-------- Britain
U.K. Seizes Scud Parts Headed for Libya Compiled
International Herald Tribune
Paris, Monday, January 10, 2000
by Our Staff From Dispatches
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/MON/IN/scuds.2.html
LONDON - Britain will protest to Libya after Scud missile parts being smuggled to Tripoli were seized at a London airport, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said Sunday.
News that British customs agents had discovered 32 crates of missile parts, disguised as automotive spare parts, on a British Airways flight destined for Libya was widely seen as an embarrassment to both countries.
The discovery came within months of Britain's restoring diplomatic relations with Colonel Moammar Gadhafi's administration after a 15-year break. For Colonel Gadhafi, it marked a setback in his attempts at rehabilitating relations with Europe and the United States.
Mr. Cook accused Libya of a ''clear breach of the European Union arms embargo.''
The export of missile technology to Libya remains illegal under international embargoes.
''We have long had concerns about Libya's ambitions to develop enhanced missile technology,'' Mr. Cook said. ''We will remain vigilant and alert to frustrate any attempt to breach them.''
A British customs and excise spokesman said that the seizure was made at Gatwick airport on Nov. 24.
Customs officials declined to comment on a report in The Sunday Times that paperwork found with the crates indicated that other missile shipments had already reached Libya via Britain.
The paper said 32 crates of jet propulsion systems and other missile parts were found at Gatwick when they arrived on a British Airways flight bound for Tripoli via Malta.
The shipment was sent to Britain by a knit-wear company in Taiwan called Hontex, the report said.
In Taiwan, newspapers also reported that the shipment belonged to Hontex, but they said the company was based in the southern China province of Fujian, directly across from Taiwan.
The discovery is likely to damage Libya's improving ties with the West. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions over the Lockerbie bombing, but relations started to warm slowly last year after Tripoli handed over two suspects for trial in the Netherlands.
Scuds were first developed by the Soviet Union, which built thousands, but reports indicate they have also been produced in Egypt, Iran, Iraq and North Korea, according to Jane's Strategic Weapons Systems.
The Scuds, used by Iraq in the Gulf war, are short-range, mobile ballistic missiles that can carry chemical, biological or nuclear warheads in addition to traditional explosives.
--------- Activism
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 22:22:54 -0500 From: Carol Moore <CarolMoore@kreative.net>
Hello, de-alerting activists in DC and beyond... >From my experience I can safely say a lot of education and motivating has to happen to get grassroots activists as involved in de-alerting issues as they need to be. The "Back from the Brink" video is a good start, but I think there's a lot more that could be done video-wise:
a) nuclear war related video library to loan out to activists around the country. Below is a list of top nuke war videos and links to buy many of them. (It would be great if someone would put together a video of clips of best of them!)
b) one or twice monthly video parties in your area for local activists. (In DC, show Back from the Brink at the upcoming Civil Disobedience Conference where you have hundreds of young college activists from around the country. .http://www.infoshop.org/nccd/ )
c) remind people of the interventionist actions that could lead to nuke war (see two articles below). (And how can we get all these people planning to shut down the IMFin April to make de-alerting weapons part of their goal; the IMF is a tiny flea compared to nuke war!)
d) for fun go to http://www.kreative.net/carolmoore/C&C-news.html ============= LINKS TO/ABOUT NUCLEAR WAR VIDEOS AND MOVIES
Many of the movies/videos mentioned below, or mentioned at links below, can be bought at http://www.amazon.com in the video section. Or search by film's name at http://www.hotbot.com
NUCLEAR WAR IN POPULAR CULTURE WEBSITE (Reviews and links) http://www.ibp-intl.demon.co.uk/nuke/nukecult.html "The War Game" - docudrama of nuclear attack on England "Testament" - Nuclear war survivors in the Pacific Northwest slowly die "Miracle Mile" - couple find out nuclear war is just minutes away "Threads" - survivors of a nuclear war in England "The Day After" - Nuclear war in Kansas "By Dawn's Early Light" - Militarists strategize with nuke weapons
OTHER MOVIES/VIDEOS:
"Back from the Brink" FREE video about de-alerting nuclear weapons. http://www.dealert.com
"The Atomic Café" nuclear war in the 1950s and 1960s culture http://www.publicshelter.com/main/index.html (some graphics) http://www.moviewavs.com/Atomic_Cafe.shtml (sound clips/buy)
"Threads" Two pages with detailed descriptions, photos, animation about nuke war in England. http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/pdbean/thread.html http://www.unc.edu/~landon/threads.html
"Trinity and Beyond" the history of nuclear weapons development http://www.vce.com/trinity.html
"The Atomic Filmmakers" cameramen who photographed atomic weapon http://www.vce.com/atomic.html
"Nuclear Winter: Changing Our Way of Thinking" Produced by The Natural Resources Defense Council http://www.igc.apc.org/videoproject/NUCLEAR_WINTER.html
American Friends Service Committee Video & Film Library, 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02140 617-497-5273 "America-From Hitler to MX" 1983; "Atomic Age: A Trail of Victims" 1980; "Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang" 1979
"Nuclear Y2K Countdown" $20 (US dollars) per copy to: Robert Ridgeway, Ridgeway/Barlow Productions, 541 Rockmont Rd, Greenville, SC 29615USA email: NY2KC@juno.com
Nuclear Movies: Filmography and critical Analysis Hibakusha Cinema:Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film http://www.1earth.net/~postmodm/nukemovi.html
>From Atoms to Apocalypse: Film and the Nuclear Issue http://www.1earth.net/~postmodm/m/text/n_fromatom.html
Atomic Age Film Series: detailed list and description of nuclear movies http://www.1earth.net/~postmodm/m/text/atomage.html
Also nuclear related sites including: Trinity Atomic Web Site--Nuclear Weapons: History, Technology, and Consequences http://www.enviroweb.org/issues/nuketesting/
Graphic photos of destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki http://pegasus.phys.saga-u.ac.jp/peace1e.html http://www.fourthfreedom.org/ http://www.enviroweb.org/nukenet/ http://www.noradiation.org/main.htm http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/y2k/phase1.htm http://www.nuclearfiles.org/nwa/ Nuclear Information Word Wide Web Server http://nuke.handheld.com/ Big List of Nuclear Related Links http://www.fas.org/nuke/hew/News/Bigbig.html Prop One Committee's Bigger List of Nuclear Related Links http://prop1.org/prop1/azantink.htm Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Atomic Clock http://www.bullatomsci.org/clock.html Cresson H. Kearny "Nuclear War Survival Skills" http://www.oism.org/nwss/
-------- china
China breaks missile vow, sends material to N. Korea
Washington Times
January 10 - 16, 2000 -- Edition
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.americasnewspaper.com/stories/top.html#linkTOP
China is continuing to supply materials for North Korea's long-range missile program despite promises that it would tighten exports of such technology.
The latest shipment was arranged by China just three weeks ago, The Washington Times has learned.
A Pentagon intelligence report sent to Clinton administration policy-makers in late December stated that the Pentagon's National Security Agency (NSA) uncovered a deal for the transfer.
The report identified a Hong Kong company that was used to send Chinese-made missile-relat-ed goods to North Korea, said Pentagon officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"This is a deal for a direct shipment of Chinese missile technology," said an official who has seen the report.
The missile dealing is more evidence that China is going back on promises made to U.S. officials that it will take steps to tighten exports of missile technology covered by the 29-nation Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
Officials declined to provide other details about the transfer, citing concerns about sensitive intelligence involved in the report.
Numerous reports of Chinese weapons technology transfers to North Korea and other states, including Iran, in recent months contradict promises made to the United States by Chinese President Jiang Zemin to impose stricter export controls on weap-ons-related goods.
The latest reports follow other recent intelligence reports on transfers of missile know-how and components.
They have included:
* In October, U.S. intelligence agencies reported that China had supplied fiber-optic gyroscopes to North Korea several months earlier. * A March 8, 1999, NSA report said China sold specialty steel for North Korean missiles.
* Chinese and North Korean scientific institutes also have cooperated in sharing space technology that U.S. intelligence agencies believe is being used to hide missile technology sharing.
* A Defense Intelligence Agency report from June stated that China supplied accelerometers, gyroscopes and special high-tech machinery to North Korean missile manufacturers.
* A report from November 1998 that China provided specialty steel used in missile frames to North Korea. The transfer prompted a diplomatic note of protest from the State Department that month.
* A special House committee that investigated North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and missile programs examined suspected cooperation between China and North Korea on developing small nuclear warheads for use on missiles.
A House national security aide said the links between China and North Korea on weapons technology are close and it is likely the Chinese have allowed the North Koreans to have warhead data. China is known to have supplied nuclear warhead design information to Pakistan years ago.
* An Oct. 19 Pentagon intelligence report stated that North Korea is continuing to develop its long-range Taepo Dong missile that was first tested in August 1998. Spy agencies believe the single test is enough for the North Koreans to use the missile in a crisis.
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said in July she was worried about the Chinese missile transfers to North Korea.
The secretary said in response to a report on the issue that appeared in The Washington Times that "we are concerned by reports that DPNK [North Korea] may be seeking from China materials such as specialty steel for its missile program."
The administration takes the reports "seriously" and investigates the issue, she said, noting that "we have raised our concerns with China, and we will continue to do so."
Mrs. Albright sidestepped questions about whether China's missile-related transfers to North Korea violate U.S. anti-proliferation laws. She insisted that the administration "will fully and faithfully implement the requirements of U.S. law."
U.S. law requires the government to impose economic and other sanctions on foreign governments and businesses that violate anti-proliferation statutes.
North Korean and Pakistani firms were sanctioned last year for missile activities. Sanctions were imposed briefly on China in the early 1990s for missile sales to Pakistan. The sanctions were lifted after some months, however.
Yu Shuning, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy, denied that China has sold missile components to North Korea.
"We have always abided by our commitments so far as the MTCR is concerned," he said.
Mr. Yu said since China agreed several years ago not to violate the missile export agreement in exchange for the United States lifting sanctions imposed over the M-11 missile technology sales to Pakistan.
"Since that time, the U.S. government has stated that China has abided by our commitment," Mr. Yu said.
-------- japan
Japan Takes Back Hazardous Waste
Yahoo News
01:56 PM ET 01/10/00
TOKYO (AP) _ Japan took back a shipment of hazardous medical and household waste Monday that had been illegally sent to the Philippines, Kyodo News agency reported.
Some 2,800 tons of soiled adult diapers, used sanitary napkins, empty medicine vials and other refuse arrived at Tokyo's port from the Philippines aboard the MV Pulsar, Kyodo said, citing unidentified police officials.
The containers were to be unloaded Tuesday morning, Kyodo said. Japanese officials were not in their offices on Monday, a national holiday, said guards at the port, police headquarters and a number of ministries.
Philippine customs officials say Japanese trading company Shinsei Enterprises labeled 122 containers of toxic material as recyclable paper and plastic, then shipped them to its sister company in the Philippines in August.
The waste, unclaimed, sat at a Manila port.
Japanese officials plan to charge those responsible for the shipment, but have so far been unable to track down suspects.
Philippine Environment Secretary Antonio Cerilles filed a criminal complaint against Shinsei Enterprises, but the company refused a summons and failed to appear at a hearing last month.
-------- russia
Ready, Aim . . . Misfire?
Salt Lake Tribune
Monday, January 10, 2000
By JONATHAN S.LANDAY
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
http://www.sltrib.com/2000/jan/01102000/nation_w/16630.htm
WASHINGTON -- Russia's early-warning system is so decayed that Moscow is unable to detect U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile launches for at least seven hours a day and can no longer spot missiles fired from American submarines at all, U.S. officials and experts say.
At most, only four of Russia's 21 early warning satellites are still working, according to experts on Moscow's space program. That gives Russian commanders no more than 17 hours -- and perhaps as little as 12 hours -- of daily coverage of the 550 nuclear-tipped ICBM silos in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming.
"Against submarines, they basically have no warning," said Theodore Postol, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who studies Russia's early warning system.
But because the logic of nuclear deterrence requires both sides to launch their missiles before a surprise attack obliterates them, Russia's semi-blindness is as dangerous to the United States as it is to Russia. The fear is that in the heat of a serious crisis, Russian military and civilian leaders could misread a nonthreatening rocket launch or ambiguous data as a nuclear first strike and launch a salvo at the United States and Western Europe.
If Russia's early-warning system "cannot reassure Russian leaders that false alarms are indeed benign events, the danger for both countries could be significant," said an August 1999 report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a research agency for Congress.
" The chances [of a nuclear mistake] are rising . . . from what was a very, very low level," warned former Ambassador James Goodby, who negotiated the U.S.-funded destruction of Russian nuclear weapons. "The effects of a glitch would be cataclysmic." While acknowledging that Russia's early warning system has deteriorated badly, Clinton administration officials say Russia retains considerable early warning capabilities and strong, centralized control of its nuclear forces. In addition, the United States and Russia now notify each other of rocket launches in advance.
Although U.S. officials insist there is little chance of an inadvertent nuclear war, the Clinton administration finds itself in the unusual position of offering to help the Russians detect an American missile attack. One proposal calls for establishing a joint early warning center in Moscow, another for helping to finance the rebuilding of Russia's early warning system.
Early warning radars and satellites remain important because, while the United States and Russia have agreed to "de-target" each other, both can re-program their missiles in minutes. China, Britain and France also maintain ICBM forces. Other countries, including Iran, Iraq, Israel, India, North Korea and Pakistan, are pursuing long-range missile programs.
Russia still keeps an estimated 2,000 nuclear warheads on high alert, most of them atop silo-based SS-18 missiles. Experts say the United States has as many as 2,500 warheads on high alert, divided between Ohio class submarines -- four of which are always poised to fire -- and 50 MX and 500 Minuteman III missiles in five northern states.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
Because it no longer is able to keep a massive retaliatory capability hidden aboard expensive nuclear submarines, Russia is more dependent than the United States on launching its missiles at the first warning of incoming missiles. To make matters worse, Moscow's lack of money also has stranded much of its mobile land-based missile force in garrisons, where it is highly vulnerable.
Russia's early warning system consists of two ground-based radar networks and two networks of satellites that use infrared sensors to spot the hot exhaust of rocket engines against the cold backgrounds of Earth's atmosphere and space.
The older space-based network is made up of nine Oko satellites. No more than three are still providing data, said MIT's Postol and James Oberg, an expert on the Russian aerospace industry.
Philip Clark, a consultant in Hastings, England who publishes an international newsletter on space launches, said in an interview that a new Oko was launched last month but is not yet operational.
The second Russian space-based network consisted of 11 Prognoz satellites, designed to detect both land- and submarine-based missile launches. The most recent Prognoz was lofted in 1998, but drifted out of orbit within a month or two when a fuel tank ruptured.
"In the Prognoz series, there are no satellites operating. They are drifting," said Clark, basing his conclusion on declassified data released by the U.S. Air Force Space Command.
On the ground, Russia operates at least 18 so-called Hen House and Pechora-type phased-array radars. They can detect incoming missiles only after they have traveled about one-third of the way to their targets, which leaves Russian leaders 20 minutes or less to determine whether an alarm is real or false.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
The Kremlin cannot afford to put into orbit the six replacement satellites it needs to resume 24-hour surveillance of American missile silos, experts say. Nor can the Russians pay to activate replacements for two land-based early warning radars. One was demolished by the former Soviet republic of Latvia in August 1998; the other was dismantled in 1991, after years of American complaints, because it violated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
As a result, experts in and outside the U.S. government say, Russian radars are blind in the northern areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans where U.S. ballistic missile submarines operate, each loaded with 24 Trident missiles tipped with up to eight nuclear warheads apiece.
However, a U.S. official said, the Russians "are committed to ensuring that their part of command-and-control works," or, if it fails, does not result in an accidental missile launch.
"It is hard for me to imagine that this degradation is making them more hair-triggered. It's making them more cautious," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Although Russia is believed to have tightened the already strict controls on its nuclear arsenal, experts say there have been several close calls.
The most recent was in January 1995, when Russian officers, despite prior notification, mistook the launch of a U.S.-Norwegian science rocket for a U.S. nuclear strike. They alerted the Kremlin, where former president Boris Yeltsin was brought the briefcase containing the launch codes for a retaliatory Russian attack. The error was caught just in time because Russian satellites detected no launches from U.S. missile silos, experts say.
In 1995, however, those satellites still had 24-hour surveillance capability. Today they do not.
U.S. officials are sufficiently concerned that President Clinton signed a September 1998 accord proposing a center in Moscow where the Russian military could review data from American early warning satellites and radars. In return, U.S. officers would be able to view Russian early warning data.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
Until Jan. 15, a temporary U.S.-Russian center established to ensure against Y2K bugs in the Russian early warning system is serving as a prototype for the Moscow facility. Russia has selected a site for the permanent early warning center, according to Gen. Richard Myers, commander in chief of the U.S. Space Command.
The Clinton administration is pursuing other initiatives. These include RAMOS, a joint early warning research project for which Russia and the United States are each building a prototype satellite. Washington also has offered to help put Russia's new early warning radars into operation if Moscow agrees to changes in the 1972 ABM treaty that would permit the United States to develop and field a limited missile defense system.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
The administration also would be "receptive to discussions" about footing Russia's $200 million bill for lofting new satellites to restore 24-hour surveillance of U.S. missile silos, said a senior U.S. defense official, who asked not to be identified.
"We deal with small probabilities," said the official. "So we would like to make whatever probabilities that an accident could occur or there could be an accidental unauthorized launch even smaller. I don't want to say I'm completely at comfort because we are always trying to drive these small probabilities even lower."
X X X
GRAPHIC (from KRT Graphics Network, 202-383-6064):
20000109 EARLY WARNING.fh8, 3x3/164x76mm. Map shows blind spots in Russia's network of land-based early warning radars
---
Russia's missile detection system: Outdated, dangerous
Lincoln Journal Star
Monday, Jan. 10, 2000
BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.journalstar.com/archives/011000/nat/stox
WASHINGTON -- Russia's early warning system is so decayed that Moscow is unable to detect U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile launches for at least seven hours a day and no longer can spot missiles fired from American submarines at all, U.S. officials and experts say.
At most, only four of Russia's 21 early warning satellites are still working, according to experts on Moscow's space program. That gives Russian commanders no more than 17 hours -- and perhaps as little as 12 hours -- of daily coverage of the 550 nuclear-tipped ICBM silos in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming.
"Against submarines, they basically have no warning," said Theodore Postol, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who studies Russia's early warning system.
But because the logic of nuclear deterrence requires both sides to launch their missiles before a surprise attack obliterates them, Russia's semi-blindness is as dangerous to the United States as it is to Russia. The fear is that in the heat of a serious crisis, Russian military and civilian leaders could misread a nonthreatening rocket launch or ambiguous data as a nuclear first strike and launch a salvo at the United States and Western Europe.
If Russia's early warning system "cannot reassure Russian leaders that false alarms are indeed benign events, the danger for both countries could be significant," said an August 1999 report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a research agency for Congress.
"I think the chances (of a nuclear mistake) are rising ... from what I felt was a very, very low level," warned former Ambassador James Goodby, who negotiated the U.S.-funded destruction of Russian nuclear weapons. "... The effects of a glitch would be cataclysmic." While acknowledging that Russia's early warning system has deteriorated badly, Clinton administration officials say Russia retains considerable early warning capabilities and strong, centralized control of its nuclear forces. In addition, the United States and Russia now notify each other of rocket launches in advance.
Although U.S. officials insist there is little chance of an inadvertent nuclear war, the Clinton administration finds itself in the unusual position of offering to help the Russians detect an American missile attack. One proposal calls for establishing a joint early warning center in Moscow, another for helping to finance the rebuilding of Russia's early warning system.
Early warning radars and satellites remain important because, while the United States and Russia have agreed to "de-target" each other, both can re-program their missiles in minutes. China, Britain and France also maintain ICBM forces. Other countries, including Iran, Iraq, Israel, India, North Korea and Pakistan, are pursuing long-range missile programs.
Russia still keeps an estimated 2,000 nuclear warheads on high alert, most of them atop silo-based SS-18 missiles. Experts say the United States has as many as 2,500 warheads on high alert, divided between Ohio class submarines -- four of which are always poised to fire -- and 50 MX and 500 Minuteman III missiles in five northern states.
The Kremlin cannot afford to put into orbit the six replacement satellites it needs to resume 24-hour surveillance of American missile silos, experts say. Nor can the Russians pay to activate replacements for two land-based early warning radars. One was demolished by the former Soviet republic of Latvia in August 1998; the other was dismantled in 1991, after years of American complaints, because it violated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
As a result, experts in and outside the U.S. government say, Russian radars are blind in the northern areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans where U.S. ballistic missile submarines operate, each loaded with 24 Trident missiles tipped with up to eight nuclear warheads apiece.
However, a U.S. official said, the Russians "are committed to ensuring that their part of command-and-control works," or, if it fails, does not result in an accidental missile launch.
"It is hard for me to imagine that this degradation is making them more hair-triggered. It's making them more cautious," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Although Russia is believed to have tightened the already strict controls on its nuclear arsenal, experts say there have been several close calls.
The most recent was in January 1995, when Russian officers, despite prior notification, mistook the launch of a U.S.-Norwegian science rocket for a U.S. nuclear strike. They alerted the Kremlin, where former president Boris Yeltsin was brought the briefcase containing the launch codes for a retaliatory Russian attack. The error was caught just in time because Russian satellites detected no launches from U.S. missile silos, experts say.
In 1995, however, those satellites still had 24-hour surveillance capability. Today they do not.
U.S. officials are sufficiently concerned that President Clinton signed a September 1998 accord proposing a center in Moscow where the Russian military could review data from American early warning satellites and radars. In return, U.S. officers would be able to view Russian early warning data.
The administration also would be "receptive to discussions" about footing Russia's $200 million bill for lofting new satellites to restore 24-hour surveillance of U.S. missile silos, said a senior U.S. defense official, who asked not to be identified.
"We deal with small probabilities," said the official. "So we would like to make whatever probabilities that an accident could occur or there could be an accidental unauthorized launch even smaller. I don't want to say I'm completely at comfort because we are always trying to drive these small probabilities even lower."
-------- taiwan
Taiwan Firm Says Libya Missile Link "Ridiculous"
Inside China Today
Jan 10, 2000
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=124103
TAIPEI, -- (Reuters) A Taiwan textile firm on Monday denied any connection to a shipment of missile parts destined for Libya that were seized at London's Gatwick airport in November.
"We are an ordinary textile maker. We are not arms sellers," Wang Chuan-cheng, president of Nam Liong Industrial Corp, said by telephone from the firm's base at Yung Kang in southern Taiwan.
Britain's Sunday Times reported that 32 crates of jet propulsion systems and other Scud missile parts disguised as car parts were found at the airport when they arrived on a British Airways flight bound for Tripoli.
Accompanying paperwork indicated that the shipment, which arrived on November 24, was sent to Britain in the name of a company called Hontex, the newspaper said.
"We do have a brand called Hontex and this apparently is why they think we were involved," said Wang, whose small, unlisted firm makes knitted fabrics as well as synthetic fabrics used in the making of wetsuits.
"We don't have that kind of technology to make missiles. It's just ridiculous," he said.
Wang called the case clearly one of mistaken identity, though he left open the possibility that arms smugglers had used his company's identity as cover without its knowledge.
"We've checked everything and there is no record of a shipment like this. I don't understand how our company could be involved. They must be mistaking us for someone else," Wang said.
Taiwan authorities said they had launched an investigation but declined to comment further.
Taiwan is not believed to possess Scuds, short-range ballistic missiles whose design originated in the Soviet Union and that can carry chemical, biological or nuclear warheads or traditional explosives.
British officials declined to comment on the Sunday Times' conclusion, based on the accompanying paperwork, that other missile part shipments already had reached Libya via Britain.
Britain said on Sunday it would protest to Libya.
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said Libya would not be allowed to evade a European Union arms embargo via Britain, which recently re-established relations with the government of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Cook said Britain had long been concerned about Gaddafi's military ambitions and this was why it did not lift the arms embargo against Libya when it resumed diplomatic ties in 1999 after a lapse of 15 years.
-------- ukraine
Reactor at Ukrainian Plant Restarts
Associated Press
January 10, 2000 Filed at 9:39 a.m. EST
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Ukraine-Reactor.html
http://f1.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Login?YY=26930
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A nuclear reactor at Ukraine's Zaporizhia nuclear power plant was restarted after major repairs, officials said Monday.
Reactor No. 3 was brought back online Friday after extensive repairs that began Oct. 16, the state nuclear company Energoatom said. All of the plant's six reactors are now operating, the company said.
Ukraine's aging nuclear power plants are plagued by frequent breakdowns. Twelve of its 14 reactors at five nuclear power plants are currently operating, and they produce about 40 percent of the country's electricity.
---
Chernobyl: The Great Health Cover Up, Risk Model In Error By 10,000 Times Minimum
November 1999 edition of "The Ecologist," Volume 29, No.7.
For people wanting copies in the USA call: 510-548-2032, Fax:510-548-4916. Main Office [in UK] Call: 0171-351-3578, Fax: 0171-351-3617, e-mail: ecologist@gn.apc.org
By Chris Busby
The nuclear catastrophe that had been long feared by anti-nuclear activists finally occurred in April 1986. The explosion at the Chernobyl reactor in the Ukraine, and the resulting release of radioactivity, turned a large part of the Soviet Union into a radioactive wasteland. The interdependence of nations became clear, as radioisotopes traveled scross the world and contaminated milk in areas as far away as the USA.
The efffects of Chernobyl on the USSR were enormous. Soviet scientists were well aware of the magnitude of the effect, and also how the West would attempt to downplay the problems.In 1995, writing for UNESCO, Academician Savchenko drew attention to the critical need for humanity to use the environmental health data to establish the true health consequences of radioactive releases. He was already too late. The cover-up was already underway. The International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] had seen the danger, and their friends in the World Health Organization [WHO] [with whom they had an agreement dating back to 1957] had swung into action.
Dr. Parkin, in Lyon, funded by the EU, set up a study of Chernobyl related childhood leukemia in Europe, putting all the countries with their different doses into the same bag. Since high doses and low doses are diluted into a large population of varying genetic susceptibility, this confuses any clear onset or trend in leukemia increase which can be ascribed to the accident.This is because part of the dilution effect is due to different lag times between exposure and expression between high and low doses.
Needless to say, he found "no effect" in the worst-affected territories, where the registrars were told that they were not to write down "leukemia" as a cause of death, and victims were told that they were the victims of a new "psychosomatic" disease called "radiophoia," a variant of the increasingly prevalent "Chemophobia." Even the extraordinary and unexpected increases in thyroid cancer were explained away by retrospectively altering the assumed doses of radio-iodine.
In Vienna, in April and May 1996, there were two conferences. An IAEA conference found no evidence of any significant health effects from Chernobyl, apart from thyroid cancer. The other conference, that of the "Permanent Peoples Tribunal" offered a frightening account of cancer increases, malformations, cover ups and torment. Since then we have been sent figures from Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Poland and Bulgaria which show clear evidence of a rise in cancer, leukemia, congenital malformations and general ill health. The situation on the ground is reflected by an extract from Vladimir Nestorenko's recent 1998 report CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT: RADIATION PROTECTION OF POPULATION:
"In the period 1988 to 1995, the tumour rate has grown by 2.4 times, the rate of malignant tumours by 13 times, endocrynous systems diseases rate by 4.5 times, illnesses of the nervous system and organs of sense, by 3.5 times, illnesses of blood circulation organs by 4 times etc. was registered."
Whatever the arguments about the ex-Soviet Union, there is now sufficient evidence that the releases also took their toll globally. Using the new "genetic fingerprint" test, it was possible to establish that Chernobyl has caused a doubling of genetic damage. Based on the measured natural mutation rate of 10-5 and the assumption of no genetic effect in the children of Hiroshima survivors, people who received a much higher dose than those near Chernobyl, the doubling of mutations revealed by the "genetic fingerprint" test shows the assumptions of the resent risk model to be in eeror by a minimum factor of 10,000 times!
There was another unexpected effect. Despite the tiny doses, conventionally assessed, infant leukemia from Greece and the US increased among children who were in their mother's womb during the period of peak exposure. We found a statistically significant four-fold increases in infants in Wales and Scotland.
This discovery was valuable since it enabled us retrospectively to use the number of cases as a test of the risk model. The National Radiological Protection Board have measured the Chernobyl radiation and assessed the doses. They provide the Hiroshima model risk factors which predict the number of leukemia cases expected at that dose in the population of Wales and Scotland. Since we observe more than one hundred times the predicted number, we have shown that the eeror in the model is more than 100-fold. The BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL has refused to publish these findings without even referring them to a reviewer.
REFERENCE: Yaroshinskaya, A. Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth, Oxford: John Carpenter [1988].
----------- us nuc weapons
On The Issues: Missile Defense
USA Today
01/10/00- Updated 01:36 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/e98/e990.htm
Does America need a national missile defense system to defend itself against nuclear attack? Democrats
Bill Bradley
''A national missile defense system has not been adequately tested, so it's too soon to say that it is an effective way to defend America against nuclear attack. Even if it is shown to be both technically feasible and strategically desirable, a NMD cannot defend America against nuclear attacks delivered by other means, for example in a terrorist's suitcase. In any case, arms control and diplomatic pressure may be more effective in reducing the possibility of a nuclear attack, and the United States should continue to rely primarily on the threat of nuclear retaliation to deter nuclear attacks.''
Al Gore
''The decision to proceed toward deployment of a national missile defense system needs to be based on: 1. the level of our confidence in the technology; 2. its impact on our ability to protect arms control; 3. an assessment of the cost; and 4. an evaluation of the threat. As president, I would be willing to consider changes to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty restricting missile deployment and even abandoning the treaty if the United States was seriously threatened by a missile attack from a 'rogue' nation.''
Reform candidates
Pat Buchanan
''Yes. The U.S. must not allow a 30-year-old ABM treaty, with a defunct Soviet Union, to prevent us from defending our people from a nuclear missile attack. Test a ballistic missile defense until it works; then build it, without apology. U.S. security is paramount.''
Donald Trump
N/A
Republicans
Gary Bauer
''As one of my first acts in office, I will order deployment of a strategic missile defense to begin defending the American people against nuclear attacks.''
George W. Bush
''Yes. At the earliest possible date, my administration will deploy anti-ballistic missile systems, both theater and national, to guard America and our allies against attack and blackmail. I will work to persuade Russia that it is in both our nations' best interests to amend the anti-ballistic missile treaty to allow these defense systems to protect our people from rogue attacks. If Russia refuses, we will withdraw from the treaty. The president of the United States has a solemn obligation to protect the American people and our allies from nuclear attack.''
Steve Forbes
''We could construct viable missile defense systems for ourselves and our allies in Europe, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea - to name a few - by integrating new missile defense innovations with existing technologies on the Navy's Aegis cruisers. American taxpayers have already invested some $50 billion in missile defense research. Experts believe it would take less than $10 billion to finish the job.''
Orrin Hatch
''Yes. Beginning with my support of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, I have consistently and without exception supported or co-sponsored every congressional initiative to research, fund and deploy at the soonest possible time a theater missile defense of the United States.''
Alan Keyes "Yes."
John McCain
''Yes. I believe the American people can and must be protected from the possibility of a missile attack on our soil. Recent reports of successful tests of a missile defense system demonstrate that such a system can work. I supported legislation stating that it should be the policy of the United States to build a national missile defense system as soon as technologically possible. As president, I would make the deployment of a national missile defense system, as well as defense systems for our armed forces deployed overseas, one of my highest priorities.''
Source: The Associated Press
-------- us uranium
Barriers will let creatures use abandoned mines, boost safety
Deseret News
Monday, January 10, 2000
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,145018221,00.html?
MARYSVALE, Piute County - Some 75 abandoned mines in the high Tuschar Mountains west of Marysvale will be safer while retaining bat habitat and historic features following completion of a project under the direction of the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining.
Officials said safety is the primary purpose in installing bat gates and block walls that will also preserve the resources. "Some of the mines in the project area have been identified as significant bat habitat and some were noted as historic," said Becky Doolittle, project manager.
The gates will allow animals to continue to use the mine for living space while denying access to people. The block walls will be set back from mine entrances to eliminate entry, thereby preserving the historic appearance of mine excavation.
Doolittle said a contract was awarded to Minchey Digging to close the mine entrances.
Other abandoned mines have been closed in southern Utah during recent years. The Marysvale area contains many former uranium mines, and gold and silver was mined in the Tuschar Mountains in the late 1800s and until the mid 1900s. Some areas have been named in connection with the mining industry, such as Bullion Canyon west of Marysvale
---
From: "Dan Fahey" <mtpdu@dclink.com>
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 12:50:31 -0800
In 1997 I received a Freedom of Information Act response from the Department of Defense that stated US A-10 aircraft fired 783,514 rounds of 30mm DU ammunition during the 1991 Gulf War. Each round contains a DU penetrator weighing 0.666 pounds or 0.302 kg. Therefore, 521,820 pounds or 236,621 kg of DU was released in 1991 from rounds shot by A-10's.
I just came across a FOIA response from the 11th Wing of the US Air Force, dated May 24, 1999, providing information about "the use of depleted uranium in Yugoslavia and Iraq." The letter states, in part, "Iraq: Approximately 982,000 rounds of 30mm ammunition was expended during the Gulf War to the present date." This would appear to indicate that American aircraft have fired an additional 200,000 30mm DU rounds in Iraq since 1991. This seems plausible, considering the active war American aircraft have waged over Iraq since 1991. If this is true, American aircraft have released an additional 133,200 pounds, or 60,400 kg, of depleted uranium in Iraq. This would raise the official total estimate of DU shot in Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia to approximately 773,200 pounds (387 tons), or 350,000 kg.
If you are interested in writing your own request for information about the amount of depleted uranium shot in Yugoslavia or Iraq, write to:
Freedom of Information and Security Review OASD (PA), Room 2C757 1400 Defense Pentagon Washington, DC 20301-1400
Be sure to state that you are requesting information in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. Ask that any fees be waived, and ask to be informed if there are any fees prior to the request being fulfilled.
It's time for the war to end, for the use of DU to stop, for the civilians to be warned, and for the US act as a true world leader and go into Iraq and clean up DU contamination. Dan Fahey
-----------
From: Vina Colley <vcolley@earthlink.net> To:downwinders Date: Friday, January 07, 2000 6:09 PM Subject: Nuclear waste
Views on Nuclear waste plan sought Columbus Dispatch Jan 7, 2000.
The Energy Department will go to Ohio, Illinois and Nebraska to hear views of more residents of states which high-level radioactive waste must pass if the government opens a dump site at Yucca Mountain Nev.
Hearings have been planned for Jan24 in Lincoln, Neb; Jan 28 in Cleveland and Feb1, in ChicagoThe Energy Department has proposed a remote site in the Nevada desert to become the permanent burial site for radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear power plants.
Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project, which opposes putting a dump at Yucca Mountain, said Ohio highways and rail lines would carry waste from both instate nuclear plants, Davis-Besse and Perry, and from plants Northeast would go through the Cleveland area.
-----------
No Nuclear Forks
Gov't Drops Plan For Recycled Radioctive Nickel
Material Will Not Be Used In Consumer Goods
WASHINGTON Tuesday, January 11, 2000 - 09:10 PM ET CBS
http://www.cbs.com/now/story/0,1597,148520-311,00.shtml
For now, at least, recycled nickel won't end up in any consumer goods.
(CBS) CBS News has learned that Wednesday, the Department of Energy will announce it is halting its controversial program to recycle radioactive nickel from U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, and use it in everyday products like forks, knives, pots, pans, and zippers.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said "The public had a lot of questions. There was a perception problem that this was not safe. The Congress had a lot of questions. I had a lot of questions."
The government had hired BNFL, a private metal processor, to recycle 6,000 tons of radioactive nickel from a nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. BNFL developed a program to decontaminate the nickel as much as it could, then sell to the scrap steel industry beginning next fall. But the nickel would still have been radioactive when it went into the steel supply and would have been used for everything from bicycles and baby rattles to braces.
If successful, the project was slated to be expanded, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. The Energy Department figured it could save hundreds of millions of dollars by recycling the contaminated metal instead of burying it. BNFL project manager Jim McAnally insisted the program was safe, saying "We're dealing (with radiation) at such low levels that I, on a personal basis, do not feel that it poses any risk to the public."
But critics argued the whole deal to recycle the radioactive nickel was cut largely in secret, that there were no oversight hearings, and that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has never set any standards for acceptable levels of radioactivity in consumer products.
Also, there was no plan for government inspectors to check the metal before it was sent into the steel supply to make sure the radiation levels were low. Congressional opponents, including representatives John Dingell and Ron Klink, argued that no scientific studies have ever established that any levels of radioactivity are safe.
"You might have to go to the ridiculous position of having each individual take a Geiger counter into a store or restaurant, or anywhere that you went, to try to read if the material that you were buying or what you were using had radioactive material in it," said Klink.
Adding to the controversy, steel industry representatives went public saying they didn't even want the recycled nickel. Their biggest fear was that frightened consumers would stop buying metal products altogether.
In the face of mounting pressure, the Energy Department will officially announce Wednesday that it has ordered BNFL not to recycle the radioactive nickel, and banned the so-called "free release" of the metal into the steel supply. BNFL must stop construction of its new nickel processing facility, and set aside any nickel it has already processed.
"We're not going to release this," Richardson said. "We're not going to make it commercial, we're going to wait and make sure that this policy makes sense, and I'm not sure it makes sense."
Now begins a new search to find a safe way to get rid of thousands of tons of radioactive nickel left over from the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
---
Radioactive fork, dear?
Guess what's coming to dinner next fall
BY BRUCE B. AUSTER U.S. News 9/20/99
http://www.usnews.com:80/usnews/issue/990920/paducah.htm
What would you think of eating your dinner with forks and knives made from recycled metal once used in a nuclear weapons plant? Or having braces on your kids' teeth fashioned from steel that was once radioactive? As early as fall 2000, such metals could be making their way into these products and just about anything else made of steel. That's when BNFL Inc., a nuclear technology firm, becomes the first company to recycle metals from a nuclear facility-in this case 6,000 tons of nickel from the federal government's nuclear complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.-and sell them to scrap-metal dealers.
The problem is, nobody knows for sure if recycling is safe. The Department of Energy and BNFL insist that any radiation left after decontamination is negligible. Some environmentalists and scientists disagree. "You may clean the surface, but there may be contamination inside," says Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, an antinuclear research organization, noting that even "avery small quantity of radioactivity could cause significant damage."
There are currently no federal regulations governing the recycling of radioactive scrap, but steelmakers routinely screen for it anyway. Thomas Danjczek, president of the Steel Manufacturers Association, says that despite precautions, some radioactive metals-mostly from overseas-have slipped into plants. And he warns that if recycling takes off, far more could slip through and end up in consumer products. "Right now we're the safety net," he says.
An estimated 1.5 million tons of scrap metal in commercial and government nuclear facilities across the nation could ultimately be recycled. Next in line: metals from the Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah, Ky., which has 60,000 tons of scrap. What's going on? The Department of Energy is eager to offset the estimated $250 billion price tag of cleaning up the nation's massive nuclear weapons complex. And recycling is one way to do it. For instance, DOE estimated it would cost $800 million to scrub three large buildings at Oak Ridge and bury the scrap; instead BNFL promised to remove, clean, and recycle it for $238 million. Another reason nuclear recycling is so hot now: Deals have been cut out of public view. A 1998 memo from a BNFL partner indicates the company was rushing to seal the Oak Ridge deal before "environmental activists" could make a fuss.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week will consider whether it is possible to set a national standard on radiation levels in metals recycled from commercial nuclear facilities. The meeting comes on the heels of a lawsuit at the Paducah plant, where workers charge they were unwittingly exposed to unsafe radiation doses-an allegation Congress is set to review during hearings this week.
-------- us nuc weapons facilities
Sympathy for Wen Ho Lee
Washington Post
Tuesday, January 11, 2000; Page A16
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/11/011l-011100-idx.html
I disagree with The Post's assertion that Wen Ho Lee's indefinite incarceration is justified [editorial, Jan. 3]. The notion that his missing tapes constitute a dire threat to the security of this country is debatable. As a former weapon component engineer, I can assure you that fielding a nuclear weapon involves far more engineering and testing than is contained in the arcane computer programs and data that are allegedly on these tapes. The idea that a foreign power could run these tapes and obtain a credible, modern nuclear capability is absurd and trivializes the real effort involved.
When you add the fact that Dr. Lee has remained cooperative and available throughout the years of dogged pursuit of him by the Department of Energy and the FBI, it is even harder to understand why he is now so dangerous that he must be imprisoned without trial in near solitary confinement.
WILLIAM N. SULLIVAN
Albuquerque, N.M.
--------us military
Army survey rebuts Pentagon By Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times
January 10, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/national/news3-011000.htm
The Army is losing some of its best future leadership because officers are growing increasingly disenchanted with a bureaucratic operation dominated by peacekeeping missions.
An internal study appears to rebut the argument of Pentagon leaders that officers are fleeing the military for better paying private-sector jobs in a robust economy.
"Pay is not a major factor in career intent," says the Army survey, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times. "The decision to leave is based on multiple reasons . . . a strong civilian economy enables career change, but does not cause it."
The Army survey reinforces the findings of a study released today by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which concludes that "readiness and morale" have "slipped" in recent years.
The Army survey was conducted at Fort Benning, Ga., home of Army infantry training, by the Army Research Institute. An Army spokesman declined to comment because the report is still a "working document."
Researchers surveyed captains - the Army's leaders in the future - to find out why the attrition rate for that rank has increased from 6.7 percent 10 years ago to nearly 11 percent in 1999. The exit flow has increased 3 percent in the past three years.
The most often-cited reasons the captains gave for leaving were high-operational tempo, a "dissatisfaction" with the Clinton administration's peacekeeping missions, "excessive micromanagement" by superiors, and insufficient time and equipment for realistic combat training.
Of peacekeeping, such as ongoing missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, the report said: "A source for career disillusionment for some leavers. Not what they came in Army to do."
The report is troubling for the Army on two fronts. For one, its post-Cold War future has been geared more to peace enforcement than to fighting a great land battle, meaning the attrition rate may continue to increase. By losing captains, the Army has a reduced pool from which to select battalion and brigade commanders as officers rise in rank from captain to major to colonel.
The Fort Benning report found that exiting captains complained of "disillusionment with their role as an officer, lack of control in assignments, family disruption and lack of autonomy and limited responsibility."
"It's not fun anymore," says Joseph Collins, a retired Army colonel and an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There's too much pressure. Too many deployments. There's a general sense of a force under pressure."
Mr. Collins is an author of the wide-ranging new CSIS study into the military's changing culture.
"We say in our study that people are overcommitted, underpaid and underresourced at the cutting edge," Mr. Collins said. "People complain for the most part about having to do more with less, meaning equipment is getting older. They have less money to keep it going. They have more requirements to keep them on the road and away from the family."
The CSIS study found the military is increasingly dispirited by a lack of money and equipment for realistic training and by an accelerated pace of operations with a pared down force.
"Many service members have a deep concern about the state of training and readiness in their units. This strikes at the heart of a number of military values," the CSIS study found.
"Today, the smallest force in four decades - with 56 percent married - is overworked, underpaid, and underresourced at the cutting edge. Readiness and morale have slipped; recruiting and retention are problematic; and careers in the military have become less satisfying."
Sinking morale was a major finding in the two-year CSIS study, "American Military Culture in the 21st Century," which was based on surveys of 12,000 military personnel and on 125 focus groups.
"Morale and satisfaction with service have both suffered," CSIS found, "and this has had a negative impact on military effectiveness."
The Fort Benning study includes these typical responses from captains: * "I do not enjoy peacekeeping missions. When I was in Germany, we did zero warfighting training."
* "Job I am doing now we had lieutenants do in my previous unit. I am not challenged and [am] overly supervised. It's just not fun any more."
* "The time lost from my children due to deployments makes getting out more attractive."
* "The best are getting out, leaving the mediocre to step into positions of command."
The Fort Benning study found that while the quitting rate for infantry officers has risen to nearly 11 percent, the number for other critical positions is even higher. Field artillery captains have a 13.4 percent rate. The number for military intelligence captains is 12.8 percent.
Congress last year increased all service members' pay by 4.8 percent, and provided targeted salary boosts for skilled personnel. The pay was part of an overall defense spending increase aimed at improving combat readiness and at aiding recruiting and retention.
Military experts say the pay issue is especially important for enlisted soldiers whose pay lags civilian compensation. But they say the Fort Benning study shows the Pentagon cannot cure low morale in the officer corps with money alone.
The Army study recommends several changes in relations between junior officers and superiors. These include granting more autonomy, opening dialogue between the ranks and re-evaluating the jobs given captains.
---
The Spy Who Loved Him
Francis Gary Powers Jr. Is Hunting High And Low for a Place to Lay Memories of His Father, and the Cold War, to Rest
Washington Post
Monday, January 10, 2000; Page C01
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/10/041l-011000-idx.html
WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va.-Ason of the Cold War strides down a concrete tunnel in a bunker designed to preserve the American government after the nuclear apocalypse. The click-clack of his footsteps shoots down the corridor and echoes off a 30-ton iron blast door. If the Soviet ICBMs had incinerated Washington, this is the place where Congress would have come--a hardened mausoleum hidden beside a luxury hotel in the southern West Virginia hills.
But World War III never happened. Instead, the Cold War did.
Sprawled across five decades and most of the planet, it claimed thousands of lives and may have cost as much as $13 trillion. But there are no battlegrounds to tour, no definitive list of wounded or dead. If World War II was a real war, then the Cold War was the outline of war, filled in with shadow. How do you memorialize a phantom?
This man, Francis Gary Powers Jr., is trying. For those who know history, and for those who lived it, the name is familiar. In 1960, in a fulcrum moment of the Cold War, his father was shot down while flying a secret U-2 spy plane over Russia. He was imprisoned for 18 months before being returned to the United States.
It should not come as much of a surprise then, that the younger Powers, at 34, is unlike so many of the rest of us, who have moved far beyond the Cold War. Its blacklisting, missile crisis and proxy wars are fading fast in the glow of the peace dividend.
Powers, however, has a basement corner at home full of his dad's belongings, and he's trying to find a temporary place to display them. He is the flesh-and-blood legacy of the Cold War--and perhaps its chief salesman.
Slightly pudgy and quick to laugh, Powers is a Fairfax City PR man who uses his fingers to form "air quotes" around statements. " . . . get some press and generate some interest," he is saying to Fritz Bugas, the man who ran this hillside bunker where Powers is now trying to make a deal. In his spare time, Powers hauls around the things from his basement, the remnants of his father's ordeal--his correspondence, a piece of the black plane's wreckage, photographs, other artifacts. He's lugged the stuff to the CIA, to Texas, to Norway. It's going to Germany soon. But he's always looking to add stops on the tour. This bunker might work.
"What do you have now, Gary?" asks Bugas. "Do you have an 18-wheeler, or what?"
"Nope," says Powers. "I've got three crates that go with me. If you don't have display space, I'll work with you and the local university or cabinet shops . . . "
His words are swallowed whole by this crypt. The 112,554-square-foot bunker was built with secret urgency in the late '50s, burrowed into a hillside next to the Greenbrier Hotel. Bugas, who spent 25 years running the facility, now gives tours, charging $25 a head.
During the 90-minute walk-through, visitors can gawk at the radiation showers and try to budge the blast door on its massive hinges. This is one of the few places where people can put their hands on the Cold War.
Powers is hoping to add another. He wants to build a permanent Cold War museum in the Washington area--where his father's peripatetic belongings can finally rest--and a memorial in the shape of an Iron Curtain at Arlington National Cemetery. So far he's gotten small elements: a museum logo, a few patches and T-shirts, a modest bank account and a Web page.
But he has big needs: To discover a lost father. To honor him. And to remember his war. Right now, Americans who served in the military or worked for the government between Sept. 2, 1945, and Dec. 26, 1991, can apply for a "Cold War Recognition Certificate" from the Department of Defense.
Powers thinks there should be more. A piece of paper doesn't seem enough.
Fate's Flight
What a quick turn history has taken.
John Glenn was a hero of the Cold War. Yet his launch pad at Cape Canaveral was sold for scrap iron years ago. Washington was once ringed with Nike missiles pointed skyward. Now, a Nike site in Great Falls is filled in with concrete. The Berlin Wall was once 66 miles long. Now the biggest chunk of it outside Germany sits at the Newseum in Rosslyn. It is the unimposing size of three garage doors.
Say "U-2" today and a lot of people will think of an aging Irish rock band. But in 1960, U-2 was part of the lexicon of war, like missile gap, duck and cover, fallout.
On May 1, a farm boy from southwestern Virginia named Francis Gary Powers was strapped inside a U-2 spy plane at Peshawar, Pakistan. He was to fly across the Soviet Union and photograph military targets. Halfway through, he was shot down by Soviet air defenses that had been badly underestimated by U.S. intelligence. President Eisenhower initially said the U-2 was a weather plane gone astray. Then the Soviets produced Powers and the plane's wreckage. Banner headlines screamed across the world.
Powers spent a year and a half in a Moscow prison before being exchanged for a Red spy. Adjusting to home wasn't easy. An already shaky marriage ended in divorce.
He soon married Claudia "Sue" Edwards Downey, a Warrenton, Va., native who had administered his CIA psychological tests. She had a daughter, Dee, from a previous marriage. In 1962, Powers took a job as a test pilot with California-based Lockheed--which built the U-2--and the young family moved to Sherman Oaks, Calif.
In 1965, Francis Gary Powers Jr. was born.
Five years later, his father wrote a book about his ordeal and was summarily fired by Lockheed. Even though the CIA okayed the book, its epilogue was critical of the agency.
What does an ex-spy pilot do for work? Airborne traffic reporter.
The job was merely tolerable for his father, Powers remembers, but "it gave him a chance to fly again."
And the family flourished. The son took the father to school on show-and-tell days. There were frequent family picnics and trips to the beach. Hollywood even made a movie of Powers's book; there is a photo of father and son on the film's set. They are smiling.
On Aug. 1, 1977, Powers Jr. was barely 12 years old. His mother, Sue, picked him up after school in the old family Mercedes, the one with the broken radio. When they pulled into the circular driveway in front of their home, they saw a car belonging to a friend of Sue's. As mother and son stepped on the front porch, the door opened and the friend appeared.
"What are you doing here?" Sue asked.
"Haven't you heard the news?" the woman asked.
"No, the car radio's broken. What news?"
"There's been an accident."
Powers's traffic chopper had run out of fuel and gone down in Tarzana, Calif. He had tried a crash-landing maneuver but failed; the crash killed Powers and a cameraman aboard. The death certificate read "pilot error." Powers, who was 47, was a man who'd fallen 70,000 feet out of the sky into the hands of an enemy and survived.
Now, his life had ended in such an ignominious fashion. Francis Gary Powers Jr. had no idea what to do. So he closed up.
The Rift . . .
Dee had already left home by the time of her stepfather's death, so the widow and the son spent a lot of time together. Or at least under the same roof. Francis Gary Jr. kept to himself, in his basement bedroom.
"A teacher once told me that, when my father died, the spark went out of my eyes," Powers says. The boy had been outgoing: He was sixth-grade class president. As he entered seventh grade, a month after his father's death, he avoided extracurricular activities. If asked his name, he said "Gary," not "Gary Powers."
For years after the father died, the phone and credit card bills still came in his name. It was just one more thing that mother and son fought over. Sometime during his senior year in high school, the boy hugged his mother and told her that he loved her--it was the first time in years. It would be nice to think it was a neat closure, that the boy was on his way. But that would be wrong.
. . . And the Drift
In 1983, while President Reagan was announcing his plans to build the "Star Wars" anti-missile defense system and the Soviet Union was fighting Afghans supported by the CIA, Francis Gary Powers Jr. was hanging out at keggers.
He was just another freshman at California State University-Northridge. He pledged the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and eventually became its president.
As a teen, Powers was ambivalent about following in his father's footsteps--he nearly entered the Air Force Academy, but balked at the last moment. He logged one hour of flight time toward a pilot's license, then quit.
Here at Cal State, he was surrounded by a bunch of other 18-year-olds whose sense of history stretched back to last fall's rush. Here, he could be just "Gary."
And in a strange way it gave him a freedom far beyond that which college normally brings. For the first time, he was able to approach his father's ghost on his own terms.
He started slowly, plumbing the library's collection of old Time and Life magazines. He scoured microfiche. Read that his father was called unpatriotic for not killing himself while in prison. The son sloughed off such criticism. "They just didn't know Dad," he thought.
What the searching son didn't do was study.
As his frat activity increased, his grades plummeted. After four years, short of a degree, he flunked out. He skulked home. He and his mother resumed their fighting. He worked for a real estate developer for two years, then entered Cal State-L.A. and, two years later, graduated with a philosophy degree.
He knocked around. He won a vacation to Costa Rica by appearing on a TV game show called "Relatively Speaking," featuring relatives of famous people.
He went to Mammoth Lake, in northern California. There he helped build a house and worked at a hotel. On his days off, he skied. It was a wastrel's terrific life. He can't remember if he even watched TV the night the Cold War putatively ended--Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down.
Crossing the Bridge
And then the Russian TV reporter phoned.
May 1, 1990, was the 30th anniversary of the U-2 shoot-down. The reporter wanted to bring Powers to Moscow. Powers had hoped to see his father's U-2 wreckage, which he believed to be somewhere in Moscow. Instead, as pro-democracy demonstrations flared in Red Square, he was shown scenic dachas in the country.
No matter.
On the way to Moscow, Powers stopped in Berlin. It was there, in the early morning of Feb. 10, 1962, that his father was exchanged for a Soviet spy and walked from East to West across the Glienicke Bridge.
For years, Powers had avoided his father's footsteps as if they were land mines. Now, at 24, he stood at the west end of the 394-foot bridge and looked east. In his mind, he saw East German guards and the long red-and-white gate arms. He saw his father's footsteps. They were coming toward him.
He walked out to meet them.
It was a warm spring day, but Powers envisioned his father's winter crossing.
"I imagined the cold and the barbed wire and the machine guns and the German shepherds barking at him," he says. In the middle, Powers stopped. Here, his father had passed Soviet agent Rudolf Abel. The young Powers turned, grinned and walked back to the West. Just as his father had.
Two years later, in 1992, he would walk further into his father's past, returning to his home state. He came to Virginia for his grandmother's funeral. For the first time since his father's death, Powers had an urge to engage with his family. His mother suggests: "I think it was about becoming an adult."
Powers entered George Mason University and took a master's degree in public administration. He worked for the City of Fairfax and in various public relations jobs.
But that was only his vocation. Powers was focusing his considerable energy on his father. He visited cousins in his father's home town of Pound, Va. He attended reunions of U-2 pilots. He gave U-2 lectures to history classes at George Mason. He assembled the artifacts of his father's life. He began to pick up history's baggage and tote it with him.
It was 1992, and Francis Gary Powers Jr.'s life was coming together--because of the Cold War.
Sons of the Cold War
That same year, Fritz Bugas's world was falling apart--because of the Cold War. The bunker he had run for a quarter-century was being forced to close. "I was morose and moping around and wondering if the world was going to fall in," he says.
Don't get him wrong: He didn't regret that the world seemed to pull back from nuclear annihilation. He just didn't know what he was going to . . . do.
"Who knows? Maybe we all were a bunch of Strangeloves," says Bugas, who at 70 still emits a fissionable energy.
He has made a bit of peace with it all now. The tours help. "I have found there is a degree of satisfaction in trying to portray this picture of what the Cold War was all about," he says.
On a recent cool and sunny Friday, Bugas stands outside the mammoth blast door, neatly turned out in jacket and tie, white beard trimmed with military precision.
He and Powers have spent the morning together and have hit it off. But Bugas politely declines to display Powers's U-2 memorabilia--they run so many tours through that they have to keep 'em moving, he says; can't have 'em stopping to look at more things.
It's funny. Powers had better luck with another son of the Cold War. Powers's father was shot down by forces under the command of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who also had a son. Sergei grew up watching the Cold War from Moscow. Today he is a naturalized American and teaches political science at Brown University in Providence, R.I.
In 1995, Sergei Khrushchev went to a U-2 conference in Norway, where he met Powers. The two talked about their fathers. "His father's fate was much more tragic," Khrushchev says.
With Powers's urging, Khrushchev agreed to lend his name to the Cold War museum project. It is one of Powers's successes over the years. There have been a few others.
In 1996, Powers incorporated his museum idea into a nonprofit organization. The next year he persuaded Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) to sponsor legislation funding a Cold War memorial. And by 1997, Powers was returning to Moscow, his trip paid for by a Russian businessman.
Cell 31
This time his Russian tour guides took him to the Central Museum of Armed Forces. Missiles hung from the ceiling. He was tingling.
Was it here?
There! Over in a corner, piled in a heap, behind a rope, was the wreckage of his father's U-2. Finally. Powers could smell the jet fuel, after nearly 40 years. He was frozen by the sight of the wreck. He could read the markings on the fuselage: "NO STEP."
He and two companions were then bundled into a tiny car and driven three hours outside of Moscow to Vladimir prison, where his father was held captive.
On a sunny June day, Powers met prison officials and exchanged gifts--he traded a copy of his father's book for a prison-made soccer ball. Inside, Powers and his companions were led up several flights of stairs and across metal catwalks that groaned and clanked underfoot.
Finally, the prison director stopped before a cell.
In Russian, he said, "This is it." He opened the metal door to Cell 31--it was here that Powers the American spy had sat, here that he had stitched a 2-by-3-foot rug, which is part of his son's traveling exhibit. The son felt a shot of anxiety. He thought: "I don't want to stay."
But he walked inside.
"Can I have a few moments alone?" he asked.
Powers sat on a bunk. He looked up and saw the metal shutters over the cell's one window--angled downward to prevent prisoners from seeing outside, as his father had written. It was quiet.
"I had memories of what my father had told me, sadness for what he had gone through, excitement for the joy of being able to be there as a friend and invited guest," he says. What he didn't feel was enmity toward his hosts for trying to kill his father.
"Hey, Dad was spying," he says, matter-of-factly.
Honor Thy Father
It is night. Powers is heading north through Virginia on Interstate 81, back from his trip to the Greenbrier bunker.
Though Bugas took a pass on the U-2 relics, Powers is undeterred.
"It's all part of the ongoing marketing and public relations," he says. "You have to go through 99 nos to get one yes."
And even though it sometimes seems this way, the Cold War museum is not the only thing in Powers's life. On Monday morning, he'll be back at his desk at Ebstor.com, a Manassas computer company. He has a fiancee, Jennifer Webber, and they will marry in May. Perhaps he'll make a second run at Fairfax City Council (last year he lost--by 200 votes).
Meanwhile, he'll continue to haul around his dad's belongings, like Marley's chains, until they find a permanent resting place.
He'll pull it off, says Webber, 24, who typed the Cold War museum's articles of incorporation. Clearly, he has the will. But what about a clear strategy?
Webber pauses.
"I think he has a lot of ideas," she says. "I don't think he has a clear picture of how he's going to get there at this point."
Powers looks out of the car window into the passing darkness.
"One big sponsor, that's what we need," he muses. Next year, Kevin Costner will star in a movie about the Cuban missile crisis called "Thirteen Days." Powers wants to persuade the movie star to lend his name to the museum project, as Khrushchev has. But he doesn't know how to contact Costner.
It is this energy and naivete that so endear Powers to his sister, Dee Powers Rogers, who is 43, married and lives in Minneapolis.
"My mother instilled in me and my brother that there is one thing we would carry throughout our whole entire life and that is our name," she says. "Especially his name--Francis Gary Powers Jr. Gary bears the burden and responsibility as well as the pride and power of that name."
That name. Once, it got a nod of recognition. Now, it may be just one more musty footnote that high school history students are forced to swallow--or are they anymore? Perhaps the phantom war is becoming a genuine ghost.
"These youngsters now in high school or college have no idea what you're talking about when you say something about a U-2," says Sue Powers, on the phone from Las Vegas, where she now lives. She never remarried. When she looks at her son, she sees her late husband's crooked smile. "They certainly don't know who Frank is."
Two years after its introduction, the Cold War memorial legislation languishes in committee. And maybe Costner won't help with the museum. Or anyone else. That's fine, too.
"If I didn't do it, who would?" asks the son of the Cold War. "Who else is there to do it but me?"
Besides, he says: "What else am I going to do with my life?"
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To US, Putin is a riddle wrapped in a mystery
New Russian leader's posture toward US will affect everything from missile defense to arms control.
Christian Science Monitor
01/06/00
USA WASHINGTON DOSSIER
Justin Brown
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON
Russia's Acting President Vladimir Putin is likely to be among the most important world leaders the US will have to negotiate with in the coming years.
As master of the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal, his actions will help determine the course of the American military - as well as US plans to build a national missile defense. And a driving force behind the war in Chechnya, he will determine whether there will be chaos or stability in a region that has become the front line between Christianity and Islam. But to the dismay of some US officials, Mr. Putin is also a surprisingly unknown element - his true identity veiled by campaign rhetoric, silence on crucial issues, and years of work as an intelligence officer in the former East Germany.
Since Putin became, in succession, prime minister, the leading presidential candidate, and, with the New Year's Eve resignation of Boris Yeltsin, acting president, US officials have been struggling to get a handle on the stern-faced upstart, who is almost universally described as "pragmatic."
"The good news is that [Russia] will have a president of good health who will work hard," says a US official, contrasting the active first days of Putin's rule to the lethargic last leg of the Yeltsin era. "The bad news is that there are some things we don't know - we don't know who this man is entirely."
At the center of efforts to read Putin is the time he spent with the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Services, which he directed.
KGB image misleading
Putin worked as an intelligence officer for at least four years in Germany, ending in 1989. But as an example of how little has been confirmed about him, US officials say it is unclear when he began that post - and exactly what he did while he was there.
On the flip side of concerns about a mysterious KGB past is the assumption that Putin benefited from working at one of the most successful and modern agencies in the former Soviet Union.
"The KGB conjures images of men in leather jackets beating up dissidents," says Keith Bush, an analyst at the Center of Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "But the reality is that the KGB was prestigious and attracted the best and the brightest in the Soviet Union."
US officials, who agree that KGB experience may have made Putin more open-minded about reform, are careful to point out that the acting president is not a one-dimensional, law-enforcement type. Rather, they say, he is well-grounded in economics, which should allow him to move Russia's economy forward and make the country more stable than it is now.
Economic stability is considered crucial to protecting Russia's vast nuclear stockpile - which some in the US fear could be sold off to rogue states in the event of a financial meltdown.
While a university-level student in St. Petersburg in the 1970s, Putin wrote his dissertation on the national economic policy concerning minerals.
As a city official, also in St. Petersburg, he was the mayor's point man for foreign investment, and he helped open banks and hotels.
Since he became prime minister Aug. 9, the Russian economy has improved. While soaring fuel revenues are largely behind the boost, US officials say that, unlike some of his predecessors, Putin "has not done anything to stifle the economy."
Mr. Putin, a 47-year-old judo expert, is said to be a man of his word, something the Russian public desperately wants. Since he took over as prime minister he punctually followed through on two of his promises: to hold Duma elections on time and to crack down on alleged Chechen terrorists.
While strong words may be good for Russian voters, they do not sit well with officials and analysts here, who worry that Putin could usher in a new wave of Russian nationalism. Already, anti-Western sentiment fueled by NATO expansion and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, is on the rise.
So far Putin has pushed all the right domestic buttons - which is what any presidential candidate would want to do with elections no more than three months away.
According to Ariel Cohen, a Russia expert at the Heritage Foundation here, his first "brilliant" move was to visit Russian troops fighting in Chechnya on New Year's Day, when the rest of Russia was in a deep slumber. Rather than give them customary watches, he chose a stronger symbol - signed hunting knives. After that, he fired Yeltsin adviser and daughter Tatyana Dyachenko, who has been accused of corruption.
"He's a natural for power politics," says Mr. Cohen.
Putin abroad
But internationally, Putin's policy has not gone over so well. He is credited with being the architect of the Russian invasion into Chechnya - which was first justified as a crackdown on terrorists but is now called a mission to preserve Russian territorial integrity.
US officials predict he will tone down the operation as elections near - in an effort to prevent casualties that could turn public opinion against a popular war. They also hope that his pragmatism will prevent the conflict from spreading throughout the Caucasus, an already unstable region that is rich in oil.
Finally, officials here are looking closely to see how Putin will respond to the US desire to revise the 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty. The treaty would have to be changed or discarded for the US to build a national missile-defense system - something the Russians have vehemently opposed.
In previous statements, Putin has said he wants to ratify the START II nonproliferation agreement.
If he does that, US officials say, it would be a goodwill gesture that could make the US look bad if they were to break the much more important ABM treaty.
But, US officials say, it is impossible to read too much into the future with Putin.
"He will defend the [Russian] national interest," says a US official. "That means sometimes he will cooperate with the US, sometimes he won't."
The URL for this page is: http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/01/06/fp3s1-csm.shtml
For further information:
It's Vladimir Putin, International Man of Mystery Time
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/daily/special/look/0,2633,36841,00.html
Putin will win in first round, say backers Electronic Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000181711402826&rtmo=aNwXwHXL&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/1/3/wrus03.html
Yeltsin immunity suggests deal with Putin Irish Times
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2000/0103/wor12.htm
A new Kremlin face, but "family" keeps the real power
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/000102/world/afp/A_new_Kremlin_face__but__family__keeps_the_real_power.html
Putin Reshuffles Kremlin Staff On Busy Day,
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=122566
Russia Today
http://www.russiatoday.com/
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Readers' Forum: Why not report the real story in Iraq?
Toledo Blade
January 6, 2000
http://www.toledoblade.com/editorial/letters/0a06lett.htm
Your editorial regarding the situation in Iraq represents many of the myths perpetuated by the U.S. State Department for the last 10 years. France, Russia, and China abstained from voting for United Nations Resolution 1284, which would reinstate inspections of Iraq, because they know, after nine years of inspections, that no nuclear weapons ever existed in Iraq and, moreover, that some "inspectors" were actually U.S. spies aiming to re-commence bombing.
The resolution resembles the Rambouillet Accord - a Catch-22 that the United States knew could not possibly be accepted by Serbia but which, by its rejection, would allow a rationale for bombing that country. U.S. propaganda then blames the victim in order to carry out its war crimes. The catastrophe in Iraq has been compared to the Holocaust, having so far killed 2 million people - mostly children.
Your editorial does not mention the 7,000 deaths per month that UNICEF attributes directly to the embargo - one death every 10 minutes. Nor does it depict the agony caused by the most prolonged bombardment of civilians since Vietnam.
Sanctions on food and medicine have resulted in widespread death due to malnutrition and intestinal disease. There is a sharp rise in instances of leukemia and rare cancers from the highly radioactive depleted uranium from bombs.
Just this month, appalling conditions were witnessed by a delegation led by activist Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit. Nine children in one hospital were covered with shattered glass from a bomb that had landed on their school.
Schoolchildren screamed hysterically at seeing Americans, whom they associate with bombs. Everywhere the team went, they were asked, "Why are you doing this to us? We are human, just like you."
Why don't you report the real story?
ANNE MARIE ABOWD Brookside Road
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Cox's Flaccid Report Vaunted Chinese Spy Report Unravels
Orange County Weekly
January 7 - 13, 2000
by R. Scott Moxley
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/00/18/news-moxley.shtml
Congressman Christopher Cox would have been delighted had he been inside the Barnes & Noble at the Irvine Spectrum one night last June. Days before, at a carefully staged Capitol Hill press conference, Cox had donned a black suit, solid red tie and somber face to claim that critical U.S. nuclear-weapons secrets had been stolen by Chinese spies. Though remarkably short on supporting evidence, the allegations produced sensational international headlines and once again transformed the congressman into a political star whose machinations could dominate a conversation between five middle-aged women in a bookstore. Never mind that Cox later admitted to a reporter, "We're having a great deal of difficulty in finding suspects. We don't even have any real open cases." People love spy tales. "Thank God for Chris Cox," said one of the women. "If he had been president, the Chinese would have never stolen our secrets."
For the Newport Beach millionaire, who has made no secret of his desire for higher public office, Hollywood could not have scripted a better role: national-security hero. The best heroes are, of course, the reluctant ones, a point the shrewd Cox surely understands. Bob Schieffer, the host of CBS's Face the Nation, ended an interview with the six-term congressman by saying, "I know you've had a long row with [your investigation], and I'm sure you're glad it's over." With all the sincerity he could muster, Cox responded solemnly, "Amen."
Our reluctant hero was so glad it was over that he proceeded to mass-produce press releases touting his allegations, write editorials for several newspapers, book himself speaking engagements, and appear on just about every television network-news show in the country. Not even a Washington Post report that the congressman had leaked details of his secret investigation to favored reporters curtailed the adulation. On the McLaughlin Group talk show, one guest boldly called Cox "a Cool Hand Luke" who is "smart, analytical" and should be Speaker of the House.
For six months, Cox basked in near-blemish-free media glory, haughtily dismissing critical reports (which appeared mostly in the alternative press, including the Weekly). But last month, the congressman's allegations of Chinese espionage suffered a near-fatal blow. Stanford University's respected Center for International Security, which is headed by the man who directed this country's nuclear-weapons programs for 36 years, issued a blistering rebuke to what has come to be known as the "Cox Report." Though Cox oddly didn't bother to include one nuclear-weapons expert on his investigation's staff, the university hired five world-renowned experts. They concluded, "There is no credible evidence presented or instances described of actual theft of U.S. missile technology." That may explain why the FBI has been unable to arrest a single person in what Cox would have us believe is the most damaging espionage scheme in U.S. history.
In their 100-page detailed review, the center's experts found Cox's allegations "inflammatory," "misleading," "extremely vague" and "implausible." The Cox Report, they determined, "lacks scholarly rigor and exhibits too many examples of sloppy research, factual errors and weakly justified inferences." (And to think: Cox's claims prompted conservative newspaper columnist Debra J. Sanders to call for public hangings; another columnist floated the idea that all Chinese-American scientists should be investigated as potential spies.)
Cox-who has always maintained that his report "did not engage in opinion" even though phrases such as "appear to be" pepper the document-tried at first to ignore the university's review. Later, he placed on his office Web site a link to a government press release that slammed the center. According to the defensive statement issued by a Republican staff member, the university's critique "represents the personal conclusions and opinions of the authors and those opinions might be right or wrong" and is a "disservice" to this country by "biased" men who sympathize with the communists. The congressman let others do the dirty work; he did not issue retaliatory press releases or grant a series of high-profile interviews. Better to let that specific story die quickly.
There were clues from the beginning that the Cox Report was nothing more than cheap-if entertaining-political theater. CNN's Reliable Sources noted the report's unusual Hollywood-like "high production values." Strangely enough, those production values worked best at supposedly liberal Newsweek. In a June cover story, the magazine's reporters unquestioningly swallowed Cox's tale. "There is no doubt that Beijing has been adept at pilfering U.S. nuclear secrets," they wrote, without attribution to a single source-much less an expert.
But in trying to pump up Cox's stature, Newsweek may have inadvertently handed his critics a noose. (Some media analysts speculate that Cox leaked information to the magazine to secure favorable coverage.) "Late last fall, the Cox Committee investigation seemed at a dead end. For months the House panel had slogged through arcane documents and endured hours of technical testimony -searching for proof that China had illegally obtained American satellite technology. . . . Then, last November, came a breakthrough," the magazine reported excitedly. "Notra Trulock, a top intelligence officer at the Energy Department, appeared before the panel. In a dry, monotone drawl, he told the secret meeting that over the years, Beijing had stolen some of America's most sensitive nuclear-weapons secrets from the nation's labs. As Trulock spoke, committee members began to stiffen in their chairs. Christopher Cox, the committee's chairman, looked at his colleagues and their eyes bugged out, remembers one participant [the source was likely the congressman]. For the committee, bad news never looked so good."
More accurately: for the ultra-ambitious Cox-a corporate lawyer who jealously protects and promotes his own reputation as a rising political star in Republican circles-bad news (as flimsy as it has proved) certainly never looked so good.
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'U.S. reserves right to strike at terrorist bases'
The Hindu
Saturday, January 08, 2000
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/01/08/stories/03080003.htm
WASHINGTON, JAN. 7. The U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton, has asserted that the United States ``makes no concessions to terrorists'' and reserves the right to strike at terrorist bases, as it did unilaterally in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for hosting the Saudi dissident, Osama Bin Laden.
``As long as terrorists continue to target American citizens, we reserve the right to act in self-defence by striking at their bases and those who sponsor, assist or actively support them,'' Mr. Clinton warned.
In his national security strategy report to the U.S. Congress, the President said, ``we make no concessions to terrorists. We fully exploit all available legal mechanisms to punish international terrorists, eliminate foreign terrorists and their support networks in our country, and extend the reach of financial sanctions to international terrorist support networks.''
Pointing out that ``the U.S. has made concerted efforts to deter and punish terrorists'', Mr. Clinton said his country would, ``remain determined to apprehend and bring to justice those who terrorise American citizens.'' ``Because terrorist organisations may not be deterred by traditional means, we must ensure a robust capability to accurately attribute the source of attacks against the U.S. or its citizens and to respond effectively and decisively to protect our national interests.''
Speaking about the U.S. dialogue with India and Pakistan, he said Washington sought to encourage both countries to take steps to prevent proliferation, reduce the risk of conflict and exercise restraint in their nuclear and missile programmes.
- PTI
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Rafael Develops "Target Missile" to Reduce Arrow Missile Trials Cost by 90%
Israel's Business Arena
Sunday , Jan 9, 2000 Sun-Thu at 18:00 (GMT+2)
By Dror Marom
http://www.globes.co.il/cgi-bin/Serve_Archive_Arena/pages/English/1.2.1.10/20000106/1
The Israel Armaments Development Authority (Rafael) has developed a new missile, called "Black Sparrow", which will be used as a target for the Arrow missile trials. The new missile will reduce the cost of the trials in the anti-missile defense program to a tenth of the current price, which amounts to tens of millions of shekels per trial.
The new missile is the first target missile developed by Rafael, which develops air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. Rafael will offer the missile to the US Defense Department, which currently manages eight anti-missile missile development programs concurrently, and is attempting to find cheap target missiles.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on January 6, 2000
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Albright To Meet Putin In Moscow Jan 30
Inside Russia Today
Jan 8, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=123794
MOSCOW, -- (Reuters) U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is expected to meet Russia's Acting President Vladimir Putin at the end of January during a visit to Moscow, Itar-Tass news agency quoted diplomatic sources as saying on Friday.
Tass said Albright would arrive on January 30, two days before a planned session of Middle East peace talks at foreign ministers' level, which Russia and the United States are due to chair jointly in the Russian capital.
The Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the Tass report.
The meeting with Putin would be the first since the prime minister took over as acting president on New Year's eve when Boris Yeltsin announced his shock resignation.
Albright will also hold talks with her Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov, focusing on progress towards ratification by Russia's State Duma lower house of parliament of the START-2 treaty, which cuts nuclear arsenals on both sides, Tass said.
A possible visit to Moscow by U.S. President Bill Clinton could also be on the agenda, it added.
Clinton, who has criticized Russia's military campaign against Islamic militants in the breakaway Chechnya region, spoke by phone to Putin on January 1 and said relations were "off to a good start".
U.S.-Russian relations have been chilly since Moscow denounced last year's NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia. Russia has also criticized Washington's attempts to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
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China Continues Missile Shipments To North Korea: Report
Inside China Today
Jan 7, 2000
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=123425
WASHINGTON, -- (Agence France Presse) China is continuing to supply materials for North Korea's long-range missile program, the Washington Times reported Thursday, citing a Pentagon intelligence report.
Two weeks ago China sent missile related goods to North Korea through a Hong Kong company, the Times said.
The Pentagon declined to comment on the newspaper report which said the shipment and others in the past showed that Beijing was breaking a commitment to curb such sales covered by the 29-nation Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
Officials declined to provide further details about the shipment, citing sensitive intelligence concerns, the paper added.
China, Stalinist North Korea's closest ally, is publicly committed to opposing weapons proliferation and helping maintain stability on the Korean peninsula.
In 1998 Pyongyang test-fired a medium-range Taepodong I ballistic missile, and was reportedly ready to launch a longer-range Taepodong II capable of reaching Alaska. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse
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Saving the earth best done in the 'Hard Green' way
Denver Rocky Mountain News
January 9, 2000
Linda Seebach
mailto:seebach@denver-rmn.com
Linda Seebach's Biography
http://insidedenver.com/news/columnists.shtml#seebach
http://insidedenver.com/seebach/0109seeba.shtml
Peter Huber believes the environment is too important to be left to the environmentalists, and in his new book Hard Green, he explains why.
Huber adapts his terminology from Amory Lovins, who argued in a widely cited 1976 article that "soft" sources of energy, such as conservation, biomass, solar, wind and low-head hydro were vastly preferable to "hard" sources such as oil, coal and nuclear.
In the spirit of the times, when Americans fumed in long gas lines caused by federal fuel-allocation regulations and Jimmy Carter shivered in the White House rather than turning up the thermostat, Lovins' message resonated. But it's wrong (and not merely because the gas lines disappeared as soon as the government stopped causing them).
The reason it is wrong, Huber says, is that the soft energy sources depend ultimately on capturing solar energy, and solar energy is very diffuse. Maybe we could get enough of it by damming every river and covering the land with wind farms and solar cells and crops we could burn for fuel, but in the process we would destroy much of the natural world and its wild areas that we cherish.
Hard power is greener, Huber says, because it extracts more power from less of the Earth's surface. "Uranium is harder than oil and gas, which are harder than coal, which is harder than biomass, solar, and wind.
"Policies that promote soft fuels over hard do not protect the environment; they hasten its destruction."
Hard technology allows us to live in three dimensions rather than two, mining for fuel rather than clearing the surface, flying rather than laying down more highways and railroad tracks.
Putting waste back in the ground is just putting carbon back in the Earth, which is, after all, where we get most of it. "Composting food wastes and recycling newspapers are the last thing we should want to do," Huber says. "The notion that 'there is no room' down there is absurd. If we take old carbon out of the ground, we can put new carbon back in. Only two-dimensional thinkers could possibly believe otherwise. In three dimensions, there is always plenty of room."
The irony of the successful campaign to stop construction of nuclear power plants in the United States is that it has led to vastly increased use of coal, which tends to increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But at the same time, the decrease in farm land because hard agricultural technology is so much more productive has meant a huge reforestation of America. Growing trees take carbon out of the atmosphere, so much so that North America is not, on balance, contributing to the worldwide increase.
None of this is what Soft Greens would predict, and Huber's recurring theme is that grand theories of everything, applied coercively by planners who are certain they know better than anyone else how to save the planet, are likely to go disastrously wrong.
Soft prescriptions tend to be wrong on the small scale too. Saving energy with more efficient appliances doesn't mean people use less energy -- "With all that money saved by your gas furnace in the basement, you fly to Aspen for a weekend in the snow."
The one thing there is a genuine scarcity of is unspoiled land, and hard technology conserves it.
Huber's model of conservation is Theodore Roosevelt, not because he liked to shoot animals but because he recognized the importance of unspoiled land that would give the animals room to live and restore the human spirit as well.
Roosevelt wrote in 1909, "There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, ... where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and changed only by the slow change of the ages through time everlasting."
Hard, not Soft, is the path leading to that green vision.
Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the News.
She can be reached at (303)892-2519 or seebach@RockyMountainNews.com by e-mail.