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Digest 95, originally sent Wed May 19 14:48:52 1999 :
There are 9 messages in this issue.
Topics in today's digest:
NucNews-0 Brief 5/18/99
NucNews-5- 5/18/99 - Atomic Tests 50's; General Dynamics Now; Cruise Missiles Sudan/Afghan; INS Now
3. NucNews-2- 5/18/99 - Germany; Lithuania; Canada (2); Pakistan; Israel; Dalai Lama
4. NucNews-7- 5/18/99 - China/ NSA; Kissinger
5. NucNews-8- 5/18/99 - Clinton/Military-Iraq; China 3-D
6. NucNews-4- 5/18/99 - NY Cleanup; DOE New Brunswick Lab Open House May 25; Hanford; Modern Labs; Atomic Train
7. NucNews-6- 5/18/99 - US/Korea; China Deals ('98); China/NATO, defense upgrade; CIA files: the Prequel; China 6 warheads
8. NucNews-1- 5/18/99 - depleted uranium
9. NucNews-3- 5/18/99 - Russia; Formula to Light the World
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Message: 1 Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:53:49 -0400 From: News <prop1@prop1.org> Subject: NucNews-0 Brief 5/18/99
[Please address replies to the original publisher (with a copy to prop1@prop1.org and NucNews@onelist.com (Archives)). Your help in refuting false information appreciated!]
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NucNews-1- 5/18/99 - depleted uranium NucNews-2- 5/18/99 - Germany; Lithuania; Canada (2); Pakistan; Israel; Dalai Lama NucNews-3- 5/18/99 - Russia; Formula to Light the World NucNews-4- 5/18/99 - NY Cleanup; DOE New Brunswick Lab Open House May 25; Hanford; Modern Labs; Atomic Train NucNews-5- 5/18/99 - Atomic Tests 50's; General Dynamics Now; Cruise Missiles Sudan/Afghan; INS Now NucNews-6- 5/18/99 - US/Korea; China Deals ('98); China/NATO, defense upgrade; CIA files: the Prequel; China 6 warheads NucNews-7- 5/18/99 - China/ NSA; Kissinger NucNews-8- 5/18/99 - Clinton/Military-Iraq; China 3-D
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1. NATO BOMBING UNLEASHES ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE IN EUROPE For immediate release - May 14, 1999 International Action Center, http://www.iacenter.org ... IAC co-director Sara Flounders was heading to Yugoslavia May 14 to investigate and bring back first-hand evidence and documentation involving NATO's use of DU weapons and its attacks on chemical and pharmaceutical plants, plastics factories, refineries and other targets. This bombing creates environmental devastation that will impact on millions of people and for generations to come....
2. Your reaction to Tony Blair's article BBC, May 18, 1999 http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking%5Fpoint/newsid%5F343000/34389 8.asp (Blair: My pledge to the refugees, May 14, 1999, http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_343000/343739.stm) ...One wonders too about the environmental damage caused by the use of so much depleted Uranium. Stop this farce now and get back round the table. Alex Spalding, England.... .. Maybe Mr Blair needs to go back to school and learn the meaning of the word genocide, then perhaps he would better understand that what Nato is doing against the Serb people is indeed racial genocide: with uranium depleted bombs and cluster bombs and attacking of chemical plants...Samantha Jupitre, UK.....
3. House Panel Critical Of Pentagon Gulf War Syndrome Inquiry By PHILIP SHENON, October 26, 1997 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/102697gulfwar-report.html WASHINGTON -- After a 20-month investigation, the panel that has led the chief congressional inquiry into the illnesses of Persian Gulf war veterans will ask that the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs be stripped of their authority over the issue.
4. Selected Articles on Gulf War Illness October 26, 1997 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/gulfindex.html --- Panel Says Pentagon Ignored Signs of Poison Gas October 31 1997, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/103197gulfwar-vets.html --- House Panel Critical Of Pentagon Gulf War Syndrome Inquiry (October 26, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/102697gulfwar-report.html
Investigators Find Excerpts of Gulf War Chemical Logs (October 24, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/102497us-gulfwar-logs.html
Panel Wants Pentagon to Lose Gulf-Inquiry Authority (September 6, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/090697gulf-war-chem.html --- Study Links Chemicals to Sick Veterans (June 15, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/061597chem-weapons.html --- Weapons Expert Tells of Possible Iraqi Gas Attacks in Gulf War (April 25, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/042597gulf-chemwar.html --- Powell Says C.I.A. Did Not Warn of Chemical Arms in Gulf (April 18, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/041897gulf-powell.html --- C.I.A. Says It Failed to Give Data on Iraqi Arms (April 10, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/0410cia-gulfwar.html --- Army Knew in '91 of Chemical Weapons Dangers in Iraq (Feb. 25, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/0225chemweapons.html -- U.S. May Never Know How Many Gulf Troops Were Exposed to Chemical Weapons (Dec. 22, 1996) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/1222gulfwar-chemical.html
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5. Waste overload risk for German N-reactors -paper 06:51 a.m. May 16, 1999 Eastern (Reuters), By Mark John http://www.dogpile.com (search newswires "nuclear OR plutonium OR uranium OR radioactiv???") BONN - Four of Germany's 19 nuclear reactors will have to be shut down this year unless a temporary ban on nuclear waste shipments is lifted, Welt am Sonntag newspaper said on Sunday.
6. Lithuania nuclear plant faces temporary shutdown 09:38 a.m. May 17, 1999 Eastern (Reuters) http://www.dogpile.com (search newswires "nuclear OR plutonium OR uranium OR radioactiv???") VILNIUS - Lithuania's Soviet-built Ignalina nuclear power plant is preparing for a temporary shutdown after missing on Monday a deadline to acquire an operating license for one of its two reactors, officials said.
7. Aid agency pushes nuclear sales [Canada] CIDA program targets Thai teens in Candu drive By Bill Schiller, Toronto Star, May 16, 1999 http://www.thestar.com/thestar/back_issues/ED19990516/news/990516NEW01_CI-CI DA16.html Canada's kind and helping hand in the Third World, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), has been enlisted to help sell Candu nuclear reactors in Thailand. The revelation is seen as a scandal by those who monitor foreign aid.
8. Canada Fights for US Torpedo Access By David Crary Associated Press Writer Friday, May 14, 1999; 7:22 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990514/V000504-051499-idx.html TORONTO (AP) -- Exasperated by drawn-out negotiations with British Columbia, the Canadian government Friday tooks steps to expropriate a torpedo testing range in order to ensure it remains at the disposal of the U.S. Navy.
9. Pakistan Army Chief Backs Nukes By Kathy Gannon Associated Press, May 15, 1999 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990515/V000864-051599-idx.html ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Nuclear deterrence has a ``sobering effect on the enemy,'' but more traditional military strengths would ultimately win a regional war, Pakistan's Army Chief said Saturday.
10. Barak Ousts Netanyahu in Israel Associated Press, May 18, 1999, 4:59 a.m. EDT http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Israel-Election.html TEL AVIV, Israel -- Winning a crushing victory over hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak promised today to forge a secure peace with the Palestinians, pull troops out of Lebanon in a year and heal the deep divisions among Israelis....
11. Dalai Lama Seeks Peace Via Music Associated Press, May 17, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-India-Dalai-Lama.html NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- The Dalai Lama said Monday that he hopes to promote peace through sacred music in a series of concerts around the world....
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[These are dated, but interesting, and not posted on NucNews online yet.]
12. Russia Struggles in Long Race to Prevent an Atomic Theft By MICHAEL R. GORDON, April 20, 1996 New York Times http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+site+30740+7+ wAAA+uranium MOSCOW -- When scientists from the Kurchatov Institute go to work at Building 116, getting in the door is no simple matter.
13. Finding a Formula to Light the World but Guard the Bomb By MATTHEW L. WALD, June 2, 1998 New York Times http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+site+23187+8+ wAAA+uranium Image: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/060298sci-thorium.gif WASHINGTON -- Now that India has shown the world that it could quietly purify enough plutonium for the five nuclear devices it detonated recently -- and probably enough for many more -- attention is turning to how to divorce nuclear weapons from nuclear power plants.
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14. Phase 1 of Nuke Cleanup Nears End By Carolyn Thompson Associated Press Writer Sunday, May 16, 1999; 12:02 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990516/V000228-051699-idx.html WEST VALLEY, N.Y. (AP) -- More than 600,000 gallons of highly radioactive waste have been solidified into glass, nearly completing the first phase of a cleanup at what was once the country's only commercial reprocessing center for nuclear fuel.
15. Company Press Release SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy New Brunswick Laboratory Turns 50; May 25 Open House Planned CHICAGO, May 17 /PRNewswire/ -- May 17, 9:02 am Eastern Time http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990517/il_newbrun_1.html ... NBL researchers also support DOE's commitment to reduce inventories of surplus weapons-usable fissile materials worldwide in a safe, secure, transparent and irreversible manner. As qualified U.S. nuclear monitors, they recently monitored four Russian nuclear sites to insure the integrity of the Russian program for blending down highly enriched uranium.... Additional details about the 50th Anniversary celebration are on NBL's home page at www.nbl.doe.gov. Oil/Energy News: http://biz.yahoo.com/n/y/y0024.html
16. Looking back at the new Hanford Pact to clean up nation's most-contaminated site was fraught with bureaucratic, technical pitfalls Associated Press - May 13, 1999 Spokane Net http://www.spokane.net:80/news-story-body.asp?Date=051399&ID=s576478&cat= RICHLAND _ Ten years ago, the signing of the Tri-Party Agreement officially marked Hanford Nuclear Reservation's transition from production of plutonium for defense purposes to environmental cleanup.
17. Can state secrets be safe in modern laboratories? May 15, 1999, Nando Media, Christian Science Monitor Service, By SCOTT BALDAUF http://www2.nando.net:80/noframes/story/0,2107,49084-79086-555712-0,00.html At Los Alamos National Laboratory, the line between classified and unclassified material gets crossed every day. Scientists who study the integrity of America's nuclear stockpile may also be involved in medical research of brain waves. Satellites meant to identify illegal underground nuclear tests can also be used to study lightning storms....
[Needs reply: letters@nytimes.com]
18. Balancing Speech Against Violence New York Times Letters to Editor, May 17, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/lmcvay.html To the Editor: It is revealing that Senator Richard H. Bryan of Nevada is upset at NBC for improving the technical accuracy of the movie "Atomic Train" (Business Day, May 13; news article, May 14). He is working hard to stop the Department of Energy from building a nuclear waste disposal plant in his state, so anything that can raise fears serves his purpose. More than 2,500 shipments of nuclear fuel wastes have been safely transported around this country in the last 50 years, with not a single incident that threatened the public. The same cannot be said for many hazardous materials....
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19. U.S. Atomic Tests in '50s Exposed Millions to Risk, Study Says By MATTHEW L. WALD, July 29, 1997 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/archive/nuclear-test-fallout.html WASHINGTON -- Atmospheric nuclear bomb tests in Nevada from 1951 to 1962 exposed millions of American children to large amounts of radioactive iodine, a component of fallout that can affect the thyroid gland, the National Cancer Institute said on Monday.
20. General Dynamics To Acquire Gulfstream Stock Deal Valued At $5.3 Billion By Tim Smart Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, May 18, 1999; Page E01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-05/18/132l-051899-idx.html One month after the Pentagon shot down its unsolicited $2 billion bid for Newport News Shipbuilding Inc., General Dynamics Corp. of Falls Church agreed yesterday to buy corporate-jet maker Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. for $5.3 billion in stock. ALSO: General Dynamics to Buy Gulfstream, Maker of Jet Planes By LESLIE WAYNE, New York Times, May 18, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/general-gulfstream.html
[For those puzzled by Clinton's fondness for bombing, I ran across this article after the Sudan bombing last summer, which linked to a number of other articles (see headlines/URLs below) which showed that he increases in popularity and support whenever he throws his weight around. Whether or not this is true is another question. But people believe what they're told, and keep their dissent silent if they think they're the only few who care....]
21. U.S. Cruise Missiles Strike Sudan and Afghan Targets Tied to Terrorist Network By JAMES BENNET, August 21, 1998 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-us.html RELATED: Weapons: The Tomahawk Missile [One wonders whether there was depleted uranium ballast?] http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198missile.jpg.html --- Dead Bodies, Burning Buildings http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-us.2.htm --- Most Members of Congress Rally Around Clinton http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-congress.html --- Mideast Governments remain Silent About U.S. Attack [See what happens?] http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-mideast-react.html --- TV Turns Away From Monica for News of a Different Shock Value http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-media.html --- Is Life Imitating Art? 'Wag the Dog' Springs to Many Minds http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-wag.html
[This is a revealing look at the U.S. Immigration Service (INS)]
22. I.N.S. Releases Jailed Refugees and Will Let Them Stay in U.S. May 18, 1999 New York Times, By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/051899kosovo-refugees-ins.html Four Kosovar refugees, who had been sent to jails in Pennsylvania for having misled immigration officials in Macedonia in order to reach the United States, have been released and sent back to the refugee camp at Fort Dix, N.J., where they will remain eligible for residency in the United States, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service said on Monday ... after the agency drew sharp criticism for having sent the four refugees, one of them a minor, to jails and detention centers in York, Carbon and Berks counties....
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23. White House stood firm against implementing missile defense {Korea] By Bill Gertz, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, May 17, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/investiga/gertz1.html
[Note the date]
24. Scrutinizing Chinese Weapons Deals By STEVEN ERLANGER, June 22, 1998 New York Times http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+site+11101+33 +wAAA+uranium Related Articles Coverage of the China Satellite Inquiry http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/index-china.html Forum Join a Discussion on China Satellite Inquiry http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@@.eed96eb
25. China Slams NATO, Urges Defense Upgrade Updated 5:33 AM ET May 17, 1999 (Reuters), By Christiaan Virant http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990517/05/news-yugoslavia-china<a href="c:\windows\desktop\netscape.lnk"></a> BEIJING - China's state-run media kept up scathing rhetorical attacks on NATO Monday, calling the military alliance a tool of U.S. hegemonists and urging greater awareness of the need for defense modernization.
26. What's in Those Secret CIA Files? ... Embassy Bombing: the Prequel By Al Kamen Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 17, 1999 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-05/17/125l-051799-idx.html And about that bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade . . . Loop Fans may recall in April 1986, when Washington wanted to take out Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, how France refused to authorize flights over its airspace. So the planes had to approach Tripoli via the Straits of Gibraltar. The bombs missed Gadhafi and killed his daughter, and one of them hit . . . you guessed it, the French Embassy nearby, damaging the building a bit, but no one was hurt. Just an accident.
27. Report: China stole secrets on 6 warheads USA Today, April 17, 1999 (Washington) http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/nc1.htm WASHINGTON - China stole secrets of six U.S. nuclear warheads and data on neutron bombs and devices that short-circuit an enemy's power grids and computers, according to a still-sealed House committee report. China's theft of those secrets has shaved as much as 20 years off its development of the latest weapons technology.... The 700-page report was written last December, but the Clinton administration, citing national security concerns, has delayed its release.... ALSO: Cox: 'No question' Chinese obtained sensitive data USA Today, May 17, 1999 http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncssun04.htm
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28. Clinton failed to punish nuclear proliferation By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES, May 18, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/news/news3.html Alarm bells went off at the headquarters of the supersecret National Security Agency on a cold December day in 1995. NSA, located inside an Army base at Fort Meade, Md., is the U.S. intelligence community's ears around the world. It picks up millions of communications, from coded military radio transmissions to cellular-phone conversations by international weapons dealers....
29. Memo Underlines Importance of China By George Gedda Associated Press Writer Saturday, May 15, 1999; 2:38 a.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990515/V000679-051599-idx.html WASHINGTON (AP) -- Eager to strengthen relations with China, a newly acquired Cold War partner, the United States in 1974 embarked on a systematic plan to loosen security ties with Taiwan, including the withdrawal of nuclear weapons. The U.S. strategy was outlined in a recently declassified memo from Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to President Ford not long after Ford replaced President Nixon in August 1974....
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30. Book Excerpt- Clinton wouldn't back Navy officer after laser attack [Iraq] By Bill Gertz, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, May 17, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/investiga/gertz2.html Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, details the motives and dangers of the Clinton administration's national defense policies in a new book, "Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security" (Regnery Publishing Inc.).
31. Seeing China in 3-D May 18, 1999, New York Times FOREIGN AFFAIRS / By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/friedman/051899frie.html So I'm listening to the radio last week reporting on the stoning of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, in retaliation for NATO's bombing of China's Belgrade embassy. But I can't help chuckling at the last line of the news report. It quotes China's Minister of Tourism as saying that despite the rock-throwing, China is perfectly safe and American and other tourists shouldn't think of staying away. Translation: We burn U.S. flags, not U.S. dollars.... They certainly have a subtle, multi-dimensional view of their own situation. If we don't adopt an equally subtle, multi-dimensional view we will help turn China into a one-dimensional place. And nothing -- nothing -- would destabilize the whole world more. Letter to Editor: http://www.nytimes.com/subscribe/help/letters.html Forum: Thomas L. Friedman's Columns http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@@.eedfb4f
[Here's Proposition One Committee's reply.] hr827 - 07:30am May 18, 1999 EST (#1717 of 1717) http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?14@178.gJfQaXbHb1h^365140@.eedfb4f/1866 Great strides can be made in China and elsewhere by agreeing to ban all radioactive weapons (fission, neutron, and depleted uranium), with the United States and NATO in the lead in making this proposal. (See http://prop1.org - "Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!") _____________________________
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Message: 2 Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:34:32 -0400
Subject: NucNews-5- 5/18/99 - Atomic Tests 50's; General Dynamics Now; Cruise Missiles Sudan/Afghan; INS Now
19. U.S. Atomic Tests in '50s Exposed Millions to Risk, Study Says
By MATTHEW L. WALD, July 29, 1997 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/archive/nuclear-test-fallout.html
WASHINGTON -- Atmospheric nuclear bomb tests in Nevada from 1951 to 1962 exposed millions of American children to large amounts of radioactive iodine, a component of fallout that can affect the thyroid gland, the National Cancer Institute said on Monday.
The releases were larger than earlier estimates, and at least 10 times larger than those caused by the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. Under federal rules implemented in 1992 to deal with accidents at nuclear power plants, some of the tests would require protective actions like moving cows to shelter, or dumping their milk that would tend to have high concentrations of radioactive iodine. But no such precautions were taken at the time of the Nevada tests.
The cancer institute could not say whether any cases of thyroid cancer were caused by the fallout. But several experts said the levels of exposure could justify special monitoring for some people -- particularly those who were children in the 1950s and 1960s.
The information is from a 100,000-page study by the cancer institute that was ordered by Congress in 1982. The study was begun in 1983 and a draft report was completed in 1994. It has been undergoing revisions and rewriting since then.
A summary of the study, prepared for internal use at the Department of Energy and obtained by The New York Times, says that according to formulas in international use for calculating radiation damage, the doses were large enough to produce 25,000 to 50,000 cases of thyroid cancer around the country, of which 2,500 would be expected to be fatal. But the accuracy of those formulas is not certain, experts at the Department of Energy and elsewhere say, because the data on exposures at that level are limited.
The Department of Energy did not play a role in the study beyond providing some of the raw data. The department is a successor to the Atomic Energy Agency, which detonated most of the bombs.
The leader of the cancer institute study, Dr. Bruce Wachholz, said it was not clear that the exposures were high enough to increase the cancer risk. Studies of people in Utah immediately downwind from the test site did not find a clear association with thyroid cancer, Wachholz said.
The new study says the average dose to the approximately 160 million people living in the country in that period was 2 rads, a unit that stands for "radiation absorbed dose" and refers to the amount of energy absorbed by flesh. But, the cancer institute said on Monday, people living in "Western states to the north and east of the test site" received doses averaging 5 to 16 rads. Children aged 3 months to 5 years had doses 10 times higher, the institute said.
The main pathway for radioactive iodine exposure is through milk, which children consume in larger quantities than adults, especially in comparison to their body weight. When the contaminated milk is consumed, the human body delivers the iodine to the thyroid, where it can cause the development of cancerous nodules.
In addition, children's thyroids are smaller, and an equal quantity of the radioactive iodine in a smaller gland would deliver more energy per kilogram of tissue.
In contrast to the 50 to 160 rads those children are believed to have received, federal rules for nuclear power plant accidents call for taking protective action when the dose to human thyroids is anticipated to reach 15 rads. And another government agency, a branch of the Public Health Service, studying thyroid exposures around a government nuclear bomb factory at Hanford, Wash., has recommended medical monitoring for adults who absorbed 10 rads or more as children.
"There's a reasonable association" between radioactive iodine exposure and cancer, said Dr. Robert Spengler, the assistant director for science of the agency that made the recommendation, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. He said the association was demonstrated by a growing body of literature, from people in the Marshall Islands, where tests were also conducted, and elsewhere.
But Wachholz said "we really don't understand the dose-effect relationship" for radioactive iodine.
He said studies by his agency in the 1980s of 2,500 adults in Utah who had also been studied as children in the 1960s had not found a basis for a firm statistical finding of an association.
"I think it raises some serious questions," said E. Cooper Brown, chairman of the National Committee for Radiation Victims, a coalition of groups that includes soldiers exposed in the field, uranium miners and people who lived downwind of the test site. "I don't think you can say, 'aha, definitely.' That would be stepping way out of bounds. But you can't just shrug your shoulders and say, ah, it probably didn't hurt anybody."
The iodine form in question, iodine 131, is created when uranium or plutonium is split, in a reactor or a bomb. It is intensely radioactive, losing half of its radioactivity every eight days, meaning that within a few weeks it has disappeared. But if the release is large enough, it can be carried thousands of miles in the upper atmosphere and come to earth with enough energy remaining to deliver substantial doses.
The cancer institute said that its dose estimates were subject to "a large degree of uncertainty" because they were based on a small number of radiation measurements made at the time. One factor in estimating the dose is calculating the average amount of milk consumed, and its average time to market.
The institute said it had accomplished two of the goals that Congress set for it in 1982: developing a way to estimate the dose, and making the estimate. The third, assessing the risk of cancer from the exposures, is still to be finished, the institute said. It released the information after several days of reports about the contents of the study, which it plans to complete by October.
The cancer institute warned doctors in 1977 that the incidence of thyroid cancer had risen, to 3.9 cases per 100,000 population in a 1969-71 survey, from 2.4 cases in 1947. Among white people aged 20 to 35, the increase was "twofold to fourfold," the institute said, referring to people who were children at the time. But the cause is not clear; doctors had been using radiation to treat everything from acne to deafness from the 1920s on.
Thyroid cancer is a relatively rare disease. According to the American Cancer Society, it will kill about 1,230 people this year, out of a total 560,000 deaths from all forms of cancer. The disease has a cure rate of 90 percent to 95 percent, although patients require drug therapy for the rest of their lives.
The size of the doses being estimated surprised experts.
"This is especially tragic, because it could have been avoided," said Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a nonprofit group based here that specializes in nuclear weapons. "They knew when the tests were and chose not to warn the population, and they located the test site in the West, knowing there would be fallout over the whole country."
The Department of Energy summary contrasted the new estimate of radiation dose to an estimate submitted to the old Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1959, which was .2 to .4 rads, or more than 100 times smaller than the average now cited for Western states.
The new study attempts to reconstruct the effects of 90 blasts at the Nevada Test Site, which was used by this country and Britain, across the 3,070 counties in the 48 contiguous states.
The study found Iodine 131 "hot spots" from a series of tests in 1953 that included large areas of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa, Wisconsin, New York and Massachusetts, including one event in the Troy/Albany area. That event was briefly described by the Defense Nuclear Agency in 1982, when it said people living there may have received a dose of 2 rads to the whole body, and was widely reported at that time.
The Department of Energy summary of the new study, however, puts the Troy/Albany event in a new light, since 2 rads would not necessarily have required protective action under the rules that would be adopted later. But the thyroid dose there was high enough to have required protective action, had those rules been in effect at the time, the summary said.
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20. General Dynamics To Acquire Gulfstream Stock Deal Valued At $5.3 Billion
By Tim Smart Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, May 18, 1999; Page E01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-05/18/132l-051899-idx.html
One month after the Pentagon shot down its unsolicited $2 billion bid for Newport News Shipbuilding Inc., General Dynamics Corp. of Falls Church agreed yesterday to buy corporate-jet maker Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. for $5.3 billion in stock.
The surprise announcement by the country's primary builder of nuclear-powered submarines partly returns General Dynamics to its roots. Until the early 1990s, the company made the F-16 fighter and owned Cessna Aircraft Co., a manufacturer of small and medium-size planes.
Gulfstream jets are in big demand among royalty, rock stars and chief executives of the country's largest companies. They are often sold in fractional ownership programs that allow them to be shared among several people or companies. Radio personality Don Imus has one, dubbed the I-Jet, while tennis pro Pete Sampras and actor John Travolta are Gulfstream frequent fliers.
The planes also are popular with the potentates of small nations; the U.S. government uses them for special operations, including classified missions.
"The Gulfstream, for a lot of smaller countries, is like Air Force One," New York financier Theodore Forstmann told securities analysts in a conference call yesterday. His buyout firm, Forstmann Little & Co., owns about one-quarter of Gulfstream, and he will remain chairman of the Savannah, Ga., company.
The deal will prove a financial windfall for Forstmann, whose firm acquired Gulfstream from Chrysler Corp. in 1990 for $850 million. Forstmann and his business partners will reap about $3 billion from the sale.
Under the deal, General Dynamics will swap one share of its stock at $71.44 for each share of Gulfstream, a premium of about 28 percent to Gulfstream's $55.62 1/2 Friday closing price. The news buoyed Gulfstream shares, which soared more than $8 a share to reach a new high of $64.25 in the first hour of trading before closing at $61.68 3/4, up $6.06 1/4. The stock of General Dynamics, however, slumped, closing at $65.25, down $6.18 3/4. Both are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
The purchase, which has been approved by the boards of both companies, will require antitrust regulatory review but does not face Defense Department scrutiny because Gulfstream largely sells to the civilian marketplace.
"The products are different," General Dynamics Chairman Nicholas D. Chabraja said in an interview, "but the businesses are very much alike" in designing and making complicated products. "It's not unwise to be modestly diverse as long as the business is within your core competencies."
Chabraja said the deal will have an immediate favorable effect on General Dynamics' earnings and cash flow. Like General Dynamics, Gulfstream is viewed by investors as a well-managed company that typically beats Wall Street profit forecasts.
General Dynamics does not plan changes in Gulfstream's operations or its work force, Chabraja said, adding that "the changes under our stewardship would be more evolutionary than revolutionary."
Forstmann struggled with Gulfstream after acquiring the company in 1990, but recently it has been very successful, last year launching the G-V corporate jet, considered the industry standard. The plane can fly halfway around the world at close to the speed of sound without refueling. About 150 of the $35 million to $40 million planes are on order, with about 40 delivered so far. Gulfstream had sales of $2.4 billion last year and has a backlog of orders valued at more than $4 billion.
Although Gulfstream had been considered a takeover candidate, largely because Forstmann believed its value was not adequately reflected in its stock price, few on Wall Street believed General Dynamics would be the suitor. After shedding military businesses earlier this decade, the company has concentrated on building a portfolio of shipbuilding and selective defense units involved in electronics and armored vehicles.
"Is this a one-off deal that is perceived as a value investment or is it a change in strategy?" asked Jon Kutler, president of Quarterdeck Investment Partners, an aerospace consulting firm.
Chabraja indicated a desire to expand his reach when he spoke to securities analysts at a New York aerospace industry conference two months ago. There, he hinted General Dynamics was considering acquisitions outside of its core businesses and reminded analysts that the company still had executives on board whose experience dated to the days when it was a primary maker of military aircraft.
"At General Dynamics, it's not about products, it's about performance," said Loren Thompson, a military consultant in Arlington who does work for the company.
In the conference call with analysts yesterday, Chabraja said he had been working on the Gulfstream deal at the same time he was pursuing Newport News, a deal that the Pentagon determined would result in a lack of competition among the Navy's top two nuclear shipyards. The acquisition also faced stiff opposition on Capitol Hill, particularly from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), who worried about the loss of shipbuilding jobs in his home state. Newport News has since received another offer, from defense conglomerate Litton Industries Inc.
Chabraja said he would continue to make acquisitions in both the nondefense and defense arenas, provided they meet his criteria of being well-run companies that can help General Dynamics meet his goals of double-digit earnings growth. That's a strategy that has made his company a favorite among investors, who have rewarded it with a premium valuation compared with other defense firms.
In recent months, there has been speculation in the defense industry that Chabraja might bid for GTE Corp.'s military electronics business, which the telecommunications company has indicated it wants to sell.
ALSO:
General Dynamics to Buy Gulfstream, Maker of Jet Planes By LESLIE WAYNE, New York Times, May 18, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/general-gulfstream.html
... "General Dynamics is not a company that makes ships, it's a company that makes money, and it will diversify into those areas that add to that," said Loren Thompson, an industry analyst at the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., research firm. "Gulfstream has a superior backlog of orders; it's an area where General Dynamics has a long history and a lot of current management talent and, with the anticipated expansion of Pentagon spending, General Dynamics is not buying it at the top of its own business cycle."
Earlier this year, the government blocked an attempt by General Dynamics to buy Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. for $1.4 billion, citing antitrust grounds. Chabraja of General Dynamics said of the two deals, "They were both perking along at the same time, and we were fully prepared to do both."
General Dynamics, based in Falls Church, Va., which earned $364 million last year, or $2.86 a share, on sales of $5 billion, said Gulfstream would increase 1999 earnings by 25 cents a share and 2000 earnings by 35 cents a share. Gulfstream, based in Savannah, Ga., earned $225.3 million in 1998 on revenue of $2.4 billion.
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[For those puzzled by Clinton's fondness for bombing, I ran across this article after the Sudan bombing last summer, which linked to a number of other articles (see headlines/URLs below) which showed that he increases in popularity and support whenever he throws his weight around. Whether or not this is true is another question. But people believe what they're told, and keep their dissent silent if they think they're the only few who care....]
21. U.S. Cruise Missiles Strike Sudan and Afghan Targets Tied to Terrorist Network
By JAMES BENNET, August 21, 1998 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-us.html
RELATED:
Weapons: The Tomahawk Missile [One wonders whether there was depleted uranium ballast?] http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198missile.jpg.html
Dead Bodies, Burning Buildings http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-us.2.htm
Most Members of Congress Rally Around Clinton http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-congress.html
Mideast Governments remain Silent About U.S. Attack [See what happens?] http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-mideast-react.html
TV Turns Away From Monica for News of a Different Shock Value http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-media.html
Is Life Imitating Art? 'Wag the Dog' Springs to Many Minds http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/082198attack-wag.html
[... End dissertation.]
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[This is a revealing look at the U.S. Immigration Service (INS)]
I.N.S. Releases Jailed Refugees and Will Let Them Stay in U.S.
May 18, 1999 New York Times, By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/051899kosovo-refugees-ins.html
Four Kosovar refugees, who had been sent to jails in Pennsylvania for having misled immigration officials in Macedonia in order to reach the United States, have been released and sent back to the refugee camp at Fort Dix, N.J., where they will remain eligible for residency in the United States, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service said on Monday.
The unexpected reversal by the Immigration and Naturalization Service came after the agency drew sharp criticism for having sent the four refugees, one of them a minor, to jails and detention centers in York, Carbon and Berks counties.
Detention in the county jails was the first step in what would have been the forced return of the four to the Balkans through what the INS calls an "expedited removal process," an immigration spokesman said, though the four did not have homes to return to.
"The field folks and everyone realized very quickly that we had to work out a more appropriate process," said Mike Gilhooly, a spokesman for the INS. He said the four were all legitimate refugees with no criminal records, but had entered the United States without proper documentation. They were released on Saturday.
Resettlement officials said that in the crowded refugee camps in Macedonia, rumors were circulating that the United States would give preference to resettling intact families, and so some people who had lost touch with their relatives in the confusion of fleeing Kosovo might have patched together substitute families. Others may have lied about their ages, since the United States did not intend to admit unaccompanied minors.
Immigration officials have so far found that slightly more than 1 percent, or 33 of the 2,627 Kosovar Albanians at Fort Dix, entered the country with improper documentation. Gilhooly said on Monday that the INS had sent only the first four to county jails, and had moved to find other solutions well before the criticism late last week.
"We'll look at these small number of cases and determine what additional steps are needed to complete the resettlement of these people in the United States," Gilhooly said. He said the same procedure would apply to any similar problems that arise in the future. "We don't intend to place anyone into the expedited removal process, unless it turns out that they're not refugees, or they pose some threat to the public," he said.
William F. Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A., said that he had heard conflicting reports about the immigration agency's plans for handling future discrepancies among the Kosovar refugees. He said that if, indeed, the INS no longer planned to jail any Kosovar refugees, "then naturally we commend them for that."
But he said the agency's reversal only underscored "how utterly inappropriate the general practice is." The human rights organization has criticized the INS severely for sending both the Kosovars and foreigners who seek political asylum to county jails, where Schulz said they are at times mixed with the general criminal population.
Gilhooly said that only foreigners who claim asylum as a last resort on the verge of deportation are sent to county jails. He said the INS did not have an estimate of how many people fit into that category. He added that the INS' latest decision only applies to the Kosovar Albanians, whose inability to return home is not a matter of dispute.
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- Fifth of eight messages - ______________________
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Message: 3 Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:17:23 -0400
Subject: NucNews-2- 5/18/99 - Germany; Lithuania; Canada (2); Pakistan; Israel; Dalai Lama
5. Waste overload risk for German N-reactors -paper
06:51 a.m. May 16, 1999 Eastern (Reuters), By Mark John http://www.dogpile.com (search newswires "nuclear OR plutonium OR uranium OR radioactiv???")
BONN - Four of Germany's 19 nuclear reactors will have to be shut down this year unless a temporary ban on nuclear waste shipments is lifted, Welt am Sonntag newspaper said on Sunday.
Shipments were suspended last May after it emerged waste containers had been leaking radiation 3,000 times above accepted levels en route to reprocessing plants in Britain and France.
Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, a leader of the ecologist Greens party and a former anti-nuclear activist, has insisted not only that the ban remain in place this year but that safety criteria be tightened before it is relaxed.
Welt am Sonntag reported that the Neckarwestheim, Stade, Biblis and Philipsburg plants, among Germany's most powerful reactors, would have to be shut down this year because they were running out of space to store waste on-site.
Nuclear power, from which Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government has a long-term policy commitment to withdraw, accounts for around a third of Germany's energy needs.
Aside from the safety fears surrounding waste shipments, the reprocessing issue is a delicate one because of the lucrative contracts held by firms in France and Britain to reprocess waste for Germany, which does not have its own such facilities.
Schroeder forced Trittin to pull back from plans to impose from 2000 a permanent ban on all future waste shipments after London and Paris warned they would back huge compensation claims being threatened by their firms for possible lost business.
The all-out ban, which was to have been the first step in Germany's planned gradual pull-out from nuclear power, has now been postponed indefinitely until adequate alternative storage space can be provided.
Withdrawing from nuclear energy is one of the most cherished policies of the Greens and one of their key demands in return for backing Schroeder as chancellor after last September's election.
The more centrist Schroeder has, however, tried to slow the project and seek some form of consensus with the country's utilities over the move in a bid to avoid being sued by them.
The nuclear industry suspects Trittin of using the existing suspension of waste shipments to scrap nuclear power through the back door.
Environmentalists meanwhile mistrust warnings by nuclear providers of plant closures and heavy job losses, seeing them as attempts by the sector to gain leverage in continuing talks with the government over energy policy.
An environment ministry official repeated on Saturday that Trittin continued to see no need for waste shipments to restart this year.
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6. Lithuania nuclear plant faces temporary shutdown
09:38 a.m. May 17, 1999 Eastern (Reuters)
http://www.dogpile.com (search newswires "nuclear OR plutonium OR uranium OR radioactiv???")
VILNIUS - Lithuania's Soviet-built Ignalina nuclear power plant is preparing for a temporary shutdown after missing on Monday a deadline to acquire an operating license for one of its two reactors, officials said.
The head of Lithuania's Nuclear Safety Inspectorate (VATESI) said the plant had failed to provide documents on the implementation of some safety regulations and was expected to take a month to complete licensing procedures.
``Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant has to prepare, according to the regulations and procedures, to safely shut down Unit One,'' VATESI Director Saulius Kutas told a news conference.
The plant's number two reactor has already been switched off due to routine maintenance, expected to last until July 1.
``We have received the request from VATESI...and we will be shutting down the plant in the previously approved way,'' Ignalina deputy director Gennady Negrivoda told Reuters.
Officials could not say when the number one reactor would be fully shut down, as the plant must first alert the energy supplier Lietuvos Energija, but they said the process could take about three days and would not affect energy supply. This will be only the second time in Ignalina's 15-year history that both reactors at the plant will be halted simultaneously. The first was during a bomb threat in 1994.
Located 120 km (75 miles) northeast of the capital Vilnius, Ignalina produced about 77 percent of the country's electric energy last year, making Lithuania the most nuclear-dependent nation in the world.
Ignalina uses a pair of RBMK-type reactors of the same design that caused the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl. Its safety has been a concern in nearby Scandinavia and the European Union, which Lithuania wants to join.
Lithuania has committed itself to decommissioning both reactors, but a precise timeframe for the closures has never been set. Many see it as a major obstacle to beginning talks on EU membership, one of the country's top foreign policy goals.
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7. Aid agency pushes nuclear sales CIDA program targets Thai teens in Candu drive
By Bill Schiller, Toronto Star, May 16, 1999 http://www.thestar.com/thestar/back_issues/ED19990516/news/990516NEW01_CI-CI DA16.html
Canada's kind and helping hand in the Third World, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), has been enlisted to help sell Candu nuclear reactors in Thailand.
The revelation is seen as a scandal by those who monitor foreign aid.
As Ottawa's primary agency for dispensing assistance abroad, CIDA's goal is supposed to be the reduction of poverty in developing countries.
But a little-circulated report by crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) shows CIDA approved and funded a ``public education'' program aimed at convincing Thai high school students of the benefits of nuclear technology. The program, launched in 1995 and still operating, is part of an over-all effort by AECL to sell Canadian nuclear technology to Thailand.
Students are targeted, the report says, because they can best influence their parents and their peers.
``This is shameful activity,'' says Dr. Ursula Franklin, a Companion of the Order of Canada and professor emerita at the University of Toronto, where she taught engineering for 25 years. ``To use these children for the `softening up' process and doing it so blatantly seems to go beyond anything I've seen before . . . This is an incredible misuse of taxpayers' dollars.''
Bob Johnston, director of CIDA's Indochina, Thailand and Malaysia division told The Star, ``We may have been wrong . . . We all have to learn from our mistakes.''
But asked whether CIDA's participation was a mistake, Johnston replied, ``I'm not sure.''
Canada's own sensibilities on the nuclear issue appear self-evident: no new Candus have been built in Canada since construction began on the last one in 1982. And in August, 1997, seven of Canada's then 21 operating nuclear reactors were shut down following a report from U.S. consultants saying Ontario Hydro didn't have the managerial capacity to operate them safely.
`This is shameful activity. To use these children for the `softening up' process and doing it so blatantly seems to go beyond anything I've seen before . . . This is an incredible misuse of taxpayers' dollars.' - Dr. Ursula Franklin, professor emerita, University of Toronto
The Thai education project is jointly funded by CIDA, AECL and the Electrical Generating Authority of Thailand. It is to run in Thai schools until next year and uses videos, booklets and even ``essay contests'' with ``scholarships'' going to the winners.
A 12-minute Thai-language video shown in more than 1,000 schools, makes a strong case against fossil fuel and hydro power, and uses upbeat pop music to introduce a gleaming, efficient, environment-friendly world of nuclear energy. A youthful Thai woman notes that while nuclear power presents challenges, they are manageable. Nuclear waste, for example, can be buried.
A second part of the program aims at improving and expanding the nuclear engineering program at Thailand's Chulalongkorn University, to ensure Thailand has a core of engineers capable of handling Candu technology if sales are made.
Academics from seven Canadian universities made more than 100 short-term CIDA-funded visits to Thailand to lecture on nuclear engineering there.
CIDA's contribution for both parts of the program came to $1 million in taxpayers' money.
``Presumably this is money that might have gone to bring fresh water to a needy village or launch a life-saving inoculation program,'' says Norman Rubin, a senior policy analyst at Toronto's anti-nuclear Energy Probe.
``I'm outraged that my tax money, in the name of international generosity, is going to fund a public relations campaign to sell nuclear reactors.''
But more than money, it is the manipulative nature of the program involving young students - undertaken in the name of Canadians - that offends some most. The 1998 AECL report itself, entitled The Thai-Canadian Nuclear Human Resources Development Linkage Project, makes no secret of its manipulative intent.
The report states that in order to develop a nuclear power program in Thailand, securing ``a level of public acceptance'' is vital. And high school students are the means to do it.
``This target audience was selected in part because they will be directly affected by the expected introduction of nuclear power over the next 10 years, as well as their ability to influence their peers, family members and others in the community,'' the report says.
A separate scholarly paper about the project, delivered at a conference in Banff last May, went on about the attractions of the Grade 11 Thai students, the program targets.
``They are more curious, by nature of their age, and in Thai society they are still very close to their parents . . . (At) the same time, the students may also have some influence on their parents' behaviour, as seen in the case of smoking and electricity conservation.''
Says Grainne Ryder, a director with the Toronto-based foreign aid watchdog, Probe International, ``Apart from the public funds issue, this is a cynical and shameless campaign to brainwash Thai citizens.
``CIDA seems to be operating on the old assumptions that people can be duped, told what to believe or what's good for them . . . It's the underlying assumption that Thai people are stupid or isolated from the rest of the world.''
Ryder wants a full parliamentary review of the agency.
Cranford Pratt, Canada's pre-eminent scholar in the field of north-south relations and emeritus professor of political science at U of T, called CIDA's involvement with AECL's efforts in Thailand, ``terrible.''
``Unfortunately, this is just an extreme illustration of a fairly major emphasis, particularly in CIDA's Asia branch programs, which attempt to develop activities that will be of particular benefit to Canadian exporters.
``It runs entirely counter to the putative primary emphasis of CIDA, which is supposed to be poverty alleviation - reaching out and helping the poorest.''
A CIDA spokesperson explained that the agency's involvement in the program was justified on the basis that human resources in Thailand would be developed.
But Pratt said terminology like ``human resources development'' is sometimes just ``an excuse'' to prepare the way for Canadian exports.
``And that's exactly what this is.''
Professor David Morrison, director of Trent University's International Program and the author of a recent book on CIDA, Aid and Ebb Tide, A History of CIDA and Canadian Development Assistance, said he found it ``upsetting'' that the agency would use ``aid money'' to launch a ``public education program about the value of nuclear energy.''
``Our aid program is supposed to reflect Canadian values,'' he said.
``I regret very much that we are flogging an outmoded and environmentally insensitive technology around the world. And I find it particularly lamentable that we've used aid dollars to do that.
``I think this is really out of sync with Canadian sensibilities on this issue,'' Morrison said.
``This (program) is something that would surprise, shock and upset people in the economic development community,'' he added, ``especially people in NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and people who have traditionally supported our development assistance program.''
At McGill University, Margaret Sommerville, who developed ethical guidelines for the National Research Council in Ottawa, said that, in principle, CIDA may have transgressed basic research ethics in helping fund a research program that targets young students, unless they'd obtained the students' informed consent.
``Under NRC guidelines, for example, these students would be regarded as a vulnerable' population,'' she said.
``(CIDA) should also have had the program ethically reviewed.''
But CIDA's Johnston said the project wasn't ethically reviewed by CIDA. He said the agency has no ethical review process of which he is aware.
Asked whether the students were told they were participating in a research program, Johnston replied, ``I can't answer that. I don't know.''
He added with some assurance, however, that ``there hasn't been much in the way of a nuclear power industry developed'' in Thailand.
But only last Thursday, AECL hosted a gala dinner at the posh Sukhothai Hotel to celebrate the opening of its representative office in Bangkok. AECL predicts ``long term co-operation for the future'' with Thailand.
Canadian tax dollars, earmarked for foreign aid, helped that effort.
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8. Canada Fights for US Torpedo Access
By David Crary Associated Press Writer Friday, May 14, 1999; http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990514/V000504-051499-idx.html
TORONTO (AP) -- Exasperated by drawn-out negotiations with British Columbia, the Canadian government Friday tooks steps to expropriate a torpedo testing range in order to ensure it remains at the disposal of the U.S. Navy.
Canadian media said it was the first time the federal government has threatened to expropriate land from a province over the objections of the provincial government.
The 10-year lease allowing the U.S. and Canadian militaries to use the testing range in Nanoose Bay, off the coast of Vancouver Island, expires Sept. 4, and negotiations between the federal and provincial government over renewing it have broken down.
During negotiations, British Columbia has repeatedly expanded and modified its demands. It has also sought a promise that no U.S. Navy ships with nuclear weapons would be allowed in Nanoose Bay.
Though both sides left often the possibility of resuming talks, federal officials said they had to start the three-month expropriation process now to ensure there is no disruption at the range.
``The government of Canada cannot permit itself to be put in breach of its international obligations,'' said Defense Minister Art Eggleton. ``Holding Canada's critical defense needs hostage to unrelated interests ... is not an appropriate action for the government of British Columbia.''
Under the new lease proposed by the federal government, British Columbia would get $4 million a year for use of the range, compared to a token $1 a year rent under the expiring lease.
The undersea terrain in Nanoose Bay is uniquely suited to torpedo testing because the torpedoes can be retrieved relatively easily for examination. The range has been in use since 1965.
The dispute has become increasingly bitter, to the point where federal Fisheries Minister David Anderson accused British Columbia's premier, Glen Clark, of endangering the lives of Canadian soldiers.
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9. Pakistan Army Chief Backs Nukes
By Kathy Gannon Associated Press, May 15, 1999 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990515/V000864-051599-idx.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Nuclear deterrence has a ``sobering effect on the enemy,'' but more traditional military strengths would ultimately win a regional war, Pakistan's Army Chief said Saturday.
Pervaz Musharraf told a graduating class of Pakistan Air Force cadets that his country could only face down a larger enemy through better training, more determination, and conventional weapons.
While ``nuclear deterrence in the region will have a sobering effect on the enemy ... conventional weapons continue to be the actual tools of war-waging, even in the nuclear era,'' the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan quoted Musharraf as saying.
``We must build up our conventional forces to deter the adversary's aggressive designs,'' he said.
Pakistan and rival India exploded underground nuclear devices one year ago and declared themselves nuclear powers, generating fears of a nuclear arms race on the volatile South Asian subcontinent.
Pakistan and India have fought three wars since 1947 when British rule of the region ended. Pakistan lost all three wars, two of which were fought over the disputed Himalayan state of Kashmir claimed by both Pakistan and India.
``We are destined to fight outnumbered with an enemy much larger in size,'' he said. ``We can blunt its superiority only through a qualitative edge in our training and dedication.''
Pakistan has announced 18 days of celebration to mark the one-year anniversary of the nuclear explosions, and May 28 has been declared self-reliance day by the government. Songs are being created for the occasion and a monument erected to commemorate the event.
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10. Barak Ousts Netanyahu in Israel
Associated Press, May 18, 1999, 4:59 a.m. EDT http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Israel-Election.html
TEL AVIV, Israel -- Winning a crushing victory over hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak promised today to forge a secure peace with the Palestinians, pull troops out of Lebanon in a year and heal the deep divisions among Israelis....
In an emotional speech, Barak, Israel's most decorated soldier, promised tens of thousands of supporters that he would continue the path of peace forged by former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He spoke in Rabin Square -- the wide plaza in Tel Aviv where Rabin was gunned down by a Jewish extremist in 1995.
``I came here, to Rabin Square, to this place where our hearts were broken,'' Barak said, raising both hands in triumph. ``I came to swear to you, citizens of Israel ... that this is, indeed is the dawn of a new day.' ...
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11. Dalai Lama Seeks Peace Via Music
Associated Press, May 17, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-India-Dalai-Lama.html
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- The Dalai Lama said Monday that he hopes to promote peace through sacred music in a series of concerts around the world.
``Among the many forms in which the human spirit has tried to express its innermost yearnings and perceptions, music is perhaps the most universal,'' the Dalai Lama said at a news conference announcing the ``World Festival of Sacred Music,'' which will begin Oct. 9 in Los Angeles and continue in several other cities.
The music festival is aimed at uniting people of different nationalities, religions and cultures, he said. It will feature chants by Asian Buddhists and Gregorian monks, the earth-worshipping sounds of Australian aborigines and the gospel music of black Americans.
``People are dying of starvation, some are killing people by bombing them,'' said the spiritual leader of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan Buddhists. ``We need a wider view of the world, a world as one body.''
The festival, which is being coordinated by the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in the northern Indian town of Dharmsala, will be held over five months. After Los Angeles, it will travel to Dresden, Germany; Cape Town, South Africa; Sydney, Australia; Hiroshima, Japan; and Bangalore, India.
The Dalai Lama led an exodus of more than 100,000 people when he fled Tibet after an ill-fated 1959 revolt against China, which seized the region in 1950.
He regularly speaks out against what he calls China's suppression of Tibetan culture. But rather than seeking outright independence for Tibet, the Dalai Lama calls for more autonomy for his Himalayan homeland.
In announcing the series of concerts, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner said people have a duty to show concern for others.
``If you have inner peace, you will have world peace,'' he said.
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- Second of eight messages - ______________________
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Message: 4 Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:54:00 -0400
Subject: NucNews-7- 5/18/99 - China/ NSA; Kissinger
25. China Slams NATO, Urges Defense Upgrade
Updated 5:33 AM ET May 17, 1999 (Reuters), By Christiaan Virant http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990517/05/news-yugoslavia-china<a href="c:\windows\desktop\netscape.lnk"></a>
BEIJING - China's state-run media kept up scathing rhetorical attacks on NATO Monday, calling the military alliance a tool of U.S. hegemonists and urging greater awareness of the need for defense modernization.
As the People's Daily accused Washington of seeking world domination, China Defense News called on Chinese to step up their military consciousness.
"We need to tighten our belts and work on defense modernization," the paper said in a front-page commentary.
"We also should promote the urgency of the upgrade," referring to existing plans to modernize the armed forces.
The newspaper argued that China had become complacent in the post-Cold War world and had not placed enough stress on military development.
"The strike on the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia burst the peaceful dreams," it said.
"If we boost our overall strength and continue important military upgrades we will be able to resist shame and won't suffer great losses."
The People's Daily, flagship of the Communist Party, accused the United States of using NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia to strengthen Washington's grip over Europe and further its goal of world domination.
In an unsigned, front-page commentary, the paper also charged the West with trumpeting "the so-called values of democracy, freedom and human rights" while at the same time imposing its ideals on other nations.
"The U.S.-led NATO launched the war so as to gain control of the Balkans and then open a door for its further eastward expansion and the control of the whole of Europe," the commentary said.
"It shows that NATO, the most powerful military bloc since the Cold War, is becoming an important tool for Washington in carrying out its hegemonism in the world."
China's state media has kept up a drumbeat of anti-U.S. rhetoric since the beginning of the NATO air war in Yugoslavia.
It turned up the intensity after NATO bombs destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 7, killing three journalists and wounding 20 other people.
The strike, which NATO said was a mistake stemming from the use of outdated maps, fuelled three days of often violent protests outside the U.S. and British embassies in Beijing and at NATO missions in Shanghai and other Chinese cities.
"The aggressive war by the U.S.-led NATO against Yugoslavia has met with brave resistance of the Yugoslav people and strong opposition from the people of the world," the commentary said.
"Facts have proven that hegemonism is very unpopular and any conspiracy of building a 'new world pattern' of hegemonism is doomed."
Sunday, the three reporters killed in the NATO attack on China's embassy were honored as "excellent journalists of the people" in a somber ceremony sponsored by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
Party propaganda chief Ding Guangen praised them for telling the truth about the war in Yugoslavia and aiding the "fight against power politics," the official Xinhua news agency said.
"They fulfilled their duty with loyalty and dedication to the motherland and demonstrated the well-established spiritual and moral superiority of Chinese journalists," Ding said.
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26. What's in Those Secret CIA Files? ... Embassy Bombing: the Prequel
By Al Kamen Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 17, 1999 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-05/17/125l-051799-idx.html
And about that bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade . . . Loop Fans may recall in April 1986, when Washington wanted to take out Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, how France refused to authorize flights over its airspace. So the planes had to approach Tripoli via the Straits of Gibraltar. The bombs missed Gadhafi and killed his daughter, and one of them hit . . . you guessed it, the French Embassy nearby, damaging the building a bit, but no one was hurt. Just an accident.
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27. Report: China stole secrets on 6 warheads
USA Today, April 17, 1999 (Washington) http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/nc1.htm
WASHINGTON - China stole secrets of six U.S. nuclear warheads and data on neutron bombs and devices that short-circuit an enemy's power grids and computers, according to a still-sealed House committee report. China's theft of those secrets has shaved as much as 20 years off its development of the latest weapons technology, government officials and aides who have read the report said. The 700-page report was written last December, but the Clinton administration, citing national security concerns, has delayed its release. Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., said Sunday on ABC's This Week the report will need "top attention" from Capitol Hill. Chinese officials continue to deny any theft of technology.
Cox: 'No question' Chinese obtained sensitive data USA Today, May 17, 1999 http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncssun04.htm
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28. Clinton failed to punish nuclear proliferation
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES, May 18, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/news/news3.html#link
Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, details the motives and dangers of the Clinton administration's national defense policies in a new book, "Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security" (Regnery Publishing Inc.), which is excerpted below.
Alarm bells went off at the headquarters of the supersecret National Security Agency on a cold December day in 1995. NSA, located inside an Army base at Fort Meade, Md., is the U.S. intelligence community's ears around the world. It picks up millions of communications, from coded military radio transmissions to cellular-phone conversations by international weapons dealers.
This time, NSA listeners got the immediate attention of Vice Adm. J. Michael McConnell, who, as the agency's director, was the nation's premier electronic spymaster. The intercept that crossed his desk revealed that a year earlier, in December 1994, China completed a -- Continued from Front Page -- $70,000 deal to sell Pakistan 5,000 custom-made "ring magnets" produced by an arm of the Chinese government's China National Nuclear Corp.
The intelligence report noted that the devices -- ring-shaped, high-technology magnetic bearings -- are key components in making fuel for nuclear weapons. The technology transfer remained secret until this reporter broke the story on the front page of The Washington Times on Feb. 5, 1996.
But the Clinton White House made sure the State Department did not conclude China violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or impose legally required economic sanctions.
The administration's policy was that sanctions against China should be avoided. It would be bad for the international business that Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown was trying to drum up.
"The lengths this administration went to to ignore great dangers to U.S. national security in the name of promoting business were unprecedented," said a former military officer who worked in the White House and declined to be named.
And on May 29, 1998 -- about 2 and a half years after U.S. intelligence flagged the China deal with Pakistan -- the ground shook in a remote region of southwestern Pakistan as that nation conducted an underground nuclear test. It was the beginning of a new arms race in Southwest Asia.
Back in December 1995, NSA immediately had sent a top-secret cable under Adm. McConnell's title to the head of the CIA's Non-Proliferation Center and to senior officials at the Pentagon, White House and State Department, notifying them of China's shipment of ring magnets to Pakistan.
The intelligence report created a furor within the Clinton administration over whether China had helped Pakistan make fuel for its nuclear-weapons arsenal, estimated at 10 to 15 unassembled nuclear devices.
At the State Department, Robert Einhorn, deputy assistant secretary for political-military affairs, quickly recognized the problem. He had been assigned the task of looking into the application of complex laws enacted by Congress to put teeth into policies designed to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Made of a special alloy called samarium-cobalt, ring magnets must be precision-manufactured to withstand the high speeds of gas centrifuges that are part of the process for making nuclear-bomb fuel. China is the world leader in producing the components.
The sale triggered a provision of law on business loans requiring the secretary of state to notify the Export-Import Bank when any nation is caught helping another nation develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Einhorn called the bank and told officials the intelligence reports meant that, under the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act, the bank could be required to hold up all new loan guarantees for projects sought by American businesses in China.
But the Commerce Department, headed by Mr. Brown, former Democratic National Committee chairman, soon was leading the charge to block economic sanctions against Beijing and Islamabad.
The Clinton administration ignored the violations.
'Chinese not forthcoming'
The United States had imposed sanctions against China in 1993 for selling M-11 missile components but lifted them the next year at the urging of Mr. Brown and C. Michael Armstrong, chairman of Los Angeles-based satellite maker Hughes Electronics.
Mr. Armstrong had written a terse letter to President Clinton on Oct. 29, 1993, first highlighting how he had done what the president requested by supporting his economic and trade policies and calls for looser export controls.
"I am respectfully requesting your involvement to resolve the China sanctions," Mr. Armstrong wrote, noting that he had spoken to a Chinese official who informed him Beijing was "positive" about the idea.
But when then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher told the Chinese that the United States needed to see "some sign of movement" by China on curbing weapons proliferation, a National Security Council memorandum reported, "The Chinese were not forthcoming."
The memo said Mr. Armstrong and Hughes Electronics "lobbied aggressively" to be allowed to sell satellites to China.
In 1995, the president named Mr. Armstrong to the influential Export Council, where he worked hard against trade controls designed to protect national security. The council produced a lengthy paper arguing against imposing sanctions on foreign trading partners that engaged in illicit weapons sales.
Bernard L. Schwartz, chairman of Loral Space & Communications Ltd., also lobbied hard to ease restrictions on satellite sales to China. Mr. Schwartz denied that his large donations to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were meant to influence Mr. Clinton's policies on satellite exports.
A Senate investigation into illegal foreign political payments could not make a direct connection between them and Mr. Clinton's conciliatory policies toward China.
Both the White House and the Chinese government deny that Chinese cash influenced policies. But a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee report in 1998 concluded: "It is clear that illegal foreign contributions were made to the DNC and that these contributions were facilitated by individuals with extensive ties to the PRC [People's Republic of China]. It is also clear that well before the 1996 elections, officials at the highest levels of the Chinese government approved of efforts to increase the PRC's involvement in the U.S. political process."
'No information'
Two years before the ring-magnets deal, in March 1992, China signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The 1970 agreement recognized five nations -- the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China -- as the only nuclear powers and sought to prevent others from becoming nuclear powers.
The treaty was extended indefinitely in 1995 in what the Clinton administration hailed as a major arms-control victory. The treaty forbids signatories from providing components of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states.
The State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs was in a quandary. China had failed its first test as a signatory. Selling ring magnets to Pakistan undermined years of work to keep such states from building nuclear bombs.
In January 1996, the State Department quietly approached China National Nuclear Corp. about the sale it learned of in December. The Chinese said there was "no information" about it.
They lied. And the State Department and the White House's National Security Council knew it. The intelligence was solid: NSA had the intercept detailing the transfer.
To this day, the Chinese and Pakistani governments deny the sale. But for $70,000, China gave a major boost to Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program.
"The United States does have concerns about possible nuclear-related transfers between China and Pakistan," State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said the day The Washington Times broke the story, refusing to comment directly on the transaction.
He said the matter had been raised at senior levels of the Chinese and Pakistani governments. But the exact "concerns" and how they were raised did not become public. They were secret, and the Clinton administration was not pressured to explain, either by Congress or the news media.
Ten days later, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang denied the sale took place.
"China, a responsible state, has never transferred equipment or technology for producing nuclear weapons to any other country, nor will China do so in the future," he told reporters in Beijing.
He warned that U.S. economic sanctions against China would cause "serious harm" to relations. "China hopes the U.S. side will not use rumors as the basis for making decisions," he said.
Keeping it quiet
Rumors? The rumors were hard intelligence reports, most classified at the top-secret level and above. The CIA, however, did produce an unclassified report to Congress covering the period from July to December 1996.
"During the last half of 1996, China was the most significant supplier of weapons of mass-destruction goods and technology to foreign countries," the report said. "The Chinese provided a tremendous variety of assistance to both Iran's and Pakistan's ballistic-missile programs. China also was the primary source of nuclear-related equipment and technology to Pakistan and a key supplier to Iran during this reporting period."
In a move aimed at keeping the ring-magnets dispute quiet, Mr. Christopher wrote to the Export-Import Bank later in February 1996, asking it to defer loan approvals for American businessmen operating in China.
The cutoff would have been worth about $10 billion in new loans if it had been kept in place. But the measure lasted only 30 days and did not affect already-approved loans.
The bank began considering new loans after the 30 days lapsed, without waiting for an official go-ahead from State. The president considered waiving the 30-day sanctions, but backed off after Congress protested.
Several U.S. corporations, including Boeing and Honeywell, lobbied against sanctions. To many in the business community, nuclear-weapons transfers should not be allowed to disrupt the flow of trade.
National security interests, Mr. Brown asserted, should not be a higher priority than trade. "I happened to think the best chance for us to have an impact in those other areas is through being engaged with China," he said.
Mr. Christopher broached the ring-magnets sale in his April 19 meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, a hard-line communist and vehement critic of the United States. Mr. Qian lied: China had not violated the treaty, and therefore had no reason to commit itself to refraining from such exports.
The Christopher-Qian meeting revealed the administration's plan: If China would just pledge not to transfer more nuclear-weapons technology, the United States would agree not to impose the sanctions required by law.
After months of secret U.S.-Chinese talks, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns issued a carefully worded statement May 10, 1996, saying the secretary of state had cleared China of any culpability.
"Of particular significance, the Chinese assured us that China will not provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities, and the Chinese will now confirm this in a public statement," Mr. Burns said.
Unsafeguarded facilities are nuclear plants and support facilities that are not subject to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear facilities around the world under the treaty.
"In addition," Mr. Burns declared, "senior Chinese officials have informed us that the government of China was unaware of any transfers of ring magnets by a Chinese entity, and they have confirmed our understanding that China's policy of not assisting unsafeguarded nuclear programs will preclude future transfers of ring magnets to unsafeguarded facilities."
There was "not a sufficient basis" to impose sanctions as required by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994.
'Looking the other way'
China's public announcement of the accord said only that "China will not provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities." The Clinton administration claimed this was a "significant public commitment."
The Chinese response was reported by the Xinhua news agency, the Communist government's official organ.
"As a state party to the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, China strictly observes its obligations under the treaty, and is against the proliferation of nuclear weapons," Xinhua quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. "China pursues the policy of not endorsing, encouraging, or engaging in the proliferation of nuclear weapons or assisting other countries in developing such weapons."
No mention was made of ring magnets, and no promises were offered on future sales.
The Chinese "assurance" fell short of the written guarantee sought by U.S. officials.
The limitations of the U.S.-China understanding were highlighted by the fact that the U.S. statement was issued not in Warren Christopher's name, but that of his spokesman.
The failure to sanction Beijing undermined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and encouraged China and other nations to disregard their obligations under it, said Rep. Floyd D. Spence, South Carolina Republican and chairman of the House National Security Committee.
"It is a further example of the administration looking the other way when the Chinese openly violated international law," Mr. Spence said.
But it was a lawmaker from Mr. Clinton's own party who had some of the strongest words.
"It is outrageous that the administration has now freed the Export-Import Bank to use taxpayer funds for loans to assist the China National Nuclear Corp. -- the very company that sold the ring magnets to Pakistan," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat. "When all is said and done," she added, "the Chinese proliferated nuclear-weapons technology and got away with it, and Pakistan received essential nuclear-weapons technology and was rewarded."
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29. Memo Underlines Importance of China
By George Gedda Associated Press Writer Saturday, May 15, 1999; 2:38 a.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990515/V000679-051599-idx.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Eager to strengthen relations with China, a newly acquired Cold War partner, the United States in 1974 embarked on a systematic plan to loosen security ties with Taiwan, including the withdrawal of nuclear weapons.
The U.S. strategy was outlined in a recently declassified memo from Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to President Ford not long after Ford replaced President Nixon in August 1974.
The 17-page memo, stamped ``top secret,'' was obtained by the National Security Archive, a private group that publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act.
Kissinger said he wanted to establish full relations with China by mid-1976, but that step was not taken until early 1979, midway through the Carter administration. Simultaneously, the administration ended diplomatic and security relations with Taiwan.
But the loosening of ties with Taiwan was well under way before then. In 1974, as part of a substantial reduction in U.S. military forces on Taiwan, Kissinger said, ``We will remove all U-2 (spy) planes from Taiwan this year and we shall remove all nuclear weapons which are on Taiwan this year.''
Japan's Kyodo News Agency, which first reported on the Kissinger memo, said it was known previously that the United States had deployed nuclear-capable missiles in Taiwan in 1957, but the memo offered the first proof that nuclear weapons had actually been deployed on Taiwan.
Kissinger wrote that China had been informed that the United States intended to ``disengage from our military presence and our military supply relations'' with Taiwan by early 1977, when the Ford administration ended.
The memo underscored how much the United States prized its fledgling relationship with China at the time. The two countries viewed each other as useful counterweights to their common enemy, the Soviet Union.
Washington and Beijing have had less success in finding common ground since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Nowadays, suspicions abound. Following the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia last week, ties between the two countries have been at a low point.
In his memo, Kissinger said China was resisting American efforts at the time to arrange for some form of U.S. representation on Taiwan after U.S.-Chinese relations were established. China also balked at U.S. efforts to win a commitment from Beijing for a peaceful resolution of the question of reunification between China and Taiwan.
In a gesture to China, Kissinger said the United States was keeping Beijing ``meticulously informed'' about U.S. dealings with Moscow and had pledged ``never to make any agreement with the Soviet Union that is directed at China. We will not collude with Moscow against Beijing in any form.''
At another point, Kissinger said, ``If the Soviet Union attacks China, the United States would regard this as a threat to international stability and American security.''
In a further effort to mollify China, Kissinger said the United States was seeking to end the U.N. military presence in South Korea, a Chinese adversary in the Korean War. Those efforts never bore fruit, and the U.N. command remains there 25 years later.
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Message: 5 Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:55:01 -0400
Subject: NucNews-8- 5/18/99 - Clinton/Military-Iraq; China 3-D
30. Book Excerpt- Clinton wouldn't back Navy officer after laser attack
By Bill Gertz, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, May 17, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/news/news2.html#link
Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, details the motives and dangers of the Clinton administration's national defense policies in a new book, "Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security" (Regnery Publishing Inc.).
The phone rang in the middle of the night at the Canadian home of U.S. Navy Lt. Jack Daly. "The Kapitan Man is inbound about to enter the strait," the watch officer told Lt. Daly over the phone from the joint intelligence center at Canada's military base near Esquimault, on Vancouver Island.
The Kapitan Man for years had masqueraded as a merchant vessel but actually was one of two Russian spy ships that tracked nine U.S. nuclear submarines based nearby in Bangor, Wash.
Now the Kapitan Man was at the mouth of the 100-mile Juan de Fuca Strait, heading into Puget Sound.
Lt. Daly's orders: secretly photograph it from above with a digital camera as part of the crew of a Canadian helicopter.
It was 3:30 a.m. April 4, 1997. The mission would change Lt. Daly's life -- and his opinion of the U.S. government and the Navy he loved.
He showered, grabbed his flight suit and headed for the base as reports on the Kapitan Man's movements continued to flow from the Coast Guard.
Lt. Daly sat in a jump seat on the port side of the CH-124 helicopter, hooked up to a safety line, as the aircraft took off about noon and flew southeast from Victoria International Airport.
"We've got an outbound boomer on the surface," Capt. Pat Barnes, the pilot, announced as they reached the water.
The huge, black submarine was the USS Ohio, which had dropped off an ill crew member at its home port, Bangor. Because its missions are secret, the nuclear sub was not supposed to be on the surface. It had just had a direct encounter with the Kapitan Man.
"If we had launched five minutes sooner, I would have been able to photograph both vessels in the same frame," Lt. Daly said.
Three merchant ships came into view, the Kapitan Man in the middle. At Lt. Daly's direction, Capt. Barnes made a single circle over the U.S.-flagged container ship President Jackson and then headed east for three passes of the Kapitan Man.
After three circles, the chopper flew directly over the top of the ship. It was about 12:30 p.m.
"As far as I knew," Lt. Daly said, "the camera was working and the mission was successful."
'You better take a look'
Lt. Daly, a foreign intelligence liaison officer, was assigned to Maritime Forces Pacific, a joint command staffed by about 1,500 Canadian navy, air force and army personnel who defend Canada's West Coast and work closely with the U.S. Navy.
In an informal debriefing back at the airfield, the crew reported having seen someone on the bridge of the Kapitan Man holding what appeared to be binoculars. A Canadian intelligence officer saw a man on deck, his arms crossed over his head.
About 4 p.m. at Esquimault, Lt. Daly handed the digital camera to U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Scott Tabor, who was trained in imagery technology and analysis. Chief Tabor downloaded the images to an office computer.
About 5:30 p.m., Chief Tabor walked into Lt. Daly's office.
"Are you having any problems with your eyes?" he asked.
"Yeah, my right eye is bugging me," Lt. Daly replied. "I guess I must have gotten something in it when I stuck my head out the door because of the wind."
"Are you experiencing any kind of headache?"
"Yeah, I have a real bad headache."
"Well, I think you better take a look at this."
Chief Tabor handed him a photo. It showed a red dot of light on the bridge of the Kapitan Man.
"I think you may have caught a laser beam in this picture," Chief Tabor said. "I know this is supposed to be the running-light area, but the signature of the light in this picture just doesn't look right to me."
'Definitive evidence'
The former Soviet Union often used lasers for military purposes. During the Cold War, the Russians fired lasers at pilots. Air crews had been warned to don protective eye gear, but pilots spotting intelligence ships nevertheless were injured.
In 1998, Human Rights Watch obtained a declassified U.S. intelligence report that stated: "Russia leads the world in the development of laser blinding weapons."
But the use of a laser against a Canadian helicopter was not something most officials in Washington expected from America's former enemy.
"I wasn't close to being convinced," Lt. Daly recalled.
The next morning, he awoke with a sharp pain in his right eye. Looking in a bathroom mirror, he saw a large blob of blood in the white of the eye.
An eye doctor in Victoria found the eyeball was swollen.
That night, around 10 p.m., the phone rang. It was Capt. Barnes, the chopper pilot, and he had eerily similar symptoms.
The next day, Lt. Daly's supervisor at the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), Capt. Eric Meyers, ordered him to write a report.
White House and State Department policy-makers were alarmed because the incident could upset U.S.-Russia relations.
And so the public knew nothing about it for more than a month. Until a top-secret Joint Staff report was leaked to this reporter and The Washington Times published a Page One story on May 14, 1997.
But by about 9 p.m. April 6, the entire military chain of command had been notified. Gen. John Shalikashvili, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ordered more information.
"A total of 30 frames were taken with frame number 16 showing definitive evidence of an emanation coming from the bridge area of the merchant vessel," the Joint Staff report said of Lt. Daly's photos. "Initial medical exams indicated some eye damage to both the pilot and the U.S. lieutenant, but none that is considered permanent."
(Lt. Daly would wonder later where that medical assessment came from. More than two years later, he suffers from severe eye pain and headaches. And Capt. Barnes not only has eye pain but had his flying career cut short.)
Protests, promises
At 1:30 a.m. Monday, April 7, the Joint Staff's deputy director of operations talked to Thomas Lynch, the State Department's director of Russian affairs. Mr. Lynch said State would "concur" with the Department of Defense "if we had reason to detain the vessel."
After consultations that included Gen. Shalikashvili and Deputy Secretary of Defense John White, the Coast Guard was ordered to detain the Kapitan Man, set to depart that day at 6 a.m.
What wasn't said was that State had notified the Russian Embassy in Washington that a search party would board the ship. The tip-off gave the Russians time to notify their vessel so that any lasers on board could be disposed of or hidden.
The National Security Agency later confirmed exactly that through an intercept.
When The Times broke the story, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns confirmed that senior officials there and at the Russian Embassy had discussed the incident before the search of the Kapitan Man.
"We protested this incident forcefully to the Russian government," Mr. Burns said. "The Russian government in turn promised to cooperate with an investigation."
He denied any restrictions were placed on the Coast Guard and Navy search team: "We wanted there to be a full search, as did the Pentagon, as did the Coast Guard."
Mr. Burns lied -- and a secret State Department document proved it.
An interagency group led by Robert Bell, President Clinton's top arms control advocate at the National Security Council, met April 7 via the Secure Video Teleconference System (SVTS).
"The nine-member boarding party has instructions to search public areas of the ship for a laser," State Department official Jonathan Kessler wrote in the secret memo on the meeting. "If the Kapitan Man crew is uncooperative, a second SVTS will be convened April 7 to decide on a further course of action."
The crew did not cooperate, and in a two-hour search the team "found no laser or any trace of a laser," Mr. Kessler wrote April 8.
A member of the boarding party later said Russian sailors confronted searchers in front of a locked compartment and denied them entry.
Free to go
During the second video teleconference April 7, "the conferees could not agree on a course of action," Mr. Kessler wrote. "State and NSC [National Security Council] opted to let the Kapitan Man leave Tacoma. DoD (except for the Coast Guard) wanted to detain the vessel until tests are completed on the helo crew."
At 12:15 a.m. April 8, the National Security Council set up a secure conference call among Jan Lodal, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy; James Steinberg, the NSC's executive director; Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state; and James Collins, designated as the next ambassador to Russia.
No military officials took part. The officials decided to let the Kapitan Man go. The ship sailed later that morning.
Lt. Daly and Capt. Barnes were examined and tested for several days at the Army Medical Detachment in San Antonio. Bruce Stuck, head of the medical group, told Lt. Daly there was interest in his case "at the highest levels" and that Mr. Clinton was briefed daily on his health.
Doctors discovered four or five faint lesions on the retina of Lt. Daly's right eye; they believed the cause was a "repetitive pulsed laser." Lab tests were unable to duplicate the light seen in the photo. One possible explanation is that the Russians used a hand-held laser that combined a visible-light, red-laser "pointer" -- such as is common in lecturing aids -- with a dangerous, invisible-light laser.
Though Capt. Barnes had the same painful symptoms, no lesions were detected. Doctors believe Lt. Daly may have suffered greater damage because the laser's effect was magnified by the camera lens.
On April 27, three weeks after the incident, Lt. Daly and Chief Tabor flew to Washington for a debriefing at ONI headquarters. Lt. Daly, reviewing files, found that information he had relayed was reported inaccurately.
After lunch, Cmdr. Joseph Hoeing, an analyst, confided: "You do not know the pressure I am under to sweep this under the rug."
"As soon as I heard those words," Lt. Daly recalled, "I knew I was in trouble. The first thought that came to my mind was that this was a cover-up."
Cmdr. Hoeing declined an interview. "That's a matter I'm not going to discuss," he said of the Kapitan Man incident.
'A mystery'
The NSA intercept confirmed the Russian crew refused to allow Coast Guard inspectors to look at all areas, and that the vessel could not have been searched thoroughly within the two-hour limit.
Under later questioning from reporters, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the boarding party was "granted access to every part of the ship to which they requested access" -- except for "a library to which the crew could not find the keys."
Mr. Bacon acknowledged it was possible the laser had been hidden in the library.
But, the official spokesman insisted, Lt. Daly's injuries were "not compatible with a laser having been used on the ship."
Pressed to explain his unusual statement that a laser had been fired but not from the Kapitan Man, Mr. Bacon said: "I think you have to describe this as a mystery."
The formal Pentagon report issued to the public concluded: "The Department believes that the eye injury suffered by the American naval officer is consistent with injuries that would result from exposure to a repetitive pulsed laser. Available evidence does not indicate, however, what the source of such an exposure might have been. Specifically, there is no physical evidence tying the eye injury of the American officer to a laser located on the Russian merchant vessel."
The cover-up was complete.
'Victims of a hostile act'
Lt. Daly believed ONI had bungled the investigation in ways that could not have been accidental. The public report was rife with errors and inaccuracies, and his efforts to get headquarters to fix them were fruitless.
He was particularly upset because Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said publicly that his eye damage was temporary.
Lt. Daly was ordered not to talk to reporters about the experience.
The report did not mention Capt. Barnes and his injuries at all. The reason was clear: Place all the onus on a single person, discredit his account and dispose of the matter with little or no consequence.
On Feb. 28, 1998, Lt. Daly transferred to San Diego as an intelligence officer with Marine Corps Amphibious Group 3. The Foreign Intelligence Liaison Officer program that launched the U.S.-Canada joint intelligence effort, and of which he was a part, is being disbanded.
By the summer of 1998, Lt. Daly had been passed over for promotion. In January he got a less-than-stellar evaluation. Worse, it was suggested that he undergo psychiatric evaluation -- a tactic used against whistleblowers who make waves.
Lt. Daly finally went public Feb. 11 in testimony before a House Armed Services subcommittee.
"In essence, this incident left Captain Barnes and I as victims of what could be argued was a hostile act in an undeclared war, an act of terrorism, and at a minimum, a federal crime," he said.
'Betrayed and sacrificed'
Today the pain affects both eyes.
"Most of the time it's like a really bad toothache -- a constant ache in the eyes themselves," Lt. Daly said in an interview. "On occasion, the pain resembles someone sticking a needle in the corner of my eye."
Lt. Daly, who enlisted in the Navy in 1982, is bitter.
"I just want justice. I want to see somebody held accountable for the way it was handled."
Why the cover-up?
"I firmly believe it was seen as jeopardizing our relations with Russia," he said. "Bill Clinton has said he doesn't want to be the guy who blew the opportunity for everlasting peace with Russia."
A real threat to national security -- Russian spying -- is ongoing and ignored, Lt. Daly said.
"Why should the government lie to its own people when our national security has been compromised?" he asked.
He thinks the Clinton administration set a dangerous precedent.
"The message to the Russians is: You can get away with an intentional hostile act within U.S. borders and not only will your crime go unpunished, your illegal acts will be denied and your getaway assisted by the U.S. government.
"In fulfilling my duty as a naval intelligence officer," Lt. Daly said, "I was betrayed and sacrificed so that our continuing relations with Russia would not be jeopardized, despite their continued illegal activities in our waters and on our soil.
"Secretary of Defense William Cohen not long ago stated to the press, during the Monica Lewinsky debacle, that he didn't believe that President Clinton would ever take risks with our national security. However, I am living proof that he has."
Tomorrow: Part 3, The Chinese-Pakistani nuclear link.
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31. Seeing China in 3-D
May 18, 1999, New York Times FOREIGN AFFAIRS / By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/friedman/051899frie.html
So I'm listening to the radio last week reporting on the stoning of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, in retaliation for NATO's bombing of China's Belgrade embassy. But I can't help chuckling at the last line of the news report. It quotes China's Minister of Tourism as saying that despite the rock-throwing, China is perfectly safe and American and other tourists shouldn't think of staying away. Translation: We burn U.S. flags, not U.S. dollars.
The anti-China crowd wants us to believe that the embassy stoning was organized entirely by the Beijing Government and shows the real, true, unchanging character of China. I beg to differ. What it shows us is the real, true, constantly evolving, multi-dimensional character of China, where government control is not what it used to be.
It is time we mothballed the perception, frozen since the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, that China is just a big prison where everyone is making replicas of the Statue of Liberty in the basement. Wake up! What has happened since Tiananmen is that the Communist leadership in China -- for its own survival -- has struck a New Deal with the Chinese people. That deal says you can live, work and travel as you like, make as much money as you want and say whatever you want at home. Just don't do one thing: Challenge Communist Party rule.
As a result, since Tiananmen China has witnessed a flowering of pop culture, alternative life styles, tabloids and call-in radio shows, neatly detailed by Jianying Zha in the book "China Pop." At the same time, China's impressive economic development has fostered a lot of authentic national pride. And at the same time the Chinese regime has stoked this nationalism to deflect attention from its own corruption, and to reinforce its legitimacy at a time when Communist ideology is dead and the regime can't afford to bring down the iron fist on its people as easily as in the past.
This cocktail of Chinese self-confidence and nationalism emerges at a time when America is no longer China's ally against the Soviet Union but now the world's dominant power, telling China what it can and cannot do. As such, America today inspires as much envy and resentment in Chinese youths as admiration. The NATO bombing played right into that.
"When I grew up, America stood for democracy and human rights," remarked a Chinese friend who graduated from Beijing University in 1982. "But now America is seen as a high-tech economic power, with certain imperialistic tendencies. And when America refused to let China hold the Olympics, that made big headlines. People are now sobering up from their romantic view of the West." So Chinese students throw rocks at the U.S. Embassy while preparing to take the national English exams to get into a U.S. university.
The same multi-dimensional view needs to be brought to bear when analyzing Chinese politics, as Larry Diamond, the democracy specialist at the Hoover Institution, explains in his important new book "Developing Democracy."
"Democracy doesn't happen at one instant," observes Mr. Diamond. "More often, you get a softening of authoritarian rule, incremental changes in the political and civic landscape, and liberalization, prior to democratization. If we want China to fully democratize one day, we have to encourage the incremental process now under way there -- the opening up of information flows, the introduction of electoral choices, even at levels that may seem meaningless now, and the limited judicial due process beginning to take shape in the administrative arena. These changes will go on at the same time as brutal repression in Tibet and China's stealing of nuclear secrets from the U.S."
That is why U.S. policy has to remain focused on curbing one trend while constantly nurturing the other. It's not either-or, but always both. "Because the more China liberalizes and integrates into the world," says Mr. Diamond, "the more you raise the costs for bad behavior." Indeed, you could almost see China's leaders weighing how far to milk the embassy stoning -- before it threatened trade, tourism, investment and other relations. Four days was their limit.
They certainly have a subtle, multi-dimensional view of their own situation. If we don't adopt an equally subtle, multi-dimensional view we will help turn China into a one-dimensional place. And nothing -- nothing -- would destabilize the whole world more.
Letter to Editor: http://www.nytimes.com/subscribe/help/letters.html
Forum: Join a Discussion on Thomas L. Friedman's Columns http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@@.eedfb4f
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[Here's Proposition One Committee's reply.]
hr827 - 07:30am May 18, 1999 EST (#1717 of 1717)
http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?14@178.gJfQaXbHb1h^365140@.eedfb4f/1866
Great strides can be made in China and elsewhere by agreeing to ban all radioactive weapons (fission, neutron, and depleted uranium), with the United States and NATO in the lead in making this proposal. (See http://prop1.org - "Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!")
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A fast way to keep up to date: Subscribe to NucNews !! To subscribe: prop1@prop1.org Say "Subscribe NucNews"
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Message: 6 Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:49:49 -0400
Subject: NucNews-4- 5/18/99 - NY Cleanup; DOE New Brunswick Lab Open House May 25; Hanford; Modern Labs; Atomic Train
14. Phase 1 of Nuke Cleanup Nears End
By Carolyn Thompson Associated Press Writer Sunday, May 16, 1999; 12:02 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990516/V000228-051699-idx.html
WEST VALLEY, N.Y. (AP) -- More than 600,000 gallons of highly radioactive waste have been solidified into glass, nearly completing the first phase of a cleanup at what was once the country's only commercial reprocessing center for nuclear fuel.
The lethal leftovers from three decades ago are now in the form of 10-foot glass logs stored in individual steel canisters and stacked behind concrete walls 4 feet thick. The 250 capsules are visible through equally thick windows but are touched only by robotic arms. They will endure for 10,000 years.
``If you hugged one of these things you wouldn't last a minute,'' said Terry Dunford, spokesman for the West Valley Demonstration Project, peering through a mineral oil-filled window that gives the storage room an eerie yellow hue.
The containers are destined, someday, for a repository that does not yet exist, perhaps Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
As painstaking and technologically challenging as the three-year $1.3 billion waste-to-glass process has been -- using remote-controlled equipment to do everything from mix the glass to stack the canisters -- the hardest part of the West Valley cleanup is yet to come.
Next, it must be decided what to do with the 3,300-acre site itself, situated deep in farmland in western New York, 40 miles south of Buffalo.
Four options now on the table include indefinitely monitoring and maintaining the site at a cost of $30 million per year, to removing all traces of the project and its waste, at a cost of $8 billion.
The other options: store all waste and residual contamination in an above-ground facility, at a cost of $3.7 billion, or fill the tank and other underground facilities with concrete and cap the site, at a cost of roughly $1 billion.
U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has given state and federal authorities one year to agree on how to proceed.
``It's at a crossroads right now,'' said James Little, executive vice president of West Valley Nuclear Services Co., a subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric Corp. ``There's no clearcut solution here.''
The private Nuclear Fuel Services reprocessed nuclear fuel rods on 200 acres of the site from 1966 to 1972. NFS believed there was money to be made in recovering used uranium to make new fuel. But when the project halted for expansion in 1972 after processing 640 tons of fuel, it was never to resume, deterred by high costs and increasingly stringent government controls.
Left behind were an underground carbon-steel tank of liquid waste measuring 70 feet in diameter and 30 feet deep, a concrete-walled processing facility littered with pieces of nuclear fuel rods and spent fuel assemblies stored in water.
The state took control of the site in 1976. Four years later, President Carter signed the West Valley Demonstration Project Act authorizing its cleanup.
Westinghouse, the developer of the atomic engine for the first nuclear-powered sub, the USS Nautilus, has been the project's primary contractor since 1982.
The waste-to-glass process, known as vitrification, was undertaken to keep the liquid from seeping, as a result of rupture or corrosion, through the single-hulled storage tank into the ground. The site is criscrossed by several streams and the waste eventually could have found its way to Lake Erie and Buffalo's water intakes. Had that happened, the city's drinking water might have been contaminated for 300 years.
During vitrification, liquid waste is mixed with silica, heated to about 2,000 degrees and poured into the stainless steel canisters, which are then capped, dipped in acid to remove excess glass and placed on carts to be rolled into storage.
``These guys are wizards,'' Little said of the workers who accomplish the delicate task via remote control and video screens as if playing a video game. ``They can take an aspirin bottle, take the cap off and remove a single aspirin.''
Some of the low-level waste from West Valley is transported by tractor-trailers to a site in Clive, Utah. Those shipments began last year.
With 250 canisters of the high-level waste filled, about 10 more remain to be filled, but the difficulty in getting at the remaining sludge in the bottom of the tank has slowed progress.
The work so far has impressed the Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes, a citizens group that has been a constant watchdog for 25 years.
``We're pleased to death that it worked,'' Carol Mongerson said of the solidification. ``We're pleased to see they've gotten through it -- and relieved.''
As for the next step of cleanup, the coalition favors the removal of the tank from the site and for material buried in an on-site dump to be excavated and stored on site only until a permanent repository opens.
That is the most costly solution among the four now on the table.
``We would like to see that tank removed, not just filled with concrete,'' Ms. Mongerson said, ``at least before institutional control ends. That's another large issue. How long are we going to have the government -- either the DOE or the state -- on site?''
The answer to that is not yet known.
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15. Company Press Release SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy
New Brunswick Laboratory Turns 50; May 25 Open House Planned
CHICAGO, May 17 /PRNewswire/ -- May 17, 9:02 am Eastern Time http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990517/il_newbrun_1.html
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) New Brunswick Laboratory (NBL) will celebrate its 50th Anniversary May 25, 1999 with an all-day Open House. One of a handful of DOE government owned and operated laboratories, NBL, located in Argonne, Ill., is a center of excellence in analytical chemistry and the science of measuring nuclear materials. It serves as the government's nuclear materials measurements and standards laboratory.
Established in 1949 by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, a DOE predecessor agency, NBL was initially located in New Brunswick, N.J. Scientists from the National Bureau of Standards, who conducted nuclear materials measurements for the Manhattan Project in the 1940s and 1950s, served as NBL staff. Between 1975 and 1977, NBL was relocated to its current Illinois site.
NBL's original mission was to provide the federal government with capabilities for analyzing uranium-containing materials for the nation's developing atomic energy program. Over the years, NBL improved its methods and procedures, developed new ones, and certified additional reference materials for global use.
New Brunswick scientists have historically pioneered in the development of new analytical chemistry processes and technologies for uranium and plutonium. This leadership has contributed to safe handling and management of these special nuclear materials worldwide.
NBL researchers also support DOE's commitment to reduce inventories of surplus weapons-usable fissile materials worldwide in a safe, secure, transparent and irreversible manner. As qualified U.S. nuclear monitors, they recently monitored four Russian nuclear sites to insure the integrity of the Russian program for blending down highly enriched uranium.
Additional details about the 50th Anniversary celebration are on NBL's home page at www.nbl.doe.gov. Those planning to participate in the Open House, tours, or the celebration dinner are requested to contact Dennis Troutman, 630-252-2470; or e-mail, dennis.troutman@ch.doe.gov or John Sickels, 630-252-8401; or e-mail, john.sickels@ch.doe.gov.
Two technical meetings will be also be held at NBL May 24 and May 26-27, 1999 respectively: The Joint Committee Meeting of the Internal Organization for Standardization TC85/SC5/WG3 Committee/the ANSI/INMM5.1 Analytical Chemistry Laboratory Measurement Control Committee; and the Annual Meeting of the Measurement Evaluation Program.
NBL is a component of DOE's Chicago Operations Office, and receives major funding from DOE's Office of Safeguards and Security.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy
Oil/Energy News: http://biz.yahoo.com/n/y/y0024.html
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16. Looking back at the new Hanford Pact to clean up nation's most-contaminated site was fraught with bureaucratic, technical pitfalls
Associated Press - May 13, 1999 Spokane Net http://www.spokane.net:80/news-story-body.asp?Date=051399&ID=s576478&cat=
RICHLAND _ Ten years ago, the signing of the Tri-Party Agreement officially marked Hanford Nuclear Reservation's transition from production of plutonium for defense purposes to environmental cleanup.
The TPA, signed May 15, 1989, ranks just behind the Manhattan Project in its influence on the history of Hanford.
The pact among the state Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington state Department of Ecology set standards for cleaning up the most contaminated nuclear site in the country.
For the first time, Hanford was locked into an enforceable and defined cleanup mission. The agreement also gave the state and the EPA the tools to push DOE to clean up the old reactors, chemical plants and grounds contaminated by more then 40 years of making plutonium for atomic bombs.
State and federal regulators were given the power to fine DOE for failing to follow the new plan. Just last year, Gov. Gary Locke used that legal hammer to threaten a lawsuit against the federal government over cleanup delays.
The beginnings of the TPA date to the mid-1980s, when DOE began releasing thousands of documents revealing the extent of pollution on the 560-square-mile reservation.
And a federal judge ruled that environmental laws, from which DOE previously had been exempt, would apply to all DOE sites. At the time, state Attorney General Christine Gregoire was an assistant in the AG's office, which had joined forces with the state Department of Ecology in an unsuccessful attempt to pry out information on the environmental mess at Hanford.
In 1988, when Gregoire was director of the state Ecology Department, the state seriously considered a lawsuit against DOE, but there were concerns about long, expensive litigation.
EPA joined in discussions with state and Energy Department lawyers because Hanford was about to be designated a federal Superfund site.
Mike Lawrence, DOE's Hanford manager at the time, had his own worries. Hanford and every other DOE site had to comply with all state and federal environmental laws, and none was even close.
``There was no way to come into compliance instantaneously,'' said Lawrence, now general manager of BNFL Inc.'s Hanford operation.
DOE and the state talked about a court-approved consent decree to set cleanup timetables and standards, but that would mean an agreement hammered out in court. DOE also doubted Congress would pay for any cleanup during litigation.
``I don't think either side went into this without doubts,'' Gregoire said.
The talks lasted 14 months.
The state, DOE and EPA signed the pact amid much hoopla, but the longterm significance of the TPA did not sink in right away.
``I don't think I realized the importance of the agreement at the time,'' said Richland Mayor Larry Haler, a longtime Hanford employee.
The agreement's architects -- and everyone else -- had only a fuzzy idea of the amount and extent of the contamination above and below ground at Hanford.
``We took our best shot with the best information we had at the time,'' said Roger Stanley, a lead state negotiator on the pact.
The agreement included the flexibility to make changes as more became known about the site's environmental and technical problems.
``We came to realize we knew far too little,'' Gregoire recalled.
In the mid-1990s, Congress was slashing budgets while Hanford was being criticized for spending millions of dollars on studies and administrative work with little cleanup taking place.
Hanford budgets were cut, but Haler notes the pact prevented huge reductions that threatened cleanup milestones because the state and EPA had some legal clout against DOE.
Memo: ``Letting the state have a big stick (under the pact) has helped cleanup,'' said Jerry White, one of DOE's negotiators in 1989.
Gregoire, Lawrence and others are more or less pleased with how the TPA has worked and evolved over the past 10 years despite its flaws. The often-delayed efforts to glassify the tank wastes has been one of the biggest disappointments for many.
Gregoire believes the first 10 years were a shakedown era to learn how to make the pact work. The next 10 years will determine if it really works. ``Have we accomplished what we intended to accomplish over the last 10 years? No,'' she said.
``For the next 10 years, I'm optimistic.''
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17. Can state secrets be safe in modern laboratories?
May 15, 1999, Nando Media, Christian Science Monitor Service, By SCOTT BALDAUF http://www2.nando.net:80/noframes/story/0,2107,49084-79086-555712-0,00.html
At Los Alamos National Laboratory, the line between classified and unclassified material gets crossed every day. Scientists who study the integrity of America's nuclear stockpile may also be involved in medical research of brain waves. Satellites meant to identify illegal underground nuclear tests can also be used to study lightning storms.
It's a lab where as many as half of all new hires come from foreign countries and where the free exchange of ideas among some of the world's greatest thinkers is considered a part - a necessary part - of the scientific process.
Given all that, the question arising more and more pointedly from here to Washington is: Can any secret really be safe in this environment?
The scientists here who work with the arcane and sensitive insist it is not difficult to understand the difference between what's secret and what's not - or to keep them separate. But they acknowledge that even the tightest security will do little stop an insider who is determined to pass on "black" information.
"If you are in a position of trust, with all the computer tools of modern society at your disposal, there's a lot you can do to betray that trust," says Stanley Busboom, director of security at Los Alamos. "A determined insider who is a U.S. citizen can do a lot of damage. We could only hope to make that more difficult, and to catch them doing it."
What does seem certain is that the culture of the nation's weapons laboratories will be changing in the wake of the spy scandal whirling around Wen Ho Lee. Already, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has said he wants to appoint a new "security czar" to oversee the labs and report directly to him. Secretary Richardson has also said he plans to create one $800 million security budget for various labs and installations.
Yet critics - including several members of Congress - say different reforms are needed as well. Some suggest banning foreign scientists. Others suggest such stringent security measures that scientists may end up dreaming in red, white, and blue.
What started it
This has all come about because of the investigation into the activities of Lee. Investigators say Lee shared nuclear weapons designs for the top-secret W-88 program during two trips to mainland China in the 1980s. In addition, they say he downloaded the nuclear codes for the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal onto an unclassified computer network, which could have made them available for any number of outsiders.
Lee has never formally been charged, and he denies the accusations, saying that he has in fact cooperated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation throughout the 1980s to root out potential Chinese spies at Los Alamos.
If the charges prove to be true, however, experts say they would be the worst security breach in U.S. history.
But ask nuclear scientist Albert Migliori if he thinks Los Alamos National Laboratory is a soft target for espionage, and he just might go ballistic.
"There is no question in my mind what is sensitive information and what is not," says Migliori, giving a visitor a tour of a laboratory full of purring computers. "There is a moral obligation for keeping these secrets and making sure these weapons are robust. This is too dangerous to let anyone know what we know."
John Shaner, director of the Center for International Security Affairs at Los Alamos, says keeping secrets is much easier than it sounds. "I would say that the average Los Alamos staffer has a clearer idea of classified material than the average congressional staffer," he says, with the hint of a smile under his gray mustache. As for foreign visitors, he has had many, and "they don't just wander the halls, you can count on that. Those people have to be escorted even to the bathroom."
Indeed, most scientists say there is no real gray area in the black-and-white world of classified and unclassified science.
"Basic science is for the most part unclassified," says Geoff Reeves, a space scientist at Los Alamos. "How that knowledge gets applied is where you get into the classified realm." For example, the Forte satellite that his group developed to identify illegal nuclear tests is also capable of monitoring electrical storms, and is helping scientists create models for weather change. All of the scientists on the project know when they can talk about the basic principles, and when they have to stop their conversation and move "behind the fence," to discuss its more classified aspects.
But Reeves and others say that taking apart that collaborative environment would destroy the purpose of Los Alamos and other labs. "It's really a social enterprise," says Reeves. "You remember Sir Isaac Newton, and the apple and gravity? It wasn't until years later (when) people began incorporating that idea into their own research that it became important. Einstein didn't sit alone in his office saying, 'E equals mc ... squared!' "
For similar reasons, most scientists here fret that banning foreign-born scientists, as Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama suggests, will end up hurting the lab's performance without actually improving its security. After all, such a ban wouldn't have applied to Lee, a U.S. citizen. In addition, having foreign scientists from nuclear states can have a deterrent effect as well, since these scientists can tell their leaders just how advanced and reliable U.S. nuclear arms are.
"Ironically, deterrence works less if an adversary can't see the fruits of our work," says John Martz, a manager for enhanced surveillance of the nuclear-weapons program. In the old days, deterrence was just one earth-shaking nuclear test away. Today, where nuclear tests have been banned, scientists must verify the reliability of weapons through subtle computer models and precise measurements of how plutonium cores deteriorate over time. "Ultimately, having foreign nationals here can be a deterrent. They should not doubt the first-class nature of our research."
Fodder for critics
That said, Los Alamos does have its share of critics, including a fair number of former employees.
Take Chris Mechels, a computer-security specialist who retired from Los Alamos in 1994 after stints with the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Cray Computer Co.
"I used to work with the NSA and the CIA - I know what security looks like," says Mechels, who now lives 45 minutes away in Santa Fe. "When I got to Los Alamos (in the early 1980s), I couldn't believe it."
He recalls walking into a classified meeting, such as the film of a secret nuclear device being tested. "We had popcorn, sodas. It was very pleasant," he says. "But it was troubling that they didn't operate on a need-to-know basis."
Los Alamos security director Busboom discounts this criticism, noting that today's classified computers have no electronic link with the computers in unclassified areas. In addition, all workers entering a classified area must have not only a picture ID, but also have their palms identified by a computer.
The lab is also revamping its counterintelligence efforts, including new background checks and psychological profiles of classified employees.
'It's absolutely demoralizing'
But in the meantime, Migliori says the current media scrutiny is causing some top scientists to start looking for other jobs. "It's absolutely demoralizing," he says. "It is horrible to see people making choices on whether to leave."
And you won't hear Migliori offer any condolences for Lee. "I have no sympathy for this guy, if he gave away U.S. secrets. Even if he did it accidentally, this is a bad man," says Migliori, leaning back in his chair. "But if a U.S. citizen gives away secrets willingly, there's nothing you can do."
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[Needs reply: letters@nytimes.com]
18. Balancing Speech Against Violence
New York Times Letters to Editor, May 17, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/lmcvay.html
To the Editor:
It is revealing that Senator Richard H. Bryan of Nevada is upset at NBC for improving the technical accuracy of the movie "Atomic Train" (Business Day, May 13; news article, May 14). He is working hard to stop the Department of Energy from building a nuclear waste disposal plant in his state, so anything that can raise fears serves his purpose.
More than 2,500 shipments of nuclear fuel wastes have been safely transported around this country in the last 50 years, with not a single incident that threatened the public. The same cannot be said for many hazardous materials.
NBC's recognition of these facts in a fictional story should be applauded, not criticized.
"Atomic Train" is an escapist film that takes many liberties with the facts, which is fine for entertainment. It is shameful, however, for a Senator to accuse NBC of bending to some sort of influence when the company makes an effort to be more accurate.
WILLIAM H. MILLER Columbia, Mo., May 14, 1999
The writer is a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Missouri.
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Message: 7 Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:51:31 -0400
Subject: NucNews-6- 5/18/99 - US/Korea; China Deals ('98); China/NATO, defense upgrade; CIA files: the Prequel; China 6 warheads
23. White House stood firm against implementing missile defense
By Bill Gertz, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, May 17, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/investiga/gertz1.html
Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, details the motives and dangers of the Clinton administration's national defense policies in a new book, "Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security" (Regnery Publishing Inc.).
North Korea fired its first Taepo Dong missile Aug. 31 from a remote facility. The missile, accelerating quickly, traveled over northern Japan. Despite monitoring by U.S. and Japanese ships, surveillance aircraft and space sensors, initial reaction from the Clinton administration was that the missile was a two-stage rocket, nothing more.
But the Pentagon reviewed its assessment after the North Koreans announced their rocket had launched into orbit a satellite that was playing patriotic songs to the people.
"They have gone some way down toward developing a missile with a much longer-range capability," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told reporters two weeks later, on Sept. 15. "We're talking something that could be approaching intercontinental ballistic missile range."
In short, North Korea had taken a quantum leap in its relatively primitive missile program, which had been based on 1950s Scud missile technology.
Mr. Bacon called it "worrisome."
Inside the Pentagon, the news was explosive.
Though the satellite failed, U.S. intelligence agencies analyzing the trajectory of debris concluded that the Taepo Dong missile's range was roughly between 2,500 miles and 3,700 miles.
At the high end, a North Korean missile could hit almost all of Alaska and reach the northernmost Hawaiian islands, according to a Pentagon chart.
Would this new threat change the Clinton administration's insistence that the Pentagon would not deploy a national missile defense? Mr. Bacon did not answer directly.
"We monitor stuff all the time and adjust our conclusions according to the evidence," he said.
"We believe that North Korea attempted to launch a satellite and failed," Mr. Bacon said. "There are at least two significant revelations from this effort. The first is that they launched a multistage missile, and they were able to get the stages to separate. And the second is that the third stage of the missile apparently was a solid-fuel missile."
Robert Walpole, CIA national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, admitted the spy agency had been caught by surprise.
"The existence of a third stage concerns us; we had not anticipated it," Mr. Walpole said in a speech some two weeks afterward.
Secret agenda
The Communist regime in Pyongyang had achieved a major breakthrough. With a huge arsenal of chemical weapons and a secret nuclear program, could a warhead containing a weapon of mass destruction be far behind?
Many analysts feared that a Taepo Dong missile with a third stage perhaps could lob chemical or biological weapons not just on Alaska and Hawaii, but on some of the western United States.
Other Pentagon officials confessed to this reporter that with just one more test, the North Koreans could achieve something few other nations had done: develop an ICBM -- an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The White House added its own spin.
North Korea still had to "master the unique and fairly daunting challenges of returning a re-entry vehicle back to land, re-entering the Earth's atmosphere to hit a target without burning up," White House Press Secretary Michael McCurry said.
President Clinton's response would be to "aggressively pursue concerns we have . . . as we continue the bilateral dialogue" with North Korea, Mr. McCurry said.
That is, a bilateral dialogue with a Communist regime that considers itself at war with the United States.
Once again the administration's secret agenda was related not to North Korea, but to Russia. The president was wedded to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with the Soviet Union in 1972, and missile threats would undermine its viability.
After his election, Mr. Clinton for the most part passed arms-control policy over to Vice President Al Gore.
In turn, Mr. Gore tapped Robert Bell, top arms-control aide to Sen. Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat who was then chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Mr. Bell became the White House National Security Council's key official in charge of "defense and arms control policy."
A grand bargain?
While many Democrats believed money spent on missile defense research was just another Pentagon boondoggle, others argued that missile defenses endangered world peace by undermining the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. This belief persisted even though the Soviets had violated the treaty since the early 1970s.
But for die-hard arms controllers like Mr. Bell and others who joined the administration, the treaty became an end in itself --even though it was outdated.
For one thing, long-range missiles had made tremendous technical advances. For another, the treaty was signed with the now-defunct Soviet Union. And finally, other nations were pursuing long-range missile systems with no regard for the agreement.
The Bush administration had engaged Russia in negotiations to update the treaty by adapting it to modern technical realities and broadening it to allow limited nationwide missile defenses.
But the Clinton administration in 1993 declared that it viewed the treaty as "the cornerstone" for U.S. strategic policy and U.S.-Russian strategic relations. The directive was the work of Mr. Bell, who in a secret review outlined what he called a "comprehensive grand bargain."
The deal was this: The United States would agree to expand membership of the treaty to include Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other countries as well as Russia, effectively diluting U.S. influence. The United States would "defer indefinitely" any discussion of changing the treaty to allow national missile defenses beyond the limited single-site system outlined in it. Russia would agree to "clarifications" covering "theater," or regional, missile defenses.
"This was no grand bargain; it was a grand sellout" of U.S. defenses, one American military officer told this reporter -- and he was not the only one to think so.
Clinton administration efforts to defend the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty at all costs led to the death of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) -- the revolutionary concept of shifting from reliance on mutual offensive nuclear annihilation to a strategic defense against long-range missiles.
For the administration, even theoretical or potential violations of the treaty could not be tolerated. Preserving the pact was more important than building defenses that could defend American troops or cities.
Help from China
On Sept. 9, 1998, the Senate failed by a single vote to end a Democratic filibuster that blocked legislation calling for deployment of a national missile defense capable of hitting and destroying incoming missiles like the Taepo Dong.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, typified the inflammatory level of the debate.
"This bill will destroy the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty," Mr. Biden said in a floor speech. Moreover, he argued, deploying a missile defense would cause Russia and China to adopt "launch on warning" stances that would bring nuclear war "closer."
But all Mr. Biden had done was to revive the Cold War doctrine of mutual assured destruction, a doctrine irrelevant in confronting rogue states like North Korea.
Several months after the test launch of the Taepo Dong, the Pentagon was shocked by new intelligence indicating China and its scientists were helping North Korea develop space launchers and satellites.
The White House again ignored the danger, signaled by the National Security Agency's interception of communications between China and North Korea about the collaboration.
The Pentagon, however, was not fooled. Satellite and space technology is virtually identical to the know-how needed to build long-range missiles and warheads.
"I think the Chinese are helping them with the missile program, not just with satellites," a senior Defense Department official said. "The two are so closely intertwined, there is no way you can separate them."
About a month before the Taepo Dong test, Iran had test-fired its first medium-range missile, the Shahab-3, which could travel 800 miles. And Pakistan had test-fired a medium-range missile that had come off-the-shelf from North Korea.
By the end of 1998, the danger became too great for the president to continue to ignore.
Arms control heresy
In January, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen announced that the Pentagon would begin budgeting, but not actually spending, $6.6 billion over six years to deploy a national missile defense. For the first time, the Pentagon admitted it was wrong to think no threat of long-range missiles would emerge until 2010.
Nevertheless, Mr. Cohen asserted that no decision would be made to actually deploy a missile defense system until June 2000 or later, because he was not sure the technology was available.
Asked by this reporter what the United States would do if the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty could not be amended to permit a national missile defense, Mr. Cohen replied that we would pull out of the treaty.
The defense secretary had committed arms control heresy. To rectify the damage, the next day the president sent out Mr. Bell to address a White House press conference. He told reporters that the United States was not going to pull out of the treaty and remained "committed" to its strategic vulnerability provisions.
To many observers, the administration's ploy appeared to be a political effort to nullify missile defense as an issue for Republicans in the coming presidential campaign.
The solution is not to expand and reinforce the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, says Rep. Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the House National Security subcommittee on military research and development. Rather, we should focus in talks with the Russians on a strategy that includes mutually beneficial nuclear offenses and defenses.
"In the end it is going to cost American lives," Mr. Weldon said of adherence to an outdated treaty. "Here we are seven years after Desert Storm, and we still don't have a system that can defend troops against missile attack. That's unacceptable. This administration simply doesn't believe in missile defense."
In March, Congress endorsed Mr. Weldon's stance when both the House and the Senate passed a bill declaring it U.S. policy to deploy a national missile defense. The bill won wide bipartisan support, so much so that the president could not veto it. Nevertheless, in private the White House remained opposed to deployment.
In President Clinton's view, having an agreement limiting arms takes precedence over building systems to defend the nation against long-range missiles --whether from rogue states like North Korea and Iran or from nuclear powers like Russia or China. [Note the date]
24. Scrutinizing Chinese Weapons Deals
By STEVEN ERLANGER, June 22, 1998 New York Times http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+site+11101+33 +wAAA+uranium
WASHINGTON -- As President Clinton prepares to go to China this week, the central foreign policy drama in Washington is the increasing Congressional furor over the Administration's engagement policy, in particular the sense that Clinton is damaging national security in his eagerness to promote relations with Beijing.
Congressional leaders, mostly Republican, argue that Clinton and the executive branch are ignoring a pattern of Chinese exports of dangerous nuclear, chemical and ballistic missile technology. The motive, the critics say, is that the White House wants to avoid imposing the sanctions that the law requires.
The Administration is also under new attack for authorizing the export of commercial satellites for launching aboard Chinese rockets, a process that may have provided technical details that China could use to improve the accuracy of its nuclear-tipped missiles.
At the White House there is an equal and opposite frustration with Congress for trying to "micromanage" relations with China. Since the 1989 crackdown on student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, Congress has passed nearly 12 laws and amendments that try to govern how the executive branch has to deal with proliferation. Each measure has different standards of proof and rules of enforcement, and some are so sweeping that billions of dollars of trade are at stake.
Administration officials complain that Congress confuses voting on sanctions legislation with formulating a working policy on nonproliferation and that Congress sets even stricter requirements for Chinese behavior than international agreements do. In essence, the officials complain, Congress does not allow the President to take a broader, more nuanced view of American national interests. They say the laws do not always provide the flexibility for the executive branch to accomplish the real ends of the legislation, less proliferation.
"There are some staffers up on the Hill who think that if we embargoed every country we'd have the world's best nonproliferation policy, whether it impeded anyone or not," said a senior official with nearly a decade of work on those issues.
But a senior Congressional staffer with equal experience said with equal bitterness: "When it comes to implementing sanction laws the Executive traditionally takes the view that ends justify the means. But the problem is that it degrades the credibility and, thus, the deterrent effect of these sanctions if they're not implemented when flagrantly triggered, even if the executive finds some legal loophole."
The intense argument between the executive and legislative branches reflects two approaches for dealing with China that are not, at their core, partisan differences, although the renewed presummit debate is intensely political.
Although Republican leaders, including the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, and Speaker Newt Gingrich, are among Clinton's most vocal critics on Chinese proliferation, Democratic Senators including John Glenn of Ohio have long shared some of the same concerns.
There is wide agreement that China has significantly improved its record on nuclear, missile, chemical and biological exports since the 1980's, when it advocated nuclear proliferation as a form of anticolonial equity. China gave Pakistan the design for a nuclear weapon and the materials to make it, and it shipped missiles to the Middle East. Prompting China to curtail such exports has been its growing international maturity, combined with pressure and engagement from the United States, including the apt use of sanctions.
"China's behavior is improving, the trend line is up, and there is no longer any consistent pattern of willful flouting of international obligations," a senior Administration official said. "But there are serious questions in the missile and chemical areas, and to the extent the Administration implies there is no problem it doesn't help the cause and it infuriates the Congress."
Asked today on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" about China's proliferation record, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said, "A lot has been done and more needs to be done."
The attention from Republicans is on whether the Chinese Government illegally contributed to the Democratic Party and used advice from American aerospace companies to improve its strategic missiles. But that feeds on the more longstanding and bitter argument over whether China remains a dangerous exporter to Iran and Pakistan and whether its behavior is improving through engagement.
The question remains: is China keeping to its more responsible commitments made since 1992 or is it just better at cheating?
In the broadest sense this is just another chapter in the debate about the wisdom of an engagement policy with China that dates from Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Even Clinton, after criticizing engagement in the 1992 Presidential campaign, embraced it as the best way to influence Chinese behavior in the next century.
One skeptic is Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment, who complains that under Clinton engagement is uncritical. Any action to constrain Chinese behavior can be rationalized as harmful to the larger goal of drawing China into international relationships that may moderate the Government in Beijing, he said.
"My concern is about an approach that assumes in advance that China will be our friend in the next century instead of saying honestly that we don't know what China is going to be like, so we have to hedge against certain possibilities," Kagan said. "Russia is our friend, too, but we have seriously hedged against Russia going in a different direction by expanding NATO."
Kagan said he believed that Chinese access to sensitive American technologies and exports should "not be an inducement for changing behavior, but a reward for changed behavior."
But the argument over China's true record can be answered only with access to highly sensitive and sometimes ambiguous intelligence material. Even that intelligence is debated, to see whether it suffices as the indisputable evidence, or "smoking gun," that senior White House officials say even the Reagan and Bush Administrations required to impose sanctions.
The debates swirl over detailed findings about what might be in certain crates shipped by China to Pakistan in the early 90's and whether they contained missiles or missile parts, as is widely believed but not proven. And if the crates did contain missiles, were they Chinese M-11 missiles or another kind, and with what range?
Similarly, what specific help has China provided Pakistan to build one certain factory in Rawalpindi, and is that factory designed to produce missiles and, if so, what kind and what range, and will they be considered Chinese or Pakistani?
Those questions matter, because the different laws are specific about what requires different sanctions. The only missiles subject to sanctions fall under the Missile Technology Control Regime, which covers those capable of carrying warhead of 500 kilograms, or 1,100 pounds, at least 300 kilometers, 190 miles.
National security is never separate from domestic politics, a senior Congressional staff member said, which is why Presidents from every party prefer not to receive perfect answers.
"If Clinton finds China sanctionable and then waives, he opens himself up to political criticism that he's soft on the Chinese despite a violation and is undermining the intent of the law," the Congressional staff member said. "It's just easier to say we don't know for sure, that the intelligence is ambiguous."
A senior American official deeply engaged in China policy said that no official could ignore a "smoking gun" without legal consequences and that the interagency intelligence process was pure.
Missile sanctions affect trade with whole sectors of the Chinese economy, so policymakers have set a high evidentiary threshold.
"If you sanction and you're wrong," the official said, "your credibility really goes out the window."
On dangerous exports of chemicals or equipment that could be used for chemical warfare, however, the laws require a lower threshold of evidence, simply "knowing and material assistance" to a chemical or biological weapons program on the American terrorist list, and narrower sanctions, he said.
Although "a lot of people in the intelligence community take Pakistan as a test of their manhood," another senior Administration official said, "they have a fundamentally different mission, which is threat assessment.
"Do we think Pakistan has M-11 missiles? Yeah, we do. And if we were to go to war with Pakistan tomorrow I'd like our guys to be prepared for M-11's. But that's different from a Presidential finding that we know for sure that they're there. Intel doesn't have to be certain. But we do, according to the law."
KEEPING TRACK China the Arms Merchant
China has sharply improved its proliferation behavior since 1992, but serious problems remain.
THE IMPROVEMENTS<br> China has limited dangerous exports to Iran and Pakistan and taken important steps, sometimes pressed by American sanctions.
February 1992 China promises to abide by the Missile Technology Control Regime governing missiles of medium or longer range.<P> March 1992 China agrees to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
October 1994 China joins the Chemical Weapons Convention; pledges to consider the M-11 a controlled missile and not export it.<br> May 1996 Under threat of United States sanctions, China halts exports of items for use in nuclear plants, like Pakistan's without international safeguards. China also stops nuclear testing, signs the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
October 1997 China agrees to stop shipments of certain cruise missiles to Iran, stop all nuclear cooperation with Iran, and join the Zangger group of countries regulating dangerous exports.<P> Spring 1998 China cooperates with Washington to try to deter India and Pakistan from creating nuclear weapons, as it has cooperated on North Korea.
THE PROBLEMS
Intelligence reports continue to suggest that there are Chinese exports and technical assistance to Pakistan and Iran that would violate China's pledges and that could require U.S. sanctions.
1992 Despite pledges, China is believed to have shipped M-11 missiles or parts to Pakistan.
<a name=hit0000></a>1994-1995 U.S. discovers a shipment of ring magnets to Pakistan, useful in enriching uranium, and arguably a violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty.
1995 China is believed to have helped in building a Rawalpindi factory that might produce medium-range missiles.
1997 China reportedly offers Iran technical help and parts like missile guidance systems, gyroscopes and special steels for a short-range missile.
January 1997 China contracts with an Iranian complex to supply tons of an acid sometimes used to enrich uranium. After Washington protests, Beijing stops the sale.
May 1997 U.S. imposes sanctions on seven Chinese companies and individuals for helping Iran's chemical weapons program. <P> October 1997-present China refuses to sign the control regime, which would mean abiding by its annexes, which list banned exports.
Related Articles Coverage of the China Satellite Inquiry http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/index-china.html
Forum Join a Discussion on China Satellite Inquiry http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@@.eed96eb
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Message: 8 Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:48:47 -0400
Subject: NucNews-1- 5/18/99 - depleted uranium
1. NATO BOMBING UNLEASHES ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE IN EUROPE
For immediate release - May 14, 1999 International Action Center, http://www.iacenter.org
Spokespeople for the International Action Center announced in New York today that their group was taking actions to document NATO's bombing as a war crime against the environment of the Balkans and Europe especially in light of the Pentagon's recent admission it was using depleted uranium weapons against Yugoslavia.
The Pentagon and other NATO armed forces use the extremely dense depleted-uranium to reinforce large-caliber bullets and shells. This
element increases the shells' ability to penetrate armor, but it leaves toxic and radioactive particles of uranium oxide that endanger humans and pollute the environment.
IAC co-director Sara Flounders was heading to Yugoslavia May 14 to investigate and bring back first-hand evidence and documentation involving NATO's use of DU weapons and its attacks on chemical and pharmaceutical plants, plastics factories, refineries and other targets. This bombing creates environmental devastation that will impact on millions of people and for generations to come.
The delegation will be led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who traveled to Yugoslavia in the first week of the bombing with videographer Gloria La Riva, whose videos on Iraq have won international awards. La Riva is currently working on a video on NATO's war on Yugoslavia. Jeremy Scahill of Pacifica Radio's national program Democracy Now, also part of the delegation, will provide daily news coverage on NATO bombing targets. His coverage will particularly focus on the long-term environmental disaster that is unfolding.
Flounders is a co-editor of Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium, a 1997 book exposing the dangers of DU-reinforced shells and its link with Gulf War Syndrome. Metal of Dishonor's other co-editor, John Catalinotto, will be speaking at forums on Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands on May 15, and Bonn, Germany, on May 17 about these environmental issues and their link to NATO's war against Yugoslavia.
These issues have gained importance due to the turmoil within the European Green parties whose leadership has abandoned its traditional pacifism and defense of the environment to support NATO's war. This is especially seen in the German Greens, which form part of the current government. On May 13 in Bielefeld, Germany, rank-and-file Greens at a party congress were accusing their leader--current German Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer--of betrayal and demanding an immediate end to NATO bombing.
Flounders discussed the NATO strikes that did the most damage to the environment. "NATO planes bombed the pharmaceutical complex in Galenika, the largest medicine factory in Yugoslavia. This attack on a vital civilian target released dangerous, highly toxic fumes immediately, and will undermine the ability to provide medicine in the future.
"On April 15, NATO forces bombed plants of the petrochemical complex in Pancevo, directly hitting installations and equipment of the Vinyl Chloride Monomer plant and Ethylene plant and damaging others. According to a report from the plant's director, Dr. Slobodan Tresac, fire broke out and huge quantities of chlorine, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride monomer flowed out. Workers at Pancevo, fearing further bombing attacks that would blow up dangerous materials, released tons of ethylene dichloride, a carcinogen, into the Danube.
"That same night, NATO also hit the Ammonia and Power Supply divisions of HIP-AZOTARA Fertilizer Company and completely destroyed them, also in Pancevo.
"In a May 7 news release, the Worldwide Fund for Nature warned that an environmental crisis is looming in the lower Danube river and the Black Sea due mainly to oil slicks. The river is a source of drinking water for 10 million people.
"Of course NATO bombing is also the cause of immediate human suffering in Yugoslavia," said Flounders, "but we don't want to neglect its long-term criminal impact on the environment.
"In an open letter from Belgrade, the Yugoslav minister of agriculture, Nedelijko Sipovac, wrote in early May that these bombings have caused ecological catastrophe `not only on the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia but on the territories of all Balkan, Danube basin, Mediterranean and European countries as well.' Sipovac noted an increase in radioactivity which he attributed to the use of depleted uranium bullets."
Catalinotto said Pentagon spokesperson Major-General Chuck Wald finally admitted to BBC news on May 7 that its A-10 "Warthog" planes were firing depleted uranium ammunition. "These planes fired almost a million 30 millimeter DU rounds during the 1991 war against Iraq," he said.
"DU is one important aspect of a looming environmental disaster for the region," Catalinotto added, "that will harm all the different nationalities of the former Yugoslavia and could spill over into Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and the Czech and Slovak republics.
"The environmental arrogance of the NATO generals exposes their original `humanitarian' excuse for starting to bomb Yugoslavia as a fraud," he said. "They are making the whole region unfit for human habitation. And they will wind up poisoning their own soldiers as they did with Agent Orange in Vietnam and with DU in Iraq.
"We in the International Action Center will spread this message far and wide in Europe and North America and expose anyone who defends NATO's war as a killer of the environment. We hope this will bring the Greens where they belong, side by side with anti-war forces that demand NATO end the bombing and get out."
The IAC is part of a coalition of anti-war organizations in the United States who are organizing a national demonstration expected to bring tens of thousands of people to the Pentagon in Washington DC to protest the war on Saturday, June 5.
The second edition of Metal of Dishonor was just released. Since the first edition came out in 1997, this issue has gained international attention and the book has been translated into Arabic and Japanese editions.
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International Action Center 39 West 14 St., #206 New York, NY 10011 (212) 633-6646 fax: (212) 633-2889 email: iacenter@iacenter.org http://www.iacenter.org (212) 633-6646 Contacts: Deirdre Sinnott, Brian Becker
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2. Your reaction to Tony Blair's article
BBC, May 18, 1999 http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking%5Fpoint/newsid%5F343000/34389 8.asp (Blair: My pledge to the refugees, May 14, 1999, http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_343000/343739.stm)
... Tony Blair's double standards are quite breathtaking. He is concerned, quite rightly, for the plight of Kosovan Albanians, but at the same time his government has agreed over 60 new contracts to sell military equipment, including Hawk jets, which have been used to carry out some of the most brutal ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen in East Timor. If western eyes and ears were to hear their stories we would be as appalled and horrified. Bombing has done nothing more than unite a country behind a leader the majority do not support (Milosevic) and we have also seen the Chinese marching in support of their government!!! One wonders too about the environmental damage caused by the use of so much depleted Uranium. Stop this farce now and get back round the table. Alex Spalding, England....
Maybe Mr Blair needs to go back to school and learn the meaning of the word genocide, then perhaps he would better understand that what Nato is doing against the Serb people is indeed racial genocide: with uranium depleted bombs and cluster bombs and attacking of chemical plants(where deadly spills are a product), Nato thus enacting a "policy of killing an ethnic group or nationality", whilst under the umbrella of a bloody moral imperative. Mr Blair, my god forgive you for not learning your vocabulary at chool!!! Samantha Jupitre, UK....
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3. House Panel Critical Of Pentagon Gulf War Syndrome Inquiry
By PHILIP SHENON, October 26, 1997 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/102697gulfwar-report.html
WASHINGTON -- After a 20-month investigation, the panel that has led the chief congressional inquiry into the illnesses of Persian Gulf war veterans will ask that the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs be stripped of their authority over the issue.
In its final report, the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight said the congressional investigation showed that "a variety of toxic agents in the gulf war," including Iraqi chemical weapons and pesticides, were probably responsible for the health problems reported by thousands of veterans.
The report, which is expected to be made public this week, says that the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs have so mishandled the investigation of the veterans' health problems that Congress should create or designate an agency independent of them to coordinate research into the cause of the ailments.
"Sadly, when it comes to diagnosis, treatment and research for gulf war veterans, we find the federal government too often has a tin ear, a cold heart and a closed mind," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who has overseen the House investigation. A copy of the report, which is expected to have bipartisan support and to be approved by the committee in a vote this week, was obtained by The New York Times.
The report will be released only days ahead of a separate study by a White House panel of experts that will be nearly as harsh in its criticism of the Defense Department.
In a draft of that study, the White House panel, called the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, said that the Pentagon had "an institutional culture and pervasive inclination" to ignore or dismiss evidence suggesting that American soldiers may have been exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons. "Lack of due diligence means only certain facts come to light," it said.
A Defense Department spokesman said the Pentagon would withhold comment on the House report until it received a copy.
Congressional officials say they hope that the release of such blistering criticism from two sources -- Capitol Hill and the presidential committee -- will force President Clinton to remove the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs from any further oversight of the investigation of the illnesses reported by gulf war veterans.
If the White House does not act, they say, members of Congress will offer legislation to accomplish the same goal, possibly through a bill that would turn over responsibility for the investigations to the National Institutes of Health or some other federal agency.
The House report said that the agency given responsibility for the inquiries should direct federal research money to studies involving the treatment of the neurological problems that are commonly reported by gulf war veterans and that may be the result of chemical exposures.
In the introduction to the report, Shays, chairman of the Government Reform subcommittee on Human Resources, said that the investigations by the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs were "irreparably flawed" and had been "plagued by arrogant incuriosity and a pervasive myopia that sees a lack of evidence as proof."
"We reluctantly conclude that responsibility for gulf war illnesses, especially the research agenda, must be placed in a more responsive agency, independent of the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs," he said. "We find current approaches to research, diagnosis and treatment unlikely to yield answers to veterans' life-or-death questions."
The report acknowledged that the mystery over the illnesses reported by veterans would probably linger for years.
Though some scientists believe that Iraqi chemical weapons and other poisons released on the battlefield are responsible for many of the health problems, which typically include chronic digestive problems and memory loss, other researchers believe that combat stress is more likely to be the cause.
After more than five years of denials, the Defense Department acknowledged last year for the first time the possibility that large numbers of American troops were exposed to chemical weapons during or after the war.
The Pentagon has since estimated that as many as 100,000 American troops, or one out of seven American soldiers who served in the war, were exposed to low doses of the nerve gas sarin released in the demolition of an Iraqi ammunition depot in March 1991, shortly after the war.
The department says there is no evidence to show that the exposures led to illnesses among the thousands of veterans who have since complained of health problems, but it has agreed to provide millions of dollars in new research on the issue.
Last month, Defense Secretary William Cohen said that the Pentagon should not be stripped of its authority in the investigation of the illnesses of gulf war veterans.
While acknowledging that the Pentagon had done an inadequate job for several years in studying the ailments, Cohen said that the military had mounted a far more aggressive inquiry over the last year. "I believe that the Pentagon is fully capable of conducting an investigation," he said.
Dr. Frances M. Murphy, director of Persian Gulf health programs for the Department of Veterans Affairs, said that though the criticism of the department was unfair, it was not surprising because "we've heard that same rhetoric before from Congressman Shays at his hearings."
"The record shows that VA has a record of being very proactive, starting with the very first health care programs for gulf war veterans as early as 1992," Murphy said. "We kept an open mind about pesticide exposures, about chemical exposures."
The House report does not identify what agency should take over the investigation except to say that it must be "more responsive" and "independent from the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs."
"Having demonstrated unwillingness and inability to overcome institutional biases and constraints, the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs should no longer control the Persian Gulf war illness research agency," the report said.
"The premise of both VA and DOD approaches to Gulf war veterans' illnesses has been that toxic exposures played no role in causing the mysterious range of maladies known as 'Gulf War Syndrome.' That presumption is no longer warranted."
The report does not single out any one poison as the cause of the health problems.
Instead it offers a list: "Chemical and biological warfare agents, organophosphates found in pesticides and insect repellents, leaded diesel fuel, depleted uranium, oil-well fire smoke, leaded vehicle exhaust, contaminated drinking water, shower water and clothing, parasites, and pyridostigmine bromide and other drugs to protect against chemical warfare agents."
Pyridostigmine bromide pills were widely distributed to American soldiers during the war to protect them against the effects of soman, a nerve gas that Iraq had stockpiled in huge quantities. But recent research suggests that the drug can cause serious health problems if taken when the body is experiencing stress, such as in battle. The depleted uranium, as cited in the report, was from shells designed to puncture tank armor.
"By all accounts -- official, scientific and firsthand -- the gulf war theater was not just a war zone; it was a cesspool of toxic substances," the report said.
"While the research has yet to cement the link between toxic exposures and delayed, chronic illnesses, the timing, nature and frequency of undiagnosed illnesses among gulf war veterans strongly suggest such a link does exist and will -- given the appropriate interest, funding and support -- be confirmed."
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ALSO:
Selected Articles on Gulf War Illness
October 26, 1997 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/gulfindex.html --- Panel Says Pentagon Ignored Signs of Poison Gas October 31 1997, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/103197gulfwar-vets.html The final report of a White House panel will say that the Pentagon has dismissed credible evidence that thousands of Marines may have been exposed to poison gas when they crossed Iraqi minefields as they invaded Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, officials said Thursday. --- House Panel Critical Of Pentagon Gulf War Syndrome Inquiry (October 26, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/102697gulfwar-report.html After a 20-month investigation, the panel that has led the chief congressional inquiry into the illnesses of Persian Gulf war veterans will ask that the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs be stripped of their authority over the issue. In its final report, the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight said the congressional investigation showed that "a variety of toxic agents in the gulf war," including Iraqi chemical weapons and pesticides, were probably responsible for the health problems reported by thousands of veterans.
Investigators Find Excerpts of Gulf War Chemical Logs (October 24, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/102497us-gulfwar-logs.html The Defense Department, which announced last year that classified chemical-detection logs from the 1991 Persian Gulf war were missing, has found lengthy excerpts from the logs in the home of an Army officer, officials said Thursday. A criminal investigation of the officer is now underway.
Panel Wants Pentagon to Lose Gulf-Inquiry Authority (September 6, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/090697gulf-war-chem.html A special White House panel said Friday that the Pentagon had lost so much credibility in its investigation of the release of Iraqi chemical weapons in the 1991 Persian Gulf War that oversight of the investigation must be taken away from the Defense Department permanently.
Study Links Chemicals to Sick Veterans (June 15, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/061597chem-weapons.html A new government report has harshly criticized the Pentagon and a special White House panel over their investigation of the illnesses reported by veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war and has found that there is "substantial evidence" linking nerve gas and other chemical weapons to the sorts of health problems seen among the veterans.
Weapons Expert Tells of Possible Iraqi Gas Attacks in Gulf War (April 25, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/042597gulf-chemwar.html A respected chemical-weapons researcher who had been mysteriously dismissed from a special White House panel said on Thursday that he believed that Iraq might have attacked American troops with chemical weapons during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, contrary to repeated denials by the Pentagon.
Powell Says C.I.A. Did Not Warn of Chemical Arms in Gulf (April 18, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/041897gulf-powell.html Gen. Colin Powell said on Thursday that he and other senior military commanders never received warnings from the CIA about the presence of chemical weapons in areas of southern Iraq where American troops blew up Iraqi ammunition depots shortly after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
C.I.A. Says It Failed to Give Data on Iraqi Arms (April 10, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/0410cia-gulfwar.html The CIA said on Wednesday that its own errors may have led to the demolition of an Iraqi ammunition bunker filled with chemical weapons after the 1991 Persian Gulf war -- an event that may have exposed tens of thousands of U.S. troops to nerve gas.
Army Knew in '91 of Chemical Weapons Dangers in Iraq (Feb. 25, 1997) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/0225chemweapons.html The Pentagon has said the possible exposure of troops to chemical weapons came to its attention only last year, but the C.I.A. gave it a warning five years ago.
U.S. May Never Know How Many Gulf Troops Were Exposed to Chemical Weapons (Dec. 22, 1996) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/1222gulfwar-chemical.html A panel of independent scientists has determined that there is a "very real possibility" that the Pentagon will never know how many American troops may have been exposed to chemical weapons in the demolition of an Iraqi ammunition depot shortly after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the Defense Department has announced.
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Message: 9 Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 19:21:09 -0400
Subject: NucNews-3- 5/18/99 - Russia; Formula to Light the World
[These are dated, but interesting, and not posted on NucNews online yet.]
12. Russia Struggles in Long Race to Prevent an Atomic Theft
By MICHAEL R. GORDON, April 20, 1996 New York Times http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+site+30740+7+ wAAA+uranium
MOSCOW -- When scientists from the Kurchatov Institute go to work at Building 116, getting in the door is no simple matter.
First, they slide computerized identification cards into a cage-like booth at the entranceway. Then they punch in a secret code, while a computer determines their weight to verify their identity.
If everything checks out, the rear of the booth opens up, admitting them into the building.
The need for security is clear. Situated within the city limits of Russia's bustling capital, Building 116 contains enough highly enriched uranium for several nuclear bombs.
Two years after the first reports that nuclear material had been smuggled out of the former Soviet Union, Washington and Moscow are already collaborating on an ambitious program -- unthinkable during the cold war -- to safeguard Russia's nuclear materials. The result has been to help Russia, as well as other former Soviet republics, make steady if slow progress toward protecting nuclear bomb ingredients.
Still, security systems like those at Building 116 -- part of a premier nuclear institute named after the father of the Russian bomb -- remain the exception, not the rule.
Of 28 areas at the Kurchatov Institute where bomb-grade materials are stored, only two have the most up-to-date and stringent security procedures. Officials say it will take another year or two to include them all.
Russian specialists predict that it will take as long as a decade to protect and account for the vast store of nuclear materials scattered at sites across the former Soviet Union. The current shaky system of controls is one of the main reasons why leaders of the industrialized nations have come to Moscow for a summit meeting this weekend.
"That is the scale of the task," said Aleksandr N. Roumiantsev, a senior official at the institute. "All of these must be provided with physical security and each case is very specific."
During the cold war, the Soviet Union produced a monumental 1,300 tons of highly enriched uranium and nearly 220 tons of plutonium, much of it still spread widely throughout former Soviet republics at poorly guarded sites, including plants alarmingly close to war zones and aspiring nuclear states.
And while important headway is being made, the push to secure nuclear materials has been constrained by a lack of money, a growing nationalist feeling spurred on by Russia's election-year politics and lingering doubts within the Russian and American militaries.
The Russians have backed away from a 1994 agreement to share data, and from a deal to shut down three plutonium-producing reactors by 2000. American suspicions have also posed problems, with the Navy reluctant to allow Russian officials to visit its nuclear storage sites.
So far there is no evidence that nuclear materials have been acquired by would-be nuclear powers or terrorist groups. But some experts say that the money and effort to guard against theft must be doubled, and that Russia and the other former Soviet republics are in a race against time.
New Dangers: Threat of Theft Is Main Worry Now
The breakup of the Soviet Union cost Moscow its most reliable safeguard of nuclear materials: the iron grip of its police state.
Porous borders, relaxed Government controls, the growth of criminal gangs and the declining prestige and wages of nuclear scientists in Russia have all combined to create a new danger: theft of the essential incredients of a nuclear bomb.
"The chilling reality is that nuclear materials and technologies are more accessible now than at any other time in history, due primarily to the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the region's worsening economic conditions," John Deutch, the director of Central Intelligence, told Congress last month.
Nuclear materials are also widely scattered throughout the former Soviet Union, at 40 to 50 locations. At these sites, there are 1,500 to 2,000 specific areas where nuclear materials are handled, according to Russian officials.
Complicating the task is the Soviet system of accounting for nuclear materials, which relied largely on records of the production of nuclear materials, instead of sophisticated scientific measurements.
The system is so inexact that Russia still does not know the precise quantity and disposition of nuclear material at many of its sites. A more scientific system has been mandated, but Russia is only in the early stages of developing it.
The problem is not Russia's alone.
On the shores of the Caspian Sea, not far from Iran, the Kazakstani reactor at Aktau has emerged as a special worry for American experts.
Fueled with uranium with a 30 percent level of enrichment, the reactor produces "ivory grade" plutonium, which is even better for bombs than the weapons-grade plutonium generally used.
The plutonium is contained in the spent reactor fuel that is kept in a cooling pond near the reactor. To be used for military purposes, the plutonium would have to be chemically separated, a procedure that does not require advanced technology if the fuel has been in the pond long enough for its radioactivity to cool.
But now that Kazakstan is an independent country, the Russians have refused to transport the spent fuel to Russia for safekeeping.
Concerned that Iran may try to acquire either fuel from the reactor or spent fuel from the cooling ponds, the United States Department of Energy has already begun an effort to improve security there, but the work is not yet completed.
Officials from the C.I.A. say that Iranian agents tried to acquire nuclear materials from the Ulba Metallurgial Plant in Kazakstan in 1992 and have been involved in other smuggling efforts.
American officials are also worried about a small cache of enriched uranium at a laboratory near Tbilisi, Georgia, in the volatile Caucasus. They fear the supply, less than a bomb's worth, might somehow find its way to Chechen rebels.
Russian plants have already been targeted by thieves. In 1994 almost six pounds of highly enriched uranium believed to have originated in the former Soviet Union was seized by the Czech police, the largest recorded seizure, but less nuclear material than would be needed for a bomb.
Depots for nuclear fuel for Russian submarines and icebreakers, some of which has also been singled out by thieves, are also a concern.
Deutch, the C.I.A. director, told Congress last month that a comprehensive review by American intelligence officials concluded that as yet, "none of these facilities in Russia or other newly independent states has adequate safeguards or security measures by international standards for weapons-usable materials." Slow Progress Improving Security Could Take Years
There are some significant signs of progress.
The United States and Russia, for example, have already agreed to improve security at over 30 locations that account for more 70 percent of the places where Russia stores significant quantities of bomb-grade materials.
The Institute of Physics and Power Engineering, a civilian plant with large quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, is a case in point. It is at Obninsk, an area only recently opened to foreigners and Russians without special security clearance.
But under the most optimistic American Government estimates, it will take six years to carry out the planned security improvements in Russia at the current level of funding. Russians say it will probably take longer.
American officials also hope the Russians will use their experience in working with the United States and apply new security and accounting procedures to the most secret domains of their nuclear empire, including the nuclear weapons production and dismantlement facilities that remain off limits.
Pavel V. Oleynikov, a specialist from Chelyabinsk-70, said six American nuclear laboratories were helping to develop security systems for several research reactors at the complex. Situated in a closed area in the Ural Mountains, Chelyabinsk-70 is one of Russia's primary nuclear design centers. Oleynikov said Russian scientists hoped to expand the security improvements to far more sensitive parts of the complex and to similar plants in the Urals and in Siberia, which American specialists are not now allowed to visit.
Russian and American officials are taking the same approach at Arzamas-16, another major nuclear weapons design center.
One development that has speeded progress is the effort by American nuclear laboratories to work directly with Russian nuclear institutes and complexes, using American money to underwrite the development of Russian security systems. Earlier efforts were hampered by red tape within both Governments and by the requirement that most American money be funneled to American contractors.
Still, difficult problems remain.
While the two sides are discussing the problem of protecting nuclear fuel for submarines and icebreakers, American experts have not yet been to these storage centers. That issue has been complicated by the United States Navy's reluctance to allow Russian officials to visit its storage sites.
And other efforts are moving even slower, if at all.
To enable specialists to better understand the scope of the nuclear security problem, President Boris N. Yeltsin and President Clinton agreed in 1994 to exchange information on how many warheads and how much fissionable material each country has.
The two sides also agreed to use special radiation-detecting devices to measure the stockpile of nuclear material from dismantled warheads as an indirect way to confirm the number of warheads taken apart.
Sharing such data is not as simple as it seems. Under both country's laws, such steps cannot be carried out until there is a special accord authorizing the exchange. But to the Americans' surprise, the Russians called off talks in November to develop such a legal framework.
Officially, Russia says there are technical problems. But Valery Bogdan, the business manager of the Russian Ministry for Atomic Energy, acknowledged that politics was also a consideration.
Specifically, the Yeltsin Government has been worried about nationalist charges that it is disclosing Russian secrets. Some American officials also say Washington has not treated the accord as a top priority. A separate case of backpeddling arose in connection with Russia's much ballyhooed 1994 agreement to shut down three reactors at Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk that produce weapons-grade plutonium.
The reactors also supply heat and energy to the surrounding Siberian communities, and the Russians eventually concluded that they could not afford to replace them with conventional power plants.
"We failed with replacing the military reactors," observed Alexei Yablokov, an environmental adviser to President Yeltsin and a critic of Russia's nuclear establishment.
As a fallback, the United States and Russia are now developing a plan that will allow the reactors to continue operating, while converting them so that they no longer produce weapons-grade plutonium.
Uncertain Future: Effort and Costs Grow With Risks
While the political purpose of this weekend's summit meeting is to boost President Yeltsin's election prospects, Western officials also want to use the carefully planned session to cement a new agreement to coordinate efforts against nuclear smuggling.
The summit is also expected to establish an international meeting to develop long-term ways to dispose of plutonium.
American officials want the Russians to commit themselves to a total nuclear test ban, international safety standards for nuclear reactors and the safe disposal of nuclear waste, among other measures.
Some specialists, however, say that for all the summit fanfare, the United States is not moving fast enough.
Clinton Administration officials said they could move quickly by, for example, installing security checks at Russian nuclear installations, if the Congress would provide additional money.
And John P. Holdren, a nuclear scientist who helped prepared a classified report on nuclear smuggling for the White House, recently urged a doubling of American assistance for the protection and accounting of nuclear materials, an increase that would raise the level of money in 1996 to $150 million. He also urged more money to combat nuclear smuggling and to buy highly enriched uranium from Russia.
In a letter to Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, Holdren acknowledged that his proposal might appear expensive.
But he added: "The costs and risk of inaction -- in both lower security and higher defense expenditures should weapons-usuable nuclear material fall into hands unfriendly to the United States -- would be far higher than the cost of timely preventative action today."
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13. Finding a Formula to Light the World but Guard the Bomb
By MATTHEW L. WALD, June 2, 1998 New York Times http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+site+23187+8+ wAAA+uranium Image: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/060298sci-thorium.gif
WASHINGTON -- Now that India has shown the world that it could quietly purify enough plutonium for the five nuclear devices it detonated recently -- and probably enough for many more -- attention is turning to how to divorce nuclear weapons from nuclear power plants.
A small company based here says it has the answer, by substituting thorium for some of the uranium in fuel for power reactors.
The company, Radkowsky Thorium Power Corp., headed by a physicist who was formerly the chief scientist of the U.S. Naval Propulsion Program, says its fuel could be used in existing reactors in place of the ordinary uranium fuel, and would produce very little plutonium, a normal byproduct of the reaction when uranium is used.
The company plans to test its fuel in 2002 in a Russian reactor that resembles the dominant U.S. design.
Proponents say it could also be offered to countries like North Korea and Cuba, which say they want reactors to generate electric power.
But some fear they want reactors mostly to generate plutonium for weapons. The thorium reactor could also be useful for burning up surplus weapons plutonium -- the United States has at least 50 tons of it -- without producing nearly as much new plutonium as existing reactors do. And the plutonium it does produce would be a mix of types that makes the weapon prone to "fizzle," or sustain a chain reaction for only a brief period, cutting its explosive yield by 95 to 97 percent.
"It's pretty intriguing," said Christopher Payne, a senior researcher at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that is active in nuclear proliferation issues. "It's worth looking into."
"It's a lot better than what we've got," said Robert H. Williams, a physicist at the Princeton University Center for Energy and Environmental Studies. He pointed out, though, that even if production is cut by 80 percent, a large nuclear reactor would still produce enough plutonium each year for several bombs.
The Energy Department has contributed $1.1 million to help with the development and Raytheon Engineers & Constructors, which hopes to win engineering work if the system is used, paid $500,000. Alvin Radkowsky, who was the chief scientist of the Naval Propulsion Program from 1948 to 1972, designed the fuel. But some people question whether Radkowsky's fuel can compete with existing ones, because the operating characteristics of the existing fuels are so well known.
Developers refer to Radkowsky's system as a reactor, but it is essentially a new core, replacing the fuel in an existing reactor. Its benefit is to change a characteristic of nuclear reactors that was long considered a virtue but is now a problem: that as they consume the kind of uranium that can be readily split, they make a new kind of atom that can also be split easily, plutonium.
The fuel for nearly all reactors today is uranium-235, which is called "fissile," because it can be fissioned, or split. It is mixed with uranium-238, which is very hard to split.
When the uranium-235 is split, it gives off neutrons that go on to fission other atoms, sustaining a chain reaction. But often a neutron hits an atom of uranium-238, a material that is called "fertile," because instead of being split by the neutron, it absorbs the neutron and changes into a new material, in this case, plutonium-239.
Plutonium is a different element, and thus is fairly easy to chemically separate from the rest of the fuel when the fuel bundle is removed from the reactor.
The Radkowsky fuel avoids plutonium production by minimizing the use of fertile uranium. Instead it uses thorium, a material that was tried with uranium in the first civilian reactors in the 1950s and '60s but later dropped in favor of straight uranium fuel. Thorium, cheap and plentiful, cannot be fissioned to produce energy, but it is also fertile, and as it absorbs stray neutrons it is converted to something fissile, in this case, uranium-233.
But uranium-233 is hard to separate from other uranium in the core, and thus is hard to purify for bombs.
Thomas Graham, a former negotiator for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency who is now president of the Lawyers' Alliance for World Security and a member of the Radkowsky company's board of directors, said that what India had done in the last few years would have been nearly impossible if that country's reactors had used Radkowsky fuel.
Pakistan could still have developed its bombs, however, because its weapons used enriched uranium, not plutonium. That route to a bomb is much more expensive and difficult, though, he said.
A reactor that does not produce much plutonium would be useful in the United States as well.
To dispose of excess plutonium, the Energy Department wants to use it to fuel conventional civilian reactors, but for each 3 pounds of pure plutonium that is converted into fuel, another 2 pounds of plutonium will be created in those reactors, and that theoretically could be refined and turned into new weapons fuel.
(Some designs are called breeder reactors, because each atom split produces more than one additional fissile atom.)
In the Radkowksy fuel, far less plutonium is created. And of the uranium-233 that is created, most is consumed in the fuel as it is made, producing heat that can be turned into electricity.
If the reactor is shut down before the fuel is fully consumed, the uranium mix inside would be extremely difficult to purify and refine into bomb fuel, physicists say.
This is because some of it has absorbed yet another neutron and turned into uranium-234, and the thorium also has some uranium-238 added. Separating those forms of uranium from each other would be difficult, because they are chemically identical.
The design is similar to existing nuclear fuel: ceramic pellets about the size of pencil erasers loaded into long, thin metal tubes, sometimes as long as 14 feet, assembled into bundles. Radkowsky's design is that each bundle would have an inner "seed" using uranium, and outer tubes forming a "blanket," filled mostly with thorium. The seed could also be made of plutonium.
The thorium system has drawbacks, though. One is that the uranium in the seed would have to be enriched to about 20 percent of the fissile type of uranium, uranium-235, compared with about 3-5 percent in conventional reactors.
Up to 20 percent is still considered low enrichment, far too low for a bomb, but far above the natural level of 0.7 percent. And a nation or group that wanted an atom bomb would have a major head start in building a uranium model if it began with fuel enriched to 20 percent.
Another problem is that while total plutonium production is low, it is concentrated in the fuel rods in the seed, not those in the blanket. In fact, there would be more plutonium in a ton of used seed from the Radkowsky design than from a ton of used uranium fuel from a conventional uranium reactor.
But Alex Galperin, a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and an associate of Radkowsky, said in a telephone interview that the mix of types of plutonium in the reactor would still deter someone who wanted to build a bomb. For one thing, it would have a large quantity of plutonium-238, which gives off heat for years, so much heat, he said, that it would interfere with the high explosives that are used to help set off a nuclear weapon.
It would also contain a large amount of plutonium-240 and plutonium-242, which tend to emit neutrons spontaneously. These neutrons can start a chain reaction too soon, leading to a fizzle. The company says such plutonium would never produce more than a fizzle.
Harold A. Fieveson, of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University and the editor of Science and Global Security, said this was "really lousy plutonium from a weapons point of view."
"It would be possible with a lot of care and tremendous difficulty to fabricate a weapon that could have a yield of hundreds of tons, but it would be a bigger weapon than you would need with normal plutonium," he said, making it harder to deliver.
But Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said that a device that produced only a fizzle could still be a weapon.
Makhijani, a physicist, said "a 50 percent probability that it will fizzle is not good enough, if you're trying to protect yourself against it."
And, he said, a fizzle was a mere 3 to 5 percent of the potential explosive value, but that is still 3 to 5 percent of a very large number. If a Nagasaki-sized weapon fizzled, he said, that would still be 100 times larger than the bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, or the Marine barracks in Beiruit. But it would still be 20 or 30 times smaller than a typical nuclear weapon.