----------- depleted uranium
Jets vandalized, 4 activists arrested
Philadelphia Inquirer December 20, 1999 Staff and wire report
http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/99/Dec/20/local/PROT20.htm
ESSEX, Md. - A Catholic worker from Philadelphia was one of four peace activists arrested yesterday after she and the others broke through a fence at a Maryland Air National Guard base, sprayed two aircraft with what they said was their own blood and hammered on a jet engine.
Elizabeth Walz, 33, of Philadelphia, was among the members of Plowshares arrested, said Max Obuszewski, a spokesman for the group, which has held similar protests at other military installations.
Walz is a member of Germantown Catholic Worker, a household of people that tries to help homeless and engages in peace efforts, according to Robert Smith, of the Brandywine Peace Community.
Also charged was Philip Berrigan, a former priest and a founding member of Plowshares. Members of the group have taken hammers to ships, planes and other weapons on about 60 occasions since 1980. The four protesters used bolt cutters to break through a chain-link fence around the Warfield Air National Guard Base at Martin State Airport in Essex at about 4 a.m., said Maj. Robert Gould.
They sprayed a substance they claimed was their own blood onto two A-10 Thunderbolt jets and damaged the left engine of one of the jets with a hammer before Air National Guard security apprehended them, Gould said. He said security police were there in about 90 seconds.
The protesters were turned over to Baltimore County police who said they would be charged with destruction of property and trespassing.
The Plowshares target nuclear weapons, and targeted the A-10s because they fired depleted uranium in Iraq and Yugoslavia.
Berrigan, a 76-year-old former Catholic priest from Baltimore, has been arrested for civil disobedience more than 100 times. He and his brother started protesting during the Vietnam War and were jailed for destroying draft records in Baltimore.
Obuszewski identified the others arrested yesterday as Susan Crane, 56, of Baltimore, and the Rev. Stephen Kelly, 50, of New York.
--------- russia
Accidents and incidents
Submarine spent fuel storage barge catches fire in the Pacific.
Igor Kudrik, 1999.12.17 16:39
http://www.bellona.no/imaker?id=13896&sub=1
The PM-80 storage barge for submarine spent nuclear fuel caught fire. Four cabins were destroyed. The fire was caused by an electric short circuit. The barge (Project 326) is based at Primorye in the Russian Far East and belongs to the Russian Pacific Fleet.
The information about the incident was reported by the local daily Vladivostok with a reference to unofficial sources in the Pacific Fleet. PM-80 was built in 1964 and has been taken out of service. The barge had reportedly around 100 spent fuel assemblies onboard. The fire was put out by the crew and led to no casualties.
The Russian Navy has eight Project-326 barges split evenly between the Northern and Pacific Fleet. Each barge is capable of holding 80 containers for a total of 560 spent fuel assemblies. The barges are also outfitted with three storage tanks for liquid radioactive waste. The total volume is 230 cubic meters. The average age of the barges is more than 30 years.
----------- canada
U.S. legislator proposes bill outlawing nuclear shipments
Canadian Broadcasting System 11/20/99
http://cbc.ca/cp/world/991220/w1220101.html
LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Transporting nuclear material across Great Lakes bridges would be illegal under a proposal by a state legislator.
Representative Andy Neumann (D - Alpena) said he will introduce a bill when the legislature returns in January. It would ban shipments such as the plutonium transport scheduled to cross Michigan headed for Chalk River, Ont.
The bill calls for a $1 million US fine and a year prison sentence for anyone who violates the ban.
It is unlikely the legislation could pass in time to affect the controversial plutonium shipment cleared last week by a federal judge in Kalamazoo.
The U.S. Department of Energy will not say exactly when the shipment will take place. But in federal court last week, a department official said the shipment would have to be made before Christmas or be delayed until late January because of an agency policy restricting high-security transports in the first three weeks of 2000.
The agency plans to send the shipment across Interstates 94, 69, 75 and the Mackinac Bridge before continuing to Canada across another bridge at Sault Ste. Marie.
From there, the shipment will proceed across Northern Ontario along Highway 17, past such centres as Sudbury and North Bay, before reaching Chalk River, about 150 kilometres northwest of Ottawa.
Neumann said although he realizes his bill probably won't stop this shipment, he hopes it will keep it from ever happening again.
"If something happens on land, that's one thing," he said. "But for something to happen over the Great Lakes, now you've contaminated our whole Great Lakes basin."
-------
British Energy says Ontario deal is 'speculative'
Reuters Updated 4:01 PM ET December 20, 1999 By Amran Abocar
http://news.excite.com/news/r/991220/16/electricity-ontariopower
TORONTO (Reuters) - British Energy Plc dismissed as speculation Monday reports that it is about to unveil a $1 billion offer for one of Canada's biggest nuclear reactors, but did not rule out an offer down the line.
British and Canadian newspapers reported Monday that the Edinburgh, Scotland-based firm, along with its U.S. joint venture partner, Peco Energy , would launch an offer for Ontario's Bruce nuclear plant next month.
"That was clearly a speculative story that popped up in the U.K.," said Susan Brissette, a spokeswoman for British Energy in North America. "I'm not exactly sure where it came from. If we have an announcement to make, we make it to the world all at the same time."
Brissette said British Energy, which completed its first North American acquisition last week through its joint venture AmerGen Energy Co., was open to new acquisitions in Canada.
"It's no secret that with the deregulation of markets throughout North America, including Canada, there are likely to be opportunities that come up that we'll want to look at," she said.
A spokesman for Philadelphia-based Peco Energy made a similar comment.
One U.S.-based analyst said that although a Peco or British Energy move into Canada would fit well with their overall strategy, the published $1 billion price tag was far too high.
"I'd be surprised they'd be willing to pay that much," said Pat Kane, an investment analyst at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. "That's more than 10 times what they paid for Clinton and they were operating Clinton when they made their bid."
AmerGen paid $20 million for the 950-megawatt (MW) Clinton nuclear power station near Chicago. The deal was completed last week.
Earlier this fall, Ontario Power Generation, a spin-off of Ontario's debt-laden public electrical utility, said it was once again looking for investors to buy some or all of its three nuclear power complexes, with their 20 Canadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactors, as it attempts to meet provincial guidelines set out for Ontario's deregulating electricity market.
The early focus is on the 6000-MW Bruce nuclear complex, which has eight reactors in two units, the Bruce "A" and the newer "B" sites. The Bruce "A" unit, with its four reactors, has been in "layup" for some time cutting total output to 3000 MW.
"We're taking expressions of interests but we're not prepared to say more than that," said Ted Gruetzner, a spokesman at Ontario Power Generation Monday.
Gruetzner declined to confirm whether AmerGen or its Canadian counterpart, CanaGen, had made an offer yet, saying the process for making bids had yet to close.
Federated's Kane said the CANDU technology would be "a concern" for the U.S. players, where plants are either boiling water or pressurized water reactors, and would likely bring the price tag lower.
"I think that would be looked at as a negative by Peco," he said. "It wouldn't preclude a sale but it would be a concern they'd have to come to grips with."
Based on AmerGen's acquisition price for the 950-MW Clinton plant, Kane calculated a price tag of around $130 million for the Bruce plant's four active reactors with their 3,000-MW output.
($1-$1.48 Canadian)
----------- Iraq
Iraq Says No to U.N. on Arms Inspectors
New York Times December 20, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/iraq-un-afp.html
Related Article
Iraq Rejects U.N. Decision to Create New Arms Inspection Plan (Dec. 19, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/121999iraq-un.html
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 19 -- Iraq's official press warned today that Baghdad would not cooperate with a "criminal" new United Nations resolution covering the return of arms inspectors in return for a suspension of crippling sanctions.
But the government itself remained mute about rejecting the resolution completely, and a diplomat noted that efforts would intensify to find a solution.
"Iraq will not implement or respect this resolution" which "maintains the embargo and brings Iraq back to the starting point," said the daily newspaper Babel, run by Uday Saddam Hussein, the eldest son of the Iraqi president.
"This criminal resolution turns Iraq into a protectorate led from the outside with Iraqi money, and indefinitely maintains the embargo," it said.
The ruling Baath party's newspaper, Ath-Thawra, said that the resolution, "of U.S. father and British mother, is stillborn" and that "all efforts to bring it back to life will fail."
"Iraq rejects this resolution," the newspaper said, "and if America is planning another stupid act, Iraq will not stay with its arms crossed but will defend its rights and its sovereignty."
----------- japan
Nuclear Accident Victim Very Ill
Los Angeles Times Monday, December 20, 1999 Reuters
http://www.latimes.com/news/health/medicine/19991220/t000115958.html
TOKYO--One of three workers exposed to heavy doses of radiation in Japan's worst nuclear accident lapsed into critical condition, while another left a hospital today.
Tokyo University Hospital said in a statement late Sunday that Hisashi Ouchi, 35, was in a "more severe condition which requires the utmost attention."
Ouchi and two colleagues were exposed to high levels of radiation from the accident at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura on Sept. 30.
Ouchi's blood pressure has become volatile, and doctors are "barely" managing to keep it and other vital signs under control with the use of drugs, the hospital said.
His condition has worsened since his heart temporarily failed in late November.
Ouchi received about 17 sieverts of radiation in the accident. Experts have said seven sieverts is considered a lethal dose.
Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories about: Nuclear Accidents - Japan, Casualties, Factories, Uranium, Health Hazards, Radiation Poisoning, Employees. You will not be charged to look for stories, only to retrieve one.
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----------- korea
Contract is completed for N. Korean reactors
Philadelphia Inquirer December 16, 1999 By Sang-hun Choe ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Dec/16/international/NKOREA16.htm
SEOUL, South Korea - A U.S.-led consortium signed a $4.6 billion contract yesterday to build two nuclear reactors in North Korea as a reward for the communist nation's promise to freeze and eventually dismantle its suspected nuclear-weapons program.
The contract was the final element of preparations to build the U.S.-designed reactors in Kumho, a rural village in the northeast part of North Korea.
"Today's event reflects the improving political climate surrounding the Korean peninsula," the consortium's executive director, Desaix Anderson, said. Anderson signed the contract in Seoul with Choi Byung Soo, the president of South Korea's state utility company, Korea Electric Power Corp.
The South Korean company will be the main builder of the reactors and other key facilities for the power plants. It has been doing ground-leveling and other preparatory work since 1997, but the major part of the construction has been delayed because of funding and other problems.
The consortium's three main members - the United States, Japan and South Korea - recently agreed on details of the funding.
South Korea will assume 70 percent of the cost, or $3.2 billion. Japan will provide $1 billion; the United States, $115 million; and the European Union, $80 million. The balance has yet to be filled.
The funding will be made through the consortium, which is called the Korean Peninsula Energy Organization.
Under a 1994 accord, the consortium members promised to build two reactors, each with a rated capacity of 1,000 megawatts.
The light-water reactors will replace North Korea's Soviet-designed, graphite-moderated reactors, which experts have said produce greater amounts of weapons-grade plutonium.
U.S. experts have said that, before freezing its nuclear program, North Korea was suspected of having extracted enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs. The North has said its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
At a normal pace of construction, the first reactor would be built by 2007, four years behind schedule. The second reactor would be completed a year later. Under the accord, North Korea also is to receive an annual shipment of 500,000 tons of fuel oil until the first reactor is built.
----------- us nuc weapons complex
Community will miss Flats boss
Denver Rocky Mountain News December 20, 1999 By Berny Morson
http://insidedenver.com/news/1220jess7.shtml
Rocky Flats manager Jessie Roberson sometimes felt like a pariah when she began representing the defunct nuclear weapons plant before community groups three years ago.
"It really hurt me personally that people viewed me as untrustworthy, underhanded, sneaky," she said.
One day, longtime anti-nuclear activist LeRoy Moore of Boulder advised Roberson not to take it personally. It's just that Rocky Flats symbolizes everything people distrust about the weapons program, he said.
As Roberson prepares to leave to take a position on the Defense Nuclear Safety Board in the next few weeks, no one questions her integrity. Community leaders describe her as accessible and direct in expressing her views.
But whether the plant continues to overcome deep community distrust depends on the person who replaces her, they say.
"It's still the Department of Energy, and the Department of Energy is a problematic animal," said Moore, who is active with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, a group that has criticized Rocky Flats for decades.
Roberson has held the top DOE job at Rocky Flats since 1996. She was appointed to the prestigious safety board position by President Clinton in September.
Enshrouded in secrecy and patrolled by machine-gun-toting guards, the weapons plant was widely distrusted in surrounding communities during the Cold War. Health officials and the public feared the effects on surrounding communities from radioactive materials released during two fires.
The plant has not made a bomb since 1989, and cleanup was well under way when Roberson became manager. Independent studies have largely dispelled concerns about health effects.
But Roberson said the next plant manager will have to continue to work at chipping away "decades of mistrust and cynicism."
Roberson said she spent a lot of time meeting with people. She visited the Peace and Justice Center, long viewed by Rocky Flats officials as the Kremlin West.
"I'd go again," she said of her reception.
"I'm going to miss her," Moore said. "She was as good as we had out there."
Hank Stovall, a Broomfield city councilman, agreed that Roberson was accessible.
Stovall is among local leaders who want Rocky Flats cleaned to a higher level than called for in energy department plans. He credits her with moving the cleanup forward after years of study.
"She brought a higher sense of urgency," he said.
Stovall says the danger is that a new manager will fall back into the old bureaucratic pattern of interminable study or that the manager will press ahead without Roberson's oft-repeated concern for safety.
Roberson said the nation must press ahead with cleanup at Rocky Flats and other weapons plants or the opportunity will be lost. New Mexico is balking at accepting waste for burial, as is Nevada.
So far, South Carolina, which will get the highly radioactive weapons-grade plutonium, has not objected. But that could change, Roberson said.
Roberson said it's easy for government agencies to fall back into the pattern of endless studying unless leaders continue to demand work.
"You have to pick a place and, bite by bite, deal with it," she said.
Roberson will continue to work with Rocky Flats in her new job, which makes safety recommendations to the energy secretary. The board made news in 1996 when it warned that hydrogen was building up in barrels of radioactive waste at Rocky Flats and could explode. The problem was corrected.
Contact Berny Morson at (303) 892-5072 or morsonb@RockyMountainNews.com
----------- y2k
US Embassies To Stop Issuing Visa
04:40 PM ET 12/20/99s By BRIGITTE GREENBERG Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2562736810-de2
WASHINGTON (AP) _ U.S. embassies abroad will be open, with extra security, at the start of the new year, but they will not be issuing visas right away, State Department officials said Monday.
No nonimmigrant visas will be issued the first two working days of January, and no immigrant visas will be issued the first two weeks so personnel can concentrate on Y2K priorities, the officials said.
The State Department has issued a worldwide alert to American citizens because of the threat of possible terrorist operations targeting Americans during millennium celebrations.
``We have individuals around the world and leaders of terrorist groups ... who would seek to exploit in their view a period when they might feel world attention was focused either in the press, on events going on around the world, or that there were weaknesses that could be exploited,'' Thomas Pickering, undersecretary of state for political affairs, told a press briefing.
Bonnie Cohen, undersecretary of state for management, said Americans could be evacuated in an emergency if necessary.
``It depends on the situation. We can assist them in making their own reservations or logistics out of a country,'' she said. ``We can arrange charters ... if it's a question of getting out large numbers of people. And obviously as a last resort, as we have done in some cases, we can use the military.''
-----
Midnight bright?
by JOHN SKIPPER, Globe-Gazette Sunday, December 19, 1999
http://www.globegazette.com/news/1999/1299/week4/991219_ni1.html
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a series of stories on North Iowa Y2K preparedness. Each day through the end of the year, reporter John Skipper will look at another segment of business or community and the efforts being made to ensure all is well when the clock strikes midnight Dec. 31, signaling the beginning of the year 2000.
MASON CITY - It will be the most famous midnight since Paul Revere ... and it brings the question of the century: When the clock strikes 12, will the lights go out?
Millions of businesses, government agencies and individuals throughout the world have performed thousands of tests to determine if they are prepared for what has come to be known as the "Y2K" factor - the possibility that at 12:01 a.m., Jan. 1, 2000, when computer systems may roll over to "0-0-0," much of our high-tech society could grind to a halt.
"I don't think we're going to see major outages across the United States or across the world," said Bob Newell, Y2K project manager for Alliant Energy in Madison, Wis. "On a worldwide basis, to think that everything is going to be perfect is just asking too much. CNN will find some problem somewhere," he said.
Newell said he doesn't share the view of many that the rest of the world is not prepared for Y2K. He and Alliant have been directly involved in helping other parts of the world get prepared.
"We had project team members in Hong Kong in June to help train people," he said. "In September, we were asked to participate in what is called a G-8 conference in Germany, meaning seven industrialized countries plus Russia," said Newell.
The participating countries were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. The conference not only covered gas and electricity, but also shipping and transportation, finance and banking, health care and government services, according to Newell.
Three weeks later, Alliant was represented at Prague for an International Energy Corp. program on contingency planning. About a month after that, Newell was in Moscow to participate in the Russian Nuclear Power Plant Communications Exercise. "It was basically a drill at a nuclear power plant and it went very well," said Newell.
Alliant will have 1,000 workers on duty in its four-state service area on New Year's Eve and into the early morning hours of New Year's Day to handle any situations that might develop.
In Mason City, many Alliant workers will be staffing the main office and warehouses from about 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., said Alliant spokesperson Deb Marson. "We'll have our overhead manager, our underground manager, our maintenance manager and two clerical workers in the office. We'll have four line mechanics on call at the Mason City warehouse and three in the warehouse at Britt. Also, we'll have two from our gas crew on call at the warehouse in Mason City and two in Belmond," she said.
"We'll have open communication with the command post in Mason City for police and fire and other services and we'll also have some of our crucial substations manned," said Marson. Alliant is manning the substations for security reasons.
MidAmerican Energy serves many small communities in North Iowa. A spokesman said customer service offices will be staffed on New Year's Eve but won't open to the public unless problems arise.
"MidAmerican service centers and customer offices will open to take walk-in orders, should the need arise," said Paul Maakestad, the utility's Y2K project manager. "Energy consultants will also be located at many of the service centers to respond to large customer concerns."
In North Iowa, customer service offices will be staffed in Charles City and Hampton.
On New Year's Eve, the U.S. government probably will be focused on obtaining Y2K reports from abroad, but John A. Koskinen, the president's Y2K adviser, said Americans should not assume that what happens oversees will also happen in this country. Koskinen said it may take a week to get a good picture of Y2K's magnitude.
Koskinen issued a "benchmarks" fact sheet showing what normally happens on a given day - meaning that not everything that goes wrong on New Year's Day should be blamed on Y2K.
For example, Koskinen said, 1 percent to 2 percent of all automated teller machines are broken at any one time and about 10 percent of credit card transactions fail routinely. The share of gasoline stations normally closed on New Year's Day ranges from zero to 15 percent, depending on the company or operator, said Koskinen.
----------- spy
Canada Spy Chief Gave Warning
By TOM COHEN Associated Press Writer Yahoo News 04:54 PM ET 12/20/99
TORONTO (AP) _ More than a year before an Algerian was charged with bringing explosives into Washington state from British Columbia, Canada's intelligence chief warned that dozens of international terrorist groups were operating in the country.
Ward Elcock, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told a parliamentary committee in June 1998 his agency was investigating 50 terrorist groups in Canada.
Canada's democratic principles, multiethnic society and policy of welcoming immigrants meant it ``can be seen as a haven'' for terrorists, Elcock said then. Sharing a long, often remote border with the United States, a major target of some groups, made it even more attractive, he said.
The risk of an attack has come under increased scrutiny since the Dec. 14 arrest of Ahmed Ressam, a 32-year-old Algerian who officials say entered the United States at Port Angeles, Wash., in a vehicle carrying nitroglycerine and other components of a possible bomb.
The FBI heads the Ressam case investigation, and Canadian agencies involved _ led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Elcock's intelligence service _ have made little information available.
Media reports say Ressam could be linked with an Algerian crime gang based in Montreal that committed robberies and sold the goods for money sent to terrorist groups overseas.
Investigators believe the money raised through the thefts was quickly funneled out of Canada via a sophisticated network passing through France, Belgium, Italy, Kosovo, Pakistan and finally, Algeria.
Montreal police spokesman Andre Poirier said 11 members of the gang, including eight Algerians, were arrested last week, but he was unable to confirm a connection with Ressam.
In his testimony last year, Elcock said the groups known to his agency were raising money for international terrorist networks or helping them with logistics.
He said terrorists working in Canada had direct or indirect links to the World Trade Center bombing in New York, suicide bombings in Israel, attacks on tourists in Egypt, assassinations in India and the bombing campaign of the Irish Republican Army.
Since Ressam's arrest, border guards have been put on high alert and patrols have increased, particularly at remote border points.
``We're obviously doing this to make sure the borders are secure and that we stop anyone who would engage in terrorist activities,'' said U.S. Customs spokesman Bill Anthony. ``There seems to be a threat at this particular time.''
---
U.S.: No Pollard Ruling Soon
04:58 PM ET 12/20/99
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2562737052-73e
WASHINGTON (AP) _ An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met last week with the White House counsel to ask for the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, the White House confirmed on Monday.
The aide, Moshe Kochanovsky, a senior official in the Israeli Defense Ministry, had not previously met Beth Nolan, the new White House chief counsel, and officials described the meeting as a courtesy call.
``He had not had a chance to sit down and meet the new White House counsel, so there was a session where they went through the process,'' said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart. ``I believe they've gotten all the input that they're going to get.''
Jim Kennedy, spokesman for the counsel's office, said the meeting was held to allow Kochanovsky, who had accompanied Barak to Washington for peace talks with the Syrian foreign minister, to restate the Israeli case for Pollard's release.
Lockhart reiterated the Clinton administration's position that the Pollard case should not be considered part of the peace negotiations.
The administration has been reviewing Israel's request that Pollard be released since October 1998, when the issue nearly derailed peace talks at Wye River, Md.
President Clinton directed the White House counsel's office to collect recommendations from the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies about possible clemency. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretary William Cohen, among others, have opposed Pollard's release.
``No recommendation has gone to the president,'' Lockhart said, adding that he didn't expect Nolan to forward any such recommendation in the near future.
Hillary Rodham Clinton has come under pressure from Pollard supporters. But Lockhart said that the first lady, who is mounting a Senate bid in New York, has not played a role in determining Pollard's fate.
A former civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy, Pollard was convicted of espionage in 1985 for giving Israel tens of thousands of top-secret documents. He is serving a life sentence in a North Carolina prison.
---
Back Channels: The Intelligence Community
Ex-Spy Catcher Looks for Medal, Not Scorn
By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 20, 1999; Page A31
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/20/054l-122099-idx.html
The former director of counterintelligence at Los Alamos National Laboratory continues to speak out on the government's Chinese espionage investigation, saying the Department of Energy's national laboratories found out far more about China's nuclear weapons than they ever lost to foreign spies and deserve a medal, not scorn.
"The view that the U.S. weapons labs have leaked nuclear secrets to China could not be further from the truth," Robert S. Vrooman said in a recent speech at Los Alamos to a group of electrical engineers. "If someone told me that 85 percent of everything we know about China's nuclear weapons program came through the DOE weapons laboratories, I would not be surprised."
Vrooman retired as counterintelligence chief at Los Alamos in March. He was stripped of a consultant's contract in September at the recommendation of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson for failing to remove physicist Wen Ho Lee from his job inside Los Alamos's top-secret X Division in 1997 after Lee came under suspicion for espionage.
Vrooman fired his first public salvo in August, shortly after Richardson recommended disciplinary action against him. At the time, Vrooman said federal investigators targeted Lee as an espionage suspect largely because he was a Chinese American and did not have a "shred of evidence" against him as a spy. Lee is in jail, charged with mishandling classified information.
In his most recent remarks, Vrooman disclosed that the weapons labs began collecting China's nuclear secrets in 1979 after a retired U.S. weapons scientist traveled to China and "found the Chinese willing to talk about what they were doing."
"At this time the U.S. intelligence community knew very little about the Chinese nuclear weapons program," Vrooman said. "This visit led to 10 years of 'controlled,' let me emphasize the word 'controlled,' contacts between Chinese and U.S. nuclear weapons specialists.
"By the early 1990s the U.S. intelligence community knew the names of the leading Chinese weapons specialists, knew information on the weapons systems and understood Chinese nuclear doctrine. China also accepted the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] and stopped testing," Vrooman said. "This is a much different picture than some in Congress and the intelligence community would like you to believe."
CRITIQUING A CRITIQUE: A day after Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation issued a harsh, 95-page critique last week of a House select committee's May 1999 report on Chinese espionage, a top staffer on the committee fired back with his own list of 50 factual errors in the Stanford report.
Nicholas Rostow, who worked for the House committee chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calf.) and now is staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, concedes in a preface to the list that the Cox committee made "mistakes and omissions . . . that deserve examination."
But the four essays that make up the Stanford critique, he writes, "fail to reveal any substantial errors, and, in fact, are replete with their own errors and mistakes."
The Stanford critique can be found online at http://www.stanford.edu/group/CISAC/. Rostow's rebuttal is soon to be posted at http://www.house.gov/cox/.
FINDING ABSURDITY: Less than a month after a federal judge ruled that the CIA didn't have to give him an aggregate total for intelligence community spending in fiscal 1999, Steven Aftergood suffered another setback last week in his quest for greater government disclosure when a government panel refused his request for total intelligence spending 11 years earlier.
Aftergood, who heads the Federation of American Scientists' project on government secrecy, called the latest denial "just ineffably absurd."
While pursuing the 1999 spending total in court through the Freedom of Information Act, last year Aftergood requested the 1988 total through another process for obtaining secret government documents called mandatory declassification review.
When the CIA refused to release the figure, Aftergood appealed to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel.
"I figured, let's go back 10 years . . . and let's see how far budget secrecy goes," Aftergood said.
Now he knows: on Friday, the ISCAP informed him that it was upholding the agency's denial, agreeing that the total spent on intelligence in fiscal 1988 is still too sensitive to release.
"It has to get more absurd in order to get less absurd," Aftergood said. "And we're moving in that direction."
------------
Lee Accuses Gov't of Smear Campaign
Yahoo News 05:38 PM ET 12/20/99 By MATT KELLEY Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2562737555-664
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Government officials leaked false and misleading information to reporters to smear Wen Ho Lee as a spy for China, the fired nuclear weapons scientist said in a lawsuit filed Monday.
The suit accuses the FBI and the departments of Justice and Energy of violating the Privacy Act by releasing details such as Lee's job history, his travels to Asia and allegations that he failed a lie-detector test. The leaks created a ``trial-by-media atmosphere'' that led to Lee's being charged with improper handling of classified information, the U.S. District Court lawsuit said.
``It is unlawful for the government to play under a different set of rules to try to smear somebody before they charge them,'' said Brian Sun, the California lawyer representing Lee in the privacy suit. ``That is just not right. That's what we think happened in this case.''
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, speaking Monday at the Sandia National Laboratories, said Lee's lawsuit is groundless.
``I believe the lawsuit has no foundation,'' Richardson said. ``We have made an effort to protect the privacy of all people involved in this case.''
FBI spokesman Dave Miller wound not comment.
Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona did not immediately return a telephone message Monday.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Lee and his wife Sylvia, does not seek a specific amount of money but does open a new legal front for the scientist fired from his job at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The lawsuit will allow Lee's lawyers to gather records and testimony about the investigation and officials' contacts with reporters, Sun said.
``This lawsuit is designed to ferret out and identify those folks who leaked confidential and personal information about Wen Ho and Sylvia Lee to the press,'' Sun said.
Lee remains held without bail in New Mexico after his Dec. 10 arrest on 59 felony charges alleging that he transferred nuclear secrets to his personal computer and portable data tapes. The indictment does not allege that Lee gave infomation to China or any other foreign government.
``These leaks have not only disgraced my family and devastated my family, they also removed us of our dignity,'' Lee's 26-year-old daughter, Alberta Lee, said outside the federal courthouse Monday. ``We believe these leaks are the reason why my father is still in jail today.''
News reports quoted unidentified government sources as saying Lee was a prime suspect in the alleged theft by China of information about the W-88, the smallest and most sophisticated warhead in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The lawsuit cites recent Associated Press reports that the FBI had doubts as early as November 1988 that Lee, a Taiwan-born U.S. citizen, was a Chinese spy.
Among information the lawsuit said was leaked to the press illegally are claims a polygraph examination indicated Lee was lying, that Lee hired a Chinese graduate student as an assistant and that he got $700 from an American Express office while visiting Hong Kong.
While a New York Times article reported that unidentified investigators thought an unidentified spy suspect _ later identified as Lee _ used the $700 for an airplane ticket to Shanghai, China, Lee actually gave the money to his daughter ``to take an excursion outside Hong Kong with a tour group,'' the lawsuit said.
That article also said the suspect's wife _ later identified as Sylvia Lee _ drew suspicion because she spoke at a computer conference in China, though she was ``only a secretary'' at Los Alamos. The lawsuit said Mrs. Lee was a data analyst, with a highest-level ``Q'' security clearance, who was working for the FBI to help monitor Chinese scientists when she attended the conference.
Mrs. Lee, a U.S. citizen born in China who retired from Los Alamos in 1995, has not been charged with a crime.
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Scientist Lee will retaliate with suit
Washington Times December 20, 1999 By John Solomon ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://208.246.212.80/national/news1-19991220.htm
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2562725387-34b
Former Los Alamos laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee has decided to sue the FBI, Justice Department and Energy Department, claiming they violated his privacy and wrongly portrayed him as a Chinese spy.
Former Los Alamos laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee has decided to sue the FBI, Justice Department and Energy Department, claiming they violated his privacy and wrongly portrayed him as a Chinese spy.
Mr. Lee, who was indicted Dec. 10 on charges he improperly removed nuclear secrets from Los Alamos, plans to file the lawsuit today in U.S. District Court in Washington, according to people familiar with Mr. Lee's plans.
The suit will charge the three agencies violated the Privacy Act by making unauthorized disclosures of private information about Mr. Lee, much of which was false or unsubstantiated. The suit will suggest the motive for the leaks was to deflect attention from poor security at U.S. nuclear weapons labs, the sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. In making a case against the government agencies, the suit will cite recent Associated Press articles that disclosed that the FBI had doubts as early as November 1998 that Mr. Lee was a Chinese spy, but that agents continued to pursue him for many more months amid continued leaks portraying Mr. Lee as a Chinese spy, the sources said.
The indictment eventually brought against Mr. Lee accused him of downloading a wide array of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos computers and illegally removing them from the lab on computer tapes, but it offered no evidence that Mr. Lee gave the information to a foreign government. Brian Sun, a California lawyer representing Mr. Lee, his wife, Sylvia, and their two adult children, declined to discuss the lawsuit but said yesterday his clients tried months ago to get the federal agencies to stop news media leaks.
"The Lees were very concerned about this biased and unfair media coverage and requested that this activity stop, but they were unsuccessful," said Mr. Sun, who has represented other prominent Asian-Americans including fund-raiser Johnny Chung. "It is troubling to any American, much less the Lees, to have a system where government officials can systematically leak for their own purposes and ends and not be held accountable," Mr. Sun said.
"This may be how government officials in Washington operate, but the law does not allow it, and such conduct should not be condoned."
An FBI spokesman was not immediately available for comment yesterday afternoon, the bureau office said. The suit will set up a second front for Mr. Lee's legal attack, allowing him to pursue the agencies in civil court while his criminal attorneys defend against the indictment. And it comes at a sensitive time for federal authorities. FBI Director Louis J. Freeh persuaded Congress last week not to hold hearings that could divulge government dissension and doubts in the China espionage investigation, fearing they might help Mr. Lee's defense. Senate investigators had gathered internal FBI memos, including one addressed to Mr. Freeh, that showed agents doubted more than a year ago that Mr. Lee had leaked nuclear secrets to China.
The memos analyze and identify flaws in the original Energy Department investigation that identified Mr. Lee as a suspect.
Senate investigators have been reviewing whether the FBI and Energy Department focused too narrowly on Mr. Lee and the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico during the first three years of the investigation, excluding other possible suspects and sites. The Associated Press has reported that the FBI's doubts were fueled in part by an agent's interview in September 1998 in which Mr. Lee's boss divulged that an average of 250 workers each year at several federal facilities had access to the W-88 nuclear warhead secrets that the FBI once thought Mr. Lee gave to China. FBI agents also recently learned that some scientists who participated in the 1996 Energy Department review that identified Mr. Lee as a possible suspect disagreed with its conclusions, officials have said. The FBI recently refocused its investigation on other labs, facilities and suspects.
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National Security Adviser Warns of Risk of Terrorism
New York Times December 20, 1999 By STEPHEN LABATON
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/terror-rdp.html
Related Article
Peering Into Unknown, U.S. Agents Monitor Millennium Trouble Spots Around World (Dec. 19, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/121999us-terrorism.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 -- With security being tightened after the arrest of an Algerian man who crossed the Canadian border into Washington with powerful bomb-making materials, President Clinton's national security adviser today warned Americans to be more vigilant over the next few weeks because of a "heightened risk of terrorist actions."
While the State Department has issued similar warnings in recent weeks for Americans traveling abroad during millennial celebrations, Samuel R. Berger, the White House's ranking security aide, broadened the caution today.
"We're not aware of any other specific threat against particular targets in the United States, and obviously if that changes we'll alert the American people," Mr. Berger said on the CBS program "Face the Nation." "But I would think that as Americans go about their plans for New Year's, they simply should be vigilant."
For example, he said, "If they see something suspicious, or see packages or activities that they think are unusual, they should obviously let law enforcement people know."
For several weeks, American officials have been walking a careful line between urging citizens to exercise prudence and seeming alarmist.
But while security forces have been put on alert in American cities that are planning millennial celebrations, the main concern has been overseas, because intelligence agencies have said they have "specific and credible" information that Americans abroad are being targeted by extremists.
Even without other such evidence about the risks of an attack in the United States, the arrest in Washington State has prompted tighter security at the borders.
Mr. Berger said that investigators had been unable to discern the motives, plans and affiliations of the Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested last week after he crossed the border by ferry into Port Angeles, Wash., driving a car filled with the ingredients for a powerful bomb.
The car carried nitroglycerin, urea powder and timing devices that officials said were capable of being used in a bomb that could have caused substantial damage in an office building or a crowd of people.
Mr. Berger said that Mr. Ressam was being investigated for possible ties to a wide range of terrorist groups, including the organization headed by Osama Bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire who lives in Afghanistan and is accused of being behind the bombings of two American embassies in Africa last year.
Some officials have said Mr. Ressam may have had affiliations with the Islamic Armed Group, a terrorist organization that operates primarily in North Africa and Europe.
Officials in Montreal, where Mr. Ressam had lived, reported that they had discovered evidence that he might have shared an apartment with Karim Said Atmani, whom Canada extradited to France after charges that he participated in several bombings, including one in a Paris subway in 1996 that killed 4 people and injured 86.
The Canadian authorities were investigating possible ties between Mr. Ressam and a group of 11 other men, most of Algerian origin, who had been arrested over the last few months on theft charges.
Officials say that the thefts, which consisted of more than 5,000 items, may have been part of a broader scheme to help finance Algerian terrorist activities. American officials have said that Mr. Ressam has a Canadian criminal record for theft under $5,000, and that he was being sought on a Canadian immigration arrest warrant.
His arrest as he left Canada last week has prompted American customs officials to tighten security further. Border guards, American embassies, military installations and the police in big cities were on heightened alert.
Customs officials in Washington said today that they would add at least 150 more inspectors at remote sites across the Mexican and Canadian borders, including Port Angeles, in response to the arrest of Mr. Ressam. The additional security would come from a combination of redeployed customs inspectors and inspectors working overtime.
Raymond W. Kelly, commissioner of the Customs Service, said that because of concerns about terrorist attacks during the year-end holidays, customs, like other law enforcement agencies, had already been placed on a "heightened state of alert" before the arrest.
The new steps he had ordered, he said, were an additional tightening of security.
"It is fair to assume that this person tried to cross at a remote point because of the fairly minimal staffing we have there," he said. However, he added, people would be unlikely to notice increased delays when entering the United States, either at remote places or the largest international airports.
Law enforcement agencies around the world have taken steps to head off possible terrorist acts.
In Pakistan, the authorities said they had arrested more than 200 people, mostly Afghan nationals, and tightened security in the largest airports to avert attacks on American citizens, according to The Associated Press. The arrests were made in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and in northwestern Peshawar, which borders Afghanistan.
And officials in Jordan arrested 13 people last week who the authorities said were planning attacks there after being trained in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said today that the potential for terrorist-related violence by Muslim extremists has been a top concern of the agency in the 1990's.
That concern has been heightened by the attention surrounding New Year's Eve celebrations and Mr. Ressam's arrest.
Islamic extremists may use the occasion to further their interests through a terrorist act, said Dan Lambert of the Canadian intelligence service.
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Authorities Urge Caution in U.S.
10:33 PM ET 12/20/99 By ROBERT BURNS AP Military Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2562743438-cde
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Despite the arrest of a man trying to smuggle explosive materials into Washington state aboard a ferry from Canada, U.S. authorities know of no specific terror threats against domestic targets, President Clinton's national security adviser said Monday.
But the arrest, and suspicions that the man may be linked to terrorist groups, prompted officials to heighten security and to caution Americans to watch out during the holiday season for signs of terrorist activities.
And the U.S. Customs Service said it is putting on duty 300 extra inspectors at high-priority entry points.
Meanwhile, U.S. Border Patrol officers said they arrested an Algerian national with a falsified Canadian passport at a border station in Beecher's Falls, Vt., on Monday.
Arrested with him was a woman of unknown nationality, said Mark Henry, assistant chief of the Border Patrol sector covering Vermont.
Henry said he had not received a report from the agent following the case most closely. But he added that he knew of no link between the Washington state incident and the attempted entry in Vermont.
``I don't know why they were here. It could be as simple as she's smuggling him into the United States,'' he said.
Sandy Berger, the president's national security adviser, said U.S. authorities are investigating what plans Ahmed Ressam may have had for the nitroglycerin and other potential bomb-making materials in his car when he was arrested in Port Angeles, Wash., after taking a ferry last week from Victoria, British Columbia.
Speaking to reporters, Berger urged Americans to be vigilant as they plan New Year's activities but also said officials know of no specific threats against targets in the United States.
At the State Department, spokesman James Foley said it was too early to know if Ressam is a member of a terror group.
``Obviously, they're looking into his motivation, his intentions, whether he had accomplices and whether he was part of a wider network and is affiliated with international terrorist groups,'' Foley said.
Foley noted that the State Department recently cautioned Americans abroad to be especially careful.
``We've indicated that we have information that terrorists are undertaking planning for attacks during the New Year period'' overseas, Foley said. ``It is obviously particularly important now for there to be maximum vigilance.''
At the White House, presidential press secretary Joe Lockhart said Clinton had been briefed on counterterrorism efforts in the pre-New Year's period, including Ressam's capture.
``We have ongoing efforts that look at both international terrorism, protecting against domestic terrorism,'' Lockhart said. ``That work is something that the president has closely involved himself in and has done a lot of work on.''
At a ceremony in Washington honoring the four Customs agents who apprehended Ressam last week, Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly said he is putting an extra 300 inspectors on duty at various points of entry, with particular attention to ``remote ports.''
Kelly did not say where the additional inspectors would be or how long the extra force would be on station. He said 300 would be added through overtime or by shifting people to high priority stations.
The additional inspectors will allow Customs to question more people entering the United States at airports, seaports and road crossings, Kelly said.
``We are applying additional resources to do additional contacts with the public coming through,'' Kelly said. ``It would mean more questioning, looking for perhaps questionable or suspicious activity, engaging in more conversation. That's basically how Customs inspectors work.''
Some 460 million people come into the United States each year though 301 points of entry.
``The message is that U.S. Customs Service ... is ready and prepared,'' Kelly said.
In Maine, U.S. Border Patrol agents have been called back to work from leave, and others are working overtime as the agency increased staffing levels in response to Friday's arrest across the country in Washington.
``There's no increase in border activity, but we are taking the necessary precautions,'' assistant Chief Matt Zetts said. Border Patrol agents monitor 27,000 square miles between Maine's two border checkpoints.
Carol Jenifer, district director for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Detroit, said more ``secondary inspections'' will be performed if there are indications that a driver may not be qualified to enter the United States. A secondary inspection is done by having a driver pull off to the side of the road.
``We're just not taking any chances,'' she said.
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Cold War oddities preserved
By John Ochwat Connect Oklahoma The Daily Oklahoman 12/17/1999
http://www.oklahoman.com/cgi-bin/shart?ID=419098&TP=get-ether
"When the first nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, popular culture was quick to respond." So states Nuke Pop, a good site that comes to us courtesy of Paul Brians, an English professor at Washington State University.
In the late '40s and early '50s, Brians writes, "Almost everyone had difficulty estimating the scope of the damage that would be inflicted by a bomb."
If you doubt the widespread ignorance of the time, consider "the absurd civil defense campaign of the 1950s, which urged schoolchildren to survive a nuclear attack by imitating a cartoon turtle: 'Duck and cover!'"
Along with ignorance came propaganda. Atomic war toys and games appeared shortly after World War II, including a board game that let you bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and pro-nuclear comics ("The Mighty Atom") appeared throughout the '50s and later that were often distributed free to children in public schools.
Nuke Pop does a great job of tracking the different story themes that followed the bomb. There's "Bomberotica," which is an atomic update of the old sex-and-violence recipe. "Nuclear weapons, like other weapons, have been linked in the male imagination to sex from very early on," Brians writes, with the movie "Dr. Strangelove" in mind.
Then there are post-holocaust fantasies, which include everything from "Planet of the Apes" to "Waterworld" to the Teen-age Mutant Ninja Turtles. And don't forget the "Radioactive Rambo" variation, which is what Brians labels the Mad Max films from Australia.
Nuke Pop concentrates on the bomb's effect on fiction, but he notes how it radiated into our culture in other ways, too.
In the mid-'80s, Brians writes, nuclear war imagery became common in rock music videos. "One student doing research for me reported that MTV was showing an average of one nuclear bomb image per hour."
In a 1988 J. Crew catalog, there's "a jacket that might have been worn by J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos." (Oppenheimer worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II.)
Even swimwear was affected. The bikini, after all, is named after Bikini Atoll, the first postwar nuclear test site. www.wsu.edu/brians/nukepop
In a less direct way, you could make the case that the Nuclear Age affected architecture, too.
In the '50s and '60s, especially in southern California, a new style of architecture "designed to make the most of strip shopping centers and other roadside locations" was being born. It was eclectic, and it "fit the needs of the new California 'car culture' and the dreams of the even newer space age."
This architecture is called by various names, "Googie" being the most popular. Googie Architecture On-line pays homage to this style, which took its name from a Los Angeles coffee shop. Googie architecture is very '50s and space age, with upswept roofs, large domes, exposed steel beams, boomerang or amoeba shapes, starbursts and atomic models.
Chris Jepsen, the site's creator, notes that atomic models "appeared in everything from sculpture and road signs to dinnerware patterns and household appliances. The interlocking rings of the atomic model were a symbol of man's scientific ingenuity and represented the unlimited power that would make our future utopia possible."
The Googie site has dozens of photos of curious hotels, coffee shops, bygone Disneyland attractions (such as Monsanto's Plastics Home of the Future) and Bob's Big Boy restaurants.
"Perhaps the world's most famous Googie building" is the Seattle Space Needle, which was designed for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair and "was originally painted 'Astronaut White,' 'Orbital Olive,' 'Re-entry Red' and 'Galaxy Gold.'"
Though Jepsen notes that Googie "came to be a slur in 'serious' architectural circles," any style that "seems like a joint design by the Jetsons and the Flintstones" is worth a look-see. home.fea.net/cjepsen/googie.htm
A missile silo full of columns, www.oklahoman.com/ethernaut.
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Black sailor in '44 mutiny pardoned
12/23/99- Updated 05:52 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsthu03.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton pardoned Thursday a black sailor court-martialed for mutiny when he and others refused to load live ammunition following a deadly 1944 explosion on two transport ships.
Freddie Meeks of Los Angeles is one of only two known surviving members of the 50-man crew sentenced to three months in prison following the incident at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine near San Francisco. He alone formally sought a pardon.
The explosion killed 320 men.
Lawmakers, veterans' groups and the NAACP had urged Clinton to grant a pardon, contending that the sailors were the victims of racial prejudice.
The Meeks pardon was one of three dozen the president signed Thursday said White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The pardon had no official effect on the records of the other 49 convicted seamen.
''The president reviewed all the circumstances of the Port Chicago incident, as well as the facts and circumstances of (Meek's) life since that time and believed that he was deserving of a pardon,'' one official said.
On July 17, 1944, two transport ships carrying ammunition exploded at Port Chicago.
The blast killed 320 men and injured 390 in what was the worst domestic loss of life in World War II. The ships and a pier were destroyed.
Two-thirds of the fatalities were African-Americans assigned to load bombs onto ships.
The following day, white officers were given 30 days leave. But a commander told the African-American seamen they had to resume loading ammunition, and he threatened to shoot anyone who refused. Those who asked for a transfer were arrested.
The arrested sailors were held on a barge until they were tried and convicted for mutiny.
A legal review of the case by the Navy in 1994 found that the African-American sailors were the victims of racial prejudice. But the review found no grounds to overturn the courts-martial.
Meeks, 79 and in failing health, asked Clinton in May to clear his name.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People passed a resolution at its July convention urging the president to ''pardon the Port Chicago trial survivors, restore their benefits and make the survivor's benefits available to the widows of those convicted in the unfair trial.''
The only other known survivor of the incident, Jules Crittenden, had not sought a pardon. He told The Associated Press in August that he was more interested in seeing each family of the 320 victims get full death benefits from the military, with interest.
Crittenden said that each family should have been entitled to $5,000, but that Congress reduced the payment to about $3,000 for the survivors of Port Chicago.