----------- britain
Inquiry demanded into 'nuclear' grotto
By Richard Savill ISSUE 1679 Thursday 30 December 1999
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000118613908976&rtmo=r3EQtQbX&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/99/12/30/ngroto30.html
CAMPAIGNERS called for an inquiry yesterday into claims that drums which once held nuclear waste were made into a Santa Claus grotto. The grotto in Thurso, Caithness, was built by apprentices from the nearby Dounreay nuclear plant using four containers which had stored low-level waste.
Lorraine Mann, of Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping, said she was horrified to learn that the grotto had been used by 700 children: "If what has been said is correct it is astonishingly negligent and there should be an inquiry into how this has happened. I would be amazed if the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate allowed these containers to be taken off the site." One mother, who took her two children to the grotto, said: "I would certainly have thought twice if I had known the containers had been used to hold nuclear waste."
The UK Atomic Energy Authority, which runs the plant, said the containers had been thoroughly decontaminated. It had taken a team of Dounreay apprentices a month to weld together the 3.5-ton drums and to cut out doors and windows. The containers had been used to store low-level nuclear waste including overalls and paper towels used by workers in contact with radioactive materials.
A Dounreay spokesman said: "I can categorically state that those containers were safe. They were thoroughly clean and they would not have been allowed to leave the site if there had been any danger."
The grotto had been built for a community group Thurso Beyond 2000. Its secretary, Tom Jackson, said it had been delighted to accept the offer and he had received no complaints from parents. Dounreay, which is due to close in 2004, has suffered a series of safety lapses in recent years.
---
NUCLEAR POWER ACQUISITION
New York Times December 30, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/99/12/30/news/financial/biz-briefs.html
In a move to expand in the United States, Europe and Asia, British Nuclear Fuels P.L.C. said it had agreed to acquire the commercial nuclear power businesses of the Swiss-Swedish engineering giant ABB Ltd. for $485 million. British Nuclear said it would merge ABB's operations into its Westinghouse Electric Company unit. ABB, based in Zurich, said the sale was in line with its plan to reposition the company away from heavy industry and toward high-technology operations. (Dow Jones)
----------- china
Official Criticizes Taiwan Policy
The Associated Press Thursday, Dec. 30, 1999; 11:32 a.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991230/aponline113258_000.htm
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan's declaration last summer that it and rival China should treat each other like equal states hurt the island's relations with the United States, a senior Taiwanese official was quoted as saying Thursday.
Stephen Chen, the Taiwanese representative to Washington, said Wednesday that President Lee Teng-hui harmed the trust between Taiwan and the United States when he announced that Taiwan was redefining its relations with the mainland, the China Times reported. Lee's announcement infuriated mainland Chinese leaders, and Lee made it without first informing Washington.
Chinese leaders considered Lee's move to be a radical step toward independence. China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, and Beijing considers Taiwan to be a province under its rule. It has threatened to use force to reunify the two sides.
Taiwan has long regarded the United States to be its most reliable ally if China's larger military decides to attack this island, about 90 miles off the China coast. But Washington criticized the new policy, saying it unnecessarily strained China-Taiwan relations.
Chen also said Washington does not support Vice President Lien Chan's recent suggestion that Taiwan develop long-range ballistic missiles, the China Times reported. Some analysts have said the weapons could provoke China or start a new arms race.
In Beijing on Thursday, China's Foreign Ministry repeated its condemnation of Lee as a "troublemaker."
"Lee Teng-hui must retract his two-states theory and only in so doing can peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region be realized," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said.
----------
China May Hold Exercises Before Taiwan Polls: Defense Officials
Inside China Today Thursday, Dec 30 at Prague 06:14 am, N.Y. 12:14 am http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=121461
TAIPEI, Dec 28, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) China may launch military maneuvers to intimidate Taiwan before the island's presidential elections in March, defense officials were quoted as saying Tuesday.
According to intelligence sources, the mainland is enforcing air defense missile deployment along the southeastern coast facing this nationalist island, the United Daily News quoted Lieutenant General Feng Shih-kuang as saying.
Feng, deputy chief of general staff for intelligence, made the remarks during talks with local magazine executives Monday, the paper said.
Chinese troops were also erecting review platforms and making other preparations at bases along the coast from Chungshan in Quandong province to Zhoushan island in Zhejiang province, the paper said.
Military activities in the areas would continue, Feng said, and could be expanded to larger scale actions.
Vitriolic attacks against Taiwan have been stepped up through some press in Hong Kong, which had also published details of the mainland's military progress -- such as long-range missiles -- to intimidate people here, Feng added.
To discourage pro-independence sentiment ahead of Taiwan's first democratic presidential polls in March 1996, Beijing launched six rounds of war-games in the waters near the island.
It also attacked then-candidate Lee Teng-hui accusing him of leading Taiwan, which it has considered a breakaway province, towards independence.
Cross-strait tensions were eased only after Washington dispatched two fleets to the region.
Defense Minister Tang Fei, meanwhile, told the United Daily News that Taiwan would further cut its troops to 350,000 by 2005. Under current plans, the number of troops is to be cut to 400,000 by mid-2000.
Taiwan and China were split in 1949 when nationalist troops fled here following their defeat by the communists. ((c) 1999 Agence France Presse)
-----------
China Gears Up for Millennium Bug, Celebrations
By Benjamin Kang Lim Reuters Updated 2:26 AM ET December 30, 1999
http://news.excite.com/news/r/991230/02/international-millennium-china
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=121870
BEIJING (Reuters) - Executives from China's main airline will pilot a passenger plane on New Year's Eve to underscore government confidence the world's most populous nation has largely beaten the Y2K computer bug.
China says there is no chance of it producing any apocalyptic nightmare of a nuclear power station running wild, and the top technology officer of the U.S. CIA says it does not see problems that might cause a Chinese nuclear missile to go berserk.
But some analysts -- including the Central Intelligence Agency man -- put China among the countries most vulnerable to Y2K troubles because of its late arrival at the battle against the bug and heavy use of pirated software.
They say lights could go out, phones go dead and banks could falter over the Y2K bug, a product of old programming which might cause some computers to mistake 2000 for 1900, possibly leading to errors or system failures.
Most of China will be celebrating the dawn of a new era. Millions are expected to watch a live television broadcast of President Jiang Zemin lighting an eternal flame at the Century Monument -- Beijing's answer to London's Millennium Dome.
Wang Lian and Zhang Fugui, the top executives at flag carrier Air China, will pilot a flight from Beijing to the southern boomtown of Shenzhen spanning midnight on December 31 as part of efforts to dispel all concerns of Y2K complications.
Li Zhongming, president of China Eastern Airlines, will also make a trans-millennium flight from Shanghai to Beijing.
DOUBLE INSURANCE COVERAGE
China Eastern has taken out a 230 million yuan ($27.8 million) policy covering the round trip flight which will straddle the millennium transition in local time and GMT.
China Life Insurance Co will underwrite the policy, which gives 400,000 yuan in coverage to each passenger and crew member aboard the millennium flights, double the normal coverage.
The chief executive of China Southern Airlines, the nation's largest, will also be in the air on December 31.
Ports will be closed to foreign shipping. The busy crossing point to Hong Kong will shut overnight.
Chinese Y2K tsar Zhang Qi, who declared this month that the country was "basically ready" for Y2K, commended the airline executives.
"Their willingness to fly indicates their strong confidence they have solved the problem," Zhang said.
Little more than a year ago, China was alarming foreign experts who saw widespread ignorance of the Y2K problem. But it has hustled to overcome a late start.
U.S. CIA PREDICTS PLETHORA OF PROBLEMS
As recently as October, however, Lawrence Gershwin, the officer in charge of science and technology at the CIA, still painted a grim picture.
"Beijing will fail to solve many of its Y2K problems in the limited time remaining, and will probably experience failures in key sectors such as telecommunications, electric power and banking," Gershwin told Congress.
China disputes this. The State Power Corp of China says power supplies will be unaffected. China Telecom says it is ready. So do the banks.
But Gershwin did say doomsday scenarios were unlikely.
"We do not see a problem in terms of Russian or Chinese missiles automatically being launched, or nuclear weapons going off, because of computer problems arising from Y2K failures."
Gershwin had told the U.S. Senate in March that China's problems were exacerbated by the fact that more than 90 percent of the software used in China is pirated, including most of that used in government offices and state-owned enterprises.
However, U.S. high technology consultancy IDC was more upbeat. It said last month that despite China's relative lack of preparedness, disruption was likely to be minimal.
"Sure, China has a miserable record of Y2K remediation -- yet in a country with little in the way of dependable infrastructure, a little computer downtime will have little impact," IDC said.
----------- japan
Braced for worst-case scenario, Japanese leader heads to bunker
Wsshington Times December 30, 1999 By Edward Neilan
http://208.246.212.80/world/news1-19991230.htm
Cynics are calling it a case of "classic overkill," but Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi is taking no chances when Tokyo becomes the first of the world's megacities to tackle the year-2000 computer glitch.
TOKYO - Cynics are calling it a case of "classic overkill," but Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi is taking no chances when Tokyo becomes the first of the world's megacities to tackle the year-2000 computer glitch.
Unlike President Clinton, who plans to welcome the New Year by setting the Washington Monument ablaze with pyrotechnics, Mr. Obuchi will hunker down in a command bunker at his residence in the capital.
Tokyo, the world's biggest city with about 27 million people, will face the year-2000 computer bug 14 hours ahead of Washington and New York.
"The day when Tokyo saves the world," is how one commentator describes it.
"If anything does happen," said Toshiaki Kanda, 38, a Kobe-based video journalist and former wine maker, "the rest of the world will want to know the degree of damage in Japan and act consequently to prevent it."
The glitch, commonly known as "Y2K," refers to the risk that computer systems will mistake the year 2000 for 1900 and then crash or churn out erroneous data that could cripple supplies of food, water, power, cash, credit and other daily necessities.
In recent days, a rash of small fires deliberately set on commuter trains and exploding bombs in train-station lockers have shifted worries away from computer-generated mischief to fears of holiday terrorism.
To respond to any crisis, as many as 50 people will be working side by side with Mr. Obuchi when the clock strikes midnight, one official told the Agence France-Presse news service.
More than 1 million Japanese workers, including 10,000 central government officials, and 106,000 police officers will be on duty.
At 1 a.m. New Year's morning, Mr. Obuchi plans to emerge from the bunker and step before a wall of reporters and television cameras to report on the first hour of battle.
"We're all going to look pretty silly come Jan. 1 [if] nothing has happened," said John Bosnitch, a Canadian-born desk editor at the English-language Nikkei Weekly newspaper.
"Classic overkill," said Fred Worthy, a computer software technician from Los Angeles who has been working in Japan for five years.
"The main bottleneck will come from people making unnecessary calls to find out if everything is OK," Mr. Worthy said. "Actually, I expect outages from Y2K will be less than glitches on a normal working day in heavily wired Tokyo."
Following the Japanese tradition of organizing an association to combat every problem, Mr. Kanda has formed a voluntary organization called "Y2K-TOKYO."
The group will broadcast live on the Internet at www.y2k-tokyo.org.
Programming, consisting of news about what's gone right or wrong worldwide, will begin Dec. 31 at 7 p.m. Japan time (5 a.m. Dec. 31 in Washington).
Japan's government has already warned people to stock up on food, water and kerosene, the fuel commonly used in home heaters.
None of the preparations should be particularly burdensome. The Japanese typically greet the New Year by stocking up since most of the country typically shuts down from Jan. 1 to 3 for one of the world's more festive New Year's holidays.
As an added precaution, the government says it will temporarily abandon the use of e-mail in communicating among key ministries, relying instead on old-fashioned fax machines and telephones.
The government had considered e-mail as a means to speed up the circulation of damage reports. But recent tests by local governments showed that bureaucrats had difficulties using e-mail.
Tokyo will be the world's first city with a population of more than 10 million to welcome the year 2000.
A private organization called JHelp says it will provide information in English for the expatriate community using information from CNN, the BBC and NHK, which is Japan's national broadcasting service.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it will provide telephone, fax and Internet information services in English as well as Korean, Portuguese (for Japanese-Brazilian workers), and Mandarin Chinese.
Kaoru Nakamura, head of the millennium-bug task force office at the Cabinet Councilors' Office on Internal Affairs, said the first reports would likely deal with major power outages and the condition of railways, telecommunications and other infrastructure.
He said he intends to use a Web site at the prime minister's residence (www.kantei.go.jp) to post detailed reports.
Meanwhile, the government, with its notoriously bad record of crisis management, is calling on the public to remain calm.
Few have forgotten that former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama first heard of the devastating 1995 Kobe earthquake by listening to news on a local radio station.
---------- panama
US Sees Less Need for Panama Forces
By The Associated Press December 30, 1999 Filed at 8:11 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Leaving-the-Canal.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991230/aponline011358_000.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The turnover of the Panama Canal to Panama on New Year's Eve means more than the end of American control of the 50-mile waterway. It marks the loss of a U.S. military foothold in Central America.
For some, the transfer raises questions about whether U.S. national security will be weakened.
The answer, in the view of many, is no. Panama no longer is the strategic prize it was during much of the 20th century, and the U.S. armed forces have made alternative arrangements to keep a credible presence in the region.
Some people, most notably those who have argued against the canal handover since President Carter signed the Panama Canal Treaties in 1977, disagree. They believe the loss of the canal is a blow to U.S. influence in the region and could create a security vacuum that Colombia's drug lords will try to exploit.
Retired Adm. Thomas Moorer, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress earlier this month that he believes China will use its commercial links to the canal to sneak nuclear missiles into the area.
Such fears are dismissed by Joseph W. Cornelison, deputy administrator of the Panama Canal Commission, the canal operator whose duties will cease on Friday. He told the Senate Armed Service Committee in October, ``I think I could detect a threat if it were in the making right in front of my eyes.''
Chinese, U.S. and Panamanian officials also dismiss any notion that China wants to control the canal. Richard H. Shultz, a national security expert at Tufts University, said he sees little reason for worry about the departure of U.S. forces for that or any other reason.
``With the Cold War over and the changing security arrangements we have in Latin America, I don't know what having forces in Panama does for us that we couldn't do with forces based in the United States,'' said Shultz, who is director of international security studies at Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
The first U.S. soldiers permanently assigned to Panama came to guard construction of the canal, which opened in 1914.
The U.S. troop number peaked at about 65,000 during World War II, when the canal served as an important transit point for Navy ships. Since the mid-1990s, fewer than 10,000 troops have been based there.
Today's aircraft carriers are too big to fit through the canal, and the Navy makes almost no use of it in executing overseas missions.
Panama's Quarry Heights had been headquarters of U.S. Southern Command, the warfighting command with responsibility for Central and South America until 1998, when it was moved to Miami.
The last U.S. soldiers departed Panama earlier this month with the handover of the Corozal military installation to Panama, although a small number will remain as part of the U.S. Embassy's military assistance team, a normal arrangement.
Twice -- in 1979 and 1991 -- the Congress stated that it would be in the United States' interests to retain a military presence in Panama after 1999 and urged the president to negotiate with the Panamanian government over a possible arrangement. Negotiations to maintain an anti-drug base in Panama broke off earlier this year.
Defense Secretary William Cohen has sought to dispel fears, referring to one of the Panama Canal treaties which states that if canal operations are jeopardized the United States and Panama each independently has the right to use military force to reopen the canal or restore its operations.
Raul Duany, a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, said Marine Corps Gen. Charles Wilhelm, commander in chief of Southern Command, believes the loss of Panama bases will not harm U.S. national security.
``We knew 22 years ago that we had to get out of Panama,'' Duany said. ``It was a matter of finding the best alternative locations. We don't think it has affected our operations.''
The 24th Wing, which had been based at Howard Air Force Base on the Pacific side of the isthmus, was inactivated last May. The counterdrug operations that the 24th Wing had conducted will be handled instead by U.S. Air Force aircraft using what the Pentagon calls ``forward operating locations'' at two airfields on Curacao and Aruba in the Netherlands Antilles north of Venezuela and one in Manta, Ecuador.
Wilhelm has called Howard the most valued U.S. facility in Panama, but he also told Congress in September that the alternative of using airfields in the Netherlands Antilles and Ecuador will provide ``far better and more efficient coverage'' of the areas of greatest concern for the counterdrug effort.
The Army component of U.S. Southern Command has moved from Fort Clayton in Panama to Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, and reduced its numbers from about 3,800 people to 1,380, spokesman Duany said. When Fort Sherman, on the Atlantic side of Panama, closed it meant the loss of the Army's jungle warfare training center, but Duany said the Army believes its troops can get the jungle training they need elsewhere.
----------- russia
Ex-Russian Officer Acquitted of Spying
By David Hoffman Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, December 30, 1999; Page A27
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/30/123l-123099-idx.html
MOSCOW, Dec. 29-Alexander Nikitin, a retired Russian naval captain, was acquitted today by a St. Petersburg court of espionage charges brought because he disclosed nuclear safety hazards aboard Russian submarines to a Norwegian environmental group.
The decision, nearly four years after Nikitin was arrested and after a second trial, was hailed as a major victory for environmentalists here, who have been under intense pressure from Russian security services not to probe the military's handling of nuclear materials.
The Nikitin case had attracted widespread attention in part because it centered on the dangers of one of the world's most concentrated zones of radioactive material, the waste and spent fuel from Russia's Northern Fleet submarines. Nikitin maintained that he had not committed a crime by bringing the dangers to public attention.
Nikitin co-authored two chapters of a 1995 report by the Norwegian environmental group Bellona that attempted to point to the dangers of radioactive waste from the fleet.
Nikitin's case also drew attention because he was accused under secret military orders that were adopted only after his arrest. Today's verdict appeared to strike down those orders; Judge Sergei Golets said their use was "a direct violation of the constitution."
"We are discussing the period August to September 1995," he said. "Later it became possible to apply new legislative acts, but not at that time."
The St. Petersburg prosecutor's office said it would appeal. However, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet KGB that investigated Nikitin, said the decision "is a ruling that we regard as having been reached on the basis of the law."
Nikitin was tried in the same court last year, but the case was returned to investigating authorities because the judge said the indictment was too vague. The security service issued a new indictment--the eighth in the case--but it was also classified as secret.
Today, Golets threw out the charges, saying they did not amount to a crime, and lifted an order that restricted Nikitin's travel outside of St. Petersburg.
"Despite what happened, what is happening and what may yet happen," Nikitin said in closing remarks to the judge, "I do not regret anything. I do not doubt even for a minute that it was the right choice."
Nikitin said that information about 30-year-old nuclear accidents or aging reactors could not have harmed Russia's defense capabilities, and that making the information public could help prevent accidents.
After Nikitin was arrested, the security services began investigating other people who had disclosed information about the navy's handling of nuclear waste. Grigory Pasko, a military journalist in the Far East port of Vladivostok, was sentenced in July to three years in prison for passing details of nuclear waste dumping to Japanese television, but the sentence was lifted immediately.
-----------
Russian Nuclear Whistleblower Wins Victory for Free Speech
By CELESTINE BOHLEN New York Times December 30, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/123099russia-trial.html
Issue in Depth
Russia's Turmoil
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/russia-index.html
MOSCOW, Dec. 29 -- In a ruling hailed as a rare victory for the rule of law, a St. Petersburg judge today acquitted a former naval captain, Aleksandr Nikitin, of charges that he had leaked state secrets about nuclear pollution to a Norwegian environmental organization.
Mr. Nikitin's arrest in 1996, followed by a heavy-handed investigation by security services into his report on nuclear contamination by the Russian Navy, had been seen as a chilling example of the limits of freedom in Russia's new democracy.
Today, applause broke out in a municipal courtroom in St. Petersburg as Mr. Nikitin's supporters greeted the unexpected acquittal verdict. "This is very good news for Russia," said Mr. Nikitin, who spent nine months in jail after his arrest and was subsequently barred from leaving the country.
Judge Sergei Golets found that the accusations brought against Mr. Nikitin were unconstitutional because they were based on secret decrees from the Defense Ministry which Mr. Nikitin could not have known.
"The use of these orders is a direct violation of the Constitution of the Russia Federation," Judge Golets said. He also said the federal case ran counter to the European convention on human rights, to which Russia is a signatory.
The Nikitin case has been raised by international human rights groups and Western governments as a test of Russia's commitment to free speech, and to a fair trial for those who run afoul of the Federal Security Service, the domestic intelligence service that is heir to the Soviet-era K.G.B.
"We are thrilled that he was acquitted but distressed that it took nearly four years for the Russian criminal justice system to reach an obvious conclusion," said Rachel Denber, a deputy director of Human Rights Watch.
The Federal Security Service had accused Mr. Nikitin of divulging state secrets -- a charge tantamount to treason -- in his report on nuclear submarine accidents for Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group. During the investigation, security agents raided Bellona's offices in the North Sea Port of Murmansk, and confiscated 1,500 copies of the Bellona report, which were labeled forbidden literature.
Mr. Nikitin, who had worked for 11 years as an engineer on Soviet nuclear submarines and later as a nuclear inspector for the Defense Ministry, has argued that all the material in his report was based on unclassified information that had already been published in the Russian press.
The case highlighted Russian sensitivity to the environmental threat posed by the Northern Fleet's careless handling of nuclear material. Norway, which lies on the other side of Russia's northwestern borders, has been particularly sensitive to reports of accidents on Russian nuclear submarines, overburdened radioactive storage sites and ocean dumping of nuclear waste.
In a similar case, a court in the far-eastern city of Vladivostok last July dropped treason charges against Grigory Pasko, a Russian military journalist, who had also written on nuclear dumping by the Russian Navy. Mr. Pasko was convicted of a lesser charge of violating rules for military journalists, but was given amnesty by the Vladivostok court.
Although both cases ended in a legal defeat for the Security Service, their determination may have already had the intended effect of discouraging whistle-blowers with access to information that could seen as damaging to the government.
Mr. Nikitin's ordeal began when he was roused from sleep in his St. Petersburg apartment by security agents who ordered him to come with them for an interrogation. He was put in prison, his telephone was cut off, and he had to appeal to Russia's Constitutional Court for the right to his own lawyer, after having refused one chosen for him by the security service.
After he was freed, Mr. Nikitin accused the security services of harassment. His wife and child now live in Canada. In the meantime, his case was kicked around the Russian court system. In a ruling earlier this year, the Russian Supreme Court refused to drop the treason charges against him.
Supporters said then that the Russian government seemed to be dragging the case out in order to avoid embarrassment for the powerful security services. Their case rested on two secret decrees issued by the Defense Ministry, which had never been published and were not made available to the defense.
"The stakes were set very high," said Ms. Denber, "There was a lot of foot-dragging, ordering up new investigations, appointing new prosecutors as a way to give the FSB a face saving way out of a mess."
The prosecution can appeal the St. Petersburg verdict, but many observers expect that the Federal Security Service will drop the case.
---
U.S. Govt. Employees Leave Russia
By Brigitte Greenberg Associated Press Writer, Dec. 30, 1999; 11:52 a.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991230/aponline115248_000.htm
WASHINGTON -- A total of 352 U.S. employees and dependents have left Russia and three other countries in a Y2K precautionary move, the State Department said today.
Of these, 95 are nonessential U.S. employees and 257 are dependents. In all, 2,254 could have chosen to leave. All were free to go home with U.S.-paid transportation.
In the United States, hundreds of federal emergency officials have fanned out across the country and will await the stroke of midnight in each U.S. time zone Friday with an eye toward Y2K disaster.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has established 10 regional centers to monitor potential catastrophes in the United States and its territories.
Beginning today, FEMA is putting its emergency support team in full gear around the clock through Sunday. More than 800 personnel will be working through the weekend.
In Moscow, 1,155 embassy employees and dependents were eligible to take the offer to leave, and 254 did, 74 of them employees at the U.S. Embassy and 180 dependents, said State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker.
The offer was made by the State Department on Oct. 29 and has no connection to concern about terrorism, Reeker said. It is a precaution in the highly unlikely event heat and other services fail in the onset of the new millennium, he said.
Besides Russia, and the U.S. Embassy and consulates, nonessential employees and dependents were eligible to leave at government expense in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.
In Washington, the Federal Emergency Management Agency can draw on resources from as many as 26 federal agencies and the Red Cross if Y2K emergencies arise.
"FEMA is confident that nothing serious will happen, but we are prepared to respond just like we would for any other natural disaster or any other emergency situation," said Robert Adamcik, associate director for FEMA response and recovery.
Preparing for 18 months, the agency's officials have rehearsed a multitude of scenarios, including explosions, power outages and nuclear disaster.
FEMA officials said they will constantly gather information from state and local governments throughout the weekend, monitoring them with an automated system that assigns a green light to communities that are OK, a yellow light to those where an emergency is suspected but information is incomplete, and a red light for a confirmed disaster.
FEMA would be called in only after a state's governor asked President Clinton to declare a federal disaster area.
"Some of the things that we can provide under the plan range from mass care that Red Cross can provide, food through the Department of Agriculture, transportation, communications, search and rescue or emergency medical and pharmaceuticals, should those be needed by state and local government," said Bruce Baughman, chief of operations for FEMA response and recovery.
The Health and Human Services Department, Centers for Disease Control and Defense Department have gas masks and antidotes in the event of chemical or biological terrorism, FEMA spokesman Marc Wolfson said.
Officials emphasized that they had not received any specific threats, but extra security measures were introduced at federal buildings across the country this week, said Bob Dunfey, the regional administrator of the General Services Administration in New England.
At the federal courthouse in Boston, visitors and courthouse employees were asked to produce photo identification to enter the building.
In Scranton, Pa., officials told visitors to the federal courthouse to park in nearby lots rather than on the street right outside, allowing the building to have a buffer, said Dave Branham, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals.
Even if a significant disaster arises that is not related to Y2K, such as an unexpected weather phenomenon, FEMA would respond, Adamcik said. However, certain emergencies - cyber terrorism, local civil disturbances, a national security emergency or long-term economic recovery - would fall under the purview of other agencies.
President Clinton's top Y2K expert, John Koskinen, said stores appear to be fully supplied if people wish to stock up on water or other provisions for parties or a long midwinter weekend.
---
Confident Russia Says Space Stations Y2K-Proof
Space.com posted: 09:41 am EST 30 December 1999 By Martin Nesirsky
http://www.space.com/space/spacestation/russia_y2k_991230_wg.html
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=121950
MOSCOW, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Russia kept up its flow of positive Y2K vibes on Thursday, saying everything from the Mir space station to the country's lifeline railway network would be immune to the millennium computer bug.
Western nations say Russia, home to nine Soviet-era atomic power plants and thousands of nuclear missiles, is one of those most at risk when January 1, 2000 arrives. A glitch means some computers may read 2000 as 1900 and crash or malfunction.
On Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who heads Russia's Y2K task force, said he was certain things would go smoothly and the Strategic Rocket Forces reiterated all their missiles would stay put when midnight strikes.
Other Russian officials gave similarly upbeat reports on Thursday as crunch time neared in the world's largest country.
"The arrival of the New Year will not affect computers at Mission Control."
Mikhail Pronin, chief engineer
Midnight strikes first in Russia's Far East on the international dateline opposite Alaska and then sweeps across the country's 11 time zones.
"The arrival of the New Year will not affect computers at Mission Control,'' Mikhail Pronin, chief engineer at Russia's space headquarters near Moscow, told Itar-Tass news agency. "We don't expect anything to happen because of the 2000 problem.''
Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for the Russian Space Agency, told Tass the Mir orbital station had been equipped with new computers that outperformed even those at Mission Control.
The 13-year-old station has been crewless since two Russians and a Frenchman returned to earth in August. A lack of funds means Russia is unlikely to be able to extend Mir's life.
Russia is helping to establish an International Space Station, the first modules of which are already in orbit. Gorbunov said this station was also Y2K-proof, not least because it was kitted out with modern Western computer systems.
Back on earth, Russian railway officials said they were confident their network, second only to the U.S. rail system in length, would work smoothly. But staff have been trained how to work without computers if there is a problem.
Air officials said they were fully prepared, and so did FAPSI, the government's secret communications agency.
The United States and Britain, among others, place Russia near the top of their Y2K worry list. Several countries have withdrawn non-essential diplomatic staff from Moscow.
Russian officials say they may have started late and with little money but they do not envisage major problems.
Many Russians are unfazed by the Y2K problem and are much more concerned with preparations to celebrate the New Year, traditionally the most important holiday in Russia's calendar.
Two-thirds of the 667 people who telephoned Ekho Moskvy radio for a poll said they did not think Y2K would affect them.
Russian military alert but relaxed over Y2K
Russia's navy said its nuclear submarines and conventional fleet were safe.
"The multi-layered control system completely rules out the possibility of a computer fault causing the unsanctioned use of nuclear weapons by combat vessels,'' Vice-Admiral Mikhail Barskov, the navy's Y2K chief, told RIA news agency.
The Strategic Rocket Forces say they have completed checks on automatic systems governing land-based nuclear rockets.
As an extra safeguard, Russian specialists are in the United States at a command center in Colorado, and began work on Tuesday with U.S. experts to watch for any false warnings of missile attacks sparked by the millennium computer bug.
They will keep a joint watch over Russia's 2,000 nuclear-tipped missiles and 2,440 U.S. rockets for three weeks.
Russia's electricity firm RAO UES said people should not try to save energy on New Year's night because that could give officials the wrong impression about generating needs.
"UES earnestly asked citizens not to overload their minds with global problems and to direct their energies to greeting the New Year happily,'' Tass said.
---
Russia Tells People to Relax Over Y2K
Reuters December 30, 1999 Filed at 10:29 a.m. ET By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-yk-russia.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia kept up its flow of positive Y2K vibes Thursday, saying everything from the Mir space station to the country's lifeline railway network would be immune to the millennium computer bug.
Western nations say Russia, home to nine Soviet-era atomic power plants and thousands of nuclear missiles, is one of those most at risk when January 1, 2000 arrives. A glitch means some computers may read 2000 as 1900 and crash or malfunction.
Russian electricity firm RAO UES said people should not try to save energy as a Y2K precaution because it could give the wrong impression about generating needs.
``UES earnestly asked citizens not to overload their minds with global problems and to direct their energies to greeting the New Year happily,'' Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who heads Russia's Y2K task force, said he was sure all would go smoothly.
Other officials gave similarly upbeat reports Thursday as crunch time neared in the world's largest country. Midnight strikes first in Russia's Far East on the international dateline opposite Alaska and then sweeps across 11 time zones.
A Soviet-era atomic power plant in Chukotka region will be among the first to enter the New Year at 1200 GMT Friday.
A U.S. embassy spokeswoman told Reuters that Russian Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov and U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson would speak by video link soon after that. A team of three U.S. experts is in town to work with Russian officials.
SPACE STATIONS ARE Y2K-PROOF, RUSSIA SAYS
The United States has also been working with Russia on a new International Space Station. The first modules are in orbit.
Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for the Russian Space Agency, told Tass the station was Y2K-proof. He said Russia's Mir orbital station had been equipped with new computers.
The 13-year-old station has been mothballed and crewless since two Russians and a Frenchman returned in August. A lack of funds means Russia is unlikely to be able to extend Mir's life.
``We don't expect anything to happen because of the 2000 problem,'' said Mikhail Pronin, Mission Control's chief engineer.
Railway officials said they were confident their network, second only to the U.S. system in length, would work smoothly.
``We're not expecting problems, but we have got information there might be problems with electricity supply in one region,'' Railways Ministry spokesman Valery Panferov told Reuters. He declined to say which of Russia's 89 regions was involved.
Staff have been trained to work without computers. Electricity officials do not anticipate major outages.
The United States and Britain, among others, place Russia near the top of their Y2K worry list. Several countries have withdrawn non-essential diplomatic staff from Moscow.
Russian officials say they may have started late and with little money but they do not envisage major problems.
Many Russians are unfazed by Y2K and are more concerned with preparations to celebrate the New Year, traditionally the most important holiday in Russia's calendar.
RUSSIAN MILITARY ALERT, BUT RELAXED OVER Y2K
The navy said nuclear submarines and surface ships were safe. Vice-Admiral Mikhail Barskov, the navy's Y2K chief, told RIA news agency: ``The multi-layered control system completely rules out the possibility of a computer fault causing the unsanctioned use of nuclear weapons by combat vessels.''
The Strategic Rocket Forces say they have completed checks on automatic systems governing land-based nuclear rockets.
As an extra measure, Russian specialists are working with U.S. experts in Colorado to watch for false warnings of attacks. They will keep a joint watch over Russia's 2,000 nuclear-tipped missiles and 2,440 U.S. rockets for three weeks.
The U.S. embassy spokeswoman said U.S. technicians were in Moscow to ensure ``hotline'' links to Washington worked. Some lines date back to the Cold War and had to be upgraded.
The man in charge of Russia's missiles over New Year told the newspaper Trud that people should not be worried.
``Even if there was a computer fault, nuclear missiles still would not launch,'' said Major-General Vitaly Denisyuk, who will meet his 40th New Year in a command bunker. ``I'll disclose what was a secret until recently...we've never entrusted this task to computers, however sophisticated. It's all done by people.''
---
Y2K missile attack won't occur, Russian vows
Colonel is part of delegation in Colorado Springs
to monitor nuclear arsenals on eve of year
By Dick Foster Denver Rocky Mountain News Southern Bureau 12/30/99
http://insidedenver.com/news/1230russ2.shtml
COLORADO SPRINGS -- A Russian Air Force colonel gave assurances Wednesday that his country's nuclear arsenal will not be launched by accident when the 1900s come to an end this weekend.
"All of our warning systems and strategic missile systems are ready to meet the Y2K problem," said Col. Sergey Kaplin through a translator during a media session Wednesday at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.
"We have done many researches, and we are really sure, believe us, that no problems will occur," Kaplin said.
Whether the Russian nuclear missiles remain stable will be answered early New Year's Eve because the millennium date change will begin on the other side of the world, Air Force Lt. Col. Jon Wicklund said. New Year's Day 2000 will come in Russia's easternmost missile ranges in eastern Siberia about 9 a.m. Mountain time Friday.
Kaplin is part of a Russian military delegation that will join U.S. Air Force officers at Peterson Air Force Base to monitor Russian and U.S. missile operations through the turn of the millennium.
The Year 2000 Strategic Stability Center is scheduled to begin operations at 8 a.m. today and continue round-the-clock monitoring through mid-January.
Five crews, each with two U.S. and two Russian operators, and a colonel from each country, will take shifts monitoring missile operations for the two-week period.
The information will be fed to the center from NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain operations center, which is linked to U.S. satellites and ground-based surveillance systems monitoring missile launches worldwide.
U.S. Air Force officers supported Kaplin's assurances, saying neither Russian nor American missiles can be launched simply because of a computer glitch. Each system requires manual operation by military personnel at the missile sites.
"For our military and for the Russian military, there's a man in the loop for all launches of strategic nuclear weapons," said Wicklund, operations director for the stability center.
"A computer glitch or a computer problem, will never in and of itself, launch a missile," Wicklund said.
In Russia, the commander of strategic rocket forces, Col. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, has invited Western journalists into some Russian control centers to witness the rollover into the new millennium, Wicklund said.
To assure stability during the New Year's time period, no country has scheduled space launches of any kind for Dec. 31 and Jan. 1, Wicklund said.
December 30, 1999
----------- ukraine
Chernobyl Reactor May Be Shut Down
WORLD IN BRIEF Compiled from news services Thursday, December 30, 1999; Page A26
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/30/116l-123099-idx.html
KIEV, Ukraine--Financial constraints could force Ukraine to shut down the only operational reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant next year even if the government wants to keep it running, a top nuclear official said.
Next year's scheduled repairs to reactor No. 3 at Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear accident, will cost some $100 million, said Viktor Stovbun, a high-level official at the Energoatom state nuclear power company, adding that Energoatom does not have the resources to finance the repairs and that the reactor is losing money because previous repairs have closed it for long periods.
----------- us nuc waste
Concerned about toxic emissions
Thursday, December 30, 1999 Letters to the Editor
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/123099/opE_1230990049.html
To The Oak Ridger:
I worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory back in the latter '80s, as the TSCA incinerator was being designed and problems with HF releases from K-25 and Y-12 were causing health concerns.
ORNL was so concerned they sent a team of white coat lab persons into the communities around K-25 to collect samples of milk, well water, and produce. Some say these HF concerns that I raised caused the K-25 plant to be shut down just after that.
The basic truth on what makes persons sick at the Oak Ridge plants has a lot to do with a poison gas called hydrogen fluoride or HF. HF is used in the "green salt" operations at Y-12, where many are so sick that the plants benefits workers call the area "death row."
Same problem at K-25 where leaky buildings and open processes allow trapped UF-6 to react with moisture and form HF gas that is in high concentrations in the buildings, since they were shut down and the large air flows turned off.
The problems with the design of the TSCA incinerator were centered mostly on burning the soluble uranium fluorides and releasing HF and other toxic fluorides into the air.
This was helped by adding chemical catalysts, like methyl cyanide, that modify the fluoride toxic products by creating less toxic methyl fluoride products.
TSCA operates no different than a catalytic converter on a car and the health problems from K-25 are not the incinerator, but connected to the releases of HF from the careless dismantlement work.
The Oak Ridge managers planned to hide these problems by using distractions and misinformation like the missing area in the aerial survey near the Scarboro community. This pulled attention to uranium dusts and off the high HF releases from the Y-12 Plant that can easily travel over the ridge and damage children's lungs and get into the food chain uptake of gardens.
TSCA concerns were even played up to pull the public attention off the extreme chemical toxic hazards of the plants tear down.
Similarly, corrupt managers and many so-called activists that help them planned to play up toxic metals and radiations that would never prove to be the real problem.
As part of this, an adviser to Richardson, dump Pu and Np documents into the Washington Post articles on Paducah illnesses and totally ignore the HF exposures that are well established to be a 1,000 times worse than the uranium in the body.
The bulk of the sick worker problems indicate exposures to fluorides or HF. The lung damages and the high blood calcium are prime indicators of HF exposures.
The arthritis, sore joints, thinking impairment, rashes, and fatigue are also prime indicators of increasing amounts of insoluble calcium fluoride rat poison in the body. HF calcium scavenges and will impact nerve myelin and also kill off mitochondria in cells and lead to heart spasms and attacks.
Toxic fluorine is the most volatile, toxic, and abundant toxin in Oak Ridge. Doctors that failed to diagnose persons affected from the above effects or have them properly treated have committed malpractice.
Workers and area residents deserve a break from the misleading games played in Oak Ridge to hide the massive mistakes of the plants managers and scientists. More information is on the Internet at: http://members.aol.com/doewatch.
Happy holidays.
Jim Phelps 1600 Buttercup Circle Knoxville
-------
Microbe trap -
ENN News Bytes Thursday, December 30, 1999
http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/1999/12/123099/newsbytes.asp
Microbes living underground at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory [http://www.inel.gov/cgi-bin/newsdesk.cgi?a=138&t=template.html] may help researchers trap a radioactive contaminant found in the groundwater beneath the lab. The microbes break down urea through a process called urea hydrolysis, according to researchers from INEEL, Idaho State University and the University of Toronto. The microbes may be able to change the chemistry of the groundwater so that calcite, a mineral found naturally in the rock through which the groundwater flows, will accumulate faster than normal. The growing calcite deposits trap radioactive strontium-90 in their crystal structures. Strontium-90 is a toxic, radioactive substance produced in nuclear reactors. For more information, contact Mary Beckman at (208)526-0061, email: beckmt@inel.gov.
-- Related:
A Little Help from Below: Naturally Occurring Microbes Ready to Lend a Hand Trapping Radioactivity Underground
Decmeber 15, 1999
http://www.inel.gov/cgi-bin/newsdesk.cgi?a=138&t=template.html
Microbes living underground at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory can do a little chemistry, which means they may be able to help researchers trap a radioactive contaminant found in the groundwater beneath the lab.
Microbes isolated from groundwater drawn at the lab site break down the compound urea through a process called urea hydrolysis, researchers from INEEL, Idaho State University, and the University of Toronto reported today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. The INEEL specializes in subsurface science as part of its environmental mission.
That means the naturally occurring microbes may be able to change the chemistry of the groundwater so calcite, a mineral found naturally in the rock the water flows through, will accumulate faster than normal. The growing calcite deposits will trap radioactive strontium-90 in their crystal structures.
Researchers hope to inject urea into a contaminated area and let the native microorganisms go to work breaking it down. The resulting buildup of calcite should keep the strontium-90 from spreading. The buildup will remain limited to the area around the injection well and will not interfere with groundwater flow.
"If we can trap strontium-90 in the subsurface, it's not going to keep moving with the groundwater," said INEEL microbiologist Yoshiko Fujita, who reported the results in the Hydrology: Environmental Geochemistry poster session. "We want to stop it in place."
Trapping strontium-90 underground should be cheaper and safer than extracting it, said INEEL geochemist Bob Smith who leads the project. "If you were to do some sort of treatment where you brought it to the surface, you'd have to expose workers, you'd have to ship it, you'd have to pack it," he said.
The researchers hope to contain the contaminant until it has decayed away. Strontium-90 decays with a half-life of 29 years. That means a sample containing strontium-90 will be only half as radioactive after 29 years, only one-quarter as radioactive after 58 years, and so on. After 300 years, 99.9 percent of the radioactivity will have disappeared.
Strontium-90 is a toxic, radioactive substance produced in nuclear reactors. In past decades, some waste-disposal methods have left pockets of low-level radioactive contamination in and above the groundwater at INEEL and other DOE sites.
Proving that naturally occurring microbes break down urea and promote the formation of calcite is the first step in a 3-year, $900,000 DOE-funded project to develop the technique for trapping strontium and other metals in calcite deposits in arid regions of the western United States.
The groundwater in arid regions is often saturated with calcium carbonate. Since the water cannot hold any more of the substance, additional calcium carbonate gradually drops out of solution and forms calcite in the surrounding rock in the same way deposits build up in the pipes of houses with hard water.
Microbes that break down urea should increase the rate at which calcite builds up. When urea is hydrolyzed, the groundwater will become less acidic and more basic, which will reduce the amount of calcium carbonate the water can hold. More calcium carbonate will then precipitate out as calcite.
Growing calcite deposits should draw strontium and other metals out of the groundwater because strontium atoms and other contaminants can replace calcium atoms in the mineral's crystal structure.
The existence of the urea-hydrolyzing microbes suggests nature is willing to help the researchers with their plan. "For every sample of groundwater we tested, there was some hydrolysis of urea," Fujita said. "I think that's important because it shows this is a very common activity. If you rely on a reaction that is rare, your chances of going out in the field and having the method work are slim."
When grown in a medium rich in both urea and calcium carbonate, the isolated microbes precipitate calcite rapidly as they multiply, said microbial geochemist F. Grant Ferris of the University of Toronto. "In our medium, all of the microbes started the precipitation within the first half-hour of growth," he said.
Electron microscope images of the precipitated calcite suggest the mineral grows in globules around the microbes themselves. By serving as seeds for crystal growth, the microbes might further accelerate the rate at which calcite forms.
The researchers hope to begin field tests of the technique in two years. Before then, they must determine the rate at which calcite forms when the microbes are present, whether they should supply the microbes food as well as urea, and whether the precipitation of calcite will be as efficient if the concentrations of calcium carbonate and strontium are reduced from the artificially high levels the researchers have used in the laboratory so far.
The INEEL is managed and operated by Bechtel BWXT, Idaho, LLC (BBWI) for the U.S. Department of Energy.
-INEEL-
Media contacts: Adrian Cho, 208-526-3176, choha@inel.gov, Mary Beckman, 208-526-0061, beckmt@inel.gov Teri Ehresman, 208-526-7785, ehr@inel.gov
99-109
Visit our Web site at http://www.inel.gov
---
National Research Council Releases Report on INEEL High-Level Waste
December 16, 1999 DOE News Release
http://www.inel.gov/cgi-bin/newsdesk.cgi?a=141&t=template.html
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Report Completes Review Requested by Energy Department
The National Research Council Board of Radioactive Waste Management (NRC) today released a report on its study of the options for treating high-level radioactive waste stored at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). The report was commissioned by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 1998 and completes an NRC review of the proposed technologies for treating 4,200 cubic meters of solid mixed high-level waste (HLW) calcine and 1.4 million gallons of liquid mixed transuranic waste (also known as sodium-bearing waste or SBW) at INEEL site.
The department, with the cooperation of the state of Idaho, is preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) analyzing various alternatives for treating INEEL wastes and closing related facilities. The NRC study provides an independent assessment of the proposed treatment technologies under consideration by the department. The draft EIS is scheduled for release in mid-January 2000 for a 60-day public comment period. DOE has no preferred treatment or closure alternative at this time.
Key recommendations in the NRC report include:
o Improve characterization of the chemical, physical and radiological properties for both the high-level waste calcine and the liquid sodium-bearing waste before selection of the preferred treatment alternative(s).
o Solidify sodium-bearing waste as soon as practicable, using a techology other than calcination.
o Maintain interim storage of the high-level waste calcine until such time as DOE determines where the material can be sent, what disposal form(s) are acceptable, and develops an approved transportation plan for shipment to a disposal site. The NRC report notes that the current storage configuration of the high-level waste calcine at INEEL does not present a significant hazard to public health and the environment.
"The National Research Council's recommendations will be important factors in our continuing consideration of the treatment options for high-level waste and liquid mixed transuranic waste and facility closures at INEEL," said Carolyn Huntoon, DOE's Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management. "In addition to the issues identified in the NRC report, we also will be analyzing costs, current regulatory requirements and commitments to the state of Idaho, and other factors in the selection of preferred alternatives for treating these wastes and disposing of facilities."
Copies of the National Research Council report are available from:
National Academy Press 2101 Constitution Ave., NW Box 285 Washington, DC 20055
Interested individuals may also request copies by calling 1-800-624-6242 or 202-334-3313 (Washington metropolitan area), or on the Internet at http://www.nap.edu
For more information about the draft EIS, contact Brad Bugger at 208-526-0833 or call (toll-free) 1-888-918-5100.
--DOE--
Media contact: Brad Bugger, 208-526-0833, buggerbp@id.doe.gov
99-110
Visit our web site at http://www.inel.gov
---
INEEL, Republic of Korea Collaborate on Nuclear Fuel Testing System
December 14, 1999 DOE News Release
http://www.inel.gov/cgi-bin/newsdesk.cgi?a=137&t=template.html
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory has started a program to design the first instrumented capsule for testing a new nuclear reactor fuel and the capsule control and handling systems for a Republic of Korea research reactor.
The contract is the first ever between the INEEL and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, the Republic of Korea's nuclear power research agency. The two-phase project will help KAERI develop testing capabilities at its new HANARO research reactor.
Under the project, INEEL engineers will do preliminary design for an instrumented capsule to test the performance of a new nuclear reactor fuel. They will also develop the control system for the experiments and the handling system to retrieve the capsule from the reactor and transfer it to a hot cell for examination.
KAERI will use the capsule in the HANARO reactor to test new fuel designs for use in pressurized water reactors.
The project fits within the INEEL's nuclear technology lead lab role for the DOE to promote and support safe nuclear power technology worldwide.
Gary Smith, senior account executive in the INEEL's Technology Transfer and Commercialization office, says the agreement fulfills the goal of a DOE memorandum of understanding between the DOE and the Republic of Korea to promote peaceful and non-explosive uses of atomic energy. The project also utilizes the nuclear expertise of INEEL employees.
Blaine Grover, INEEL mechanical engineer and project lead, explains the capsule holds the fuel test sample and is equipped with instruments that let scientists control and record temperature data during the irradiation experiments. Similar capsules are used at the INEEL's Advanced Test Reactor for fuel and materials experiments.
The handling system will remove the capsule from the test reactor and transfer it to a hot cell (a shielded room) where it is remotely opened to retrieve the test fuel for examination.
Once this project is completed, KAERI will have the capability of designing future fuel test capsules. Smith says the long-term value of this project is to establish a successful relationship with the Korean agency that can lead to future projects.
-INEEL-
Media contact: John Walsh, (208) 526-8646, jhw@inel.gov 99-105
Visit our Web site at http://www.inel.gov
---
All 1999 headlines
http://www.inel.gov/cgi-bin/newsdesk.cgi?t=archive.html
----------- us nuc weapons spying
Atom Scientist Is Denied Bail, but Possibility Is Held Out
New York Times December 30, 1999 By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/99/12/30/news/washpol/nuke-lee.html
Related Article
Indicted Scientist Worried He'd Let Secrets Slip, Ex-Boss Says (Dec. 29, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/early/122999nuke-lee.html
ALBUQUERQUE, Dec. 29 -- A federal judge refused today to grant bail to Wen Ho Lee, the government scientist charged with mishandling nuclear weapons secrets.
But, in addressing the central issue in a three-day bail hearing, the judge, James A. Parker of Federal District Court, said he would reconsider if it could be shown that Dr. Lee had told the truth when he said he had destroyed seven missing computer tapes containing much of the trove of secrets.
Judge Parker said he would have been inclined to free Dr. Lee under restrictive home detention were it not for the grave concerns expressed by a number of senior government officials that the missing tapes were not destroyed and could be passed to a hostile power.
Dr. Lee has acknowledged transferring a huge volume of information about the design, testing and construction of nuclear weapons from secure to unsecure computers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked for years, and then downloaded much of the information onto computer tapes. He has also said he destroyed seven of those tapes. The remaining three were found by government officials in his office after Dr. Lee was fired in March for security violations.
The judge noted in his decision, on a defense appeal of a magistrate's earlier refusal to grant bail, that Dr. Lee's lawyers had said Dr. Lee would be willing to submit to a lie test about the missing tapes.
Dr. Lee was indicted on 59 counts of having mishandled the secret information, although he was not charged with espionage or giving anyone else the information. He has said he is not guilty.
The prosecutors have so far refused the offer to conduct a lie detector test partly, the judge said, because of concerns about the precise questions that would be asked.
The judge encouraged, but did not order, the United States attorney here, John J. Kelly, to negotiate a deal for Dr. Lee to take the test. But afterward Mr. Kelly was noncommital and noted that the concerns that had made an agreement impossible until now had not gone away.
"We will take the judge's counsel concerning these questions," Mr. Kelly said.
Mark Holscher, one of Dr. Lee's lawyers, said prosecutors had refused the defense's offer to have Dr. Lee take the polygraph test.
After the decision, Dr. Lee showed little reaction but wore a grim expression as he was immediately led from the courtroom by federal marshals. He waved briefly to his son and daughter, both of whom burst into tears. His wife said shortly afterward that she would not comment.
The judge had also said Dr. Lee was being held in severe conditions at a jail near here, in Santa Fe, and asked Mr. Kelly to consider easing the restrictions. Dr. Lee is in solitary confinement and can see no one except his immediate family and his lawyers for just one hour a week. Dr. Lee, a naturalized United States citizen from Taiwan, is prohibited from speaking Chinese with his family, and a guard must be next to him at all times.
Mr. Kelly said only that he would consider the judge's request.
Both sides have said that a trial might not be held for a year or more, given the complex nature of the case, so Dr. Lee now faces the prospect of a year's incarceration if he cannot find some way of answering the court's doubts about what happened to the computer tapes.
One senior government scientist said that the tapes contained "the crown jewels" of the American weapons program, an almost complete description of the physics and practical information needed to design anything from simple to highly sophisticated nuclear weapons.
Today's decision came at the end of a hearing that all those involved said was unlike any other such detention hearing in their experience. Normally, such hearings are brief, with evidence offered in summary form and any testimony taken quickly.
But in this instance the judge allowed extensive examination and cross examination of several witnesses. Since the normal rules of evidence do not apply to a preliminary hearing, the testimony ranged widely, involving much speculation and opinion that would have been excluded in a trial.
The prosecution was not able to show that Dr. Lee gave the secrets to anyone, only that he had methodically violated security rules in assembling and downloading it onto unsecure computers, where hackers or others might have gained access.
In cross-examinations, the defense tried to show that there could be benign explanations for Dr. Lee's actions and that he had done little to conceal most of what he had done.
The defense never addressed what the judge today said was the most critical issue for Dr. Lee, and perhaps the American weapons program: why he made those tapes, and precisely what he did with them.
---
Wen Ho Lee denied bail
USA Today 12/30/99- Updated 06:17 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nc1.htm#fema
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A federal judge denied bail for Wen Ho Lee on Wednesday, citing seven missing computer tapes filled with the nation's nuclear secrets and possible ''enormous harm'' to the country if the fired scientist was freed. U.S. District Judge James Parker voiced ''great concerns about the extreme restrictions'' imposed on Lee in jail, but said prosecutors had shown ''clear and convincing'' evidence that Lee should not be released. Lee, 60, who has pleaded innocent, has said he destroyed the tapes after losing his security clearance. Lee was arrested in March and indicted in December on 59 counts.
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The 'accidental' spy
Washington Times EDITORIAL • December 30, 1999
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/houseed1-19991230.htm
After acknowledging to his supervisor that he had just been informed that he had failed an FBI lie detector test in which he was asked if he had ever passed secrets to China, nuclear-weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee told his superior in February that he "may have accidentally" revealed classified nuclear weapons data to a foreign nation, according to the supervisor's startling testimony this week. Federal prosecutors indicted Mr. Lee Dec. 10 on 59 felony counts, charging that he illegally removed U.S. nuclear secrets from a classified computer system and downloaded them into an unsecure computer network at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, where he worked as a computer scientist before being fired in March. He was also charged with transferring virtually all of those computer files, described as the "crown jewels" of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, to 10 computer tapes, seven of which have not been recovered.
At a hearing to determine whether Mr. Lee should remain in custody before his trial begins, Richard Krajcik, the deputy director at Los Alamos' nuclear weapons division and Mr. Lee's supervisor, revealed that the polygraph questioning involved the United States' most sophisticated nuclear warhead, the W-88, which is deployed on the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile. Mr. Krajcik testified that Mr. Lee failed two questions relating to whether he had disclosed secret information or classified codes to a foreign nation.
Testifying after Mr. Krajcik, FBI agent Robert Messemer said Mr. Lee responded deceptively when questioned about his failure to inform his superiors about contacts he had made with Chinese scientists during two approved visits to China in 1986 and 1988. At the February lie detector exam, Mr. Messemer said, Mr. Lee admitted helping Chinese nuclear weapons scientists solve a problem during his 1986 visit. Mr. Messemer also revealed that Mr. Lee had acknowledged during an earlier polygraph test that he attended a clandestine hotel meeting with Chinese scientists in 1988 at which, he later told the FBI, he had also assisted a Chinese scientist.
Mr. Lee's attorney disputed Mr. Krajcik's interpretation of the February meeting, arguing that the secret information Mr. Lee said he may have inadvertently revealed was disclosed only in a scholarly paper that had been approved by the laboratory. Mr. Krajcik replied that Mr. Lee made no mention of such a paper during the February meeting and that Mr. Lee had later appeared "deceptive and evasive" during a March 5 meeting at which the FBI intensively interviewed Mr. Lee, who was fired three days later.
While Mr. Lee has not been charged with espionage, his indictment did declare that he removed the equivalent of 800,000 pages worth of nuclear secrets "with the intent to injure the United States and with the intent to secure an advantage for a foreign power." For the first time since he was fired, U.S. officials this week have publicly offered information suggesting that Mr. Lee may have revealed secrets to a foreign power.
All of this will be sorted out at Mr. Lee's trial, which is expected to begin in about a year. The issue of the moment is whether he should remain in custody. Noting that the information Mr. Lee downloaded and transferred to tapes could "truly change the world strategic balance," Paul Robinson, the president of Sandia National Laboratory, which develops nuclear weapons, urged caution, cryptically observing, "This court faces a you-bet-your-country decision." With the ultimate disposition of seven of the 10 computer tapes still unknown - Mr. Lee's attorneys say that he destroyed them - this is clearly a bet that the United States cannot afford to lose.
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No Bail In Atomic Data Case
Judge Cites Missing Wen Ho Lee Tapes
By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer, December 30, 1999; Page A01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/30/229l-123099-idx.html
ALBUQUERQUE, Dec. 29-A federal judge today ordered that former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Wen Ho Lee remain in jail without bail pending trial on charges he downloaded vast quantities of secret nuclear weapons data from the lab's secure computer system and transferred them to unsecure portable computer tapes.
At the end of a three-day detention hearing, Judge James A. Parker held that no reasonable combination of restrictions on Lee's actions outside jail would be sufficient to safeguard national security, given Lee's inability to account for seven tapes containing enough information to design and construct a sophisticated thermonuclear weapon.
"The danger," Parker told a packed courtroom, "is presented primarily by the missing tapes" and Lee's refusal to state when, where and how he disposed of them.
Parker urged prosecutors to take Lee up on his standing offer to take a polygraph examination on the question of what became of the tapes. Parker said that if a passing score by Lee allayed the government's concerns about the tapes, he could reapply for bail.
Parker also urged the government to consider loosening the restrictions imposed on Lee in custody. The scientist is being held in solitary confinement and is allowed to see his family in the presence of an FBI agent for only one hour per week. A slight man with gray hair and glasses who will turn 60 on New Year's Eve, Lee was whisked out of the courtroom by U.S. marshals moments after the judge's decision as his daughter, Alberta, sobbed in the front row.
Mark Holscher, Lee's lead defense attorney, appeared stunned by Parker's ruling and said he has been waiting since Dec. 10 for the government to agree to polygraph Lee on his statement that he destroyed the tapes.
In refusing to revoke a magistrate's Dec. 13 bail denial, Parker accepted the argument of prosecutors that Lee represents an "unprecedented" threat to national security and would require, were he to be released on bail, 24-hour FBI surveillance to ensure the missing tapes were not passed to a foreign power. Ordering such surveillance as a condition of release, Parker concluded, would be unreasonable and beyond his authority.
U.S. Attorney John J. Kelly told Parker in a lengthy closing argument that "if you have concluded that the risks are sufficiently great that round-the-clock surveillance is warranted, that suggests the defendant ought to be in custody."
John Cline, one of Lee's attorneys, responded that the government had failed to show that allowing Lee out on bail would threaten the community or nation, particularly since he has relinquished his passport and agreed to have his movements and communications restricted and monitored.
Cline repeated Lee's assertion that he has destroyed all of the missing tapes and said the government has produced no evidence to show that the tapes exist, despite an international search by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement. He also said that an exhaustive FBI investigation of Lee involving 60 agents and more than 1,000 interviews has failed to produce any evidence that Lee revealed--or intended to reveal--any of the downloaded nuclear secrets to a foreign government or any other unauthorized party.
Cline said a combination of home detention and electronic monitoring would be sufficient to safeguard the community if Lee is released on bail, adding that 24-hour FBI surveillance would only be necessary if Parker accepted the government's "unrealistic scenarios about what might happen--helicopters landing, abductions by foreign spies, and so forth."
But in the end, the judge accepted arguments made in testimony by a series of nuclear weapons officials about the extreme sensitivity of the nuclear weapons computer data--the equivalent of 800,000 pages--downloaded by Lee.
Paul Robinson, president of Sandia National Laboratories and a former ambassador to nuclear nonproliferation talks in Geneva, testified that the risk to U.S. national security if a foreign power were to obtain the data contained on the seven missing tapes would be "truly a devastating one."
"Those tapes could truly change the world's strategic balance," Robinson testified.
Parker also attached significant weight to the testimony of FBI agent Robert A. Messemer, a Chinese counterintelligence expert supervising the Lee investigation, who said that no combination of restrictions could keep Lee from transferring the missing tapes to a foreign power if Lee were released on bail.
Even an innocuous remark made by Lee to one of his children, Messemer testified, could jeopardize national security. "It could be as simple as saying, 'Uncle Wen says hello,' " Messemer said. "That could be a message telling a third party to do something with those tapes."
Messemer also said that, should Lee be released, the FBI would have to put even more elaborate surveillance in place and would have to assemble teams of Chinese-speaking agents and translators fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese in order to monitor Lee's communications to ensure he did not turn over the tapes to foreign spies.
"Today, we have the additional risk of hostile intelligence services knowing these tapes exist," Messemer said. "I believe they will act upon the information being released in the media."
Lee has been in jail here since he was indicted Dec. 10 on 59 felony counts of mishandling classified information. Thirty-nine counts involve violations of secrecy provisions in the Atomic Energy Act and carry maximum sentences of life in prison if the government can prove that Lee willfully intended to damage national security by downloading the nuclear weapons data.
Lee was fired from his post in Los Alamos's X Division in March for allegedly tampering with classified documents and failing to report contacts he had with Chinese nuclear weapons scientists during authorized trips he made to Beijing in 1986 and 1988. At the time of his firing, Lee was identified by federal authorities as their prime suspect in a Chinese espionage investigation centering on evidence that China may have stolen design information related to the W-88 warhead, America's most sophisticated thermonuclear weapon.
Despite identifying Lee as an espionage suspect, authorities now acknowledge that they do not have evidence to show Lee passed classified information to China or any other foreign country. Lee's downloading of classified material was not discovered by investigators until late March, weeks after he was fired and publicly identified as an espionage suspect, and Kelly has said in court papers filed here that the charges brought against Lee for downloading nuclear weapons data are unrelated to the earlier espionage probe.
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Felons gain access to nation's secrets
USA Today 2/30/99- Updated 01:25 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncswed09.htm
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon agency charged with guarding national secrets regularly gives people with histories of criminal activity and drug, alcohol and other problems access to that information, USA TODAY has learned. A review of 1,500 security-clearance decisions concerning defense contractor employees shows that the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals has approved applications from convicted felons and murderers. One such successful applicant is a 42-year-old man with a lengthy rap sheet capped by a 1978 murder. Now, on parole, he can't vote in many states, but he can obtain powerful information that is off-limits to most Americans.
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Walter J. Levison, 81, Helped design `spy satellite' camera
Boston Globe By Tom Long, Globe Staff, 12/30/1999
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/364/obituaries/Walter_J_Levison_81+.shtml
Walter J. Levison of Harvard, the leader of the team that designed the first ''spy satellite'' camera for the United States, died of complications following lung cancer surgery Monday in the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester. He was 81.
Mr. Levison was the leader of the design team at Itek Corp. that developed the cameras for the Corona program, the United States's first top secret ''spy satellite'' missions. The first Corona missile was launched in 1960. The program lasted about 12 years
The work of Mr. Levison and his colleagues remained classified top secret until 1995.
''Corona marked the beginning of an explosion of intelligence data,'' CIA Director John Deutch said at a ceremony saluting Mr. Levison and his colleagues in 1995. Deutch said the Corona program was ''probably instrumental in keeping us back from the nuclear threshold.''
In a story published in the Globe on June 26, 1995, Mr. Levison said when the first Corona camera was launched, the CIA estimated the Soviets had 3,000 ballistic missiles, but the cameras showed ''they actually had about six.''
Of the belated recognition of his work, he said, ''I don't know if you've ever kept secrets from your wife for 12 years. ... I thought I would go to my grave without ever seeing this public.''
Mr. Levison was born in New York City. He earned a degree in physics at City College of New York before serving as an aerial photographer in the Army Air Corps during World War II.
He was called to active duty by the Air Force during the Korean War, when he was an optical engineer at Boston University Physical Research Laboratories.
After the Korean War, he became affiliated with Itek Corp., where he also worked on the Viking I camera that beamed back the first pictures of Mars.
After leaving Itek in the mid-1970s, he was a founder of the Aegis Venture Fund, a venture capital firm specializing in high-tech businesses.
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How decisions and appeals are handled
USA Today 2/29/99- Updated 08:53 AM ET By Edward T. Pound, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncswed03.htm
WASHINGTON - Most military contractor employees and Defense Department personnel get their security clearances from the Pentagon without running into trouble. However, if an initial decision is made to reject them, there are different procedures for contractor employees and Pentagon personnel who seek to overturn the decision.
The procedures work this way:
Contractor employees
A Pentagon agency, the Defense Security Service, does background inquiries on security applicants. If the review produces no derogatory information, the security service issues a clearance. That happens in most cases. However, the service has no authority to deny a clearance, so if it develops significant negative information, the case is referred to the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals. DOHA reviewed 10,190 cases last year.
DOHA either clears the employee, which is what usually happens, or its security specialists issue a formal ''Statement of Reasons,'' or SOR, detailing why the government believes the applicant should not be cleared. The SOR cites the factual and legal basis for why it is not in the ''national interest'' to issue the clearance. The SOR alleges that the applicant failed to live up to one or more of 13 ''adjudicative guidelines'' established by the government for access to classified information. Those guidelines, revised in 1997 and made government-wide, cover such issues as allegiance to the nation, personal conduct, security violations, financial problems, sexual behavior and drug and alcohol use.
An applicant can contest the SOR in writing under oath. The applicant can request a trial-like hearing before one of DOHA's 15 administrative judges or ask that a judge decide the case based on written submissions. DOHA lawyers, known as ''department counsel,'' represent the Pentagon in opposing the request for a clearance.
Hearings are generally held near the applicant's home area. DOHA attorneys and judges, based in Arlington, Va., Boston, and Van Nuys, Calif., travel to the home areas of applicants for hearings.
An applicant can be represented by a lawyer and is allowed to cross-examine government witnesses. The applicant can offer witnesses and other evidence mitigating misconduct because, the guidelines say, the ''adjudicative process'' requires evaluating the ''whole person.'' The judge decides whether it is in the ''national interest'' to issue a clearance.
Either the government or the employee can appeal to the DOHA Appeal Board, made up of three administrative judges. The board's decisions are final.
The process grew out of a 1959 Supreme Court decision. A contractor employee who was accused of having communist ties during the McCarthy era lost his clearance and his job. The court ruled that an employee was entitled to a full hearing if the government planned to deny a clearance application. In 1960, President Eisenhower signed an executive order requiring the hearing process. The Pentagon created the Directorate for Industrial Security Clearance Review. The directorate became DOHA years later.
DOHA also reviews appeals from employees of companies doing business with 20 other agencies, including the State, Justice, Treasury, and Commerce departments.
Pentagon civilian and military personnel
The procedure is markedly different. Employees do not have the right to a full trial-like hearing and can't cross-examine government witnesses or present their own witnesses. However, they do have the right to make a ''personal appearance'' before a DOHA judge.
Like contractor employees, Pentagon civilians and military personnel undergo a background investigation. The findings are referred to Pentagon organizations, known as CAFS, that judge whether a clearance should be issued. Separate CAFS are established in the Army, Navy and Air Force and in the Washington Headquarters Services, the Pentagon's administrative arm.
The CAFS also apply the adjudicative guidelines. They, too, issue Statements of Reasons why a clearance shouldn't be granted. An applicant can respond, but if not persuasive the CAFS issue a ''Letter of Denial.'' An applicant can appeal directly to an appeal board. Each branch and Washington Headquarters Services has its own Personnel Security Appeal Board, known as PSAB. Alternatively, an applicant can request a personal appearance before a DOHA administrative judge to present evidence. The judge issues a ''recommended decision'' to the appropriate PSAB, which makes the final decision.
This system was established under an executive order issued by President Clinton in August 1995. It was meant to balance the scales for government employees, including Defense Department personnel, who did not have the same appeal rights as contractor employees. Before the order, Pentagon employees could appeal only to a ''higher authority'' within the branch or agency in which they worked, according to Sheldon Cohen, an Arlington, Va., lawyer who represents clients in clearance cases. He said the personal appearance alternative allows for ''an impartial view'' from an administrative judge.
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A few who got through
By Edward T. Pound, USA TODAY 12/29/99
Decisions by the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals administrative judges were reviewed on its Web site (www.defenselink.mil/dodgc/doha/) and at its headquarters in Arlington, Va. Here are summaries of a few decisions:
Case 98-0682. In May, Administrative Judge Wilford Ross allowed a software systems engineer employed by a defense contractor to keep his secret-level clearance, even though the man had not filed income tax returns for six years. On the day of his hearing, the engineer provided his returns for 1992 and 1993 and later submitted other delinquent returns. Ross wrote that DOHA lawyers had established with ''substantial evidence'' that the engineer had violated criminal laws, but he said the man had ''successfully mitigated the government's case'' by filing the returns.
Case 98-0247. In granting a clearance to an employee of a military contractor in January, Judge Joseph Testan rejected a criminal court decision that found the man, 51, guilty of child abuse and neglect. The man was charged with five counts of sexual assault after a minor told police he had sexually molested her. The man, in an agreement with prosecutors, pleaded guilty to child abuse and neglect, a misdemeanor, and was placed on probation for three years. He was ordered to complete a counseling program for sex offenders and to have no contact with the alleged victim. In his hearing, the applicant said he hadn't molested the child. He said he pleaded guilty because he couldn't afford to fight the charges and faced a life sentence if convicted on the more serious crimes. Judge Testan concluded that the applicant ''did not engage in any misconduct with the minor.'' DOHA lawyers appealed. The agency's three-member appeal board upheld the decision.
Case 97-0399. Administrative Judge Barry Sax granted a clearance for a senior principal engineer for a major defense contractor despite the man's history of alcohol-related arrests and misstatements to Defense Department investigators. The man, 65, who held a clearance for 37 years, had three convictions for driving under the influence and a fourth DWI arrest on his record. Sax cited a Supreme Court decision issued in 1988 that said, ''Clearance determinations should err, if they must, on the side of denials.'' That meant, Sax wrote, that doubts about an applicant's judgment and reliability ''are to be resolved against the applicant.'' Nevertheless, Sax said, he was convinced the applicant would not slip again. The applicant, described as holding ''a high level position'' in his company, has had an impressive career with no indications that he mishandled classified information, Sax said.
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Action urged on security clearances
By Edward T. Pound, USA TODAY 12/30/99- Updated 02:51 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncswed08.htm
WASHINGTON - Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa demanded Wednesday that Defense Secretary William Cohen take "immediate steps" to prevent the Pentagon from granting security clearances "to people whose record suggests a high risk to national security."
Harkin, a Democrat, reacted strongly to a USA TODAY report detailing how the Pentagon regularly grants clearances to employees of defense contractors with long histories of financial problems, drug use, alcoholism, sexual misconduct or criminal activity.
He said some clearance decisions defied "common sense."
"It's ironic that the same agency that has a 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy (on homosexuals) apparently has an 'Ask, don't care' policy when it comes to contractor security clearances," Harkin said in a statement. "The policy for contractor clearances should be 'when in doubt, just say no.' "
Harkin's criticism, also detailed in a letter to Cohen, focused on decisions issued by administrative judges who work for the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals (DOHA).
DOHA's judges preside at hearings in which applicants seek to overturn preliminary decisions denying them access to classified information.
Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, declined comment on Harkin's letter. However, he said DOHA had done a good job in balancing the rights of applicants against the vital interests of national security.
"On balance," he said, "we do feel the system works."
Harkin, a frequent critic of wasteful Pentagon spending, said DOHA's "dubious decisions," coupled with an enormous backlog of background security investigations, "suggests a security clearance process that is in need of substantial reform."
Harkin, a member of an important defense subcommittee, also asked Cohen to identify any cases of suspected espionage over the past 10 years that involved contractor employees granted clearances by DOHA.
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Harkin hopping mad
Washington Times December 30, 1999
http://208.246.212.80/national/inpolitics.htm
Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, is demanding a Pentagon investigation of reports that security clearances were granted to defense contractor employees with felony records.
In a letter to Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, Mr. Harkin said the practice "defies common sense." He urged Mr. Cohen to take "immediate steps to prevent granting of security clearance to people whose record suggests a high risk to national security," according to the Associated Press.
USA Today reported yesterday that security clearances have been regularly granted to defense-industry employees with long histories of financial problems, drug use, alcoholism, sexual misconduct or criminal activity.
One man was allowed to keep his security clearance despite participating in a scheme to defraud the Navy of $2 million. Another contractor employee granted clearance was still on probation following conviction and imprisonment for bank fraud.
The clearances were approved by administrative judges for the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals. Leon Schachter, the agency's director, said, "It is important to treat people fairly, and we have a system designed to be fair."
----------- us nuc weapons
Nuclear Chief Sought By Energy Dept
The Associated Press Thursday, Dec. 30, 1999; 6:11 p.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991230/aponline181125_000.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Energy Secretary Bill Richardson named a high-level search committee Thursday to recommend candidates to head the department's new nuclear weapons agency.
Richardson said he hoped to have the new chief in place by March, when the agency, created by Congress last year amid the uproar over alleged Chinese espionage, must begin operation.
The search committee will be chaired by Charles Curtis, former deputy energy secretary, and include retired Admiral James Watkins, energy secretary in the Bush administration.
Congress created the new National Nuclear Security Administration last year despite strong objections from Richardson, who said it gave too much independence to the agency.
Republicans in Congress said a new agency was needed to ensure that security and counterespionage programs are improved at the DOE's weapons labs.
But President Clinton, in signing the law that created the agency, triggered an uproar among some Republican lawmakers when he said that because of shortcomings in the law Richardson would head the agency. Congressional critics accused Clinton of trying to sidestep the law.
Richardson said Thursday he formed the search panel after receiving an assurance from Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., that the senator would support legislation next year that assures that the energy secretary will have clear authority over the new agency.
Domenici said he would pursue the change sought by Richardson. He called the naming of the search committee ``a very positive step'' in getting disagreements over the nuclear agency resolved.
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Missiles Still a Threat
New York Times December 30, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/99/12/30/letters/l30dis.html
Related Articles
As Year 2000 Nears, U.S. Is Confident, Yet Cautious (Dec. 27, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/early/122799terrorist-tv.html
To the Editor:
John J. Hamre, the deputy secretary of defense, may feel that there is no longer a threat of an accidental nuclear launching from the Russians ("As Year 2000 Nears, U.S. Is Confident, Yet Cautious," news article, Dec. 27).
But thousands of Russian and United States nuclear weapons remain on high alert, ready to be launched on a few minutes' warning.
A slight miscalculation could bring unimaginable destruction. Because of the disarray in Russia, and because of the increased possibility of misreadings during the Year 2000 rollover period, President Clinton should strike an agreement with Russia to remove all nuclear weapons from high-alert status.
WENDY PERRON New York, Dec. 28, 1999
The writer is executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, New York City chapter.
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Missile defense an expensive and often repeated mistake
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Washington Post December 30, 1999
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/letter4-19991230.htm
James T. Hackett ends his column admonishing those who question the feasibility, legality or necessity of nationwide ballistic missile defenses by comparing the risk and difficulty of the current endeavor to President Kennedy's call in 1961 to send a manned mission to land on the moon and return safely to Earth ("Sorties against missile defenses," Commentary, Dec. 27). Mr. Hackett then argues that had Mr. Kennedy followed the Clinton administration's approach to missile defenses, "we probably would still be waiting" to go to the moon.
But there are many obvious and critical differences between journeying to the moon and attempting to thwart a ballistic missile attack of even modest size. For starters, the moon follows a predictable orbit; we always know precisely where it will be at any given time. Not so with either a deliberate or an accidental missile launch. The moon's predictability also means that we have lots of time to plan a launch and, if we miss the launch window, we can always try again. With missile defenses, you only have one chance to get it right, and you don't have the luxury of being able to decide when to try.
There also is only one moon. Our astronauts would never discover en route that there suddenly are a dozen or more moons - one real and the rest decoys - launched by Earthling-wary citizens of the moon. With missile defenses, however, a variety of simple and inexpensive decoy measures are available to anyone with the ability to build a ballistic missile, meaning that the job of identifying and destroying all the real warheads in the limited time available is significantly complicated.
Finally, the cost of failure with missile defenses is much, much higher. A failed moon mission would kill several astronauts. Reliance on a missile defense system that could never be fully tested under actual combat conditions, on the other hand, could jeopardize the lives of millions of Americans.
It's worth bearing in mind that since the mid-1950s, the United States has spent more than $120 billion attempting to defend against ballistic missile attacks, including some $23 billion for the ill-fated nuclear-tipped Safeguard system deployed briefly in North Dakota in late 1975. More than half of the total has been spent since Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983.
Before we repeat the expensive missile defense mistakes of the past, we should consider carefully whether expending additional billions for easily defeated systems of marginal effectiveness is in the national interest and whether other, nonmilitary measures might offer greater long-term security at less cost.
STEPHEN I. SCHWARTZ Publisher Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Chicago
Stephen Schwartz is also the editor and co-author of "Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940" (Brookings Institution Press, 1998).
Shrinking choices in the political arena
I find much irony in Monday's article regarding the Freedom in the World survey ("Liberty expands in century," World, Dec. 27). It mentions countries with "restricted democratic practices," defined as "countries with systems in which a single party exercises long-term political dominance and the role of opposition parties is limited."
In America, our system is dominated by Democrats and Republicans. Because there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two, they have effectively morphed into one party. Demopublicans advocate government as the solution to every problem. (Republicans mouth other sentiments but consistently vote for bigger government.)
That these Demopublicans do everything in their power to keep voters from having a real choice is irrefutable. Third parties such as the Libertarian Party must jump through hoop after hoop just to get their candidates' names on the ballot. Once on the ballot, such candidates are excluded routinely from media debates. While Demopublicans spend their money on saturating the airwaves with the same old rhetoric, third parties must spend their own money fighting the system Demopublicans have created just to be heard.
One must wonder: Are the Demopublicans afraid that Americans would reject them once given a true choice? When we have more choice in toothpaste brands than in the voting booth, how free are we? NOELLE STETTNER Falls Church
Bush's faith and the intolerance of the secularists
When Texas Gov. George W. Bush, a Republican presidential candidate, mentioned in an Iowa debate that Jesus Christ had changed his heart, little did he know how his comment would cause waves of fear to sweep the secular landscape.
Visions of veiled women and female genital mutilations compelled political pundits and liberal clergy to quickly denounce his comment as exclusionary and a turnoff to the patchwork of diversity that makes up the American quilt.
Chasing God from the public schools, and now the public square, requires a certain diligence. There is no guarantee the ensuing void won't be filled with something far more pernicious to our freedoms than Christian morality.
Society cannot operate in a moral vacuum for long. While liberals fret over the thought that somewhere in America, at any given moment, a conservative Christian is spoiling someone's fun, in march the environmentalists, fully intent on indoctrinating our youth while they impose their peculiar beliefs on the rest of us. Should they prevail, the restrictions these modern-day pagans place on economic growth, private property, what we eat and how we get around will make the Taleban green with envy.
You surely can bet that in the not-too-distant future, Americans will look back to the days when Christian values ruled the culture, and they will yearn for a return to the freedoms that offered. THOMAS M. BEATTIE Mount Vernon
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Humans, machines may swap roles in future
Washington Times December 30, 1999 By Kristina Stefanova
http://www.washtimes.com/business/business-19991230.htm
More and more, computerized and mechanical things are a part of daily life. Half a millennium from now, a robot maid might be waking folks, feeding them and taking them to work.
The machines of the future could be . . . human beings.
And humans could become machines.
More and more, computerized and mechanical things are a part of daily life. Roosters used to wake us in the morning. Now, a beeping digital alarm clock-radio does the job. Half a millennium from now, a robot maid might be waking folks, feeding them and taking them to work.
And the line between human beings and machines easily could be breached in the future. Higher-functioning computers will assume more human roles, including the ability to make decisions and direct other machines. Individuals will become more task-oriented, like most of today's machines.
"People will become computers," says Greg Bear, the author of more than 20 science fiction books, among them "Darwin's Radio," "Eon" and "Anvil of Stars."
"A person is a user, a computer is a tool," Mr. Bear says. "We are becoming more and more computerlike tools. And the other way around. Computers are becoming like people. They remember, record things. Our instincts will be to work with a machine, use a machine."
Hollywood long has explored the concept of machines becoming "human," from the renegade spaceship computer Hal in "2001: A Space Odyssey" more than 30 years ago to the robot that is turned into a person in the new Robin Williams movie, "Bicentennial Man."
The movie-world fantasy is not so far-fetched, as Mr. Bear sees it.
Predictions for the end of the millennium have circulated for years. Some guessed robots would replace labor. Others foretold the end of the world.
Just two days short of 2000, the words of science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke come to mind: "The future isn't what it used to be."
"Thirty years ago, we were talking about things in the future," says Hugh Burns, a spokesman for Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp., the nation's largest defense company. "By 1987, we were supposed to have atomic-power vacuum cleaners and flying cars like the Jetsons. And where are they? But a lot of things people had no concept of exist right now."
Your Skycar is waiting
So what newfangled machinery does the future have in store? Dream programmers, virtual reality, more robots?
Moller International, a California company, already is testing a prototype four-passenger flying car. As early as 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration could certify the M400 Skycar as air worthy.
In the next 1,000 years, Frank Vizard, technology editor at Popular Science magazine in New York, imagines the development of computerized headgear that can instantaneously transmit messages, almost like telepathy.
"Sort of like a mental cell phone," Mr. Vizard says.
He also envisions robot dogs programmed to fetch the newspaper in the morning and "Star Trek"-like computers that react to the human voice. Voice-activated computers already are in the early stages of development.
"There will be a variety of technologies so small that they would be so integrated into your daily life that they would be like throwaway Post Its," Mr. Vizard predicts.
The question is how those new technologies will affect people over the next 500 or 1,000 years.
"Imagine asking someone in the Middle Ages what life would be like today," says Fred Edwords, editor of the Humanist, a publication of the American Humanist Association, a D.C. nonprofit that tracks the human condition. "They couldn't have imagined, couldn't have come close to where we are today."
Machines evolve
When the first computer - the size of a living room, as heavy as several elephants - was developed 30 years ago, nobody could have known it would become as commonplace as it is today.
Nowadays, computers the size of wristwatches are being introduced.
"This is a period of unusually rapid change," says William J. Raduschel, technology chief at Sterling, Va.-based America Online, the world's largest Internet service provider. "We are in the middle of an exciting 50 years. But 25 years from now most of the change will have happened. The current technology can't continue for a thousand years.
"As machines become more powerful they let you build other, more powerful machines," he says. "This generation of computers could not have existed without the previous one."
The complexity and capacity of computers increase with each minute, yet their size diminishes. Relatively soon, maybe in the next century, computers will be the size of electrons. We're talking tiny.
"People are talking about biological computers, optical computers, new forms of storage that are very different technologies from what we know," Mr. Raduschel says.
In the next 100 to 200 years, computers will work by re-creating the way the brain operates, adding complexity to the machines of today.
Computers already play a larger role in the operation of everything from Oldsmobiles to ovens.
Cars that can monitor themselves and issue warnings when something goes wrong were only the beginning. Computers that act as co-pilots, telling drivers how to get where they're going, will become pervasive. The ability to build ovens that refrigerate food until it's time to start cooking exists now. And today's ideas are tomorrow's machines.
At work
One advantage to the influx of machines is that the same number of human beings will be able to work on far more complex projects.
Computers have to a large extent already made this reality. But in the future the scale of the projects will increase, scientists say.
In the 1940s, for example, designing a building involved a few men drawing on paper, going back to it later, calculating, erasing and redrawing. Today, computer programs do the drawing and calculations; architects and engineers can design a building in far less time.
So perhaps developing technologies won't replace humanity, but simply will continue to change the nature of jobs.
Examples already can be found in the workplace: Computers now do inventory, so clerks don't have to count boxes in a storage room. Scanners at checkout counters not only register prices, but log inventory and even reorder items that are running low.
Perhaps the most drastic effect of relatively inexpensive, widely available technology on work is that employees no longer will have to travel to perform their jobs.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 21 million of us already telecommute at least one day a week, up from 4 million in 1990. The bureau projects that number will rise to 51 million by 2030.
And if machines are going to do more of the work, the question of who will run them becomes important, as evidenced by the current shortage of qualified employees for the high-tech industry. Employees who are able to keep up with or stay ahead of new technology will only increase in value.
Dale Vonhaase, a member of the corporate science and engineering staff at Lockheed Martin, says it is just as likely that jobs will be created, not just eliminated, to accommodate new technology.
Life-changing effect
Scientists envision a world where machines make, fix, work with and watch other machines. No later than 500 years from now, some say, humans no longer will be needed to perform most jobs.
For example, a repairman won't fix a car anymore - a machine will. "It's inevitable that machines become a larger part of life because it's better for the consumer and better for the manufacturer," Mr. Raduschel says. "If the motor of your dishwasher knows that it's going to fail within six weeks and it can notify its manufacturer that it needs repair, and someone shows up at your house before it breaks, you are ecstatic as a consumer -and the manufacturer is saving on the warranty."
But machines will progress far beyond that, actually creating human life.
By using genetic engineering, a machine can design a baby. Although a mother still will give birth, a machine will have assigned the baby's sex, coloring, favorite pastimes and inclination in life, whether artistic or technical.
"Just wait until we have created a novel life form we have to give definition to," Mr. Bear says. "The moral and ethical dilemmas of creating a life are well beyond those raised by the digital revolution."
Mr. Edwords predicts biotechnology, specifically nanotechnology - the designing of molecular machines - will be the next big revolution.
"So just imagine preprogrammed molecular machines fixing up things in your body," he says. "You just inject them into your body where there is tissue damage and it goes in and restructures the organism to grow new tissues. Just imagine it."
Of course, humanity's judgment on this version of the future will be key.
Concerns about developing technologies, such as biotechnology, are heightened even today. Europeans and many Americans are refusing to buy and eat genetically engineered foods, and all over the world religious groups are protesting human genetic engineering.
Free thinkers?
If the fears of a millennium bug provide a clear lesson, it's that machines are so pervasive that modern societies have grown dependent on them.
So how independent human beings will be in a world of even more machines is the subject of much debate.
"Freedom is the big question for us in the future - how to determine if you have that freedom," Mr. Bear says. "Some people will want to advance themselves [by using new technologies]. Other people are going to try and prevent them from doing it."
As surely as the Puritans burned "witches" at the stake in the 16th century and Sen. Joseph McCarthy hunted communists in the 1950s, some in the future will fear technology's increased role in their lives and stand up against it.
Such concerns could turn out to be well founded, as evolving machines have less need for humans.
"We can't count on ancient value systems to be of much use now or in the future," Mr. Edwords says. "We have to develop new moral standards to go along with new, modern technologies we are developing. We need a whole new way we think about this."
Mr. Raduschel, on the other hand, argues that the "grand fantasies that machines will control everything are simply erroneous."
"I think that humans will push back," he says. "We as a society will want to put the limit on how far technology can go."
Speeding communications
Communications technology has made breathtaking strides since Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1837.
These days, a teen-age girl in Venice can type on her laptop while being rowed through the city's canals. With the click of a button, she can send news of her adventure to her best friend in New York.
In the middle of the next millennium, those two girlfriends wouldn't have to send e-mails overseas. They could meet in the world of virtual reality simply by putting on "goggles," even if they couldn't transport themselves in much the same way characters in TV's "Star Trek" beam up, down and around. (Many scoff, but some speculate teletransportation will be possible within the next 1,000 years.)
The future of communications is much debated among engineers, Mr. Raduschel says. The day may not be far when babies are assigned telephone numbers and e-mail addresses at birth. And the existing line between the voice-sensitive telephone and the text-and-photo-driven Internet is destined to disappear as teleconferencing becomes the norm.
When the U.S. military invented the Internet in the 1970s, it was meant for communications in case of nuclear war. Today, the complex web of information is used by everyone from the world of academia to those teen-age girls sharing first love stories via e-mail.
New age of weaponry
New communications technology will be critical in war during the next 1,000 years.
"War is a complex system that is all information-based," Mr. Raduschel says.
Specifications and blueprints of one Navy warship weighed more than the ammunition it carried, he notes.
What happens when information systems are the key to winning wars was the main topic at a recent planning meeting at Lockheed Martin.
"A defense system needs to talk to another system somewhere else," Mr. Vonhaase says. "Twenty-five years from now, the [defense] industry will be dominated by information - between platforms, weapons systems, people. That's an enormous amount of information. The trick is to sort out which of those pieces of information are important to the war fighter. Because if they knew everything, they wouldn't be able to digest it."
Scientists and engineers say manual weapons most likely will disappear. They will be replaced by more efficient, cheaper and easier-to-make biological weapons that dispense viruses and diseases.
Mr. Edwords, the Humanist editor, predicts the day when almost anyone could have access to germ warfare.
"Now minor powers can have these kinds of weapons," he says. "Wait until not only dictators but terrorists have all kinds of germ weapons. If computer viruses can spread the way they do, pretty soon diseases will be the same way.
"We have to figure out how to control this sort of weapon," he says.
Traveling through space
One guarantee for the near term is more space travel, Mr. Bear predicts.
"The space tourist industry is a good investment for long term, 20 to 30 years from now," he says. "I'd put my money on that. Because if you could go even on a small orbital flight for $10,000, would you go? Yeah, people would. Tens of thousands of people would."
Mr. Bear sees space tourism becoming a reality as soon as the next decade. Companies already are putting out brochures and taking reservations.
Space-travel advocates who attended the first U.S. Space Tourism Conference in the District last summer said the public could begin suborbital, up-and-down trips like Alan Shepherd - the first U.S. astronaut in space - as soon as 2002.
A Seattle-based adventure travel company, Zegrahm Expeditions, has taken 250 reservations since October 1997 for a seven-day flight into space that it hopes to offer late in 2002 at the price of $98,000 per person.
Sixty adventurers have paid at least $5,000 of the $98,000; 10 have paid for the entire trip.
Orbital trips would follow in the next 100 to 200 years, allowing us to circumnavigate the globe about 180 miles above the Earth, experts say.
So the next step is creating the vehicles that would allow space tourism.
"It's hard to get venture capitalists to look in that now," Mr. Bear says. "Now they want to spend money on the Internet."
A millennium from now, he predicts, inhabitants of Earth will have left - either on long space adventures or to permanently live on space stations or other planets.
"Our descendants will be making very different choices," Mr. Bear says. "They will be farther away from us than we have ever been from a medieval person. By the end of the next millennium, we won't even be able to recognize our surroundings - if we are still around, and we could be."
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Ike, Reagan Ended Terms Strongly
Associated Press December 30, 1999 Filed at 3:17 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Other-Presidents.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991230/aponline151720_000.htm
In their last years in office, President Eisenhower saw a Soviet summit shot down and President Reagan saw the Cold War begin to thaw. They were the last two presidents to serve two full terms.
Eisenhower's final months in office were consumed by his fight with communism. Earlier, he sent the first American military advisers to help South Vietnam fight the communist-supported Viet Cong.
In 1960, just before Eisenhower left to meet with Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev in Paris, the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane flying over its territory. When Eisenhower refused to apologize, Khrushchev boycotted and the summit was called off. The Kremlin leader uninvited Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union.
Less than a month before he left office, Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba after communist dictator Fidel Castro seized property that U.S. companies held in the island nation.
The end of the Reagan era brought an easing of U.S.-Soviet tension. Reagan met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow and they agreed to begin to reduce nuclear missiles. If not for that thaw, it would have been a lean year for the administration, which was entangled in the Iran-contra affair. The scandal erupted over sales of U.S. weapons to Iran and the use of the profits to help Nicaraguan rebels known as the contras.
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Widower sues beryllium company
December 30, 1999 BY SAM ROE BLADE SENIOR WRITER http://www.toledoblade.com/editorial/beryllium/9l30bery.htm
The widower of Marilyn Miller, a woman whose long battle with beryllium disease was chronicled in The Blade, filed suit yesterday against Brush Wellman, Inc., the company where she allegedly contracted her fatal illness.
"Brush Wellman knew of a dangerous condition and knew that dangerous condition was substantially certain to cause some injury,'' said Rick Alkire, a Cleveland attorney representing the Miller family.
Mrs. Miller was exposed to toxic beryllium dust while working as a secretary at a former Brush beryllium plant in nearby Luckey. In an interview before her death in April, 1998, she said she never thought she was in danger. She said no one told her beryllium dust could harm her, that workers in other plants had died, or that her plant was exceeding safety limits.
"If I had known that, I wouldn't have worked there,'' she said.
The Blade story, published in March and April as part of a six-day series on the hazards of beryllium, detailed Mrs. Miller's final days, and final hours.
It described how she learned in 1969 that she had beryllium disease, a progressive lung illness caused by the metal's dust, and how the illness slowly stole her ability to breathe.
She was 68 when she died and had spent her last 10 years tethered to an oxygen tank.
The wife of a Bradner dairy farmer, she used to climb up in the silo and help toss out the silage.
In her last few months, she didn't have the strength to wash herself.
"Those who did this should be held responsible,'' her widower, Jack, said yesterday.
He said he watched his wife slowly slip away. "It's probably the worst way to go, when you can't get any air."
Yet she was not the only one in the family with beryllium disease. Her youngest son, Dave, contracted the illness while working at Brush's main processing plant, near Elmore.
His mother begged him not to work there, but he didn't listen. He was diagnosed with the illness in 1983.
Jack Miller's lawsuit, a wrongful-death claim, was filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland where Brush Wellman has its headquarters. It alleges that Brush knew Mrs. Miller was being exposed to high levels of beryllium dust.
The suit states Mrs. Miller worked at the beryllium plant in Luckey from about 1949 to 1953. During that time, the plant was making beryllium for weapons for the U.S. government.
And during that time, the old U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw nuclear weapons production, had a contract with Brush that required the beryllium firm to meet certain safety standards, the suit states. Among those standards was a limit on the amount of beryllium dust that workers could be exposed to.
The suit alleges that Brush knew that its workers, including Mrs. Miller, were being exposed to beryllium dust above the safety limit.
Furthermore, the suit states that Brush knew the safety limit was not sufficient to protect workers from disease in the first place.
The suit seeks damages in excess of $25,000.
Brush spokesman Hugh Hanes said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
The company is America's leading beryllium producer, with facilities in several states including the 780-worker Elmore plant.
Beryllium is a strong, lightweight metal used in the defense, automotive, and electronics industries.
At least 10 other suits have been filed against Brush in recent months. Most allege the company knowingly exposed workers at the Elmore plant to unsafe conditions.
The Blade series detailed how the U.S. government and the beryllium industry, primarily Brush Wellman, repeatedly put production of the metal ahead of safety.
Among the findings: Over the last five decades, the government and beryllium industry knowingly allowed thousands of workers to be exposed to levels of beryllium dust over the safety limit.
An estimated 1,200 people have contracted beryllium disease nationwide since the 1940s, including 65 current or former workers at the Elmore plant.
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Bombing suspect had military explosives
USA Today 12/30/99- Updated 09:26 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm#pent
SEATTLE - The Algerian man caught at the U.S.-Canadian border earlier this month and charged with explosives smuggling wasn't carrying nitroglycerine, as previously thought. Instead, he allegedly had a rarer, more powerful explosive commonly used by the military, officials said. Ahmed Ressam was arrested Dec. 14 in Port Angeles. According to federal officials, he was carrying 200 pounds of a fertilizer called urea, four rudimentary timing devices and two jars of liquid. According to federal court documents released Tuesday, the liquid thought to be nitroglycerine turned out to be RDX, or cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, one of the most powerful explosives in the world, used by military forces around the world for demolition.
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Fighting terrorism
Washington Times December 30, 1999 John R. Kasich
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/Kasich-19991230.htm
Terrorists are intent on causing real harm to American citizens, and Americans are wondering why. The answer says much about our world, our heritage and our responsibilit