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United States News Title: Rumsfeld Friend an advocate of "concentration camps” for illegal immigrants IS Named L.A. Times Publisher Rumsfeld Friend Named L.A. Times Publisher Liberals in Hollywood aren’t jumping for joy after learning more about the new publisher of their local newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. David Hiller, who was named publisher by the Times’ parent Tribune Co. on Oct. 5, was a friend of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and an advocate of "concentration camps” for illegal immigrants. The Times’ profile of its new publisher mentioned only his "two years at the Reagan Justice Department (where his colleagues included current Chief Justice John G. Roberts and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani)” without detailing his work there. But an investigation by LA Weekly turned up plenty of details. During Hiller’s tenure at the Justice Department, the Reagan administration was attempting to deal with a sudden surge in Haitian and Southeast Asian refugees and the wake of Cuba’s Mariel boatlift. A Reagan presidential task force on immigration and refugee policy "decided to recommend that the Reagan administration take drastic action to prevent any new flood of Cuban and Haitian refugees into Florida by stopping boats on the high seas and detaining the newcomers in what they recognize could be called ‘concentration camps,’” according to a Washington Post article at the time, which was uncovered by LA Weekly’s Nikki Fink. "The task force option paper [was] prepared by David Hiller, a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith.” According to Fink, Hiller was instrumental in "dealing with all sorts of policy initiatives including plans for mass deportations back to Mexico of Mexicans in the U.S., illegal alien internment camp proposals, calls for indefinite imprisonment for Cuban boatlift refugees, and national ID cards.” Fink also unearthed a 2001 Chicago Tribune story revealing that liberal anathema Donald Rumsfeld was a director at Tribune Co. and a "friend” of Hiller, who was then president of Tribune Interactive. The paper reported that Hiller often played squash with Rumsfeld, whom Hiller called "one of the most competitive son-of-a-guns I have ever stepped on the court with.” Does Hiller’s appointment as publisher of the Times foreshadow a rightward turn in the paper’s editorial stance? Fink opines: "Ever since the 2003 California gubernatorial-recall campaign, when the paper published its election-eve Schwarzenegger groping allegations, right-wing media and bloggers have ganged up to savage the paper’s politics, all the while persuading conservatives to flee the LAT subscriber base in anecdotal droves. "The flight did not go unnoticed at Tribune Co., and it has continued to obsess management even now.”
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