CMYK Nxxx,2013-09-03,A,001,Bs-BK,E2 Late Edition Today, clouds and sunshine, a shower, high 83. Tonight, mostly clear, turning cooler, low 64. Tomorrow, mostly sunny, low humidity, high 80. Weather map, Page A22. VOL. CLXII . . . No. 56,248 U.S.-RUSSIAN TIES STILL FALL SHORT OF 'RESET' GOAL In Syria Crisis, PRESIDENT GAINS U.S. Keeps Eye MCCAIN'S BACKING On Iran Policy ON SYRIA ATTACK Still Seeks Progress on Nuclear Diplomacy A TENTATIVE AGREEMENT GLOBAL MEETING NEARS Putin's Suspicion About American Actions Is at Heart of Rift By ROBERT F. WORTH By PETER BAKER WASHINGTON -- Just days before Vladimir V. Putin reassumed the presidency of Russia last year, President Obama dispatched his national security adviser to Moscow. Mr. Obama had made considerable progress with Dmitri A. Medvedev, the caretaker president, and wanted to preserve the momentum. Any hopes of that, however, were quickly dashed when Mr. Putin sat down with the visiting American adviser, Tom Donilon, at the lavish presidential residence outside Moscow. Rather than talk of cooperation, Mr. Putin opened the meeting with a sharp challenge underscoring his deep suspicion of American ambitions: "When," he asked pointedly, "are you going to start bombing Syria?" At the time, Mr. Obama had no plans for military involvement in the civil war raging in the heart of the Middle East, but Mr. Putin did not believe that. In Mr. Putin's view, the United States wanted only to meddle in places where it had no business, fomenting revolutions to install governments friendly to Washington. The meeting 16 months ago set the stage for a tense new chapter in Russian-American relations, one that will play out publicly this week when Mr. Obama travels to St. Petersburg for a Group of 20 summit meeting hosted by Mr. Putin. Although Mr. Obama had no intention of bombing Syria last year, on Saturday he said he now favored military action against Syrian forces, not to depose the government of Bashar al-Assad, a Russian ally, but in retaliation for gassing its own citizens -- an assertion Mr. Putin denounced as "utter nonsense" to justify American intervention. While it was the Kremlin's deContinued on Page A8 CBS Returns, Triumphant, To Cable Box By BILL CARTER CBS and Time Warner Cable ended their protracted contract dispute Monday evening with CBS winning not only a significant financial increase for its programming, but also its stake in the digital future. The agreement between the two sides restored the CBS network and its related channels, including Showtime, to millions of cable subscribers largely in three major cities: New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. The outcome underscored the leverage that the owners of important television content, especially sports like N.F.L. football, retain over distributors like cable systems. The looming National Football League season, which starts this week, includes key games every week on CBS. "It was hugely important," an executive involved in the negotiation said Monday night. (The executive asked not to be identified because the participants agreed not to offer details on the agreement beyond the official announcement.) Indeed, Time Warner Cable executives had said Continued on Page A3 $2.50 NEW YORK, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2013 (C) 2013 The New York Times ABOVE, TINA FINEBERG/ASSOCIATED PRESS; BELOW, BRIAN HARKIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Labor Day events attracted mayoral candidates like Bill de Blasio, above, at the West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn, and John Catsimatidis, at a Queens parade. Page A16. NO REST Campaign Plan: Free Thinking, Freer Spending By THOMAS KAPLAN His tie is often askew, his clothes often stained. He fell asleep on a car ride with a reporter from WNYC radio, who dutifully recorded his gentle snoring. At campaign appearances, no one would ever guess that John A. Catsimatidis was the billionaire in the room. But his riches have given him license to run this year's most idiosyncratic campaign for mayor, one unfettered by the constraints, on spending, on rhetoric, or on imagination, that have dulled the actions and utterances of the mere mortals on the trail. While most politicians hold fund-raisers, where attendees give money to the candidates, IN THE RUNNING A Candidate of Few Limits Mr. Catsimatidis holds "friendraisers," where the candidate gives out swag. And while other candidates hone their talking points, he speaks in a stream of consciousness, and tosses around unconventional ideas: building a monorail alongside the Long Island Expressway and a new bridge over the Harlem River, and bringing the World's Fair back to New York City. During a recent event at Sylvia's, the Harlem restaurant, not far from where he grew up on West 135th Street, his meandering remarks to the crowd included a story about how his daugh- ter bought 3,000 pairs of shoes for children in Mozambique ("I taught her how to have heart") and his experience watching the movie "Old Yeller" as a child ("I cried and cried and cried when the dog died at the end, but I think it's important we teach our kids to have feelings"). As he reminisced about his childhood, he pulled aside his eyelid to show that he was welling up. Mr. Catsimatidis, 64, who was born on the Greek island of Nisyros and was brought to New York by his parents when he was just six months old, says he is running for mayor because he wants to "give back" to the city where he made his fortune, which he amassed from his ownership of the Gristedes supermarket chain Continued on Page A20 WASHINGTON -- As the Obama administration makes a case for punitive airstrikes on the Syrian government, its strongest card in the view of some supporters of a military response may be the need to send a message to another country: Iran. If the United States does not enforce its selfimposed "red line" on Syria's use of chemical weapons, this thinking goes, Iran will smell weakness and press ahead more boldly in its quest for nuclear weapons. But that message may be clashing with a simultaneous effort by American officials to explore dialogue with Iran's moderate new president, Hassan Rouhani, in the latest expression of Washington's long struggle to balance toughness with diplomacy in its relations with a longtime adversary. Two recent diplomatic ventures have raised speculation about a possible back channel between Washington and Tehran. Last week, Jeffrey Feltman, a high State Department official in President Obama's first term who is now a senior envoy at the United Nations, visited Iran to meet with the new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and discussed possible reactions to an American airstrike in Syria. At the same time, the sultan of Oman, who has often served as an intermediary between the United States and Iran, was in Tehran meeting with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Neither Mr. Feltman nor Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said of Oman has said anything about carrying messages between the two governments. Still, those overtures, along with some surprisingly mild noises from Iranian leaders, have raised hopes that Washington may be able to thread the needle -- to strike Syria without compromising efforts toward an Iranian-American d?tente before meetings at the United Nations General Assembly this month. Those hopes may well be premature: even if Mr. Rouhani and his foreign minister are eager for a deal ending the dispute over the future of Iran's nuclear program, it is far from clear that they Continued on Page A6 Hawkish G.O.P. Critic Says Meeting Was 'Encouraging' This article is by Jackie Calmes, Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt. WASHINGTON -- The White House's aggressive push for Congressional approval of an attack on Syria appeared to have won the tentative support of one of President Obama's most hawkish critics, Senator John McCain, who said Monday that he would back a limited strike if the president did more to arm the Syrian rebels and the attack was punishing enough to weaken the Syrian military. In an hourlong meeting at the White House, said Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, Mr. Obama gave general support to doing more for the Syrian rebels, although no specifics were agreed upon. Officials said that in the same conversation, which included Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, Mr. Obama indicated that a covert effort by the United States to arm and train Syrian rebels was beginning to yield results: the first 50-man cell of fighters, who have been trained by the C.I.A., was beginning to sneak into Syria. There appeared to be broad agreement with the president, Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham said, that any attack on Syria should be to "degrade" the Syrian government's delivery systems. Such a strike could include aircraft, artillery and the kind of rockets that the Obama administration says the forces of President Bashar al-Assad used to carry out an Aug. 21 sarin attack in the Damascus suburbs that killed more than 1,400 people. The senators said they planned to meet with Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama's national security adviser, to discuss the strategy in greater depth. "It is all in the details, but I left the meeting feeling better than I felt before about what happens the day after and that the purpose of the attack is going to be a little more robust than I thought," Mr. Graham said in an interview. But Mr. McCain said in an inContinued on Page A7 Vote on Syria Sets Up Clash Within G.O.P. The Congressional vote on whether to strike Syria will offer the best insight yet on which wing of the Republican Party -- the traditional hawks or a growing bloc of noninterventionists -- has the advantage in PAGE A7 fierce internal debates over foreign policy. Sharks Absent, Swimmer, 64, Strokes From Cuba to Florida By LIZETTE ALVAREZ MIAMI -- This time, nature tipped its hat, and Diana Nyad finally conquered the 110-mile passage from Cuba to Florida that had bedeviled her for 35 years. Sharks steered clear, currents were friendly, and storms took most of the Labor Day weekend off. The 64-year-old endurance swimmer emerged dazed and sunburned from the surf on Smathers Beach in Key West, Fla., just before 2 p.m. on Monday after nearly 53 hours in the ocean, a two-day, two-night swim from her starting point in Havana. She had survived the treacherous Florida Straits, a notorious stretch of water brimming with sharks, jellyfish, squalls and an unpredictable Gulf Stream. And she became the first person to do so unaided by the protection of a shark cage. It was her fifth attempt, coming after four years of grueling training, precision planning and single-minded determination. Her face scorched and puffy from so many hours in the salt water, she leaned on one of her friends and said from the beach: "I have three messages. One is we should never, ever give up. Two is you never are too old to chase your dreams. Three is it looks like a solitary sport, but it takes a team." Coming at an age when few Continued on Page A13 ANDY NEWMAN/FLORIDA KEYS NEWS BUREAU, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS Kayakers on Monday helped escort Diana Nyad about two miles off Key West, Fla., on her way to becoming the first swimmer to cross the 110-mile Florida Straits without a shark cage. SCIENCE TIMES D1-8 INTERNATIONAL A4-11 BUSINESS DAY B1-7 SPORTSTUESDAY B8-13 ARTS C1-8 Learning What Works Brazil Angry Over U.S. Spying Microsoft Buys Nokia Units Federer Ousted at U.S. Open Movies in the Mountain Air A special issue on education looks at helping children achieve success in science and math. With their usual silliness, the cast of "Sesame Street" is inPAGE D1 troducing scientific ideas. Brazilian officials were indignant at a report on National Security Agency spying, but Mexico's reaction to American surveillance was more muted. PAGE A4 The company will acquire the faded cellphone business's handset and service units, and bring back one of its former executives, in a $7.1 billion deal. PAGE B1 Roger Federer, the 17-time Grand Slam singles champion, was knocked out of the United States Open in the Round of 16 by Tommy Robredo of Spain in PAGE B8 straight sets. NATIONAL A12-14 Verizon Reaches Wireless Deal Films and actors at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, which is celebrating its 40th year, inspire thoughts that stray to Oscar time. For three years in a row, the festival provided the first North American screens for the eventual best PAGE C1 picture winners. A Proxy Battle Over Guns A recall election in Colorado has drawn money and interest from far beyond the PAGE A14 state's borders. The company is spending $130 billion to gain full control of Verizon Wireless PAGE B1 from Vodafone. NEW YORK A15-20 Dreams, but Little Consensus Newtown Lets Itself Celebrate After its bankruptcy, Detroit has a rare chance to reshape itself from top to bottom, but the path is not clear. PAGE A12 Seeking normalcy months after the school massacre, Newtown, Conn., came out for its Labor Day parade. PAGE A15 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A24-25 Joe Nocera PAGE A25 U(D54G1D)y+%!]!$!=!%