PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

KATA-KATA MUTIARA YANDRE

kata-kata mutiara yandre
Tugas kita bukanlah untuk berhasil. Tugas kita
adalah untuk mencoba, karena didalam mencoba
itulah kita menemukan dan belajar membangun
kesempatan untuk berhasil
kita hanya dekat dengan mereka yang kita
sukai. Dan seringkali kita menghindari orang
yang tidak tidak kita sukai, padahal dari dialah
kita akan mengenal sudut pkitang yang baru
Tinggalkanlah kesenangan yang menghalangi
pencapaian kecemerlangan hidup yang di
idamkan. Dan berhati-hatilah, karena beberapa
kesenangan adalah cara gembira menuju
kegagalan
Orang-orang yang berhenti belajar akan menjadi
pemilik masa lalu. Orang-orang yang masih terus
belajar, akan menjadi pemilik masa depan
Jangan menolak perubahan hanya karena kita
takut kehilangan yang telah dimiliki, karena
dengannya kita merendahkan nilai yang bisa
kita capai melalui perubahan itu
Jangan pernah merobohkan pagar tanpa mengetahui
mengapa didirikan. Jangan pernah mengabaikan
tuntunan kebaikan tanpa mengetahui keburukan
yang kemudian kita dapat
Ketepatan sikap adalah dasar semua ketepatan.
Tidak ada penghalang keberhasilan bila sikap
kita tepat, dan tidak ada yang bisa menolong
bila sikap kita salah
kita tidak akan berhasil menjadi pribadi baru bila
kita berkeras untuk mempertahankan cara-cara
lama kita. kita akan disebut baru, hanya bila
cara-cara kita baru
Orang lanjut usia yang berorientasi pada
kesempatan adalah orang muda yang tidak
pernah menua ; tetapi pemuda yang berorientasi
pada keamanan, telah menua sejak muda
Hanya orang takut yang bisa berani, karena
keberanian adalah melakukan sesuatu yang
ditakutinya. Maka, bila merasa takut, kita akan
punya kesempatan untuk bersikap berani
Kekuatan terbesar yang mampu mengalahkan
stress adalah kemampuan memilih pikiran yang
tepat. kita akan menjadi lebih damai bila yang
kita pikirkan adalah jalan keluar masalah.
Seseorang yang menolak memperbarui cara-cara
kerjanya yang tidak lagi menghasilkan, berlaku
seperti orang yang terus memeras jerami untuk
mendapatkan santan
Bila kita belum menemkan pekerjaan yang sesuai
dengan bakat kita, bakatilah apapun pekerjaan
kita sekarang. kita akan tampil secemerlang
yang berbakat
by yandre pramana putra

NAIK HAJI BAGI WANITA HAIDH

HAJI BAGI WANITA YANG SEDANG HAIDH

Oleh
Ad-Daimah Lil IftaAl-Lajnah

Pertanyaan
Ad-Daimah Lil IftaAl-Lajnah ditanya : Apa hukum wanita muslimah yang haidh dalam hari-hari hajinya, apakah sah hajinya sebab demikian itu ?

Jawaban
Jika seorang wanita haidh dalam hari-hari hajinya maka hendaklah dia melakukan apa yang dilakukan orang-orang yang sedang haji selain thawaf dan sa'i hingga dia suci. Jika dia telah suci dan mandi maka dia thawaf dan sa'i. Jika seorang wanita haidh dan tidak tersisa dari amal-amalan haji selain thawaf wada', maka ketika pulang dia tidak wajib membayar kifarat apa pun karena thawaf wada tidak wajib bagi dia dan hajinya sah. Sebagaimana landasan dasar tersebut adalah.

[a]. Hadits yang diriwayatkan dari Abdullah bin Abbas Radhiallahu 'anhu bahwa Rasulullah Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda.

"Artinya : Wanita yang nifas dan haidh jika keduanya datang ke miqat maka keduanya mandi dan berihram dan melaksanakan semua manasik haji selain thawaf di Baitullah" [Hadits Riwayat Ahmad dan Abu Dawud]

[b]. Dalam hadits shahih disebutkan riwayat dari Aisyah Radhiallahu 'anha, bahwa dia haidh sebelum melaksanakan manasik umrah, maka Nabi Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam memerintahkan kepadanya untuk ihram haji selain thawaf di Baitullah hingga dia suci. Juga diperintahkannya melakukan apa yang dilakukan orang yang haji dan memasukkan ihram kepada umrah.

[c]. Imam Bukhari meriwayatkan hadits Aisyah Radhiallahu 'anha.

"Artinya : Bhawa Shafiyah istri Nabi Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam haidh, lalu dia menyampaikan hal itu kepada Rasulullah Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam, maka beliau bersabda : 'Apakah dia menahan kita (dari pulang)'. dia berkata : 'Sesungguhnya dia telah thawaf ifadhah'. Nabi Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda : 'Jika demikian maka tidak'". [Hadits Riwayat Bukhari, Muslim dan yang lainnya]

Dalam riwayat lain disebutkan, bahwa 'Aisyah berkata : "Shafiyah haidh setelah thawaf ifadhah. Aku sebutkan haidhnya kepada Rasulullah Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam. Maka Rasulullah Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda : "Apakah dia menahan (kepulangan) kita ?" Saya berkata : "Wahai Rasulullah, sesungguhnya dia telah thawaf ifadhah di Baitullah kemudian dia haidh setelah ifadhah". Maka Rasulullah Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda : "Karena itu hendaklah dia (ikut) pulang !" [Hadits Riwayat Bukhari, Muslim, dan yang lainnya]

WANITA HAIDH KETIKA IHRAM TIDAK BOLEH SHALAT

Oleh
Syaikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz

Pertanyaan
Syaikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz ditanya : Bagaimana shalat dua rakaat ihram bagi wanita yang haidh ?

Jawaban
Wanita yang sedang haidh tidak boleh shalat dua raka'at ihram, bahkan dia ihram dengan tanpa shalat. Sebab shalat haram bagi wanita yang haid. Terlebih shalat dua rakaat ihram hukumnya sunnah menurut jumhur ulama, bahkan sebagian ulama menilainya tidak termasuk sunnah karena tidak terdapat dalil khusus. Sedangkan jumhur yang menilainya sunnah adalah karena berpedoman kepada hadits Nabi Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda.

"Artinya : Allah berfirman : "Shalatlah kamu di lembah yang diberkahi ini dan katakanlah : "Umrah dalam haji" [Hadits Riwayat Ahmad, Bukhari, dan Abu Dawud]

Maksudnya, di lembah al-Atiq dalam haji wada'. Juga terdapat riwayat dari seorang sahabat Nabi Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam shalat kemudian ihram. Maka jumhur ulama menyatakan bahwa ihram setelah sunnah, baik shalat wajib atau sunnah. Karena wanita yang haidh dan nifas haram mendirikan shalat, maka keduanya ihram tanpa shalat dan tidak meng-qadha' shalatnya (dua ra'kaat ihram).

HAIDH ATAU NIFAS SETELAH IHRAM

Oleh
Syaikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz

Pertanyaan
Syaikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz ditanya : Jika seorang wanita haidh atau nifas setelah ihram, apakah sah jika dia thawaf dia Baitullah, atau apakah yang dia harus lakukan, dan apakah dia wajib thawaf wada.?

Jawaban
Wanita yang nifas atau haidh ketika kedatangannya untuk umrah maka dia hendaknya menunggu sampai suci. Jika telah suci, dia thawaf, sa'i dan memotong rambut, maka sempurnakanlah umrahnya. Tapi jika datangnya haidh atau nifas setelah umrah atau setelah ihram haji pada hari ke 8 Dzulhijjah, maka dia melakukan manasik haji, yaitu wukuf di 'Arafah, mabit di Muzdalifah, melontar tiga jumrah di Mina, dan lain-lain seperti talbiyah dan dzikir. Lalu ketika dia telah suci, dia thawaf dan sa'i untuk hajinya. Namun jika wanita haidh atau nifas setelah thawaf dan sa'i dan sebelum thawaf wada' maka gugur darinya thawaf wada'. Sebab wanita yang haidh atau nifas tidak wajib thawaf wada'.

Disalin dari buku Fatwa-Fatwa Haji dan Umrah oleh Ulama-Ulama Besar Saudi Arabia, penysusun Muhammad bin Abdul Aziz Al-Musnad, terbitan Pustaka Imam Asy-Syafi'i, hal. 130-134, penerjemah H.Asmuni Solihan Zamaksyari Lc]

Baca Artikel Lainnya : BAJU UNTUK UMRAH

PERJUANGAN DALAM THAWAF

Ketika melakukan tawaf, sunnah hukumnya berlari-lari kecil pada putaran pertama, kedua, dan ketiga. Pada saat berlari-lari kecil itulah para jamaah haji melingkarkan pakaian ihramnya di atas pundak kiri hingga ke ketiak sebelah kanan. Ujung yang satu berada di depan dada dan ujung yang lain berada di belakang punggung.

Secara historis, berlari-lari kecil saat melakukan tawaf ditujukan untuk membantah asumsi negatif orang kafir Quraisy yang mengatakan bahwa umat muslim yang baru datang dari tempat-tempat yang jauh sudah capai, tidak bersemangat, dan dalam keadaan terpaksa menjalankan ibadah. Untuk menghapus asumsi tersebut, Rasulullah SAW memerintahkan para sahabatnya mengerjakan tawaf dengan berlari-lari kecil dan penuh semangat.

Dari cerita tersebut, sebagai umat Nabi Muhammad SAW perlu memahami bahwa untuk menghapus citra negatif yang disematkan oleh musuh-musuh Islam kepada umat muslim dan agama Islam, dibutuhkan perjuangan yang serius. Perjuangan tersebut tidak boleh berhenti sebab permusuhan umat lain terhadap umat Islam pun tidak pernah berhenti.

Sumber : Republika.co.id

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ZIARAH DI MASJID NABAWI

Karena Masjid Nabawi adalah situs sejarah yang sangat dimuliakan, kita tidak bisa berbuat seenaknya tatkala mengunjunginya. Adab atau tata krama saat berziarah ke makam Rasulullah SAW adalah:

1. Mandi;

2. Memakai wewangian;

3. Bertaubat dari segala dosa ketika sampai di Madinah;

4. Membaca shalawat kepada Nabi SAW dan berdoa;

5. Mengunjungi Masjid Nabawi dengan niat mendekatkan diri kepada Allah SWT setelah membersihkan diri baik lahir maupun batin;

6. Memasuki komplek masjid dengan kaki kanan sambil membaca doa masuk masjid berikut:

Bismillaahi washshalaatu wassalaamu ‘ala rasuulillaah, a’uudzu billaahil ‘adziimi biwajhihil kariimi wa sulthaanihil qadiimi minasy syaithaanir rajiim, allaahummaf tah li abwaaba rahmatik.

“Dengan menyebut nama Allah, shalawat dan salam teruntuk Rasulullah. Aku berlindung kepada Allah Yang Maha Besar, demi dzat-Nya yang mulia dan kekuasaan- Nya yang qadim dari setan yang terkutuk. Wahai Allah, bukalah pintu-pintu rahmat-Mu untukku.”

7. Mengerjakan shalat tahiyatul masjid sebanyak dua rakaat dan shalat sunnah yang lain semampunya. Lebih utama jika kita melaksanakan shalat-shalat tersebut di ar-Raudhah asy-Syarifah. Rasulullah SAW bersabda, “Antara rumahku dan mimbarku terbentang sebuah taman surga.”;

8. Kembali berdoa demi kebaikan dunia dan akhirat;

9. Berjalan ke makam Rasulullah SAW dengan penuh kesopanan dan kekhusyukan serta mengikuti arahan petugas

Sumber : http://www.jurnalhaji.com

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11 ANGOTA SINDIKAT PENCURI MOTOR DITANGKAP

saco-indonesia.com, Sindikat pencurian kendaraan bermotor (curanmor) telah dibongkar Satuan Reskrim Polres Sukabumi Kota. Dalam pengungkapan kasus ini, polisi telah mengamankan belasan tersangka, seorang di antaranya oknum Anggota TNI yang berperan sebagai penadah sekaligus dalang curanmor. Untuk dapat melumpuhkan komplotan curanmor ini, petugas terpaksa harus mengeluarkan timah panas dan menembus paha salah seorang tersangka.

Dari tangan tersangka, polisi telah berhasil mengamankan sejumlah barang bukti di antaranya puluhan kendaraan bermotor , uang jutaan rupiah dan berbagai jenis kunci leter T. Kini, belasan tersangka telah mendekam di hotel predeo Mapolres Sukabumi Kota untuk dapat mempetanggungjawabkan perbuatannya.

Pengungkapan ini juga merupakan hasil pengembangan dan penyelidikan Satreskrim Polres Sukabumi Kota. Dari hasil penyelidikan telah diketahui tempat berkumpulnya pelaku spesialis pencurian sepeda bermotor yang terletak di Desa Cimanggu Kecamatan Cikembang kabupaten Sukabumi yang dikendalikan oleh salah seorang oknum anggota TNI.

Di lokasi tersebut, polisi telah mengamankan 11 orang. Pada saat ditangkap, mereka juga sempat melawan hingga petugas terpaksa harus melumpuhkan salah seorang tersangka dengan timah panas mengenai paha sebelah kanan.

Rincian barang bukti yakni 20 unit sepeda motor berbagai merk, uang puluhan juta rupiah dari hasil penjualan dan puluhan plat nomor serta alat-alat lainnya untuk dapat melancarkan aksinya.

Kasat Reskrim Polres Sukabumi Kota AKP Sulaeman telah membenarkan adanya penggerebekan yang dilakukan satuan reskrim Sukabumi Kota terhadap sindikan pencurian kendaraan bermotor yang sudah lama menjadi incaran dan target sasaran.

“Kami juga telah menangkap dan mengamankan sedikitnya 11 orang pelaku yang terlibat pencurian sepeda motor. Saat ini para pelaku juga sedang menjalani pemeriksaan untuk kepentingan pengembanga. Soalnya disinyalir masih ada para pelaku yang belum kami tangkap, Dari belasan yang kami tangkap ada oknum anggota TNI yang diduga sebagai otak pelaku sekaligus penadah sepeda bermotor hasil curian,” ungkapnya.

Akibat perbuatannya, tersangka terancam dijerat dengan pasal pasal 363 tentang pencurian dengan pemberatan dan pasal 365 tentang pencurian dengan kekerasan dengan ancaman hukuman maksimal limat tahun kurungan penjara.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, 93, Dies; Polish Auschwitz Survivor Aided Jews

Mr. Bartoszewski was given honorary Israeli citizenship for his work to save Jews during World War II and later surprised even himself by being instrumental in reconciling Poland and Germany.

How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters

Imagine an elite professional services firm with a high-performing, workaholic culture. Everyone is expected to turn on a dime to serve a client, travel at a moment’s notice, and be available pretty much every evening and weekend. It can make for a grueling work life, but at the highest levels of accounting, law, investment banking and consulting firms, it is just the way things are.

Except for one dirty little secret: Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it.

Many of them were, at least, at one elite consulting firm studied by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. It’s impossible to know if what she learned at that unidentified consulting firm applies across the world of work more broadly. But her research, published in the academic journal Organization Science, offers a way to understand how the professional world differs between men and women, and some of the ways a hard-charging culture that emphasizes long hours above all can make some companies worse off.

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Ms. Reid interviewed more than 100 people in the American offices of a global consulting firm and had access to performance reviews and internal human resources documents. At the firm there was a strong culture around long hours and responding to clients promptly.

“When the client needs me to be somewhere, I just have to be there,” said one of the consultants Ms. Reid interviewed. “And if you can’t be there, it’s probably because you’ve got another client meeting at the same time. You know it’s tough to say I can’t be there because my son had a Cub Scout meeting.”

Some people fully embraced this culture and put in the long hours, and they tended to be top performers. Others openly pushed back against it, insisting upon lighter and more flexible work hours, or less travel; they were punished in their performance reviews.

The third group is most interesting. Some 31 percent of the men and 11 percent of the women whose records Ms. Reid examined managed to achieve the benefits of a more moderate work schedule without explicitly asking for it.

They made an effort to line up clients who were local, reducing the need for travel. When they skipped work to spend time with their children or spouse, they didn’t call attention to it. One team on which several members had small children agreed among themselves to cover for one another so that everyone could have more flexible hours.

A male junior manager described working to have repeat consulting engagements with a company near enough to his home that he could take care of it with day trips. “I try to head out by 5, get home at 5:30, have dinner, play with my daughter,” he said, adding that he generally kept weekend work down to two hours of catching up on email.

Despite the limited hours, he said: “I know what clients are expecting. So I deliver above that.” He received a high performance review and a promotion.

What is fascinating about the firm Ms. Reid studied is that these people, who in her terminology were “passing” as workaholics, received performance reviews that were as strong as their hyper-ambitious colleagues. For people who were good at faking it, there was no real damage done by their lighter workloads.

It calls to mind the episode of “Seinfeld” in which George Costanza leaves his car in the parking lot at Yankee Stadium, where he works, and gets a promotion because his boss sees the car and thinks he is getting to work earlier and staying later than anyone else. (The strategy goes awry for him, and is not recommended for any aspiring partners in a consulting firm.)

A second finding is that women, particularly those with young children, were much more likely to request greater flexibility through more formal means, such as returning from maternity leave with an explicitly reduced schedule. Men who requested a paternity leave seemed to be punished come review time, and so may have felt more need to take time to spend with their families through those unofficial methods.

The result of this is easy to see: Those specifically requesting a lighter workload, who were disproportionately women, suffered in their performance reviews; those who took a lighter workload more discreetly didn’t suffer. The maxim of “ask forgiveness, not permission” seemed to apply.

It would be dangerous to extrapolate too much from a study at one firm, but Ms. Reid said in an interview that since publishing a summary of her research in Harvard Business Review she has heard from people in a variety of industries describing the same dynamic.

High-octane professional service firms are that way for a reason, and no one would doubt that insane hours and lots of travel can be necessary if you’re a lawyer on the verge of a big trial, an accountant right before tax day or an investment banker advising on a huge merger.

But the fact that the consultants who quietly lightened their workload did just as well in their performance reviews as those who were truly working 80 or more hours a week suggests that in normal times, heavy workloads may be more about signaling devotion to a firm than really being more productive. The person working 80 hours isn’t necessarily serving clients any better than the person working 50.

In other words, maybe the real problem isn’t men faking greater devotion to their jobs. Maybe it’s that too many companies reward the wrong things, favoring the illusion of extraordinary effort over actual productivity.

Andrew Lesnie, Cinematographer of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ Dies at 59

The magical quality Mr. Lesnie created in shooting the “Babe” films caught the eye of the director Peter Jackson, who chose him to film the fantasy epic.

Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Biographer of Clara Barton and Robert E. Lee, Dies at 64

Ms. Pryor, who served more than two decades in the State Department, was the author of well-regarded biographies of the founder of the American Red Cross and the Confederate commander.

Robert Patterson Jr., Lawyer and Judge Who Fought for the Accused, Dies at 91

Judge Patterson helped to protect the rights of Attica inmates after the prison riot in 1971 and later served on the Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Ruth Rendell, Novelist Who Thrilled and Educated, Dies at 85

Ms. Rendell was a prolific writer of intricately plotted mystery novels that combined psychological insight, social conscience and teeth-chattering terror.

William Sokolin, Wine Seller Who Broke Famed Bottle, Dies at 85

The bottle Mr. Sokolin famously broke was a 1787 Château Margaux, which was said to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Sokolin had been hoping to sell it for $519,750.

Marty Napoleon, 93, Dies; Jazz Pianist Played With Louis Armstrong

Mr. Napoleon was a self-taught musician whose career began in earnest with the orchestra led by Chico Marx of the Marx Brothers.

Edward Chambers, Early Leader in Community Organizing, Dies at 85

A lapsed seminarian, Mr. Chambers succeeded Saul Alinsky as leader of the social justice umbrella group Industrial Areas Foundation.

Gilbert Haroche, Builder of an Economy Travel Empire, Dies at 87

Mr. Haroche was a founder of Liberty Travel, which grew from a two-man operation to the largest leisure travel operation in the United States.

Richard Suzman, 72, Dies; Researcher Influenced Global Surveys on Aging

At the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Suzman’s signature accomplishment was the central role he played in creating a global network of surveys on aging.

In Baltimore, National Guard Pullout Begins as Citywide Curfew Is Lifted

David Goldman/Associated Press

National Guard soldiers boarding a truck in Baltimore on Sunday.

Baltimore residents prepared to resume the more familiar rhythms of their lives as days passed without new bouts of widespread rioting and as the National Guard began to pull its troops from the city.

In Baltimore, National Guard Pullout Begins as Citywide Curfew Is Lifted | PAKET UMROH BULAN JANUARI 2016

Ex-C.I.A. Official Rebuts Republican Claims on Benghazi Attack in ‘The Great War of Our Time’

WASHINGTON — The former deputy director of the C.I.A. asserts in a forthcoming book that Republicans, in their eagerness to politicize the killing of the American ambassador to Libya, repeatedly distorted the agency’s analysis of events. But he also argues that the C.I.A. should get out of the business of providing “talking points” for administration officials in national security events that quickly become partisan, as happened after the Benghazi attack in 2012.

The official, Michael J. Morell, dismisses the allegation that the United States military and C.I.A. officers “were ordered to stand down and not come to the rescue of their comrades,” and he says there is “no evidence” to support the charge that “there was a conspiracy between C.I.A. and the White House to spin the Benghazi story in a way that would protect the political interests of the president and Secretary Clinton,” referring to the secretary of state at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But he also concludes that the White House itself embellished some of the talking points provided by the Central Intelligence Agency and had blocked him from sending an internal study of agency conclusions to Congress.

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“I finally did so without asking,” just before leaving government, he writes, and after the White House released internal emails to a committee investigating the State Department’s handling of the issue.

A lengthy congressional investigation remains underway, one that many Republicans hope to use against Mrs. Clinton in the 2016 election cycle.

In parts of the book, “The Great War of Our Time” (Twelve), Mr. Morell praises his C.I.A. colleagues for many successes in stopping terrorist attacks, but he is surprisingly critical of other C.I.A. failings — and those of the National Security Agency.

Soon after Mr. Morell retired in 2013 after 33 years in the agency, President Obama appointed him to a commission reviewing the actions of the National Security Agency after the disclosures of Edward J. Snowden, a former intelligence contractor who released classified documents about the government’s eavesdropping abilities. Mr. Morell writes that he was surprised by what he found.

“You would have thought that of all the government entities on the planet, the one least vulnerable to such grand theft would have been the N.S.A.,” he writes. “But it turned out that the N.S.A. had left itself vulnerable.”

He concludes that most Wall Street firms had better cybersecurity than the N.S.A. had when Mr. Snowden swept information from its systems in 2013. While he said he found himself “chagrined by how well the N.S.A. was doing” compared with the C.I.A. in stepping up its collection of data on intelligence targets, he also sensed that the N.S.A., which specializes in electronic spying, was operating without considering the implications of its methods.

“The N.S.A. had largely been collecting information because it could, not necessarily in all cases because it should,” he says.

The book is to be released next week.

Mr. Morell was a career analyst who rose through the ranks of the agency, and he ended up in the No. 2 post. He served as President George W. Bush’s personal intelligence briefer in the first months of his presidency — in those days, he could often be spotted at the Starbucks in Waco, Tex., catching up on his reading — and was with him in the schoolhouse in Florida on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when the Bush presidency changed in an instant.

Mr. Morell twice took over as acting C.I.A. director, first when Leon E. Panetta was appointed secretary of defense and then when retired Gen. David H. Petraeus resigned over an extramarital affair with his biographer, a relationship that included his handing her classified notes of his time as America’s best-known military commander.

Mr. Morell says he first learned of the affair from Mr. Petraeus only the night before he resigned, and just as the Benghazi events were turning into a political firestorm. While praising Mr. Petraeus, who had told his deputy “I am very lucky” to run the C.I.A., Mr. Morell writes that “the organization did not feel the same way about him.” The former general “created the impression through the tone of his voice and his body language that he did not want people to disagree with him (which was not true in my own interaction with him),” he says.

But it is his account of the Benghazi attacks — and how the C.I.A. was drawn into the debate over whether the Obama White House deliberately distorted its account of the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens — that is bound to attract attention, at least partly because of its relevance to the coming presidential election. The initial assessments that the C.I.A. gave to the White House said demonstrations had preceded the attack. By the time analysts reversed their opinion, Susan E. Rice, now the national security adviser, had made a series of statements on Sunday talk shows describing the initial assessment. The controversy and other comments Ms. Rice made derailed Mr. Obama’s plan to appoint her as secretary of state.

The experience prompted Mr. Morell to write that the C.I.A. should stay out of the business of preparing talking points — especially on issues that are being seized upon for “political purposes.” He is critical of the State Department for not beefing up security in Libya for its diplomats, as the C.I.A., he said, did for its employees.

But he concludes that the assault in which the ambassador was killed took place “with little or no advance planning” and “was not well organized.” He says the attackers “did not appear to be looking for Americans to harm. They appeared intent on looting and conducting some vandalism,” setting fires that killed Mr. Stevens and a security official, Sean Smith.

Mr. Morell paints a picture of an agency that was struggling, largely unsuccessfully, to understand dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa when the Arab Spring broke out in late 2011 in Tunisia. The agency’s analysts failed to see the forces of revolution coming — and then failed again, he writes, when they told Mr. Obama that the uprisings would undercut Al Qaeda by showing there was a democratic pathway to change.

“There is no good explanation for our not being able to see the pressures growing to dangerous levels across the region,” he writes. The agency had again relied too heavily “on a handful of strong leaders in the countries of concern to help us understand what was going on in the Arab street,” he says, and those leaders themselves were clueless.

Moreover, an agency that has always overvalued secretly gathered intelligence and undervalued “open source” material “was not doing enough to mine the wealth of information available through social media,” he writes. “We thought and told policy makers that this outburst of popular revolt would damage Al Qaeda by undermining the group’s narrative,” he writes.

Instead, weak governments in Egypt, and the absence of governance from Libya to Yemen, were “a boon to Islamic extremists across both the Middle East and North Africa.”

Mr. Morell is gentle about most of the politicians he dealt with — he expresses admiration for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama, though he accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney of deliberately implying a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq that the C.I.A. had concluded probably did not exist. But when it comes to the events leading up to the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, he is critical of his own agency.

Mr. Morell concludes that the Bush White House did not have to twist intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged effort to rekindle the country’s work on weapons of mass destruction.

“The view that hard-liners in the Bush administration forced the intelligence community into its position on W.M.D. is just flat wrong,” he writes. “No one pushed. The analysts were already there and they had been there for years, long before Bush came to office.”

Obama Finds a Bolder Voice on Race Issues

As he reflected on the festering wounds deepened by race and grievance that have been on painful display in America’s cities lately, President Obama on Monday found himself thinking about a young man he had just met named Malachi.

A few minutes before, in a closed-door round-table discussion at Lehman College in the Bronx, Mr. Obama had asked a group of black and Hispanic students from disadvantaged backgrounds what could be done to help them reach their goals. Several talked about counseling and guidance programs.

“Malachi, he just talked about — we should talk about love,” Mr. Obama told a crowd afterward, drifting away from his prepared remarks. “Because Malachi and I shared the fact that our dad wasn’t around and that sometimes we wondered why he wasn’t around and what had happened. But really, that’s what this comes down to is: Do we love these kids?”

Many presidents have governed during times of racial tension, but Mr. Obama is the first to see in the mirror a face that looks like those on the other side of history’s ledger. While his first term was consumed with the economy, war and health care, his second keeps coming back to the societal divide that was not bridged by his election. A president who eschewed focusing on race now seems to have found his voice again as he thinks about how to use his remaining time in office and beyond.

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Obama Speaks of a ‘Sense of Unfairness’

In the aftermath of racially charged unrest in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and New York, Mr. Obama came to the Bronx on Monday for the announcement of a new nonprofit organization that is being spun off from his White House initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. Staked by more than $80 million in commitments from corporations and other donors, the new group, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, will in effect provide the nucleus for Mr. Obama’s post-presidency, which will begin in January 2017.

“This will remain a mission for me and for Michelle not just for the rest of my presidency but for the rest of my life,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is simple,” he added. Referring to some of the youths he had just met, he said: “We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. The only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.”

Organizers said the new alliance already had financial pledges from companies like American Express, Deloitte, Discovery Communications and News Corporation. The money will be used to help companies address obstacles facing young black and Hispanic men, provide grants to programs for disadvantaged youths, and help communities aid their populations.

Joe Echevarria, a former chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, will lead the alliance, and among those on its leadership team or advisory group are executives at PepsiCo, News Corporation, Sprint, BET and Prudential Group Insurance; former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the music star John Legend; the retired athletes Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Bettis and Shaquille O’Neal; and the mayors of Indianapolis, Sacramento and Philadelphia.

The alliance, while nominally independent of the White House, may face some of the same questions confronting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins another presidential campaign. Some of those donating to the alliance may have interests in government action, and skeptics may wonder whether they are trying to curry favor with the president by contributing.

“The Obama administration will have no role in deciding how donations are screened and what criteria they’ll set at the alliance for donor policies, because it’s an entirely separate entity,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One en route to New York. But he added, “I’m confident that the members of the board are well aware of the president’s commitment to transparency.”

The alliance was in the works before the disturbances last week after the death of Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore, but it reflected the evolution of Mr. Obama’s presidency. For him, in a way, it is coming back to issues that animated him as a young community organizer and politician. It was his own struggle with race and identity, captured in his youthful memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that stood him apart from other presidential aspirants.

But that was a side of him that he kept largely to himself through the first years of his presidency while he focused on other priorities like turning the economy around, expanding government-subsidized health care and avoiding electoral land mines en route to re-election.

After securing a second term, Mr. Obama appeared more emboldened. Just a month after his 2013 inauguration, he talked passionately about opportunity and race with a group of teenage boys in Chicago, a moment aides point to as perhaps the first time he had spoken about these issues in such a personal, powerful way as president. A few months later, he publicly lamented the death of Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager, saying that “could have been me 35 years ago.”

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That case, along with public ruptures of anger over police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have pushed the issue of race and law enforcement onto the public agenda. Aides said they imagined that with his presidency in its final stages, Mr. Obama might be thinking more about what comes next and causes he can advance as a private citizen.

That is not to say that his public discussion of these issues has been universally welcomed. Some conservatives said he had made matters worse by seeming in their view to blame police officers in some of the disputed cases.

“President Obama, when he was elected, could have been a unifying leader,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate for president, said at a forum last week. “He has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions.”

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, some liberal African-American activists have complained that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help downtrodden communities. While he is speaking out more, these critics argue, he has hardly used the power of the presidency to make the sort of radical change they say is necessary.

The line Mr. Obama has tried to straddle has been a serrated one. He condemns police brutality as he defends most officers as honorable. He condemns “criminals and thugs” who looted in Baltimore while expressing empathy with those trapped in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness.

In the Bronx on Monday, Mr. Obama bemoaned the death of Brian Moore, a plainclothes New York police officer who had died earlier in the day after being shot in the head Saturday on a Queens street. Most police officers are “good and honest and fair and care deeply about their communities,” even as they put their lives on the line, Mr. Obama said.

“Which is why in addressing the issues in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York, the point I made was that if we’re just looking at policing, we’re looking at it too narrowly,” he added. “If we ask the police to simply contain and control problems that we ourselves have been unwilling to invest and solve, that’s not fair to the communities, it’s not fair to the police.”

Moreover, if society writes off some people, he said, “that’s not the kind of country I want to live in; that’s not what America is about.”

His message to young men like Malachi Hernandez, who attends Boston Latin Academy in Massachusetts, is not to give up.

“I want you to know you matter,” he said. “You matter to us.”

Ben E. King, Soulful Singer of ‘Stand by Me,’ Dies at 76

Mr. King sang for the Drifters and found success as a solo performer with hits like “Spanish Harlem.”