September 07, 1999 Deseret News (Utah) Letters to Editor
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1,1249,115007532,00.html?
Feedback: mailto:reece@desnews.com

The alleged extreme toxicity of plutonium is a bugaboo invented by safety personnel on the Manhattan project to scare workers into handling plutonium carefully. Plutonium is actually one of the safer radioactive elements. Ordinary matter is so absorptive of radiation that plutonium's rays are stopped by a sheet of paper. It can be handled with your bare hands safely. It is not absorbed in the digestive tract so the problem with ingestion is radiation damage to the lining of the digestive tract. Its lethal oral dose is more than an aspirin in weight. Its lethal inhalation dose is suppositional. It is difficult to get plutonium as a sufficiently fine aerosol to lodge in the lungs. There is no danger of atomic wastes erupting into a nuclear fire or explosion. Fear of plutonium in atomic waste qualifies as a superstition. There is a page on plutonium risks on the internet at coalition I for those who wish to see documentation on it.

Volney Wallace
Salt Lake City

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By Stephanie Nebehay, September 7 11:07 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19990907/pl/un_arms_1.html

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States and the European Union Tuesday expressed their frustration that attempts by the U.N. arms control body to halt the production of nuclear bomb-making fissile material had again foundered.

``Yet another year has passed without any material progress to show to the international community,'' U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Grey lamented in a speech to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament.

He called on all states to show flexibility in 2000 to allow work to begin on the fissile material ``cut-off'' treaty, which Washington sees as the next step in nuclear disarmament.

``It's the only hope we have of avoiding yet another sterile year on the multilateral arms control front and for beginning the new millennium with a solid and full-scale arms control program of work,'' Grey said.

Washington and the EU urged the Conference to launch negotiations to halt production of fissile material (plutonium and highly-enriched uranium) as soon as the talks resume in Geneva in January.

Despite growing fears of a nuclear arms race between arch-foes India and Pakistan, envoys and U.N. sources saw little prospect of the 66-member body breaking the stalemate quickly.

Finland's Ambassador Markku Reimaa, speaking on behalf of the 15-member EU and 10 associated countries of Central and Eastern Europe, said: ``The fissile material cut-off treaty has been the long-standing goal of the international community.

``The European Union is convinced that a fissile material cut-off treaty, by irreversibly limiting the fissile material stockpiles available for use in nuclear weapons and by establishing an effective verification system, will strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime...''

France's disarmament envoy, Hubert de la Fortelle, said: ''The conclusions of this year are disquieting. The tyranny of inertia carried the day over the will to act.

``Prospects for the 2000 session appear very bleak,'' he added. ``The Conference must avoid, at all costs, a fourth year of paralysis which will contribute to discrediting it further.''

British envoy Ian Soutar regretted the ``totally unacceptable impasse.''

``There simply cannot be nuclear disarmament without confidence that no new fissile material is being produced for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

``A fissile material cut-off treaty is not then the last step, but it is the next essential one,'' he said.

The Conference on Disarmament launched fissile negotiations in August 1998, but never began substantive negotiations. This year, it has been unable to renew the negotiating committee's mandate.

The five official nuclear powers -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- have refused demands by non-aligned powers including India and Pakistan to go further by launching negotiations to eliminate nuclear arms, diplomats say.

The United States, which is studying plans to develop and deploy a missile defense system, is the only member opposed to negotiations on outer space defense systems.

Washington's firm position has also prevented reaching agreement on a compromise negotiating package at the Conference, according to diplomats.

The only tangible progress in 1999 was agreement to admit five new states -- including Ireland which was kept waiting 17 years to join the world's only multilateral disarmament body.

---

Tuesday, September 7, 1999; Page A18 Washington Post Editorial
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/07/004l-090799-idx.html

THE PROPOSED nuclear test ban treaty has been around so long -- for 50 years -- and has been so shrouded in political foliage that many people have forgotten just what it entails. The current debate about it centers on the Clinton administration's differences with the Russians on the one hand and with the Republicans on the other. But in fact the appeal of the treaty is a good deal simpler and more powerful than the debate indicates. This treaty would put an end to underground nuclear tests everywhere; tests above ground already are proscribed either by treaty or by political calculation. Its merits shine through.

Testing is the principal engine of nuclear proliferation. Without tests, a would-be nuclear power cannot be sure enough the thing would work to employ it as a reliable military and political instrument. Leaving open the testing option means leaving open the proliferation option -- the very definition of instability. The United States, which enjoys immense global nuclear advantage, can only be the loser as additional countries go nuclear or extend their nuclear reach. The aspiring nuclear powers, whether they are anti-American rogue states or friendly-to-America parties to regional disputes, sow danger and uncertainty across a global landscape. No nation possibly can gain more than we do from universal acceptance of a test ban that helps close off others' options.

At the moment, the treaty is hung up in the Senate by Republicans desiring to use it as a hostage for a national missile defense of their particular design. This is curious. The obstructionists pride themselves in believing American power to be the core of American security. Why then do they support a test ban holdup that multiplies the mischief and menace of proliferators and directly erodes American power? The idea has spread that Americans must choose between a test ban treaty and a missile defense. The idea is false. These are two aspects of a single American security program, the one being a first resort to restrain others' nuclear ambitions and the other a last resort to limit the damage if all else fails. No reasonable person would want to cast one of these away, least of all over details of missile program design. Those in the Senate who are forcing an either-or choice owe it to the country to explain why we cannot employ them both.

The old bugaboo of verification has arisen in the current debate. There is no harm in conceding that verification of low-yield tests might not be 100 percent. But the reasonable measure of these things always has been whether the evasion would make a difference. The answer has to be that cheating so slight as to be undetectable by one or another American intelligence means would not make much difference at all.

The trump card of those who believe the United States should maintain a testing option is that computer calculations alone cannot provide the degree of certitude about the reliability of weapons in the American stockpile that would prudently allow us to forgo tests. This is a matter of continuing contention among the specialists. But what seems to us much less in contention is the proposition that, given American technological prowess, the risk of weapons rotting in the American stockpile has got to be a good deal less than the risk that other countries will test their way to nuclear status.

The core question of proliferation remains what will induce would-be proliferators to get off the nuclear track. Certainly a "mere" signature on a piece of paper would not stay the hand of a country driven by extreme nuclear fear or ambition. Two things, however, could make a difference. One is if the nuclear powers showed themselves ready to accept some increasing part of the discipline they are calling on non-nuclear others to accept, so that the treaty could not be dismissed as punitive and discriminatory. The other is that when you embrace the test ban and related restraints on chemical and biological weapons, you are joining a global order in which those who play by the agreed rules enjoy ever-widening benefits and privileges and those who do not are left out and behind.

President Clinton signed the test ban treaty, and achieving Senate ratification is one of his prime foreign policy goals. More important, ratification would make the world a safer place for the United States. Much still has to be worked out with the Republicans and the Russians, but that is detail work. The larger gain is now within American reach.

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By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, September 7, 1999; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/07/041l-090799-idx.html

Shortly after CIA Director George J. Tenet coaxed Jack G. Downing out of retirement to run the agency's troubled espionage service, the legendary spy took stock of flagging morale and prescribed a cure: jump training.

Few government bureaucracies losing their best workers in droves would start pushing new ones out of airplanes to build esprit de corps. But jump training appears to have had a beneficial effect. The CIA's super-secret Directorate of Operations now seems on the mend two years after Downing arrived and reminded the barons of Langley and the agency's overseers on Capitol Hill that the DO isn't any old government agency.

Money is pouring in from Congress, the CIA is engaged in the most significant recruiting drive in its history, morale is up and resignations by DO case officers are way, way down.

"I really believe the corner has been turned," Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said last week in an interview.

He credits Downing, 59, a Harvard-educated former Marine infantry officer fluent in Chinese and Russian--and the only person in CIA history to have been station chief in both Moscow and Beijing. Tenet once called him "a world-renowned operator . . . who reads Chinese poetry for kicks."

As recently as 18 months ago, Goss was lamenting the DO's slide in espionage, counterintelligence and covert action. "The cupboard is nearly bare in the area of human intelligence," he said.

But Goss, himself a former DO case officer, offered a different assessment when Downing retired for the second time at the end of July and turned his reform program over to his deputy, James L. Pavitt, a noted operations officer with much Washington experience.

"Under Jack, DO officers have found ways to penetrate terrorist cells, to get inside the cabinet rooms of rogue states, and to detect and disrupt the movement of narcotics," Goss said in remarks he had inserted into the Congressional Record. "Under Jack, the DO has been put in a position to collect intelligence on whatever threats and challenges come our way in the next century."

Agency critics, many of them former CIA case officers and senior managers, remain skeptical. While nearly all praise Downing, they say even his plan won't be able to reform a Cold War-era espionage service that lurches on, nearly a decade after the Cold War ended.

"I think we should be trying to cut the DO way back," said Melvin A. Goodman, a former chief of the CIA's Soviet affairs division who teaches at the National War College and heads the intelligence reform project at the Center for International Policy.

Goodman believes the DO should become a more elite corps that pursues new strategies to penetrate increasingly hard targets: criminal syndicates, terrorist organizations and rogue states. To do this, he said, far more case officers need to operate overseas using "nonofficial cover"--say, posing as business executives--because most foreign intelligence services are no longer fooled by CIA spies working out of U.S. embassies and posing as State Department political officers.

The DO's exact size is classified, but it is thought to have about 5,000 employees, including about 1,000 overseas operations officers--the spies who recruit and handle foreign agents and manage intelligence collection. Downing's blueprint calls for the spy force to increase in size by about 30 percent over the next seven years, which will allow the CIA to reopen a number of overseas stations closed after the Cold War ended.

Goodman's critique has many adherents, most notably Ruel Marc Gerecht, a former DO case officer who wrote a devastating portrait of his former employer in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1998, seven months after Downing's return.

The Directorate of Operations, he wrote, using the pen name Edward G. Shirley, had grown intellectually dishonest and become an institution where case officers played a cynical "numbers game" to get promoted by recruiting large numbers of paid foreign agents, regardless of quality.

The "secrets" these agents produced were often nearly worthless, Gerecht wrote, and typical case officers either didn't care or didn't know better, lacking language skills and much grounding in the culture in which they operated.

"America's national security would not be compromised by temporarily shutting down the DO," Gerecht wrote. "A Directorate of Operations that produces mostly mediocre intelligence and egregiously stupid coup d'etat schemes against, for example, [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein harms the United States abroad."

Downing and Pavitt disagree.

Yes, they concede, the "numbers game" once was a problem. And yes, penetrating the new hard targets requires far different strategies than the agency employed against the KGB, the Soviet spy agency. But they reject Gerecht's contention that the DO is--or ever was--a failed organization that contributed little to national security.

"I still think this is the world's finest intelligence organization bar none," said Pavitt, 53, who speaks German, has served as a DO case officer and station chief in four overseas assignments and worked at the National Security Council during the Bush administration.

"I wish I could convey with greater detail some of our great successes," he said. "My job is to keep those secret. But if I walked you down to the bowels of this building, through any geographic division or any one of our centers and said sit down here and spend a week watching what they do, you'd walk away extraordinarily impressed."

Downing began his last--and perhaps most important--assignment two years ago by drawing a line in the sand: The cutbacks had to end. The DO could no longer do more with less, as the cliche went. It was doing less with less, Downing declared--and he convinced Congress that something desperately needed to be done.

"That's a very important message," Downing said. "It made people feel that they are valued."

Another message Downing wanted to send, in part to help motivate a new generation of case officers, had to do with the importance of technology. This he did by assigning Hugh Turner to head a new Staff for Technology Management. Its purpose was twofold:

* To better use technology in support of human intelligence operations, through such means as improved radio communications, miniature camera technology, disguises and documents.

* To use human intelligence operations better in support of new and exotic technical intelligence collection strategies.

Turner, 56, a veteran case officer and station chief who rose to the DO's number 2 slot last month, speaks Arabic and Turkish and won the Silver Star as a Green Beret in Vietnam.

His presence, added to the likes of Downing and Pavitt, helped send another message: The days of risk aversion were over. The operators were ascendant.

Downing knew it would take time to make believers out of case officers overseas. "People watch what you do," he said, "not what you say."

But after two years, he and Pavitt believe the message is taking root.

"In this business you do get caught," Pavitt said. "In this business things do go wrong. I am not going to take somebody out and hang them because they've done what we've asked them to do and they've done it well."

As part of the rebuilding effort, Downing and Pavitt also paid attention to the prosaic side of espionage. They beefed up training and reinstituted a requirement designed to make recruits believe in themselves under the most challenging circumstances: making all operations officers bail out of the back of an airplane, paramilitary style, at 1,200 feet.

"Ordinary people are not inclined to jump out of an airplane," Downing said, "and we are not looking for ordinary people."

In the same vein, he and Pavitt also emphasized the importance of language proficiency, forcing division chiefs to disclose in the paperwork supporting assignments and promotions that are sent for approval by the director of central intelligence the language proficiency of those they were recommending for station chief and other senior positions.

Emphasizing languages, Downing said, was a no-brainer, given how low the DO's language capabilities had slipped. The directorate had so few speakers of important languages in the Balkans, Downing recalled, that he forced the DO's Central Eurasia Division to send a cadre of young officers to study Serbo-Croatian and Albanian in June 1998. They had not quite finished their year's study when NATO's bombardment of Yugoslavia began in March. But with Kosovo and Albania still critical areas of operation, the class is out of school--and in the field.

Downing and Pavitt also focused on keeping experienced hands satisfied on the job. They made sure that everyone who resigned over the past two years was interviewed by their superiors to find out why. Resignations have dropped by one-half to two-thirds.

"We are beginning to see a significant turn in morale," Pavitt said. "The young men and women who are joining this organization today are among the best and the brightest this country has to offer. They are people with, for the most part, very good educations, good languages, and in some instances languages learned at their mother's knee."

Pavitt rejects the argument that the DO is somehow incapable of penetrating the new hard targets. "This is one of the things that is so extraordinary about this work force. They get everybody around this table and say, 'Here's what we've got to do, how do we do it?' And they come up with answers. They're creative answers, they're different answers, they're different ways of doing business."

Pavitt also rejects the argument that espionage--stealing other country's secrets--is less important in a world awash in information. "If anything, the mission has grown and continues to grow: proliferation, terrorism, narcotics, organized crime," he said. "That's one of my problems. I can't do more with less and hence I've argued for more--and the argument has carried the day."

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September 6, 1999
http://www.washtimes.com/politics/politicallinks.html

Campaign Sites

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Bill Bradley (http://www.billbradley.com)
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Political Resources

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Election Talk (http://www.electiontalk.com)

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Updated 11:37 AM ET September 4, 1999
http://news.excite.com/news/r/990904/11/politics-congress-agenda

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers return from recess this week to a crowded agenda dominated by tax cuts and spending bills. Here are some other key issues that members of Congress are expected to tackle before the end of the session.

+ CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM -- The House is scheduled to take up campaign finance reform in the coming weeks. The leading bill would ban the use of so-called soft money that national party organizations raise on behalf of their candidates. It would also limit independent organizations from raising and spending money on "issue ads". Republican leaders have put obstacles in the way of the measure. The House Rules Committee, which sets the terms of debates, has made 10 amendments aimed at making the bill unpalatable to Democrats.

+ COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREATY -- Democrats have threatened to push Republicans to hold congressional hearings on the 152-nation treaty banning nuclear testing -- one of President Clinton's top foreign policy goals. Senate Republicans do not favor going forward with a new treaty until they are convinced the administration will build at least a limited defense for the United States against long-range missile attacks.

+ GUN CONTROL -- House and Senate negotiators are trying to work out a compromise on gun control and youth crime but the issue is divisive. A major stumbling block is over tighter regulation of weapons sales at gun shows.

+ MEDICARE -- Republicans and Democrats favor adding some form of prescription drug benefit to Medicare, the health-care program for the elderly. But they disagree on how to pay for it and how far-reaching it should be. A compromise could be wrapped into an overall tax and budget spending agreement this year, but it could also be put off until Congress eventually takes up an overhaul of the whole Medicare program.

+ PATIENTS' BILL OF RIGHTS -- The Senate has passed a Republican patients' bill of rights, which Clinton has threatened to veto. Unable to hold together their majority on the contentious issue, House Republicans put off a vote in August while they work on a compromise bill for a possible September vote.

+ AGRICULTURE -- Lawmakers are likely to enact the second farm rescue package in a year to help farmers suffering from dismally low grain prices. The Senate approved a record $7.65 billion in emergency aid last month, mostly in direct cash payments to grain, soybean and cotton growers. But Republicans and Democrats disagree on how to distribute the money. Also, after months on the sidelines, the White House is expected to weigh in with a multibillion dollar plan of its own.

+ BANKING REFORM -- A House-Senate conference committee is due to resume work on legislation to overhaul America's Depression-era banking laws and allow banks, brokerages and insurers into each other's businesses. Negotiators met for the first time on Aug 3. Progress is expected to be slow, with major issues remaining and a presidential veto threat hanging over the Senate version.

+ BANKRUPTCY REFORM -- The Senate is tentatively scheduled to take up bankruptcy reform legislation around Sept. 9. The bill would make it more difficult for individuals to wipe out their debts by filing for bankruptcy. The House passed its version of the legislation on May 5.

+ NOMINATIONS -- Congress must approve the nominations of Roger Ferguson as the first black vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and former banker Carol Parry for a seat on the Fed board.

+ IMF GOLD SALES -- Congress will decide whether to approve International Monetary Fund plans to sell 10 million ounces of its gold reserves to fund debt relief. Faced with stiff opposition from lawmakers from U.S. gold producing states, the IMF backed away from a proposal to sell gold on the open market. It is now finalizing a plan to sell the gold to central banks who would return it to the IMF in lieu of future payments. This is more likely to win Congress' backing.

+ UNITED NATIONS ARREARS -- Clinton is pressing lawmakers to approve payment of $350 million in arrears to the United Nations by year end. The Senate voted, by a margin of 98 to 2, to authorize the money. But in the House, Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, may derail it with an anti-abortion amendment that would draw a Clinton veto.

+ CHINA TRADE -- The U.S. is resuming talks with China on its bid to join the World Trade Organization. If agreement is reached Congress would have to approve granting China permanent preferential trade privileges.

+ ELECTRICITY -- Congress may delve into what has become a de facto deregulation of the $230 billion electrical power sector. The House Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power may begin hearings in September.

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By Helle Bering THE WASHINGTON TIMES, September 8, 1999
http://www.washtimes.com/opinion/bering.html
Feedback: mailto:letter@twtmail.com

Displays of French arrogance do not usually get rounds of applause around here. Yet, there was a moment, back in the fall of 1995, when the French defied the world and proceeded with a set of nuclear tests beneath a remote Pacific atoll, when one felt like clapping. At the time, President Jacques Chirac defied the collective indignation of the governments of Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. French exports like red wine, camembert and ladies' bloomers suffered serious setbacks.

Then there was the flotilla of protesters to be faced surrounding the atoll of Mururoa, led by Rainbow Warrior II, a ship owned by the environmental group Greenpeace, whose predecessor, the original Rainbow Warrior, had been blown up by French agents in the harbor of New Zealand in 1985. That incident generated a fair amount of negative publicity, and 10 years later the French navy merely hauled away the motley crew so testing could go ahead. The French government argued very reasonably that the tests were needed for new generations of nuclear warheads.

These fond thoughts of French élan were prompted by a New York Times report last week that congressional Democrats are getting ready for a major push, initiated by the White House, to achieve Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the first weeks of the new session. The Clinton administration is ambitiously trying to pull a 'three-fer' tying the CTBT with other arms-control treaties, i.e., U.S. Senate ratification of revisions to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and Russian Duma ratification of the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II).

The urgent push for ratification is dictated by the calendar. As suggested by the president's above comment, the CTBT and the other arms-reduction and nonproliferation efforts are all part of a final push for the Clinton legacy project. Time is running out as Mr. Clinton becomes more and more of a bit player on the political scene. Furthermore, an international conference to evaluate the CTBT is coming up in October. If the United States has not ratified the document by then, the U.S. administration, which has pushed it harder than anyone, will look pretty foolish.

But at least we will not be alone. Of the major nuclear powers, only England and France (having completed its own tests) have ratified the treaty, neither Russia nor China, our most likely adversaries, have ratified.

The administration's strategy is to apply maximum pressure to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jesse Helms, who fortunately is not a man who responds well to pressure. So far, Mr. Helms has wisely refused to hold hearings on the CTBT. The next few weeks could see a battle royal reminiscent of the fight over the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) during which Mr. Helms staunchly manned the ramparts, only to find that Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott had struck a deal with the White House to let the treaty come to a vote.

The difference is that the criticism leveled at Mr. Lott from conservative Republican quarters over the CWC was so stinging that he reportedly has no inclination to repeat the experience. Both Mr. Helms and Mr. Lott would do us all a favor if they allow the CTBT to remain in whatever back room it happens currently to be collecting dust.

In essence, what we have here are two opposed views of the national security of the United States, falling roughly into a Democratic and a Republican position -- and they relate to a lot of the different arms-control treaties stuck in Senate ratification limbo. Democrats tend to believe that security is a collective international concern, to be settled through the signing of treaties. By voluntarily giving up the right to nuclear tests, for instance, the United States would encourage others to follow suit, staunch the production of such weapons in rogue states and bring down the level of danger and tension worldwide.

From a Republican point of view this is wrong-headed, dangerous even. The belief is here that treaties do not stop other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons or developing new generations of weapons -- and while we tie our hands, China, Iran or Russia may proceed to test in secret. Indeed, even if we detected all tests, we would still not be able to prevent them. Security, therefore, lies in keeping up a credible nuclear deterrent and producing a missile shield to render other countries' weapons ineffectual against us. This view is often derided by Democrats as "isolationist," which it is not, since we might well choose to share missile defense technology with friendly and allied nations.

It may be, as the administration likes to point out, that 80 percent of Americans favor the CTBT -- but did the pollsters actually ask them if they know what it is? It would be particularly egregious to sacrifice American national security to the dictates of the election calendar. Republican Senate leaders have no justification for bending to Democratic pressure this time.

Helle Bering is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. She may be contacted at helle.bering@washtimes.com

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By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 8, 1999; Page A13
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/08/078l-090899-idx.html

Rejecting calls from Republican lawmakers to overhaul the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty all at once, President Clinton has decided to ask Russia to agree initially to relatively modest changes in the 27-year-old agreement, administration officials said yesterday.

The decision follows months of debate within the administration over whether to seek wholesale changes in the treaty immediately or take a two-step approach as the United States attempts to build a nationwide defense against missiles.

Administration officials said the gradual approach would improve the chances of reaching an agreement before presidential elections next year in both countries.

The first set of changes sought by the administration would permit the United States to place 100 interceptor missiles in Alaska, which is the Pentagon's latest plan for defending the country against, at a bare minimum, a few incoming warheads from a state such as North Korea, Iraq or Iran.

As the missile threat is perceived to grow and as U.S. technologies improve, officials said, the United States would seek further treaty amendments to permit more than 200 interceptors, at least two launching sites, advances in radar and the use of space-based sensors.

But congressional Republicans attacked the strategy, accusing the administration of squandering an opportunity to alter the treaty substantially now and arguing that the phased approach would only prolong tensions with Russia. They said that Moscow, which has long opposed U.S. defenses against long-range missile attack, likely would reject even the limited proposal for modifications. They also predicted trouble in Congress.

"The administration is very clear on what would be acceptable, and the minimalist approach is not acceptable," one senior Senate Republican staff member said.

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, the administration's top Russia expert, flew to Moscow yesterday to begin discussions on the phased negotiation plan. Other high-level exchanges are due next week when Defense Secretary William S. Cohen visits Moscow and Russia's deputy foreign minister, Georgi Mamedov, comes to Washington.

European allies also were being informed of the U.S. plan this week, officials said. Concern that the Europeans might take issue with a more aggressive U.S. approach was a major factor in the decision to proceed in steps, according to officials involved in the decision.

"We also have to get the concurrence of our allies in order to make an effective anti-missile system," Cohen said in an interview yesterday. "They still look on the ABM Treaty as being one of the stabilizing factors in the relationship with Russia. It's important for us to proceed in a responsible fashion."

Some senior defense officials reportedly argued within the administration for a broader negotiation with Moscow. But Cohen insisted that he and Clinton's other top national security aides were unanimous in their support for the phased approach.

"This first phase will give us the kind of protection we'll need for the immediate missile threat," he said.

At the same time, Cohen stressed that the Russians would be told of longer-term U.S. plans to expand the anti-missile system and to seek further treaty changes in a second set of negotiations at a future date.

While Clinton has yet to approve the deployment of any national missile defense system, he has come closer in the past year to a decision to build one under pressure from Republican lawmakers and amid evidence that a growing number of nations are acquiring ballistic missiles.

In January, Clinton pledged $6.6 billion over the next six years for construction of a network of radars and interceptor missiles. The administration also announced then that it would ask Russia to renegotiate the ABM Treaty to permit a limited system of missile defenses. Months of debate ensued over how to structure the talks.

The ABM Treaty, signed by President Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, strictly limits the number, type and placement of missiles that Washington or Moscow can deploy to shoot down incoming missiles. Its fundamental premise, which held throughout the Cold War, was that limiting missile defense would discourage development of more offensive nuclear weapons and make each side confident that it had a credible deterrent against attack.

Despite mounting calls by Republican lawmakers to scrap the treaty as a Cold War relic, the Clinton administration has opted to preserve it as a cornerstone of nuclear strategy, essential to avoiding a new nuclear arms race.

U.S. officials have urged the Russians to view the deployment of a limited U.S. antimissile system not as a threat to the strategic balance between the two nations, but rather as a weapon against attack from "rogue states." But the Russians regard the scaled-down plan as a forerunner to reviving the more ambitious "Star Wars" system proposed by President Ronald Reagan in 1983--a space-based shield to protect the entire country from thousands of incoming nuclear missiles.

To entice Moscow into a deal, U.S. officials plan on trying to couple a new ABM Treaty agreement with a new strategic arms reduction treaty, START III, that the Russians want and that could reduce each side's nuclear arsenal to 1,500 warheads from about 6,000.

There are still enormous technological and financial obstacles to a national missile defense system. Chief among them: The Pentagon has yet to prove it can build a system that works. Clinton faces a decision next summer over whether to authorize deployment, but many experts predict the deadline will slip because of testing delays.

To permit the initial system that the Pentagon envisions, U.S. officials said they need agreement from Russia to designate a new site, substituting Alaska in place of Grand Forks, N.D., which was picked in the mid-1970s when the United States briefly activated an antimissile system.

The treaty allows a single site for protecting either a set of strategic missiles, as was the case in North Dakota, or a nation's capital. But it specifically bans an antimissile system to protect all national territory. This prohibition also will have to be renegotiated, officials said.

Other similarly contentious provisions restricting radar locations and basing as well as the use of space-based sensors would be postponed under the U.S. plan until a later phase of talks.

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By Nora Boustany, Wednesday, September 8, 1999; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/08/083l-090899-idx.html

When it was time to push the envelope on substantive ties with China in 1972 and with Vietnam in 1989, in advance of diplomatic relations, Jeremy J. Stone, president of the Federation of American Scientists and his group were involved.

"We are specialists in trying to establish scientific ties with countries not formally recognized by the United States. We are originally a peace group of scientists," said Stone as he prepared to meet five Iranian scientists who arrived in Washington yesterday--the highest such delegation from Iran in 20 years. "This is a case of a very important step, like the Ping-Pong players from China, with a scientific group coming here to start scientific relations before diplomatic relations can be established," Stone said.

Washington says formal ties are blocked by a number of issues, including Iran's state-sponsored terrorism, its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and unresolved questions of compensation for American property seized during the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Stone took the first group of American scientists since the 1979 revolution to Iran last December and in return invited this delegation, which is led by the head of Iran's national academy of scientists and includes three prominent engineers and a physician.

"When I went to Iran, almost all the scientists I ran into were graduates of American universities--Illinois, California and Cal Tech, [and] they all spoke English. This was very different from the experience we had in China. There, they produced one scientist who had graduated from Harvard in 1911, and they had to prop him up," Stone said with a chuckle.

The five Iranians are here at the invitation of the federation and the National Academy of Scientists.

During their week-long visit, they will be introduced not only to the academy, but also to the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They will also meet with nongovernmental groups interested in the environment and energy efficiency, Stone said.

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By Catherine Wilson ASSOCIATED PRESS, September 7, 1999 Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/business/business2.html http://usatoday.com/news/ndsmon09.htm

MIAMI - Dangerous goods are still making their way on board the nation's airliners even though the Federal Aviation Administration has made regulatory strides to keep hazardous materials on the ground.

The fiery ValuJet crash that killed 110 persons three years ago was blamed on oxygen generators carried in cargo. The explosive-triggered generators, now banned on passenger airlines, have flown or been intercepted at least 20 times since that crash.

The FAA came under attack in the ValuJet investigation for in-house problems controlling hazardous materials -- hazmat for short -- and some of the same problems persist.

The agency's training and enforcement in the field may not be as strong as Washington thinks they are, violations routinely take two years to process, headline-grabbing proposed penalties often shrink to smaller fines, and airlines have been slow to install mandated fire gear on older aircraft.

Since the ValuJet crash, the biggest change was a requirement proposed by the FAA more than a year later to add fire-detection and -suppression equipment to old cargo holds by 2001.

Forms filed by the industry show only 11 percent of the nation's fleet has been converted halfway to the deadline.

On the plus side, a new force of 140 inspectors and lawyers work exclusively on hazmat enforcement, shippers are under scrutiny for the first time, and unprecedented criminal charges over the ValuJet crash riveted the industry in July.

There is no way to guarantee hazmat never flies, but closer scrutiny of everything going onto planes and better training of people clearing packages to fly are reducing the risks.

A major contributing factor in the ValuJet crash was the failure of ground crews with the discount carrier and a maintenance contractor to realize the improperly packaged generators could easily ignite.

Like about 80 percent of the nation's airlines, ValuJet was what is known in the industry as a "will-not-carry" airline, which means it doesn't knowingly accept hazmat for its flights.

The crash disclosed vague wording in FAA rules about whether will-not-carry airlines were required to train workers to recognize hazmat. A report due within days from the inspector general's office of the Transportation Department will address the will-not-carry issue.

Bill Wilkening, FAA manager of dangerous goods and cargo security, said that issue was resolved in April 1998 with written guidance from FAA lawyers and the security division to the work force.

"It's not an open issue. We feel it's enforceable," Mr. Wilkening said. "Our agents have been provided guidance that will-not-carry carriers must have recognition training."

But as recently as November, agency sources told the Associated Press that an FAA instructor told newly hired security inspectors that training may be required, but no enforcement action can be taken against violators.

The interpretation offered in training "would be wrong," said FAA spokeswoman Rebecca Trexler. "We believe the regulation is now clear enough to enforce."

Overall, the amount of fines proposed by the FAA for hazmat violations are up from $2.3 million in 1994 to $19.6 million in 1998.

But there often is a gap of two years or more between a violation and the FAA's proposed penalty. And the fine amount tends to shrink.

Sears, Roebuck & Co. was cited for shipping 100 signal flares with UPS in March 1997. The $150,000 proposed fine was settled for $75,000.

A California supplier of toys and novelties was cited for a 1996 delivery of a five-gallon drum of flammable glue, which leaked at the same UPS sorting center in Kentucky. The company had no idea what the FAA was talking about when first approached about the violation because so much time had passed. The proposed fine of $75,000 fell to $35,000 when the case was closed.

The new hazmat teams, fully staffed since the summer of 1997, have organized special inspections in 20 cities in addition to routine checks. For every airline inspected, the FAA has set an undisclosed ratio for the number of shippers that also must be checked to attack an obvious problem area -- ignorance on the part of people preparing air shipments.

"I talk to shippers every day that don't really know anything about these regulations," said Jim Powell of Torrance, Calif., a hazmat training consultant. "It's just something they think their carrier will take care of for them."

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By Martha M. Hamilton Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 6, 1999; Page F16
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/06/027l-090699-idx.html

"In some ways it's a simple business," said USEC Inc.'s vice president and chief financial officer. "It's a unique company with one product line. We sell enriched uranium to 65 customers."

But as Henry Z. Shelton quickly acknowledged, business isn't quite that simple for the recently privatized company formerly known as the U.S. Enrichment Corp.

Once part of the U.S. Department of Energy, USEC is still a player in national security matters by virtue of its commitment to buy highly enriched nuclear warhead material from Russia to blend into power plant fuel.

Instead of having to satisfy congressional overseers, however, USEC now is judged by its stock market performance, and over the past year, financial analysts have found it wanting.

USEC, with revenue of more than $1.4 billion and with its headquarters in Bethesda, became a private company on July 28, 1998, through a $1.9 billion initial public offering. Initially sold at $14.25, the company's stock closed Friday at $10.93 3/4, up 6 1/4 cents.

"From an investor's standpoint, it hasn't gone well," said Steven L. Fleishman of Merrill Lynch Global Securities. "The stock hasn't gone up. They've had some earnings disappointments. They've done some good things, but overall, the first year has been disappointing."

"They experienced growing pains learning how to be a publicly traded company," said M. Carol Coale of Prudential Securities Inc. "It looks like the steps they've taken internally have been in the right direction, but they underestimated or miscalculated the direction of the external market."

USEC has converted the equivalent of more than 3,000 Russian nuclear warheads into fuel through its participation in the five-year-old Megatons to Megawatts program.

But this success has come at a cost: The contract requires USEC to pay more for the material than it would pay to produce it at its own plants.

When prices were higher for uranium enrichment -- which is the process the company sells - USEC could still make money even with the higher costs of its Russian contract. But prices have been depressed by aggressive competition from the world's fourth-largest processor, URENCO, which is owned by British, Dutch and German utility companies.

The biggest negative is that the demand for USEC's product dropped dramatically, falling by 15 to 20 percent, according to Merrill Lynch's Fleishman.

The market situation has been difficult, but USEC has taken important steps to control costs and has made some other improvements in operations, Fleishman said.

USEC President William H. Timbers Jr. said the past year has seen a dramatic shift in corporate attention. Before privatization, Timbers and his crew spent approximately 80 percent of their time on government affairs. Now they spend about 85 percent of their time on business matters.

In the shorthand of the corporation, management now spends more time on "212 problems" instead of "202 problems," referring to a shift in its phone-calling activity from Washington to New York.

What counts in government is process, but what now counts at USEC is performance, said Timbers. "That was a turnaround."

Among the steps that the company has taken to improve performance is taking over direct operation of its production plants from Lockheed Martin Corp. as of last May. "What U.S. business has another U.S. business running their operations for them?" Timbers asked. In eliminating the middleman, USEC reduced its costs by about $11 million and created a more direct relationship with the 4,500 workers at its enrichment plants in Kentucky and Ohio, he said.

A recent Washington Post investigation revealed that thousands of uranium workers at the Paducah plant were exposed to radioactive materials without their knowledge when the plant was still a government facility. USEC, however, is exempt from liability on claims arising from when the plants were government-owned. The plants are now regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rather than the Energy Department.

Besides the two plants, USEC's other employment center is in Bethesda, where it has a headquarters staff of about 160.

The company also restructured its deal with utilities that operate a dedicated coal-fired power plant that provides electricity to USEC's operations. The deal allows USEC to release power back to the utilities for resale when energy prices are high and to increase operations when prices are low, which is expected to produce a $30 million benefit this summer.

Other steps that analysts consider improvements include a decision to pay half of management bonuses in stock options -- which theoretically increases management interest in ensuring higher stock values -- and the initiation in June of a buyback program for up to 10 million shares of common stock.

The company also suspended a program to develop a technology that uses lasers to separate fissionable and nonfissionable isotopes in uranium in June, incurring a nonrecurring charge of about $40 million. The company said it was abandoning the project because the possible returns weren't high enough to warrant the risks and growing financial requirements.

So what are the prospects for growth for USEC? "Our goal here for the next year or two is to pay close attention to our knitting and make sure that our core business is predictable and sustainable," said Timbers. The market for the company's single product, enrichment, is not likely to grow much in the future, according to Merrill Lynch's Fleishman.

There are no stocks comparable to USEC's, Timbers said. Although the company is often grouped with utilities, it is closer in nature to a chemical processing company, such as DuPont Co. or Union Carbide Corp., he said.

In the future, the company could pursue other opportunities related to its core business, said Timbers. For instance, the company might find investment opportunities in dealing with spent fuel from utilities, decommissioning nuclear power plants or even power generation.

In the meantime, Timbers and Shelton said they and others at USEC are enjoying the shift to the private sector.

"You get a report card at the end of every day, or -- if you're into Bloomberg [the business and stock market news service] -- every minute," Shelton said.

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Filed at 8:19 a.m. EDT By The Associated Press, September 8, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Waco-Flares.html

DALLAS (AP) -- Several spent illumination flares were found in the tons of evidence recovered from the charred rubble of the Branch Dividian compound near Waco, The Dallas Morning News reported today.

The newspaper said Texas Rangers discovered a star parachute flare while sifting through a storage facility Friday for missing pyrotechnic tear gas grenades.

Evidence logs showed more such incendiary flares were recovered in the weeks following the FBI siege and assault on April 19, 1993, said James B. Francis Jr., head of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

``These flares are potentially a very important issue, inasmuch as the government had enormous spotlights trained on the compound throughout the standoff.''

``They didn't need these flares to light the compound. One or more was fired,'' Francis told the newspaper. ``For what purpose or reason would these rounds be used?''

John Collingwood, an FBI spokesman, told the newspaper he could not flatly rule out the agency's use of illumination rounds during the deadly siege but said they played no part in the final assault.

``Several times during the standoff, they had people sneaking in or out of the compound at night. Whether they ever used them then, I don't know,'' said Collingwood. ``But I can say categorically, we did not use illumination rounds on the 19th.''

David Koresh and 78 followers died in the fire and assault at the compound following the 51-day siege. The government has maintained that the fires which destroyed the compound were deliberately set by the Branch Davidians.

Some GOP lawmakers want to know whether the FBI lied for several months about using incendiary tear gas canisters during the final raid. The possibility of launching an independent inquiry has been discussed.

Use of the pyrotechnic rounds, Attorney General Janet Reno has said, violated her strict instructions that nothing capable of sparking a fire be used during the FBI tear-gas assault.

Some 24,000 pounds of evidence has been recovered from the burned compound, plus more than 300,000 rounds of ammunition and other ordnance stockpiled by the sect.

``There is a big semiwarehouse of spent munitions that has not been investigated,'' one unnamed Texas official told the newspaper. ``Nobody knew what they were looking for before now. Nobody was hunting for incendiary devices.''