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Ricky Gervais took the awards to the edge of puerile bullying three years in a row, but Tina Fey and Amy Poehler brought charm and easy good humor to a ceremony where stars are supposed to relax and have fun.

And it was one of the more amusing awards shows because of it. The two comedians were gentle — up to a point. In their opening, Ms. Fey and Ms. Poehler pointed out Kathryn Bigelow and made a joke about the controversy over her film "Zero Dark Thirty." Ms. Poehler said, "When it comes to torture, I trust a lady who spent three years married to James Cameron." The camera panned stars looking a little shocked as they laughed.

It wasn't the only Girl Power moment. Former President Bill Clinton was met with a standing ovation when he arrived to introduce the Steven Spielberg film "Lincoln." But it was Ms. Poehler who got the biggest laugh when she returned to the stage and said rapturously, "That was Hillary Clinton's husband."

Female wunderkinds of every age seemed to dominate the night, including Jodie Foster, a former child star who was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, and the newcomer Lena Dunham, the creator and star of "Girls."

Ms. Foster, long reticent about her personal life, gave a brilliant, somewhat incomprehensible soliloquy that was almost a coming-out speech, but then veered away. (It was like Garbo talks, then Garbo is garbled.) Ms. Dunham accepted for best actress in a TV comedy by saying somewhat tremulously that other, more senior nominees for the award, like Ms. Fey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, were the comfort of her youth. Ms. Fey underlined the slight by saying sarcastically, "Congratulations, Lena, I'm glad we got you through middle school."

Julianne Moore, who won best actress in a television movie for her depiction of Sarah Palin in the HBO film "Game Change," made a point of saluting two women who had nothing to do with the film but everything with exposing Ms. Palin's weaknesses: Ms. Fey, who impersonated Ms. Palin on "Saturday Night Live," and Katie Couric, whose interviews with Ms. Palin during the 2008 election campaign provided Ms. Fey with raw material for her parody.

And one of the most unlikely star turns was by Aida Takla O'Reilly, the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group that is often mocked but is not known for having a sense of humor. Ms. Takla O'Reilly said, "I know that Jeffrey Katzenberg will never forget my name, because he never knew it in the first place."

In so many studied efforts at levity, lapses are all the more glaring. British actors are known for their witty good manners at awards shows, but Damian Lewis, who won best actor in a TV drama for "Homeland," thanked many colleagues and friends but didn't even mention his co-star, Claire Danes — one of the more startling omissions since Hilary Swank forgot to thank her husband at the time, Chad Lowe. (When Ms. Dunham was onstage after winning the award for best comedy or musical TV series, she made an oblique reference to that slip, joking, "I also promised myself that if I ever got this chance, I would thank Chad Lowe.")

Most of the women were studiously gracious in victory (except the pop singer Adele, who used a rather salty Britishism to describe how much she was enjoying the show). While accepting her award, Jennifer Lawrence made a joke about beating out Meryl Streep, but praised her co-star Bradley Cooper and also the producer Harvey Weinstein, whom she thanked for "killing whoever you had to kill to get me up here today." Anne Hathaway, who won for best supporting actress in a movie, even reached out to one of her rivals for the award, thanking Sally Field, nominated for playing the president's wife in "Lincoln," for being "a vanguard against typecasting" by going from "The Flying Nun" to "Norma Rae." (Ms. Hathaway rose to fame as the star of "The Princess Diaries.")

And it could be that all the female success has left a pall on some of the men.

On the red carpet before the show Jay Leno gave the hosts of the night a backhanded compliment: he called Ms. Fey and Ms. Poehler "two of the funniest women I know," then added of Ms. Poehler's sitcom: " 'Parks and Recreation' is my wife's favorite show. She never misses it."

Ms. Poehler had the last laugh, closing the show by saying of herself and Ms. Fey, "We're going home with Jodie Foster."

And he was recalled as something else, a hero of the free culture movement — a coalition as varied as Wikipedia contributors, Flickr photographers and online educators, and prominent figures like Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, and online vigilantes like Anonymous. They share a belief in using the Internet to provide easy, open access to the world's knowledge.

"He's something to aspire toward," said Benjamin Hitov, a 23-year-old Web programmer from Cambridge, Mass., who said he had cried when he learned the news about Mr. Swartz. "I think all of us would like to be a bit more like him. Most of us aren't quite as idealistic as he was. But we still definitely respect that."

The United States government has a very different view of Mr. Swartz. In 2011, he was arrested and accused of using M.I.T.'s computers to gain illegal access to millions of scholarly papers kept by Jstor, a subscription-only service for distributing scientific and literary journals.

At his trial, which was to begin in April, he faced the possibility of millions of dollars in fines and up to 35 years in prison, punishments that friends and family say haunted him for two years and led to his suicide.

Mr. Swartz was a flash point in the debate over whether information should be made widely available. On one side were activists like Mr. Swartz and advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Students for Free Culture. On the other were governments and corporations that argued that some information must be kept private for security or commercial reasons.

After his death, Mr. Swartz has come to symbolize a different debate over how aggressively governments should pursue criminal cases against people like Mr. Swartz who believe in "freeing" information.

In a statement, his family said in part: "Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. attorney's office and at M.I.T. contributed to his death."

On Sunday evening, M.I.T.'s president, L. Rafael Reif, said he had appointed a prominent professor, Hal Abelson, to "lead a thorough analysis of M.I.T.'s involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present." He promised to disclose the report, adding, "It pains me to think that M.I.T. played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy."

Late Sunday, M.I.T.'s Web site was inaccessible. Officials there did not provide a cause.

While Mr. Swartz viewed his making copies of academic papers as an unadulterated good, spreading knowledge, the prosecutor compared Mr. Swartz's actions to using a crowbar to break in and steal someone's money under the mattress. On Sunday, she declined to comment on Mr. Swartz's death out of respect for his family's privacy.

The question of how to treat online crimes is still a vexing one, many years into the existence of the Internet.

Prosecutors have great discretion on what to charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the law cited in Mr. Swartz's case, and how to value the loss. "The question in any given case is whether the prosecutor asked for too much, and properly balanced the harm caused in a particular case with the defendant's true culpability," said Marc Zwillinger, a former federal cybercrimes prosecutor.

The belief that information is power and should be shared freely — which Mr. Swartz described in a treatise in 2008 — is under considerable legal assault. The immediate reaction among those sympathetic to Mr. Swartz has been anger and a vow to soldier on. Young people interviewed on Sunday spoke of the government's power to intimidate.

"Using certain people as poster children for deterring others from doing that same action, ultimately it won't work," Jennifer Baek, a third-year student at New York Law School, said by telephone, referring to Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been charged with multiple counts in the leaking of confidential documents, and Mr. Swartz. Ms. Baek, a member of the board of Students for Free Culture, said the comments on blogs and discussion boards she had visited since Mr. Swartz's death showed that "people aren't afraid to say this is what the injustice was."

The ingredients for trouble perhaps lay in Mr. Swartz's personal and direct approach to solving problems. As one mentor, Cory Doctorow of the popular Web site Boing Boing, wrote in tribute, he was highly impressionable and sought after and was forgiven by those he worked with and worked for.

A permanent "kid genius," Mr. Swartz had often put his skills to the task of making information more accessible. At 14 he was a co-creator of RSS, a tool that allows online content to be distribute, and then made a tidy sum as one of the creators of the social-news site Reddit, now part of Condé Nast.

But even before, and certainly after, he crusaded for open access to information. His projects include a range of influential efforts like the Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Wikipedia and the Recap collection of legal documents.

He also began more traditional projects for subjects he took an interest in. At 19, he volunteered to upload the archive of a defunct magazine he loved, Lingua Franca. In 2005, he called up the writer Rick Perlstein to offer to create a Web page for him after reading a book of his he liked.

"I smelled a hustle, asking him how much it would cost, and he said, no, he wanted to do it for free," Mr. Perlstein wrote in The Nation over the weekend. "I thought: 'What a loser this guy must be. Someone with nothing better to do.' " Mr. Perlstein writes that he ended up becoming friends, and he sent chapters of his next book, "Nixonland," to Mr. Swartz before he showed them to anyone else.

Mr. Swartz outlined his views in the manifesto: "It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy."

And he said the stakes were clear: "We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks."

Still, even many of his allies concede that Mr. Swartz's passion for free information may have taken him too far in the Jstor downloads. According to the government's indictment, in September 2010 Mr. Swartz broke into a computer-wiring closet on the M.I.T. campus; when retrieving a computer he connected, he hid his face behind a bicycle helmet, peeking out through the ventilation holes. At the time, he was a student at nearby Harvard.

Some would say that perhaps a punishment for trespassing would have been warranted, but the idea that he could have seen serious prison time was infuriating. Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard Law professor who founded Creative Commons to advocate greater sharing of creative material online, called the prosecution's case absurd and said that boxing in Mr. Swartz with an aggressive case and little ability to mount a defense "made it make sense to this brilliant but troubled boy to end it."

E.J. Hilbert, a former cybercrimes investigator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said that the broader issues around such activist transgressions raise many complex questions that are subject to "a lot of discretion from prosecutors." He added that the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts has long been renowned for a particularly aggressive pursuit of cybercrimes.

Jstor, for its part, declined to pursue the case and posted a note over the weekend describing Mr. Swartz as "a truly gifted person who made important contributions to the development of the Internet and the Web from which we all benefit."

Michael McCarthy, a 30-year-old animator from Providence who was also at the M.I.T. vigil, said Mr. Swartz was let down by the university. "If places like M.I.T. aren't safe for people to be a little miscreant in their quest for truth and understanding, then we're in a lot of trouble," he said.

It's unclear how much the impending case contributed to Mr. Swartz's decision to take his own life. Years back, he wrote about his struggle with depression in his blog, Raw Thoughts.

The last post he wrote on that blog, in November, was a detailed analysis of the final installment of the "Batman" series.

Having warned his readers that he was about to reveal the conclusion of the movies, he ended the post by writing: "Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it's no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide."

On Friday night, Mr. Schroeder, now 77, gathered with friends at the Mohawk Rifle and Pistol Club, slipping .22-caliber rounds, one after another, into the magazine for his Smith & Wesson Model 41 pistol. He fixed his eyes on a quarter-sized bull's-eye hanging 50 feet away and pulled the trigger.

Mr. Schroeder, known to all as Budd, is an accomplished shooter; for decades he has been a regular at pistol competitions in western New York. And for just as long, he has devoted himself to protecting gun rights in New York State, joining a grass-roots organization in 1966 to fight measures proposed in the wake of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, and fighting gun control laws ever since.

Now, in the aftermath of last month's massacre of first graders in Newtown, Conn., Mr. Schroeder is pleading with lawmakers, in what he acknowledges is an uphill battle, to block what his group has deemed the biggest threat to New York gun owners since the 1960s. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, propelled into action by recent mass shootings, has proposed what he says would be the nation's toughest package of gun laws, including an expanded ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The Legislature appears prepared to go along, perhaps as soon as this week. Aides to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, and state lawmakers continued to negotiate on Sunday.

Mr. Schroeder's efforts are emblematic of those by gun rights advocates around the country, who are desperately trying to head off what they view as ill-advised restrictions that they do not believe would solve the problem of gun violence. Mr. Schroeder, a retired park superintendent who teaches gun-safety instruction and is a former board member of the National Rifle Association, said that gun owners felt demonized in the wake of the shooting and that they looked upon what happened in Newtown in the same way as those who had never fired a gun.

"I'm every bit as angry as they are," he said. "It's an atrocity that these things happen — I mean, a real atrocity. But somewhere along the way the system broke down. Now, this kid obviously had mental problems, but it wasn't brought to the attention of people who could help him or put him away."

Mr. Schroeder is more than 250 miles and a world away from the State Capitol, but he has been meeting with lawmakers from western New York, many of whom he has known for years, in an effort to persuade them to stand firm against Mr. Cuomo's proposals. He writes a weekly political column for two local newspapers that emphasizes the Second Amendment.

He is chairman of the board of directors of the Shooters Committee on Political Education, or SCOPE, which has about 3,000 members and 200 affiliated gun clubs across the state. The group is one element of the loose coalition of groups and individuals that make up the gun lobby in Albany — there are also the professional lobbyists who represent gun manufacturers; the N.R.A. and its state affiliate, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association; and bloggers, talk show hosts and local groups all trying to influence the debate. And there are sympathetic lawmakers, many of them from rural parts of the state.

"Downstate, we're a bunch of criminals," Mr. Schroeder said. "Upstate, it's a different story."

Mr. Schroeder traces the movement back to the fight over the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, enacted after the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

"Ever since that bill passed, which was supposed to be the be-and-end-all of gun control, that was just the tip of the iceberg," Mr. Schroeder said. "And from there on we've been doing the fight ever since."

Every legislative session brings a new fight: he has battled year after year with the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, whose chamber has passed numerous new gun controls, and clashed bitterly with Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, who won a package of gun laws in 2000 (and, Mr. Schroeder said, "sold out the gun owners for a 15-minute press conference.")

"I don't think we've ever had a pro-gun governor in our lifetimes," he said. Mr. Schroeder used his first Winchester shotgun for bird hunting. An uncle gave him a .22-caliber rifle, perfect for shooting rats at a nearby railroad dump. In college, he joined the Army Reserve as a bandsman, playing the alto saxophone, and was later called into active duty and sent to Fort Bragg, N.C., where he made the pistol team. ("It saved me from digging foxholes," he said.) Some of Mr. Schroeder's concerns are practical: he says New York already has enough restrictions on guns, and pulls out a plastic binder containing Article 265 of the State Penal Law, on firearms and dangerous weapons, to demonstrate how voluminous the existing laws already are. Some concerns are more philosophical: he argues that an expanded ban on assault weapons is simply a wrongheaded approach to reducing violence.

He said Mr. Cuomo and others were using the Newtown violence to push measures that would take them toward a goal they held long before any recent mass shootings — banning guns altogether. He also said upstanding, taxpaying, legal gun owners were being punished for the actions of a few madmen. "It's like saying you shouldn't have any politicians because we got a couple of crooks we caught," he said.

He also argued on constitutional grounds, recalling the American colonists who resisted the British at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. He says of the Second Amendment, "The sole purpose of that was to prevent a dystopic government from taking over the population." He added, "Sometimes you get accused of being paranoid, but if you watch history, no republic or democracy has ever gone to a totalitarian form of government without first disarming the populace."

 Mr. Schroeder's fellow gun enthusiasts at the pistol club, located near Buffalo, shared his outrage over the proposals, but were pessimistic about stopping them.

They said politicians needed to focus on keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill; making sure that people who have illegal guns and use them to commit crimes are properly punished; and improving security in schools. They said Mr. Cuomo's proposal to ban more guns would not address the problem.

"It would outlaw most of the guns we shoot," said Frank Bialy, a retired chemist who used to coach a high school rifle team. "What's so frustrating is the people who are here obeying the law are the ones who pay all the prices when these crazy things happen."

Taking after the Gnomes on the animated series who ardently practice American capitalism, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have wooed investors and raised money to form their own production studio, which they plan to announce on Monday.

The new company is to be called Important Studios and hopes to be just that. With an estimated value of $300 million built on revenue from "South Park," now in its 16th season on Comedy Central, and the Broadway megahit "The Book of Mormon," the studio will have the power and money to approve television, movie and theater projects, including a big-screen version of "The Book of Mormon."

On Friday, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone were putting together the final news release to announce their studio. They settled on this quip: "Having worked with several different studios over the years, we came to realize that our favorite people in the world are ourselves."

The pair will join a short line of Hollywood players who have formed their own studios as a way to gain control over the creative, production and distribution process.

Merv Griffin created a television empire that he parlayed into real estate and other ventures. Dick Clark created Dick Clark Productions, which continued after his death last year. In 2006, the "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest created Ryan Seacrest Productions, which produces reality shows including "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" and related spinoffs.

Lately, those independent studios have become ripe for acquisition as media conglomerates look to expand their library of intellectual property and consumer products. In October, Disney said it would pay $4.05 billion in cash and stock for Lucasfilm, the production studio created by George Lucas, and the company that produced "Star Wars" and its lineup of lucrative sequels and prequels.

Mr. Stone initially said he hoped Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks or Mr. Lucas's Lucasfilm could serve as a model for Important Studios, then paused for a moment. "In some ways it's a stupid comparison because they are gargantuan," he said. "We want to be a smaller, more humble version of that."

He continued: "If DreamWorks is Walmart, we are over here knitting sweaters."

The "South Park" creators have made millions and attracted both fans and detractors in satirizing everything from Christmas (celebrating the holiday with singing fecal matter) to Islamist extremism (depicting Muhammad in a bear suit) and race relations (naming one of the only black characters on the series Token).

Important Studios will incorporate revenue from "South Park" and "The Book of Mormon," as well as revenue from future projects. "The Book of Mormon," one of the highest-grossing Broadway musicals in recent years, received nine Tony Awards in 2011 and has grossed more than $200 million.

That amount continues to grow because the New York production makes $1.6 million a week, according to the producers. A touring version of the show makes about $1.6 million a week, and another production in Chicago grosses $1.5 million a week. And the show is about to go into production in London.

Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker, who created the musical, are the largest shareholders in "The Book of Mormon," followed by the film producer Scott Rudin and others. Among the first projects that Important Studios is likely to develop is a movie version of the musical.

Mr. Stone said he and his partner had been considering forming an independent studio for almost two years. "At first we thought we'd get some money from a hedge fund or a Russian oligarch or something," Mr. Stone said, seemingly half-joking.

Instead, they teamed with a nascent Hollywood oligarch. Through their relationship with Ariel Z. Emanuel at the talent agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, they met Joseph Ravitch. Mr. Ravitch heads the Raine Group, a boutique merchant bank that focuses on entertainment, digital media and sports. (William Morris is an investor in Raine.)

Mr. Ravitch, a former Goldman Sachs banker who advised on the sale of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and helped the N.B.A. set up its business in China, hit it off with the two men. Raine invested about $60 million in Important Studios in exchange for a stake of just under 20 percent. Mr. Stone called Raine "big brains with big Rolodexes" and said "the money has some intellect with it."

For his part, Mr. Ravitch said, "Our bet is they will create some exciting stuff over the next five years, and this allows them the creative and financial flexibility to own their future."

Invariably, Mr. Ravitch and his investors will eventually want to sell their stake, raising the prospect that Important Studios could ultimately be sold to a larger media company like Viacom.

In the meantime, the deal speaks to a huge shift in power in the entertainment industry, thanks to the Internet and the changing ways people watch television. Creators like Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker have the opportunity to have a more direct relationship with their millions of fans, potentially bypassing the traditional Hollywood machinery to promote new projects and make old ones available.

"South Park," in particular, is an early pioneer of making television available through online streaming. Even as Viacom, which owns Comedy Central, filed a lawsuit against Google over the unauthorized posting of clips of its shows on YouTube, factions within the company pushed to make episodes of "South Park" available free almost immediately after their initial broadcast.

In a meeting in 2007 on online piracy, Erik Flannigan, executive vice president for digital media at the Viacom Entertainment Group, typed "South Park" into Google on a giant screen in a conference room. The first several Web sites that came up offered illegal pirated versions of the series. That put the impetus on the media company to make "South Park" available online, which sharply cut down on piracy.

Its early and robust online presence gave "South Park" a more direct relationship with fans, which Mr. Stone said would help in introducing future projects.

"Ten years ago, you needed that studio machinery to start cranking its marketing muscle," Mr. Stone said. "Now we could market a movie-size project. We bring a lot of heft."

Mr. Stone said he and Mr. Parker hoped to use the new money to allow them to "be more prolific with less struggle."

"We want to have a little control over our life," he explained. "We used to walk into a studio and try to become an employee. We're done with that. We are too grown up for that."

Important Studios' balance sheet will also probably give Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker more leverage when negotiating with other studios. Doug Herzog, president of the MTV Networks Entertainment Group, who brought "South Park" to Comedy Central, said of the new studio: "Bringing money to the table goes a long way. Money talks." He said the studio would allow the two men "to pursue their vision in as pure a way as possible. Matt and Trey with a lot of money. Be afraid."

Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker have had an unlikely journey to moguldom. After meeting at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1992, the two introduced a stop-motion animated short called "The Spirit of Christmas" (known as "Jesus vs. Frosty"). A second Christmas-inspired short film, known as "Jesus vs. Santa," had its debut in 1995 and further built the team's cult following.

In 2007, Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker, with the help of their lawyer, Kevin Morris, cut a sweetheart deal with Comedy Central: a 50-50 joint venture on all revenue not related to television. That meant the two men have had a huge stake in the all-important digital rights to "South Park" as well as movies, soundtracks, "Oh my God! They Killed Kenny!" T-shirts and other merchandise. That deal was said to be worth $75 million for the two men. Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker are at work on a second "South Park" video game.

Despite their goofy characters and collaborations, Mr. Stone said, "We're closet responsible." Of course, even with a couple of hits under their belts, nothing is foolproof. "We could fall flat on our faces," he said.

For years, the United States tried to stem the spread of Islamic militancy in the region by conducting its most ambitious counterterrorism program ever across these vast, turbulent stretches of the Sahara.

But as insurgents swept through the desert last year, commanders of this nation's elite army units, the fruit of years of careful American training, defected when they were needed most — taking troops, guns, trucks and their newfound skills to the enemy in the heat of battle, according to senior Malian military officials.

"It was a disaster," said one of several senior Malian officers to confirm the defections.

Then an American-trained officer overthrew Mali's elected government, setting the stage for more than half of the country to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists. American spy planes and surveillance drones have tried to make sense of the mess, but American officials and their allies are still scrambling to get a detailed picture of who they are even up against.

Now, in the face of longstanding American warnings that a Western assault on the Islamist stronghold could rally jihadists around the world and prompt terrorist attacks as far away as Europe, the French have entered the war themselves.

First, they blunted an Islamist advance, saying the rest of Mali would have fallen into the hands of militants within days. Then on Sunday, French warplanes went on the offensive, going after training camps, depots and other militant positions far inside Islamist-held territory in an effort to uproot the militants, who have formed one of the largest havens for jihadists in the world.

Some Defense Department officials, notably officers at the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command, have pushed for a lethal campaign to kill senior operatives of two of the extremists groups holding northern Mali, Ansar Dine and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Killing the leadership, they argued, could lead to an internal collapse.

But with its attention and resources so focused on other conflicts in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, the Obama administration has rejected such strikes in favor of a more cautious, step-back strategy: helping African nations repel and contain the threat on their own.

Over the last four years, the United States has spent between $520 million and $600 million in a sweeping effort to combat Islamist militancy in the region without fighting the kind of wars it has waged in the Middle East. The program stretched from Morocco to Nigeria, and American officials heralded the Malian military as an exemplary partner. American Special Forces trained its troops in marksmanship, border patrol, ambush drills and other counterterrorism skills.

But all that deliberate planning collapsed swiftly when heavily armed, battle-hardened Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya. They teamed up with jihadists like Ansar Dine, routed poorly equipped Malian forces and demoralized them so thoroughly that it set off a mutiny against the government in the capital, Bamako.

A confidential internal review completed last July by the Pentagon's Africa Command concluded that the coup had unfolded too quickly for American commanders or intelligence analysts to detect any clear warning signs.

"The coup in Mali progressed very rapidly and with very little warning," said Col. Tom Davis, a command spokesman. "The spark that ignited it occurred within their junior military ranks, who ultimately overthrew the government, not at the senior leadership level where warning signs might have been more easily noticed."

But one Special Operations Forces officer disagreed, saying, "This has been brewing for five years. The analysts got complacent in their assumptions and did not see the big changes and the impacts of them, like the big weaponry coming out of Libya and the different, more Islamic" fighters who came back.

Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York, will be among the first senators to meet with Mr. Hagel since his nomination last week. Mr. Schumer has told aides and other senators that he could be persuaded to support Mr. Hagel depending on the meeting's outcome. Mr. Hagel's nomination has been met with suspicion, and even outright hostility, among Republicans and Democrats who are strongly aligned with Jewish groups.

Mr. Schumer plans to ask Mr. Hagel to clarify and in some ways recant statements about Iran and Israel, according to a person with knowledge of the senator's plans for the meeting. Mr. Schumer also intends to press Mr. Hagel about conservative views he has expressed on gay rights and abortion. Other Democrats are likely to take their cues about the nomination from Mr. Schumer, who is the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate and has strong ties to pro-Israel groups.

Of deepest concern to Mr. Schumer, reflecting the anxiety of many Israel advocacy groups, are Mr. Hagel's positions on the nuclear threat posed by Iran, according to the person with knowledge of the senator's plans. Mr. Hagel has said a military strike against Iran would be counterproductive.

But Mr. Hagel got a resounding vote of support on Sunday from a fellow Republican moderate, Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state, who said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" that Mr. Hagel was "superbly qualified."

"First, I think he's had a very, very distinguished public service record that he can stand on," Mr. Powell said. "There are a lot of comments about different things he said over the years, and I think he'll have a chance to respond to all those comments at the confirmation hearings."

Another Republican, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, said on the ABC News program "This Week" that he had questions about Mr. Hagel's "overall temperament."

Mr. Schumer is also suspicious of comments by Mr. Hagel that seem to support a strategy of containment, in which the United States would accept Iran's development of a nuclear weapon while seeking to prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

Mr. Hagel might need to fully reject that strategy in order to bring his position in line with President Obama's and Mr. Schumer's. During his race against Mitt Romney last year, Mr. Obama took a more forceful position against Iran.

As a senator from Nebraska, Mr. Hagel voted against several rounds of sanctions against Iran that ultimately passed the Senate. Mr. Hagel has said unilateral sanctions are ineffective, a position that is out of step with the Obama administration's thinking. But in recent weeks, Mr. Hagel has sounded more hawkish about Iran in meetings with administration officials.

Mr. Hagel's views on the militant Islamist groups Hezbollah and Hamas have also become issues. He was among only a handful of senators who declined to sign a letter to the European Union calling for the designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Mr. Hagel has since said he does not believe in sending letters to foreign governments. He has also supported direct negotiations between the United States and Hamas, which governs Gaza.

Mr. Schumer will seek reassurances that Mr. Hagel now considers Hezbollah and Hamas to be terrorist groups, the person familiar with his plans said.

Mr. Schumer is also expected to ask Mr. Hagel about his disparaging statements about gay people — remarks he has since apologized for — and his views on abortion, particularly his opposition to allowing abortions for women in the military who have been raped, a position that has upset some Democratic women in the Senate.

Although Mr. Schumer said Mr. Obama should have discretion over appointments to his cabinet, people close to the senator said his concerns would need to be put to rest before he would support Mr. Hagel's nomination.

Jewish groups that have met with Mr. Schumer have expressed reservations about openly opposing Mr. Hagel's nomination for fear of inflaming their tensions with the Obama administration and deepening difficulties between the United States and Israel. Further, it would be a major break with the Obama administration for Mr. Schumer to oppose him.

On Sunday, Mr. Hagel continued to draw criticism from conservatives who share Mr. Schumer's worries about Israel and Iran and have lingering concerns about Mr. Hagel's criticisms of the Bush administration's execution of the Iraq war.

Senator John McCain of Arizona said on "Face the Nation" that Mr. Hagel's early opposition to the troop surge in Iraq was "bizarre." Mr. McCain is the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, which will conduct Mr. Hagel's confirmation hearing.

But only after a sense of finality engulfed the crowd, only after a defender made one of the most critical catches of the night for the Patriots: a leaping interception by Rob Ninkovich, their nimble defensive end.

It thwarted a promising Houston drive. It resulted, six plays later, in a New England touchdown. That score turned an 11-point lead that was in jeopardy into an 18-point advantage that soon ballooned to 25.

A fourth-quarter surge by the Texans obscured the comprehensive nature of New England's 41-28 divisional-round victory, which set up a rematch of last year's A.F.C. Championship game. On Sunday, New England will host the Baltimore Ravens, who came within a shanked field goal of winning here last year, and who spoiled what would have been a captivating matchup of quarterback superstars — Tom Brady versus Peyton Manning — with an exhilarating victory Saturday in Denver.

Baltimore's double-overtime victory triggered a weekend of fantastic finishes and electrifying performances, a prelude to the reliable numbing dominance of the Patriots. They rushed for 122 yards. Their running backs, Shane Vereen and Stevan Ridley, combined for four touchdowns. Brady completed 25 of 40 passes for 344 yards and 3 touchdowns, all without Danny Woodhead (thumb) and Rob Gronkowski (left forearm), who were injured early in the first quarter and did not return.

Gronkowski is expected to miss rest of playoffs. "It's hard to replace a player like him; he's a freak of nature," his fellow tight end Aaron Hernandez said.

The Texans tried so hard. They vowed not to be humiliated again. Returning to the same stadium where New England humbled them by 28 points on Dec. 10, the Texans escaped embarrassment for only so long.

Houston scored 10 points in the final 75 seconds before halftime to draw within 17-13. After Brady directed a 69-yard scoring drive to open the third quarter, capped by an 8-yard run by Ridley, the Texans were in position to slice into the Patriots' lead after marching from their 5 to the New England 37. Then Ninkovich jumped, and down went the Texans.

"I guess I'm just blessed," Ninkovich said, adding, "Right place, right time."

Leading to Sunday, the Patriots discussed their previous victory over the Texans, but only in vague, almost apologetic terms — as if stricken with selective amnesia. It was forgotten as quickly as it happened, banished to that same dark, distant nook in the brain where another Monday night massacre resides.

Houston, in essence, aspired to emulate the 2010 Jets, who stampeded into Gillette that postseason and avenged a 42-point humiliation. For the Texans, the loss to New England precipitated a funk that cost them the No. 1 seed in the A.F.C., a first-round bye and home-field advantage. It cast them as underdogs or, worse, as pretenders.

Although they were not directly inspired by precedent, the Texans did feature elements of that Jets team of two years ago, elements necessary to topple New England: a dynamic, clock-controlling running game and a ferocious defense with a pass rush capable of rattling Tom Brady. At least, in theory.

If not for Danieal Manning, the Texans would have been embarrassed again in the first half. His 94-yard return on the opening kickoff set up a field goal by Shayne Graham.   His 35-yard return late in the second quarter, compounded by a 15-yard penalty on New England, set up a five-play scoring drive capped by Arian Foster's 1-yard run.

On that possession, Houston gained 47 yards. Foster rushed for all of them, as much out of necessity as by design. Foster, whose streak of 100-yard rushing games in the postseason ended at three, was so amused by a Boston Globe column last week mocking the Texans, calling them "tomato cans" and "frauds," that he turned an excerpt into his avatar on Twitter.