* Nuclear Experts Fault Bush Beliefs on Test Ban Treaty
* Peace Action Urges: 'Ask Bush the Tough Questions'
* Successful test launch of two Trident II D5 Missiles
* USEC May Quit Processing Russian Uranium
* Physicians Concerned About Fate of Missile Treaty
* Senate Panel Chief Blasts Europe Y2K Vote
* Where's the 2000 Buzz?
* Company wants government help to buy uranium
* Heavyweight 'Vulcans' Help Bush Forge a Foreign Policy
* Gore Hits Foreign Policy Highlights
* Ill workers may be paid $100,000
* Bush says he would share missile-defense technology with Russia
* Hanford contractor Bechtel is accused of 'breach of trust'
* Acid Canyon To Undergo Tests
* Aquifer Test Shows No Lab Waste
* New Leads Found in Spy Probe
* Chinese Report's Errors Point Beyond Lab, Lee
* FBI Widens Chinese Espionage Probe - Report
* Legislators upset by exclusion of Piketon workers from bill
Uranium-enrichment plant employees would not be offered compensation.
* Decoding a Radiation-Resistant Bug
* Plan to Import New Viruses Draws Concern
* Yeltsin courting summit conflict
* THE TRADE-OFF Russia Offers to Bargain on Chechnya, Using Iraq as Its Bait
* FBI widens China spying investigation
* China Said to Be Building Anti-Missile System
* Bush Outlines Foreign Policy Views
* •Q. I know uranium spontaneously disintegrates. What finally happens to it?
* China connection
Inside the Ring - Notes from the Pentagon
* China, U.S. Eye First Military Talks Since Bombing
* S. Korea Eyes Missile Development
* S.Korea, US haggle over missiles
* U.S., N.Korea Talks Resume in Berlin
* N.Korea expels U.S. citizen on spy charge
* China's military upgrade may raise stakes in Taiwan
* China Said to Be Building Anti-Missile System
* Schroder ready to close all nuclear plant
-------- us nuc weapons
Nuclear Experts Fault Bush Beliefs on Test Ban Treaty
US Newswire 19 Nov 15:53
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/1119-127.htm
WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The umbrella organization for an alliance of 17 national nuclear non-proliferation organizations issued a statement today in response to presidential candidate George W. Bush's foreign policy speech in which he explained why he opposes the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The CTBT would limit the ability of nuclear weapons states to build new nuclear weapons by prohibiting "any nuclear weapon test explosions and all other nuclear explosions." It will similarly impede the development of new, sophisticated nuclear weapons by the existing nuclear powers. The statement from the Coalition's executive director, Daryl Kimball, said:
"Governor Bush's opposition to the test ban treaty puts him on the wrong side of public, expert, and international opinion on the CTBT. In dismissing the value of the CTBT, he fails to offer a strategy for stopping nuclear weapons testing and the modernization of nuclear arsenals by countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Russia and others. His statement ignores the harsh reality that India and Pakistan are pursuing a nuclear arms buildup, made possible by their recent nuclear tests."
"Governor Bush also ignores the fact that the future viability of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty depends on support for the CTBT. The NPT was extended indefinitely in 1995 largely on the basis of our commitment to conclude the CTBT. By itself, the CTBT cannot stop proliferation, but America cannot effectively fight the spread of nuclear weapons without the CTBT."
"Governor Bush claims that the CTBT 'is not enforceable' and it would 'stop us from ensuring the safety and reliability of our nation's deterrent, should the need arise' -- an assessment that is contradicted by the directors of the nuclear weapons laboratories, four of the last five Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, including General Colin Powell, and dozens of experts in the field of nuclear physics and nuclear test verification and monitoring.
"While Bush does not advocate the resumption of nuclear testing, some of his key advisors do. As Richard Perle argues in the Oct. 23 edition of National Journal, '...low yield testing should not be regarded as an evil.'
"The Bush formula -- failure to approve the Test Ban Treaty but observe a nuclear test moratorium -- puts the U.S. in state of test ban policy 'limbo' that is not beneficial to U.S. security. Nuclear explosive tests are not needed to maintain the existing United States nuclear weapons arsenal. By rejecting the CTBT, the Senate only denies the United States the benefits of the Treaty's extensive nuclear test monitoring and on-site inspection provisions, it denies the United States the moral and legal authority to encourage other nations not to conduct nuclear weapon test explosions and leave te door open to renewed nuclear testing and renewed nuclear dangers that can threaten U.S. and international security."
(The Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers is a non-partisan alliance of 17 national nuclear non-proliferation organizations dedicated to the pursuit of a practical, step-by-step program to protect America from nuclear threats. For more information, see http://www.crnd.org.)
---
Peace Action Urges: 'Ask Bush the Tough Questions'
US Newswire 18 Nov 19:53
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/1118-147.htm
Nation's Largest Peace Group Urges Reporters: 'Ask Bush the Tough Questions' To: National Desk Contact: Gordon Clark, 202-862-9740, ext. 3002 or Sheila Dormody, 202-862-9740, ext. 3006
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Peace Action, the nation's leading grassroots peace and disarmament group, has issued a call for journalists to confront Republican Presidential candidate George W. Bush, following his long-awaited speech this Friday on his foreign policy positions.
"In light of widespread concerns over Governor Bush's lack of comprehension regarding key foreign and military issues," said Peace Action Executive Director Gordon Clark, "we hope he'll be forced to explain where he stands. We are very concerned about the risks of having an admitted C-student with his finger on the button."
Clark noted that after Bush's previous major foreign policy address, he refused to take questions, deferring to his advisors. Peace Action leaders, along with many others, note that so far Bush's foreign policy positions replicate those of the far-right Republican Senate majority that voted down the Comprehensive Test Ban in October.
"Many of us wonder," said Clark, "why he would repudiate his own father's legacy. President Bush took a major step towards nuclear sanity by removing U.S. missiles in Europe from alert status in 1991, and his Administration helped move the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty forward. Now his son is in league with the extremist agenda of Sen. Jesse Helms in defeating the CTBT, trying to scrap Nixon's Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and wasting billions on Star Wars."
Clark added that a number of basic contradictions in George W. Bush's foreign policy positions continue to raise troubling questions about both his competence and his direction in this area. "He says he wants certainty in an uncertain world, yet he opposes common sense treaties like the nuclear test ban which would curtail nuclear weapons proliferation. He says he wants to strengthen our alliances, but he wants to push ahead with a ballistic missile defense which is frightening our allies and adversaries alike."
On Friday morning, activists from California Peace Action will be outside the Ronald Reagan Library, site of Gov. Bush's speech, with a giant photo of a mushroom-cloud type atomic explosion, captioned "George W. Bush, Our Nuclear Weapons President?" Clark underlined that "Our message to George W. Bush and the other presidential aspirants is simple: no new arms race. We will make sure you are forced to debate the full implications of wrecking all of the existing arms-control treaties-and if you don't understand those treaties, we'll be happy to put them into layman's terms for you."
--------
Successful test launch of two Trident II D5 Missiles
Defence Systems Daily 17 November 1999
http://defence-data.com/current/page5830.htm Photo: http://defence-data.com/storypic/trid2.jpg
Two U.S. Navy Trident II D5 Fleet Ballistic Missiles (FBM), built by Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space, Sunnyvale, Calif., were successfully launched in a test conducted last week from the USS Kentucky (SSBN 737) at the Eastern Test Range off the Florida coast.
This test was one in a continuing series of operational evaluation tests conducted by the Navy to monitor the safety, reliability, readiness and performance of the Trident II D5 Strategic Weapon System.
These two missiles represent the 86th and 87th consecutive successful launches of the Trident II D5 Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile and continue the string of successful test launches that began in December 1989. No other large ballistic missile or space launch vehicle in the world has amassed such a remarkable record of mission success.
The Navy selected Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space as its prime missile contractor in 1956. Since then, the FBM team has produced the Polaris (A1), Polaris (A2), Polaris (A3), Poseidon (C3), Trident I (C4) and the Trident II (D5) missile.
[This page came with a flashing advertisement for http://dubai2000.org]
---
USEC May Quit Processing Russian Uranium
By Martha M. Hamilton, Washington Post, November 19, 1999; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/19/073l-111999-idx.html
USEC Inc., a formerly government-operated uranium-processing company that was sold to investors last year, has told the Clinton administration and members of Congress that it may quit its role as the government's executive agent in a nuclear nonproliferation deal with Russia unless it gets assurances of federal financial aid.
But the administration has responded to this apparent threat by negotiating with potential USEC competitors to take over the job if the company walks. Moreover, lawmakers from both parties are discussing whether to revoke USEC's protection until mid-2001 from a takeover, a key part of the legislation that privatized USEC.
"If USEC threatens to bail out on the uranium deal, we'll find other avenues," Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said yesterday in a telephone interview from Turkey. "That's not a threat that will go very far with me."
According to another senior administration official, negotiations are underway with several firms that might be interested in taking over the obligation if USEC terminates.
What amounts to a high-stakes game of poker involving the administration, Congress and the Bethesda-based company emerged out of several days of intense behind-the-scenes bargaining as USEC sought help for its financial problems in last-minute budget negotiations.
USEC had been seeking as much as $200 million in relief, arguing that a deal in which it buys what was formerly weapons-grade uranium from Russia is causing losses for the company and its shareholders. So far, however, the administration has offered only approximately $40 million in aid, which would be delivered by having the federal government assume liability for uranium waste products. Nothing was included in the budget for USEC.
USEC spokesman Charles Yulish said the company has not used the possibility of resigning as the executive agent in the Russian deal as a threat. "What we have said is that the company cannot continue to subsidize the U.S. government," he said. "I want to be clear that we have not and will not threaten the U.S. government. We have not and would not do that."
But USEC's board will consider whether the company should resign as the executive agent when it meets Wednesday, Yulish said.
USEC, once under the umbrella of the Department of Energy, became the executive agent as part of a historic agreement between the United States and Russia to help rid the world of nuclear weapons. USEC's role was created in a 1993 accord designed to convert highly enriched uranium from dismantled Soviet nuclear warheads into low-enriched uranium to be used as fuel in nuclear power plants. Under that accord the equivalent of more than 3,000 Russian nuclear warheads have been converted into fuel.
The five-year agreement requires USEC to pay the Russians $88 per unit of processing, which the company says it now sells at the market price of $80. Hence, USEC estimates it will lose $200 million to $300 million under the two years remaining in the contract. Even so, administration officials say, the contract may still be valuable to another company if USEC drops out.
Under the contract, USEC may resign as executive agent. But the contract requires USEC to give 30 days' notice and then to continue as executive agent for the balance of the year after that 30 days expires, plus another year. It is those terms that make Dec. 1 a key date. If the company were to give notice after that, it would need to continue until the end of 2001 rather than 2000.
In addition to saying that it might resign as executive agent, USEC has also raised the possibility of laying off workers at its uranium-processing plants in Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio. The company has said it may lay off "several hundred" workers to help reduce its costs.
Richardson said USEC must keep both plants open and operating at current levels if it hopes to win federal financial backing. That position also has been pushed by Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), Rep. Edward Whitfield (R-Ky.) and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical & Energy Workers International Union, which represents the workers at the plants.
Strickland said that he believes that USEC won't give up its executive agent status because he believes it can't meet its long-term contractual obligations to provide fuel to utilities without at least a portion of the uranium from Russia.
"I don't have a lot of sympathy for USEC," Strickland said, noting that the company knew what it was getting into when it was privatized. He also noted that the company has spent about $100 million buying back its stock in order to improve per-share prices and is paying approximately $100 million in dividends to shareholders.
In fact, USEC's lobbying appears likely to create problems for the company. House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas J. Bliley Jr. (R-Va.) wrote National Security Adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger earlier this week, raising questions about the manner in which the company was privatized and subsequent oversight and asking for more information. He also wrote House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), urging that no last-minute aid be provided, saying that he wants to explore the circumstances surrounding USEC's current situation next year.
---
Physicians Concerned About Fate of Missile Treaty
US Newswire 18 Nov 17, 1999 :06
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/1118-137.htm
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) today expressed concern over Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush's announced intention to terminate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and Russia and pursue the construction of a ballistic missile defense program if he becomes president.
Bush is scheduled to deliver his first major foreign policy speech at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., on Friday. There, he will outline a plan to pursue a ballistic missile defense program if he becomes president. Development of a ballistic missile defense would violate the 1972 agreement. Russia has announced that it opposes changing or ending the ABM.
"The ABM Treaty is a cornerstone of stable and cooperative relations between the United States and Russia," said Robert W. Tiller, PSR's director of security programs. "Destroying the treaty will decrease our national security and help usher in a new nuclear arms race."
Tiller added, "There is no good reason for the U.S. to move ahead with its missile defense program, and there are many good reasons not to. The projected costs are astronomical, the technology is still unproven, and the threats from so-called rogue nations are overrated. In addition, U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defense would encourage other nations to follow suit, and even to develop their own nuclear weapons."
PSR believes that the next U.S. president should strive to improve diplomatic relations with allies and adversaries around the globe, and should begin negotiations on a global treaty to eliminate all nuclear weapons, rather than deploying a provocative new missile defense system. Preventing the launch of nuclear-tipped missiles is far more effective than attempting to shoot them down after they are launched.
PSR is also dismayed at Bush's unwillingness to support U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which would ban nuclear test explosions worldwide. The CTBT, which was rejected by the Senate last month, would be a major step in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and facilitating reductions of existing nuclear arsenals. Continued U.S. failure to ratify the treaty will only entrench isolationism among U.S. officials, which Bush claims to oppose.
---
Senate Panel Chief Blasts Europe Y2K Vote
New York Times November 19, 1999 Filed at 1:42 a.m. ET By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-nuclear-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of a special Senate panel on the Year 2000 blasted as ill-informed a European Parliament call Thursday to shut down nuclear weapon alert systems over the New Year to avoid accidental launches.
``This vote is particularly troubling in that it demonstrates an overall lack of awareness with regard to Y2K's potential effects on a country's infrastructure,'' Sen. Robert Bennett, Republican of Utah, said in a statement.
He said the European move also showed ``a profound misunderstanding of Y2K's potential effects on ballistic missile systems.''
Deputies in Strasbourg voted to appeal to the United States and Russia in particular to guard against possible errors in computer systems that may not recognize the date change to 2000.
U.S. and Russian military officials are to spend New Year's Eve together in a special command center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to monitor launch data across the century date change.
Bennett -- who was involved in setting up the U.S.-Russian Center for Year 2000 Strategic Stability -- said shutting down missile warning systems would be ``far more dangerous than any problem that may arise from Y2K.''
``What the European Parliament is asking countries to do is wear blindfolds during the crucial date rollover,'' he said.
The so-called Y2K glitch could cause some computers and the systems they control to crash or malfunction when their internal clocks encounter ``00'' in areas that track dates.
Bennett said there was no danger of missiles being launched by a computer glitch because a person always is part of the command process.
``International cooperation and awareness are the keys to avoiding a Y2K catastrophe, not pulling the plug and hoping for the best,'' he said.
The European Parliament also voted to ask countries with nuclear power stations to shut them down over New Year's Eve unless they had been shown to be millennium compliant.
Deputies said their appeal would be aimed specifically at countries in central and Eastern Europe, Turkey, Russia and members of the former Soviet Union.
---
Where's the 2000 Buzz?
Washington Post Friday, November 19, 1999; Page A45 By Charles Krauthammer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/19/054l-111999-idx.html
Where is the panic? Where is the hysteria? Where are the men in robes and placards warning of the imminent end of the world? There are just six weeks left before the turn of the millennium, and things are so quiet and sober that one hardly senses a fin-de-siecle atmosphere, let alone millennial trepidation.
The hounds are not barking. Why is the most portentous, widely anticipated turn of the calendar being greeted with such apparent equanimity?
One answer, I suppose, is that ours is a far less religious age than 100, 200 or certainly 1,000 years ago. The millennium of the birth of Christ is accordingly less fraught with meaning.
But in a culture as suffused as ours with secular superstitions--belief in UFOs, psychic phenomena, astrology and psychoanalysis, for example--the advent of a rare and magical number, regardless of its religious origins, might be expected to generate some anticipatory, if not agitated, buzz.
It hasn't.
Hence a more plausible explanation: We have already had our burst of millennialism. It came early--about two decades early. The late '70s and early '80s saw a remarkable, if brief, efflorescence of apocalyptic dread.
Why then? Because a mere odometer rollover is not sufficient to cause millennial stirrings. Bad times are required, too. And the '90s are good times. The bad times hit two decades ago, a time of oil shocks, stagflation and post-Vietnam demoralization.
It was a time rife with foreboding and trepidation, from the influential Club of Rome report predicting catastrophic resource depletion and economic collapse, to Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth," a fundamentalist tract linking modern events to the biblical apocalypse.
The hunger for apocalypse was insatiable. "The Late Great Planet Earth" went through 21 printings in its first 26 months. (It was the No. 1 nonfiction bestseller for the entire decade of the 1970s.) Its secular equivalent, Jonathan Schell's "The Fate of the Earth," laid out in equally lurid detail the coming nuclear apocalypse. It begat the granddaddy of panics, the nuclear hysteria of the early '80s.
A rehearsal of sorts occurred in 1979, when the coincidence of Three Mile Island and the movie "The China Syndrome" stoked a mini-panic over nuclear power. But it was the specter of nuclear war that soon invaded the mass consciousness.
Text was provided by Schell. Video was provided by "The Day After," the ABC-TV movie depicting a nuclear attack on the United States. (It sparked such alarm that psychological counselors were assigned to schools throughout the country to deal with the morning after "The Day After.") Drama was provided by now forgotten organizations like Ground Zero that offered symbolic reenactments of all the burning, melting and exploding that would attend the coming Armageddon. Heavy thinking was provided by such fashionable figures as psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who diagnosed those resisting the anti-nuclear hysteria as suffering from "psychic numbing" and "nuclearism."
The panic engendered countless demonstrations, culminating in the New York City disarmament rally of June 1982, by some estimates the largest demonstration in American history.
And then it all vanished.
Perhaps every generation has only one millennial panic in it, and we've already shot our wad.
But I'd venture one more reason why the millennium is being approached with such psychic equanimity: the Y2K computer problem. My theory is that Y2K is ironically having a dampening effect on the free-floating anxiety one might have expected with the advent of the millennium.
The Y2K computer problem, being real, has taken that anxiety and focused it. It has taken an irrational dread--2000 is, after all, just an arbitrary number--and rationalized it. For the first time in history, the turning of the calendar corresponds to a real event in the physical universe. Y2K takes the new millennium out of the realm of metaphysics and reduces it to a problem of engineering.
With everyone racing to fix their computers, there is very little time for idle speculation about the apocalypse. True, a minor cottage industry of catastrophe speculation has grown up, with suitably millennial predictions of airplanes falling out of the sky, elevators and economies coming to a halt, and general dislocation and chaos on Jan. 1.
Yet what little credence these predictions have been given--and it is not much--has actually helped deflect more cosmic millennial fears. The Y2K apocalypse, unlike any other ever anticipated, is fixable by human agency: a few lines of computer code.
The fix may cost a lot--by the reckoning of experts, some $100 billion to $300 billion. But it is a bargain, a small price to pay for the service Y2K renders during a potentially mind-addling metaphysical moment: keeping us sane and focused on the plumbing.
---
Company wants government help to buy uranium
From Time to Time: Nando's in-depth look at the 20th century
By KATHERINE RIZZO Nando Media November 19, 1999 9:03 p.m. EST
http://www2.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,500059438-500098020-500395950-0,00.html
WASHINGTON ( http://www.nandotimes.com) - This year's Congressional session ended Friday without giving financial help to the American company that takes Russia's weapons-grade uranium out of circulation.
But negotiations continued between the company and the Clinton administration, and some kind of aid early next year remained possible.
Meanwhile, the United States Enrichment Corp. said it was looking for ways to cut costs, both because of the money-losing Russian deal and because of a worldwide drop in the price of nuclear power plant fuel.
Layoffs at USEC's processing centers in Ohio and Kentucky were among the options, but no decision had been made, spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said.
Staffing levels and a discussion of whether to pull out of the Russian deal were on the agenda for a meeting next Wednesday of USEC's board, which faces a Dec. 1 deadline for deciding whether to continue as the government's agent after 2000.
USEC, a private company, operates the nation's only uranium enrichment plants. It buys diluted weapons-grade uranium from Russia and sells the now low-enriched uranium to utilities for use in power reactors.
The company has asked the government to make up the difference between the price it can get for diluted warhead uranium and the price its contract requires it to pay Russia - about $200 million.
House Commerce Committee Chairman Tom Bliley, R-Va., said Friday he plans to step up his investigation of both USEC and the handling of the Russian deal.
"It appears that the Clinton administration was asleep at the wheel when it came to protecting our national security," Bliley said. "Now at the eleventh hour, the administration is struggling to respond to USEC's threat to pull out of the Russian HEU (highly enriched uranium) agreement."
Another critic, Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, has complained about the company's decisions to spend $100 million to prop up its stock price and to pay shareholders another $100 million in dividends.
---
Heavyweight 'Vulcans' Help Bush Forge a Foreign Policy
By John Lancaster and Terry M. Neal, Washington Post, November 19, 1999; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/19/159l-111999-idx.html
Today in Simi Valley, Calif., at the Ronald Reagan Library, Texas Gov. George W. Bush is scheduled to give his first major address on foreign policy. The Vulcans will be watching.
Inspired by the Roman god of fire and metalworking, "Vulcans" is the campaign's nickname for Bush's foreign policy team, whose eight core members include leading lights of his father's presidency and the Reagan administration, led by former National Security Council aide Condoleezza Rice and former undersecretary of defense Paul D. Wolfowitz.
In daily e-mail messages, weekly conference calls and occasional meetings at the governor's mansion, the Vulcans have hammered out a platform that rejects both isolationism and drifting "from crisis to crisis" in places without clear U.S. interests, instead emphasizing relations with major allies and "great powers" such as Russia, China and, potentially, India.
That emphasis is an implicit criticism of President Clinton. In the view of Bush and his advisers, Clinton has entangled U.S. military forces in secondary conflicts while neglecting what they consider the real threats to American security, such as "rogue states," Chinese nationalism and the potential for a resurgent Russia.
All presidential candidates seek expert help. But the Vulcans may prove especially important for the Republican front-runner, a former oilman and sports team owner who by his own admission plans to rely heavily on advisers to compensate for his lack of experience in foreign affairs.
Not surprisingly, interviews with all eight foreign policy advisers--most of whom asked not to be quoted by name--paint a more nuanced picture of the Texas governor than the caricature drawn by his critics. Notwithstanding his well-publicized gaffes--confusing Slovakia with Slovenia, referring to Greeks as "Grecians" and failing a pop quiz on the names of four foreign leaders--they described their candidate as a quick study armed with a strong set of core beliefs.
Though honest about gaps in his knowledge, advisers said, Bush has not been timid about expressing his views, urging them to be bolder in staking out positions on China, NATO's intervention in Kosovo and the need for investing in the military, for example.
"He seems unafraid of saying, 'Well, you guys are the experts, and this is what I just heard you say, but this is the way it sounds to me,' " one adviser said. "That's what leadership is all about."
In an interview in Iowa earlier this week, Bush said the advisers helped him mainly with "the specifics" of today's speech. "Some of the specifics in the policy complement the philosophy. But the philosophy is in my heart," he said.
Many of the Vulcans got their first exposure to the candidate's style in February, when Bush had them down to Austin for a session on defense policy. Dov S. Zakheim, a Reagan-era Pentagon official and now an executive with an Arlington defense firm, arrived at the governor's mansion armed with detailed charts on Pentagon budgets and procurement issues.
Only a few minutes into the presentation, however, Bush interrupted Zakheim to ask, in effect: "What do we need an army for?" The question caused momentary surprise. But the ensuing discussion on the role of the military in the post-Cold War world was far more useful than flipping through charts, participants said.
The Vulcans are understandably sensitive to suggestions that Bush is reading from a script. Asked to name a specific case in which Bush had overruled his advisers, one of them said: "You mean, does he have a brain?"
Bush advisers noted that as governor of a large state bordering Mexico, the governor is fluent in Spanish and well versed in regional issues--such as trade, immigration and narcotics trafficking--that affect what he calls "the neighborhood."
Whatever his intrinsic strengths, Bush has benefited from his lineage in rounding up foreign policy talent. Last summer, according to campaign officials, Bush's father set up a meeting at his summer residence in Kennebunkport, Maine, between his son and "Condi" Rice, a Russia specialist who held a senior foreign policy position in the Bush White House and earlier this year stepped down as provost of Stanford University.
After conferring with the younger Bush over several days--including once while she was exercising on a treadmill--Rice agreed to lead his foreign policy team. "Vulcans" is a reference not just to the forging of policy, but also to her hometown of Birmingham, Ala., where a statue of the Roman god symbolizes the city's heritage of steelmaking.
Rice was soon joined by another Bush administration luminary, Wolfowitz, who was recruited to the team by Richard B. Cheney, President Bush's defense secretary, and by former secretary of state George P. Shultz, who served in the Reagan administration.
Other advisers "stuck a toe in the water because they were curious," a Bush campaign official said. "They saw in the governor someone whose philosophy matched theirs and was a successful governor and a potentially successful president."
By early this year, Rice and Wolfowitz had cemented the team, whose first meeting was the February session on defense policy. Subsequent gatherings have occurred over brunch at Shultz's house in Palo Alto, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington and at the governor's mansion. For the most part, however, the Vulcans have conducted their business in e-mail messages and Monday morning conference calls.
If schedules permit, Rice and Wolfowitz also hold a conference call with the governor and Joshua Bolten, his senior policy adviser, on Sunday evenings.
Though hardly monolithic in their views, Bush's foreign policy advisers tend toward the internationalist wing of the Republican Party, favoring free trade and an active overseas role that pays special attention to the care and feeding of allies. That the governor relies heavily on the advisers is not in doubt.
During the recent Senate debate over whether the United States should join the international treaty banning nuclear tests, for example, Bush adviser and former assistant defense secretary Stephen J. Hadley led the drafting of a memo that laid out arguments on both sides of the debate and concluded with a recommendation. The governor followed the advice, siding with Senate Republicans who voted to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but vowing that as president he would continue the testing moratorium begun by his father in 1992.
A prominent Democratic foreign policy specialist conceded that the team has strong credentials--"This is not the gang that couldn't shoot straight"--but questioned whether its members' Cold War experience is suited to an era defined by "shades of gray." He noted, for example, that Bush's Sept. 23 speech on defense policy accused the Clinton administration of "sending our military on vague, aimless and endless deployments"--but neglected to say which ones he would have scrapped.
As the Bush campaign has begun dropping hints about the content of today's speech, advisers to Vice President Gore, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, have already weighed in with preemptive criticism. "There's a lot here which is an effort to cobble together stuff and mint it as significantly different, but it's not," a senior Gore adviser said yesterday. "This speech is a self-administered test with a low threshold for passing, and the threshold is you read the speech that someone else wrote for you and you make it look convincing."
Except to say that Bush would be more reluctant than Clinton to commit U.S. forces abroad, his advisers acknowledge that neither they nor their candidate have formulated a clear standard for deciding when to do so. Discussions on the genocide in Rwanda, for example, yielded no definitive answer on whether the United States should have intervened to stop the bloodletting.
"These are not simple matters," one adviser said. "You don't come up with a full-blown doctrine overnight."
Members of the group were hard pressed to cite examples of Bush explicitly rejecting their advice. On the other hand, they said, he is not shy about telling them what he thinks. "I don't think it's so much rejecting the consensus of the group as it is pushing the group to be a little bolder," one adviser said.
During one meeting in Austin, for example, Bush asked for the Vulcans' views on the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which precludes the United States from building a nationwide shield against ballistic missiles. "All of us to a greater or lesser extent are uncomfortable with the treaty," said one. "But he said, and this was clearly on his own, 'My concern isn't the treaty. My concern is [building a] missile defense, and I don't want to let anything stand in the way of it.' "
Bush's ability to see through the clutter, advisers said, also was apparent during discussions on the Clinton administration's China policy. Advisers were especially critical of the president's performance during his 10-day visit to China last year, when Clinton referred to China as a "strategic partner" and neglected to pay courtesy calls on Japan or South Korea.
"We thought it was a gratuitous slap in the face" at Washington's closest Asian allies, said one person present during the discussion. Advisers urged the candidate to adopt a more muscular stand toward Beijing, acknowledging China as a potential threat while emphasizing the need to stay engaged on trade and other issues.
It was at that point, advisers said, that Bush came up with the phrase "strategic competitor" to describe the U.S. relationship with China. The phrase has since been adopted by his campaign.
While the group tries to reach consensus on major issues, Bush sometimes has to choose between competing arguments. Last spring, for example, he was confronted with a difference of views over whether the United States should take military action to protect the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. Zakheim was against it. Wolfowitz was for it. In the end, swayed by arguments that the crisis threatened European stability, Bush reluctantly backed Clinton's decision to intervene.
But Bush is uncomfortable with such entanglements. A draft of today's speech, for example, warns against isolationism but also rejects the "temptation" to "drift, to move from crisis to crisis like a cork."
Bush's Foreign Policy Team
RICHARD ARMITAGE
International consultant; assistant secretary of defense, Reagan administration
ROBERT BLACKWILL
Harvard University professor; National Security Council aide, Bush administration
STEPHEN J. HADLEY
International lawyer; assistant secretary of defense, Bush administration
RICHARD PERLE
Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; assistant secretary of defense, Reagan administration
CONDOLEEZA RICE
Former provost, Stanford University; National Security Council aide, Bush administration
PAUL WOLFOWITZ
Dean, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; undersecretary of defense, Bush administration
DOV ZAKHEIM
Defense consultant; deputy under secretary of defense, Reagan administration
ROBERT ZOELLICK
Research scholar, Harvard; deputy chief of staff, Bush White House
---
Gore Hits Foreign Policy Highlights
New York Times November 19, 1999 Filed at 5:08 a.m. EST By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/p/AP-Gore.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- Vice President Al Gore told some of the Democratic Party's biggest donors that next year will bring them one of the most important opportunities ever to shape the nation's future.
Speaking at two separate fund-raisers where tickets sold for $25,000-per-couple, Gore told supporters of the Democratic National Committee that Republicans are ``afraid'' to say no to the GOP's right wing and that it was up to voters to do it for them
The remarks came Thursday night at a pair of events the vice president headlined for the DNC, expecting to raise $1.3 million for the party.
He focused particularly on the Senate's rejection last month, mostly along party lines, of an international treaty banning nuclear weapons testing.
``One of our greatest dangers is the proliferation of nuclear weapons,'' Gore said. ``But the Republican Party of 1999 is afraid to say 'no' to the extremists. ... They made our nation the only nation in the entire world to reject this treaty.''
Gore tempered his remarks based on the audience, quoting George Washington and the Federalist Papers at a cocktail reception that included some crossover Republicans, and reserving harsher statements for the more heavily Democratic group at dinner.
Both events were held at private homes, the first attracting about 25 people to the Park Avenue apartment of Connie Milstein, chair of the DNC's ``major supporters.''
The second stop was a catered buffet dinner for 60 at an apartment on Central Park West, a fancy address not far from where John Lennon once lived.
In a city where the most basic, 550 square-foot, one-bedroom apartment often rents for $1,500 a month or more, each of the host's homes boasted vaulted ceilings with elaborate molding, thousands of square feet decorated with custom draperies and stunning artwork. One overlooks Central Park, the other has a marble fireplace.
The vice president joked that a few people in the audience may even have benefited from the stock market's stellar performance under the Clinton-Gore administration, but he said Democrats could do better.
``We've got to go the rest of the way,'' he said.
---
Ill workers may be paid $100,000
Evansville Courier & Press, November 18, 1999
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?199911/18+illworkers111899_news.html+19991118
The Clinton administration Wednesday sent Congress legislation that would give $100,000 to each person who became ill after working at nuclear weapons facilities in Paducah, Ky., and elsewhere.
Under the bill, each Paducah worker who developed cancer after being unwittingly exposed to plutonium and other highly radioactive materials would be eligible for a lump-sum payment of $100,000. Family members could collect for dead workers.
The legislation could benefit 200 current and former Paducah workers and their families and more than 1,000 workers at other weapons facilities. It also would compensate workers who get sick in coming years because of workplace exposure at Paducah between 1953 and 1992.
"This action is long overdue," Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said at a news conference. "The department is finally going to stop fighting these workers and instead help them get the treatment they need."
In addition, the legislation would offer workers' compensation benefits or $100,000 payments to workers who developed lung disease from exposure to the metal beryllium at weapons plants.
---
Bush says he would share missile-defense technology with Russia
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 17, 1999 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.seattlep-i.com/national/camp171.shtml
WASHINGTON -- GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush, outlining his vision for American foreign policy, said yesterday he would be willing to share technology to help Russia develop an anti-ballistic-missile system if Moscow pledged to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
In an interview previewing a major address Friday, Bush also said he would seek to cut off international aid to Russia if the bloodshed in Chechnya continues. The Texas governor said Russia, China, the Middle East and Central and South America would be his top priorities as president.
Bush hopes Friday's speech and a Dec. 2 debate lay to rest questions about his presidential credentials. A string of foreign policy gaffes have raised doubts about his readiness in a field where his father, former President George Bush, excelled.
"I'm going to talk about optimism and keeping the peace, keeping the peace not only for this generation but to keep the peace for a lengthy period of time," Bush said. "I'm going to talk about the need for America to seize the moment, to set a tone for a new American internationalism."
"The way to achieve our objective will be through a strong military, through economic policy based upon fair trade and through strong alliances," Bush said.
Like the rest of the GOP field, Bush wants Russia to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to allow the United States to develop a national missile defense system.
In an effort to signal that the move would be purely defensive, Bush said he would offer to help Russia develop its own missile-defense system by sharing technology. Russia must first pledge to stop spreading nuclear weapons technology to other nations, he said.
The Clinton administration has proposed helping Russia develop radar technology in hopes that Russia amends the treaty. Condoleeza Rice, Bush's top foreign policy adviser, said that while the administration is discussing a narrow incentive to Russia, Bush is talking about a broader -- but not yet specific -- approach to sharing technology "that might have any number of elements."
"Anti-ballistic missile technology is good for all peace-loving nations," she said.
Elsewhere in the presidential campaign:
Arizona Sen. John McCain formalized his decision to bypass Iowa, notifying GOP leaders yesterday that he'll come to the state for two campaign debates but won't compete in the Jan. 24 caucuses.
McCain said he made the decision because "the compressed nature of the primary schedule" makes it impossible for candidates without unlimited resources to compete everywhere.
Instead, McCain will concentrate his efforts on New Hampshire's leadoff primary, and an early test in South Carolina.
The last major candidate to turn to TV, Bill Bradley unveiled his first $214,000 wave of ads yesterday tempting Iowa and New Hampshire voters with the root-for-the-underdog slogan, "It can happen."
Bradley, who has played up his "Washington outsider" status in trying to draw contrasts with Vice President Al Gore, nonetheless features in his 60-second "Crystal City Bio" testimonials from two Senate veterans -- New York's Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nebraska's Bob Kerrey -- who have 34 years of Washington experience between them.
Communications adviser Anita Dunn said the Bradley campaign wanted to give voters "some information about what kind of senator he had been."
Steve Forbes' presidential campaign alleged in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission that a moderate Republican group made an illegal $100,000 contribution to Bush.
Bill Dal Col, Forbes' campaign manager, said he took the action after the Republican Leadership Council -- whose members include several Bush supporters -- began running commercials in Iowa and New Hampshire warning the millionaire publisher not to run negative ads.
"The Republican Leadership Council and the Bush campaign are mirror images of each other when one looks at the contributors and supporters of each," Dal Col said. He called the RLC a "surrogate organization" for the Bush campaign.
More than half of the RLC's advisory board has endorsed Bush for president, though the group has not backed any candidate.
RLC Executive Director Mark Miller said the ad was reviewed only by three leaders of the group, none of whom had endorsed Bush.
FEC officials said yesterday they had not yet received the complaint.
-------- us nuc weapons plants
Hanford contractor Bechtel is accused of 'breach of trust'
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 19, 1999 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.seattlep-i.com/local/hanf191.shtml
RICHLAND -- State and federal regulators have accused a Hanford Nuclear Reservation contractor of a "serious breach of trust" in the handling of a hazardous waste case.
The complaint could bring fines of almost $150,000.
A Bechtel Hanford executive said such an accusation "hurts."
In a letter Wednesday from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Ecology to Bechtel and the U.S. Department of Energy, the regulators said Bechtel faces up to $140,000 in federal fines for not having a waste-control plan and other approved plans at U Plant from June 22 to Sept. 29.
The incident involves about one gallon of hazardous chemical waste.
A $9,700 state fine also could be imposed for keeping the waste container on a storage pad for more than the 90-day limit.
U Plant is one of Hanford's contaminated Cold War-era plutonium extraction facilities.
The letter said state inspector Bob Wilson looked over U Plant's outside compound on Sept. 16. At a concrete pad where non-radioactive wastes can be kept up to 90 days before disposal, one small container had been there for 87 days, and had not yet been sampled or analyzed. Wilson told Bechtel about the upcoming deadline.
On Sept. 21, Wilson checked with Bechtel and was told by the contractor that the container was regulated by a different law and that the 90-day deadline was not applicable. Wilson asked for the required waste control plan but was told it did not exist.
The letter said Bechtel then submitted a waste-control plan for approval Sept. 28 to the appropriate EPA and state project managers, but did not tell them about Wilson's compliance concerns. Consequently, those regulators did not consult with Wilson and did not know of the circumstances prompting Bechtel to submit the plan, the letter said.
"The point is (Bechtel) not being truthful with (its) cleanup partners. . . . This does jeopardize that relationship," said Doug Sherwood, EPA's Hanford site manager.
"We regard this as a serious breach of trust," said Michael Gearheard, director of EPA's regional cleanup office in Seattle.
On Oct. 6, the waste was treated and buried in a huge central Hanford landfill for contaminated rubble and items, without notifying Wilson or addressing his concerns, the letter said.
The container's waste was never sampled or analyzed.
"They didn't know what was in it," Wilson said.
Bechtel believes the container held tributyl phosphate, said Mike Hughes, Bechtel's vice president for operations.
Hughes said that conclusion is based on historical knowledge of tributyl phosphate found in a pipe system eight years ago. He believes that pipe system is also the source of the material in the container. Historical knowledge is a legal basis to characterize waste, he said.
Hughes said he was surprised by the breach of trust accusation, adding that it "hurts."
"What I believe is that there are some miscommunications among various parties," Hughes said.
Bechtel acted in good faith throughout the matter and thought it was adequately communicating with the regulators, Hughes said. He questioned how well the regulators communicated among themselves.
Hughes said Bechtel moves and buries tons of contaminated materials without running afoul of numerous routine inspections.
"We had no reason to zigzag around the regulators," he said. "We also take this trust thing seriously."
Bechtel and DOE have 10 days to respond to the letter.
---
Acid Canyon To Undergo Tests
By Ian Hoffman, Albuqueque Journal Wednesday, November 17, 1999
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/18news11-17-99.htm
SANTA FE -- Two years ago, state scientists began to suspect Los Alamos National Laboratory was leaving a major radioactive waste cleanup unfinished.
They dug into a piece of Atomic City's past and found hints their hunches were on target.
Steve Yanicak and Michael Dale dug up dirt in Acid Canyon with contamination levels of weapons-grade plutonium up to 10,000 times what is typically found in the back yards of Los Alamos. State and federal officials are retesting the canyon to be sure it is safe for public use.
In Acid Canyon, the lab flushed millions of gallons of treated and untreated radioactive liquids -- mostly acid solutions of plutonium and other metals -- for 20 years after the beginning of the Manhattan Project. Much of the canyon is now a county park.
Yanicak and Dale watched people eat lunch there, joggers run its paths and boys play in the woods -- all a safe distance from the contaminated soils. But state and federal officials agree Acid Canyon needs closer scrutiny.
"Given the data we have, we don't feel we can certify there are no risks to the public," John Parker of the state Environment Department told the Los Alamos County Council on Tuesday night.
Federal and lab officials say Acid Canyon still appears safe for hikers and family picnics. Their calculations, using the state's latest data, show the extra radiation dose from ingesting or inhaling contaminated dust remains a third or less than U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits.
"Therefore we believe that the exposure is within acceptable limits," said Ted Taylor, a U.S. Department of Energy official in charge of overseeing environmental cleanup at LANL.
The Energy Department, the EPA and the state are racing nonetheless to retest Acid Canyon to settle the issue of health risk.
The canyon underwent two cleanups, with tons of mesa top and canyon wall shoveled into dump trucks and buried in a lab radioactive waste landfill. They hardly removed any soil, however, from the canyon bottom.
Lab scientists tested the surface soils in 1992 and declared them "clean" enough. In 1996, the lab and the DOE asked for the state's seal of approval on Acid Canyon.
Since the early 1990s environmental scientists at LANL and elsewhere learned the old soil tests can miss pockets of contamination. They switched to a method that seeks out such hot spots. Yanicak and Dale used that method and found evidence that Acid Canyon was not as clean as the lab reported.
"They didn't dig down," Yanicak said.
In spots, the canyon's dirt held plutonium, cesium-137, americium, strontium-90 and such toxic metals as mercury and lead -- above the levels at which a site might be declared clean.
Tests during the winter and spring will be wider ranging and more intensive than any to date. Yanicak believed they will reveal any lingering problems in Acid Canyon.
"I think we'll all be together on the final outcome," Yanicak said.
Until the new tests are done, said DOE's Taylor, "we would not take any action. We would not recommend that anyone else take any action."
Yanicak, for one, isn't taking chances until he knows more about the contamination.
"We don't know enough about what's down there," he said after the Los Alamos meeting. "Until we know more, I'm not letting my daughter down there."
---
Aquifer Test Shows No Lab Waste
By Ian Hoffman, Albuquerque Journal, Tuesday, November 16, 1999
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/17news11-16-99.htm
SANTA FE -- For 35 years, the federal nuclear-weapons laboratory in Los Alamos has flushed its liquid radioactive waste into Mortandad Canyon, but no one has been sure where it all ends up.
Lab scientists drilled deep in the canyon floor recently for clues. And so far, they've found no evidence of lab waste 1,100 feet down, in the deep ground-water reservoir that supplies Los Alamos' drinking water.
They will announce today that the deep aquifer under Mortandad holds a whiff of salt, uranium and tritium -- all in concentrations so exceedingly slight as to be naturally occurring -- but nothing to reflect the decades of lab waste disposal.
"It was definitely a surprise for us," said David Broxton, a hydrogeologist for Los Alamos National Laboratory's environmental cleanup program.
That's good news for the lab and everyone who drinks the water deep under the Pajarito Plateau, as far as anyone can tell from a single well.
Yet lab scientists know better than to resurrect the now-disproven theory that hundreds of feet of volcanic rock serve as a holding basin, a diaper if you will, for the lab's liquid wastes.
Three times, scientists drilled into the deep aquifer in Los Alamos Canyon and Cañon de Valle and pulled up lab-contaminated water, tainted either by radioactive elements or high explosives.
"It would be disingenuous to cast this as 'no problem,' '' said Charles Nylander, head of a lab project to drill 32 deep wells. "I think we have more wells, more work to do."
But at Mortandad, it seems, the old diaper theory may not be completely wrong. Deep down, the canyon may contain rock and clay that at least partially protect the deeper drinking-water supply.
The latest well does show contaminated water 646 feet down, apparently suspended by clays in an old basaltic lava flow. In the language of underground water, this is called a "perched layer." What scientists found there is tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. Tritium in the perched layer measures a little over 4,000 picocuries, or trillionths of a curie, per liter of water. That's about a fifth of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's safe limit for tritium in drinking water of 20,000 picocuries per liter.
The new well, called R-15, is about 11/2 miles down the canyon from Technical Area 50, home to the lab's radioactive liquid waste treatment plant. Roughly 1,600 pipes bring radioactive liquids to the treatment plant, which then disgorges less-radioactive effluent into Mortandad Canyon once every workday. The effluent contains a whole family of byproducts from atom splitting and weapons research -- tritium, strontium-90, cesium-137, americium-241 and several kinds of plutonium.
Sands a few feet deep in Mortandad are soggy in water too "hot" to drink safely, based on the EPA standards.
But the new well suggests that sand, rock and clay beneath Mortandad are capturing the vast majority of those radioactive pollutants as they trickle past. Most radioactive elements tend to stick to or adsorb into fine-grained rock and soil. Tritium is the exception. Being hydrogen, it runs just like water and so its appearance in the perched layer is logical. But scientists found no evidence there of strontium, the next most slippery radioactive contaminant.
"That's the saving grace of waste disposal up here," said David Rogers, a lab hydrologist. "The plutonium and so forth tend to adsorb a lot, so the sediments are pretty hot. But it doesn't get much farther down."
Not 1,100 feet down, anyway, to water still running in the ancient bed of the Rio Grande. That's where the rock is more than 6 million years old and where the new well stops.
"Basically, it looks fairly clean there," said Pat Longmire, a lab geochemist who analyzes the well test results.
Still, he and other lab scientists warn, a single well reveals very little about a complex, layered geology spawned by volcanoes, rain and rivers. At least two wells over the next few years will reveal more about the interplay of rock and radioactive liquid in Mortandad Canyon, said Broxton.
"If you had to go by the data from this one well, you don't see anything moving here except tritium," he said. "But it's just one little pinprick, and we need to evaluate all the data to understand the whole system."
---
New Leads Found in Spy Probe
Chinese Report's Errors Point Beyond Lab, Lee
By Vernon Loeb and Walter Pincus Washington Post, November 19, 1999; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/19/219l-111999-idx.html
The FBI has found new evidence suggesting that China may have stolen information about the most advanced U.S. nuclear warhead from one of the weapon's assemblers, widening an investigation once focused almost exclusively on Los Alamos National Laboratory and one of its staff scientists, Wen Ho Lee.
The evidence emerged after weapons scientists at Los Alamos noted errors in a Chinese intelligence document that sparked the initial FBI and congressional investigations into Los Alamos and Lee. The telltale errors, contained in a description of the miniaturized W-88 warhead, were traced to one of the contractors and defense installations that assemble nuclear weapons, government sources said.
While the new evidence does not completely eliminate Los Alamos or Lee, the sources said, it indicates that the most likely origin of the information is one of the weapons "integrators." These include Sandia National Laboratories, which puts together prototypes of some warheads; Lockheed Martin Corp., which attaches warheads to missiles; and the Navy, which supervises the process.
One source said the analysis "widened the circle and gave convincing evidence" backing up the contention, long voiced by scientists at Los Alamos and officials at the Department of Energy, that China could have obtained classified information about the W-88 and other U.S. nuclear warheads from any of dozens of facilities.
A Lockheed Martin spokesman said yesterday the company "is cooperating with the government in its investigation and is not under investigation nor implicated in any wrongdoing."
Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh told Congress in September that they were starting their investigation into Chinese espionage over again and assigning scores of additional agents to broaden the probe.
The decision to go back to square one, they explained, came after they concluded that the initial inquiry was botched by FBI agents and Department of Energy intelligence officials who focused prematurely on Lee, a Chinese American physicist who worked for almost 20 years at Los Alamos's top secret X Division.
Lee was fired by Department of Energy officials in March for violating lab security procedures, and he was identified as the government's prime espionage suspect. U.S. officials now say it is likely that Lee soon will be indicted for gross negligence in handling classified information by transferring top-secret computer programs to his unsecure desktop computer.
But the officials acknowledge that the espionage case against Lee was circumstantial and that they do not have evidence he turned over nuclear secrets to China. Together with a dire report on Chinese espionage by a House select committee headed by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), the FBI's espionage probe at Los Alamos created a political furor earlier this year.
Cracks in the case began to appear in June, when the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board criticized the Department of Energy and the FBI for focusing almost exclusively on Lee when there was no hard evidence that he, or anyone else at Los Alamos, was the source of classified information somehow obtained by China.
Then, in August, the former chief of counterintelligence at Los Alamos publicly alleged that federal investigators had improperly targeted Lee because of his ethnicity.
Lee's attorney, Mark Holscher, said yesterday that the FBI's new evidence "is further proof that the focus of the investigation on Doctor Lee was inappropriate and that to continue to prosecute him for lesser charges is unfair."
The espionage investigation at Los Alamos was triggered in late 1995 by a classified Chinese military report on nuclear weapons that was obtained by the CIA in Taiwan. The document, dated 1988, was provided by a Chinese official who offered to spy for the United States and who, over a period of time, also turned over hundreds of other papers.
Because the Chinese official volunteered and was not recruited, he is known in intelligence parlance as a "walk-in," and the military document he provided has become known as the "walk-in document." It drew immediate interest because it discussed the need for Beijing to design a new intercontinental missile and cited the W-88 as an example of what Chinese scientists should be developing.
Among the details in the walk-in document were the dimensions and shape of the primary nuclear element in the W-88, which were configured to reduce the size of the warhead.
Energy Department intelligence officials, who believed they had seen some changes in the nuclear devices China had begun testing in the early 1990s, brought in experts to analyze the document. They decided that some of the information was classified and must have been obtained by espionage.
Helped by the FBI, an Energy Department team attempted to determine the origin of the leak. It quickly focused on Los Alamos, where the W-88 was designed and developed.
From the start, however, the Chinese document's description of the radius of the W-88's nuclear trigger was less precise than would be needed to construct such a device, according to one U.S. nuclear scientist familiar with the document. "The information was not detailed enough to be accurate," the scientist said.
Although officials yesterday would not discuss the particular errors involved in the FBI investigation, the measurement of the trigger was said to be the kind of data under scrutiny.
At one point in late 1996, the CIA determined that the Chinese official who delivered the document was not to be trusted and probably was a double agent. The agency also warned that the documents he had provided may have been approved for delivery by Chinese intelligence and, therefore, were suspect.
That finding held up the Energy Department and FBI investigators for several months. In the end, however, they decided that enough of the information was classified to justify an inquiry into how China obtained it.
---
FBI Widens Chinese Espionage Probe - Report
ABC News WIRE:11/19/1999 00:41:00 ET
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters19991119_100.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI has found new evidence suggesting China may have stolen information about the most advanced U.S. nuclear warhead from one of the weapon's assemblers, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
Quoting unidentified government sources, the newspaper said the new evidence has widened an investigation that once focused almost exclusively on Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and one of its staff scientists, Wen Ho Lee.
Lee was fired by Department of Energy officials earlier this year for violating lab security procedures, but has denied passing information to China. He has not been charged with any crime and U.S. officials have said there was not enough evidence to pursue espionage charges against him.
China has steadfastly denied the spying allegations.
The Post said the new evidence emerged after weapons scientists at Los Alamos noted errors in a Chinese intelligence document that sparked the initial FBI and Congressional investigations into Los Alamos and Lee.
The telltale errors, contained in a description of the miniaturized W-88 warhead, were traced to one of the contractors and defense installations that assemble nuclear weapons, the newspaper said.
One source quoted by the Post said the analysis "widened the circle and gave convincing evidence" backing up the contention that China could have obtained classified information about the W-88 and other U.S. nuclear warheads from any of dozens of facilities.
While the new evidence did not completely eliminate Los Alamos or Lee, the sources told the Post that it indicated the most likely origin of the information was one of the weapons "integrators."
The newspaper said those included Sandia National Laboratories, which puts together prototypes of some warheads; Lockheed Martin Corp., which attach warheads to missiles; and the Navy, which supervises the process.
A Lockheed Martin spokesman told the Post the company "is cooperating with the government in its investigation and is not under investigation nor implicated in any wrongdoing."
------- us nuc plants
Legislators upset by exclusion of Piketon workers from bill
Uranium-enrichment plant employees would not be offered compensation.
Columbus Dispatch, November 18, 1999, By Jonathan Riskind
http://www.dispatch.com/pan/localarchive/pbuxnws.html
WASHINGTON -- Ohio legislators were angered yesterday when they learned that a bill to compensate workers exposed to radiation at a Kentucky power plant does not include employees who worked with uranium at a southern Ohio plant.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson assured the lawmakers "we're not going to forget'' Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers and said it should be determined by March whether they are eligible for payments because of illnesses linked to radiation exposure.
Payouts authorized by the Clinton administration bill that Richardson unveiled at a news conference are estimated by some Energy Department officials to total about $125 million over five years.
It would provide payments of up to $100,000 each for uranium-enrichment workers in Kentucky who were unwittingly exposed to plutonium- tainted uranium and other contaminants during the Cold War.
The bulk of the money, however, would compensate hundreds of nuclear-site workers across the country, including some near Toledo and Cleveland, whose exposure to beryllium made them ill.
None of the money will be appropriated before Congress adjourns this year, and Ohio lawmakers say they will block any legislation that doesn't include Ohio enrichment workers from passing next year.
Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, said southern Ohio workers also were exposed to plutonium and other radioactive elements during their work enriching weapons-grade uranium.
Strickland yesterday introduced his own bill that would extend the compensation package to cover Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers.
"There is simply no rational explanation of why workers at the Portsmouth plant would be left out of any compensation package,'' Strickland said.
Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said he plans to call a hearing next year to review the administration's proposal. Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, said that he and DeWine will block any legislation that doesn't include southern Ohio workers.
Richardson said he wants to wait until next year to decide whether to include southern Ohio enrichment workers because that is when the Energy Department will finish an initial investigation there.
An investigation by The Dispatch revealed that many workers there were exposed to plutonium-laced uranium, as well as to other radioactive and chemical elements, as part of a flawed government attempt to recycle spent nuclear-reactor fuel.
It also appeared increasingly unlikely yesterday that Congress would approve a bailout of the privatized federal corporation that runs the nation's uranium-enrichment plants in Piketon, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky., before the body's expected adjournment this week.
The United States Enrichment Corp., privatized last year, says it needs up to $200 million to make up for losses in its role as the government's agent to buy and sell Russian low-enriched uranium that is culled from nuclear warheads to be used for nuclear-power-plant fuel.
Lawmakers and the Clinton administration have balked at the bailout request, saying if USEC wants government assistance with the $8 billion Russian deal, crafted in 1993 as a way to get Russia to disarm thousands of nuclear weapons, it must promise to run the plants at current levels at least until 2005.
The chairman of the House Commerce Committee, Rep. Thomas J. Bliley Jr., R-Va., perhaps put a final nail in the coffin of a bailout when he wrote House Speaker Dennis Hastert expressing disapproval for such a move. Bliley told Hastert that his committee has jurisdiction over USEC and intends to "explore fully'' the privatization issue when Congress returns next year.
About the bailout request, Bliley wrote, "I have studied this issue and cannot justify the American taxpayers giving USEC as much as $200 million over the next two years.''
USEC produces its own low-enriched uranium that it sells for use as commercial nuclear-power-plant fuel, but it says its production levels are hurt because it is forced to buy and sell the Russian material at a loss.
Strickland says he is worried that USEC will begin laying off hundreds of workers by August, so he wants any bailout of the Russian deal tied to worker-protection guarantees. Under terms of privatization, USEC was limited to eliminating 500 jobs through July 2000. USEC has refused to agree to worker-protection guarantees.
It was unclear yesterday whether USEC would carry out its threat to end its role in the Russian deal by Dec. 1 if it does not get a bailout. The Clinton administration is talking to potential replacements, and USEC directors are to discuss the issue in a pre-Thanksgiving meeting.
---
Decoding a Radiation-Resistant Bug
USA Today November 19, 1999 By NICHOLAS WADE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/111999hth-radioactive-gene.html
It thrives in deserts, medical autoclaves and food irradiation chambers. It can withstand more radiation than the Incredible Hulk. The Energy Department has used it to help clean up perpetually boiling vats of radioactive wastes. Its place of origin is a mystery, but some scientists wonder how it acquired all the hardy properties required of a space traveler.
It is just a tiny red bacterium, but in deference to its awesome powers scientists have named it Deinococcus radiodurans, a Greco-Latin amalgam meaning weird, radiation-resistant, berry-shaped bug. Hoping to learn the secret of its origins and amazing resistance to radiation, biologists at the Institute for Genomic Research in Bethesda, Md., have decoded the 3,284,156 letters of its genetic message.
And what have they learned?
"The bottom line is that it has not given us the answer as to why the organism is so radiation resistant," said Dr. Michael J. Daly of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda and a co-author of a new report about it.
Dr. J. R. Battista, a Deinococcus expert at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who was not involved in the genome decoding, said, "The part that is absolutely amazing to me is that there is no obvious explanation for its ionizing radiation resistance."
Still, the sequence of the strange bacterium's genome, described in today's issue of Science, hints at many of the little organism's survival stratagems.
The $2.1 million cost of the project was paid for by the Energy Department as part of a program for sequencing industrially important microbes. The department hopes the microbe will clean up hot sites and yield information about protecting people from ionizing radiation, said Dr. Ari Patrinos, a senior official.
Deinococcus radiodurans was first isolated in 1956 from cans of meat that had been sterilized, or so it was thought, with gamma radiation. When Deinococcus is dried, some bacteria can survive exposure to 12 million rads of radiation, Dr. Battista has found. One thousand rads will kill a person.
Radiation causes mutation -- damage to individual DNA units -- but is deadly to cells because it can also cut both strands of the DNA double helix. Most bacteria can repair a couple of double breaks but cannot cope with more. Deinococcus can knit together its DNA even after the genome has been blasted into more than 100 pieces.
Even more surprisingly, the bacterium somehow recognizes and corrects all the mutated DNA units. "It repairs double-strand breaks and keeps the genome totally free of mutation; it truly is extraordinary," Dr. Battista said.
The genome sequencing team at the Institute for Genomic Research has now found that Deinococcus's DNA is arranged in the form of four circles, which between them code for 3,187 genes. The team, led by Dr. Owen White, has identified the role of some 2,000 of these genes by comparing them with genes of known function logged in DNA data banks. The other thousand genes have no match and have unknown roles.
All bacteria have a kit of special proteins, known as enzymes, which repair damaged DNA. Dr. White said Deinococcus seemed to have much the same type of enzymes in its DNA repair kit, although in several cases it possessed more copies of the enzyme genes. "Deinococcus is like a Cadillac: it doesn't have any new features the other cars don't have, it just happens to have all of them," he said.
One special capability, though, is a family of proteins that evict damaged DNA units from the cell. Eviction is a smart step because it prevents the damaged units from being reincorporated into DNA and reintroducing a mutation.
Deinococcus maintains at least four copies of its genome in each cell, and Dr. Daly believes that identical circles of DNA are stacked up like lifesavers in a tube. When a double-strand break occurs in one circle, the repair kit enzymes can refer to the neighboring strand's sequence for mending the break.
Evolution teaches that an organism will possess only the abilities that it needs to survive. So where in the world did Deinococcus live that required it to withstand 12 million rads of ionizing radiation? Because natural radiation nowhere reaches the barest fraction of this level, Dr. Battista believes that Deinococcus evolved to withstand conditions of extreme dryness.
Desiccation, he said, will produce the same double breaks in DNA as radiation, and probably mutations as well. "So radiation resistance is just a fortuitous consequence of that evolutionary process," he said.
The completed sequence of Deinococcus's genome confirms the suspicion that it is quite closely related to Thermus thermophilus, a bacterium that lives in near-scalding water. This common ancestry may have equipped Deinococcus to live in another kind of extreme environment, that of high aridity.
It has been found in the granite of Antarctic mountains that have not seen rain for thousands of years, Dr. Daly said.
Dr. White sees Deinococcus as a scavenger, probably adapted to feed off other bacteria. The microbe is found all over the world, yet nowhere is it very common. Its strategy may be that of a survival specialist. Other bacteria outgrow it but will eventually succumb to drought or ultraviolet radiation; Deinococcus will always outlast them, and dine on the carcasses.
Fortunately, having no taste for people, this Incredible Hulklet of a bacterium is entirely nonpathogenic.
-------
Plan to Import New Viruses Draws Concern
New York Times November 19, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/regional/ny-animal-virus.html
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. -- Stressing safety and trying to debunk a cloak-and-dagger image they said was undeserved, officials of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center turned to the public Wednesday night to seek support for an expansion that would allow top-security research on viruses that are deadly to animals and humans.
But the reaction was mixed at the public meeting in Greenport, a community on the North Fork of Long Island that is about 10 miles from the offshore center, and where many of the center's 180 employees live. About 200 residents, including lab employees, attended the meeting, the first of several to be held in coming months, including one scheduled for Thursday night in Waterford, Conn., about 10 miles north of Plum Island.
The proposed addition would require Congressional approval and, if approved, might not be in place for several years.
At Wednesday's meeting, in an American Legion hall, a question-and-answer period continued beyond the time laboratory officials had allotted, as some residents and local officials questioned the wisdom of importing lethal and highly contagious animal viruses to an island one mile off the eastern tip of densely populated Long Island and less than 100 miles east of Manhattan.
"If one of these things get out, it will make West Nile virus seem like child's play," said Anne Kristiansen, a resident of Huntington.
State Assemblywoman Patricia L. Acampora of Mattituck, whose district includes the parts of Long Island nearest the 840-acre island, said: "No one is questioning the need for us to be prepared to combat bioterrorism.
The central issue here is whether Plum Island is the appropriate location to handle some of the most dangerous germs that are known to man."
But David E. Kapell, the mayor of Greenport, said a tour of the laboratory that he and other officials took on Monday had reassured him. "I can understand people's fear, but on the other hand, Plum Island has been there 50 years and there have been no incidents," he said.
The United States Department of Agriculture is considering upgrading the Plum Island center so that it would be the only animal research center in the country designated at biosafety level four, or BL4.
It is currently a BL3 center, where safety and security protocols are similar to those needed at the higher classification.
The change would allow the center to study foreign viruses, including newly emerging and previously unknown strains, that could pose a potentially catastrophic threat to humans and animals if they were introduced into domestic animal stocks.
The Clinton administration has expressed fears about a growing threat of biological terrorism, which could introduce into animals viruses for which there is no known cure; the viruses could then pass on to humans. But members of a panel of high-ranking laboratory and agricultural department officials at the hearing played down the threat of bioterrorism, saying the BL4 lab would be used primarily to enhance the lab's mission of protecting the country's $90 billion livestock industry against foreign viruses.
Those officials said there had been no final decision where to put the BL4 lab, but they left no question that Plum Island was in the lead.
"There really is no short list of alternatives," said Wilda Martinez, the area director for the Agricultural Research Service.
The officials said that the island had advantages over other possible sites because it already had a BL3 center and the scientific staff to study foreign animal diseases.
"You have to take into account where the good scientists are," said Dr. Michael Kiley, the Animal Research Service safety officer at Plum Island.
Dr. Kiley said an upgrading of the laboratory to BL4 would involve extensive security measures.
Viruses collected abroad and shipped to the lab now arrive by jet at Kennedy International Airport in small vials within larger vials, packaged in plastic-lined cardboard containers that, Dr. Kiley said, could withstand an airline crash. Couriers transport the packages by car on the Long Island Expressway and other roads to Orient Point, where they are taken by boat to the island.
Sandy M. Hays, the director of the Agricultural Research Service information office, said a more stringent delivery system would be adopted if the center had a BL4 lab.
The five towns on eastern Long Island have passed resolutions demanding that the Suffolk County Health Services Department be allowed to monitor lab health and safety precautions. One of them, Shelter Island, has called on the federal government to eliminate Plum Island as a potential site for the BL4 lab.
Thomas W. Sparkman, the First Selectman of Lisbon, Conn., said he was unaware of any local groups that opposed the BL4 facilities.
Sparkman was among the group that toured the laboratory on Monday. "Quite frankly, I was impressed," he said. "I was given the sense they were ever mindful of safety."
------- russia
Yeltsin courting summit conflict
The Guardian Date: 19/11/99 By IAN BLACK in Istanbul
http://www.smh.com.au/news/9911/19/text/world11.html
Russia and the West were heading for confrontation yesterday at a European security summit which was overshadowed by charges of Moscow's indiscriminate violence in Chechnya and its test-firing of nuclear-capable missiles.
With Moscow rattling sabres because of arms control disagreements with Washington, tension over the war in the Caucasus cast a chill over a summit that had been billed as an opportunity to repair relations following the Kosovo confrontation.
As a combative Russian President Boris Yeltsin left on Wednesday for the conference in Istanbul, Russia said two SS20s, the heaviest hitters in Russia's nuclear missile fleet, had been launched from its largest submarine in the high Arctic, and had hit a testing ground on the other side of the continent in Kamchatka, in the far east.
Despite Russia's claim that the launch was routine, there was no mistaking the message for Western leaders.
On Tuesday, Russia announced it had launched ship-based, nuclear-capable Stingray missiles, a move seen as a response to the withdrawal of the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Even before the summit started, US President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Mr Sandy Berger, warned that the international community had every right to raise international concern about the number of civilian casualties in Chechnya. Chechen officials say more than 4,000 civilians have been killed.
But Mr Yeltsin, certain to raise concerns about the 1972 missile treaty, said he would not tolerate attacks over the seven-week war in Chechnya.
''I hope commonsense will prevail with those who have not been ready for that so far,'' Mr Yeltsin said, insisting that Russia was acting within international norms.
The 54-member Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe - in charge of security from the Atlantic to the Urals - is planning to finalise revisions to the Cold War-era Conventional Forces Europe (CFE) treaty as well as issue a new European security charter.
But as almost all national leaders gathered yesterday in Istanbul for the summit's grand opening ceremony, doubts were growing over whether both these agreements could be signed and sealed.
Russian deployments of armour in Chechnya are already wildly in excess of the levels permitted by both the old CFE treaty - signed by NATO and the Warsaw Pact in 1990 - and by the amended version.
And Western governments say they will not ratify the treaty without the speedy withdrawal of thousands of Russian troops from Georgia and Moldova.
Trumping Mr Clinton on the eve of the summit, Mr Yeltsin also declared he would sign a global arms control treaty the US Senate rejected last month.
The statement embarrasses Mr Clinton before his European allies. Mr Clinton desperately wanted US approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. European and other world leaders vehemently denounced the Senate rejection of the treaty, which would ban nuclear weapons testing worldwide.
The Guardian, The New York Times
---
THE TRADE-OFF Russia Offers to Bargain on Chechnya, Using Iraq as Its Bait
Related Article
The Overview: Yeltsin and West Clash at Summit Over Chechen War
By JUDITH MILLER New York Times November 19, 1999
Russia has suggested for the first time that it might support a weapons inspection system for Iraq that would be acceptable to Western nations if Washington gave Moscow a free hand in Chechnya, administration officials said Thursday.
The proposed link was contained in an informal document that Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during a meeting Wednesday of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, in Istanbul. Administration officials seemed eager Thursday to reject even the possibility of such a deal.
After restating Russian demands for changes in U.S. policy toward Iraq, the two-page paper asked the Clinton administration to agree not to raise Russia's military actions against Chechnya in the U.N. Security Council, which the paper stated "is unacceptable to us." Russia could then offer progress on Iraq, the paper suggested, saying, "We are ready to instruct the Russian representative to the Security Council to be flexible on Iraq."
Iraq has said it would not accept the proposals now being considered in the Security Council for keeping it from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. officials said the diplomatic paper caught them off guard, the more so because Thursday in Istanbul, neither Ivanov, in his meeting with Albright, nor President Boris Yeltsin, who met with President Clinton, brought up such a trade-off.
James Rubin, the State Department spokesman, said: "If Russia did seek such linkage, we would find it wholly unacceptable. We will pursue our interests in both areas without regard to any attempt by Russia to link them."
Nevertheless, the Russian paper, parts of which were read to The New York Times by an administration official, led to a debate within the administration over how it should be interpreted, officials said.
One question was whether Russia was really prepared to move away from Iraq to gain U.S. acquiescence for its operations in Chechnya, or whether the suggestion was made in the knowledge that Washington would reject it.
Another question was why Russia would be anxious about Chechnya coming up before the Security Council. According to several U.N. diplomats, neither the Security Council members nor even many Islamic states seem inclined to criticize Russia formally at the United Nations, much less sanction it, for a campaign in a republic that is still part of the the Russian federation.
Many U.N. members, facing secessionists and rebels in their own lands, remain reluctant to take up an issue that many regard as undue interference in a country's internal affairs.
Within the Security Council, Russia and the United States have been deeply divided for months over how to monitor Iraqi weapons programs and when, or if, to begin removing sanctions against Baghdad. There have been no U.N. inspections in Iraq since December, when inspectors were withdrawn in advance of punitive airstrikes by Britain and the United States, and President Saddam Hussein barred them from returning.
Most of the new Russian paper restated old Russian positions on how the United Nations should handle Iraq. Officials said the paper reiterated Russia's demand that the United Nations, in effect, should be more lenient in insisting on Iraqi compliance with the disarmament pledges it made after the Gulf War in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. The paper also cited Russia's well-known position that the suffering of the Iraqi people should be alleviated by permitting Baghdad to sell as much oil as it likes. It also called on the United States to end its frequent airstrikes against Iraq.
Finally, the paper called on Washington to release the holds it has placed on Russian sales to Iraq in the U.N. sanctions committee, where the United States has frequently challenged items that Iraq wanted to buy abroad. A U.N. official said Thursday that holds had been placed on 389 contracts worth a total of $1.042 billion, but he said he did not know how many of those sales were Russian.
-------- china
FBI Widens China Spy Investigation
New York Times November 19, 1999 Filed at 12:01 p.m. EST By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-China-Nuclear-Secrets.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nc1.htm#armo
WASHINGTON (AP) -- New evidence widens the FBI's investigation into spying allegations and suggests China may have stolen information about America's most advanced nuclear warhead from one of the weapon's contractors or from the Navy, The Washington Post reported today.
The probe had focused almost entirely on the Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico and Wen Ho Lee, a staff scientist fired from the lab in March.
But errors found in a Chinese intelligence document describing the W-88 warhead have been traced to a defense installation and contractors that assemble nuclear weapons, sources told the Post.
An FBI analysis now supports the position of Energy Department officials and Los Alamos scientists that China could have obtained the nuclear secrets at any of dozens of locations, the sources said.
The information most likely came from one of the weapon's assembly points, an unidentified source told the Post. These sites include Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., which builds warhead prototypes; Lockheed Martin Corp., which mounts the warheads on missiles; and the Navy, which supervises the process.
``We have no indication we are under any more scrutiny than any other member of the weapons complex,'' Sandia spokesman Rod Geer told The Associated Press today. Investigators are looking at dozens of weapons complex sites such as Sandia that are considered ``systems integrators,'' he said.
``Since day one of this investigation, we have provided the investigators and DOE with as much understanding as possible with our responsibilities with W-88. We are not under investigation ourselves, and we have not been implicated with any wrongdoing,'' Geer said.
A Lockheed Martin spokesman told the newspaper his company ``is cooperating with the government in its investigation and is not under investigation nor implicated in any wrongdoing.''
Mark Holscher, Lee's attorney, told the Post the new evidence ``is further proof that the focus of the investigation on Dr. Lee was inappropriate and that to continue to prosecute him for lesser charges is unfair.''
---
China Said to Be Building Anti-Missile System
New York Times November 19, 1999 Filed at 5:53 a.m. ET By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-ch.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese tabloid has said China is developing an anti-missile defense system, but Beijing-based diplomats dismissed the report as propaganda.
The Press Digest, published by the Shanghai-based Liberation Daily, said in a front-page story in its Thursday edition a new surface-to-air missile China test-fired recently was capable of ``simultaneously meeting several enemy missiles head-on.''
It did not elaborate, but its description suggested a missile with multiple warheads.
China had also developed a mobile surface-to-air missile able to counter electronic interference from Taiwan and the island's airborne radar aircraft, the newspaper said. It gave no further details.
One Western diplomat said he did not believe the report, saying an anti-missile defense system could not be developed in a short period of time.
``It's part of the propaganda war against Taiwan,'' the diplomat said.
Beijing regards Taiwan as a breakaway province and has threatened to invade if the island declared independence.
An Asian diplomat said he also had reservations about the report, saying the main components that go into an anti-missile defense system had not been seen in China.
Such a system should have the ability to detect an enemy missile launch, track, intercept and destroy it well outside the danger zone, he said.
``If China indeed has the capability, it is untested and unseen by the rest of the world,'' the envoy said.
``It would worry the Americans.''
China has been vocal in its opposition to U.S. plans for a Theater Missile Defense system which Washington argues is needed to protect American troops in Asia from the missiles of rogue states like North Korea.
Beijing fears the anti-missile defense umbrella would cover arch-rival Taiwan.
Last week, U.S. officials quietly urged Israel to drop the sale of a sophisticated $250 million airborne radar system to the Chinese air force.
China has flatly denied any plans for such a purchase despite Israeli confirmation.
Israel has tried to ease U.S. concerns by emphasizing it did not use American technology. The Israeli Defense Ministry said last week the deal was in its final stages.
---
Bush Outlines Foreign Policy Views
New York Times November 19, 1999 Filed at 1:22 p.m. EST By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/p/AP-Bush.html
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) -- George W. Bush today cautioned against retreating to a U.S. foreign policy based on isolationism and protectionism, calling it a ``shortcut to disaster'' that would invite challenges to America's power as a world leader.
The result, he said, ``would be a stagnant America and a savage world.''
Laying out his visions for U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century, the Republican presidential front-runner called for shifting the country's relationship with Russia and China from one of ``strategic partners'' to that of competitors engaged ``without ill-will -- but without illusions.''
As a counterbalance to China in particular, he proposed strengthening alliances with Democratic nations in Asia' including South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Australia and Thailand.
``If I am president, China will find itself respected as a great power, but in a region of strong democratic alliances. It will be unthreatened, but not unchecked,'' Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
Like Reagan, Bush is hoping to move from state governor to world leader.
But a string of foreign policy gaffes have raised questions about his readiness to lead. He looked to today's speech and a Dec. 2 debate lay to rest any doubts about his credentials.
Endorsing Bush, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said today that the Texas governor's speech ``hit all the major themes.''
At a Washington news conference, Lugar said Bush had sought his advice in advance of the speech and that he was not concerned about the governor's relative inexperience in foreign policy. ``Many presidential candidates in recent times have been governors of states,'' he said.
In his remarks, Bush said members of both political parties have expressed support for a policy of protectionism and isolationism. Although he didn't name names, among his rivals, GOP candidate Alan Keyes and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan have espoused a nationalist foreign policy.
``This is the shortcut to chaos, an approach that abandons our allies and our ideals,'' Bush said. ``The vacuum left by America's retreat would invite challenges to our power.''
``American foreign policy cannot be founded on fear,'' he said.
Bush also warned against drifting from crisis to crisis.
``America must be involved in the world,'' he said. ``But that does not mean our military is the answer to every difficult foreign policy situation -- a substitute for strategy.''
Bush said the country should ``develop and deploy'' missile defense systems, both theater and national. He said there was a ``real possibility'' that the United States and Russia could team up on a system that would protect both nations, so long as Russia ``breaks its habit of proliferation.''
He also said:
--The United States and Russia must ``confront the legacy of a dead ideological rivalry -- thousands of nuclear weapons, which, in the case of Russia, may not be secure.'' He called for an inventory of all nuclear material, and said Congress should substantially increase assistance to help Russia dismantle as many of its weapons.
--He supports China's admission into the World Trade Organization.
--U.S. troops should never be placed under United Nations command.
Bush already has worked to establish his presidential credentials with major addresses on civic responsibility, defense and education. Next month he will speak on economic policy.
His father, former President Bush, excelled in foreign policy, building the 28-nation coalition that won the Persian Gulf War. The governor's confusion over country names and his recent stumbling when asked to name four foreign leaders have generated questions about his own grasp of world affairs.
Bush rejects those charges, arguing that as governor of Texas he has intricate dealings with Mexico. He has also focused intensely on the subject in recent weeks with briefings from prominent advisers.
Vice President Al Gore, campaigning in New Hampshire, was asked if voters should be concerned about Bush's foreign policy credentials. ``Voters will have to make that determination by themselves,'' he said. ``I'm probably the least qualified person in America to make a dispassionate, objective analysis of Gov. Bush's for policy credentials. I believe I'd be tempted to short change him a little bit so I'm not going to do it.''
-------- us other
Spokane Review November 18, 1999, Trivia L. M. Boyd - Crown Syndicate
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=111899&ID=s708766&cat=
•Q. I know uranium spontaneously disintegrates. What finally happens to it?
A. Ends up as lead.
---
China connection
Inside the Ring - Notes from the Pentagon
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough November 19, 1999 WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/nation/ring.html
Pentagon intelligence officials tell s the Chinese were allowed to join the World Trade Organization this week virtually cost-free. No concessions were made in WTO negotiations on the important issue of China's continuing sales of missile and nuclear technology to rogue states. The sales contradict numerous Chinese government pledges over the years not to sell dangerous weapons and know-how.
Numerous intelligence reports are circulating in the Pentagon on the activity, based on reports from the alphabet soup of spy agencies -- the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Security Agency (NSA).
One classified Oct. 20 report circulated to top defense officials is enlightening. The report, based on sensitive intelligence, said the Chinese recently asked Russia to provide more high-technology fiber optic gyroscopes -- key components for both China's and North Korea's growing force of short-, medium- and long-range missiles.
The report identified the companies as Fizoptika, in Moscow, and China's Changda Corp. and noted that the Russian gyroscopes requested by the Chinese were the same items that Beijing secretly provided to North Korea's missile program earlier this year. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright expressed concern in July about China's missile technology transfers to North Korea after the sales were reported in The Washington Times.
China angst
The internal political divisions over China policy continue to heat up.
Pro-Beijing officials on the White House National Security Council (NSC) staff and at the State Department were furious with recent hard-line remarks in The Washington Times made by Adm. Dennis Blair, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command.
Adm. Blair, in an interview at his Hawaii headquarters, invoked the Taiwan Relations Act in saying the United States is justified in providing Taiwan with missile defenses. The reason: China's buildup of 500 to 600 M-9 and M-11 missiles across from the island.
"This is a major statement," one official said. "He was stating what everyone only wanted [to] assume."
The White House and State Department also did not like the fact that Adm. Blair was so clear in saying United States will defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.
The anti-Taiwan faction at the White House is led by National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger and his key aide, Kenneth Lieberthal, who are backed by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Stanley Roth and his key aide, Susan Shirk.
The Pentagon has been pushing within the administration for a more balanced view of the need to maintain Taiwan's defense in the face of mounting Chinese belligerence. They want to end the current ban on American generals and admirals visiting the island.
A high-level delegation of Taiwanese admirals and generals has been meeting with Pentagon officials this week to discuss U.S. arms sales. An official told us they are expected to "go home sad" because the anti-Taiwan elements in the administration has the upper hand on restricting weapons transfers. The Taiwanese are seeking help with missile defense, submarines and anti-aircraft missiles.
Bush's defense
Richard Armitage is sending strong signals that a George W. Bush-led Pentagon won't be business as usual. In fact, Mr. Armitage, the chief defense adviser to the Republican presidential candidate, is casting Mr. Bush as a defense reformer. Weapons procurement, global strategy, even how generals are picked, are all due for a shake-up if the Texas governor gets elected.
Mr. Bush himself laid out the broad picture during a September speech at The Citadel. He said every developing weapons system would have to pass a survival test and some might be scrapped in favor of more futuristic ones.
Then Mr. Armitage, a former Pentagon official in the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, put the generals on notice.
He told an Army conference in Washington the Pentagon does a good job of promoting officers. But generals do a lousy job of advancing fellow generals.
Mr. Armitage, who runs a Rossyln consulting firm, has emerged as the top military voice in a campaign brimming with blue-ribbon Republicans.
Just as Mr. Bush has tied up a record amount of campaign cash, he also has signed up a who's who of Republican defense and foreign policy thinkers.
Condoleezza Rice, who served on dad Bush's National Security Council staff, is the overall campaign leader on defense and foreign policy.
Mr. Armitage handles defense issues and wrote the first draft of Mr. Bush's Citadel speech.
Working with these two are Paul Wolfowitz, top defense policy-maker under Mr. Bush; Richard Perle, a tough Pentagon arms negotiator under Mr. Reagan; Dov Zakheim, an international arms expert under Mr. Reagan; Robert Zeollick, a senior State and White House official under Mr. Bush; and Robert Blackwell, a former NSC director.
In the wings acting as senior advisers are former Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and ex-Secretary of State George Shultz.
"Bush has sort of cornered the market on all the Republican stars," said a campaign insider. "But he's not just reaching back into the old Reagan and Bush drawers. I think he's going to have a nice mix. . . . Condi is in charge. She's the only one from the national security team on the official Bush steering committee."
Among the 30-somethings helping Mr. Bush is John Hillen, an Army cavalry officer in the Gulf war who is currently on the staff of a special commission, the National Security Study Group.
Insiders say Mr. Armitage, who has close ties to retired Gen. Colin Powell, would be a strong candidate to become deputy defense secretary. From the Pentagon's No. 2 post, he could personally shepherd a reform movement.
Miss Rice, an expert on European affairs, is said to be a shoo-in for White House national security adviser.
The campaign's immediate concern is dispelling the media's characterization of Mr. Bush as a lightweight on foreign policy. To that end, people like Mr. Shultz and Mr. Perle are out in public vouching for the governor's smarts.
"We have to get the editorial boards off our back," said the insider.
Que pasa?
The Pentagon has added an accent to its post-Cold War strategy.
Language training has shifted, putting more emphasis on teaching Arabic, Farsi and Korean.
Those languages just happen to coincide with where U.S. troops would likely fight the next wars --protecting South Korea or the oil-producing Persian Gulf states.
"It's a balancing act," Col. Daniel Devlin, commandant of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., tells Inside the Ring.
The Army-run school teaches 21 languages to an average student body of 3,000. Most entering school are enlisted personnel. About half go on to do intelligence work, translating intercepted communications and documents.
"Special Forces have a lot of requirements for linguists," Col. Devlin said.
He said there are about 700 enrolled this year to learn Arabic, compared with half that number 10 years ago. Likewise, the number of Korean-language students has doubled to about 600.
But the commandant adds, "Russian continues to be one of the largest programs. We graduate more Russian than any.
"What we're teaching is operational linguistics," he said. "You get the language, but you've also got to have culture, politics, societal structure, so they not only understand how the country operates, but in some cases why the language is the way it is."
The program is intense. A Russian-competent service member is graduated in 47 weeks. An Arabic-learner takes another 16 weeks. There's seven hours a day in the classroom, then three hours of homework.
"There is no more intensive language program," said Col. Devlin, adding that his students can be overheard in Monterey coffee shops practicing their new trade.
Clinton to Syria?
The U.S. Secret Service is quietly making security preparations for President Clinton to visit Damascus, Syria, we are told. Security for any presidential visit will be problematic because Syria is a safe haven for several international terrorist organizations. The visit would be part of a peace deal between Israel and Syria that is said to be close, U.S. sources close to the talks tell us. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is said to be meeting secretly with the son and designated successor of Syrian President Hafez Assad, Bashar, on the deal.
Bill Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at gertz@twtmail.com. Rowan Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at scarbo@twtmail.com.
---
China, U.S. Eye First Military Talks Since Bombing
By Reuters November 19, 1999 Filed at 12:43 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-china-u.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - The Defense Department's top China expert was due to fly into Beijing on Friday in the latest sign that ties were warming after the chill that followed the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May.
Just days after the two countries clinched a landmark deal for China to join the World Trade Organization, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Kurt Campbell was to meet Chinese military officials on Saturday in the first military-to-military talks since the bombing.
``He just wants to feel, test the waters in terms of expanding military-to-military communication,'' a U.S. embassy spokesman said.
The visit could pave the way for General Xiong Guangkuai, China's deputy chief of the general staff, to attend the third annual Sino-U.S. defense consultations in Washington early next year, said a U.S. diplomat who asked not to be identified.
The consultations were initially scheduled to be held in December. The previous round was held in Beijing in late 1998.
Campbell's weekend meeting with People's Liberation Army officers would be the first military-to-military talks since China abruptly severed bilateral defense ties in the wake of the bombing of the Chinese embassy during the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia.
CHINA SAYS NEEDS TO BE DONE
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said on Thursday the United States would have to do more for high-level military exchanges to resume.
``We hope the U.S. side will take practical action to create conditions for bilateral ties to improve and high-level military exchanges between China and the United States to resume,'' Sun said.
Campbell would be visiting ``as a guest of the U.S. embassy,'' not the Chinese government, he said without giving further details of the visit.
Campbell would be accompanied by among others Marine Corps Major General Michael Hagee, a senior officer in the U.S. military's Pacific Command.
While thorny issues remain between Beijing and Washington, bilateral ties have warmed in recent weeks, with a visit by a U.S. Navy destroyer this month to the former British colony of Hong Kong, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1997.
Retired Navy Admiral Joseph Prueher, once head of the Pacific Command, is due to arrive in Beijing in early December as ambassador to China.
THORNS IN THE SIDE OF BEIJING
Bilateral ties had also been strained in recent months by allegations that China stole U.S. nuclear secrets, charges which Beijing vehemently denies.
China is opposed to U.S. plans for a Theater Missile Defense system which Washington argues is needed to protect American troops in Asia from the missiles of rogue states like North Korea.
Beijing fears the anti-missile defense umbrella would cover arch-rival Taiwan.
Last week, U.S. officials quietly urged Israel to drop the sale of a sophisticated $250 million airborne radar system to the Chinese air force.
China has flatly denied any plans for such a purchase despite Israeli confirmation.
Israel has tried to ease U.S. concerns by emphasizing it did not use American technology. The Israeli Defense Ministry said last week the deal was in its final stages
-------- korea
S. Korea Eyes Missile Development
Washington Times November 19, 1999 By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-SKorea-US-Missile.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- U.S. and South Korean officials sat down again Friday to discuss Seoul's desire to develop longer-range missiles that can cover all of communist North Korea.
The delegates made no comment at the close of their second consecutive daylong talk. South Korean officials said the two sides will make a joint statement after their final meeting on Saturday.
A South Korean Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday's discussion centered on transparency.
``The United States wants close checks and information in every stage of our side's missile development,'' he said.
The missile nonproliferation talks come amid reports that South Korea is trying to develop longer-range missiles in violation of an agreement with the United States.
Before starting the talks on Thursday, U.S. arms control envoy Robert Einhorn said the United States supports South Korea's ability to deter attacks. But he said South Korea's missile program should conform with the ``needs of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.''
The United States is concerned that South Korea's aggressive missile development could trigger an arms race with its communist northern rival.
Under a 1979 agreement with the United States, South Korea needs U.S. permission to develop and possess missiles with a range of more than 112 miles. Washington has agreed in principle to lift the restriction, allowing Seoul to develop a missile with a range of up to 187 miles.
Now, South Korea wants U.S. permission to do research and development on missiles with a range of up to 416 miles, a distance that could reach all of North Korea.
The United States also opened missile nonproliferation talks with North Korea in Berlin on Monday. There were no reports of progress in the talks, the third this year.
North Korea alarmed the region by firing a long-range missile last year that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific. The North reportedly has completed development of a more powerful missile that experts say could reach Hawaii and Alaska.
Einhorn said the United States sees South Korea's efforts to extend its missile range ``in a very sympathetic way.''
But the United States wants South Korea to come under an international missile control regime launched by Washington in 1987. The regime bars members from developing missiles with a range longer than 187 miles and with a payload no more than 1,100 pounds.
The regime so far has 32 members. The holdouts include Middle East countries, India, Pakistan, China and North Korea.
---
S.Korea, US haggle over missiles
UPI Updated 8:37 PM ET November 19, 1999 By CHARLES LEE
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/991119/20/international-us
SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 19 (UPI) South Korean negotiators continued to bargain hard with U.S. officials Friday in hopes of extending the range of their country's missiles to cope with the North Korean military threat.
Officials in Seoul said the prickly talks might be extended until Saturday, because U.S. chief negotiator Robert Einhorn delayed his departure. Talks were planned to end Friday, and Einhorn was to leave Saturday.
The officials said the biggest hurdle for South Korea is how to restrict missile research and development.
Song Min-sun, director general of the North American bureau at Seoul's Foreign Ministry, appealed to Washington to allow its close ally to develop and test-fire missiles capable of striking anywhere in the North, or up to 312 miles (500 km).
Under a 1979 understanding with the United States, South Korea has been restricted from developing a missile with a range of more than 112 miles (180 km) and has promised to abide by a U.S.-led global missile control regime.
South Korean officials complain that their missiles fall far short of reaching most of North Korea. The restriction was eased in August 1998, when Washington agreed in principle to allow Seoul to develop a missile with a range of up to 187 miles (300 km).
But U.S. officials said Seoul is allowed only scientific research, not development and deployment, of longer-range missiles.
Einhorn, who is U.S. assistant secretary of state for non- proliferation, said South Korea should refrain from developing a new missile that could travel father because Seoul's longer-range missile deployment could trigger an arms race in East Asia.
He said the United States "supports the deterrent capability" of South Korea, but its missile program should "conform with the need for peace and stability on the Korean peninsula."
The United States wants South Korea to abide by the Missile Technology Control Regime, which bars members from developing missiles with a range longer than 187 miles (300 km) and with a payload of more than 1,100 pounds (500 kg).
Foreign Ministry officials in Seoul would not comment on the results of the talks.
The missile talks come amid reports that South Korea has already gone ahead with a longer-range missile, in violation of the 1979 agreement. The New York Times said last week that U.S. spy satellite photos revealed South Korea had built a rocket motor test station without notifying the United States.
The South Korean government denied the reports as groundless. "U.S. officials have visited every facility we have, and they have been fully informed of what we did and are doing," Foreign Ministry officials said.
"I believe we have kept transparency in the missile field with the United States," said Yoon Joe-shim, an official at the South Korean Embassy in Washington.
The bilateral missile talks, the second of their kind, were held as a crucial meeting between the United States and North Korea in Berlin sought ways to keep the communist country from test-firing and exporting ballistic missiles.
The Washington-Seoul talks have stalled due to the U.S. demand that Seoul provide Washington with information on missile development and allow U.S. access to its programs.
Seoul has rejected the demand as an infringement on its sovereignty.
---
U.S., N.Korea Talks Resume in Berlin
New York Times November 19, 1999 Filed at 5:32 a.m. ET By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-u.html
BERLIN (Reuters) - Talks between North Korea and the United States aimed at improving relations reconvened on Friday as the North Korean delegation arrived at the U.S. embassy in Berlin.
The meeting is the fourth this week in a series of sessions aimed at improving relations between Washington and the isolated communist state.
Diplomats said before the latest round of talks that they did not expect any major breakthrough from the negotiations which follow a U.S. announcement in September that it was easing long-standing economic sanctions in exchange for North Korea's pledge to freeze long-range missile tests.
A Korean diplomat on Wednesday described the atmosphere at the talks as ``positive.''
The United States wants firmer commitments from North Korea about restraining its missile and nuclear programs, a Western diplomat said last week.
North Korea was interested in benefiting from an easing of sanctions and moving toward normalizing ties, he added.
---
N.Korea expels U.S. citizen on spy charge
UPI Updated 5:27 AM ET November 19, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/991119/05/international-us-spy
SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 19 (UPI) A U.S. citizen was expelled from North Korea on Friday for allegedly spying on the country's military secrets, the North's state-run press said.
The Central News Agency said So Sun-dok, an ethnic Korean, was "caught red-handed on Sept. 29, engaging himself in espionage on military secrets of the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea)."
The state-run press said the Korean-American posed as an investor in the North's special economic zone in Rajin-Sonbong to gain access to commit espionage. The report did not provide other information on the suspect.
The U.S. citizen, who infringed "seriously" on the North's sovereignty, should normally be "severely punished," but the North has decided to fine and expel him instead, in consideration of Washington's repeated request of leniency, the agency said.
The United States and North Korea are engaged in talks in Berlin aimed at improving bilateral relations. The Cold War foes are moving toward reconciliation since September when Washington announced that it would ease decades-old economic sanctions against the impoverished country. In return, Pyongyang pledged to freeze on its long-range ballistic missile test-launches.
--------china
China's military upgrade may raise stakes in Taiwan
By Barbara Slavin and Steven Komarow USA Today 11/19/99 Page 16A
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/19991119/1672578s.htm
WASHINGTON -- Sometime around Christmas, China is expected to take delivery of a Russian destroyer that could raise the stakes for U.S. intervention in any future crisis over Taiwan, arms experts say.
The 7,300-ton ship is the first of the Sovremenny (Russian for ''contemporary'') class ever exported. It is equipped with powerful cruise missiles that can carry nuclear warheads and are designed to menace other ships.
Coupled with the anticipated delivery next year of anti-submarine helicopters and a hybrid Israeli-Russian airborne early-warning system, the destroyer could begin to alter the strategic equation in the Taiwan Strait, experts say.
''The scariest scenario is the first-shot theory,'' retired admiral Eric McVadon says. ''If Beijing decided to take a potshot at a (U.S. aircraft) carrier, this missile would give us something to worry about.''
The deal, which includes one more destroyer and is believed to be worth $1 billion to Russia, has been known to the Pentagon for some time. But the Clinton administration has not urged the Russians to refrain from the sale, a White House official said.
''The two ships are capable,'' says Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman. ''The missile systems are very good.'' But Quigley says it is unclear how well Chinese crews would be trained and how well the ships -- introduced into the Soviet navy in 1981 -- have been maintained.
However, a statement from the Office of Naval Intelligence, in response to a query from USA TODAY, raises concern about the missiles the ship carries. Code-named Sunburns, the missiles travel at twice the speed of sound and can be equipped with nuclear or 500-pound high-explosive warheads. The Sunburn, the office said, ''provides more of everything: greater speed, more range, better accuracy, greater punch and higher maneuverability.''
At his confirmation hearing Oct. 28 to be the next U.S. ambassador to China, retired admiral Joseph Prueher sidestepped a question about whether the missiles would be nuclear-tipped. Prueher, former chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said that the United States has developed ways of dealing with the ship but conceded that U.S. and Taiwanese forces would have ''to adjust their tactical thinking'' if it was introduced into the Chinese fleet.
Some arms experts question whether Taiwan's defenses could shoot down the supersonic Sunburn. Prueher said that ''under some circumstances it is possible'' for Taiwan to do so -- suggesting that under other circumstances it could not.
As always in the debate over China, much depends on how experts interpret the intentions of the world's most populous nation, an emerging economic power characterized by uneven development and internal challenges to authoritarian rule.
China has been seeking to improve its armed forces for years. The question is what it intends to do with these forces, in particular toward Taiwan, which the Communist government regards as a renegade province.
Those who believe that China will eventually try to take over the island say the new destroyer might make the United States hesitate about responding to a Chinese attack.
''The wh