----------- japan
Commission finds workers to blame for Japanese nuclear accident
ABC News This Bulletin: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 22:20 AEDT
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-24dec1999-91.htm
A Japanese Government commission has issued its final report on the deadly Tokaimura nuclear accident, but environmental groups have criticised its lack of clear findings.
The report by the Nuclear Safety Commission says the direct cause of the accident "lies in the actions of workers," but failed to elaborate further.
An official for the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center says it is incredible that the government released a final report without telling the public what caused the accident.
On September 30, three workers at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura set off a critical reaction by illegally using steel buckets to pour uranium into a precipitation tank.
The most gravely injured of the three workers died of multiple organ failure on Tuesday.
The commission's report urged the government to beef up nuclear safety regulations but failed to analyze why the plant workers were engaged in illegal procedures.
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Japan Nuke Accident Blamed on Speed
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 11:09 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-Nuclear.html
TOKYO (AP) -- A government panel investigating Japan's worst nuclear accident said today that the pursuit of efficiency at the expense of safety directly caused the disaster.
The Science and Technology Agency panel, in a final report released today, urged officials responsible for the nation's nuclear energy program to make efforts to rebuild international trust.
After nearly three months of deliberation, the panel submitted its report on the Sept. 30 accident to agency chief Hirofumi Naksone for use in the government's nuclear policy.
``By pushing efficiency, the company and its employees failed to maintain their ethical standards, and that caused the disaster,'' the report said.
The accident occurred when three workers at the plant in Tokaimura, 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, mixed uranium with nitric acid, and set off an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
The report called for creating a new system based on ``self-responsibility'' to ensure safety at nuclear facilities.
It urged power companies and government officials to stop trying to spread a myth of ``absolute safety'' in the nation's nuclear power program.
The panel admitted that lax government monitoring may have been a factor in the accident, but reached no conclusion on why the government took more than 10 hours to set up its special disaster headquarters after the accident.
Today's report came three days after Hisashi Ouchi, 35, a worker exposed to a massive dose of radiation, died at the Tokyo University Hospital, where he had been in critical condition since the accident. Ouchi was the first person in Japan to die from radiation exposure in a nuclear accident.
The least-injured of the workers, 55-year-old Yutaka Yokokawa, was discharged from the hospital Monday.
The other worker, Masato Shinohara, 39, remains hospitalized. His condition is not considered life-threatening.
A police investigation into the Tokaimura accident has found that workers at the plant, operated by JCO Co., routinely violated safety procedures.
Japan's Parliament recently passed legislation giving the prime minister emergency powers to handle nuclear accidents.
With few natural resources, Japan depends on nuclear energy for about a third of its electricity.
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On New Year, Even Japan's Premier Will Be on Duty
By HOWARD W. FRENCH New York Times December 24, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/122499japan-politics.html
TOKYO, Dec. 23 -- While President Clinton and many other world leaders will be attending lavish banquets or otherwise feting the arrival of the new millennium, Japan's prime minister, Keizo Obuchi, will reportedly be cloistered with senior aides throughout the night just in case major Y2K problems erupt.
Mr. Obuchi's caution may be owing to a recent history of weak government responses to disasters, from the 1995 Kobe earthquake to this year's accident at a nuclear fuel plant at Tokaimura.
Elections must be held sometime in the next 10 months, and with the economy in uncertain health, Mr. Obuchi's political advisers seem to have decided that it is prudent for him to appear to be on the case.
For two weeks already, the prime minister has been appearing in television announcements warning of the possible consequences of computer mishaps, even as he seeks to reassure the public. "We do not think any major confusion will occur, but you are advised to prepare for the one-in-ten-thousand chance of trouble," Mr. Obuchi says in one of his announcements.
"May everyone have a peaceful New Year."
Still, given the almost martial feel of Japan's preparations for the problem -- in which some computers may malfunction after midnight on Dec. 31 -- many here wonder if a real shock is in store.
In recent days, the government has placed 96,000 soldiers on alert over the New Year's weekend, and ordered the top 160 officers of the country's military to remain on duty.
In Tokyo, 24,000 police officers will be on duty, far more than the ordinary level of 10,000.
Thousands of mid-level bureaucrats are being ordered to report to work. And as is the case in many other countries, employees of computer, securities and other industries highly dependent on computers have been ordered to cancel their year-end vacations to be on call.
People with long experience of Japan say this country's reaction to the Y2K problem reflects more on the political and corporate culture than it does on the preparation for the possible computer glitch, which most experts here say has been thorough.
"Whenever they see a problem coming, they just throw people at it, and that is exactly what is happening here," said John Neuffer, a senior analyst at Mitsui who has worked in Japan for nine years. "They are putting an awful lot of people on duty, essentially to cover their backsides. Japan is really a worst-case-scenario culture, where people imagine the worst, and this is what they prepare for."
For all of the extra workers being thrown into action, Japan has not merely chosen a human wave approach to the problem. Indeed, if initially the country seemed a bit slow to react to the challenge, the last several months have been marked by a highly aggressive readiness campaign, both in government and industry. Even the most mundane events of daily life, from riding the subway to entering an elevator, are accompanied by recorded warning messages spoken by women with squeaky voices.
According to the prime minister's task force, at the government's insistence "all major banks, regional banks and second tier regional banks" completed major systems corrections and millennium dry-runs by the end of September.
"We have been working on this since 1996, and have had a special team in place since April 1998," said Kazuyuki Hashimoto, a spokesman for Daiwa Securities, Japan's third-largest brokerage.
Japan's financial markets have an added advantage of a public holiday on Jan. 3, which means that on the Monday when the rest of the world's stock markets and banks will discover if they have serious computer problems, this country will still be closed for business.
If there is havoc in any major international market, officials here say, at least Japan will have the luxury of a day's warning.
Public utilities, airports, airlines and hospitals, meanwhile, have performed similar industry-wide blanket checks, government and industry officials say.
To be extra safe, service will be interrupted for several minutes on the country's rail and subway lines, which will run all night to accommodate revelers.
Similarly, major hotels and other large buildings say their elevators will be taken out of service shortly before midnight, and tested for several minutes afterward, to make sure that they work properly.
Asked if he had any particular areas of concern in Tokyo, one of the world's largest and most densely populated cities, Shintaro Ishihara, governor of Tokyo prefecture, said that although he remained vigilant, he could not pinpoint any particular area.
"We've come up with the best measures we could," he said. "But even at that, there are limits to what you can do. There are millions of systems with chips out there, and even if you check with their manufacturers, you can't always know what will happen. We will simply have to wait until the New Year to see."
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new zealand
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New Zealand Vows Anti-Nuke Crusade
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 10:17 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-New-Zealand-Anti-Nuclear.html
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-aus/1999/dec/24/122400639.html
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Prime Minister Helen Clark's Labor-led coalition government has pledged to resume New Zealand's crusade to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide.
Clark, whose center-left coalition won power on Nov. 27, has called on parliament to appeal to all United Nations member states to pursue nuclear disarmament.
``In the 21st century, New Zealand will increase its efforts to lobby other countries for the elimination of nuclear weapons,'' Clark said in a statement released late Thursday. ``New Zealand has a proud record in the vanguard of the nuclear disarmament movement.''
In 1973, Labor Prime Minister Norman Kirk sent a navy frigate to the French nuclear test site at Muroroa Atoll in the South Pacific to protest atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons, starting a 26-year crusade against such weapons of mass destruction.
New Zealand's government also has twice taken France to the International Court of Justice in a bid to stop nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
Under 1980s Labor prime minister David Lange, New Zealand became the first country to pass laws banning nuclear weapons and nuclear powered ships. The action led to a breach of military and political links with the United States which is only now recovering.
----------- russia
Russia Claims Nuke Plants Y2K Ready
December 24, 1999 Filed at 10:19 a.m. EST Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Y2K.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's nuclear facilities will not be affected by the year 2000 computer bug, thanks to two years of tests and the replacement of thousands of computers, the atomic energy minister said.
Some 24,000 glitch-prone computers have been replaced and the rest aren't susceptible to the bug, Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov said Thursday, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
``All of the computers could not be replaced, but there are no date-dependent systems that could fail to work in the night of January 1, 2000,'' Adamov told a news conference.
Unlike many Russian businesses and government agencies, the Atomic Energy Ministry got a relatively early start on the Y2K bug, in which older computers that read only the last two digits of a date may mistake 2000 for 1900 and freeze up.
The ministry has been working on the problem for two years, and has spent $10 million on replacements, tests and modifications, Adamov said.
Some western experts still predict that Russia will experience failures in vital services like electricity and heating, but say that disasters such as meltdowns at nuclear power plants and accidental missile launches are highly unlikely.
Just in case, top nuclear engineers and other specialists will work at Russia's nuclear facilities on New Year's Eve to ward off any potential problems, Adamov said.
The Atomic Energy Minister will also maintain a live video link with the U.S. Department of Energy into the new year to exchange information on potential problems.
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The Reliable Source
Washington Post Friday, December 24, 1999; Page C03 By Lloyd Grove With Beth Berseli
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/24/083l-122499-idx.html
Gift-Wrapping Not Included
Searching for a last-minute Christmas present? How about a long-range, diesel-powered, 300-foot-long Russian submarine? This genuine Cold War vessel--built by the Soviet Defense Ministry in 1964, decommissioned by post-Communist Russia in 1994 and now docked at Bayboro Harbor near St. Petersburg, Fla.--is being auctioned on the Internet by a company called SubExpo (www.subexpo.com).
"It's not hot," said SubExpo President Alexander Sheftman, meaning it's neither stolen nor capable of launching nukes--though it does still have its engines. "We'd like $1 million, but we'll settle for less," added the 39-year-old Russian emigre, who apparently is still mastering the basics of capitalism. Indeed, he had a million-dollar bidder at press time yesterday. The Juliett-class sub, the world's largest non-nuclear-powered variety, was originally equipped with four nuclear cruise missiles and 10 torpedo tubes. It also featured a "stealth rubber skin" and silver zinc batteries that allowed for submerged travel at a maximum speed of 17.5 knots and an underwater range of 810 miles.
SubExpo of Finland bought it from the Russians and hauled it to Helsinki, where it was used as a museum and restaurant. In 1997, it was leased to a Canadian tourism company, which tried to tow it to the St. Petersburg city pier. But a sandbar intervened, and the sub ended up in the harbor. Florida officials have been demanding its removal--hence the auction. When we phoned the Russian Embassy yesterday, press counselor Mikhail Shurgalin told us: "I understand the U.S. Army sells a lot of uniforms all over the city. I believe this piece of scrap metal, which they're calling a 'submarine,' is the same kind of thing. This is also indicative that we are no longer in a Cold War. It's better, let's say, that the overall amount of arms and armaments is diminishing instead of increasing." Sheftman, meanwhile, said the sub would "absolutely" make a fab gift for that special someone. "And it's Y2K-ready."
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Russia Bristles at U.S. Pressure
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 5:49 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-US.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- After a top U.S. diplomat harshly criticized Russia's campaign in Chechnya, the Foreign Ministry accused the United States today of letting domestic affairs influence its stance toward Russia. Still, it voiced hope that tensions between the two countries would ease.
``American policy in the last months has been increasingly driven by momentary domestic considerations,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin said, according to Russian news agencies.
``That has been displayed by Washington's intention to use economic levers of pressure against Russia, including sanctions under artificial pretexts.''
U.S.-Russian relations have emerged as an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign, with candidates calling for the administration to halt aid because of the Chechen conflict and alleged Russian money-laundering.
Bilateral ties are at a post-Cold War low, strained by U.S. criticism of Russia's military action in Chechnya, Moscow's rejection of Washington's plan to build anti-missile defenses and other disputes. However, both sides say they don't want a return to confrontation.
The ministry statement came a day after U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, wrapping up a visit to Moscow, voiced harsh criticism of the Russian military's conduct in the breakaway republic. He accused Russian forces of indiscriminately killing Chechen civilians and violating international law.
Moscow has responded harshly to U.S. criticism over Chechnya, saying it amounted to meddling in Russian internal affairs. But Rakhmanin said the issue hadn't dominated Talbott's visit, and he chose conciliatory language to respond to the U.S. envoy's statement.
``While defending Russian interests and adequately reacting to anti-Russian attacks, we are still hoping for positive development of our mutually advantageous cooperation with the United States,'' Rakhmanin said.
``It was said that President Bill Clinton would like to leave a good legacy in Russian-American relations to his successor,'' he continued. ``We can only welcome such an approach and hope it is backed by practical steps.''
----------- us nuc weapons facilities
Cancer cases probed at uranium processing site
Bergen Record Friday, December 24, 1999 The Associated Press
http://www.bergen.com/morenews/plant199912245.htm
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?199912/24+nuke122499_news.html+19991224
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Officials at a federal uranium processing plant were secretly tracking cases of cancer among employees even as the government was hiding the fact that highly radioactive metals were being processed there, The Courier-Journal reported Thursday.
In the early 1980s, managers at the Energy Department's Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western Kentucky counted 13 current and former workers who suffered from leukemia and other cancers in the previous 27 years.
Some names and some initials were listed on a sheet of paper marked "personal and confidential," the newspaper reported.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that its analysis of plant rosters listing more than 200 employees found that 10 died of blood and lymph system cancers, including six of leukemia. Government mortality rates show that only a single death would be expected in a group that size.
Three Paducah plant employees have filed a federal lawsuit alleging workers unwittingly were exposed to plutonium and other highly toxic substances from 1953 to 1976. The lawsuit is sealed.
A recent Energy Department investigation looking back to 1990, however, found that worker safety and environmental problems have persisted during federal efforts to clean up the plant.
That report, released in October, said plant workers had not been adequately informed of some risks and that radioactive contamination from the site continues to spread through groundwater toward the Ohio River at a rate of a foot a day.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has apologized for the failure to disclose plant hazards and promised compensation for sick workers. Congress has provided a $16 million increase for the plant's cleanup in its fiscal 2000 budget.
At the time the cancer list was put together, the federal government and plant officials also were hiding the fact that highly radioactive metals such as plutonium and neptunium had contaminated some of the uranium processed at the plant for nuclear bombs and commercial power plants.
Government medical researchers saw the list when they visited the plant in 1992 and urged that the Energy Department study the incidence of leukemia among workers. That study was never done.
The Courier-Journal obtained the list from the Energy Department through the Freedom of Information Act. It's not known why the plant operator -- either Union Carbide or Martin Marietta, which took over operations in 1984 -- kept the list.
Ten of the 13 workers were dead by 1984, about the time the list was apparently prepared. Most worked in the uranium-processing building, in maintenance, or in laboratories that could have exposed them to radiation.
The three other employees were identified only by initials, and the newspaper could not determine whether they are alive.
Retired plant health physicist Charles Turok -- whose name appears at the bottom of the document indicating he had received a copy -- said he did not recall seeing it. Retired health physicist Bruce McDougal, who also was listed as having received a copy, also said he had never seen it.
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USA Today 12/24/99
Aiken - A Savannah River Site contractor has permission to begin operating a system that will reduce the volume of high-level radioactive waste. The $165 million plant will remove millions of gallons of water from the tanks each year, leaving behind a highly radioactive sludge and a less radioactive "saltcake."
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Weapons labs must refocus mission
USA Today 12/24/99- Updated 12:20 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/nc1.htm
LIVERMORE, Calif. - After months of rumors of espionage, employees at the nation's weapons labs must refocus on their scientific mission, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said Tuesday. ''Morale has been hurt by the espionage issue at all our labs and we're trying to restore morale by ensuring that we emphasize science above security,'' he said. Richardson wants to accommodate lab visits by foreign scientists to allow the collaboration lab workers consider essential, and he has scaled back plans for lie detector tests so that only those with access to the most highly classified nuclear secrets must take them.
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Gov't Seeks To Deny Bail for Lee
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 6:49 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-China-Spying.html
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Scientist Wen Ho Lee stole America's nuclear secrets by entering false information into a computer to gain access and lied about contacts with Chinese intelligence agents, according to a new court filing by federal prosecutors.
The documents filed Thursday in U.S. District Court accuse Lee of lying to Los Alamos National Laboratory employees ``to further his scheme to download information onto portable cassette tapes.'' He allegedly altered classified documents to mask their nature.
Prosecutors are asking U.S. District Judge James Parker to uphold last week's order preventing bond for the fired Los Alamos computer expert. A bail review hearing was scheduled for Monday.
``Lee stole America's nuclear secrets sufficient to build a functional thermonuclear weapon. Lee absconded with that information on computer tapes, seven of which are still missing. Those missing tapes, in the hands of an unauthorized possessor, pose a mortal danger to every American,'' says the pleading submitted by U.S. Attorney John Kelly and Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Gorence.
``There are no conditions of release that can reasonably assure the nation's security,'' they said.
Defense attorneys contend the tapes were destroyed. Prosecutors said there was no evidence of that.
Lee is accused of 59 violations of the Atomic Energy and Espionage acts, most alleging the transfer of nuclear secrets from secure computers to unsecure computers and to computer tapes. If convicted he could face life in prison, and attorneys have said Lee could spend up to a year in jail before his trial.
Lee has pleaded innocent and he has not been charged with giving material to a foreign government. He was accused of lying to federal investigators several times over the past 16 years, including about the circumstances of two trips to China. Prosecutors said he at first denied being approached by Chinese intelligence officers and later admitted he had lied.
Lee's attorney, Mark Holscher, did not return several messages left for him on Thursday. In a letter included with the documents, Holscher said Lee will submit to a polygraph test to prove that Lee didn't mishandle the tapes and to confirm that ``he did not provide the tapes to any third party.''
Lee has sued the U.S. government, claiming he has been the victim of a smear campaign labeling him as a spy for China.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said the case was ``very, very weak'' and that Lee should be released on bail.
``They're coming up with a series of jaywalking charges on the theory that if they come up with enough jaywalking charges, eventually they will get a prison sentence,'' Dershowitz said Thursday by phone from Boston. ``What the government's afraid of is he's going to win, not that he's going to flee.''
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At U.S. Labs, a Residue of Anger
Asian American Scientists Feel Spy Case Stereotyping Affects Their Futures Too
Washington Post Friday, December 24, 1999; Page A13 By Vernon Loeb
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/24/103l-122499-idx.html
LIVERMORE, Calif.-As the top security official at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's computing center, Bing Young thinks Wen Ho Lee's downloading of highly classified nuclear weapons data was serious, stupid and probably criminal.
But Young is still contributing money to a legal defense fund that has been established for the former physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory because, Young said, he does not believe Lee should be held without bail in an Albuquerque jail awaiting trial, having already surrendered his passport and shown no inclination to flee.
"I don't understand the bail aspects of it," Young said. "I'm focusing on Wen Ho Lee."
Young and other Chinese American scientists working here at Lawrence Livermore and a branch of Sandia National Laboratory across the street find it hard to conceal their anger about the latest turn of events in a national furor over suspected Chinese espionage--an uproar that has, they believe, called their loyalty as Americans into question.
"Wen Ho Lee came to this country to find the American Dream," said Joel Wong, a Livermore industrial hygienist with a top secret nuclear "Q" clearance. "What he found was the American nightmare."
Added Wen L. Hsu, a systems analyst at Sandia: "You look at the whole process. Wen Ho Lee was tried already in the media. . . . Many Asian Americans [at the labs] look at this and say, 'What does this all mean to myself?' "
Lee, 59, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, was fired from his job at Los Alamos in March for violating security regulations. Authorities publicly identified him as the government's prime suspect in a Chinese espionage probe at the New Mexico weapons design lab.
U.S. officials subsequently acknowledged they lacked hard evidence that Lee was a spy for China and conceded that they prematurely focused on him as their prime suspect. Two officials involved in the espionage probe publicly said Lee was unfairly targeted as a suspect on the basis of ethnicity.
Nonetheless, just over a week ago, the government indicted Lee on 59 felony counts, threatened him with life imprisonment for violating the Atomic Energy Act and held him without bail.
For Chinese Americans, a pernicious aspect of the government's focus on Chinese espionage involves China's known penchant for obsessively targeting individuals of Chinese descent as intelligence sources.
While FBI officials say China's track record of recruiting Chinese Americans is dismal, leaders of the Chinese American community say it isn't hard for many Chinese Americans to feel as though their bosses are looking at them with increased suspicion.
Chinese American scientists interviewed here say they have not personally experienced discrimination at Livermore or Sandia. But heightened concern over Chinese espionage and an array of new security measures, they said, have made Chinese Americans feel far less at ease working at the labs.
Hsu used to work on a nonproliferation exchange program that sent U.S. scientists to China's weapons labs and brought Chinese scientists here for visits to Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia. But the program is dead, and now Hsu now worries about the continuing exodus of Chinese American scientists from the labs--and an inability by the labs to recruit other Chinese Americans in the future.
"You go to Silicon Valley and just walk around the street," he said. "More than half of [the scientists] are Asians. Can this country afford to [lose] that segment from the labs?"
As for Lee, Wong calls him a scapegoat for the FBI's inability to find a Chinese spy. "I don't know whether the guy is innocent or guilty," he said. "But let the punishment fit the crime."
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Asian-American Scientists File a Bias Complaint
New York Times December 24, 1999 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/99/12/24/news/national/science/sci-asian-scientists.html
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 23 -- Nine Asian-Americans who are veteran employees at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory filed a complaint with the State of California today asking that it investigate possible discrimination at the federal government's weapons laboratory.
In the complaint to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the workers say they are paid less and promoted less often than their white counterparts.
The complaint comes at a time when some Asian-American scientists have said that a federal security crackdown has unfairly singled them out.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson created a committee to look at the possibility of discrimination against Asian-American workers after the arrest of Wen Ho Lee, the Taiwan-born American nuclear weapons scientist fired from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and indicted on charges of violating security measures.
One employee involved in the California complaint, Kalina Wong, said today: "At the lab, there are no Asian-Americans in upper management in the technical fields despite the large number of us. In addition, there are no Asian Americans in a position with authority to make decisions on labwide policy. Like every other American, we want to be treated fairly and equitably by our employer."
The laboratory was closed today for the Christmas weekend, and no one could be reached for comment.
Brad Yamauchi, a partner with Minami, Lew & Tamaki, a law firm specializing in cases involving federal employees, said the complaint would be amended in two weeks to make it a class-action case.
"We are seeking all remedies to make sure the discrimination does not continue," Mr. Yamauchi said. "That can include individual remedies for lost pay and promotions. It can include injunctive relief to change the way they evaluate and change the pay scales of employees and how they do promotions."
The plaintiffs say they hope the investigation will provide evidence supporting their accusations.
"We don't have across-the-board statistics that would actually prove or disprove the claims," Mr. Yamauchi said.
Barbara Osborne, the deputy director of enforcement field operations at the Energy Department, said the laboratory would have 30 days to respond to the complaints.
"We'll be looking to see if Asians are paid lower wages than others who are not Asian," Ms. Osborne said. "And it's not simply looking at Caucasians, it's looking at anybody who is not Asian."
If the complaints are found to be valid, they will be forwarded to the department's judicial body, the Fair Employment and Housing Commission, which can award damages of $150,000 per plaintiff, plus back wages and other compensation.
"If they decide the law has been violated, they will award damages," Ms. Osborne said.
Lawrence Livermore is also involved in litigation involving a discrimination case filed a year ago by some female employees.
"They are very similar claims," Mr. Yamauchi said.
----------- y2k
Youths Think Y2K Fears Overrated
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 12:02 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Y2K-Youth-Survey.html
OGDEN, Utah (AP) -- Y2K. Whatever.
That sums up the results of ``Y2Kids,'' a national survey of 1,449 children that found 72 percent think adults are overreacting to the Year 2000 computer glitch.
Muri Croft, a 12-year-old at Club Heights Elementary school, pointed to stockpiling of food as an example of adults going over the top.
``They spend thousands of dollars on this food that they're never going to use,'' Croft said.
Still, most of the 8- to 18-year-olds surveyed by Junior Achievement, a national business education organization, agree that the Y2K bug may bring some problems.
More than half think the Internet and banking computers will malfunction. And 44 percent who participated in the survey, conducted in early December, are worried about credit cards working properly.
But 17-year-old Kevin Knutson isn't concerned.
``Anybody that really needed to get anything taken care of has already taken care of it,'' said Knutson, a student at Bonneville High School. ``The biggest problems will be with stuff like freaks and cults.''
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USA Today 12/24/99
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Pierre - Twenty-five percent of the state National Guard's 4,500 members will report for duty on Dec. 31 to deal with any emergencies that might arise from the Y2K bug, Adjutant Gen. Phil Killey said. But Killey expects the holiday weekend to be uneventful. The bug could cause some computers to interpret 2000 and 1900 and shut down.
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Y2K Threatens Cambodian Computer
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 3:22 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Cambodia-Retiring-Computer.html
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- The possibility of a digital meltdown at the turn of the millennium evokes little concern in low-tech Cambodia, where electricity is already sporadic, traffic lights are mostly ignored and Phnom Penh's airport is only slightly more sophisticated than a rural airstrip.
But the Y2K bug nonetheless threatens the heart of Cambodia's fledgling democracy -- an aging, $2 million computer that managed the country's two elections since a Soviet-backed communist government relinquished power in 1993.
Many countries have spent billions of dollars to rid older computers of potentially crippling programs that could be unable to distinguish between the Year 2000 and 1900 come Jan. 1.
But technicians in charge of Cambodia's computer say that the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost to install Y2K-safe hardware is too much. Instead, the country will retire the U.N.-donated machine after Dec. 31.
The 10-year-old Sequent mini-mainframe holds a national voter roll with personal information on 5.4 million voting-age Cambodians -- a list so massive it takes more than 24 hours to print.
With Cambodia's first-ever local-level elections expected late next year, democracy advocates have expressed alarm that the computer is headed for the scrap heap. Some even suggested that the government cooked up the Y2K story in order to hijack the computer for more nefarious purposes.
But Chea Sok Huor, deputy director of the National Election Computer Center, dismisses this rumor. It would be impossible to use the specialized computer for anything but election-related tasks, he said.
``If someone stole this, it wouldn't be of any use,'' he said, gesturing toward three large computer cabinets taking up most of a small, air-conditioned room at the Interior Ministry. ``You could only use it as a big paperweight.''
The technicians have recommended purchasing a new, $700,000 computer that will be slightly less powerful than the old behemoth, but more user-friendly and easier to repair.
Election technical adviser Sorasak Pan says the proposed Windows-based computer would ease Cambodia's transition from the internationally funded and monitored elections of the past to wholly Cambodian-run polls in the future.
``In the long-run we will be dependent only on ourselves, not technicians from the United States or Europe,'' Sorasak Pan says.
The voter roll has been transferred to digital tape -- basically a massive floppy disk. But Chea Sok Huor estimates it will take him nearly two months just to enter the voter data into a new computer. Getting the whole system ready for an election could take almost a year.
Going back to pencils and paper, Sorasak Pan says, is just not an option for the National Election Committee.
``Computers ... reduce fraud and save time,'' he said. ``To go back is absolutely ridiculous.''
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Y2K Bug Extends Schools' Vacations
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 1:13 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Y2K-School-Vacation.html
Grammar schools, high schools and universities alike usually end their winter breaks on the first Monday of the new year. But this year, worry over potential effects of the Y2K bug led some schools to extend their vacations for a few days past Monday, Jan. 3 -- just in case.
Children in Washington started school early this year, on Aug. 30, to make up for days they'll lose because the district delayed the start of school to Jan. 5. Public schools in Dayton, Ohio, are extending winter vacation a full week, to Jan. 10.
``We just want to make sure everything is operational,'' said Carole Johnson, spokeswoman for the Dayton district, which has 24,000 students.
A survey by the U.S. Department of Education released in October found that more than a third of schools at all levels were unprepared for any problems that might arise if computers misread 2000 as 1900. Most were expected to be ready for the date change when it comes, however.
Among the school systems that consider themselves ready is the nation's second-largest, the Los Angeles Unified School District, with more than 700,000 students. It will reopen Jan. 3 -- a target set by school officials in March 1998.
Facing that deadline with no room for mistakes, computer specialists had equipment checked and upgraded by June. Last month they held an early New Year's and thank-you picnic to celebrate.
``Once you're told `We're going to be ready or else,' you make sure you are,'' said the district's Y2K director, Terryl Hedrich.
Minneapolis public schools will also reopen on Jan. 3, but will be ready for any problems. First thing New Year's Day, a team of technicians, faculty and staff will check the district's computerized equipment, from heating and elevators to fax machines.
If a problem is found, they'll declare Jan. 3 a snow day and take it from there, said Sheldon Ramnarine, head of computer operations for the 48,000-student district. That's remote, however, he said. ``We spent a little more than a year and a half looking at all the issues.''
Worry over the Y2K bug bit harder at officials running the 36 campuses of Minnesota's state colleges and universities. They won't let their 144,000 students back in class until Jan. 12.
Northwestern University, with campuses in Chicago and nearby Evanston, pushed its winter quarter back two days, to Jan. 5 ``to make sure our systems were all up and operating OK,'' said school spokesman Alan Cubbage. Plus, he said, ``We really didn't want to force students to have to fly on Jan. 1 or Jan. 2, figuring if there was a problem, that would exacerbate it.'
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----------- us military
-----------
<I>(This should be the role of the military all the time....Guin)</I>
USA Today
12/24/99- Updated 03:18 PM ET
Santa's helper - NORAD tracks St. Nick
http://usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm#farr
Want to keep watch on Santa's progress Christmas Eve? NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) is willing to help. They've set up a feature on their Web site that will let you track the movements of the jolly old elf as he makes his rounds. Just click on the link below to visit the NORAD site, which is updated hourly with Santa's whereabouts. So far, NORAD reports that Santa appears to be on track and able to make his worldwide deliveries in time for Christmas morning.
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Inside the Ring Notes from the Pentagon
Washington Times December 24, 1999 Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/ring-19991224.htm
Taiwan HARM
The government of Taiwan secretly asked the Clinton administration last month to sell it High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles, or HARMs, as part of its annual request for defensive arms, we are told.
Disclosure of the request for the air-launched missiles, which home in on radar beacons used to track aircraft, comes amid disclosure in this newspaper on Wednesday that China is building a new air-defense missile site near Taiwan.
A fight is under way inside the administration over the request for HARMs, which have been star weapons used in the Balkans and Iraq in recent months to knock out anti-aircraft batteries.
Pro-Beijing officials at the State Department are opposing U.S. sales of HARMs, arguing the missiles could be used to knock out the surface-to-air missile sites like the one being built at Zhangzhou on China's coast, thus would be considered offensive weapons because the site is on the mainland.
Pentagon officials in favor of the sale deem them necessary to maintain a balance of forces. They point out that the HARMs are defensive missiles allowed under the Taiwan Relations Act governing U.S. arms sales to the island. Officials told us the HARMs would be very effective against China's two new Sovremenny-class guided-missile destroyers, which come equipped with ample radar for HARMs to attack - and are not on the mainland.
Russia will turn over the first new destroyer to China Saturday in St. Petersburg. The ship is the first of two equipped with supersonic SS-N-22 cruise missiles to be based in Shanghai, conveniently close to Taiwan.
China rebuttal
Some members of the special Cox committee on Chinese spying are irate at the bashing they took in a report by a Stanford University think tank.
The report, which received prominent play in liberal news outlets who take a benign view of Chinese global aims, castigated the bipartisan Cox team for purportedly jumping to wild conclusions. The Cox panel, named after Rep. Christopher Cox, the chairman and California Republican, concluded that Chinese spies stole design information for the most advanced thermonuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. The report was based on the most secret information in the U.S. intelligence community.
Now, an ally of Mr. Cox's has drafted a rebuttal to the Stanford critics. We obtained a copy of "50 Factual Errors in the Four [Stanford] Essays." The counterattack was authored by Nicholas Rostow, staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who worked for the Cox panel.
Pulling no punches, Mr. Rostow begins: "The publisher of the essays, Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, is the direct successor of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, an organization whose conclusions on Soviet intentions and compliance with arms-control treaties were notoriously wrong."
Mr. Rostow then proceeds to uncover what he termed 50 "factual errors disclosed in a cursory review of the four essays."
Some examples:
"According to [one Stanford essay], the committee report 'maintains that PRC penetration of U.S. labs commenced in the late 1970s.' No such statement is made in the report."
"[One essay] refers to the W-88 thermonuclear warhead as 'old' technology. It is, in fact, the most modern nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal, and until it was compromised, no other nation in the world possessed such a weapon. . . . Since the W-88 is America's most modern nuclear weapon, [the essay's] description of it as 'old' trivializes a very important national security loss."
One essay "states that 'no evidence is given in any of the reports that the design of the [new, smaller PRC nuclear warhead] was derived from U.S. information.' That the specific evidence is not given merely reflects the fact that it is classified. The conclusion has been stated, not only in the committee report but also in the public versions of the two intelligence community reports on this subject to Congress during 1999."
Keep watching the sky
The North American Aerospace Defense Command, known as NORAD, will use its formidable satellite and ground radar tracking systems for the 44th year in a row to monitor the transit of a sleigh and nine - not eight - tiny reindeer from the North Pole Friday.
Santa Claus' journey will be picked up first by Defense Support Satellites - those that would spot a Chinese or Russian intercontinental ballistic missile launch, says a smiling NORAD spokesman, Master Sgt. Larry Lincoln.
"We can pick up the heat from Rudolph's nose," Sgt. Lincoln said of the ninth reindeer pulling Santa's present-filled sleigh.
The monitoring is intended to "keep the magic alive for children around the world," he said.
About 100 Air Force and other volunteers will staff phone lines inside NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain complex in Colorado Springs for children to call in their Christmas wishes or get an update on Santa's travel. A World Wide Web site will provide animation showing Santa's annual Christmas Eve journey. (719/474-3980 and www.noradsanta.org.)
Last year 80 million people visited the Web site and about 20,000 people called to find out the latest Santa update.
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.
----------- terrorism
Canada Seeking Suspect's Associate
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 1:20 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Canada-Terrorism.html
MONTREAL (AP) -- Canadian authorities have issued an arrest warrant for a suspected associate of an Algerian man who allegedly tried to bring bomb-making materials into Washington state.
Canadian police said Thursday they are seeking Abdelmajed Dahoumane, 32, on two charges involving illegal possession of explosives. They added that the same charges have been filed against Ahmed Ressam, who is in custody in Washington.
Media reports have identified Dahoumane as the man who stayed with Ressam at a Vancouver motel for three weeks before Ressam attempted to enter the United States. Canadian police have not confirmed that that is the link between the two men.
Leo Monbourquette, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesman, confirmed that authorities were searching for Dahoumane but refused to provide details on what information investigators obtained to issue the warrant.
``We don't know where he (Dahoumane) is. That is why we are seeking the public's assistance to find him,'' said Manom Eburn, a constable with the RCMP.
Ressam's car allegedly contained nitroglycerin when he was stopped. U.S. officials are investigating whether Ressam was part of a terrorist organization -- particularly the network allegedly headed by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden. A senior U.S. official in Washington told The Associated Press that there is little reason so far to link Ressam to bin Laden's network.
The warrant for Dahoumane's arrest came hours after RCMP specialists, backed up by explosives-sniffing dogs, searched a Montreal apartment that police said belonged to Dahoumane. No explosives were found, said Monbourquette.
Marcelo Moreno, superintendent of the apartment building, saw Dahoumane outside a Montreal mosque sometime between Dec. 13 and 16. Dahoumane has lived in the apartment since 1997, Moreno said.
Thursday's raid was the latest of several in Montreal in the last week. Police have also raided a downtown apartment rented by Ressam under an alias, an east-end storefront that he rented, also under the alias, and a duplex in north-end Montreal.
Fears that terrorists were planning an attack in the United States were further heightened when a Canadian woman was arrested trying to cross the border into Vermont with another Algerian man. Vermont prosecutors said Thursday that the woman, Lucia Garofalo, was linked to Algerian terrorists.
Prosecutors said in court papers the car Garofalo was driving and the cellphone she carried were registered in the name of Brahim Mahdi, who they said belonged to an alleged terrorist-linked group, the Algerian Islamic League.
Mahdi, contacted by journalists in his Montreal home, said he had never heard of the group and denied being part of any terrorist network.
``I don't know anything,'' he said. ``I don't know why they would accuse me of that.''
The Vermont court papers said the league was believed to have sponsored terrorist activities in Europe and Africa. Its founder was identified as Mourad Dhina, a scientist living in Geneva, Switzerland, whom prosecutors described as an international arms dealer.
Dhina -- contacted by telephone -- acknowledged he started a cultural group by that name years ago. But he said it hasn't existed for at least five years and never had anything to do with terrorism.
``It was a Swiss organization, well known to the authorities and which had no problems at all,'' said Dhina, 38, a physicist who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He called the prosecutors' claims ``completely surreal.''
In a statement today, Dhina again denied having any links to terrorism.
``I refute all these accusations down to the last detail,'' the statement said. ``I declare in the most solemn manner that I know neither well nor distantly the people arrested over recent days in the United States and Canada.''
Mahdi, 34, said he came to Canada in 1995 to avoid serving in the Algerian military and claimed refugee status, then was granted residency in 1997.
After working at a Montreal manufacturing plant, he said, he began studying computer technology at Rosemont College in Montreal but stopped in June because of depression for which he sometimes takes medication.
``I'm a good citizen here,'' said Mahdi. ``I don't do anything bad. I live like anyone else. I want to finish my studies and find work.''
Mahdi said Garofalo was a friend whom he sometimes helped out by shopping for her or doing other favors. One favor involved putting his name on documents to buy the car Garofalo was driving when arrested, he said.
When Garofalo couldn't get financing to buy a car, her mother paid for it and he agreed to sign the documents, he explained. He said he never drove the car.
Mahdi also said the cellular phone used to be his, but he transferred it to Garofalo when he realized he couldn't afford it. As far as he knew, Mahdi said, Garofalo had no connection to any terrorist activity.
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Arrests Show Border's Vulnerability
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 3:42 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Porous-Border.html
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- The 3,987-mile line between the United States and Canada is considered the world's longest undefended border. That means it often allows easy passage for smugglers -- and raises the possibility that terrorists can slip through, too.
Authorities say recent arrests in Washington state and Vermont show that terrorists can set their sights on the United States after first finding a haven in Canada.
In the first case, an Algerian man is charged with bringing bomb-making materials into the United States. In the second, authorities have detained two people, an Algerian with a false passport and a Canadian woman accused of having ties to Algerian extremist groups.
Other illicit activity is common. The stretch of the border in upstate New York and New England is a hotbed of smuggling in both directions. People, drugs and cash are the primary southbound cargo, while liquor and cigarettes are the northbound contraband of choice.
Border Patrol spokesman Ed Duda said aliens from more than 100 countries have been caught trying to illegally enter the United States. Officials realize that many illegal immigrants still get across -- but they have no idea how many.
``We catch as many as we can,'' Duda said. ``There is no iron curtain up here and there are no land mines.''
There are checkpoints on main roads between the United States and Canada, but there is no fence along the border. In many locations people can cross unchecked on back roads, walk through fields or take boats across rivers or lakes. The Border Patrol has remote sensors in some locations, but their staffing levels make it impossible for them to cover the length of the border.
Now law enforcement officials in the United States and Canada fear the trust that allows the border to go largely unpatrolled has made the United States vulnerable to terrorist attack.
``You can't blow up anything in the United States if you can't get in here,'' said Phillip Stern, an international private investigator and security consultant in New York.
American law enforcement agencies are working with their counterparts in Canada and Europe to learn more about the background of Ahmed Ressam, 32, the man arrested in Washington after bomb components were found in the trunk of his car. He is believed to have ties to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile accused of directing the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last year.
Federal prosecutors in Vermont have linked Canadian Lucia Garofalo to the Algerian Islamic League. The organization was founded by Mourad Dhina, an Algerian whom prosecutors describe as an arms merchant who sends weapons to terrorist organizations. Dhina, a physicist, denies the connection.
Ms. Garofalo, 35, and Bouabide Chamchi, 20, were arrested Sunday night at Beecher Falls, Vt., when they tried to enter the United States by car.
The Washington and Vermont cases have not been linked. Still, in response, the Border Patrol and Customs Service have put extra agents to work along both the Canadian and Mexican borders.
``It's a reality check for everyone, not just speaking as a Border Patrol agent but as a civilian,'' said Bob Tripi, deputy chief patrol agent in Houlton, Maine.
His agents are busy patrolling Maine's 616 miles of border. Besides working bus terminals, they're using all-terrain vehicles, and sometimes snowmobiles, to patrol remote areas.
While the Border Patrol looks for people trying to sneak across, the Immigration and Naturalization Service deals with people who try to enter the United States through checkpoints.
The INS agent in charge in Vermont, Noel Induni, said most people turned away from checkpoints are convicted criminals. He said roughly 300 people a month are denied entry.
``While it's a relatively large number of people, it's a small percentage of the total because we have several million who cross every year,'' he said.
Adds Carol Jenifer, INS district director in Detroit: ``Given the volume of work we have, I think we do a pretty good job. I think we could do much better if we had all the resources we needed.''
But the porous nature of the Canadian border is still apparent. It is becoming less expensive for a Mexican citizen to fly to Canada, where immigration laws are less stringent, and sneak across the U.S.-Canadian border than it is to hire a smuggler to go directly across the U.S.-Mexican border, said Keith Olson, president of the Border Patrol officers' union in Bellingham, Wash.
Would-be drug smugglers also know the flaws in the system. Vancouver's Cannabis Cafe, currently closed due to a police raid, offered customers maps of the border, noting the areas where patrols were few and far between. A kayaker from Victoria, British Columbia, was recently captured by a sheriff on Washington's San Juan Island with a big stash of marijuana.
While it's rare to apprehend suspected terrorists along the border, it's happened before.
Almost four years ago, a Lebanese man caught trying to illegally enter the United States at Champlain, N.Y., was linked to the Middle East terrorist group Abu Nidal.
In 1987, three Lebanese-born Canadians were arrested with a bomb in the border town of Richford, Vt. In 1978, Kristina Berster, a suspected member of the former West Germany's Baader-Meinhoff Gang, was captured entering Vermont.
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Woman arrested in Vt. has terrorist ties
USA Today 12/24/99- Updated 03:18 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm#farr
BURLINGTON, Vt. - A woman arrested at the Vermont-Canadian border has ties to an international group that is believed to have sponsored terrorist activities in Europe and Algeria, federal prosecutors said Thursday. Prosecutors said they have linked Lucia Garofalo's cell phone and the car she was driving to Brahim Mahdi, a member of the Algerian Islamic League, whose leader is said to be connected to ''organizations sponsoring a number of terrorist acts in Europe and Algeria.'' Garofalo and Bouabide Chamchi, an Algerian, were arrested Sunday at a remote border crossing in northeastern Vermont. Their arrests, combined with the arrest of an Algerian man in Washington state last week on bomb-related charges, have stirred fears of terrorist attacks.
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Terrorists Said to Hide in Canada's Melting Pot
New York Times December 24, 1999 By JOHN KIFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/122499canada-terrorism.html
Related Articles
U.S. Linking Jailed Couple to Terrorists From Algeria (Dec. 24, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/122499terror-us.html
New York Is Ground Zero, All Agree. But for Festivity, or Fear? (Dec. 24, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/122499terror-voices.html
Arrest at U.S. Border Reverberates in France (Dec. 22, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/122299algerian-terror.html
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
MONTREAL, Dec. 23 -- All street and shop signs here, by Quebec provincial law, must be in French. But walk a few blocks from the modest bachelor apartment at 1250 Fort Street where Ahmed Ressam lived under the name of Benni Antoine Noris, and sometimes Mario Roig, and the signs tell of a rich ethnic bouillabaisse.
Here is Boutique Ali, a shoe repair shop, next to Bombay Palace-Cuisine Indienne, and then, in quick succession, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Russian and Swiss restaurants, as well as two Middle Eastern groceries and "Pandit A. B. Chowdhury, immigrant consultant for refugee claimant."
Since the arrest of Mr. Ressam, an Algerian, near Seattle last week and his indictment Wednesday on charges of trying to smuggle enough bomb-making material into the United States to flatten a building, that rich ethnic mix and the loose immigration controls that have made it possible have come under close scrutiny in Montreal and across Canada.
Officials here have been trying to explain, among other things, how Mr. Ressam managed to remain in the country after his application for asylum was refused, and even after he was arrested on charges of breaking into automobiles -- in the spring of 1998, two months after a nationwide warrant for his deportation was issued.
Mr. Ressam seems to have simply melted into the immigrant community in Montreal, which includes more than 15,000 Algerians, obtaining driver's licenses under his false names and even a Canadian passport last February, a year after the initial deportation order, by using his French-sounding alias and a forged Roman Catholic baptismal certificate. In Quebec, a baptismal certificate is sufficient identification to receive a passport.
Mr. Ressam was not alone. Critics of the government charge that as many as 10,000 people a year who are seeking asylum simply vanish from official view, some smuggling themselves across the porous border into the United States, many apparently disappearing into the population here.
A spokesman for the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service said the United States has had similar problems with asylum seekers, especially those who file for asylum after being charged with violating immigration law. A 1995 study by the I.N.S. found that 90 percent of those vanished while their applications were pending.
According to a recent report by Canada's intelligence agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the country's openness to immigrants has helped make it "a haven for terrorists."
A senior intelligence official told the Toronto Globe and Mail that the agency had begun watching Mr. Ressam shortly after he arrived in early 1994 with a fake French passport and a tale of being falsely accused and tortured by Algeria's military government, which is battling Islamic insurgents. But, he added, the intelligence agency dropped the investigation.
"He has been known to us for some time," the official was quoted as saying in today's issues.
"We had to drop it recently because of lack of resources. We just don't have the time and people to continue these investigations indefinitely."
Montreal's Algerians came under closer scrutiny by the city's police last October, when a team of French counterterrorism investigators arrived in Canada. Montreal had experienced a rash of car break-ins around the financial district, with cell phones and laptop computers being stolen and then peddled on the streets.
The French were conducting an investigation based on the arrest of Fateh Kamel, an Algerian Islamic militant, and they wanted to question two men they believed to be his lieutenants -- Mr. Ressam and Karim Said Atmani, who the police now say had been directing the Montreal theft ring. Mr. Ressam was not found.
Mr. Kamel, who had fought with Afghan rebels against the Soviets, was arrested by the authorities in Jordan last spring and extradited to France.
According to the French, Mr. Kamel had been the leader of a band of gangster-terrorists who carried out a series of armed robberies and shootouts around Roubaix in northern France. He had also operated out of Montreal in the 1990's and may have married a Canadian woman, and was believed to have directed a loose group of Islamic terrorists. Some of those terrorists were veterans of fighting in Bosnia, which, like Afghanistan, attracted Arab Muslim volunteers to what they regarded as a holy war.
"I think he was the leader of this group," a senior official of the French police and judicial antiterrorism task force said in Paris. "We have material evidence he conducted this group from Montreal. He moves around -- Bosnia, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan."
Mr. Atmani, the other man sought by the French, had been deported last year to Bosnia because he carried a Bosnian passport when he arrived in Montreal as a stowaway on a cargo ship. His whereabouts are unknown, although officials suspect he may have slipped back into Canada.
Last week, the Montreal police arrested 11 men -- most of them Algerians -- who they said had been stealing from parked cars in groups of two and three and extorting money from other Algerians.
The police said that part of the proceeds was going to finance the Armed Islamic Group, an Algerian group that has carried out massacres in villages there.
"These guys are financing organizations that train people to assassinate fathers of families, pregnant women, old people and children," said Jean-Yves Mailloux, the head of the Montreal police counterterrorism division.
As the investigation accelerated, the police found a second apartment where they believe Mr. Kamel, Mr. Atmani, Mr. Ressam and two others spent several months together in 1998. It is in Ville d'Anjou, just east of Montreal, near the working-class neighborhood where Mr. Ressam had been preparing to open a small grocery store with a license issued under his identity of Benni Noris.
Investigators also believe they have identified the second man who shared rooms at a motel in Vancouver with Mr. Rassem before he made his ferry trip into the United States. He was said to be Abdul Majid Dahoumane, an Algerian who applied for asylum here in 1995, was refused, and, like Mr. Rassem, was under a deportation order.
Police and intelligence officials say that Canada's generous immigration policies have meant that foreign terror groups can more easily establish and maintain cells here.
Last year, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service reported that it had active investigations into 50 terrorist groups and 350 individuals.
The agency's director, Ward Elcock, told the Canadian Senate's security and intelligence committee last year that terrorists have been taking advantage of the system for years and that almost every terrorist group in the world had a foothold in Canada.
"Terrorist groups are present here whose origins lie in every significant regional ethnic and nationalist conflict there is," he said. "The nature of our society and the related policies concerning refugees and immigrants make us particularly vulnerable to terrorist influence and activities."
The intelligence agency's Web site lists a wide variety of foreign groups operating in Canada, including Hezbollah, Hamas, groups from Algeria and Iran, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, the Irish Republican Army and "all the major Sikh" separatists. It adds that more groups are arriving, including the Kurdish Worker's Party, "trained assassins" from the Palestinian Force 17 and the Iranian intelligence service.
Since 1992, Canada has deported only 11 people as terrorists. Before that, none.
In addition to Canada's general welcome of immigrants, Mr. Rassem was probably helped by official Quebec policy of trying to bring more French-speaking immigrants into the province. Many Algerians speak French as a legacy of French colonial rule.
In 1999, 12,600 French-speaking immigrants were admitted. Next year the number is expected to reach as high as 14,600.
"Quebec has attained its objective of increasing French-speaking immigration," the provincial immigration minister, Robert Perrault, said in a news release last month.
The number of Algerian immigrants increased markedly after 1992, when the Islamic Salvation Front started a bloody insurgency in Algeria after the military canceled elections and seized power. In 1990, 493 refugees and immigrants entered Canada from Algeria; last year the number grew to 1,914. Since 1997, the government has stopped extraditing people to Algeria because of the violence there.
Of 1,197 Algerians who applied for refugee status in 1998, 67 percent were accepted, compared with 40 percent for all refugee groups that year.
Leon Benoit of the opposition Reform Party contended that Canadian authorities cannot account for as many as 10,000 people who claimed refugee status at border points last year. Of 24,000 who made claims, he said, about 10,000 were given refugee status, and 4,000 to 5,000 more were sent away. The whereabouts of the rest, he said, are unknown.
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U.S. Probes Algerian's Background
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 10:32 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-US-Terrorism.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Algerian man arrested for allegedly trying to bring bomb-making materials into Washington state may have been trained in Afghanistan or Pakistan, federal authorities said today.
While U.S. investigators combed through new information from Canadian officials that indicates he was trained in the early 1990s in Afghanistan, The Associated Press learned separately that he may have been trained in Pakistan.
There are strong indications the Algerian had some connection to terrorists groups in that country, but there is little reason so far to link him to a terrorist network believed headed by Osama bin Laden, who is in Afghanistan, a senior U.S. official told the AP.
Concern about terrorist activities in neighboring Pakistan caused the State Department in August to ban all travel by American officials to the tribal areas of Pakistan's northwest frontier province, which lie outside the normal jurisdiction of the Pakistani government.
The U.S. investigators learned that the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service has been monitoring the activities of Ahmed Ressam for years, officials told The Associated Press on Thursday, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. officials, familiar with progress of the investigation, said authorities were trying to determine whether Ressam, whose car allegedly contained nitroglycerin when he was stopped at Port Angeles, Wash., was part of a terrorist organization -- including the network headed by reputed terrorism mastermind bin Laden.
Ressam pleaded innocent in Seattle on Wednesday to charges of transporting explosives, making false statements and smuggling.
Bin Laden, a Saudi exile, has lived in Afghanistan, and the officials said Canadian authorities believed Ressam received training there in the early 1990s before moving to Canada in 1994.
Meanwhile, Americans in neighboring Pakistan were urged by the State Department to be extra cautious. The department said there is serious concern for the safety and security of Americans throughout the country. They were told not to travel to the Khyber Pass, a favorite tourist attraction, and travel by U.S. officials there was severely limited.
Across the country in Vermont, prosecutors asserted Thursday that a woman arrested entering the country this week has ties to an alleged Algerian terrorist organization.
The Washington state and Vermont arrests followed the recent detention of 14 individuals in Jordan who were suspected of planning terrorist attacks on tourist sites and U.S. targets in the kingdom.
The 14 are believed to have ties to bin Laden, who is alleged by U.S. officials to have masterminded the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last year.
U.S. authorities say bin Laden is communicating with his supporters and has issued calls for terrorists to strike Americans during the holidays.
``Bin Laden is from a wealthy family. He has independent money to buy the best communications (equipment) known and also weapons,'' Sen. Richard Shelby, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview Thursday.
Shelby, R-Ala., said a U.S. military attack ``would be in order'' if any terrorist group makes the ``terrible mistake'' of attacking Americans. He said U.S. intelligence is relentlessly pursuing bin Laden and ``sooner or later, I believe our search and our diligence will pay off.''
Shelby's Democratic counterpart on the intelligence panel, Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, cautioned that American officials risked ``making a wider war'' if they are not careful when publicly identifying possible terrorists.
``We take sides in regional conflicts, we are forward deployed, we are a very successful liberal democracy that tends to breed jealousy if not outright animosity,'' he said.
Since Ressam's arrest last week, the government has stepped up security at border crossings, federal buildings and airports. It also has urged caution for Americans worldwide during year-end celebrations, and the FBI warned again Thursday that Americans should watch for potential mail bombs.
U.S. officials said late Thursday they were pursuing numerous leads in many cities but had not substantiated any specific threats against any domestic sites. Nonetheless, the Energy Department was taking extra security precautions at its nuclear weapons facilities and other sites, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said.
The U.S. attorney's office in Vermont said American intelligence has connected Lucia Garofalo, the Canadian woman arrested Sunday at a remote border outpost in that state, to the Algerian Islamic League.
Authorities traced Garofalo's cellular phone and car to an Algerian man living in Canada, Brahim Mahdi, who authorities said was a member of the Algerian Islamic League. Federal prosecutors in Vermont said the group's founder was Mourad Dhina, whom they described as an arms trafficker for terrorists.
Mahdi, in an interview in Montreal on Thursday, said he had no connection with terrorism. Dhina, a scientist living in Geneva, said the claims being made about him were ``completely surreal.''
The allegations were leveled during a hearing in federal court on whether to keep Ms. Garofalo, 35, and the Algerian man accompanying her, Bouabide Chamchi, 20, in jail. U.S. authorities first had said traces of explosives were detected in the car they were driving, but later said further checks had turned up nothing.
Chamchi, who was accused of trying to enter the country with a falsified French passport, was ordered held without bail because of the risk he might flee. Ms. Garofalo, who was accused of attempting to transport an illegal alien into the country, was being held without bail at least until her hearing resumes Dec. 30.
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Feds Vow To Probe Suspects' History
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 5:32 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Vermont-Border-Arrest.html
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) -- Federal authorities vowed to dig deeper into the history of two foreign nationals whose arrests at the Vermont border have contributed to a growing sense of unease about American safety.
A judge Thursday gave federal prosecutors until Dec. 30 to determine whether Canadian Lucia Garofalo should be eligible for bail. She is being held on minor immigration violations after her arrest last Sunday at the border crossing in tiny Beecher Falls.
Algerian Bouabide Chamchi was also ordered held without bail pending trial on similar immigration charges.
During the court appearance, prosecutors said they linked Ms. Garofalo's cellular phone and her car to an organization called the Algerian Islamic League, which they described as a terrorist group operating in Europe and Algeria.
But there are other areas investigators want to look into.
``We are worried to the extent that this may not be a simple border case,'' U.S. Attorney Charles Tetzlaff said after the hearing. ``There are a number of issues that the government wants to explore, particularly in connections that may exist between these defendants and other organizations.''
Terrorism has grabbed public attention in the past few weeks, ever since 14 people were detained in Jordan on suspicion of planning attacks on tourist sites and U.S. targets in the Middle Eastern kingdom.
They are believed to have ties to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile accused of directing the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last year. Authorities are also trying to find out if bin Laden is linked to Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian arrested northwest of Seattle last week after allegedly bringing bomb-making material into the United States from Canada.
This week, the State Department has warned that U.S. citizens abroad should be cautious over the holiday weekend because of possible terrorism. There was concern over mail bombs sent from Germany.
And there were the arrests of Ms. Garofalo, 35, and Chamchi, 20.
Prosecutors said they found no evidence of explosives or materials used to make them from samples taken from Ms. Garofalo's car. But in court documents, prosecutors said they have linked the car and her cell phone to Brahim Mahdi, a member of the Algerian Islamic League.
That information came from American intelligence sources, which prosecutors did not identify. Ms. Garofalo's cellular phone account was opened by Mahdi and the car was registered in his name, they said.
Mahdi, 34, who lives in Montreal, denied any connection to terrorism and told The Associated Press he had never heard of the Algerian Islamic League. He said Ms. Garofalo was a friend and he knew of no links between her and terrorism. According to him, the car was registered in his name because she has bad credit.
Mahdi also said the cellular phone used to be his, but he transferred it to Ms. Garofalo when he realized he couldn't afford it.
The court documents, citing intelligence sources, said the Algerian Islamic League was founded and directed by Mourad Dhina, an arms dealer to ``terrorist organizations.''
Dhina, reached by the AP in Geneva, denied knowing either Ms. Garofalo or Chamchi and described the allegations as ``surreal.''
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U.S. Linking Jailed Couple to Terrorists From Algeria
New York Times December 24, 1999 By DAVID STOUT with ELIZABETH OLSON
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/122499terror-us.html
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New York Is Ground Zero, All Agree. But for Festivity, or Fear? Arrest at U.S. Border Reverberates in France (Dec. 22, 1999) http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/122299algerian-terror.html
The Federal authorities said yesterday that they had uncovered links between a man and a woman arrested at a remote United States border crossing in Vermont on Sunday and people associated with Algerian terrorist organizations.
A federal magistrate ordered the suspects -- Lucia Garofalo, 35, of Montreal, and Bouabide Chamchi, 20, of Algeria -- held for further investigation after the United States attorney for Vermont, Charles R. Tetzlaff, said their case had "possible ramifications for national security."
But the government was not specific on what, if anything, its investigators think Ms. Garofalo and Mr. Chamchi were planning to do in the United States. And a statement by the Justice Department, which included a reminder that the defendants are innocent until proved guilty, illustrated the tightrope that the authorities have been walking recently in trying to alert citizens about terrorist threats without causing panic.
The F.B.I. issued a statement yesterday warning that terrorists may be planning to send mail bombs to addresses in the United States from Frankfurt, Germany, but added that it was basing the warning on "unsubstantiated information." American citizens receiving packages with Frankfurt markings or stamps from unfamiliar senders should not handle the packages, and should notify local authorities immediately, the F.B.I. statement said.
The government did not cite any connection yesterday between the two people arrested in Vermont and the arrest of Ahmed Ressam, who was stopped as he tried to enter Washington State by ferry on Dec. 14 and whose rented car was found to contain bomb-making materials.
Lawyers for Ms. Garofalo and Mr. Chamchi said in court yesterday that the cases against their clients were thin. Ms. Garofalo's court-appointed counsel, Maryann E. Kampmann, said her client was being held on the basis of "associations and innuendoes" and was suspected in part because she is married to an Algerian.
Ms. Garofalo and Mr. Chamchi were arrested on Sunday in Burlington, Vt., on immigration charges after a border check found Mr. Chamchi's French passport to be fake, the authorities said. A day later, bomb-sniffing dogs acted as though they had sniffed traces of explosives, although the authorities have conceded that later tests turned up nothing.
Nevertheless, the authorities say telephone-billing records and the car the two were arrested in link Ms. Garofalo to Brahim Mahdi, who according to intelligence officials is a "primary member" of a group called the Algerian Islamic League.
In an interview with The Associated Press outside his Montreal apartment, Mr. Mahdi said the telephone records and the car that so intrigued investigators were easily explained. He said he had transferred his cellular phone to Ms. Garofalo, whom he described as a friend, when he realized that he could not afford it. And he said that while the car the defendants were arrested in was registered to him, it had actually been paid for by Ms. Garofalo's mother. Ms. Garofalo could not get a car loan, he said.
But the government said it was suspicious that Mr. Mahdi transferred the cellular phone after having it only four days. Records show that Ms. Garofalo's telephone was then used for numerous calls to Europe and the Middle East, the government said. And an earlier telephone number used by Ms. Garofalo was called several times in January 1992 by a person suspected of having stolen dynamite in Ontario, investigators said.
Citing their intelligence sources, the authorities said yesterday that the Algerian Islamic League was founded and headed by Mourad Dhina, whom they described as an Algerian arms dealer living in Switzerland who is connected to groups that promote terrorism in Europe and Algeria.
Mr. Mahdi and Mr. Dhina immediately denounced the government's descriptions of them, saying they are anything but terrorists.
"I don't know her -- I don't know Chamchi," Mr. Dhina said in an interview outside his Geneva apartment, where he lives with his wife and five children. Mr. Dhina, 38, is a physicist who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"I am personally against any act of violence in the United States or any other part of the world," Mr. Dhina said. He said the Algerian government had tried to discredit him for being critical of its oppressive rule.
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Germans Inspect Airport Packages
Associated Press December 24, 1999 Filed at 8:15 a.m. EST http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Germany-Frankfurt-Security.html
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- Packages headed to Britain through Europe's busiest airport will also undergo additional security checks in the wake of a U.S. terrorism warning, officials at Frankfurt airport said today.
Klaus Ludwig, spokesman for the federal police at the airport, said checks on packages heading both to the United States and Britain will continue into next month. He said he had no details as to why packages from Britain also required the special security measures.
Early Thursday, in a rare middle-of-the-night warning, the FBI urged that Americans be on the lookout for potential mail bombs. In a statement, the bureau disclosed it had received ``unsubstantiated information that individuals may be planning to send bombs in small parcels to addresses in the United States'' from Frankfurt.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service said it was screening all incoming parcels and first-class mail from Frankfurt using X-ray machines at U.S. airports.
Since the warning, no explosives have been discovered at the Frankfurt airport, Ludwig said. For a year, the airport and its huge postal center have been using a machine that can detect and detonate bombs in mail or baggage.
Police have refused to elaborate on the special security measures being taken, which come on top of routine searches and checks on the 46 million passengers that passed through the airport this year.
Ludwig stressed the extra measures would cause no delay to air traffic.
``The passengers won't notice anything,'' he said.
Frankfurt police have said the FBI warning triggered a range of security measures in Germany's fifth-largest city, including in post offices.