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The cult of the chief executive reached its apogee in the nineteen-nineties, a period when C.E.O.s seemed not so much to serve their companies as to embody them. Certainly, there was a Time Warner independent of Gerald Levin, and Disney and General Electric existed beyond Michael Eisner and Jack Welch. Yet these executives, and others like them, were compensated as if they single-handedly controlled the fates of their companies. In the late eighties, a seven-figure salary was a lot to pay a C.E.O.; by the late nineties, nine-figure fortunes were routine. The chairman of General Motors, for example, made five hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in base salary in 1991 and just over two million in 2000. Michael Ovitz, at Disney, got a severance package worth somewhere between ninety and a hundred and thirty million dollars. But how much difference did most of these executives make? They took credit when the nation's economy made almost every business leader look good, and they blamed the fates when times turned hard. Many were, in essence, lavishly paid bureaucrats—caretakers more than creators.
Then, there was Martha Stewart. There was a cult around her, too, but for different reasons. Unlike most of the famous C.E.O.s of the period, she built her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, from scratch, and, unlike virtually anyone else, she herself was in many ways its singular product. (Jeff Bezos created Amazon.com, but it sold books and other merchandise.) The challenge for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia was to define itself as something other than its leader's corporate alter ego. When I visited Stewart at her house in Westport, Connecticut, last year, she talked about her importance to the magazine, Martha Stewart Living, saying, "This is me, O.K., me, one hundred per cent." Sharing credit does not come naturally to her, but she said that she was trying to be less dominant in the company—to turn it into an institution. Her role model was Ralph Lauren. "When you see Polo, you don't see Ralph Lauren," she said. But when people saw Stewart's company, which at its peak employed more than six hundred people, they saw Martha Stewart. Besides, the company seemed to exist more to serve its founder than the other way around. She was surrounded by people whose jobs were to anticipate and meet her every need. At Stewart's trial, which featured testimony from several of her courtiers, her bookkeeper, Heidi DeLuca, said that she was employed by the company but that her duties included maintaining Stewart's personal checkbook, paying her bills—such as health, life, and automobile insurance—and overseeing the payroll for her personal staff of between thirty and forty people. (Stewart reimbursed the company for a portion of DeLuca's salary.)
Stewart's sale of 3,928 shares of stock in the biotech company ImClone, on December 27, 2001, and the legal disaster it led to, is in many ways a story of her support system in action. At every stage—from the transaction to the investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the F.B.I. to, finally, her criminal trial—people mobilized to help her: assistants, brokers, lawyers, even other celebrities. Yet the more they tried to help, the more excruciating Stewart's problems became. With the guidance of her entourage, she invariably made the wrong decisions, and the result was humiliation and conviction. On March 5th, a jury in United States District Court in New York found Stewart guilty of all four charges against her: conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and two counts of making false statements. Her co-defendant, the stockbroker Peter Bacanovic, was convicted of four counts, too: conspiracy, perjury, obstruction of justice, and making a false statement.
On the scale of highly publicized misdeeds in the past decade, Stewart's trade must rank among the most trivial. She netted only about fifty thousand dollars more on the deal than if she'd held the stock for another day, and, as she told me, her ImClone holding constituted .03 per cent of her assets. It seems almost implausible that such a misstep could send Stewart to prison and lead her company to ruin—and that this happened with the help of the best and most loyal people that money could buy.
Peter Bacanovic, Stewart's broker at Merrill Lynch, was, like almost everyone else, just trying to keep Martha Stewart happy. On December 27, 2001, while he was on vacation in Florida, he heard from his assistant, Douglas Faneuil, that another of his clients, Sam Waksal, the chairman of ImClone, was trying to get rid of virtually all his own and his family's stock in the company. Bacanovic knew that Stewart owned ImClone stock—Stewart and Waksal were close friends—and he told Faneuil to call her and let her know.
What motivated Bacanovic? The decision to let Stewart know about Waksal's sale was, at the very least, a violation of Merrill Lynch policy; at worst, it was a felony—a violation of insider-trading rules. Stewart hadn't asked for the information. Why take such a risk on her behalf? (The government ultimately conceded that neither Bacanovic's tip nor Stewart's stock sale amounted to a crime. It was lying to the authorities about the transaction that brought them to trial.)
Bacanovic grew up in New York. His mother, an anesthesiologist, was born in Greece, and his father, a mid-level banker, came from Serbia. Peter went to the Lycée Français, a private school on Manhattan's East Side, then to Columbia (where he became friends with Stewart's daughter, Alexis), and, finally, to New York University's business school, from which he graduated in 1988. He bounced around for several years—working in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency in Los Angeles and, for a time, as a banker in Switzerland for the corporate raider Asher Edelman. He then took a marketing job at ImClone, where he met Waksal, but he left in 1992 to work as a broker at Merrill Lynch. There, for the first time, he thrived. He was, by all accounts, proficient at the job, but he excelled particularly at the social side of it. He was attractive, he followed the cultural scene, and, as a bachelor, he made a perfect extra man at dinner parties.
Martha Stewart may not have been Bacanovic's biggest investor, but the cachet of being her stockbroker was considerable. Although Bacanovic didn't testify at the trial, a tape-recorded interview he had with the S.E.C. was played, and there was a noticeable tone of starchy pride in his voice. "I do not discuss other clients' affairs with other clients," he said at one point. He sounded irritated—shocked—that someone would suggest otherwise. "I did not get to be a first vice-president of Merrill Lynch by discussing other people's business and by being indiscreet," he said. Stewart was demanding of Bacanovic, as she was of everyone in her life. "This is someone who gets irascible," he said of her in the interview. In late 2000, when the market started to sour, she e-mailed him, "I think it's time for me to give my money to a professional money manager who will watch it when I am too busy and will take a bit more care about overall market conditions and political and economic problems. We have just watched the slide and done nothing and I'm none too happy." She didn't withdraw her account then, but the message was clear.
By the time of the ImClone transaction, Bacanovic was even more vulnerable. In 2000, according to his S.E.C. testimony, he had made about five hundred and forty thousand dollars at Merrill Lynch. The following year, his income fell to about three hundred and fifty thousand, and the September 11th attacks made prospects for a turnaround appear bleak. His assistant, Faneuil, testified about waking Bacanovic up in Florida on the morning of December 27th and giving him the ImClone news. "Oh, my God," he told Faneuil, "get Martha on the phone." Faneuil, who reached Stewart while she was en route to a vacation in Mexico, passed along the word that the Waksals were selling, and she authorized the sale of her own shares.
Stewart's trades that day were small compared with Sam Waksal's. After learning that the Food and Drug Administration was going to reject ImClone's most important product, a cancer drug called Erbitux, Waksal tried to move 79,797 shares to his daughter Aliza's account through Bacanovic; Aliza herself sold 39,472 shares; his other daughter, Elana, sold 3,014. Waksal's father sold 135,000 shares, and his sister sold 1,336. Not surprisingly, in light of the F.D.A.'s decision, which was announced the following day, the Waksals' sales drew the attention of an internal auditor at Merrill Lynch, who asked to see Bacanovic as soon as he got back from Florida.The auditor, Brian Schimpfhauser, also noticed Stewart's sale of ImClone, and, he later testified, "that made me kind of suspicious."
A small problem now started to get bigger. Bacanovic had to come up with an explanation for why Stewart had sold at the same time as the Waksals. When Faneuil saw him after the New Year, Bacanovic first said that Stewart had sold ImClone as part of an end-of-year practice called "tax loss selling." But that made no sense, because she had sold at a profit. So Bacanovic decided to tell the investigators that he and Stewart had a preëxisting agreement to sell her ImClone stock when the price reached sixty dollars a share, which it did on December 27th.
For a while, it looked as though this story might hold. Merrill Lynch had referred the Waksal case to the S.E.C., and the government's investigators were putting together an easy insider-trading case against him. Because of the focus on the Waksal case, investigators were most concerned with whether he had tipped Stewart or anyone else about the imminent F.D.A. decision on Erbitux. Since Waksal himself hadn't told Stewart, she had every reason to think she had no problem. On January 16, 2002, Bacanovic and Stewart met for breakfast, and it's probable that they discussed the burgeoning investigation of the ImClone sales—and their possible culpability. Within a week, Stewart had decided to hire a criminal-defense attorney.
When Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia went public, in 1999, the company used the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz for corporate work. Wachtell, Lipton is smaller than many of the better-known firms in the city, but it has the highest profits per partner of any law firm in the nation—on average, more than three million dollars a year. Lawyers there tend to be brilliant and arrogant; typical among them is John Savarese, the lawyer whom Stewart hired in January, 2002. Like Bacanovic, Savarese is good-looking and socially prominent. He had earlier been a prosecutor in Manhattan, and in 1986 he helped convict the reigning bosses of the city's five Mafia families. (Just before that trial, I worked for him as a summer intern.)
On January 25th, Michael Schachter, the Assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the Waksal investigation, spoke to Savarese and asked to interview Stewart about the ImClone sale. Savarese had to evaluate this request in a transformed legal landscape of white-collar criminal law. Even before the Enron scandal, which was just then unfolding, the Justice Department and the S.E.C. had been placing tremendous pressure on corporate executives to coöperate with their investigations. The S.E.C., and even private auditors, might hesitate to certify the financial statements of a company headed by someone who wouldn't coöperate. A directive to prosecutors from Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson suggested that companies should pressure senior employees to testify rather than refuse to answer on Fifth Amendment grounds.
Stewart was travelling a lot in late January, so there wasn't much time for her to talk to Savarese, but she seemed nonchalant about the prospect of sitting down with Schachter and his colleagues. She and Savarese tentatively agreed to meet with the prosecutors on February 4th. "There was a lot of pressure, including from Martha, that she go in there and show she had nothing to hide," one person close to the Stewart camp says. "All she thought they wanted to talk about was whether Waksal himself had tipped her about the F.D.A. decision. She knew she was in the clear on that one."
On January 31st, something happened that should have signalled the magnitude of the risk of letting the government question Stewart. Around five in the afternoon, Stewart and Savarese spoke for half an hour on the telephone. When Stewart hung up, she asked her secretary, Ann Armstrong, to call up her computer's phone log for December 26th through January 7th. As Armstrong later testified at Stewart's trial, Stewart examined the messages and noted the one from Bacanovic on December 27th, which read, "Peter Bacanovic thinks ImClone is going to start trading downward." Armstrong described what happened next: "Martha saw the message from Peter, and she instantly took the mouse and she put the cursor at the end of the sentence, and she highlighted it back up to the end of Peter's name, and then she started typing over it." She changed the message to "Peter Bacanovic re imclone."
Stewart then had second thoughts, Armstrong continued. "She instantly stood up, and still standing at my desk, she told me to put it back. 'Put it back the way it was.' She walked back to her office door, and by the time she got to her office door she asked me to get her son-in-law on the phone." Alexis's husband, John Cuti, was a litigator who sometimes worked for Stewart and her company. He said to Armstrong, who became increasingly upset, "Stop in your tracks," and told her not to change anything else. When Armstrong got home that evening, Stewart called and asked if she had been able to restore the message. Ultimately, with the help of a friend, Armstrong was able to find the original message and fax a copy to Savarese. The next morning, Stewart left for a quick trip to Germany, which would get her back just before her interview at the U.S. Attorney's office.
Cuti told Savarese about the altering of the document, which suggested that Stewart was worried about the appearance, at least, of the ImClone transaction, if not the legality of her actions. But she was out of the country, and there was no way to get her ready for the interview. To make matters worse, Savarese had not gone over her phone logs with her.
Savarese could have delayed Stewart's appearance. He could have gathered all the relevant documents and forced her to test her recollections against the physical evidence. "It's not easy telling someone like Martha Stewart to take the Fifth," a lawyer inside the Stewart camp says. "She would have gone ballistic." Instead, Savarese sent into the hands of prosecutors an underprepared witness, who may not have told him the whole story, and who had already tried to doctor evidence in the case. "What Savarese did was an unbelievable disaster," another person in the defense camp told me.
On February 4th, only four days after the incident at Armstrong's desk, Savarese and an inexperienced associate at Wachtell, Lipton accompanied Stewart to her interview at the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan. Confident that she could truthfully refute the charge that Waksal himself had tipped her, Stewart told investigators the fabricated story about the preëxisting agreement to sell ImClone at sixty. Worse, Savarese allowed a second interrogation, on April 10th, during which Stewart again lied about the sixty-dollar agreement and asserted, falsely, that she couldn't remember whether she was told on December 27th that the Waksals were selling. To be sure, it was Stewart, not her lawyer, who lied to the investigators, but Savarese had allowed his client to take an immense legal risk.
Savarese may not have realized how big a target Stewart had become, but Republicans in the House of Representatives did. In early June, 2002, the Energy and Commerce Committee, which had been examining Waksal's role at ImClone, decided to investigate possible insider trading by Stewart. Later that month, as the investigation continued to grow, Douglas Faneuil walked into the U.S. Attorney's office and made a deal: he admitted his role in the coverup and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. On June 13th, the F.B.I. arrested Sam Waksal on charges of insider trading. (Waksal eventually agreed to plead guilty to the insider-trading charges and also to obstruction of justice and tax fraud, among other charges. He is currently serving a seven-year federal sentence. As part of the bargain, his relatives avoided criminal prosecution.) On June 21st, Merrill Lynch suspended Bacanovic.
During the summer of 2002, leaks from Congress kept the Stewart story in the news—especially the tabloids, which saw Stewart as a perfect subject. Stewart's only public discussion of her predicament came during an embarrassing appearance on the CBS "Early Show" on June 25th. She was conducting one of her regular cooking segments and, with a large knife, was chopping a head of cabbage. "I think this will all be resolved in the very near future and I will be exonerated of any ridiculousness," Stewart told the show's co-host, Jane Clayson, when she was asked about the story. "I want to focus on my salad, because that's why we're here." Stewart stopped appearing on the show, because her lawyers, who now included the high-profile defense lawyer Robert Morvillo, as well as the Wachtell, Lipton team, didn't want her to answer questions, and CBS vowed to pursue the issue. On October 3rd, with pressure from the investigation increasing, Stewart resigned as a member of the board of the New York Stock Exchange.
In late fall, frustrated by all the bad press, and desperate to get her side of the story before the public, Stewart hired a new helper: Lanny Davis, a former lawyer in the Clinton White House, who had been the President's most visible public spokesman during the Monica Lewinsky affair. Davis, who didn't believe in the conventional wisdom that criminal suspects should remain silent in public, offered me an interview in which Stewart would speak about the case publicly for the first time.
On a frigid Sunday afternoon in January, 2003, I drove to Stewart's restored 1805 farmhouse, known as Turkey Hill. We had never met before. She seemed strangely nervous for a public figure, and I soon realized why: she had hired Davis, and arranged for this interview, without telling Morvillo or Savarese. (A couple of days before the article appeared_,_ Savarese called and implored me to tell him what his client had said. I was also subpoenaed by the S.E.C. for my tape of the interview; when I declined to produce it, the agency dropped the matter.)
It was a peculiar afternoon. Stewart was obviously infuriated by the experience of being investigated, yet she never came out and said so. "My public image has been one of trustworthiness, of being a fine, fine editor, a fine purveyor of historic and contemporary information for the homemaker," she told me as we ate an almost comically elaborate Chinese lunch prepared by her chef, Lily. "My business is about homemaking. And that I have been turned into, or vilified openly as, something other than what I really am has been really confusing." Davis's team provided me with a summary of the ImClone trade from Stewart's perspective. As I later learned, that version of the facts had crucial omissions.
By this time, prosecutors were talking to Douglas Faneuil and weighing the question of whether to indict Stewart. My article certainly didn't help; rather, it let the prosecutors know that she was sticking with her original story—that she got rid of her ImClone stock pursuant to a preëxisting agreement to sell at sixty.
Stewart got one last chance to avoid prison. In the spring of 2003, Stewart's lawyers were expecting an indictment in the first week of June; as a result, they entered plea negotiations on her behalf. On Sunday, June 1st, Stewart went to the Wachtell, Lipton offices, on West Fifty-second Street, to decide whether to accept a deal that Savarese and his partner Larry Pedowitz had worked out. Stewart would plead guilty to a single felony: making a false statement to federal agents. The agreed-upon sentencing guidelines would make probation or house arrest likely, although there was no guarantee that Stewart would avoid prison. Also, under this arrangement Stewart wouldn't have to cooperate with prosecutors or give a proffer—an advance preview—of what she was going to say. During a speakerphone conversation with Stewart, Karen Patton Seymour, the chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's office, and her colleague Richard Owens narrowed the issues down to this: Would Stewart admit that she had lied to the investigators? In the end, late Sunday night, Stewart decided that she couldn't do it.
On Monday, Stewart and her defense team reassembled at Morvillo's office, and continued to discuss the deal. Morvillo is sixty-five years old, three years older than Stewart, and she seemed to regard him not only as a lawyer but as a peer. He has been at or near the top of the white-collar-criminal-defense bar for three decades, and is, in a way, as prominent in his field as she is in hers. His firm of thirty-six lawyers is prosperous, but its offices, on two floors at Fifth Avenue and Forty-sixth Street, haven't the splendor found at those of Wachtell, Lipton. And while Morvillo's own office—cluttered with shabby baseball souvenirs and yellowing files from old cases—may have been a Martha Stewart nightmare, Stewart and Morvillo seemed to have a kinship as people who were self-made.
According to someone at the meeting, Morvillo, Savarese, and Pedowitz all told Stewart that she would never get a better deal. A trial was a risk. No doubt a felony plea would complicate her role at her company, but the alternative—indictment, trial, and possible conviction of multiple felonies—was far worse. But again Stewart said that she couldn't do it. A grand jury indicted her two days later.
In a note to readers in the March, 2004, issue of Martha Stewart Living—the issue that was on newsstands when the testimony in her trial began—Stewart described the period leading up to the trial this way: "For the past several months, I have been happily immersed in scores of wonderfully written and beautifully illustrated garden catalogues." The trilling adverbs are a touchstone of Stewart's style. There was defiance in that "happily," too—Stewart's insistence that not even the power of the United States government could prevent her from extracting the soil's bounty.
In a way, the prosecutors were no more pleased than Stewart's team that the case had reached this point. By the day of opening statements, January 27th, the case had been reduced to a limited set of charges. The prosecution's one attempt to broaden the case, by charging Stewart with securities fraud—on the theory that she was lying in order to inflate the value of her own company—looked dubious from the start. (Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, who presided over the trial, threw out that count before the jury could consider it.) Defenders of Stewart, and others, questioned whether a case based solely on her statements to federal agents merited such a major effort by the government—especially since she was accused of lying about something that wasn't a crime. But the prosecutors felt that they had given Stewart two chances to tell the truth, then offered her what they considered a generous plea bargain. "We had no desire to prosecute this woman,"one investigator in the case told me. "But this was fairly egregious lying, worse than just asserting her innocence. She concocted a whole story, and we had to follow up to confirm or dispel it." Another government official said to me, "What were we supposed to do? Just walk away?"
Karen Patton Seymour and Michael Schachter, the prosecutors in the trial, were shrewd choices for the government in a case in which the defense was certain at least to suggest that the prosecution amounted to a government vendetta against a prominent person—and a particular kind of celebrity. Schachter, who is thirty-four, and who looked like Seymour's nerdy kid brother, barely changed his expression (or his boxy gray suit) during the entire trial. Seymour, who left a lucrative partnership at Sullivan & Cromwell to go to the U.S. Attorney's office, also came across as more thoughtful than passionate. (The magnitude of her financial sacrifice shouldn't be overstated; her husband is a partner at Sullivan.)
Morvillo, who has spent almost forty years in the courtroom, rarely tries cases anymore, preferring to use his blustering style to negotiate with (or browbeat) the city's prosecutors. He is not physically prepossessing; he has a greasy comb-over, a second chin bigger than his first, and a stomach that defies expensive tailoring, and he isn't a young sixty-five. Nevertheless, he had a commanding and wry manner in court, beginning his opening statement with a boast: "I tend to have a louder voice, so it should prevent you from dozing off." No one slept.
Still, the language of Morvillo's opening showed how weak a case his client had left him. There was no "direct" evidence against Stewart, he declared; her statements were not "deliberately" false. As Stewart herself had done when she and Savarese spoke with investigators almost two years earlier, Morvillo tried to shift attention to a subject more to his liking: the government investigation to determine whether Waksal had personally tipped Stewart about the bad news to come from the F.D.A. "Martha Stewart went to that meeting thinking that she had to convince the government that she was not tipped by Sam Waksal—that was her focus," Morvillo said. Even the government acknowledged that Waksal had not done that.
One passage in Morvillo's opening had an unexpected poignancy. He plainly knew little about Stewart's career or her business, but he did feel an obligation to try to give the jury a sense of who she was. "Martha Stewart initiated a catering business which by virtue of sixteen-hour days, fierce desire to put forward the best possible product, whether it deals with flowers, fixtures, food, furniture, expanded into a successful multimedia corporation run predominantly by women with similar goals and ideas and skills," Morvillo said. "Martha Stewart has devoted most of her life to improving the quality of life for others." He went on, "And because she stressed the notion of making things as good and as perfect as possible, she has often been ridiculed and parodied."
In the five weeks of the trial, these were the only words that addressed Stewart's accomplishments. Morvillo was right. Stewart did create a thriving business that allowed and encouraged its customers, mostly women, to improve their daily lives. Because of the trial, of course, that empire began to fall apart.
The rhythms of the trial, which took place in Room 110 of the federal courthouse in Foley Square, never varied. Stewart's S.U.V. arrived shortly before nine-thirty each morning, and the dozen or so photographers camped outside the courthouse got their arrival shots and then disappeared. Stewart and her bodyguard were excused from waiting in line for the front-door metal detector, but they did have to pass through it. From there, I saw them go to a fourth-floor war room, where, every morning, the team assembled. The group included Morvillo, three other lawyers (and assorted paralegals) from his firm, and John Cuti, Stewart's son-in-law. (Later each morning, a catered lunch was delivered for the group.) Alexis Stewart attended almost every day, and sat directly behind her mother, in the first row of spectator seats. The Stewart table was stocked with Evian water and bottled green tea from Japan. Compared with the Stewart entourage, the prosecutors and Peter Bacanovic's team (of three lawyers) drew little notice.
In a courtroom that had been the venue for many cases about organized-crime families, this case may have been the first about a clique. Few words were used more often than "friend"—a term that had a flexible definition. Bacanovic, Douglas Faneuil said, told him that he and Stewart "are close, we are very close friends and extremely loyal to one another," although Bacanovic wasn't close enough to attend Stewart's annual Christmas dinner, at Chanterelle. (As for his own relationship with Bacanovic, Faneuil said, "I didn't consider us to be friends, but we did—we did things socially.") Heidi DeLuca, Stewart's bookkeeper, called her a "friend," but said that they never socialized. Sam Waksal, who is fifty-six, was at the center of the clique. Bacanovic had worked for Waksal at ImClone, and Alexis, who is thirty-eight, had dated Waksal for years. Waksal and Stewart were close friends who travelled together and spoke often. (For all his excesses, Waksal did truly believe in Erbitux, and it appears that his faith was justified. It was, of course, the F.D.A.'s rejection of Erbitux in late 2001 that set in motion the events leading to the criminal case. But ImClone kept working on the drug, and on February 12th, in the middle of Stewart's trial, the F.D.A. finally gave its approval for Erbitux to be used in treating advanced colon cancer.)
It was clear from the start that if the government was going to win its case it would be because the jury believed Douglas Faneuil. In court, Faneuil, now twenty-eight, looked like a gawky child who had borrowed his father's best suit. When he inched his chair toward the microphone in the witness box, his knees banged against the front of it. "My knees are long," he told Judge Cedarbaum.
"Did there come a time when you were working at Merrill Lynch that you did something illegal?" Seymour asked him.
"What did you do, briefly?"
"I told one client about what another client was doing in his account and then lied to cover it up." Faneuil's manner combined a studied meekness with a showy regard for the truth. Gravely, he noted that there was an "inaccuracy" in the résumé he submitted to Merrill Lynch, saying, "I wrote that my grade-point average was 3.5, when in fact the number was actually 3.44."
The most damaging moment in Faneuil's testimony was his account of his workday on December 27, 2001. He had been Bacanovic's assistant for just six months, but the day's events turned on him. Throughout the trial, there was a fairly straightforward class division between people who, like Faneuil and Schimpfhauser, had to show up for work between Christmas and New Year's, and those who, like Stewart and Bacanovic, left town. Shortly after Faneuil arrived on the morning of the twenty-seventh, the sell orders from the Waksal family came in, and early that afternoon, as Bacanovic had insisted, Faneuil and Stewart finally spoke. "Immediately she said, 'Hi, this is Martha, what's up with Sam?' " Faneuil recounted. "So I said, 'Well, we have no news on the company, but Peter thought you might like to act on the information that Sam Waksal was trying to sell all of his shares.' At that point, I may have mentioned Waksal's daughters as well, I'm not sure."
Morvillo objected, saying that Faneuil shouldn't testify if he wasn't "sure." Given the opportunity, Faneuil made it worse for Stewart. "I'm confident saying with one-hundred-per-cent surety that I told her that Sam was trying to sell," he said. "I'll leave it at that."
Everyone thought that Morvillo's cross-examination of Faneuil would be the most important confrontation of the case, but, as it happened, the crucial turning point had nothing to do with him.
Through the early part of the trial, Peter Bacanovic's lawyers generally deferred to Morvillo, much as their client did to Stewart. Bacanovic's lead lawyer, Richard Strassberg, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, who is now with the firm of Goodwin Procter, presented Bacanovic's opening statement, but he shared substantial responsibility for the defense with David Apfel, a Boston-based partner at the firm. Apfel, who is fifty-one, had a distinguished career as a federal prosecutor in Massachusetts, where in 1997 he won the John Marshall Award, the Justice Department's highest award for trial work. In the late nineties, he turned to private practice, and, at the lectern on February 4th, he proceeded to give life to the courtroom adage that the best prosecutors do not always make the best defense lawyers.
Apfel organized his notes, stared down Faneuil on the witness stand, and snarled at him, "Mr. Faneuil, let's get a few things straight right away."
Thus began a catastrophically ineffective cross-examination. The premise of Faneuil's testimony was that he knew why Stewart had sold her shares—because he had told her that the Waksals were selling—and that any other explanation was a "cover story." The defense team could have taken a softer route—one, in fact, anticipated during a practice cross-examination of Faneuil conducted at the U.S. Attorney's office. As that session was described to me, the lawyers pointed out that Faneuil was little more than a glorified secretary who had no way of knowing the real reason that Stewart sold her shares. Faneuil was not privy to many of Stewart and Bacanovic's conversations, and he was on vacation the week before the ImClone sale, when Stewart did make some tax-related sales of stock. Using this tack, Apfel could have dismissed Faneuil's importance.
Instead, Apfel went to war. He suggested that Faneuil had changed his story; he implied that Faneuil was out for revenge; he charged that Faneuil was the real mastermind of the coverup; he all but accused him of being a nutcase, a publicity hound, a moron, and a junkie. (Faneuil had admitted to occasionally smoking marijuana.) At one point, Apfel asked him, "In January of 2002, at the time that you were having a series of discussions with Mr. Bacanovic that you have described as intimidating, did you ever send him e-mails with any funny articles attached?"
After Faneuil said that it was possible, Apfel asked, "Do you recall sending him an article in January of 2003 about a man having sex with a goat?"
Seymour's objection to that question was sustained, and the jury's laughter came at Apfel's expense. Faneuil stuck, ever more persuasively, to his original story. Then Apfel, not content with dragging down his own client, started to pull down Martha Stewart as well.
In his direct testimony, Faneuil implied that there was nothing special about his relationship with Stewart—that it amounted to a few telephone conversations. Apfel introduced a series of Faneuil's e-mails to his friends suggesting that these were anything but bland encounters. On October 23, 2001, Faneuil recounted:
**{: .break one} ** I have never, ever been treated so rudely by a stranger on the telephone. She actually hung up on me! And she had the nerve—the NERVE—to mention the layoffs in her anger. She said, "Do you know who the hell is answering your phones? You call and you know what he sounds like? He sounds like this. . . ." And then she made the most ridiculous sound I've heard coming from an adult in quite some time, kind of like a lion roaring underwater. I laughed; I thought she was joking. And then she yelled. . . . "Merrill Lynch is laying off ten thousand employees because of people like that idiot!" And then she hung up. **
Three days later: "Martha yelled at me again today, but I snapped in her face and she actually backed down! Baby put Ms. Martha in her place." Another time, Bacanovic had the temerity to put Stewart on hold, and that led to another tirade against Faneuil. "During that conversation," Apfel asked Faneuil, "she told you that she was going to leave Peter Bacanovic and leave Merrill Lynch unless that hold music was changed, is that right?" Correct, Faneuil said. Even Bacanovic had to laugh at the story about Stewart's "hold music" outburst. In a trial full of Stewart's enablers and apologists, Faneuil was the great exception.
Robert Morvillo had a lot of damage to undo. Deepening the split that Apfel had opened between the two defendants, Morvillo pointed out that it was Bacanovic, not Stewart, who had urged Faneuil to lie to investigators. And Morvillo did, at last, raise the issue of whether Faneuil was in any position to know the real reason that Stewart had sold her shares of ImClone. As for Stewart's somewhat intimidating personality, Morvillo tried to persuade the jury that it didn't matter that Stewart had yelled at an underling. After all, she always yelled at underlings—that was her style. Morvillo tried to make that point in cross-examining Waksal's secretary, Emily Perret, who had earlier said that Stewart was brusque when she called on December 27th. "Was there any difference between her tone on December 27th and the way she usually was with you?"
"No, most of the time it was the same," Perret replied.
"Most of the time she was hurried and harsh and direct when she spoke to you?"
"That's correct."
The positions of personal assistant and personal secretary may sound similar, but they represent distinct social archetypes. Assistants, like Faneuil, may aspire to be their bosses and see themselves as their social equals, while secretaries are more often denied the hope of advancement. The response of some secretaries to this plight is ever greater sublimation of self and dedication to the boss's welfare. The more Stewart's secretary, Ann E. (pronounced "Annie") Armstrong, tried to help her boss, the more she helped usher her to her fate.
Armstrong has been Stewart's secretary for six years. She has a nervous smile and a haunted look, and she mumbled through the first few minutes of her testimony. When she came to the events of December 27, 2001, she lost control of her emotions. When Stewart called on the way to Mexico, it marked the first time they had spoken since Christmas. "I thanked her for the plum pudding that she had sent home," Armstrong said, and then started to weep. She tried to recover her composure, saying, "Martha made plum puddings and sent them home with a lot of us for Christmas, so I thanked her for that." But then she started to cry again, and Judge Cedarbaum called a recess for the day.
As clearly as Faneuil loathed Martha Stewart, Armstrong loved her, which was why her testimony was so devastating. The central image she presented was vivid—the haughty Stewart sitting in her secretary's cubicle (something Armstrong said she had never done before) and fiddling with the phone log. Armstrong tried to minimize what Stewart had done, emphasizing that Stewart had told her to change the document back "instantly." On cross-examination, she told Morvillo that Stewart had never asked her to cover up or lie about the incident.
Still, the damage from Armstrong's testimony was profound. It foreclosed what would have been one of Stewart's best arguments in a case where she had not been charged with insider trading: Why would she lie if she hadn't done anything wrong in the first place?
Another disaster for the defense came in the person of Stewart's close friend Mariana Pasternak, a Westport real-estate broker. Stewart and Pasternak spoke daily, saw each other weekly, and had travelled together to the Galápagos, Egypt, Brazil, and Peru. In December of 2001, they went to Mexico and Panama. Pasternak's hair was darker than Stewart's, but they had the same expensive coiffure and similarly refined tastes. Regarding a conversation with Stewart on the balcony of their hotel suite in Los Cabos, Morvillo asked her, "You were in a chair?"
"I was in a chaise," Pasternak corrected.
The government called her simply to corroborate Faneuil's account of his conversation with Stewart on December 27th. Pasternak did that, but in her brief testimony she also gave a revealing glimpse into Stewart's emotional life.
On December 30th, the two women had returned to their suite after a guided hike near their resort. They were relaxing with soft drinks on their balcony when Pasternak, as she recalled it, said, "Here we are again, just the two of us on a holiday trip with no male companionship." They were both divorced, wealthy, and, in romantic terms, alone. Pasternak turned the conversation to Waksal, who had to be a complicated subject for Stewart. After all, Waksal and Stewart were about the same age, but he had dated her daughter. Stewart's reported comments about Waksal reflected the ambivalence such complications might produce.
Waksal, Stewart suggested, was falling apart. He had "disappeared again"—that is, she couldn't reach him. (She had tried calling him on the twenty-seventh after getting the tip from Faneuil.) He was "walking funny" at her Christmas party. Worse, Stewart went on, he and his daughters had sold or were trying to sell all their stock in ImClone. "His stock is going down, or went down, and I sold mine," Stewart added. This was the crucial part of her testimony, because Stewart had no way of knowing that Waksal and his daughters were selling except from the conversation with Faneuil.
Pasternak's appearance ended on a curious note. In her direct testimony, she said that, in another conversation in Mexico, Stewart had commented about Bacanovic's tip, "Isn't it nice to have brokers who tell you those things?" But, under Morvillo's cross-examination, she said, "I do not know if that statement was made by Martha or just was a thought in my mind"—a concession so dramatic that it brought a gasp from the spectators. But then, when the prosecution questioned her again, Pasternak said her "best belief" was that Stewart said it.
Pasternak noted in passing that Stewart was rather sad to have sold her shares in Waksal's company, because "it was a question of loyalty to her friend." Stewart said something similar to me at Turkey Hill, explaining that she liked to buy shares in the companies of C.E.O.s she admired, as a kind of tribute but also as a way to learn from them. Her stock portfolio, which was made public during the trial, revealed that she fell for other emblematic figures of the nineteen-nineties. She did well with Wal-Mart and Dell, but lost with investments in Amazon, Lucent, Doubleclick, and JDS Uniphase.
One of the most frequently raised questions about the trial was why Stewart put on such a meagre defense. A high-powered defense team, it was asserted, should have come up with something in response to a month of government witnesses. As it turned out, however, when Morvillo finally had the chance to call witnesses he had almost no good options. Most important, he thought that it was out of the question for Stewart herself to testify. She had no good answers for the most basic questions. What explanation could she give for altering the phone log at Ann Armstrong's desk? How did Pasternak know that the Waksals were dumping their shares? And if Stewart told her, as she certainly did, why did she deny to investigators that she knew of the Waksal sales?
What's more, in a cross-examination of Stewart, the rest of her life would be open to ruthless scrutiny. Wasn't it true that the State of New York had charged her with lying about the location of her residence in order to avoid some taxes? In that case, didn't she testify under oath that she hadn't appeared on the "Today" show in 1991—and wasn't that testimony false? Was it true that the state concluded that the information Stewart supplied "could not always be relied upon"? (Stewart lost the tax case and ultimately paid the state more than two hundred thousand dollars.) Morvillo could imagine other cross-examination avenues: Ms. Stewart, let me direct your attention to May, 1997. Did you call your neighbor's landscaper in East Hampton a "fucking liar," then attempt to run him down in your Suburban truck? Did he scream that you were crushing him? Did you pay him a settlement for civil damages? (The landscaper, Matthew Munnich, filed a complaint with the police, which did not result in any charges against Stewart, but she did pay him an undisclosed amount to preëmpt a civil lawsuit.) How would the imperious Stewart hold up under this kind of questioning? Morvillo was not prepared to find out. Even more important, he knew that, under federal sentencing guidelines, Stewart would face a longer sentence if Judge Cedarbaum thought she had lied on the witness stand. Given the way the case was going, and the likelihood of conviction, Morvillo didn't want to take that risk, either.
There was no shortage of potential character witnesses willing to testify to Stewart's good works. But they would have opened up what was known in the defense camp as "Chris Byron issues." Christopher Byron and Jerry Oppenheimer had written scathing biographies of Stewart, and the prosecution could have sampled their most damning stories to challenge the evidence having to do with Stewart's character. Would it affect your opinion of Ms. Stewart's character, the prosecutor might ask, if you knew she acknowledged lying in public about her ex-husband's ability to father children? Stewart had admitted to that, but, under the rules of evidence, the prosecution wouldn't be required to prove the published stories of her misbehavior. Fair or not, the questions alone would do enough damage.
So Morvillo couldn't call Stewart, couldn't call character witnesses, and couldn't call anyone to verify Stewart's preëxisting agreement with Bacanovic to sell ImClone at sixty dollars—because, as was increasingly apparent, they had no such agreement. (In an effort to prove the sixty-dollar agreement, Bacanovic's lawyers called Heidi DeLuca, Stewart's bookkeeper; but in an artful cross-examination Schachter had shown that her conversation with Bacanovic probably concerned an earlier sale of ImClone shares by Stewart, not the one on December 27, 2001.) In the end, Morvillo called just a single witness, Steven Pearl, the associate at Wachtell, Lipton whom Savarese had brought along to the U.S. Attorney's office to take notes during Stewart's interview on February 4, 2002. The idea was to challenge the F.B.I. agent's account of the meeting; as with most office interviews, there was no tape recording or transcript. Oddly, though, Pearl had little experience in note-taking, and in his testimony couldn't remember much of what was said or decipher much of what he had written. Morvillo would have been better off calling no witnesses at all.
Schachter's dense, factual summation left Morvillo with only the hoariest of arguments for guilty white-collar defendants: that no one could have been so stupid as to leave such an obvious trail of evidence. He said, mockingly, that the government had said that Stewart and Bacanovic belonged to a "confederacy of dunces." But Karen Seymour, in her rebuttal summation, came up with the obvious rejoinder to Morvillo's desperate argument: "Smart people committing stupid crimes or doing stupid things, your common sense tells you that that's what white-collar criminals do every day."
Judge Cedarbaum praised the jury throughout the trial, and it did seem a remarkably attentive group. Not one juror missed a day, so none of the six alternates were called to deliberate, and the testimony was never delayed because of juror tardiness—rare in New York. The jurors returned the Judge's esteem by following her instructions with care.
Many jurors were interviewed after the verdict, and several took the opportunity to interpret its larger implications. One said that the case "sends a message to bigwigs in corporations that they have to abide by the law. No one is above the law." Actually, the deliberations seem to have been tethered closely to the facts of the case, rather than following any broader agenda. "We never really had any arguments—we had discussions," one of the jurors, Amos Mellinger, a market researcher from Riverdale, told me. The jurors quickly studied the key evidence, first asking to hear most of Faneuil's testimony and then reviewing Stewart's stock portfolio. Mellinger had once before served on a high-profile jury, in the case of one of the white men accused of murdering Yusef Hawkins in Bensonhurst in 1989. The Stewart jury, made up of eight women and four men, "got along beautifully," he said.
The jurors' first vote was on one of the false-statement counts against Stewart, and it was unanimous: guilty. Mellinger and other jurors said that Armstrong and Pasternak were especially effective for the prosecution. "As a loyal employee, Ann was just bent out of shape having to testify, and the same with Pasternak," Mellinger said. "They didn't want to be there, but they told the truth."
Most of the jurors' notes to the Judge concerned evidence against Bacanovic, so lawyers on both sides assumed that they hadn't even turned their attention to the case against Stewart. It came as something of a surprise when the jurors, after lunch on Friday, March 5th, sent a note announcing that they had a verdict. After a five-week trial, they hadn't deliberated for even two full days. "We thought the jury would be out longer," Morvillo told me in an interview after the trial.
Jurors often look haggard and exhausted when they deliver a verdict; the emotional toll of passing judgment is often considerable, especially after a long trial. But as these jurors filed into Room 110, just before three o'clock, they looked relaxed, and several had half smiles. None of them looked at the defendants—often a tipoff of conviction—but it was their equanimity that was so startling. The jury convicted Stewart of all four counts and Bacanovic of four out of five.
Nothing seemed to go right for Stewart. In the first hours following the verdict, she posted a statement on her Web site, marthatalks.com, saying, "I am obviously distressed by the jury's verdict but I continue to take comfort in knowing that I have done nothing wrong and that I have the enduring support of my family and friends." Within minutes, though, apparently at the insistence of her lawyers, the words "I have done nothing wrong" were removed. This revision was certainly influenced by Stewart's next problem: her sentencing.
Federal guidelines use a point system to help determine the length of a sentence. Stewart's crime has a base level of twelve, and the recommended sentencing range is ten to sixteen months. But the probation department, which makes the first evaluation, and Judge Cedarbaum, who will render the final decision, could adjust Stewart's score. If they found, for instance, that Stewart abused a position of trust, such as her status as a C.E.O., that could raise her score by another two points—indicating a prison sentence of fifteen to twenty-one months. The number could go down two points if Stewart shows "acceptance of responsibility." That reduction usually goes only to defendants who plead guilty, but Stewart's lawyers may argue for it, which is why they didn't want her saying, "I have done nothing wrong." Sentencing is set for June 17th. An investigation that began as a minor annoyance, a brief interview at the U.S. Attorney's office squeezed in between trips to Europe and the West Coast, will end for Martha Stewart with a judge deciding how long—not whether—she will go to prison.
In Karen Seymour's rebuttal summation, she implored the jurors, "Don't think about the S.E.C. Don't think about the F.B.I., though they certainly were victimized. It's really our entire nation, our country, that is victimized." Seymour was, to say the least, engaging in overstatement. Stewart didn't steal anything, or fleece any investors. On December 27, 2001, more than seven million shares of ImClone changed hands. Stewart did sell her nearly four thousand shares advantageously, but it's hard to imagine that her sale had any impact on the stock price. She also misled some federal agents, but not for very long. If anyone lost, it is the stockholders in Martha Stewart's company—as a result of the prosecution of its chief. In all, it is difficult to translate Stewart's lies into a crime against "our entire nation."
Many other attempts were made to find large significance in this trial, and the case brought together unlikely allies. On the "Today" show, the writer Naomi Wolf attributed Stewart's fall to "a social taboo against women being too powerful, too wealthy, too successful without being attached to a man." Some conservatives, like Ann Coulter, heard an echo of Bill Clinton in her indifference to truth-telling—a presumption that the rules didn't apply to her—and demanded punishment. Other conservatives saw the trial as big government run amok, with Stewart's shareholders as the real victims—they were, according to the editorialists at the Wall Street Journal, "the innocent bystanders paying the biggest price for the prosecutors' zeal to see Martha Stewart in an orange jumpsuit." The facts of Stewart's fall could fit almost any agenda.
There was also a distinctly American story of self-creation—of a dramatic rise and sudden fall—which invested an essentially banal trial with the weight of meaning and the potential for a schadenfreude festival. Martha Stewart came from a New Jersey suburb and created an American business success—persuading people to buy something they didn't know they needed. In her case, she refined the ordinary comforts of middle-class life: a better Thanksgiving dinner, a prettier Christmas wreath. Her projects often took hard work, but they were never too exotic. After all, the phrase most closely associated with her is "a good thing"—not a great one. It was a modest, homely aesthetic with an overlay of Stewart's odd glamour.
Stewart's phone logs, displayed so often during the trial, revealed an existence of enviable privilege and variety. "Sec. Albright is trying to set up a follow-up meeting next week." The president of Harvard wanted to talk. Could friends borrow a white Jaguar? Was there room for one more person to squeeze into Stewart's helicopter—the one taking her to the party on a yacht off the coast of Panama? "Dick Gephardt wants to speak to you about his upcoming trip to New York." What date was convenient for her to read David Letterman's Top Ten list? "Melanie Griffith (sounding exactly 12 years old) heard you were looking for someone to 'cook with on TV' and she'd like to recommend her sister, Tracy, who is 'forty, beautiful, a sushi chef in LA, and a huge Martha fan.' " Even the work didn't sound much like work: "Choose Cookie issue cover." It was another world. And then, overnight, it seemed, Stewart became a member of the Tabloid Hall of Fame, a place inhabited by Michael Jackson, David Gest, and Liza Minnelli. Already the same op-ed columnists and television panelists who had assigned various meanings to the affair were wondering if Stewart could return from prison and remake herself and her company. Or was the price of her felonies too high, and the damage to her image and story irreparable? ♦


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Mayor's Office
Mayor Chris Beutler issued a proclamation today for National Safe Kids Week and encouraged families to attend two events focusing on the prevention of sports injuries:
The events are sponsored by Safe Kids Lincoln-Lancaster County, a coalition of public and private injury prevention experts and others in the community who are concerned about unintentional injuries occurring among children. These injuries are the leading cause of death to children ages 1 to 14 nationally and in Lancaster County. The Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department coordinates the coalition.
The events will feature local experts on sports injury prevention; more than 25 interactive activities; and demonstrations on pedestrian and bike safety, swimming pool and boating safety, and fire and burn prevention as well as child passenger and home safety.
Mayor Beutler also introduced two middle school students recovering from sports injuries. During a 2008 soccer game, Chase Wolinski's anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) was torn. After surgery and a four-month recovery, she was cleared for volleyball practice, but re-tore the ligament, requiring another surgery and six months of rehabilitation.
"Had we known in advance the importance of weight training and proper stretching in injury prevention, we would have done everything differently," said Chase's mom, Jude Eberhardt. "Chase went through a solid year of pain and some isolation. She's leading an active life again including sports, but does leg strengthening exercises and knows she has to stretch before each activity. She's really had to learn how to succeed all over again."
Scott Wineman is recovering from head and neck injuries experienced during a football game last October 2009. "I worked so hard to get on the 8th-grade team that I didn't think about being smaller than a lot of the other guys," said Wineman. Two plays in which he was hit by opponents left him with whiplash, a concussion, and a hairline fracture of a vertebrae.
"Patience is not a virtue when it comes to sports injuries," said Scott's mom, Lyn. "In hindsight, Scott should not have continued playing after the first hit, and we would have gotten him to specialists immediately." Although Scott's fracture healed, he still suffered serious headaches, fatigue, attention disorder, difficulty reading and neck pain. In January, he was referred to the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury program at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital and began therapy. At school, the emphasis is on what he learns rather than his earned grade.
Counseling helped both students deal with issues about fear, self-image, and the loneliness that comes from being left out of sports and social events involving physical activity.
According to Safe Kids USA, more than 30 million American children participate in extra curricular sports each year. The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons estimates that more than 3.5 million children age 14 and younger seek medical attention each year as a result of sports injuries. About 40 percent of traumatic brain injuries among youth are associated with sports and recreational activities.
The Lincoln-Lancaster Injury Surveillance System shows that over the 2006 though 2008 three-year period, 3,085 young people 18 and under were treated for sports injuries in Lincoln hospitals. This resulted in 3,799 days of hospitalization and $3.3 million in hospital charges for hospitalization only.
More information on Safe Kids is available at lincoln.ne.gov (keyword: safekids).


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We bring our kids to Kids Club in the mornings and the staff are WONDERFUL!! They plan activities, circle time, dance parties and games and my kids love it!
Sarah Clark
I love this gym. They have everything you could want in a gym: sauna, pool, hot tub, hot yoga, classes galore, stretch equipment/area, tons of machines, basketball gym, childcare, hydro-massage, etc, etc. Overall our family is very happy here- there's something for everyone at a reasonable price.
Kerry W.
I've been a member here for almost 6 months and I've been impressed. The facilities are always clean, the staff is nice and professional, and my toddler loves the childcare workers! They even know her by name and greet her when she comes in. Awesome gym.
Not only is it nice on the inside but they support the community, too. I went to a Zumba Fundraiser for Cancer Research that they sponsored. The club is always clean, it's nicely decorated inside and there are a ton of classes to choose from. It has a media room where you can watch movies while doing your cardio. Equipment is always available and many great classes to choose from. The daycare includes computers, video games and crafts for the kids.
Sharon M.
They have all the cardio machines you need with a full movie cardio room. Heated swimming pool. Full sized basketball court. Tons of free weights and cable machinery. You should never have to stand around waiting to use anything. All the amenities are beautiful. The sauna is great. They have private showers for all guests and FREE WIFI!!
Ken P.
This gym changed my life. I signed up for the membership, honestly expecting to stop going after a couple weeks. I'm going on month two & I don't plan on stoping any time soon. I took advantage of the trainer sessions. Roland was my trainer, I no longer meet with a trainer but he gave me the right tools and motivation. He listened to my goals and gave me tips on how to meet them.
Andrea K.
I took the Mixx Fit class yesterday at 10:30 and it was my favorite class by far, highly energetic! It was moves I could do and easy on my knees and I didn't get lost in the dance. Thank you so much for having this class as an option.
Brandy C.
It was Sydney who set me up right and I am forever grateful. I'm middle aged and over weight. After talking to her I realized I can become healthy! I can work out! She's just what I needed. I've been coming a couple months now and I feel right at home.
Susan J.
I love this location. We take our daughter who is 4 months to the kids club and she is well taken care of. We feel safe to leave her with the workers there and can enjoy our workout without worrying about anything.
Cayla G.
I'm a huge fan of the Onelife Fitness in Newport news, Norfolk and Virginia Beach. The gyms are well equipped, well run, and all have very diverse range of equipment and classes to suit most fitness needs.
Troy W.
Love this gym! The classes are awesome and so are the people. There are various ways to workout, which I really enjoy. From swimming to cycle or weights and agility you can literally have it all. If your looking for a trainer Janelle is the only way to go!
Brittany P.
I found my home away from home. The daycare center is great my son has so much fun every time!
Micah B.
Love this gym! They have everything, it's very clean and aesthetically pleasing, there's a pool, hot tub, sauna, nice locker rooms, basketball court, two floors of workout equipment, great classes, etc etc! For the price you pay, it is a really great deal and definitely makes working out fun and enjoyable! Would highly recommend.
Konnor M.
I would say this was the best thing I did by joining this gym. I'm not a workout person and hired a personal trainer for the first time to learn make changes the right way in my body. Thanks to Dustin my trainer for the way he so simplified the exercises to me and did not make me overdo it. His knowledge is amazingly good and helped me feel positive about myself. Now I know the workout regime and will highly recommend this gym to everyone.
Paromita B.
I love this place! Customer service is awesome! Front desk always smiling and greets you! There is such a wide selection of classes in afternoons, evenings and weekends. So, even though I am a working mom i can find a class perfect dor my schedule! LOVE Nicole's hot yoga!
Tracy Guy
Absolutely love this place!!! My home away from home. The trainers are the best! I started here with zero gym experience, and have never felt anything but encouraged. Group exclusive is addictive, not only for the fabulous workouts, but also for the support and friendship!
Emily P.
I do the group exclusives and they are amazing! The instructors are super friendly, you end up becoming friends with the instructor! They are people of all sizes at these classes so if your self conscious about going to a group exclusive, don't be! We all started somewhere! They are super fun and motivating. They also kick your butt though! Love these classes!
Carolyn E.
Probably the best gym I've ever been a member of. Great customer service, huge and has everything. Just about any exercise, article or video you've seen where you've said "I've never even seen that equipment before", this gym has that equipment.
Donald B.
I can't say enough good things about the trainers here and the group exclusive classes. Eight weeks ago I walked into my first metcon as someone who couldn't even do a single pushup on my toes. Everyone from the other members to the trainers have been so supportive and encouraging and I am so amazed at the progress I've made in just eight weeks. I know with 100% certainty that I could not have achieved the same results on my own.
Bethany C.
Awesome facility, great people, tons of equipment and amenities. My husband and I have been coming for a few years. Some of the staff has become like family. Kids Club is fantastic. I have a 10 month old, a 4 year old and a 7 year old. They all love it; even if they're cranky when I drop them off, they're smiling when I pick them up.
Ashley H.
I love my Tuesday night class! 2 hours of hard work and sweat that makes you feel all good and warm inside all night. It's the best!
Denise W.
Love this gym! Such a spectacular price, location, and convenience. I signed up the first day of my free 3 day pass because I fell in absolute love. The trainers are amazing. I workout with Adam and love his guidance and motivation during the training session. All the equipment is new and beautiful. In addition to the wonderful trainers and equipment, the group classes are empowering. I also enjoy using the space if a class is not going on. You must join this gym!
Alanna R.
Body pump classes are AWESOME!!! I enjoy it every time I go.
Gwendolyn P.
The kids club is the best, the staff is awesome!!! They know my kids & care for them excellently.
Michael E.
This gym is the total package, friendly staff, nice people around, lot of weights and machines, clean, wide, different activities are possible.
Love it.
Sergio L.
I LOVE this gym! The classes and instructors are awesome! I lost 2lbs in one week doing classes and personal training. Love that there is so much equipment you never have to wait.
Jessica H.
The Kid's Club is fantastic! It's great to be able to drop my baby off in friendly, trustworthy, loving hands. It's clean and the staff is wonderful. And it's inexpensive. Great care in the same building I work out.
Donna P.
I've been a member less than a month, but I've been very impressed with the trainers and staff. It's a very nice facility and I'm already seeing results from my Zone 4 class.
Jim A.
The instructors are amazing. they motivate me every time I go to a class and make me want to do better than I did the last time. I always get excited when I am heading to my class. The front desk staff are helpful and so pleasant. I'm so happy at one life!
Tanya S.
I love this Gym! Aside from all of the fun classes & activities, the overall environment invites like minded individuals that are simply trying to get a little more fit than yesterday. Some people think the gym is intimidating but they have a Zone 4 Class that ensures the individual is hitting each station and sure to kick your butt!
Annissia P.
I love this gym. There's a pool, track and a variety of cardio and strength building equipment. But my favorite are the classes. They have great instructors and an awesome choice of classes. They offer a free introduction. Come and see what I am talking about! Onelife Forever!
Susan P.
Great gym. Comfortable environment. I love how energizing the whole place is! I am excited to get up in the morning to go to the gym! Staff and facilities are all great! I just started my trial run of the Zone 4 training which is honestly one of the best workouts I have ever had!
Hayley W.
This gym is incredible. Top-of-the-line equipment, lap pool, onsite theater, basketball courts, functional intense training areas, group exercise classes throughout the day (7 days/week), spa-inspired locker rooms...what more could I ask for?
Michelle L.
Zone 4 is amazing and changes every day and the support that I get from Nicole is exceptional. She gets to know her clients on a personal level and it's not just a job, it's a passion for her and it shows. The little things that she does for us speak volumes as to how much she values us as customers!
Melissa J.
I highly recommend the Z4 program for anyone who loves the gym and would like a little extra motivation. It definitely keeps me coming back!
Britny D.
I've been going to Zone4 classes with Coach Tom since February, and I enjoy how all of the workouts are structured to give your body minimal rest periods and maximum exertion - it's a great workout mixing strength training and cardio, and I'm excited we now have a dedicated space for this small group training.
David O.
Best gym & Zumba instructors ever! Such good energy there!
Julia H.
This is an awesome and amazing gym! One Life is the best one I have ever belong to and absolutely love it :-) it is clean, professional and I cannot say enough good things about it. I would never consider going anywhere else. I love all of the cardio equipment, free weights, circuit training and classes. The locker rooms are exceptionally clean and well-kept. Another plus is the Wi-Fi.
Virginia D.
Tennis programs are the best. Youth programs in tennis are the best. I learned to play better tennis. Dance mad aerobics are free for members. Instructors are Good.
Maria G.
My daughter loved her experience at the summer tennis camp here! The friendly and caring staff helped her to fall in love with the sport. They have a great child-to-staff ratio and the kids get good conditioning and a solid foundation in tennis fundamentals. So glad we found this camp!
Mary J.
I'm glad someone told me about this place. It's definitely my kind of gym. Lots of NEW equipment, never a wait for cardio equipment. Racquetball courts, tanning beds, basketball court, FREE classes, on-site chiropractor, rock climbing wall, etc... It's simply great.
Cory S.
I love this gym. They have everything you could want in a gym: sauna, pool, hot tub, hot yoga, classes galore, stretch equipment/area, tons of machines, basketball gym, childcare, hydro-massage, etc, etc. Overall our family is very happy here- there's something for everyone at a reasonable price.
Kerry W.
We've been taking our son to EP for over 3 years for strength and agility training. He started as a "middle of the pack" swimmer who has been transformed into a national level competitor thanks to the training of Rhys Gully, Kris Johnson, and the Staff at Onelife. They really understand the physiology of the sports they support and provide well balanced training. The exercises customized for both the sport and the individual needs. There is no shortage of specialized equipment and a great, supportive environment to maximize the training.
NCAP parent
We've been training with EP and Avatus for 7 seasons. In those 7 years we've won 3 conference championships, 3 county, and 3 regional championships, 2 state final appearances, and 1 State Championship. He's personable and his passion and expertise are like no other. I love his ability to teach kids not just train them. Our team is physically and mentally ahead of anyone else, we have a high level of confidence because we are getting the best training in the DMV.
Rob Garner Head Coach Wise Boys Varsity Basketball
I've been working with EP in the off-season for strength, power, and agility. I feel more agile and stronger than ever. Thank you EP!
Lori Lindsey USWNT Midfielder
In preparing for the Olympics and I really wanted a complete training. I've been working on my strength, agility, and explosiveness and I've gotten all that with Explosive Performance.
Becky Sauerbrunn USWNT Defender
That type of training (EP) is very hard, it really takes it to the next level so that when the 4th quarter comes that you are ready to hit that next gear and perform better than (the rest). I hate it the way it makes you feel at the time but it translates over into (performance) in crunch time for whatever sport you play. I guarantee (training with EP) you will be a better athlete.
Lorenzo Alexander Pro Bowl NFL Linebacker
Train like the pros with EP or your opponents will!
Antwaan Randle El Superbowl Champion
I'd like to thank Kevin and Chris for all the hard work they do. The great thing about this is that everybody wants to be bigger faster and stronger, but it's a special type of training to be able to do all of that. Here at Explosive Performance we do all the training we need, to be successful during the season.
Kedric Golston NFL Defensive Lineman
I felt like I needed to prepare for my next training camp and training with (EP) prepared me for the intensity of camp and multiple games. I think preparing with EP was fantastic because they tailor exercises for me and my specific position. EP training has helped me tremendously and I had a great camp. I felt like I had some much more explosiveness out of my first few steps and we really worked on my defensive footwork.
Ali Krieger USWNT Defender
I just had knee surgery and I've struggled for the last several years with issues with my knees. We decided to do a different approach with (EP) to make sure that this time around I was the strongest I've ever been and get my explosiveness up. I feel as strong as I've ever been from toe to hand, and that time more aggressive coming out for the ball and stronger to take hits (on the field).
Ashlyn Harris USWNT Goalie
If you want to be an explosive athlete get with Explosive Performance!
Chris Wilson NFL Linebacker


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Built to resemble a traditional souk and set within a much larger resort, Souk Madinat Jumeirah wins the top retail spot for atmosphere and has been a success from the moment it first opened. Wind towers top the low-rise buildings of Souk Madinat Jumeirah, lighting up at night to cast a romantic glow over the whole area, complete with winding canals and glorious outside eateries. Small wonder that Souk Madinat Jumeirah is such a magnet to tourists and residents.
Home to about 75 boutique shops and over 20 enormously popular cafés, bars and restaurants, there's a constant buzz to Souk Madinat Jumeirah. Retail outlets include the Camel Company, selling everything from mugs and T-shirts to soft toys and notepads, Gallery One, with its many images of Dubai – and Madinat Theatre, offering a wide range of shows.
The many restaurants and bars at Souk Madinat Jumeirah include the Italian favourite Segretto, the Moroccan Shoo Fee Ma Fee, and Jam Base - one of the best night spots in town. A must on the Dubai tourist map, Souk Madinat Jumeirah is a great place to appreciate Dubai's efforts to wow the world with the scope of its imagination.
Address: Near the Burj Al Arab, off Jumeirah Beach Rd, Al Sufouh.
Open: Daily 10:00 to 23:00.
Tel: +971 (0)4 366 8888
Web: www.madinatjumeirah.com
Back to Dubai Shopping


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OK, ok, I guess this old coot will say goodbye to the amdmb theme.
OK, ok, I guess this old coot will say goodbye to the amdmb theme.
the logo should be pointing to www.pcper.com on all pages. it does for me after checking several different pages (i adjusted this a couple of days ago).
Most said:
Width and sorry I just prefered the old look. Why do "upgrades" insist to change the GUI and make us learn again. PS, no tiled W8 for me
the Britgeezer
My Heat otherwise a smoke free home
the Britgeezer
My Heat otherwise a smoke free home
The link to return to the forum thread list should be included at the bottom of the current page as it is as the top of the page. To return to the forum thread now you must scroll back to the top in order to click on the return link.
I thinks it is coming around.........
4x4Gb GSkill 1866/R9 290X
Sandisk ExtremeII 240GB/WD 1TB Black Spinner
Lian Li Pc-7B plusII /OCZ 600W ModXStream/Z-5500's.[/I]
anyone not getting notification emails from subscribed threads? I can see there are responses to threads I'm subscribed to. I have it set to instant email and my email addy is correct yet most thread I do not get any response to even if I log in and check the threads.
If you enjoy gaming click here to learn about the Fragging Frogs.
i seem to be getting email notifications now. can you confirm whether or not you are getting them now zetachi?
One of my threads' OP just dissapeared :/
Here's the thread : http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.p...-Digital-Storm
Last edited by SHIROI RAKUEN; 02-10-2013 at 11:48 AM.


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ATLANTA — More than half of U.S. adults with diabetes also have arthritis, raising a serious obstacle for diabetic patients urged to exercise, according to a government study.
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The survey of nearly 800,000 people is the first extensive look at the overlap between the two conditions, said Dr. John Klippel, president of the Arthritis Foundation.
And its findings highlight a significant challenge: Most diabetics are told exercise is important to their health, but experts say many of them don't do it.
People with diabetes who exercise have better control of their blood sugar and a much lower risk of heart disease complications. But the new research suggests many diabetics see themselves as unable to exercise because of arthritis, said Julia Simard, a Harvard School of Public Health researcher who has studied rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.
"If you have this perception of ill health, it may affect your willingness to be active," said Simard, who was not involved in the new research.
More than 46 million Americans have some form of arthritis, and nearly 21 million have diabetes. Other research indicates exercise is important in managing both conditions.
The study found that 52 percent of diabetics said they also had arthritis. The conditions and the overlap were most common in Americans 65 and older.
The analysis was based on telephone surveys in the years 2005 and 2007 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers relied on what people said about their health, and did not verify diagnoses.
The researchers also asked about exercise and physical activity. People with both diabetes and arthritis were 30 to 40 percent more likely to be physically inactive than those who had diabetes alone.
"If we're ever going to successfully control a disease like diabetes, we're going to have to pay a lot of attention to arthritis," Klippel said.
Exercise that put less stress on joints, such as walking, biking and aquatics, are recommended for people with arthritis, said Dr. Chad Helmick, a CDC epidemiologist who co-authored the study.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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This Assorted Wood Box Set with Magnetic Lids are approx 2.5" x 4.0" x 2.0" in size, and requires NO assembly. Made of quality wood construction, these wood boxes may be finished with decoupage, rub-ons, paint, or stain, and make a unique gift for family treasures.
We also carry a complete line of Beads, Birdhouse Kits, Christmas Crafts, Craft Supplies, Foam Sheets, Kids Crafts, Misc Crafts, Wood Craft Kits, and much more.


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In it's deliberations to consider of the legality of same sex marriage, the Supreme Court recently heard arguments from various parties on both sides of this divisive issue. One such supporting argument deserves particular attention for those of us concerned with the health and well being of children. In their recent brief to the Supreme Court, the American Sociological Association states, "Whether a child is raised by same-sex or opposite-sex parents has no bearing on a child's wellbeing". This conclusion is based on various studies that measured such outcomes as "academic performance, cognitive development, social development, psychological health, early sexual activity, and substance abuse" (see Hollingsworth vs Perry, US vs Windsor, NOS. 12-144, 12-307).
However faulty such studies might be (as was addressed quite thoroughly by Napp Nazworth in his recent two part series), I wish to submit that by allowing proponents of same sex marriage to frame the main arguments of this matter, we are allowing ourselves to be distracted from the more genuine central issues that are at stake. It may turn out that same sex couples can raise children just as well as opposite sex couples to achieve success in terms of those various measures. The real problem with this argument is that it draws our attention away from considering the central role that biological fathers and mothers play in our development towards healthy adulthood. And I am afraid this effort is being made not so much out of a willful attempt at distraction as from a gross misunderstanding of the central tenants of human development.
To gain a clear understanding of the important roles our biological fathers and mothers play in our development, we will need to clear the board of our preconceived ideas, and begin again by placing several essential pieces in place and discover how they fit together. The first piece is the most obvious yet essential foundation to our new understanding. We spend nearly one quarter of our lives in the presence of adult caregivers as we mature into adulthood. The second piece will shift us away from a strictly psychological perspective which emphasizes our cognitive and behavioral experience (e.g., the focus in early childhood on our first words and our first steps), and instead correctly places emotional/relational experience at the forefront as the variable which has the greatest impact on our development (see "The Irreducible Needs of Children", by Brazelton & Greenspan, 2000, DeCapo Press).
Let's pause for a moment to consider the magnitude of these first two pieces. As relationship creatures, if we spend 20 odd years in primary relationship experience with adult caregivers (this usually means two opposite sex parents, an obvious prerequisite to bearing children), then we would expect to find a great deal of evidence for the notion that these relationships shape our development in essential ways. First, we can say that this idea has what Ravi Zacharias calls experiential relevancy (one of his three tests for knowing if something is true). Most of us can attest to the great impact our parental relationships have had on us, but then I am faced with this truth every day through the clients I serve in my therapy practice. But let's look at a more poignant example. In his efforts to understand and help married couples, Harville Hendrix discovered that, especially in romantic relationships (although I would argue this is true in all of our adult relationships) our relationship experience with each of our parents plays a major role in not only the selection of our mate, but is most often at the root of significant areas of conflict. In fact, Hendrix would argue those issues need to be embraced as the ingredients for garnering the greatest satisfaction in a marriage (see "Getting The Love You Want" by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., 2001, First Owl Books).
With a focus on the importance of our relationship experience with each of our biological parents in shaping our development during the formative years, we now can add the remaining two pieces to complete our model. For these pieces we draw on the renowned author and developmental theorist Erik Erikson. In his many published works on human development, Erikson defined two stages that I would suggest begin very early in life, and culminate in adolescence and young adulthood. These two stages include the establishment of an identity, and the attainment of intimacy, primarily with a romantic and sexual partner. More than just stages of development, Erikson has in mind the successful achievement of these two essential tasks as paramount to healthy human development (see "Identity: Youth and Crisis", by Erik Erikson, 1968, W.W. Norton).
When we consider these four pieces together, we conclude that the two essential tasks of forming a healthy identity and establishing healthy intimacy are going to be negotiated primarily through our many formative years of relational experience with our two opposite sex parents. More to the point, we are going to be naturally inclined to seek out the establishment of our identity through our relational experience with our same sex parent, and to seek out a special kind of intimacy through our relationship experience with our opposite sex parent. I would argue that indeed the primary roles our parents play in our lives involves helping us in establishing a healthy identity and developing healthy relational intimacy.
With two primary developmental tasks to achieve, and two opposite sex parents to have relational experience with, it seems quite natural that we would pursue one of those tasks with one parent and the other task with the other parent. Indeed, we are naturally inclined to seek out identity affirming experiences with our same sex parent precisely because a central aspect of our identity is rooted in our gender. To understand why we seek intimacy experiences with our opposite sex parents, we need to look individually at boys and girls. The boy seeks intimacy with his mother because she offers a special emotional tenderness and sensitivity that his father does not provide. And the girl seeks intimacy with her father because he represents for her a primary source of strength and security that she naturally is drawn to.
My many years of experience, both professionally and personally, have confirmed over and over the truth of the model offered here. The healthier our parental relationships were growing up, the healthier we became as adults. Conversely, poor parental relationships, or the absence of one or both entirely, had an enormous impact on our lives. Every child I have ever worked with who did not have both biological parents at home raising them suffered this loss, usually to a significant degree. Once we understand this fundamental truth, that we pursue essential developmental tasks with each of our biological parents, and that the absence of either one of them (emotionally or physically) has a huge negative impact on our development, then we begin to realize the fallacy of same sex couples raising children.
The drive the point home in more specific detail, we turn to Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. Through his many years of work with men who struggle with same sex attraction, he has found that the primary source of their same sex attraction is rooted in their failure to establish a health sense of male gender identity. This failure in most cases was caused by the lack of a healthy nurturing relationship with their father (see, "Shame and Attachment Loss", by Nicolosi, 2009, Intervarsity Press). For further information, see The National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (narth.com)
I have found many of the problems children have to be rooted in a poor or absent parental relationship, same sex attraction or a lack of interest in heterosexual relationships being just some of the possible negative outcomes. Indeed, if unhealthy developmental outcome regarding any number of mental health and substance abuse issues is rooted in unhealthy parental relationships, then why would we expect the development of same sex attraction to be any different in origin. Once we understand the importance of parental relationships in human development, we would look to these experiences when seeking the roots of all developmental outcomes, including sexual orientation.
If two opposite sex parents are necessary to the raising of healthy children, how ironic, then, is the position held by proponents of same sex marriage that they can do the same when in fact they themselves are living out the negative consequences of not having had healthy relationships with two biological parents. They now wish to impose the very same deficits on the next generation of children, and then to declare this arrangement "healthy."
Does that make any sense?