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Digest 106, originally sent Fri Jun 4 04:40:24 1999 :
There are 9 messages in this issue.
Topics in today's digest:
1. Fw: NRC: Government in the Sunshine Act Regulations
2. NucNews-0 Brief 6/03/99
3. NucNews-5 6/03/99 - Activism; Secrets; Cox Report Questions; Sierra Club "Bubba" Antinuc Ads; Hackers
4. NucNews-3 6/03/99 - Chernobyl; Uzbek Poison Island/Anthrax
5. NucNews-6 6/03/99 - S.Africa Abolition Petition; X-Ray de-mining; UN/Iraq; Russia, China: Stop Bombing!; World Court Declines halt NATO bombing
6. NucNews-4 6/03/99 - US - Senate vote Nuc Arms; No New Licenses since TMI; Treaty in US Limbo; Nuc Waste Savannah River - Yucca Mountain; Nuc Contractors Deal
7. NucNews-2 6/03/99 - Y2K-Europe; India/Kashmir; UK Nuc Accident Dounreay; Dungeness; Sellafield
8. NucNews-7 6/03/99 - Kosovo UN report; Serbia ok peace plan; Gunmakers Lawsuit; Cuban lawsuit
9. NucNews-1 6/03/99 - DU-Puerto Rico (2); DU-BBC; China/Korea; Tiananmen
_______________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1 Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 13:00:36 -0400
Subject: Fw: NRC: Government in the Sunshine Act Regulations
From: Winston Weeks <wweeks@aros.net>:
Anyone interested in open government should send their comments in ASAP. Don't buy their excuses! Address below.
Secretary U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, DC 20555-0001
ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news/nrc10cfr9.htm <http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news/n rc10cfr9.htm nrc10cfr9sum.htm>Summary of Document <http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news/n rc10cfr9.htm nrc10cfr9.pdf>These pages from the Federal Register are also available in Adobe Acrobat
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[Federal Register: May 10, 1999 (Volume 64, Number 89)] [Rules and Regulations] [Page 24936-24942] >From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr10my99-3]
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
10 CFR Part 9
RIN 3150-AB94
Government in the Sunshine Act Regulations
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Final rule: Notice of intent to implement currently effective rule and request for comments.
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SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Commission) is announcing its intent to implement a final rule, published and made effective in 1985, that amended its regulations applying the Government in the Sunshine Act. The Commission is taking this action to provide an opportunity for public comment on its intent because of the time that has passed since the Commission last addressed this issue. This action is necessary to complete resolution of this issue.
DATES: The May 21, 1985, interim rule became effective May 21, 1985. Submit comments by June 9, 1999. Unless the Commission takes further action, non-Sunshine Act discussions may be held beginning June 1, 1999 <http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news/n rc10cfr9.htm nrc10cfr9a.htm>July 1, 1999.
ADDRESSES: Submit written comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Trip Rothschild, Assistant General Counsel, Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555, (301) 415-1607.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Commission, through this notice of the Commission's intent to implement a rule published and made effective in 1985, seeks to bring closure to a rulemaking that amended the NRC's regulations applying the Government in the Sunshine Act. Because of the years that have elapsed, the Commission is providing this notice of its intent to implement this rule and is providing an opportunity for additional public comment on the Commission's proposal to implement. The purpose of the rule is to bring the NRC's Sunshine Act regulations, and the way they are applied by NRC, into closer conformity with Congressional intent, as set forth in the legislative history of the Sunshine Act and as clarified in a unanimous Supreme Court decision, FCC v. ITT World
[[Page 24937]]
Communications, 466 U.S. 463 (1984). The NRC's original Sunshine Act regulations, adopted in 1977, treated every discussion of agency business by three or more Commissioners, no matter how informal or preliminary it might be, as a ``meeting'' for Sunshine Act purposes. As the 1984 Supreme Court decision made clear, however, ``meetings,'' to which the Act's procedural requirements apply, were never intended to include casual, general, informational, or preliminary discussions, so long as the discussions do not effectively predetermine final agency action. These kinds of ``non-Sunshine Act discussions,'' which can be an important part of the work of a multi-member agency, had been foreclosed at NRC since 1977 by the agency's unduly restrictive interpretation of the Sunshine Act. In response to the Supreme Court's clarification of the law, the Commission in 1985 issued an immediately effective rule that revised the definition of ``meeting'' in the NRC's Sunshine Act regulations. To ensure strict conformity with the law, the new NRC rule incorporated verbatim the Supreme Court's definition of ``meeting.'' The rule change drew criticism, however, much of it directed at the fact that it was made immediately effective, with an opportunity to comment only after the fact. To address some of the concerns raised, the NRC informed the Congress that it would not implement the rule until procedures were in place to monitor and keep minutes of all non-Sunshine Act discussions among three or more Commissioners. No such procedures were ever adopted, however, nor was the rule itself implemented, and the issue remained pending from 1985 on. The Commission believes that it is time to bring the issue of the NRC's Sunshine Act rules to a resolution. As noted, because of the many years that have passed since the Commission last addressed this issue, the NRC is providing this notice of its intent finally to implement and use the 1985 rule, and providing 30 days for public comment on the Commission's proposal to implement. The Commission will not modify its current practices, under which no non-Sunshine Act discussions take place, until it has had the opportunity to consider any comments received.
I. Background
On April 30, 1984, the United States Supreme Court issued its first decision interpreting the Government in the Sunshine Act, Federal Communications Commission v. ITT World Communications, 466 U.S. 463. Though the case could have been decided on narrow, fact-specific grounds, the Court used the opportunity to offer guidance on what leading commentators have described as ``one of the most troublesome problems in interpreting the Sunshine Act'': the definition of ``meeting'' as that term is used in the Act. R. Berg and S. Klitzman, An Interpretive Guide to the Government in the Sunshine Act (1978), at 3. The Court rejected the broad view of the term ``meeting'' that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had taken. It declared that the statutory definition of a ``meeting'' contemplated ``discussions that `effectively predetermine official actions.' '' The Court went on:
Such discussions must be ``sufficiently focused on discrete proposals or issues as to cause or be likely to cause the individual participating members to form reasonably firm positions regarding matters pending or likely to arise before the agency.'' 466 U.S. at 471.
The Court reviewed the legislative history, demonstrating how in the process of revising the original bill, Congress had narrowed the Act's scope. In the Court's words, ``the intent of the revision clearly was to permit preliminary discussion among agency members.'' Id. at 471, n.7. The Court explained Congress's reasons for limiting the reach of the Sunshine Act:
Congress in drafting the Act's definition of ``meeting'' recognized that the administrative process cannot be conducted entirely in the public eye. ``[I]nformal background discussions [that] clarify issues and expose varying views'' are a necessary part of an agency's work. [Citation omitted.] The Act's procedural requirements effectively would prevent such discussions and thereby impair normal agency operations without achieving significant public benefit. Section 552b(a)(2) therefore limits the Act's application. * *
*Id. at 469-70. At the time the Supreme Court handed down the ITT decision, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had for almost eight years applied the Government in the Sunshine Act as though it required every discussion of agency business to be conducted as a ``meeting.'' Recognizing that the Supreme Court's guidance indicated that the NRC's interpretation of ``meeting'' had been unduly broad, the NRC's Office of the General Counsel (OGC) advised the Commissioners in May 1984 that the decision seemed significant: the decision was unanimous and it was the first time that the Supreme Court had addressed the Act. OGC suggested that revisions in the NRC's regulations might be appropriate to bring the NRC into line with Congressional intent. Soon after that, in August 1984, the Administrative Conference of the United States (a body, since abolished, to which the Sunshine Act assigned a special role in the implementation of the Act by federal agencies) issued Recommendation 84-3, based upon an extensive study of the Sunshine Act. The Administrative Conference was troubled by what it saw as one harmful effect of the Act on the functioning of the multi- member agencies. Commenting that ``one of the clearest and most significant results of the Government in the Sunshine Act is to diminish the collegial character of the agency decision making process,'' the Administrative Conference recommended that Congress consider whether the Act should be revised. The Conference observed:
Although the legislative history indicates Congress believed that, after the initial period of adjustment, Sunshine would not have a significant inhibiting effect on collegial exchanges, unfortunately this has not been the case.
If Congress decided that revisions were in order, the Conference said, it recommended that agency members be permitted to discuss ``the broad outlines of agency policies and priorities'' in closed meetings. The Administrative Conference did not address the distinction between ``meetings'' and those discussions that are outside the scope of the Act.
II. The NRC's 1985 Rule
On May 21, 1985 (50 FR 20889), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued new regulations implementing the Government in the Sunshine Act. As a legal matter, the NRC could have continued to use the language of its existing regulations, and reinterpreted them in accordance with the Supreme Court's decision. However, the NRC decided that in the interest of openness, it should declare explicitly that its view of the Act's requirements had changed in light of the Court's ruling. The revised rule conforms the definition of ``meeting'' in the Commission's rules to the guidance provided by the Supreme Court by incorporating the very language of the Court's decision into its revised definition. Specifically, it provides, at 10 CFR 9.101(c):
Meeting means the deliberations of at least a quorum of Commissioners where such deliberations determine or result in the joint conduct or disposition of official Commission business, that is, where discussions are sufficiently focused on discrete proposals or issues as to cause or to
[[Page 24938]]
be likely to cause the individual participating members to form reasonably firm positions regarding matters pending or likely to arise before the agency. Deliberations required or permitted by Secs. 9.105. 9.106, or 9.108(c) do not constitute ``meetings'' within this definition.
Under the rule, which was adopted as an immediately effective ``interim'' rule (it was characterized as ``interim'' to reflect the fact that it was being made effective before any comments were received and addressed), with an opportunity for public comment, briefings were excluded from the category of ``meetings.'' In the NRC's pre-1985 regulations, by contrast, briefings were treated as meetings, as a matter of policy. The NRC's 1985 rule proved controversial. In response to Congressional criticism, much of it directed at the Commission's decision to make the rule immediately effective, the Commission assured the Congress that it would conduct no non-Sunshine Act discussions until procedures were in place to govern such discussions. In December 1985, the NRC's Office of the General Counsel forwarded a final rulemaking paper in which comments on the interim rule were analyzed and responded to. However, by the time that the Commission was briefed on the comments, the American Bar Association had announced its intention to address Sunshine Act issues, including matters directly related to the NRC's rulemaking. The Commission therefore decided to withhold action on the matter and to defer actual implementation and use of the 1985 rule pending receipt of the ABA's views.
III. The American Bar Association Acts
In the fall of 1985, William Murane, Chairman of the Administrative Law Section of the American Bar Association, announced that the Council of the Administrative Law Section had decided to involve itself in the controversy over the Sunshine Act and its effect on the collegial character of agency decision making. Administrative Law Review, Fall 1985, Vol. 37, No. 4, at p. v. The Task Force established by the Administrative Law Section ultimately focused on a single issue: the definition of ``meeting'' under the Sunshine Act. Its report and recommendations were accepted by the Administrative Law Section in April 1986 and by the full American Bar Association in February 1987. The ABA's recommendation and report confirmed that the Commission's reading of the Sunshine Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the ITT decision, was legally correct. Moreover, the legal standard set forth in the ABA recommendation incorporated the identical language from the Supreme Court opinion which the NRC had included in its 1985 rule: i.e., the provision stating that for a discussion to be exempt from the definition of ``meeting,'' it must be ``[not] sufficiently focused on discrete proposals or issues as to cause or be likely to cause the individual participating [agency] members to form reasonably firm positions regarding matters pending or likely to arise before the agency.'' Subject to that qualification, the ABA guidelines provide that the definition of ``meeting'' does not include:
(a) Spontaneous casual discussions among agency members of a subject of common interest; (b) Briefings of agency members by staff or outsiders. A key element would be that the agency members be primarily receptors of information or views and only incidentally exchange views with one another; (c) General discussions of subjects which are relevant to an agency's responsibilities but which do not pose specific problems for agency resolution; and (d) Exploratory discussions, so long as they are preliminary in nature, there are no pending proposals for agency action, and the merits of any proposed agency action would be open to full consideration at a later time. <SUP>1</SUP>
\1\ A fuller description of the types of discussions fitting in these four categories may be found at pages 9 to 11 of the ABA report. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The ABA report disposed of the suggestion, advanced by some critics of the NRC's interim rule, ``that the Supreme Court's opinion should be limited to the facts before the Court.'' While it recognized that the case could have been decided on fact-specific grounds, the report observed that:
[I]t cannot be assumed that the Supreme Court got carried away or that it was unaware that the definition of ``meeting'' was controversial and ``one of the most troublesome problems in interpreting the Sunshine Act.'' [Interpretive Guide 3.] We concluded therefore, that the Supreme Court meant what it said in ITT World Communications, and that it intended to provide guidance to agencies and the courts in applying the definition of ``meeting.'' Report at 7.
The ABA report also rejected the argument that because of the ``difficulty of specifying in advance those characteristics of a particular discussion which will cause it to fall short of becoming a meeting,'' the Supreme Court's view of the Act should not become part of agency practice. [Emphasis in the original.] The logic of this argument, said the ABA report, would permit no discussion whatever of agency business except in ``meetings,'' a result which ``seems clearly to us not to have been intended by Congress.'' Report at 8. The report noted that this argument in essence was a claim that agencies should apply a different standard from the one specified by Congress for distinguishing ``meetings'' from discussions that are not ``meetings.'' The ABA explained:
* * * Congress can hardly have gone to such pains to articulate a narrower standard had it not expected the agencies to use the leeway such a standard provides, and if they are to do so, they must attempt to set out in advance, whether by regulation or internal guidelines, the elements or characteristics of a discussion which will cause it to fall short of being a meeting. Report at 8, fn. 9.
The ABA report's conclusion was a measured endorsement of the value of non-Sunshine Act discussions. After stressing that its purpose was not to urge agencies to close discussions now held in open session, the report made clear that its focus, rather, was on the discussions which, because of the Sunshine Act, are never initiated in the first place. It said:
But the fact is that the Sunshine Act has had an inhibiting effect on the initiation of discussions among agency members. This is the conclusion of the Welborn report [to the Administrative Conference], and it is confirmed by our meeting with agency general counsels * * * [T]he Act has made difficult if not impossible the maintenance of close day-to-day working relationships in [five- member and three-member] agencies. * * * We believe that a sensible and sensitive application of the principles announced in the ITT case can ease the somewhat stilted relationships that exist in some agencies. Report at 11-12. [Emphasis in the original.]
The ABA report made clear that it did not regard the opportunity for non-Sunshine Act discussions as a panacea for the Sunshine-caused loss of collegiality which the Administrative Conference had identified, and which the ABA's own inquiry had confirmed. The Report concluded that the impact of loosened restrictions was likely to be ``slight,'' though it saw ``some tendency to increase collegiality * * * to the extent that it would contribute to more normal interpersonal relationships among agency members.'' Report at 12. The Report also observed that collegiality is most important in group decision-making sessions, where the Act's ``meeting'' requirements clearly apply. The ABA report recommended that agencies follow procedures for the monitoring and memorialization of non-Sunshine Act discussions to give assurance to the public that they are staying within the law. The ABA made clear that this was a policy recommendation, not a matter of legal obligation. (The report noted at one
[[Page 24939]]
point that if a discussion ``is not a `meeting,' no announcement or procedures are required because the Act has no application.'' Report at 6.) The ABA recommended that General Counsels brief agency members in advance on the requirements of the law, to assure their familiarity with the restrictions on non-Sunshine Act discussions, and that non- Sunshine Act discussions (other than ``spontaneous casual discussions of a subject of common interest'') be monitored, either by the General Counsel or other agency representatives, and memorialized through notes, minutes, or recordings.
IV. Further Developments
On August 5, 1987, an amendment was offered to the NRC authorization bill to bar the Commission from using any funds in fiscal year 1988 or 1989 ``to hold any Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting in accordance with the interim [Sunshine Act] rule [published in] the Federal Register on May 21, 1985.'' 133 Cong. Rec. H7178 (Aug. 5. 1987).<SUP>2</SUP> As Chairman Philip Sharp of the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce explained, the amendment ``simply neutralizes a rule change.'' The amendment, passed by a voice vote, was not passed by the Senate and thus was not enacted into law. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The text of the amendment and the colloquy surrounding its adoption by the House of Representatives are also reprinted in full in SECY-88-25. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Commission took no further action regarding the Sunshine Act after 1985, and the issue was allowed to become dormant. While the ``interim'' rule of 1985 has remained in effect and on the books, at 10 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 9, the Commission has continued to apply its pre-1985 rules. Accordingly, all discussions of business by three or more Commissioners have continued to be treated as ``meetings,'' whether formal or informal, deliberative or informational, decision-oriented or preliminary, planned or spontaneous. No non-Sunshine Act discussions of any kind have been held. In the meantime, some other agencies adopted and implemented rules that permit informal discussions that clarify issues and expose varying views but do not effectively predetermine official actions, discussions of the sort that the Court's ITT decision said are a ``necessary part of an agency's work.'' 466 U.S. at 469-70. See, for example, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission's (OSHRC) and Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board's (DNFSB) definitions of ``meeting'', at 29 CFR 2203.2(d) (50 FR 51679; 1985) and 10 CFR 1704.2(d)(5) (56 FR 9609; 1991), respectively. In February 1995, Commissioner Steven M.H. Wallman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, joined by twelve other Commissioners or former Commissioners of four independent regulatory agencies (the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Communications Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Federal Trade Commission), wrote to the Administrative Conference of the United States to urge a reevaluation of the Sunshine Act. The group expressed strong support for the Act's objective of ensuring greater public access to agency decision-making, but questioned whether the Act, as currently structured and interpreted, was achieving those goals. The group said that the Act has a ``chilling effect on the willingness and ability of agency members to engage in an open and creative discussion of issues.'' It continued:
In almost all cases, agency members operating under the Act come to a conclusion about a matter * * * without the benefit of any collective deliberations. [Footnote omitted.] This is directly in conflict with the free exchange of views that we believe is necessary to enable an agency member to fulfill adequately his or her delegated duties, and to be held accountable for his or her actions. We are also of the view that the Act is at odds with the underlying principles of multi-headed agencies. These agencies were created to provide a number of benefits, including collegial decision making where the collective thought process of a number of tenured, independent appointees would be better than one. Unfortunately, the Act often turns that goal on its head, resulting in greater miscommunication and poorer decision making by precluding, as a matter of fact, the members from engaging in decision making in a collegial way. As a result, the Act inadvertently transforms multi-headed agencies into bodies headed by a number of individually acting members. [Footnote omitted.]
The group identified as one problem the issue confronted by the NRC's 1985 rulemaking: that ``many agencies'' avoided the problem of distinguishing between ``preliminary conversations, which are outside of the Act, and deliberations, which trigger the Act,'' by a blanket prohibition, as a matter of general policy, against any conversation among a quorum of agency members, except in ``meetings'' under the Sunshine Act. While such bright-line policies were easy to apply and effective, the letter said, they were often over-inclusive, barring discussion of even the most preliminary views and often impeding the process of agency decision-making. The Administrative Conference, then soon to be abolished, took up the group's challenge, assembled a special committee to study the Sunshine Act, and convened a meeting in September, 1995, to discuss the Act, its problems, and possible remedies. The Conference appeared to be looking for some compromise, acceptable both to the Federal agencies and to representatives of the media, that would acknowledge the Act's impairment of the collegial process and try to remedy that by giving greater flexibility to agencies in applying the Act. No consensus developed, however. The Administrative Conference, apparently recognizing that there would be no meeting of the minds between critics and defenders of the Sunshine Act, did not pursue its efforts to find common ground.
V. Conclusions
The Commission has taken into account information from a number of quarters, as well as its own experience in implementing the Sunshine Act. It has considered, among other things, the language of the statute and its legislative history; the Supreme Court's decision in the ITT case; Recommendation 84-3 of the Administrative Conference of the United States; the findings of the American Bar Association; actual practice at other federal agencies, including the DNFSB and OSHRC; and the advice letter from numerous Commissioners and former Commissioners of four other independent regulatory agencies. Based on all of these, the Commission believes that while the Sunshine Act's objectives, which include increasing agency openness and fostering public understanding of how the multi-member agencies do business, are laudable, it is important to recognize exactly what it was that Congress legislated. The legislative history, as the Supreme Court explained, shows that Congress carefully weighed the competing considerations involved: the public's right of access to significant information, on the one hand, and the agencies' need to be able to function in an efficient and collegial manner on the other. Congress struck a balance: it did not legislate openness to the maximum extent possible, nor did it provide unfettered discretion to agencies to offer only as much public access as they might choose. Rather, it crafted a system in which the Sunshine Act would apply only to ``meetings,'' a term carefully defined to exclude preliminary, informal, and informational discussions, and then provided a series of exemptions to permit closure of certain
[[Page 24940]]
categories of ``meetings.'' Unfortunately, in part because of advice from the Justice Department in 1977 that later proved to be erroneous, the Commission's original Sunshine Act regulations did not give due recognition to the balance contemplated by Congress. Rather, the regulations mistakenly took the approach that every discussion among three or more Commissioners, no matter how far removed from being ``discussions that effectively predetermine official actions,'' in the Supreme Court's words, should be considered a ``meeting.'' 466 U.S. at 471. At the time that the Commission changed its Sunshine Act rules in 1985, many of its critics appeared to believe that if the rule change were implemented, numerous discussions currently held in public session would instead be held behind closed doors. This was a misapprehension. Indeed, if there is one point that needs to be emphasized above any other, it is that the objective of the 1985 rule is not that discussions heretofore held in public session should become non- Sunshine Act discussions; rather, the focus of the 1985 rule is on the discussions that currently do not take place at all. This was also the focus of the American Bar Association and the authors of the 1995 letter to the Administrative Conference. The Commission believes that non-Sunshine Act discussions can benefit the agency and thereby benefit the public which the NRC serves. This view did not originate with the Commission by any means. On the contrary, as described above, the starting point of the Commission's analysis is Congress's recognition that `` `informal background discussions [that] clarify issues and expose varying views' are a necessary part of an agency's work,'' and that to apply the Act's requirements to them would, in the words of the Supreme Court, ``impair normal agency operations without achieving significant public benefit.'' 466 U.S. 463, 469. For convenience, the currently effective (but not implemented) 1985 rule is included in this notice and the Commission is providing 30 days for public comment on its stated intent to implement the 1985 rule. No non-Sunshine Act discussions will be held during the period for public comment and for a 21-day period following close of the comment period to allow the Commission to consider the public comments. Absent further action by the Commission, non-Sunshine Act discussions may be held commencing 21 days after the close of the comment period. From previous comments, the following are possible questions about the 1985 rule, and the Commission's responses to those questions. 1. What types of discussions does the Commission have in mind, and what does it seek to accomplish with this rule? Answer: First and foremost, the Commission would like to be able to get together as a body with no fixed agenda other than to ask such questions as: ``How is the Commission functioning as an agency? How has it performed over the past year? What have been its major successes and failures? What do we see coming in the next year? In the next five years, and ten years? How well are our components serving us? Are we getting our message to the industry we regulate and to the public? Are we working effectively with the Congress?'' This kind of ``big picture'' discussion can be invaluable. One of the regrettable effects of the Sunshine Act, as documented as long ago as 1984, in Administrative Conference Recommendation 84-3, has been the loss of collective responsibility at the agencies, and the shift of authority from Presidentially appointed and accountable agency members to the agencies' staffs. The Commission believes that ``big picture'' discussions served a valuable function in pre-Sunshine Act days at NRC and can do so again, helping to assure that the Commissioners serve the public with maximum effectiveness and accountability. The Commission believes that some kinds of general, exploratory discussions can be useful in generating ideas. Such ideas, if developed into more specific proposals, will become the subject of subsequent ``meetings.'' The Commission recognizes that it would be incumbent on the participants in such non-Sunshine Act discussions to assure that they remain preliminary and do not effectively predetermine final agency action. The Commission believes that the guidelines proposed by the American Bar Association are the most suitable criteria for assuring compliance with the Act's requirements. The Commission also believes that spontaneous casual discussions of matters of mutual interest--for example, a recent news story relating to nuclear regulation--can be beneficial, helping both to ensure that Commissioners are informed of matters relevant to their duties and to promote sound working relationships among Commissioners. 2. Is it really clear that the law permits non-Sunshine Act discussions? Answer: Yes, beyond any reasonable doubt. Congress so provided, a unanimous Supreme Court has so found, the American Bar Association Task Force on the Sunshine Act agreed, the Council of the Administrative Law Section of the American Bar Association adopted the Task Force's views, and the ABA's full House of Delegates accepted the Administrative Law Section's report and recommendation. 3. Didn't the ITT case involve a trip to Europe by less than a quorum of FCC members, and couldn't the case be viewed as relating to those specific facts? Answer: The case was resolved on two separate grounds. Although the Supreme Court did not have to reach the issue of what constitutes a ``meeting'' under the Sunshine Act, it did so, in order (so the ABA report concluded) to provide guidance to agencies and the courts on a difficult aspect of Sunshine Act law. In addressing the ambiguity in the definition of ``meeting'' and thus the uncertainty as to the Act's scope, the Supreme Court was acting to resolve a problem that had been apparent literally from the day of its enactment into law, as President Ford's statement in signing the bill, on September 13, 1976, makes clear. He wrote:
I wholeheartedly support the objective of government in the sunshine. I am concerned, however, that in a few instances unnecessarily ambiguous and perhaps harmful provisions were included in S.5. * * * The ambiguous definition of the meetings covered by this act, the unnecessary rigidity of the act's procedures, and the potentially burdensome requirement for the maintenance of transcripts are provisions which may require modification. Government in the Sunshine Act--S.5 (P.L. 94-409), Source Book: Legislative History, Text, and Other Documents (1976), at 832.
4. On the meaning of ``meeting'' as used in the Sunshine Act, aren't the views of Congressional sponsors of the legislation entitled to consideration? Answer: Yes, when they appear in the pre-enactment legislative history. In the present case, for example, the Supreme Court cited the remarks of the House sponsor of the Sunshine Act, Representative Dante Fascell, who introduced the report of the Conference Committee to the House. He explained to his colleagues that the conferees had narrowed the Senate's definition of ``meeting'' in order ``to permit casual discussions between agency members that might invoke the bill's requirements'' under the Senate's approach. 122 Cong. Rec. 28474 (1976), cited at 466 U.S. 463, 470 n.7. Likewise, Senator Chiles, the Senate sponsor of the bill, described the definition of ``meeting'' in the final bill as a ``compromise version.'' 122 Cong. Rec. S15043 (Aug. 31, 1976), reprinted in
[[Page 24941]]
Government in the Sunshine Act Source Book. In any case, however, once the Supreme Court has declared what the law requires, federal agencies are bound to follow its guidance. 5. Is there any basis in the legislative history for the notion that non-Sunshine Act discussions are not only permissible, but useful? Answer: Yes. The point was made forcefully by Professor Jerre Williams (subsequently a judge on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals), presenting the views of the American Bar Association. He testified, in Congressional hearings on the bill:
One of the most critical facets of the American Bar Association view has to do with the definition of ``meeting.'' The ABA firmly agrees that policy must not be determined by informal closed-door caucuses in advance of open meetings. On the other hand, however, the ABA believes it important that ``chance encounters and informational or exploratory discussions'' by agency members should not constitute meetings unless such discussions are ``relatively formal'' and ``predetermine'' agency action. It should be a matter of concern to all those interested in good government that agency members be allowed to engage in informal work sessions at which they may ``brainstorm'' and discuss various innovative proposals without public evaluation or censorship of their search for new and creative solutions in important policy areas. All persons who have engaged in policymaking have participated in such informal sessions. Sometimes outlandish suggestions are advanced, hopefully humorous suggestions abound. But out of all this may come a new, creative, important idea. There is time enough to expose that idea to public scrutiny once it has been adequately evaluated as a viable alternative which ought to be seriously considered. [Emphasis added.] Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, 94th Cong., First Session (Nov. 6 and 12, 1975), at 114-15.
6. Why is the NRC paying so much attention to the ITT case and ignoring the Philadelphia Newspapers case which dealt specifically with NRC? Answer: First of all, the ITT case dealt with the issue of what is a ``meeting,'' whereas Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. NRC, 727 F.2d 1195 (D.C. Cir. 1984). dealt with an unrelated issue: whether a particular ``meeting'' could be closed under the Sunshine Act. Secondly, the ITT case was decided by the Supreme Court, and as such would be entitled to greater weight than the decision of one panel of a Court of Appeals, even if they were on the same issue. Thirdly, the full D.C. Circuit, sitting en banc, has severely criticized the Philadelphia Newspapers decision for digressing from Congressional intent and thereby reaching an ``untoward result.'' Clark-Cowlitz Joint Operating Agency v. FERC, 798 F.2d 499, 503 n.5 (D.C. Cir. 1984). 7. If it is so clear that non-Sunshine Act discussions are permissible, why did the NRC interpret the Act differently for so many years? Answer: In part, the answer lies in the fact that the Justice Department, in the years 1977 to 1981, took an expansive view of the definition of ``meeting.'' (See the letter from Assistant Attorney General Barbara A. Babcock reprinted in the Interpretive Guide at p. 120.) In contrast, Berg and Klitzman, the authors of the Interpretive Guide, believed that Congress had consciously narrowed the definition. (See the Interpretive Guide at 6-7.) Because the Justice Department defends Sunshine Act suits in the courts, its view of the law's requirements carried considerable weight. The Supreme Court's decision in the ITT case resolved the issue definitively. 8. Didn't the NRC acknowledge in its 1977 rulemaking that it was going beyond the law's requirements in the interest of the Act's ``presumption in favor of opening agency business to public observation''? Why isn't that rationale still applicable today? Answer: There are at least three factors today that were not present in 1977: (1) the Supreme Court's ITT decision, which makes clear that Congress gave the agencies authority to hold such discussions because it thought they were an important part of doing the public's business; (2) the Administrative Conference recommendation stating that the Sunshine Act has had a much more deleterious effect on the collegial nature of agency decision making than had been foreseen; and (3) the American Bar Association report stating that Congress gave the agencies the latitude to hold non-Sunshine Act discussions in the expectation they would use it, and suggesting that the use of such discussions might help alleviate some of the problems caused by the Sunshine Act. Moreover, the Commission has had the benefit of its own and other agencies' experience under the Act. It should be emphasized that the Commission, by implementing this rule, is not implicitly or explicitly urging that the Sunshine Act be altered; rather, it is saying that the Sunshine Act should not be applied even more restrictively than Congress intended when it enacted the statute. 9. Why does the NRC put such reliance on the ABA report, when the ABA made a point of saying that it was not urging the closing of any meetings now open? Answer: The question misses the point of the ABA comment. In the context in which the comment appears in the ABA report, it is clear that the ABA was expressing its concern for the discussions that currently do not happen at all, either in open or in closed session, because the Sunshine Act inhibits the initiation of discussions. Its point was similar to that made by Professor Williams in the hearings on the bill in 1975, when he urged that agency members not be deprived of the opportunity to generate ideas in ``brainstorming sessions''--ideas which may subsequently be the subject of ``meetings'' if they turn out to warrant formal consideration. As we have emphasized above, the Commission is not proposing to close any meetings currently held as open public meetings. 10. How does the Commission intend to differentiate between ``meetings'' and ``non-Sunshine Act discussions'? Answer: The Commission intends to abide by the guidance provided by the Court in FCC v. ITT World Communications and contained in our regulations, in differentiating between ``meetings'' and non-Sunshine Act discussions. Applying this guidance, the Commission may consider conducting a non-Sunshine Act discussion when the discussion will be casual, general, informational, or preliminary, so long as the discussion will not effectively predetermine final agency action. Whenever the Commission anticipates that a discussion seems likely to be ``sufficiently focused on discreet proposals or issues as to cause the individual participating members to form reasonably firm positions regarding matters pending or likely to arise before the agency,'' the Commission will treat those discussions as ``meetings.'' See id. at 471. Further, to ensure that we appropriately implement the Supreme Court guidance in differentiating between non-Sunshine Act discussions and meetings, the Commission will consider the ABA's remarks on the seriousness of this task. For instance, the ABA cautioned that a non- Sunshine Act discussion ``does not pose specific problems for agency resolution'' and agency ``members are not deliberating in the sense of confronting and weighing choices.'' Report at 9-11. Some specific examples of the kinds of topics that might be the subject of non-Sunshine Act discussions would include generalized ``big picture'' discussions on such matters as the following: ``How well is the agency functioning, what are our successes and
[[Page 24942]]
failures, what do we see as major challenges in the next five and ten years, what is the state of our relations with the public, industry, Congress, the press?' Preliminary, exploratory discussions that generate ideas might include, for example, ``Is there more that we could be doing through the Internet to inform the public and receive public input? How does our use of the Internet compare with what other agencies are doing?'' Such ideas, if followed up with specific proposals, would become the subject of later ``meetings'' within the meaning of the Sunshine Act. Spontaneous, casual discussions of matters of mutual interest could include discussions of a recent news story relating to NRC-licensed activities, or a Commissioner's insights and personal impressions from a visit to a licensed facility or other travel. Under this heading, three Commissioners would be permitted to have a cup of coffee together and to talk informally about matters that include business-related topics. Under the Commission's pre-1985 rule, such informal get- togethers were precluded. Briefings in which Commissioners are provided information but do not themselves deliberate on any proposal for action could include routine status updates from the staff. Discussions of business-related matters not linked to any particular proposal for Commission action might include an upcoming Congressional oversight hearing or a planned all-hands meeting for employees. 11. Apart from the issue of the definition of ``meeting,'' are there other changes that the interested public should be aware of? Answer: Yes, one minor procedural point. The 1985 rule includes a provision stating that transcripts of closed Commission meetings will be reviewed for releasability only when there is a request from a member of the public for the transcript. Reviewing transcripts for releasability when no one is interested in reading them would be a waste of agency resources and thus of the public's money. 12. Will the Commission adopt any particular internal procedures for its non-Sunshine Act discussions? Answer: For an initial 6-month period of non-Sunshine Act discussions, the Commission will maintain a record of the date and subject of, and participants in, any scheduled non-Sunshine Act discussions that three or more Commissioners attend. After the six- month period, the Commission will revisit the usefulness of the record- keeping practice.
List of Subjects in 10 CFR Part 9
Criminal penalties, Freedom of information, Privacy, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements, Sunshine Act.
The May 21, 1985 (50 FR 20863), rule is currently effective but has never been implemented. For the convenience of the reader, the Commission is republishing the text of that rule.
PART 9--PUBLIC RECORDS
1. The authority citation for part 9 continues to read as follows:
Authority: Sec. 161, 68 Stat. 948, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2201); sec. 201, 88 Stat. 1242, as amended (42 U.S.C. 5841). Subpart A is also issued 5 U.S.C. ; 31 U.S.C 9701; Pub. L. 99- 570. Subpart B is also issued under 5 U.S.C. 552a. Subpart C is also issued under 5 U.S.C. 552b.
2. In Sec. 9.101, paragraph (c) is republished for the convenience of the reader as follows:
Sec. 9.101 Definitions.
* * * * * (c) Meeting means the deliberations of at least a quorum of Commissioners where such deliberations determine or result in the joint conduct or disposition of official Commission business, that is, where discussions are sufficiently focused on discrete proposals or issues as to cause or to be likely to cause the individual participating members to form reasonably firm positions regarding matters pending or likely to arise before the agency. Deliberations required or permitted by Secs. 9.105, 9.106, or 9.108(c), do not constitute ``meetings'' within this definition. * * * * * 3. In Sec. 9.108, paragraph (c) is republished for the convenience of the reader as follows:
Sec. 9.108 Certification, transcripts, recordings and minutes
* * * * * (c) In the case of any meeting closed pursuant to Sec. 9.104, the Secretary of the Commission, upon the advice of the General Counsel and after consultation with the Commission, shall determine which, if any, portions of the electronic recording, transcript or minutes and which, if any, items of information withheld pursuant to Sec. 9.105(c) contain information which should be withheld pursuant to Sec. 9.104, in the event that a request for the recording, transcript, or minutes is received within the period during which the recording, transcript, or minutes must be retained, under paragraph (b) of this section. * * * * * Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 4th day of May, 1999.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Annette Vietti-Cook, Secretary of the Commission. [FR Doc. 99-11669 Filed 5-7-99; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
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Message: 2 Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 21:27:48 -0400
Subject: NucNews-0 Brief 6/03/99
[Please address replies to articles 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 6/03/99 - DU-Puerto Rico (2); DU-BBC; China/Korea; Tiananmen NucNews-2 6/03/99 - Y2K-Europe; India/Kashmir; UK Nuc Accident Dounreay; Dungeness; Sellafield NucNews-3 6/03/99 - Chernobyl; Uzbek Poison Island/Anthrax NucNews-4 6/03/99 - US - Senate vote Nuc Arms; No New Licenses since TMI; Treaty in US Limbo; Nuc Waste Savannah River - Yucca Mountain; Nuc Contractors Deal; NucNews-5 6/03/99 - Activism; Secrets; Cox Report Questions; Sierra Club "Bubba" Antinuc Ads; Hackers; NucNews-6 6/03/99 - S.Africa Abolition Petition; X-Ray de-mining; UN/Iraq; Russia, China: Stop Bombing!; World Court Declines halt NATO bombing; NucNews-7 6/03/99 - Kosovo UN report; Serbia ok peace plan; Gunmakers Lawsuit; Cuban lawsuit
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1. Navy Admits Firing Uranium Shells By Michelle Faul, Associated Press, June 2, 1999 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990602/V000509-060299-idx.html
2. Uranium bullets fired in error in Puerto Rico (Reuters) 06:21 p.m Jun 02, 1999 Eastern, By Patricia Zengerle http://senghor.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR +radioactiv%3F%3F%3F&fs=nws&to=thirty
3. 'Your Views' on the European elections Wednesday, June 2, 1999 BBC http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/euros%5F99/your%5Fviews/newsid %5F358000/358688.stm .. there should be a huge turnout against New Labour and its policy of warfare - we need to support the health and education of the ordinary population across Europe, and not spend £2m a day on the insanity of depleted uranium and cluster bombing of the Balkans. John, England -- High-tech war in Kosovo 08 May 99 | Sci/Tech
http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special%5Freport/1998/kosovo/newsid%5 F337000/337679.stm -- Pentagon confirms depleted uranium use 08 May 99 | Sci/Tech http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_337000/337855.stm -- Nato bombs cut Serb power 03 May 99 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_334000/334249.stm -- UN rights chief slams Nato bombings 30 Apr 99 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_332000/332745.stm -- Analysis: Escalating the war 28 Apr 99 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_330000/330456.stm -- World: Europe - Nato pounds Serbs ... Ecological disaster warning April 25, 1999 BBC http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid%5F327000/327895.stm
4. China Opens Another Door to an Isolated North Korea By ERIK ECKHOLM, New York Times, June 3, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/060399nkorea-china.html BEIJING -- North Korea's No. 2 political leader arrived in Beijing on Wednesday for the first high-level meeting between the two Communist allies in eight years, talks that will be closely watched by the United States and China's Asian neighbors. -- North Korea Unresponsive in U.S. Talks, Envoy Reports (May 30, 1999) http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/053099korea-us.html -- U.S. Aide Due in North Korea With Deal to Lift Sanctions (May 21, 1999) http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/052199korea-sanctions.html
5. Remember Tiananmen Embassy Row By James Morrison THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 3, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/internatl/embassy.html Chinese Ambassador Li Zhaoxing might have hoped to distract attention from the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre as he made the rounds of news shows, denouncing the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. But he is unlikely to forget it when demonstrators converge on the Chinese Embassy today to commemorate the protest that ended when Chinese tanks broke up the pro-democracy movement in Beijing.... -- Beijing Uses Press, Police to Deter Tiananmen Memorials By Michael Laris, June 3, 1999 Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/03/167l-060399-idx.html BEIJING, June 2--China's Communist government employed its police and propaganda machinery today in a double-barreled warning to the country's fractured dissident movement that it should not try to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the violent army crackdown on democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.... -- China Allows No Echoes of Tiananmen June 3, 1999 Associated Press http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Tiananmen-Erased.html --- Chinese Police Detain Dissidents 8:47 a.m. EDT June 3, 1999, Associated Press http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-China-Tiananmen.html --- Lying About Tiananmen Editorials, Washington Post, June 3, 1999 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/03/124l-060399-idx.html -- T-Day Plus 10 Years June 3, 1999 New York Times ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/safire/060399safi.html -- Tiananmen Defense By Jim Hoagland, Thursday, June 3, 1999; Page A27 Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/03/121l-060399-idx.html -- Party Paper in China Makes Rare Mention of '89 Protests New York Times, June 3, 1999, By ERIK ECKHOLM http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/china-tiananmen.html ... One popular Chinese-language Internet chatroom, at www.sohu.com, announced that it was shutting down for 10 days, ostensibly to "improve the system," but possibly under pressure to avoid discussions about the 1989 crackdown in which army troops killed hundreds of civilians....
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6. EU Worried About Y2K Hitting Nuclear Power Plants 05:36 a.m. Jun 03, 1999 Eastern, By Suzanne Perry (Reuters) http://senghor.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR +radioactiv%3F%3F%3F&fs=nws&to=thirty
7. India's Fernandes Sees No Nuclear Danger Mon 31 May 22:08 Reuters News Service http://senghor.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR +radioactiv%3F%3F%3F&fs=nws&to=thirty By Chaitanya Kalbag NEW DELHI - India's Defense Minister George Fernandes said Monday he was sure Pakistan's military chiefs would not resort to the use of nuclear weapons against India because they would ``liquidate'' their own country in the process.... --- Kashmir, the Imperiled Paradise By SALMAN RUSHDIE, June 3, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/oped/03rush.html
8. UK - Nuclear workers monitored after fire Firefighters were called to a uranium fire at Dounreay http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid%5F354000/354543.stm Photo - http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/350000/images/_354543_dounreay300.jpg Five workers at the Dounreay nuclear plant are being monitored for possible radioactive contamination after a fire at the plant. The five had been handling a package of uranium waste when it ignited and firefighters were called in to extinguish the blaze... -- Photos: http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/350000/images/_354543_dounreay300.jpg http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/350000/images/_354543_dounreay150.gif -- Relevant Stories -- UK New nuclear scare at Dounreay 23 Dec 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_241000/241649.stm -- UK More scientists for Dounreay 30 Nov 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_224000/224520.stm -- UK Strategy for 'unsafe' Dounreay 30 Nov 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_224000/224520.stm -- UK Experts question safety at nuclear plant 01 Sep 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_162000/162330.stm -- Health Dounreay under the microscope 31 Aug 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_161000/161686.stm -- UK Politics MPs criticise Dounreay 'secrecy' 28 Jul 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_140000/140949.stm -- UK Politics Government urged to abandon reprocessing 22 Jul 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_137000/137275.stm -- UK Greenpeace outcry over Brent Spar waste 12 Jul 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_131000/131466.stm
9. Nuclear power station oil leak [Dungeness B] 31 Jul 98 | UK http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_143000/143031.stm -- Relevant Stories -- UK Politics Government condemned for energy policy "failure" 09 Jun 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_109000/109590.stm -- UK Dounreay 'lost enough uranium for 12 bombs' 02 Jun 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_105000/105298.stm -- UK Dounreay's £200m clean-up 31 Mar 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_72000/72030.stm -- UK Sellafield pigeons radioactive hazard - Greenpeace 12 Mar 98 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_64000/64833.stm
10. Health -- Study lifts nuclear industry cancer fears May 27, 1999 Published at 23:54 GMT 00:54 UK BBC http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid%5F354000/354560.stm Children of workers at nuclear plants are no more likely to develop cancers, a study has concluded.... -- Photo Sellafield: http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/350000/images/_354560_300sellafield.jpg -- Relevant Stories [This one got to me - it couldn't be the plutonium from Sellafield, it must be the diesel fumes or paint....] -- Health Boats blamed for leukaemia 19 Apr 99 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_323000/323289.stm -- Cloned embryos 'could treat leukaemia' 31 Mar 99 | Health http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_308000/308341.stm -- Health Uranium blamed for Gulf War Syndrome 02 Feb 99 | http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_270000/270800.stm -- Internet Links -- Leukaemia information http://www.patient.org.uk/cancer.htm -- British Nuclear Fuels PLC http://www.bnfl.com/ns-home.html -- Health Effects of high-level radiation exposure http://radefx.bcm.tmc.edu/ionizing/subject/risk/acute.htm -- British Medical Journal http://www.bmj.com
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11. Ukraine sees $120-$160 mln grant for Chernobyl cover 01:01 p.m Jun 02, 1999 Eastern (Reuters) http://senghor.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR +radioactiv%3F%3F%3F&fs=nws&to=thirty KIEV, June 2 - Ukraine hopes to get a grant of $120-$160 million by the end of July to continue urgent work on the sarcophagus covering a destroyed reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, an official said on Wednesday.... -- Chernobyl - a disaster recalled May 24, 1999 Published at 09:59 GMT 10:59 UK BBC - Sci/Tech http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid%5F351000/351368.stm -- Chernobyl legacy mounts 24 May 99 | Sci/Tech By Alex Kirby, News Online BBC http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_351000/351286.stm A senior Ukrainian Government scientist, Dr Georgiy Lisichenco, says some of the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster will not peak until the second half of the next century. -- Kiev: The grey reality 10 May 99 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_340000/340009.stm -- Europe's next Chernobyl? 26 Apr 99 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_328000/328631.stm -- Demonstrations in Ukraine and Belarus to mark anniversary of Chernobyl disaster 25 Apr 99 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_328000/328276.stm -- Machine in the tomb 18 Nov 98 | Sci/Tech http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_216000/216764.stm -- Chernobyl children face immune system disease 04 Sep 98 | Health http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_164000/164740.stm -- 'Close Chernobyl before 2000' 23 Jul 98 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_138000/138365.stm -- Chernobyl (OECD Nuclear Energy Agency) http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/chernobyl/chernobyl.html -- Chernobyl (Uranium Institute) http://www.uilondon.org/chernidx.htm -- Chernobyl Children's Project UK http://www.zoo.co.uk/~z0001991/
12. POISON ISLAND: A SPECIAL REPORT At Bleak Asian Site, Killer Germs Survive By JUDITH MILLER, June 2, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/060299anthrax-island.html VOZROZHDENIYE ISLAND, Uzbekistan -- In the spring of 1988, germ scientists 850 miles east of Moscow ... in the city of Sverdlovsk ... hundreds of tons of anthrax bacteria -- enough to destroy the world many times over -- [were loaded] into giant stainless-steel canisters ... onto a train two dozen cars long ... almost a thousand miles across Russia and Kazakhstan.... Here Russian soldiers dug huge pits and poured the sludge into the ground, burying the germs and, Moscow hoped, a grave political threat.... -- Related Articles -- Tests With Anthrax Raise Fears That American Vaccine Can Be Defeated (March 26, 1998) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/032698anthrax-vaccine.html -- Arrests Highlight Growing Threat of Bioweapons (Feb. 21, 1998) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/022198anthrax-primer.html
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13. For the Record: NUCLEAR ARMS Vote, Senate NUCLEAR ARMS - For: 56 / Against: 44 Thomas' Roll Call Report Syndicate, June 3, 1999; Page M06 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/03/072l-060399-idx.html Here's how some major bills fared recently in Congress and how local members of Congress voted, as provided by Thomas' Roll Call Report Syndicate. NV means Not Voting...
14. THE QUIZ Thursday, June 3, 1999; Page A25 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/03/135l-060399-idx.html How many construction licenses for new nuclear power plants have been issued since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979? Answer: None, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. However, since the accident, 58 individual reactor units at various sites have been issued "operating permits," the last step in a nuclear plant's licensing....
15. Nuke Treaty Remains in Senate Limbo By Tom Raum, June 2, 1999; 2:22 a.m. EDT Associated Press http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990602/V000201-060299-idx.html http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Treaty-Games.html WASHINGTON (AP) -- Arms-control advocates suggest a nuclear test ban treaty languishing in the Senate could, if ratified, make it harder for China to take its acquired nuclear-weapons technology to the next level....
16. Radioactive Waste Disposal Fails [Savannah River] WASHINGTON IN BRIEF Compiled from reports by staff writer Michael A. Fletcher and the Associated Press. Thursday, June 3, 1999; Page A06 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/03/154l-060399-idx.html After spending nearly $500 million, the Energy Department acknowledged yesterday that a crucial stage in the disposal of millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste is a failure and should have been abandoned years ago.... -- Failure in nuclear waste disposal cited USA Today June 3,1999 http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncswed05.htm
17. US to Skip Step in Nuclear Disposal By H. Josef Hebert Associated Press Writer Wednesday, June 2, 1999; 2:09 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990602/V000566-060299-idx.htmll WASHINGTON (AP) -- After 16 years of experiments, the Energy Department has abandoned a key step in its process to vitrify and store millions of gallons of highly radioactive nuclear waste at a nuclear weapons facility in South Carolina.... Energy Secretary Bill Richardson decided last week to seek a new private contractor to examine alternatives to the failed process that had been abandoned because it was found to produce explosive gases, the officials said.... -- U.S. Sees Flaw in Safe Storing of Atom Waste By MATTHEW L. WALD, June 2, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/project-shutdown.html
[Opposing Views on Yucca Mountain]
18. Nuke Waste Site Safety Questioned June 2, 1999 Associated Press http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Yucca-Flooding.html BOSTON (AP) -- Signs of ancient groundwater flooding at the proposed Yucca Mountain site for nuclear waste in Nevada could put the project's safety in question, a Russian scientist says. ... -- Scientists: Potential Nev. Nuke Waste Site Stable 02:24 a.m. Jun 03, 1999 Eastern By Patrick Connole http://senghor.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR +radioactiv%3F%3F%3F&fs=nws&to=thirty WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Geological Survey scientists said Wednesday a proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada is safe from flooding, furthering the case for making Yucca Mountain the nation's permanent waste site next decade....
19. Avondale Nearing Shipbuilder Deal By Alan Sayre AP Business Writer Tuesday, June 1, 1999; 6:36 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990601/V000011-060199-idx.html NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Avondale Industries Inc., a major Navy shipbuilder, is prepared to accept a $500 million cash buyout offer from defense contractor Litton Industries Inc., but is giving a rival bidder two days to top it. Avondale, based in New Orleans, earlier agreed to merge with Newport News Shipbuilding in a $470 million stock swap deal....
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20. Flash Campaigns: Online Activism at Warp Speed By REBECCA FAIRLEY RANEY June 3, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/06/cyber/articles/03campaign.html Related Sites -- Benton Foundation - http://www.benton.org MoveOn - http://www.moveon.org Libertarian Party - http://www.lp.org Stop the War Now - http://www.stopthewarnow.com Issue Dynamics - http://www.idi.net E-rate Action - http://erateaction.policy.net
21. Spilling Our Nuclear Secrets New York Times, June 3, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/ldasch.html To the Editor: ... TOM DASCHLE Senate Democratic Leader Washington, May 28, 1999 ...CHU-YUAN CHENG Muncie, Ind., May 31, 1999 ... professor of economics at Ball State University. ...China has only about 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles. The United States has about 7,000 nuclear warheads; China has only 400.... -- Related Article -- Spying Isn't the Only Way to Learn About Nukes (May 30) http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/053099china-review.html -- On Unofficial Level, at Least, Chinese Value Ties to the U.S. (May 27) http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/052799china-us.html
22. Follow Up the Cox Report New York Times, May 27, 1999, William Safire http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/safire/052799safi.html ... Here are a few questions for investigators in both houses of Congress to pose: ... to Samuel Berger ... Bill Richardson ... Louis Freeh ... Tom Daschle ... Dan Bennet ... George Tenet ... Richard Shelby and Bob Kerrey ... Robert Toricelli ... -- Nuke irony: Stronger China benefits U.S., experts say Eric Rosenberg, San Francisco EXAMINER WASHINGTON BUREAU, May 31, 1999 http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/05/ 31/NEWS859.dtl
23. 'Bubba' Anti-Nuke Ads Don't Bomb By Jenny Coyle, The Planet, June 1999 Volume 6, Number 5 http://www.sierraclub.org:80/planet/199905/beat.html A fictional character named "Bubba" grabbed the attention of South Carolina residents in April with a series of Sierra Club radio ads objecting to the state's hunger for other states' nuclear waste....
24. Hackers Spur Pentagon To Bolster Its Security By John Schwartz Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 2, 1999; Page A02 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/02/141l-060299-idx.html -- White House Warns Hackers They Will Be Punished Updated 12:27 AM ET June 2, 1999 By Tim Loughran http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990602/00/net-internet-hackers WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Annoyed by a recent wave of attacks against official U.S. government Web sites, the White House Tuesday warned hackers who targeted federal Internet sites they would be caught and punished.... -- Federal Cybercrime Unit Hunts for Hackers By MATT RICHTEL - June 2, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/mo/biztech/articles/02hack.html
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25. NUCLEAR-PETITION METROPOLITAN MAYOR SIGNS ANTI-NUCLEAR PETITION ANC, South Africa, CAPE TOWN 31 May 1999, Sapa http://www.anc.org.za:80/ancdocs/briefing/nw19990601/27.html Cape Metropolitan Council mayor William Bantom is to add his name to the State of the World Forum's mayors' list for the worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons.
26. Loch Harris' ChemTech Physicist to Address Nuclear Conference 02:23 p.m Jun 01, 1999 Eastern /PRNewswire/ http://senghor.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR +radioactiv%3F%3F%3F&fs=nws&to=thirty ... Croatian officials who were prominent participants insisted on inviting a paper from Dr. Henry Blair, noted physicist for Chemical Detection Technologies, Inc. (ChemTech), into the program. Blair's topic, "A Man Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Based Landmine Detection and Location System," will discuss the scientific basis behind ChemTech's ELF landmine detection system and hint at its use in other applications.... .http://www.wku.edu/API/crete99/, or http://www.lochharris.com. SOURCE Loch Harris, Inc.
27. Russia Says U.N. Inspectors Left Chemicals in Iraq By JUDITH MILLER, June 2, 1999, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/iraq-un.html UNITED NATIONS -- Keeping pressure on an agency that Russia has criticized for months, Moscow's representative here on Tuesday accused the U.N. Special Commission responsible for disarming Iraq of endangering Iraqis by leaving behind dangerous chemicals in its Baghdad laboratory....
28. Stop Bombing, China and Russia Insist New York Times, June 3, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060399kosovo-china.html BEIJING -- China and Russia repeated Wednesday their demand that NATO airstrikes be halted before political talks begin to resolve the crisis in Yugoslavia.... -- Diplomacy: Moscow and West Making Headway on a Kosovo Deal http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060399kosovo-diplomacy.html -- Issue in Depth: Conflict in Kosovo http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@@.efd553f
29. World Court Declines To Halt NATO Bombing Reuters, June 2, 1999, By Janet McBride http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990602/07/news-yugoslavia-court THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The United Nations' top court Wednesday rejected Yugoslav requests to halt NATO air strikes on its territory, but expressed concern about the legal basis for the bombing.... -- Yugoslav Cease-Fire Request Denied June 2, 1999, 7:51 a.m. EDT, Associated Press http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-World-Court-Kosovo.html -- THE COURT Judges at The Hague Refuse to Halt the NATO Bombing By MARLISE SIMONS, June 3, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060399kosovo-world-court.html -- World: Europe Nato opens courtroom defence Yugoslav lawyer Rodoljub Etinski addresses the court May 10, 1999 Published at 18:11 GMT 19:11 UK - BBC http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid%5F339000/339655.stm
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30. 'Rampage' Of Terror Is Cited U.N. Team Reports On Visit to Kosovo Reuters Thursday, June 3, 1999; Page A21 Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/03/146l-060399-idx.html UNITED NATIONS, June 2--The first U.N. humanitarian mission to Kosovo reported today that it found indisputable evidence in the rebellious Serbian province of "organized, well-planned violence against civilians aimed at displacing and permanently deporting them." -- THE EVIDENCE U.N. Finds Proof Evidence of 'Ethnic Cleansing' in Kosovo June 3, 1999 New York Times, By JUDITH MILLER http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060399kosovo-un.html UNITED NATIONS -- The leader of a U.N. mission to Kosovo has found what he called "indisputable evidence" of Serbian "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovars, as well as "ample evidence" of "serious" damage caused by NATO's airstrikes....
31. Serbian Assembly OKs Peace Plan--Deputies Updated 7:09 AM ET June 3, 1999 (Reuters) http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990603/07/news-yugoslavia-plan-accept BELGRADE - Serbia's parliament Thursday accepted an international peace plan for Kosovo after a "big row," a deputy said.... -- Yugoslavia Accepts Peace Plan 10:02 a.m. EDT June 3, 1999, Associated Press http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Yugoslavia-Kosovo.html -- THE PENTAGON U.S. Military Chiefs Firm: No Ground Force for Kosovo June 3, 1999 New York Times, By STEVEN LEE MYERS http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060399kosovo-pentagon.html -- US Cautious on Belgrade Acceptance Top News Article at 10:50 a.m. June 3, 1999, Associated Press http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-Kosovo.html - Developments in Kosovo Crisis 10:22 a.m. EDT Associated Press http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Kosovo-Developments.html -- NATO's Actions Likened to Hitler's Filed at 12:05 a.m. EDT June 3, 1999, Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said Wednesday that NATO's bombardment of Yugoslavia was morally no different than Hitler's actions...
32. Main Points of Kosovo Peace Plan 9:49 a.m. EDT June 3, 1999, Associated Press http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Yugoslavia-Peace-Text.html BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Key points of the Kosovo peace plan approved by the Serb government and parliament today. A copy of the plan was obtained by The Associated Press from parliamentary sources....
33. Lawsuit Filed Against Gunmakers June 3, 1999, Associated Press http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Gun-Lawsuit.html CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) -- Camden County has joined the list of governments suing the gun industry to recover costs stemming from handgun violence....
34. Cuban Lawsuit Seeks $181B From U.S. June 1, 1999 By The Associated Press http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Cuba-US-Demand.html HAVANA (AP) -- Cuban officials have filed a lawsuit demanding $181 billion from the U.S. government for damages that Cuba says it has suffered in U.S. attacks over the last four decades, the Communist Party daily Granma reported Tuesday.... _____________________________
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Message: 3 Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 21:29:23 -0400
Subject: NucNews-5 6/03/99 - Activism; Secrets; Cox Report Questions; Sierra Club "Bubba" Antinuc Ads; Hackers
20. Flash Campaigns: Online Activism at Warp Speed
By REBECCA FAIRLEY RANEY June 3, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/06/cyber/articles/03campaign.html
In the swell of online political activism these days, whether the issue is children with guns or Kosovo, cutting-edge campaigns are posting a directive as powerful as any slogan:
"This campaign is based solely on word of mouth. It's CRUCIAL that you tell others. To transmit a brief letter to your e-mail circle, just click here."
So-called "flash campaigns," focused on hot news topics and making use of e-mail chain letters and online petitions, are erupting on the Internet. Though crises have always boosted the visibility of advocacy groups, cheap online mobilization changes the equation. With the Internet, anyone can be an advocate.
The Internet is inspiring groups and individuals who have never run issue-oriented campaigns before. And with the arrival of the newcomers comes a slight fear that the role of traditional advocacy groups could fade if they fail to keep up.
"They could be marginalized by these independent innovators," said Jillaine Smith, a senior associate with the Benton Foundation who tracks online advocacy. "I would like to see the more established organizations follow the example of the innovators. The challenge is to break out of that box."
One of the most visible examples of a flash campaign is an effort called MoveOn.org. It was started last September by Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, a married couple from Berkeley, Calif., who had been largely uninvolved in politics. They set up an online petition calling for Congress to censure President Clinton and move on in the aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky affair.
The couple sent 100 e-mail messages to friends and family asking them to add their names to the petition and forward the message to others. In the course of a few months, they gathered more than 500,000 names. People also pledged to donate $13 million next year to candidates running against members of Congress who tried to impeach the President.
MoveOn received extensive media coverage, but even so, the couple says that fully 90 percent of the people who added their names to the petition heard about it through the e-mail campaign.
After the high-school shootings in Littleton, Colo., Blades and Boyd reactivated their list of supporters to back a gun-control campaign. Their latest petition now has 70,000 signatures, most of them added in the first week of the campaign. Visitors to the site can also fire off e-mail to their representatives in Congress. For Congressional offices that do not take e-mail, notes are sent by fax or postal mail.
During the impeachment turmoil, Blades had to start from scratch, but this time around, she had an instant list of 300,000 people to notify. The creation of that list cost practically nothing.
"It really was just $89.50 to put up a Web site," Blades said.
The Libertarian Party, which had earlier focused solely on backing candidates, has seen similar success with issue-based online campaigning.
As a result of the party's first online effort in March, 171,000 people sent e-mail to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, protesting a proposed rule that would allow banks to closely monitor customers' financial transactions. That represented about 83 percent of the e-mail that was sent to the agency on the issue. The FDIC dropped the proposal, citing the flood of e-mail.
Fresh from their first success, the Libertarians launched an anti-war site at stopthewarnow.org in late April.
Steve Dasbach, national director of the party, said that in the past, the Libertarians had issued press releases stating their positions, but they had no ability to do more until the Internet came along.
In addition to building support for the party, Dasbach said, "we're trying to provide opportunities for people who already oppose the war."
In the first week, 1,000 people a day were sending e-mail to their representatives in Congress through the site, and more than 15,000 messages have been sent since the campaign's start. For constituents whose representatives do not take e-mail, the site provides a phone number or fax number for the local Congressional office.
Although these newcomers have been quite successful, the traditional advocacy organizations could still use technology to keep their edge among the innovators. Some groups have started investing in sophisticated technology that allows precise targeting of online supporters.
Ken Deutsch, vice president of Internet strategic communications at Issue Dynamics Inc. in Washington, put his company's targeting software into action in a recent campaign. Sponsored by education groups, the campaign pushed for renewal of the e-rate program, a federal subsidy for Internet connections in schools and libraries.
Visitors to the site generated about 11,000 messages between the end of April and last week, when the Federal Communications Commission approved $2.25 billion in financing for the program. Traffic to the site peaked when news outlets covered the e-rate issue.
That interest generated a list of supporters who can be mobilized quickly in the future. Individuals on the list will receive alerts, including phone numbers for Congressional offices, when their representatives are taking action on related issues.
This potential for immediate mobilization could change the way established advocacy groups work.
"It changes what you can do grass-roots work on," Deutsch said. "Real decisions get made in [Congressional] committees, and the advocacy world never knows what's coming up until the last minute. There's no time to create a new Web site and mobilize supporters."
The advantage, he predicted, will lie with groups that reach a base of online supporters quickly.
Whether Internet campaigning ultimately strengthens or weakens the role of established advocacy groups, the publicity surrounding flash campaigns has definitely caught their attention.
"You used to mobilize people to march and demonstrate," said Smith of the Benton Foundation. "Now you mobilize them to send e-mail. It's certainly a lot easier to participate. Is it as effective? Big question mark."
To Blades, the trend is healthy. During the MoveOn campaign, she frequently received thank-you notes from single mothers who appreciated having an easy way to get involved.
"It's enabling the five-minute activist," she said.
Related Sites
Benton Foundation - http://www.benton.org MoveOn - http://www.moveon.org Libertarian Party - http://www.lp.org Stop the War Now - http://www.stopthewarnow.com Issue Dynamics - http://www.idi.net E-rate Action - http://erateaction.policy.net
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21. Spilling Our Nuclear Secrets
New York Times, June 3, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/ldasch.html
To the Editor:
As a physicist, I find it hard to believe that the Administration's declassification of nuclear secrets was all that significant (Week in Review, May 30).
Many physicists outside the United States weapons establishment have done the work that made it possible for all the nuclear powers to conduct tests with few failures. Far more frightening is the possibility that the Administration thought it could buy off future expansion of nuclear weaponry with such a dopey scheme.
While claiming the comprehensive test ban treaty as a centerpiece of its policy, the Administration has pursued the development of new nuclear weapons through nonnuclear testing and modeling.
The Administration has also extinguished hope for nuclear nonproliferation.
The American-led attacks on Iraq and Yugoslavia have inspired serious re-evaluation of the need for nuclear weaponry in many countries.
DONALD H. MC NEILL Bradley Beach, N.J., May 31, 1999
To the Editor:
William Safire's May 27 column takes issue with my statement pointing out that Republican Congressional committee chairmen were briefed on Chinese nuclear espionage efforts in 1996 and chose not to take action in response to that information. As several press accounts have since confirmed, Senate and House briefings occurred shortly after Samuel R. Berger, then the deputy national security adviser, had received an identical briefing.
My intent was not to criticize any particular member of Congress but to expose the hypocrisy of those who have chosen to blame only the Clinton Administration for security lapses going back several administrations and involving both parties. In fact, the Clinton Administration was the first to address the Energy Department's security problems in a comprehensive manner.
The sooner we abandon the blame game, the faster we can do what is necessary to secure our nuclear weapons and safeguard our national security.
TOM DASCHLE Senate Democratic Leader Washington, May 28, 1999
To the Editor:
Re "On Unofficial Level, at Least, Chinese Value Ties to the U.S." (front page, May 27):
The Cox committee report on Chinese theft of American nuclear and missile secrets may serve as a timely warning for the United States to tighten military technology security. However, the real threat of espionage seems largely overblown.
China has only about 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The United States has about 7,000 nuclear warheads; China has only 400. The real threat would be a disruption in commercial and cultural relations between China and the United States, which could destabilize China and send it into the hands of hardliners eager for a return to Communism.
CHU-YUAN CHENG Muncie, Ind., May 31, 1999
The writer is a professor of economics at Ball State University.
To the Editor:
Re "Spying Isn't the Only Way to Learn About Nukes" (Week in Review, May 30): Another example of disregard for the security of our nuclear-weapons information was the elimination of color-coded access-control badges at Energy Department nuclear laboratories, beginning in 1994.
Badge color, visible across a large room, displayed one's security status -- badges enabled personnel to readily discern whether there was anyone within hearing range who should be excluded from hearing classified information. The change to green badges stripped away that protection.
This administrative disaster needs correction.
HELEN M. HUNT Princeton, N.J., May 30, 1999
Related Article
Spying Isn't the Only Way to Learn About Nukes (May 30) http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/053099china-review.html
On Unofficial Level, at Least, Chinese Value Ties to the U.S. (May 27) http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/052799china-us.html
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22. Follow Up the Cox Report
New York Times, May 27, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/safire/052799safi.html
In the CNN parking lot the other night, after a Larry King telecast about the hemorrhage of our secrets to China, Representative Chris Cox told the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Richard Shelby: "We're out of business. Now it's up to you."
Here are a few questions for investigators in both houses of Congress to pose:
To Samuel Berger, the Hogan & Hartson trade lobbyist turned national security adviser: Why can't Congress see your memo to President Clinton summarizing the devastating Cox report on espionage when it was submitted for security clearance in January? With the report now public, no claim of secrecy can properly be made.
Clinton pretended two months ago to have been uninformed of wholesale espionage. Did Berger's January cover memo truly reflect the Cox report's revelations, or did it lull the President into a false sense of national security?
To Bill Richardson, Energy Secretary since September 1998: You were briefed on espionage suspicions in November, and received the Cox report in January. Did you never have occasion to mention its serious implications on China policy to the President? You knew Secretary of State Albright was going to China in February; why did you withhold it from her? Did the White House suggest she be kept ignorant, or was it your own idea?
To F.B.I. Director Louis Freeh: Attorney General Janet Reno says "I was not apprised of the details of the case at the time the decision was made" to reject wiretap surveillance of Wen Ho Lee at Los Alamos. Didn't you think this was important enough to take to the top? She also says your 1997 request "did not contain a request to search any computer." If that is true, why not?
To the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle: The bipartisan Cox report charges the White House with failing to inform Congress, but you say "Republican chairs of the Congress were warned about this as early as 1996 and also chose to do nothing." Did you read those "warnings" before accusing Senator Arlen Specter and Representative Porter Goss of failing in their intelligence oversight duties? Can the public now see if those staff briefings were complete?
To Dan Burton, chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee: With Reno Justice allowing all Clinton's illegal Asian fund-raisers to cop a plea and walk, you've subpoenaed Charlie Trie for June 10 and John Huang for June 17. Will you allow the ranking Democrat, Henry Waxman, to turn hearings into a partisan circus, or will you depose Trie and Huang extensively beforehand to discover links to Bruce Lindsey, the D.N.C.'s Don Fowler and Hillary's Harold Ickes?
To George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence: You reported to Cox that information on China's theft of our W-88 nuclear warhead design came from a "walk-in" planted by Chinese intelligence. That's counterintuitive counterintelligence; does nobody in C.I.A. dispute the "dangle" theory? Where is he now, and is he (or she) singing?
To Richard Shelby and Bob Kerrey of Senate Intelligence: The Cox report ran 900 pages, but nearly 400 pages were cut out by the Clinton sanitizers. Was all of this really for security reasons, or do many redactions cover C.I.A., F.B.I. and White House embarrassments?
To Senator Robert Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey: You told CBS's Bob Schieffer that Clinton should talk to Reno about "her ability to perform her duties." Are you worrying about her judgment under a physical affliction, or making a nonpartisan judgment on sustained misfeasance at Justice -- or helping the White House toss her off the sled to save Sandy Berger?
The biggest question is this: Will we fall for the usual "it's old news" and "everybody did it" defenses? Or will we connect the dots from the (a) corrupt Asian and satellite-producer contributions to the (b) refusal to stop the theft of nuclear codes lest it offend Beijing to the (c) change of policy to sell China powerful computers capable of using those codes to simulate tests?
The House is being serious. What about the Senate?
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Nuke irony: Stronger China benefits U.S., experts say Eric Rosenberg, San Francisco EXAMINER WASHINGTON BUREAU, May 31, 1999 http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/05/ 31/NEWS859.dtl
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23. 'Bubba' Anti-Nuke Ads Don't Bomb
By Jenny Coyle, The Planet, June 1999 Volume 6, Number 5 http://www.sierraclub.org:80/planet/199905/beat.html
A fictional character named "Bubba" grabbed the attention of South Carolina residents in April with a series of Sierra Club radio ads objecting to the state's hunger for other states' nuclear waste.
South Carolina takes nuclear waste and plutonium from 41 other states, according to South Carolina Chapter Executive Director Dell Isham.
In one of three ads, Bubba - a Georgia convenience store clerk played by actor and teacher Kerry Maher - explains how the Department of Energy wants to use the plutonium to make fuel for reactors, like the one near Rock Hill, S.C. "It's a little experimental, but the Department of Energy doesn't think it will be too dangerous . . . and it's gonna make more deadly radioactive waste, but y'all already got so much down there, what's a little more gonna matter?" Bubba rocketed to celebrity status with a series of political ads that helped elect Jim Hodges as governor. Isham knew a good thing when he saw it, and recruited Maher for the anti-nuke campaign. "Many residents are unaware of the state's appetite for nuclear waste," says Isham. "They had no idea we're the pay toilet of the country."
That's probably how Bubba would put it, too.
We Couldn't Have Said It Better
It's gratifying to see the media push a Sierra Club position further than we believe is prudent for us to do ourselves.
Randy Cohen, who writes "The Ethicist" column for The New York Times Magazine, did that in May when a reader complained that his friends act like he's a criminal for buying a sport utility vehicle. (SUVs have become the poster child for the Club's Global Warming campaign.)
"It depends where you drive," Cohen began, suggesting that the "unforgiving lunar surface" is acceptable, but paved American roads are not.
After describing - quite eloquently - the safety and pollution issues with SUVs, Cohen concluded with this: "So if you're planning to drive that SUV in New York, pack a suitcase into your roomy cargo area, because you're driving straight to hell."
"It's refreshing to be reminded yet again by the Times just how moderate and restrained Sierra Club's global-warming advocacy campaign is," says campaign director Dan Becker.
Heavenly Staffers Get Their Wings
Four stellar Sierra Club employees were honored by their peers on April 21 - John Muir's birthday.
Debbie Sease, legislative director in Washington, D.C., received the Michael McCloskey Award. Named for the Club's chairman and former executive director, it's given to people whose work has reflected and strengthened the meaning, purpose and mission of the Sierra Club. In her 18 years with the Club, Sease has built the legislative program into a powerhouse in the nation's capitol, where Congress recently rated the Sierra Club the most effective environmental organization (See story in November 1998 Planet).
The Special Achievement Award, which acknowledges an employee's efforts to benefit or streamline the work of the Club or enhance its public image, went to Ozark (Missouri) Chapter Director Ken Midkiff. His dedication and effectiveness have helped to elevate the chapter to the most successful environmental organization in the state.
Receiving the Virginia Ferguson Award was Annette Henkin, office manager in the Washington, D.C., office. Named for the Club's first paid employee, the award honors a staff member who has demonstrated consistent and exemplary work. Henkin, with 11 years of service to the Club, is known as a problem solver in the D.C. office.
Dina Perez-Neira, who works in the office of Development and Major Gifts, received the Community Service Award for her commitment to helping others through a non-Sierra Club cause. Perez-Neira and her husband, Alfredo Neira, founded Helping Hands International, which provides medical supplies and other materials to needy people in 17 countries.
Honored for serving as a Sierra Club employee for more than 20 years was Ellen Byrne, assistant public information manager. Club volunteers will be honored at the annual banquet in September. To nominate someone, check out the Club Web site at http://www.sierraclub.org/history/awards or contact Sandy Scales at sandy.scales@sierraclub.org ; (415) 977-5500.
Four Decades Later, McCloskey Retires
When retiring Sierra Club Chairman Mike McCloskey first became active with the organization as a law student in Oregon, he had a feeling that "clean air, clean water and wildlands were worth protecting, and that fighting those battles was far more enjoyable than the prospect of practicing law," he says.
On April 30, after 38 years with the Club, McCloskey retired. He will be honored at the Club's annual banquet on Sept. 24 in San Francisco.
McCloskey was recruited as the Club's first paid field-staff member by David Brower, and later replaced Brower as executive director in 1969, until 1985, when he became the Club's chairman.
During his first decade with the Club, he worked alongside environmental pioneers like photographer Ansel Adams. He helped establish Washington's North Cascades National Park and headed the lobbying campaign to establish California's Redwood National Park. He also was a key force in passage of the Wilderness Act and the National Environmental Protection Act.
More recently he has been a leader on global environmental policy, writing the basic drafts that became the United Nation's Charter for Nature.
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24. Hackers Spur Pentagon To Bolster Its Security By John Schwartz Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 2, 1999; Page A02 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/02/141l-060299-idx.html
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White House Warns Hackers They Will Be Punished Updated 12:27 AM ET June 2, 1999 By Tim Loughran http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990602/00/net-internet-hackers WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Annoyed by a recent wave of attacks against official U.S. government Web sites, the White House Tuesday warned hackers who targeted federal Internet sites they would be caught and punished....
--
Federal Cybercrime Unit Hunts for Hackers By MATT RICHTEL - June 2, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/mo/biztech/articles/02hack.html
______________________
- Fifth of seven messages - _____________________
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Message: 4 Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 21:28:51 -0400
Subject: NucNews-3 6/03/99 - Chernobyl; Uzbek Poison Island/Anthrax
11. Ukraine sees $120-$160 mln grant for Chernobyl cover
01:01 p.m Jun 02, 1999 Eastern (Reuters) http://senghor.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR +radioactiv%3F%3F%3F&fs=nws&to=thirty
KIEV, June 2 - Ukraine hopes to get a grant of $120-$160 million by the end of July to continue urgent work on the sarcophagus covering a destroyed reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, an official said on Wednesday.
``We expect a grant worth $120-$160 million in line with the Shelter Implementation Plan (SIP) and should submit details to the European Bank's meeting set for July 1,'' Valentin Kupny, head of the SIP working group, told reporters.
Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded in 1986, sending a cloud of radioactive fall-out across Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and many European countries in the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.
Soldiers and volunteers, working in intensive radioactive fields, constructed the concrete shelter above the reactor in 1986, but nuclear experts say that parts of the sarcophagus are in unstable condition.
Concern over the deteriorating condition of the sarcophagus prompted the creation of SIP, which is charged with creating safer and more stable conditions by 2005 through international funds. Authorities say SIP projects are worth $758 million.
Representatives of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is charged with collecting money for SIP, have said Ukraine received $150 million last year, and the July grant would allow new stabilisation work.
``The new grant will focus on many important issues, such as upgrading control systems within the shelter and resolving the problem of water under the sarcophagus,'' said Olexander Slavis, who helps raise funding for the bank's Chernobyl projects.
Experts say about 11,000 cubic metres of highly radioactive water are under the sarcophogus.
Ukraine has pledged to close the troubled plant by 2000, but the ex-Soviet state also expects to get enough funds from the West to complete two nuclear reactors to replace Chernobyl, as well as money to reinforce the sarcophagus.
Chernobyl - a disaster recalled May 24, 1999 Published at 09:59 GMT 10:59 UK BBC - Sci/Tech http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid%5F351000/351368.stm
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Chernobyl legacy mounts
24 May 99 | Sci/Tech By Alex Kirby, News Online BBC http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_351000/351286.stm
A senior Ukrainian Government scientist, Dr Georgiy Lisichenco, says some of the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster will not peak until the second half of the next century.
Dr Lisichenco, of the State Centre for Environmental Radiochemistry in Kiev, says a study he has made of radioactivity in Ukraine's water courses shows that it will be at its highest in the river Dnieper in 60 to 90 years from now.
The Dnieper, Ukraine's principal river, supplies Kiev and much of the country with drinking water.
Dr Lisichenco said, in an interview for the BBC's Costing the Earth programme, that the contamination could be a particular problem for areas in the south of the country which rely on river water for irrigating crops.
Reactor number four at Chernobyl exploded early on 26 April 1986, killing 31 people in the immediate aftermath. The subsequent number of deaths the released radioactivity has caused are unknown.
Missed deadline
The level of thyroid cancers among children living nearby has risen substantially - a 20-fold increase in parts of Belarus, and smaller increases in Ukraine itself and in parts of south-western Russia.
Ukraine has agreed to close the one remaining working reactor at Chernobyl, unit 3, by the end of this year. But the head of the state-owned nuclear energy company Energoatom, Dr Mykola Dudchenko, told the programme he is certain the plant will not close by the deadline.
Nor does he think the West will honour its pledge to fund the completion of two new reactors at Khmelnitsky and Rovno in western Ukraine, to compensate for the closure of Chernobyl.
Dr Dudchenko says Ukraine will itself pay for the Soviet-designed reactors, which are 85% complete, to be finished.
Energy needs
The only way of bringing them near to Western safety standards would be a hugely expensive retro-fit, which is far beyond Ukraine's ability to fund.
An independent study for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which will decide in July whether to fund their completion, concluded that the reactors were not the least-cost option for meeting Ukraine's energy needs.
The study group chairman, Professor John Surrey of the University of Sussex, says it came under high-level political pressure to think again.
And the former chairman of the World Association of Nuclear Operators, Remy Carle of France, says the French nuclear industry has used its influence to try to make sure the two new reactors are built.
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Relevant Stories
Kiev: The grey reality 10 May 99 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_340000/340009.stm
Europe's next Chernobyl? 26 Apr 99 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_328000/328631.stm
Demonstrations in Ukraine and Belarus to mark anniversary of Chernobyl disaster 25 Apr 99 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_328000/328276.stm
Machine in the tomb 18 Nov 98 | Sci/Tech http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_216000/216764.stm
Chernobyl children face immune system disease 04 Sep 98 | Health http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_164000/164740.stm
'Close Chernobyl before 2000' 23 Jul 98 | Europe http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_138000/138365.stm
Internet Links
Chernobyl (OECD Nuclear Energy Agency) http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/chernobyl/chernobyl.html
Chernobyl (Uranium Institute) http://www.uilondon.org/chernidx.htm
Chernobyl Children's Project UK http://www.zoo.co.uk/~z0001991/
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12. POISON ISLAND: A SPECIAL REPORT At Bleak Asian Site, Killer Germs Survive
By JUDITH MILLER, June 2, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/060299anthrax-island.html
VOZROZHDENIYE ISLAND, Uzbekistan -- In the spring of 1988, germ scientists 850 miles east of Moscow were ordered to undertake their most critical mission.
Working in great haste and total secrecy, the scientists in the city of Sverdlovsk transferred hundreds of tons of anthrax bacteria -- enough to destroy the world many times over -- into giant stainless-steel canisters, poured bleach into them to decontaminate the deadly pink powder, packed the canisters onto a train two dozen cars long and sent the illicit cargo almost a thousand miles across Russia and Kazakhstan to this remote island in the heart of the inland Aral Sea, American and Central Asian officials say.
Here Russian soldiers dug huge pits and poured the sludge into the ground, burying the germs and, Moscow hoped, a grave political threat.
While Mikhail S. Gorbachev was pressing his glasnost and perestroika campaign and warming ties with the West, intelligence evidence was mounting in Washington that the Soviet Union, contrary to its treaty pledges, was producing tons of deadly germs for weapons that the world had banned. The stockpile had to be destroyed in case the United States and Britain demanded an inspection, Russian scientists close to the program said.
Vozrozhdeniye Island was a natural choice. Until the military left here for good in 1992, Renaissance Island, as it translates from the Russian, had been the Soviet Union's major open-air testing site. Today, Renaissance Island, which the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan now share, is the world's largest anthrax burial ground.
For the United States, it is an intelligence gold mine. At the invitation of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, American military scientists and intelligence experts have secretly been traveling here for the past four years -- most recently last October -- to survey the island and take samples of the buried bacteria, according to senior Uzbek and American officials.
What they have found is stunning, the experts say.
Tests of soil samples from six of 11 vast burial pits show that, although the anthrax was soaked in bleach at least twice, once inside the 66-gallon containers and again after it was dumped into the sandy pits and buried for a decade under 3-to-5 feet of sand, some of the spores are still alive -- and potentially deadly.
Tests on the samples performed by American military laboratories have shown that the anthrax vaccine now being given, in six shots and a yearly booster, to 2.4 million Americans in uniform is effective against the Russian strain of this ancient, deadly scourge -- at least the strain found on the island.
While this has reassured the Clinton administration, the discovery of live spores has alarmed Kazakhstan and especially worries Uzbekistan, which has been exploring for oil on the two-thirds of the island it controls.
Because the Aral Sea is shrinking -- the result of wrongheaded Soviet irrigation policies -- this now-deserted, isolated island has grown from 77 square miles to 770 and will soon be connected to the mainland.
Uzbek and Kazakh experts fear the buried anthrax spores could escape their sandy tomb, stirred up by carriers like gophers and other rodents, lizards and birds, and be brought to Uzbek and Kazakh territory. The disease is spread from animals to people by direct contact; it is treatable with antibiotics if detected immediately. As a weapon, it would be disbursed as an aerosol, for inhalation.
Central Asian and American officials fear that, as access to the island eases, the buried anthrax could be used by terrorists to make more of the deadly agent.
In addition, officials said, exposure to the spores could add a new threat to a population whose health is already considered abysmal. International medical experts are just starting to assess which of their many chronic ailments are attributable to poverty and environmental degradation and which might be linked to the region's biological and chemical legacy.
The Island: Breeding of Germs, Breeding of Fears
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which have both renounced weapons of mass destruction, have independently asked the United States for help in assessing, or cleaning up this terrible biological legacy of Soviet rule. In addition, Uzbekistan permitted this correspondent to visit Renaissance Island earlier this year -- the first visit by a journalist -- and to interview officials and scientists concerned about the biological hazards here.
The trip, coupled with interviews with about two dozen scientists, government officials and military experts in Central Asia, Russia and the United States, has shed light on one of the most closely guarded biological secrets of the Cold War. Although Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued an edict in 1992 closing the site and vowing that the laboratory would be dismantled and decontaminated within three years, the cash-strapped Moscow government never followed through. And Russia has never acknowledged responsibility for the anthrax cemetery here.
Military scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command and other laboratories where the samples are being studied refused comment on the island and the tests. But other officials said the labs were still deciphering the Russian anthrax's molecular structure and trying to determine why spores collected from some of the pits did not die.
"We have always known that anthrax is hard to kill," said one military expert, who would only discuss this highly classified activity if he were not identified. "But this strain has proven especially durable, and this wasn't even the most powerful strains the Soviets made."
Signs of life diminish as the Soviet-era MI-8 helicopter speeds toward this island, a 90-minute flight from Nukus, the nearest Uzbek military base. As the chopper approaches the island, fishermen in their wooden boats disappear as what was once a living sea becomes marshland. Scraggly trees give way to patches of sagebrush until, finally, there is nothing left to see below save salt-covered, cement-colored sand that the sea once covered, now as dry and cracked as an ancient face. Nothing seems to live here, not even birds.
Given its remote location and inhospitable climate, the island was long a favored Russian spot for secretive arrangements. A study soon to be published by the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California concludes that the island and the former port city of Aralsk, now about 60 miles from the sea and part of Kazakhstan, were first used by the KGB's predecessor as exile camps for kulaks, the private farmers whom Stalin repressed.
In 1936, wrote Gulbarshyn Bozheyeva, the study's principle author, Vozrozhdeniye and the city that administered the island were placed under the Ministry of Defense, which in 1954 built a biological weapons test site on the island, calling it Aralsk-7.
"The lack of vegetation," she wrote, "hot and dry climate, and sandy soil reaching 140 degrees Fahrenheit in summer" were perfect for germ testing in that they would "reduce the spread and survival of pathogenic organisms."
American officials said that although satellites recorded some unusual activity on the island in 1988, the United States did not learn that the Soviets had buried anthrax from Sverdlosk here until 1992, when Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, or Ken Alibek, as he is now known, a high-ranking germ weapons official, defected. Alibek had been the director of the giant Soviet anthrax production plant at Stepnogorsk, which is now in Kazakhstan. Between 1988 and his defection, he was the deputy director of Biopreparat, the secret network of some 40 supposedly peaceful facilities, including Stepnogorsk, that provided civilian cover for bio-weapons work.
In his book, "Biohazard" (Random House, 1999), Alibek does not disclose either that anthrax was buried on the island or what he told American officials during his debriefing. But he does report that such germ weapons as tularemia, Q-fever, brucellosis, glanders and plague were tested on Vozrozhdeniye beginning in the 1970s. In 1986 and 1987, he added in an interview, a strain of plague that was resistant to standard antibiotics was tested. In 1987, the book states, Alibek's scientists tested the powerful anthrax that he had developed at Stepnogorsk.
The Monterey study and Alibek say that the Soviet military labs also tested typhus, botulinum toxin, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, smallpox and microbial strains with characteristics useful in warfare, such as high virulence, resistance to ultraviolet rays or heat, and genetically engineered strains developed in the late 1980s.
Today, evidence of the grim research abounds. Clearly visible as one approaches the vast laboratory complex and test range are the telephone poles one kilometer apart on which detectors to measure germ agents were mounted and to which animals were tied during open-air testing.
The abandoned laboratory and high-containment unit that once handled the deadliest of agents have been stripped of equipment, pipes and even their floor and wall-tiles -- shiny, light-green mosaics decorated with a fish motif. What the Soviets left behind, scavengers, apparently impervious to the potential danger of contamination, have stripped away for sale, intelligence experts say.
The enclosed vivaria that once housed thousands of smaller animals killed in the testing -- rabbits, guinea pigs, white mice and hamsters, as well as such larger animals as horses, sheep, donkeys, monkeys and baboons -- are empty, their windows smashed or missing, their roofs collapsed.
Hundreds of small cages are stacked together in a dilapidated storage room; in another stands a human-sized cage, apparently for what scientists call "non-human primates," or man-sized monkeys. Hundreds of them died hideous deaths, sometimes in a single experiment, say Russian and American scientists.
The stench of the laboratory is familiar to veterans of the gruesome world of germ warfare -- a mixture of bleach, dust, animal dung and death.
On the northern part of the site, less than a mile from the laboratory, are the three-story barracks, residential homes, kindergarten, and cafeteria used by the Russians scientists who worked here and their families, about a thousand people in all.
Russian scientists who worked here said that most of the children were not vaccinated against the agents that were tested only a few miles downwind.
"We didn't test unless the wind was blowing south, away from the living quarters," said Dr. Gennadi L. Lepyoshkin, the former Soviet colonel who was Stepnogorsk's director after Alibek and was vaccinated against many of the lethal pathogens he tested.
In a recent interview at Stepnogorsk, Lepyoshkin, who is now director of Kazakhstan's peaceful National Center for Biotechnology and a co-author of the Monterey study, spoke almost nostalgically of his weeks here in the mid-1980s.
"The island was smaller and beautiful then, and the lab much closer to the sea," Lepyoshkin, displaying the water colors he painted and landscapes he sketched when he wasn't working with deadly microbes, playing volleyball, drinking vodka, or engaging in other island pastimes.
The Residue: Seeking U.S. Aid to Clean Up Site
In interviews in Tashkent, Uzbek officials said that only after their country became independent in 1992 did they understand the implications of their biological legacy. "We were shocked when we first learned the real picture," said Isan M. Mustafoev, Uzbekistan's deputy foreign minister. Alarmed by the health and environmental impact of unconventional weapons, Islom Karimov, Uzbekistan's president, renounced them.
In 1995, after Moscow refused to tell Uzbekistan what chemical or biological facilities had been built on Uzbek territory or what had been tested or buried here, Tashkent asked Washington for help, Mustafoev explained. 1/8On May 25, the United States and Uzbekistan signed a bilateral agreement that provides up to $6 million in American aid to dismantle and decontaminate a former Soviet chemical weapons testing facility near the Aral Sea.)
Kazakhstan had quietly permitted Pentagon officials to visit Vozrozhdeniye in 1995. Two years later, Uzbekistan independently invited more American experts to take samples of the buried anthrax, Mustafoev said.
Because the Uzbek Ministry of Defense was responsible for the American mission, Mustafoev said that his ministry was not told precisely what the tests showed about the samples that American teams collected in 1995, 1997 and last October. The last mission's goal, American officials said, was to determine why the some of the anthrax had survived.
In their major forays, the experts added, the Americans wore white, space-suit-like protective clothing and gas masks with respirators. All team members were vaccinated. "It was like a moon landing," one official said. "Only scarier."
Scientists said much can be learned from the material.
Dr. William C. Patrick III, who made germ weapons for the United States before President Richard M. Nixon outlawed them nearly three decades ago, said the samples would enable scientists to determine not only the strength of the Soviet strain, or strains, but also whether the anthrax had been genetically engineered, or enhanced in other ways for virulence or other desirable qualities.
Neither Patrick nor any officials directly involved in the missions would discuss what the samples had shown. But several experts confirmed that the tests indicated that the anthrax vaccine now being given American soldiers was effective. Molecular testing on the strains was continuing, they added.
Mustafoev said Uzbek's national oil company, which is exploring for oil on its part of the island, was not drilling close to the buried anthrax. "No amount of oil is worth risking human lives," he said.
Though Uzbekistan is deeply concerned about the potential danger, decontaminating the island, given its size and the amount of anthrax buried here, would be prohibitively expensive, he and American officials agreed. But Kazakhstan has asked Washington's help in surveying the Renaissance area to assess contamination levels, which the Clinton administration is encouraging Uzbek and Kazakh officials to work jointly on with American experts. Meanwhile, all three capitals have been quietly pressing Moscow to provide more information about what happened here.
Milton Leitenberg, a professor and expert on Russia's unconventional weapons programs, said that Moscow in 1987 had listed the town of Aralsk, the island's staging area, but not the island itself, in its first declaration of germ weapons related-sites which is required by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention banning germ warfare. In its 1992 declaration, Russia finally listed the island, but as a site where only defensive testing for vaccines and materials had been performed. "The Russians," he concludes, "have never come clean about these programs."
The Neighbors: The Poor and Sick Could Get Even Sicker
The people who live near the island know all too well how little Moscow cared for their safety and welfare. No region of Uzbekistan has been harder hit by the Soviet Union's economic policies or its relentless pursuit of unconventional weapons than Karakalpakstan, the Uzbek semi-autonomous republic inhabited by almost 5 million people with their own distinct ethnic traditions, language and culture. Karakalpakstan, the home of the Aral sea, has seen its once thriving fishing industry devastated, its arable land ruined by overuse of fertilizers and pesticides, and its ground water polluted.
Yusup S. Kamalov, an Uzbek scientist who heads the Union for the Defense of the Aral Sea, an independent environmental group, called the situation "next to hopeless." The sea's surface water has shrunk by half, its volume reduced by 75 percent. "The sea is dying," he said.
Karakalpaks, said Ian Small, the country manager of Medecins Sans Frontieres, the volunteer physicians group, are among the most "chronically sick people in the former Soviet Union." Ninety-eight percent of pregnant women are anemic. Infant mortality rates are comparable to that of sub-Saharan Africa. Two-thirds of the population suffer from some chronic illness, often tuberculosis.
"We've seen an alarming increase in kidney disease and various cancers," he said. "But because there has been no census since 1989 and health statistics are either nonexistent or unreliable, it's impossible to know whether what we're seeing is the result of the region's general poverty and environmental degradation or the past chemical and biological testing."
While local and Uzbek officials try to provide decent health care, he said, they and his small group, the only international charity in the region, are overwhelmed. Medecins is beginning to conduct a base-line health survey that may shed some light not just on the incidence of diseases, but their causes.
Most germ weapons scientists familiar with Vozrozhdeniye said there was little immediate danger to the local population. But with the continued shrinking of the sea, the island is becoming more readily accessible. In some of the pits, anthrax sludge is beginning to leach up through the sand, said one recent visitor here.
Although Uzbek officials have kept Renaissance Island closed, local inhabitants will inevitably come in contact with the still deadly bacteria once it is linked to the mainland. "We're now totally in the dark," Small said. "It's scary not to know what we're dealing with."
Related Articles
Tests With Anthrax Raise Fears That American Vaccine Can Be Defeated (March 26, 1998) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/032698anthrax-vaccine.html
Arrests Highlight Growing Threat of Bioweapons (Feb. 21, 1998) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/022198anthrax-primer.html
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Message: 5 Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 21:29:43 -0400
Subject: NucNews-6 6/03/99 - S.Africa Abolition Petition; X-Ray de-mining; UN/Iraq; Russia, China: Stop Bombing!; World Court Declines halt NATO bombing
25. NUCLEAR-PETITION METROPOLITAN MAYOR SIGNS ANTI-NUCLEAR PETITION
ANC, South Africa, CAPE TOWN 31 May 1999, Sapa http://www.anc.org.za:80/ancdocs/briefing/nw19990601/27.html
Cape Metropolitan Council mayor William Bantom is to add his name to the State of the World Forum's mayors' list for the worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons.
The council said in a statement on Monday that Bantom felt strongly about the support the CMC would "give this worthy cause." "The world has recognised that the Cape Metropolitan area is an integral link within international society, both in the diplomatic arena and in tourism," Bantom said.
"I am proud to be representing the people of the Cape metropole in this worthy cause and wish to invite other mayors around the globe to support the abolition of nuclear weapons." CMC executive committee chairman Pierre Uys said the CMC fully supported the campaign.
"The destruction caused by nuclear warheads must not be allowed to happen again," Uys said.
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26. Loch Harris' ChemTech Physicist to Address Nuclear Conference
02:23 p.m Jun 01, 1999 Eastern /PRNewswire/ http://senghor.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR +radioactiv%3F%3F%3F&fs=nws&to=thirty
AUSTIN, Texas, June 1 -- In the aftermath of agreements forged with the Ruder Boskovic Institute and the Croatian Mine Action Centre (CROMAC) in Croatia last week, officials of Loch Harris, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: LOCH) have become last-minute insertions in a prestigious international nuclear conference, according to Loch Harris CEO Rodney A. Boone.
"The 6th International Conference on Applications of Nuclear Techniques, to be held on the island of Crete, Greece June 20-26, was closed," said Boone. "But Croatian officials who were prominent participants insisted on inviting a paper from Dr. Henry Blair, noted physicist for Chemical Detection Technologies, Inc. (ChemTech), into the program.
Blair's topic, "A Man Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Based Landmine Detection and Location System," will discuss the scientific basis behind ChemTech's ELF landmine detection system and hint at its use in other applications.
Boone has also been invited by Dr. Vlado Valkovic, professor of physics and head of Ruder Boskovic Institute's Applied Physics Laboratory, to be co- author of his opening overview, "Humanitarian Demining: A Global Problem."
ChemTech, a subsidiary of Loch Harris, is owner and developer of the ELF technology, an X-ray-based system for detection and location of landmines. ChemTech recently announced an agreement to collaborate with Croatia's Ruder Boskovic Institute in field testing the ELF system in what Boone termed the "real, live laboratory of one of the worst landmine-polluted nations on earth."
"Over ten percent of the land area of Croatia has been rendered useless by an estimated 1.2 million undocumented landmines," said Boone. "Our task is to help them clear the equivalent of a one-mile wide path from Washington, DC to the Pacific Ocean."
The 6th International Conference on Applications of Nuclear Techniques is under the auspices of The Office Of National Drug Control Policy -- The White House, NCSR Demokritos, and Western Kentucky University. Additional information about the program may be found on the Western Kentucky University Web site, http://www.wku.edu/API/crete99/, or on the Loch Harris Web site, http://www.lochharris.com. SOURCE Loch Harris, Inc.
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27. Russia Says U.N. Inspectors Left Chemicals in Iraq
By JUDITH MILLER, June 2, 1999, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/iraq-un.html
UNITED NATIONS -- Keeping pressure on an agency that Russia has criticized for months, Moscow's representative here on Tuesday accused the U.N. Special Commission responsible for disarming Iraq of endangering Iraqis by leaving behind dangerous chemicals in its Baghdad laboratory.
The accusations were made as Russia requested a special meeting of the Security Council, contending that there was a danger from the chemicals. Richard Butler, the chairman of the embattled inspection agency, assured Security Council members at the closed meeting that the minute quantities of toxic chemicals being stored in a laboratory in the Canal Hotel pose no danger to Iraqi citizens.
But Sergey Lavrov, Russia's representative, said afterward that Butler would present a written report on the matter to the council.
Several diplomats described the Russian accusations about the laboratory as part of a broader struggle over the fate of the Special Commission, known as UNSCOM, and what policy the United Nations should pursue toward Iraq and its intransigent leade