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A LOOK AT . . . Mothers Who March
Washington Post
Sunday, May 14, 2000; Page B03
By Jean Bethke Elshtain
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/14/131l-051400-idx.html
THE WOMEN WHO GATHER in protest today are using their maternal role to draw attention to their political goal (tougher gun-control legislation). That's not a new approach--but is it an effective one?; Morally Sure, Politically Uncertain
Not all that many years ago, at a national meeting of women's studies scholars, an activist who had been an organizer of an influential 1960s women's group expressed reservations about the movement.
She wasn't unhappy about its opposition to atmospheric nuclear testing. Far from it. President Kennedy himself had credited Women Strike for Peace for its instrumental role in the years leading up to the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty. No, it was the movement's emphasis on motherhood that now bothered her. Its members had marched militantly behind baby carriages. They had chosen overtly maternal iconography--a skull and crossbones superimposed on baby bottles to indicate the tainting of milk with traces of strontium-90--to convey their message. There was something incorrect--very incorrect--from the then-dominant feminist standpoint, about a group of political women defining themselves primarily as mothers in the interest of any cause. Such a designation bore regressive implications, or so the speaker felt, because motherhood had become a suspect category, the very symbol of women's continuing enthrallment with "patriarchy." In that environment, Mother's Day was something to be lamented, not celebrated.
There's good reason the organizers of today's Million Mom March for national gun control legislation have ignored that particular feminist message. Women have historically used motherhood to political ends and purposes and often done so quite effectively, the most famous recent example being MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). But the "mothers and others" (as they call themselves) who gather in Washington and more than 60 other cities today should be aware that although the maternal imperative in politics has a venerable place in U.S. history, it is also a controversial one.
During the 19th-century movement for women's suffrage, women argued for their political participation on the grounds that, as mothers, they would bring certain virtues to the political arena--the very virtues that the spokeswomen for the Million Mom March proudly extol: the protection, care and nurturing of children as an ethical imperative of the highest order. So important, indeed, that other concerns are simply trumped. Who could possibly be opposed to protecting children?
Matters are never so simple, of course. It isn't always clear what is best for children or even what qualifies as protecting them. The 1993 conflagration in Waco, Tex., ensued in large part because Attorney General Janet Reno was convinced that the children of the Branch Davidians needed to be rescued. The upshot of this bungled attempt at child protection was the death of 27 children.
Still, there is an undeniable symbolic and emotional urgency whenever child protection is evoked--especially so when it is mothers who are doing the evoking. That's because we have accepted the notion that mothers have a special place when it comes to children: It is their job, quite simply, to save children, even at risk to their own lives. This is one reason Miami's Cuban community is so adamant that 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez remain in the United States: His mother died trying to get him here. Shouldn't this maternal wish and sacrifice be a primary consideration? As the continuing political battle around Elian's custody demonstrates that maternal sacrifice alone may not win the day.
The New Jersey mother who is the power behind the latest of a long line of mothers' marches and movements articulates this most venerable of all maternal rhetoric--the "mother's drive to protect her children." That, says organizer Donna Dees-Thomases, is "more powerful" than anything else. The Million Mom March Web site (www.millionmommarch.com) evokes a biological image of gestation and birth, with Dees-Thomases likening the nine-month period since her initial application to march on the Mall to pregnancy. "As a mother," she has also said, "I know what can be created in this amount of time." Besides, she has pointed out, our "children's lives are far too precious" to delay further.
Critics of maternal politics argue that this approach tends to sentimentalize complex issues, and that the symbolic clout of motherhood may not translate into feasible policy initiatives. Defenders insist that policy initiatives--like national gun control legislation--may languish unless and until those who feel most keenly a child's loss (and the Million Mom March places mothers first and foremost here, although this hardly seems fair to fathers) take the issue into their own hands.
The Million Mom March manifesto repeats the phrase, "We, the mothers," insisting that the first of all inalienable rights is the right to life itself and that the lives of children "far outweigh the right for just anyone, especially juveniles, to carry a semiautomatic assault weapon or Saturday Night Special." The organizers insist that all of this is a means of taking the gun control issue out of politics, because that is the only way to protect "our defenseless children." Critics, of course, argue that what the mothers are doing is very much politics--First Mother Hillary Rodham Clinton, after all, will be marching along--and that part of the politics involved is the very pretense that no politics is involved. Small wonder that the National Rifle Association has tried to beat the marching mothers at their own game: "This is one week to put politics aside and put kids first," is the message of NRA ads that began running last weekend. Small wonder, too, that opponents of the march, including a planned counter-march of "Second Amendment Sisters" in Washington on the same day, have found themselves rhetorically out-gunned: Who can be for harming defenseless children?
But proclaiming--as Dees-Thomases does--that gun control is not a political but a "public health" question will not, over the long run, be the most effective strategy. Calling attention to an issue is one thing. Hanging in through policy crafting and re-crafting, which requires a process of effective lobbying of Congress, on the one hand, and education of the public, on the other, is quite another. That's precisely what the marching moms will have to do if they are to bring about real change.
Mothers' movements of recent vintage that have had the most success usually take place where there is little or no political dispute about the moral authority of the cause. The Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina, for example, who in the 1970s and '80s called attention to the disappearances, torture and deaths of their children, have been effective in part because they are reacting to a situation of almost unequivocal horror: They were calling for their government to stop acting like a group of terrorists. But for such a powerfully symbolic and ethical effort to take root in a political culture, mothers have to cast their efforts in political terms that all citizens (whether mothers or not) can grasp. The translation of maternal imperatives into human rights declarations is an example of this. And such efforts as Las Madres work, in part, because those engaged in "disappearing" young people lied about it: No one wants to take credit for such horror; no one wants to be known as a torturer and depredator.
Gun control legislation is by no means so clear-cut. It is mired instead in competing claims to rights, and arguments about what will ultimately be the most effective means of stopping the illicit use of and accidents involving firearms. Those who oppose what the moms favor do so not because they are unconcerned about the well-being of children, they insist, but because they believe the legislation the moms advocate will not be an effective means of achieving its stated goals, on the one hand, and may pose specific threats to a long-standing American "freedom," on the other.
Effective response to such counter-claims demands far more than appealing to the horror of maternal loss or the imperative of maternal protection. It requires canny politics. The first thing the Million Mom March spokeswomen ought to do when they gather on the Mall today is to proclaim, "We're political, and we're proud of it." Rather than running from politics, they should embrace it. That is what citizens in a democratic country do, after all.
Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
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Resources for Grassroots Organizing against Star Wars
From: Abolition2000@aol.com
Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 05:20:58 EDT
Dear Friends and Activists,
In addition to the events listed below, non-violent demonstrations will take place at Vandenberg Air Force Base Main Gate in California on: Saturday, 24 June 2000 Monday, 26 June 2000 (the next scheduled test of the NMD system) Saturday, 5 August 2000 (this demonstration will include a teach-in on ballistic missile defense the future of Star Wars, featuring Bruce Gagnon from the Global Network Against Nuclear Weapons and Power in Space) Saturday, 7 October 2000 (Global Network International Day of Protest)
Tests of the National Missile Defense (NMD) system are being conducted between Vandenberg Air Force Base (on sacred Indigenous land on the central coast of California) and Kwajelein Atoll in the Pacific. 26 June will be the third test and final of the NMD system before President Clinton is scheduled to make a decision on deployment of the system. While it is rumored that the presidential decision may be delayed, we must act now to altogether stop the deployment of the NMD system, which not only threatens international relations, but also threatens to initiate a new arms race and fosters US Space Command plans to weaponize and dominate Outer Space. Both leading presidential candidates, Vice President Al Gore and George W. Bush, support the NMD system and a delay in the scheduled decision will almost certainly guarantee its deployment.
If you would like furhter information on actions being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base, please contact me (contact information listed in the email signature below). Thank you in advance for your support and solidarity in our common struggle to create a more secure world, free of nuclear weapons.
In Peace, Carah Ong
Carah Lynn Ong Coordinator, Abolition 2000 1187 Coast Village Road PMB 121, Suite 1 Santa Barbara CA 93108
Phone +1 (805) 965 3443 FAX +1 (805) 568 0466 Email: A2000@silcom.com Website http://www.abolition2000.org
Join the Abolition-Global Caucus listserv to receive regular updates about the Abolition movement. The caucus provides an international forum for conversation on nuclear-related issues. Important articles and information relating to nuclear issues are also circulated to keep interested individuals and activists informed about nuclear issues.
To subscribe to the Abolition Global Caucus, please do one of the following:
1. Send a message to the list moderator at A2000@silcom.com
2. Visit the Abolition-caucus website at: Http://www.egroups.com/list/abolition-caucus/ and submit a membership form.
3. Visit the Abolition 2000 website and submit a membership form.
4. Send an e-mail to: abolition-caucus-subscribe@egroups.com (leave the subject line and body of the message blank).
To post a message to the Abolition Global Caucus, send your message to:
abolition-caucus@egroups.com
To subscribe to the Abolition-USA listerve, send a message (with no subject) to: abolition-usa-request@lists.xmission.com In the body of the message, write: "subscribe abolition-usa" (do not include quotation marks)
To post a message to the Abolition-USA list, mail your message to: abolition-usa@lists.xmission.com
To subscribe to the Abolition Global Caucus, send an email from the account you wish to be subscribed to: "abolition-caucus-subscribe@egroups.com"
Do not include a subject line or any text in the body of the message.
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Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 15:57:00 -0800 To: Abolition2000@aol.com
From: Kevin Martin <kmartin@fourthfreedom.org>(by way of Abolition 2000)
Subject: Resources for Grassroots Organizing against Star Wars missile defense
Dear Friend of Peace and Foe of Star Wars,
As you'll see from the information below, quite a lot of activity is brewing within the peace and disarmament movement to build opposition to the deployment of a "Star Wars" national missile defense. Please feel free to share this information widely, and contact me at kmartin@fourthfreedom.org or call 800/233-6786, ext. 21 with questions or other resources to add to the list. This list will be posted and updated on our website at www.fourthfreedom.org.
For Peace on Earth and in Space,
Kevin Martin Director, Project Abolition
* Resources for Grassroots Organizing against "Star Wars" National Missile Defense
Actions:
-The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space is urging the international community to call the White House and Congress through May 15 in order to escalate opposition to Star Wars and plans for the weaponization of space. The Global Network is calling for groups worldwide to organize local protest actions on or before June 26th, the date of the next scheduled test of the BMD system. For more information, contact the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space at P.O. Box 90083, Gainesville, FL 32607, or call 352-337-9274, email: globalnet@mindspring.com, website: www.globenet.free-online.co.uk
-"Star Wars Action Days," June 8 10, contact: Van Gosse at Peace Action, vgosse@peace-action.org, 202/862-9740. Let both Democrats and Republicans know that you expect congressional leadership to oppose Star Wars deployment. Join local activists who will demonstrate at congressional district offices or Star Wars contractor plants across the country to voice public opposition.
-Online petition Disarmament Clearinghouse NMD petition. Here's a great chance to take action and only take a few minutes to do it. Check out the website and sign your name at: www.onedemocracy.com/stopmissiles. Remember to let your friends know about this!
Organizing, Media, and Fundraising Resources:
-Disarmament Clearinghouse/Project Abolition Resource and Action kit: the new "Stop the Star Wars Revival" organizing kit is available for your organizing pleasure. Kits include tips on meeting with editorial boards, background information, sample actions, customizable fliers, and more. Order from: Kevin Martin, phone: 800/233-6786, ext.21, email: kmartin@fourthfreedom.org,
-Bill Hartung, Michelle Ciarocca, and Frida Berrigan of the World Policy Institute have written reports detailing the PAC and soft money contributions to candidates and lobbying expenditures of the major Star Wars weapons contractors: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, TRW, Raytheon. Go to www.igc.org/infocus/papers/micr/pushing.html for their report on the Star Wars lobby. For their lists of the contractors' campaign contributions and lobbying expenses, and the top Congressional recipients on donations from the Star Wars contractors, contact Kevin Martin (information above). Also, see www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms for op-ed articles on Star Wars.
-California Peace Action's "Real Disarmament vs. False Missile Defense" action alert on Star Wars for mailing or tabling. They also have an excellent sample op-ed article that addresses the four criteria President Clinton will use in making the decision on deploying national missile defense. Contact: Andrew Page, capazaction@igc.org, 510/849-2272.
-Illinois Peace Action's signature ad, "Star Wars 2000: The Nuclear Menace", a spoof on the Star Wars movies, is great for fundraising as well as media visibility. See their website at www.webcom.com/ipa or contact Carrie Benzschawel or Kevin Kintner, ilpeace@igc.org, 312/939-3316.
-Center for Defense Information video contact 20/20 Vision: Tim Barner, timb@2020vision.org, 202/833-2020. This video explores the diverse views on National Missile Defense and you can order a FREE copy to show at your next meeting or organizing event.
Websites
-The website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has exclusive information on U.S. attempts to persuade Russia to amend the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) and allow U.S. deployment of a "limited" missile defense system. Unbelievably, the U.S. provided technical information to assuage Russian fears that such a limited defense would render Russia's nuclear arsenal impotent. The U.S. also stated that both sides will maintain huge offensive nuclear arsenals under any future arms reduction treaties (directly contradicting our legal obligation to disarm under the Non-Proliferation Treaty) and encouraged Russia to maintain its hair-trigger "launch on warning" policy. It's scary stuff, but enlightening as to U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Check it out: www.bullatomsci.org
-Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers: www.crnd.org. This site is chock full of information on missile defense and arguments against it.
-Union of Concerned Scientists site at www.ucsusa.org has their report on why Star Wars won't work, including a streaming video explaining how the technology could be overwhelmed by countermeasures easily available to any country with the technology to launch a missile at the U.S.
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Marchers and Their Imprints
New York Times
May 14, 2000
By JOHN B. JUDIS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/oped/14judi.html
WASHINGTON -- On this Mother's Day, thousands of mothers will march on Washington to demand tough new gun control legislation, but it is unlikely that the Million Mom March will prove effective in getting Congress to act. Americans have been marching on Washington to demand change ever since the populist Jacob Coxey led his ragtag army of the unemployed from Ohio to Washington during the depression of the 1890's. Some of these marches have had lasting and visible effect, but others have been quickly forgotten.
The most successful marches have made straightforward, but far-reaching, demands that the president or Congress could conceivably meet. Participants in the August 1963 civil rights march demanded that Congress pass the civil rights bill that had already been introduced; the antiwar marchers in October 1967 demanded that the Johnson administration get out of Vietnam.
The effective marches have also attracted not just unexpectedly large numbers, but usually the participation of important and powerful public figures. Walter Reuther, the head of the United Auto Workers, had a prominent role in the 1963 march, along with Martin Luther King Jr. and the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins. The 1967 antiwar demonstration featured leading literary lights, including Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer, who celebrated the march in "The Armies of the Night."
Perhaps most important, marches that have won the most serious attention have embodied, implicitly or explicitly, the threat of nonviolent civic disruption and national embarrassment. They carried an intimation of chaos, if not in the demonstration itself, then from what could occur afterward. This sort of threat was obvious in the 1932 Bonus March of World War I veterans, which helped discredit President Herbert Hoover, and in the 1967 and 1969 antiwar marches.
This last characteristic has held true for the most successful civil rights demonstrations. The massive 1963 march was entirely peaceful, though its leaders included three proponents of civil disobedience: King, James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The march didn't just make a moral appeal; it sent a warning that the more obstreperous parts of the movement would not accept defeat.
One of the most successful marches on Washington never happened at all. In 1941, as the country began preparing for war, A. Phillip Randolph, the chairman of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, began to organize a huge march on Washington to demand that President Franklin Roosevelt issue an executive order banning discrimination in defense industries and the armed forces. Roosevelt, fearful that the demonstration would weaken support among blacks for the coming war effort, capitulated and signed the executive order five days before the march was to occur.
The less successful demonstrations of recent years have all fallen short in at least one crucial respect. Civil rights marches in 1983 and 1993 attracted as many people as the 1963 march, but they lacked either a clear and achievable demand or the threat of disruption. They functioned largely as uplifting social events, as have Earth Day demonstrations, which have become little more than concerts on the Mall. The A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Solidarity Day in 1981, which attracted 260,000 demonstrators, and the 300,000-strong abortion rights march in 1989 were forgettable because it was not clear what was being demanded or what exactly would happen if the demands were not met.
Today's Million Mom March promises to be a stirring event. It has certainly inspired political discussion and reflection, and it may contribute to making gun control a more salient issue in the fall elections. The leaders are calling for handgun registration and licensing -- a reasonably dramatic demand -- but they are not even insisting that the president sign on. And the only threat is far off: the marchers' opposition at the polls in November. (Won't most of them be voting for pro-gun control candidates anyway?)
Moreover, there is no hint of disorder. The marchers are not contemplating picketing gun stores, clogging the aisles at gun shows or sitting in at the offices of recalcitrant politicians -- activities that would raise the costs of not taking the moms seriously.
These tactics may not be necessary for getting controls on guns. It might make more sense to create a national organization of mothers who can walk precincts and run ads against politicians who oppose gun control. That's the way much of politics is conducted today, and there is nothing wrong with it. But if that is what the proponents of gun control want to do, then the Million Mom March, no matter how wonderful an occasion, is only a small, and perhaps not even needed, step.
Organizations rarely grow out of marches, as Bayard Rustin, the organizer of the 1963 civil rights march learned when he tried to sustain the coalition.
If the moms marching today are serious about winning the battle over gun control, they will have to show the allies of the National Rifle Association that if they continue to block legislation, they may have to face opposition more daunting than Sunday marchers or precinct walkers.
John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and the author of The Paradox of American Democracy."
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Activism on Mother's Day
New York Times
May 14, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/14sun1.html
No matter how simple it looks, Mother's Day is a complicated holiday. It has its roots in mid-19th-century women's activism, championed first in 1858 by Anna Reeves Jarvis and then in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe. Their causes, honored locally on various mother's days in mid-spring, were improved sanitation, first aid and world peace. But activism is about the last thing Mother's Day called to mind in the 20th century.
Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first official Mother's Day on May 8, 1914, fulfilling a joint resolution of Congress that authorized the president to proclaim the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day and to request the flying of the American flag as a token of that fact. The patriotism has filtered out of Mother's Day over the past 86 years, making it hard to think of this holiday as an acknowledgment, as the joint resolution put it, of "the service rendered the United States by the American mother."
The day has instead been formalized, commercially, into a festival of flowers and feminine gifts and, perhaps, a few minutes of hard-earned leisure. But it has also been informalized, made a more intimate and less civic display of feeling.
There is something a little ambivalent, a little archaic, about the formulaic ways we celebrate this day, if only because the status of mothers has never been more complex. In 1914, a mother's service outside the home was mainly inferential. "The American mother," Congress wrote, "is doing so much for the home, for moral uplift, and religion, hence so much for good government and humanity." There is a lot in that one word "hence." But these days there is no inference about it at all. Mothers are as likely to work in good government as they are in the home.
Perhaps the best fate for this holiday would be to make it, again, a day of open activism, as it is for the women marching on behalf of gun control in many cities across the country today. Not everyone believes, as Julia Ward Howe did, that if mothers could only come together somehow, world peace would ensue. But the second Sunday of every May could come to symbolize a powerful reality of contemporary American politics.
Women united behind a cause can be a powerful force for progressive social policies, better child care, broader health coverage and fully equal opportunity for them and their children.
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Clinton Calls Mothers, Not Gun Lobby, the Stronger Voice
New York Times
May 14, 2000
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/mom-march.html
WASHINGTON, May 13 -- As the nation's capital and other cities prepared for Mother's Day demonstrations favoring stricter gun control laws, President Clinton said today the events on Sunday would show that the gun lobby "is no match for America's moms."
Mr. Clinton used his regularly scheduled radio address to praise the Million Mom March, the label organizers have given to nationwide demonstrations. The organizers expected to draw about 150,000 people to the main march, in Washington. The president has repeatedly spoken out for the march in the past few days, urging Congress to act on gun control legislation.
A counterdemonstration is also scheduled in Washington by a group of women who oppose new controls on guns. While the larger crowd occupies the huge grassy Mall at the foot of Capitol Hill, the counterdemonstrators, sponsored by a Dallas group called the Second Amendment Sisters, will march nearby up Constitution Avenue to the Capitol.
Opponents of the Million Mom March have said it is not, as organizers characterize it, a true grass-roots movement but rather a political operation in masquerade. But while some political figures, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, are expected to join in the march, the featured speakers are to be ordinary people whose lives have been shattered by gun violence.
"Many of the organizers have lost children of their own and other loved ones to gunfire," said Mr. Clinton, who met some organizers at the White House recently as part of his publicity campaign on the gun issue.
At the same time, the march is striking a deep chord in women who have not been touched by gun violence, but who simply fear for the safety of their children.
Among them is Caren Appel, a 38-year-old mother of three from Atlanta. After coordinating a companion Million Mom March in that city, she brought her family to Washington this weekend for the main demonstration.
"It was my way of showing complete support for this movement," Mrs. Appel said. "I just felt that I personally needed to do something so that there were no more shootings in schools. I want my children to be safe."
Although Mrs. Appel said she felt "lucky that gun violence hasn't hit me," she said she did have a scare recently. Her 8-year-old daughter went to visit a friend, and came home to report that children in the house had produced "the family gun," which they claimed was real. Mrs. Appel did not pursue the issue with the other parents.
But, she said, "From now on, if I do not know the family, I will ask if there is a gun in the house, and I will ask if it is locked up, and then I will decide."
Organizers of the counterdemonstration said their keynote speaker would be Suzanna Gratia-Hupp, a state representative from Texas whose parents were among 21 people killed in a rampage shooting at a restaurant in 1991. She has said she might have shot the assailant and prevented the massacre if the law had allowed her to carry her legally owned sidearm into the restaurant.
In his speech, President Clinton credited the Million Mom March as "a grass-roots effort that has already put stronger laws in place in states like California, Massachusetts and Maryland.
"They're letting the gun lobby know it is no match for America's moms," he said. "But our nationwide fight won't be over tomorrow, no matter how many march. We have so much work still to do."
Mr. Clinton favors legislation that would close a loophole allowing the sale of some firearms at gun shows without full background checks of the buyers; mandate child safety locks with every handgun sold; ban high capacity ammunition clips; bar the most violent juveniles from possessing firearms as adults; and hold adults accountable if they allow children access to guns. He has also proposed research into "smart guns" -- designed to improve safety -- and a state-based licensing system, and has sought $280 million for increasing enforcement of gun laws.
The National Rifle Association has countered with a pledge to spend an additional $1 million on gun safety education in elementary schools.
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Mothers March for Stricter Gun Laws
New York Times
May 14, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/14mothers-march.html
WASHINGTON --Tens of thousands of mothers, many accompanied by children and husbands, rallied in sight of the Capitol Sunday to demand strict control of handguns while memorializing loved ones and strangers felled by bullets.
Through personal stories of tragedy, songs, banners, posters, t-shirts and tears, participants in the "Million Mom March" aimed to send a Congress a "Mother's Day" message: A new movement of mainstream Americans is getting politically active, ready to battle the gun lobby and to work against lawmakers who oppose gun control.
"Politicians, take heed. We are watching you. The hands that rock the cradles rule the world," said Dawn Anna, mother of Lauren Townsend, a student killed in the Columbine High School shootings that stunned the nation last year.
Huge crowds thronged to the National Mall, the blocks-long grass and sand terrain that has been host to many Washington demonstrations, under a brilliant spring sun. Though there were no official crowd estimates, participants filled half a dozen blocks on the mall framed by the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, Congress and the Washington Monument. Similar rallies were scheduled in nearly 70 cities across the country.
"We are Columbine," exclaimed a banner carried by Coloradans who traveled here in remembrance of Columbine.
The gun-control advocates didn't have the day to themselves, however. A considerably smaller group of several thousand counter-demonstrators gathered near the Washington Monument to hold a rally where they argued that guns were needed for self-protection.
That demonstration, organized by a group called Second Amendment Sisters, Inc., also included mothers who brought their children. The group booed President Clinton's motorcade as it happened to pass by, returning the president to the White House from church.
"My kids know, if you see a gun, you don't touch it. You leave the area, you go tell a responsible adult," said Elitza Meyer, from Watchung, N.J.
When opponents of gun control marched toward the Capitol, they came close to "Million Mom March" participants, who jeered and chanted "No NRA, No NRA. Your stupid guns kill."
In response, members of the pro-gun group yelled, "Second Amendment, civil rights. You give up your guns, we'll give up ours."
Clinton remained at the White House, encouraging several hundred rally figures to surmount "the political mountain" they had to climb. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, running for a U.S. Senate seat from New York, joined the demonstration. Neither she nor the president appeared on the dais, although their messages carried on jumbo television screens.
Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a Maryland Democrat, said: "You know, Mothers Against Drunk Driving had an enormous impact against traffic deaths and I think we can have the same impact here."
But for the most part, elected officials stood in the background; the day was reserved instead for supportive entertainers, including mistress of ceremonies Rosie O'Donnell, a television talk show host, and for women who told painful, personal stories of losing loved ones to gun violence.
"The gun that killed my daughter in her classroom was one that could be loaded by a 6-year-old, carried by a 6-year-old, and fired by a 6-year-old," said Veronica McQueen, who was transformed into a public figure when her daughter, Kayla Rolland, was shot and killed in her first grade classroom in Flint, Mich., last Feb. 29.
For the gun-control rally, thousands of Mother's Day cards were printed with the message: "Forget the flowers ... forget the chocolate ... forget breakfast in bed. This Mother's Day, give us a present that lasts: common sense gun laws."
There was room for personal notes to members of Congress, and the cards were deposited in a letter slot beneath a model of the Capitol Dome.
Charles Payne, of Woodbridge, Va., said he was a competitive shooter and life member of the National Rifle Association but still supported the rally.
"I don't like Handgun Control Incorporated and I don't like the hard line of the NRA," he said. "People misuse guns and give my guns a bad name. What I resent is handguns in the hands of unsupervised kids, and parents who don't take time to control their own weapons."
The "Million Mom March" principally wants trigger locks to protect children and a national system that would register handguns and license their owners. All major gun control legislation before Congress has been stalled for a year.
But blocks from the House and Senate chambers, Erika Heilbrink, 9, of Falls Church, Va., carried a poster with a toy gun stapled to it. "This gun has the same childproofing as a real gun. None," the poster said.
Yolanda Reyes, of Washington's Maryland suburbs, carried a sign saying, "My son is not here this Mother's Day." Reyes said she moved to the United States from Guatemala 30 years ago to keep her children safe.
Yet one of her six children, Nelson, then 29, was shot to death in 1998 on a Washington, D.C. street by an elderly man who objected to him parking in front of his house.
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China Warns Against U.S. Missile Shield
Washington Post
Friday, May 12, 2000; Page A35
by Julie Makinen
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/12/210l-051200-idx.html
BEIJING--China's top arms negotiator warned that a proposed U.S. system to shoot down strategic missiles could neutralize Beijing's nuclear arsenal, presenting a serious threat that may force China to deploy more warheads.
Sha Zukang, director of arms control and disarmament at China's Foreign Ministry, said other possible options to counter the deployment of a U.S. national missile defense could be to improve the accuracy of Chinese warheads or use countermeasures to overcome the missile shield.
Sha stressed that China, as a developing country, does not want to spend precious resources to counter the proposed U.S. system. But he said Beijing could not merely rely on U.S. assurances that the missile shield would be designed to protect the United States from attack by smaller countries, such as North Korea, that Washington considers "rogue states."
-------- korea
Nuclear Officials Leave N. Korea
Associated Press
May 14, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-NKorea-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency have left Pyongyang after holding talks with their North Korean counterparts, the North's media reported.
The Korean Central News Agency, the North's overseas news outlet, reported the Saturday departure in a one-sentence article, but did not give further details.
The five-day visit was made shortly after communist North Korea was criticized at an international conference on nuclear nonproliferation late last month.
North Korea is among the 187 nations committed to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which allows IAEA to make sure their nuclear technology is being used for peaceful purposes.
But the North has limited IAEA access to its facilities and the agency recently said it couldn't be sure Pyongyang hadn't diverted technology to non-peaceful uses.
Fearful that North Korea was developing nuclear weapons, Washington signed a 1994 pact with Pyongyang under which the North agreed to freeze its nuclear program.
In return, a U.S.-led international consortium is building two nuclear reactors worth $4.6 billion in North Korea and providing 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually.
The United States promised to build the first light-water reactor by 2003. But now officials say privately that a delay of several years is inevitable.
-------- puerto rico
U.S. Military Arrests 51 Protesters on Vieques
Yahoo News Sunday May 14 1:31 PM ET
By John Marino
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000514/ts/puertorico_vieques_1.html
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Authorities arrested 51 people for attempting to occupy a disputed military firing range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, the largest number detained since federal agents cleared 200 protesters from the site on May 4, U.S. Navy officials said on Sunday.
Marine Corps and Navy security personnel made the arrests late on Saturday after 54 people breached a fence guarding the Navy's Camp Garcia on the eastern third of Vieques, an island off of Puerto Rico's east coast, Navy spokesman Robert Nelson said.
One man and two minors were released and the remaining 51 people were taken by boat and helicopter to the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station on Puerto Rico's east coast for processing.
``They are going to be cited for trespassing on federal property,'' Nelson said.
Firing-range protests have been staged for more than a year on Vieques since a stray bomb killed resident David Sanes Rodriguez, a civilian security guard employed by the Navy, on April 19, 1999.
His death unleashed pent-up resentment in the Spanish-speaking U.S. commonwealth, prompting the Navy to suspend live-fire bomb training and sparking a drive to oust the Navy from Vieques.
Since then, a deal has been reached between the White House and the administration of Gov. Pedro Rossello, under which the Navy can train using dummy bombs for three years. In return, Vieques would receive economic incentives and the Navy would transfer the western end of the island to commonwealth hands.
The deal also called for a referendum among Vieques residents, who would choose whether the Navy should leave in three years or stay indefinitely for an extra $50 million in economic aid.
Trespassers Face Misdemeanor Charge
The group on Saturday was the largest arrested on Vieques since a May 4 federal raid removed more than 200 protesters who were camped out on the Navy bombing range within Camp Garcia.
Nelson said the latest trespassers, who were peaceful and cooperated with authorities, would face only misdemeanor charges. Misdemeanor trespassing carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail, versus 10 years for felony trespassing.
During the earlier raid on May 4, federal authorities opted not to file charges, but warned protesters they could face 10-year prison terms and fines of $250,000 for trespassing on the range a second time. The stiff penalties corresponded to an order signed by President Clinton on Dec. 1, 1999, making it a felony to trespass on the bombing range.
Nelson said, however, that the tougher felony penalties were part of a ``temporary security zone'' that was created to coincide with the resumption of target practice using inert ordnance. The security zone was later lifted.
Puerto Rican Independence Party President Ruben Berrios, who spent nearly a year camped out on the range, was arrested on May 10 when he and another party member made it back onto Navy land. While he could have faced a felony under Clinton's order, he too was charged with a misdemeanor.
U.S. District Court Judge Carmen Consuelo Vargas de Cerezo, who was assigned to hear the Berrios case, recused herself on Friday, arguing that the Vieques cause is a petition for peace before the ``holy sacrament.''
-------- terrorism
The Scope of Terrorism
New York Times
May 14, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l14ter.html
To the Editor:
Re "Terrorism's Real Locale" (Op-Ed, May 8): Ali Abunimah seems to misconstrue the State Department's assessment that "primary terrorist threats to the United States emanate from the Middle East and South Asia." The real threat of terrorism and the justifiable fear of it lie not in the quantity of terrorist acts but in their scope and potential.
The kidnapping and ransoming of Americans in Latin America threatens those few of us who seek to travel to the countryside of Latin countries. But the bombing of a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, threatens every American who seeks to fly anywhere in the world. Therein lies the particular fear that Middle East terrorists strike in the hearts of Americans.
DAVE CRYSTAL Staten Island, May 8, 2000
-------- ukraine
Chernobyl Revisited
New York Times
May 14, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/05/14/editorial/14sun3.html
Fourteen years after the worst accident in the history of nuclear power, Ukraine seems determined to shut down the lone active reactor remaining at Chernobyl by the end of the year.
The long overdue decision will close a reactor that has experienced an unsettling variety of minor failures and end power generation at a complex that once contained four nuclear plants. But in other ways the Chernobyl accident still haunts the people and lands of the former Soviet Union. The steel and concrete shell encasing the radioactive ruins of the destroyed reactor is leaking and must be replaced.
Reactors with similar designs to those at Chernobyl -- and considerable safety problems -- still operate in Russia and Lithuania.
Several countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union depend on other types of Soviet-built reactors that also fall short of Western safety standards. These are expensive problems, requiring money that former Soviet bloc nations do not have. The West has provided millions in financial assistance, but it will have to contribute more to improve nuclear safety and close dangerous reactors.
The sarcophagus that houses the No. 4 reactor at Chernobyl, the one that exploded in April 1986, is unstable and cracked. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is trying to raise $768 million to reseal the tomb temporarily and to build a new one. So far, the United States and European nations have given only about half that amount. When donor nations meet in Berlin this summer, they must pledge to pay the balance.
A second need is to continue to care for those affected by the Chernobyl disaster. The greatest problem is thyroid cancer in people who were children at the time of the accident.
Most of the 2,000 victims so far live in Belarus and are being treated with help from the World Health Organization.
In 1992, the Group of Seven industrialized nations recommended the closure of 25 Soviet-designed reactors, including all Chernobyl-style power plants. These reactors -- there are 14 today -- are considered the most dangerous.
Though they have been upgraded to fix the flaws that contributed to the Chernobyl disaster, they remain unsafe. The 43 other Soviet-design reactors in use are considered somewhat safer, but all need more backup systems and other protective measures. The poverty of former Soviet nations adds to the risk.
At Chernobyl, for example, maintenance is slighted and employees have often had to wait months for their paychecks.
The desire to join the European Union has encouraged Lithuania, Slovakia and Bulgaria to try to meet European safety standards by scheduling early closing of their most dangerous reactors.
It is no small sacrifice for a poor nation to shut down a source of cheap energy. Lithuania, for example, is planning to close one of its two reactors, which together provide 75 percent of the country's power.
The industrialized nations have been talking about helping Ukraine to close Chernobyl for years. Their aid will take the form of loans to complete two new nuclear reactors -- a bad idea, as the reactors will not meet Western safety standards. The safer, if costlier, choice would be to build a coal plant and improve the energy efficiency of existing factories. Few catastrophes have less respect for borders than a nuclear meltdown. Unsafe reactors are an international problem, and decommissioning requires international cooperation.
-------- us military
General McCaffrey Accused of War Crimes in Iraq
The New Yorker Revisiting the Gulf War
May 14 2000
PRNewswire
NEW YORK, In ``Overwhelming Force,'' in the May 22, 2000, issue of The New Yorker, Seymour M. Hersh reports on the activities of the 24th Infantry Division during the 1991 Gulf War. The 24th was commanded by General Barry R. McCaffrey, who now serves as the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Hersh concentrates on three episodes in the campaign: the Battle of Rumaila, on March 2, 1991, which took place two days after President Bush declared a ceasefire; and two incidents, on February 27th and March 1st, in which Army personnel have been accused of wrongly shooting Iraqis who posed no threat to them and who, in the case of the February 27th incident, had already surrendered. All three of these episodes have been investigated by the Army, which found no wrongdoing, but, Hersh reports, key witnesses and information were either missed or ignored. Hersh interviewed more than two hundred past and present enlisted men and officers over the six months he spent preparing this account, including the Army's own investigators. Taken together, they present a picture that is, as editor David Remnick remarks in a Comment accompanying Hersh's article, ``at a minimum, unsettling.''
March 2, 1991: On the morning of March 2nd, Hersh writes, ``McCaffrey reported that, despite the ceasefire, his division had suddenly come under attack from a retreating Republican Guard tank division.'' There was disagreement among the officers assigned to McCaffrey's mobile headquarters, Hersh reports, about the significance and strength of the Iraqi attack and about whether there had indeed been an attack at all. There was also profound disagreement over the appropriate level for the division's response. Nonetheless, McCaffrey, after a delay, ``ordered an assault in force -- an all-out attack,'' Hersh writes. The assault destroyed some seven hundred Iraqi tanks, armored cars, and trucks.
``Many of the generals interviewed for this account believe that McCaffrey's attack went too far, and violated one of the most fundamental military doctrines: that a commander must respond in proportion to the threat,'' Hersh writes. ``That's the way we're trained,'' one major general tells Hersh. ``A single shot does not signal a battle to the death. Commanders just don't willy-nilly launch on something like that. A disciplined commander is going to figure out who fired it, and where it came from. Especially if your mission is to enforce a ceasefire. Who should have been better able to instill fire discipline than McCaffrey?''
In testimony before Congress and in written responses to questions sent to him by Hersh, McCaffrey has said that the Iraqis attacked first and that the subsequent response by the 24th was necessary to protect the lives of American soldiers. But, Hersh reports, McCaffrey's version of events was disputed by soldiers and officers who were at the scene on March 2nd. The assault ``was not so much a counterattack provoked by enemy fire as a systematic destruction of Iraqis who were generally fulfilling the requirements of the retreat,'' Hersh writes. McCaffrey, in his written responses to Hersh, says, ``I believe that my actions at Rumaila were completely appropriate and warranted in order to defend my troops against unknown and largely unknowable enemy forces and intentions.''
Among McCaffrey's harshest critics are several of his fellow Gulf War generals. ``There was no need to be shooting at anybody,'' Lieutenant General James H. Johnson, Jr. (Ret.), then the commander of the 82nd Airborne, tells Hersh. ``They couldn't surrender fast enough. The war was over.'' The officer in charge of enforcing the ceasefire, Lieutenant General John J. Yeosock (Ret.), says, ``What Barry ended up doing was fighting sand dunes and moving rapidly.'' He was ``looking for a battle.'' Major General Ronald Griffith, who commanded the 1st Armored Division of VII Corps, says of McCaffrey, ``He made it a battle when it was never one.''
After the ceasefire, the rules of engagement had been revised; commanders were to protect their troops and hold their positions but they were no longer authorized to initiate offensive military actions on their own unless they faced an imminent threat. In the two days following the ceasefire, McCaffrey had moved his forces toward an access road Iraqis were using to retreat, Hersh reports, ``without informing all the senior officers who needed to know -- inside his own division operations center at XVIII Corps, and at Third Army headquarters.''
Early on March 2nd, a Scout unit reported to McCaffrey's command post that it was being fired upon by the retreating Iraqis and that it had returned fire in self-defense. The Scouts were attacked by several different types of weapons, McCaffrey writes, and ``direct fire from T-72 tanks,'' adding that the rocketing continued later that morning. There was a delay after the initial American response, which destroyed several Iraqi tanks and guns, while McCaffrey decided what to do and his subordinates debated the nature of the Iraqi threat and the appropriate American response. Some officers were in favor of engaging the Iraqis and some were not. Major General John Le Moyne, then commanding the 1st Brigade of the 24th Division as a colonel, tells Hersh, ``there was absolutely no doubt in my mind'' that the attack was justified. Lieutenant General James Terry Scott (Ret.), then an assistant division commander, says, ``Eventually, we became convinced that it was a real, no-shit attack by the Iraqis.'' Others saw it differently. ``There was no incoming,'' Patrick Lamar, McCaffrey's operations officer, tells Hersh. ``I know that for a fact.'' Lamar describes the battle as ``a giant hoax,'' although he also told Army investigators that McCaffrey's response was ``necessary.'' To Hersh, Lamar says, ``The Iraqis were doing absolutely nothing. I told McCaffrey I was having trouble confirming the incoming.''
According to many of the enlisted men Hersh spoke to who were on the scene, there was nothing like an Iraqi attack forming the morning of the 2nd. James Manchester, a Scout positioned well forward of the main force, remembers thinking, ``It's over, it's over. These guys are going home. It was just a line of vehicles on the road.'' Edward R. Walker, another Scout, tells Hersh, ``Many of the Iraqi tanks were on flatbed trucks and had their turrets tucked backward.'' When Manchester heard a captain saying on the radio that the Iraqis were about to launch anti-tank missiles at his tanks, he was incredulous. ``We are sitting right on top of these people,'' he says, referring to the Iraqis, ``and there are no vehicles pulled off.'' The captain calling in this information, he says, was behind him and could not see the line of vehicles.
February 27, 1991: On the afternoon of February 27th, the day before the ceasefire, James Manchester and other Scouts were manning a roadblock in front of the main forces of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Ware's battalion. Things proceeded routinely until, as Manchester recalls, ``A Buick comes up, with the commander, and he surrenders his battalion to us.'' Vehicles continued to arrive, including a hospital bus, according to Specialist Edward Walker, who was in charge of counting the men. There were, he remembers, 382 Iraqis. They were stripped of their weapons, Walker says, and lined up in rows. One man, who had lost an eye, asked if he was now a prisoner. When he was told that he was, he said, ``Thank, Allah.'' The Iraqis were each given a ``a white piece of paper, if they didn't have anything white,'' Sergeant James Testerman, who was also present, tells Hersh. The lieutenant in charge of the Scout group, Kirk Allen, ``made it a point to keep the battalion headquarters in the loop,'' Hersh writes. Allen told the operations center that he had captured a large number of prisoners and reported the precise position of the surrendered hospital bus. According to Walker, Ware's headquarters ordered that the captured weapons be destroyed, a task which fell to Walker himself. Then the Scout group was ordered to move. As they drove away, the explosion detonated. At that moment, Walker says, a platoon of Bradleys came into view rolling toward the prisoners, and then the Bradleys' machine guns opened fire. ``I saw rounds impact in front of the vehicle,'' Sergeant Steven Mulig, another Scout, says. ``I could tell that they were hitting close to the prisoners, because there were people running. There were some who could have survived, but a lot of them wouldn't have, from where I saw the rounds hit.''
John Brasfield recorded radio transmissions that were being made by the Scouts and their superiors while the Bradleys were firing toward the prisoners of war, on a personal tape recorder he had brought with him to the Gulf. ``The lead company behind us is tearing up all those vehicles,'' one man is heard saying. ``There's no-one shooting at them. Why'd they have to shoot?'' asks another voice. Lieutenant Allen then reports to Lieutenant Colonel Ware, ``There's shooting, but there's no one there to shoot at,'' to which Ware responds, ``I understand.'' On the tape, Brasfield says, ``They want to surrender. Fucking armored vehicles. They don't have to blow them apart.'' Someone else says, ``It's murder.'' After more sporadic firing, someone says, ``We shot the guys we had gathered up,'' and another adds, ``They didn't have no weapons.'' At this point, Ware calls for all firing to stop.
March 1, 1991: The day after the ceasefire was announced, Hersh reports, another incident took place in which American soldiers stand accused of shooting unarmed Iraqis. Sergeant Steven Larimore, who headed a ground-surveillance-radar team, was assigned to work with Scouts from the 3-7 Battalion of McCaffrey's Command. Army troops had discovered a cache of weapons in a deserted schoolhouse late in the afternoon of the 1st, and Larimore's unit joined the Scouts in clearing the village and searching the schoolhouse. The weapons were secured, Larimore says, and after taking souvenirs, he and his men moved out toward the east, along with the Scouts. There was a group of villagers walking in the area. ``One guy had a white bedsheet on a stick,'' Larimore says, but ``out of the blue sky, some guy from where we're sitting'' -- that is, in the Scout Platoon -- ``begins shooting'' into the villagers.
Other machine guns joined in. ``We were screaming, 'Cease fire!''' Larimore tells Hersh. ``People hit the ground. The firing went on.'' Larimore estimates that he saw fifteen or twenty Iraqis fall. ``I did not see anything that looked like return fire,'' he says. Another eyewitness, Sergeant Wayne P. Irwin, who headed a different G.S.R. team that was in the area, says the Iraqis were ``just passing through'' when the shooting began. ``I yelled for them to cease fire. I couldn't understand why they were firing.'' Irwin, a seventeen-year Army veteran, tells Hersh, ``To me, they posed no threat to us-they were all in civilian clothes.'' Scouts told Irwin that they had seen the Iraqis carrying ``grenade launchers and stuff like that,'' but, Irwin says, he did not find that account credible. ``To me,'' he says, ``they had nothing.''
Lieutenant John J. Grisillo was the platoon leader of the Scout team that opened fire. Grisillo tells Hersh that Larimore, who confronted him at the time, did not understand that his men were responding to a threat. ``They raised a white flag,'' Grisillo recalls, but ``they were carrying weapons. We fired warning shots, but they didn't stop.'' Because they were headed toward the schoolhouse, a building known to contain weapons, they were, Grisillo determined, a danger. Grisillo also tells Hersh that after the war he spoke with his brigade commander, Colonel Le Moyne. ``He let me know that he thought the G.S.R. guys didn't understand the situation at the time,'' Grisillo says. ``Calls had to be made. It's not nice, but prudent. If I had that situation again, I'd do it again. I've never lost a minute's sleep about it.''
The Investigations: There were four Army investigations into the conduct reported on by Hersh in his article. Each of these investigations found that no criminal charges should be brought against anyone. Hersh describes these investigations in detail.
Concerning March 2nd: In August, 1991, Colonel Ernest H. Dinkel, then a deputy chief of staff for the Army's Criminal Investigation Division (C.I.D.), was assigned by Major General Peter T. Barry to investigate charges made in an anonymous two-page letter which had been sent from Fort Stewart to the Army's Inspector General. The letter appeared to have been written by an officer serving in McCaffrey's 24th Division command post. ``That's what scared everybody,'' Dinkel recalls. ``This was from someone who was there.'' The letter alleged that McCaffrey was guilty of a ``war crime'' in his March 2nd assault on the retreating Iraqis and that he had urged his brigade commanders to ``find a way for him to go 'kill all of those bastards.''' The letter also claimed that 24th Division soldiers had ``slaughtered'' Iraqi prisoners of war after seizing an airfield. Colonel Dinkel and his investigators spent several weeks conducting interviews and collecting data on the anonymous letter, at Fort Stewart and at Army bases around the country, but they did not focus on the shootings on the 27th or the 1st, Hersh reports. In the end, Dinkel and his assistants, after interviewing more than one hundred and fifty men and women, including McCaffrey, concluded that McCaffrey's actions on the 2nd were justified because the Iraqis had fired first. They also concluded that no prisoners had been mistreated. Nonetheless, General Peter Barry, the C.I.D's commanding officer, explains to Hersh that by the time the investigation shut down, the Army's senior leaders realized that there was ``a certain element of truth'' to the allegations made by the anonymous letter writer. ``Whoever wrote the letter had detailed knowledge,'' Barry says. ``But establishing the criminality is difficult.''
Concerning February 27th: Edward Walker told his story about the events of February 27th -- the collection of the prisoners and the shooting afterwards -- to a lawyer in Saudi Arabia. After Walker returned to his home base in Missouri, the 1st Brigade began an inquiry into his allegations. When he was asked if he had seen anyone actually get shot, Hersh writes, ``Walker said what he always said: he hadn't seen any prisoners fall, but he saw rounds being fired at them.'' The 1st Brigade's investigation absolved Lieutenant Colonel Ware's battalion of any wrongdoing. Le Moyne tells Hersh that Walker's claims were groundless. ``It was not a hospital bus. There were no wounded. They were armed Iraqi officers and soldiers.'' Steven Mulig and a few other Scouts had been summoned to testify, but Mulig says, none of the officers wanted to hear what they had to say. ``We were all getting upset,'' Mulig says, adding, ``It was just an officer cover-up kind of thing.'' The final report concluded that, while the Americans had fired in the direction of the Iraqis, no prisoners ``had been killed or wounded in the incident.''
Late in the spring of 1991, three members of the 5th Engineer Battalion at Fort Leonard Wood told officials in the base's Inspector General's office about the alleged shooting of Iraqi prisoners of war by soldiers from the 1st Brigade of the 24th Division. This investigation was conducted by Major Thomas Mitchell. Mitchell says, ``The kids who came in were nice, and there seemed to be some validity to what they saw. But we couldn't confirm anything illegal.'' In the formal report that Mitchell prepared for his superiors, he found that the 5th Engineer allegations were ``unsubstantiated.''
Concerning March 1st: After his return from Iraq, Sergeant Larimore gathered six of his colleagues in the Ground Surveillance Radar teams of the 124th Military Intelligence Battalion and met with investigators at the Fort Stewart branch of the C.I.D. The men described what they had seen on March 1st, when Iraqis in civilian clothes had been shot near a schoolhouse while holding a white flag. ``All six of us went and told what we knew,'' Larimore tells Hersh. ``The basic tenet was that we didn't see anybody shooting at us'' before the 1st Brigade platoon opened fire. After they made their report, Larimore and his colleagues heard nothing more from the C.I.D. until Colonel Le Moyne, the 1st Brigade commander, announced that he wanted to meet after work with the men in the chain of command. Once in Le Moyne's office, Larimore says, ``We got this big long speech about how we had never been in combat or in a firefight. We didn't know what it was like. He ripped us pretty good.'' When Hersh interviewed Le Moyne, he defended his meeting with Larimore and the other complainants as merely an attempt ``to cut down on confusion. You gather the key people all in one place, so there's no misunderstanding.''
Le Moyne's next step was to authorize a captain in his brigade to conduct an informal investigation and file a report. ``The captain laid out the course of his investigation,'' Larimore tells Hersh. ``He said there was a group who observed no weapons'' among the civilians who had been shot and ``there were also people who said they saw weapons and muzzle flashes.'' The captain then concluded that the allegations of wrongful death were ``unsubstantiated.'' In Le Moyne's view, the case was now closed. The investigation, he said, had produced a series of witnesses who ``totally refuted the allegations.'' The soldiers' immediate superior, Lieutenant Charles Febus, who had encouraged them to make their report, tells Hersh, ``They did their duty and filed their report. And the Army chose to do what it did.''
----
Winner May Not Take All in Pentagon Jet Deal
New York Times
May 14, 2000
By LESLIE WAYNE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/financial/sunday/051400biz-defense.html
Fearing a national monopoly in the military aircraft business, the Pentagon is now rethinking a decision to award a $200 billion jet fighter contract, the largest in its history, to a single company.
The Pentagon's "winner take all" competition has pitted Lockheed Martin against Boeing in what was once seen as a bold effort to bring commercial practices to the Defense Department.
But now the government fears that the nation could be left with only a single supplier as it begins to build the next-generation fighter jets, the Joint Strike Fighters, which will replace aging F-16s and other planes.
While the Pentagon has not announced its intention to split the contract, there are signs that it may soon. It recently set up a panel to decide whether having a single winner still made sense. Both Boeing and Lockheed have been asked by the Pentagon to come up with plans to share the contract, and top Pentagon officials have questioned whether having a single supplier is wise.
In late April, in a meeting with investors, Vance Coffman, chief executive of Lockheed, repeated an earlier statement that the "odds are more than 50-50" that the Pentagon will divide the contract, which is expected to produce more than 3,000 planes.
And in a speech on April 19, Frank Statkus, Boeing's vice president for the program, said, "A winner-take-all is not going to be the end scenario."
Yet in making this analysis, the Pentagon is caught between trying to protect an industrial base and trying to reduce costs. If it splits the contract, the overall cost will surely rise, because the Pentagon will have to support two manufacturing processes instead of one. For now, there are no estimates of the effect on the program's price.
"Any time you have two biggies, like Lockheed and Boeing, sparring on how they will carve up the goodies," said Eugene Carroll, vice president of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington nonprofit group, "the compromises tend to favor the companies' interests and Uncle Sam ends up footing the bill for additional costs."
But Carroll, a retired admiral and a frequent Pentagon critic, said a split contract was inevitable. "It's not a question of whether it is good or bad," he said. "It's a question of what else the Pentagon could do when you are down to just two players."
The Pentagon has not commented. Its committee, a three-member panel, could make a decision as early as this month.
Still, top Pentagon officials have hinted of a change. Air Force Secretary Whitten Peters, in recent congressional testimony, said the Pentagon was concerned that "given the current state of the defense industry, going to a single contractor at this time could effectively leave us with a single contractor for many years." Other top officials, including former Defense Under Secretary John Hamre, have made similar statements recently.
Many factors go into the Pentagon's thinking, ranging from election-year politics to the current depressed state of military industry stocks to concerns that the decade-long consolidation among military contractors may have gone too far, especially now that only two makers of fighter aircraft remain and there is little new business.
"The Pentagon has discovered that this program is so big that awarding it to one company effectively creates a fighter aircraft monopoly," said Loren Thompson, a military industry analyst at the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., research group. "There would be no business left for anyone else to pursue, so they have no choice."
Jon Kutler, a military industry expert and president of Quarterdeck Investment Partners of Los Angeles, added, "If it was winner-take-all, the loser might as well turn over the keys to the plant."
The Joint Strike Fighter is an experiment both in how the Pentagon does business and in the use of new technology. The plane is to be a low-cost, single-engine, single-pilot fighter that can be used by all three services and sold to NATO allies. It must fly faster than the speed of sound, be invisible to enemy radar and, because of streamlined production techniques, be produced for what by Pentagon standards is a bargain-basement price -- around $30 million a plane.
Part of the cost savings were to result from the plane's being produced by a single company, meaning that only one production line would need to be kept open, not two. Other savings would come from using new technologies in design and production, as well as from operating efficiencies. The Senate Armed Services Committee, wanting to make sure engineering problems are resolved, is urging a six-month delay for the plane. And last week, the General Accounting office agreed, but said any delay should not be interpreted as a lessening of support for the fighter.
Much has changed since the program was conceived nearly a decade ago. Procurement dollars -- representing what the Pentagon spends on new equipment -- have fallen steadily over the last decade. They hit a low of around $60 billion a year, and have only now begun to trend slightly upward. This means the Pentagon has little business to sprinkle over the military industry other than the Joint Strike Fighter.
And it is an election year. The leading Pentagon backers of the fighter, Defense Secretary William Cohen and the Pentagon acquisitions chief, Jacques Gansler, are political appointees and are likely to be replaced after January. The more the program's work can be spread across more states, more employees and more companies, the greater the constituency for this program in Congress -- even after its main supporters leave town.
No one wants to alienate any large voting bloc, or important contributor, during an election year -- which could happen if only one company is selected. "If you split the contract, you can keep everyone happy," said Kutler of Quarterdeck. "You will have fewer people to lobby and vote against you."
In the last few years, the government has begun to take a dimmer view of the shrinking military base, having denied several proposed corporate mergers, like the acquisition of Northrop Grumman by Lockheed, and consolidations in military shipbuilding.
At the same time, Wall Street has rewarded faster-growing high-technology companies with fresh capital and bypassed military companies, making them even more dependent on Pentagon dollars.
"Wall Street would hate winner-take-all," said Charles Gabriel, a Washington-based analyst for Prudential Securities.
Howard A. Rubel, an analyst with Goldman Sachs, added, "It's not so much a question of who will win but how the contract can be structured so the industry earns adequate returns."
There has been some thought that the Joint Strike Fighter would not have to have two full assembly lines, but that part of it could be made by Lockheed in Texas and part by Boeing in Seattle. For instance, the current F-22 is made in various places in the United States, but assembled at one site.
Still, Carroll says, this is how costs rise. "Once politics enter into it, you will have congressional delegations from Seattle, from Texas, from St. Louis and everywhere wanting their share of this contract. There will be a lot of logs to be rolled."
-------- us nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Department of Energy Establishes Fund to Help Los Alamos Employees Impacted by Fire
Northern NM Fire Recovery Fund Starts Collecting Money on Monday
http://home.doe.gov/news/releases00/maypr/pr00138.htm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 14, 2000
NEWS MEDIA CONTACT:
Stu Nagurka 202-586-4940 / 586-8100 Joint Information Center 505-753-2032
U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson today announced the establishment of a disaster relief fund intended to help federal and contractor employees of the Department of Energy's Los Alamos Area Office and contractor employees at the department's Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The Department of Energy (DOE) Northern New Mexico Fire Recovery Fund will begin accepting donations on Monday.
"The Department of Energy has an obligation to help our federal and contractor employees as well as the communities suffering because of the fire," said Richardson. "While there are relief agencies providing on-the-spot assistance, we know this will be a long and difficult recovery process for our employees and surrounding communities. This fund is intended to assist our employees and communities as they will surely face many unforseen and uncovered expenses in the coming months."
Richardson established this special fund following his visit to Los Alamos last Thursday. The Northern New Mexico Fire Recovery Fund is authorized to accept gifts from all public and private sources. Donations are tax deductible. Richardson has directed the department's Chief Financial Officer to administer the fund. An Executive Board will be designated to accept and review applications and distribute the fund.
Financial donations can be forwarded to: U.S. Department of Energy Attn: Northern New Mexico Fire Recovery Fund P.O. Box 500 Germantown, MD 20874-0500
Checks should be made payable to the Department of Energy and indicate they are for the Fire Recovery Fund.
The DOE's Los Alamos Area Office suffered smoke damage from the fire, and will remain closed until safety engineers determine the building is safe to occupy. In the meantime, the department is planning to temporarily relocate the Los Alamos Area Office to the LANL administration building, once the lab is back in operation.
The DOE's Los Alamos Area Office employs 65 workers, of which 56 are U.S. government salaried employees and 9 are contract hourly workers. The department is in the process of trying to contact Los Alamos Area Office employees to schedule an all-hands staff meeting to explain how the office will operate in the days and weeks ahead, assess employees' needs and provide employees with information about available assistance including detailed information about how to apply for funds from the Northern New Mexico Fire Recovery Fund. Los Alamos Area Office employees who have not yet been contacted by DOE are urged to phone the department's Albuquerque Operations Office at 505-845-6036.
While the Los Alamos National Laboratory is a Department of Energy operation, its approximately 8,000 employees are contract workers and are not U.S. government employees.
Richardson praised the University of California, the prime contractor at LANL, for unveiling a comprehensive emergency response plan which includes a $150,000 relief-fund donation, low interest loans, an expanded leave with pay policy and additional counseling services.
"Everyone associated with the Department of Energy has been saddened by the fire's destruction and recognizes that the road to recovery will be a long one," added Richardson. "The community has my assurances that the Department of Energy will do everything within its powers to help our employees, our contractors and the impacted communities."
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N.M. lab officials offer reassurance
Radioactive materials not in danger from fire, they say as area burns
Denver Rocky Mountain News
05/14/00
By M.E. Sprengelmeyer Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
http://insidedenver.com/news/0514fire4.shtml
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. - Officials gave journalists a peek at the minimal fire damage at Los Alamos National Laboratory on Saturday as a way of reassuring the public about safety along the "plutonium corridor."
But in sometimes testy exchanges during a 21/2-hour tour, lab officials still found themselves answering tough questions about whether radioactive chemicals could be released into the air as wild fires continue running like rivers through nearby canyons.
"I do not deal in rumor. I deal in fact, and I deal in truth," said Gen. Gene Habinger, commander of the laboratory's security forces, standing outside the heavily guarded Technical Area 55, the only active plutonium facility in the country.
In one pointed exchange with reporters, he was asked why people shouldn't worry about the possible contamination downwind.
"I'd go downwind right now in a heartbeat and live there. That's my confidence," the general said.
So far there's no evidence that the blaze released any of the lab's radioactive materials or waste, but officials have instituted extensive monitoring and are waiting results in coming days.
The fire destroyed one modular building, a pickup truck and other portable buildings at the laboratory. No permanent structures were damaged, officials said.
Relatively calm winds have given firefighters a breather from battling the wildfires that have blackened 36,000 acres around the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
Stronger winds Saturday afternoon added to concerns that numerous spot fires in the pine-covered mountains and valleys around Los Alamos could flare up again.
As of Saturday the fire was only about 5 percent contained, officials said. Some environmentalists have expressed fears that fires could release radioactive materials into the air from lab facilities or the burning canyons where some liquid by-products of America's atomic research were once dumped amid lax environmental regulations more than 50 years ago.
The media got their first look at the site Saturday, shuttled aboard buses through some of the most sensitive scientific facilities in the country.
There has been much concern about one area where Los Alamos processes radioactive waste to be shipped to its final resting place at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in Carlsbad, N.M. The flames did not reach that area, although they scorched nearby roads through 43 square miles of lab territory.
Dick Burick, deputy director of operations at the lab, stood atop a tall cliff, showing journalists the three concrete kivas below where uranium and plutonium are processed. Fire threatened the area, sweeping through Pajarito Canyon, but Burick insisted the sites are not dangerous because of the way they were built.
"I was confident because these are heavy nonburnable structures, so even if the fire was upon it, we weren't going to get in there with any appreciable heat," he said. "Scientifically, there's no possibility of ignition. I know there's no way I can convince you of that."
Los Alamos Fire Chief Doug MacDonald said the calmer winds of Friday and Saturday morning helped firefighters make a strong attack on the blaze. However, he said everything depended on the unpredictability of the winds, which started picking up again during the afternoon.
"What happens is it burns one day, looks like it's finished and the next day we've got another burn. It's erratic," MacDonald said. "There's still fuel. Look at all the stuff that could still burn."
Ten members of Colorado's Rocky Mountain Forestry Fire Suppression, which specializes in battling wildland fires, arrived in New Mexico last week to join the scores of other fire and rescue crews.
Chief Thomas King said the blaze has proven tough because it's been difficult getting fire trucks and equipment into some of the steep terrain where the blazes are uncontrolled.
"It's a unique fire," King said. "You can't describe this fire. Everybody's working their butts off. We're near the lab, and the lab is safe for the time being."
The 11,000 residents of Los Alamos were still being kept away from their homes.
Gordon and Teresa Burrows of Los Alamos waited for a crew from Denver's Animal Planet Rescue to retrieve the three cats left behind after a frantic evacuation Wednesday.
Other than a slight injury to one of the cat's paws, Molly, Fritz and Hank were healthy.
"We love our pets," Gordon Burrows said. "This is really a relief to us."
Contact M.E. Sprengelmeyer at (303) 470-3937 or sprengelmeyerm@RockyMountainNews.com.
Staff writer Hector Gutierrez contributed to this report.
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Flames Spare Nuke Materials
Albuquerque Journal
Sunday, May 14, 2000
By Ian Hoffman Journal Northern Bureau
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/31167news05-14-00.htm
LOS ALAMOS - Hundreds of acres across Los Alamos National Laboratory are burned to a moonscape of ashen land and charcoal trees. A canyon is still in flames, and smoke rises in dozens of spots.
Yet beyond the loss of a few office trailers, the buildings and barreled wastes of the federal nuclear-weapons lab are untouched and thought to be free from the threat of fire for the first time in days.
Only an estimated 1.2 percent of the entire 43-square-mile site is charred.
But in places, LANL slipped the Cerro Grande Fire by a thin margin.
"We were very lucky," said LANL director John C. Browne.
"Our emergency plans worked extremely well. There wasn't a lot of chaos and confusion. I feel really good about that."
Browne and U.S. Department of Energy executives lauded the lab's emergency staff as "real heroes" who battled the blaze swiftly and expertly.
"What you have is a team of professionals who have been working on plans, preparing for things like this for years," said Gen. Eugene Habiger, the DOE's security and emergency operations chief. "This has been a classic example of how this kind of disaster should be handled."
On Monday, the first handful of nonemergency lab employees return to work to churn out LANL's $20 million biweekly payroll. But the actual reopening of the lab for operations will be phased in over several weeks, starting with such undamaged places as Technical Areas 3 and 53, Browne said. LANL has never been out of full operation for such a long time.
Browne asked lab employees to call outreach centers in Santa Fe and Española so the lab knows where they are and can contact them.
Reporters toured the lab Saturday and saw that the blaze raged to the doorstep of three nuclear facilities - a waste dump and two sites containing enough nuclear-weapons materials to make several bombs. Flames had burned over the heads of firefighters defending Technical Area 55, home to the nation's only lab for turning plutonium into the first stage of nuclear weapons.
Their abandoned fire hose lies charred 80 feet from neighboring TA-54's west gate. Fire closed in on all but the east side and drew to within 50 feet of the razor-wired double fences that surround the plutonium facility.
"Here was the scene of one heck of a firefight," said Los Alamos Fire Chief Doug "Mac" MacDonald. "It burned right over the top of them. ... This whole area was threatened."
Flames jumped to within a half mile of hazardous wastes and the half-dozen plastic tents where Los Alamos stores thousands of barrels of plutonium-contaminated garbage and sludges headed for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. Lab and DOE officials considered the waste area, Technical Area 54, the lab's most vulnerable spot.
"It came closer than I'd like," said Tony Stafford, director of the lab's Facilities and Waste Division.
Fires in Two-Mile Canyon never reached the lab's heart at Technical Area 3, much to the relief of lab executives. But flames twice swept over the Emergency Operations Center where 60 employees directed firefighting in a concrete-walled basement.
The Center for International Security Affairs, where U.S. and Russian scientists often meet, was threatened several times over three days. A highway guardrail nearby was contorted off its blackened moorings by the heat. And flames destroyed an office trailer and pickup truck across the highway.
The fire defied many predictions and prompted awestruck respect among lab and DOE officials. "It's called an act of God," Habiger said.
"Half of what you think it's going to do, it doesn't do. And half of what you think it's not going to do, it sneaks up and does," said Lee McAtee, deputy director of the lab's Environment, Safety and Health Division.
Mortandad Canyon, where the lab has discharged radioactive liquid wastes since the late 1960s, was gushing smoke from a raging fire Saturday afternoon, but Los Alamos firefighters had encircled it with trenches of bare earth. They kept an eye on dozens of small fires still smoking.
"All of the smoke you see, all of the fire is in the black" of already burned areas, MacDonald said. "The threats continue to lessen, and we'll keep a watch on what's burning."
Firefighters were still battling a fire in Pajarito Canyon that threatens White Rock.
Deputy lab director Dick Burick warned employees through news cameras, "Prepare yourselves for a very different looking site when you get back here. ... In some places, it looks like a moon."
Now lab officials are turning from firefighting to assessing the fire damage and helping thousands of displaced employees, hundreds of whom are homeless.
"We want to assure all of our employees that they have our support as they try to get their lives back together," Browne said.
"A lot of our friends have lost their homes," he said. "There's a lot of grieving that's going on. ... When they come back, they're going to have a lot of stress in their lives. It's going to take awhile to recover, mentally and physically."
---
N.M. Town Assesses Lab's Future
Associated Press
May 14, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Fires-Company-Town.html
POJOAQUE, N.M. (AP) -- As a resident of a town inextricably linked to the threat of apocalyptic destruction, nuclear detonator specialist Tom Turner sees a lesson in the fire that ravaged Los Alamos.
``It shows you who's boss,'' Turner said at a shelter for evacuees. ``We're the elite -- we've developed weapons of many megatons that can set off a giant fireball -- and now a wildfire sweeps through here and we can't do a thing about it.''
The fire, which destroyed 260 homes and forced 25,000 people to evacuate, is the first major disaster here since Los Alamos National Laboratory became the historic development site of the first atomic bomb in 1945. Rebuilding will be a test of resolve for the community, whose long-term prospects have been uncertain since the end of the Cold War.
``This is a town founded on patriotism and service,'' said Stephen Younger, director for weapons programs at the laboratory. ``We need to let our people grieve. But ... we've got a mission to do, and we're going to do it.''
Darren Naud, a chemical explosives expert at the lab, is less confident about the future, personally and professionally. He and his wife, who have two small children, lost their rented townhouse in the fire and fear a replacement will be costly.
He also has doubts about the lab, saying many programs have been plagued by funding problems.
``It's just mired in worries and concerns and bureaucracies,'' Naud said. ``The whole budgeting situation is one big horrible mess.''
Some of that mess was precipitated by the firing last year of nuclear physicist Wen Ho Lee, who was charged with breaching lab security by transferring top secret files from secure to unsecure computers.
The case unleashed a torrent of criticism of security standards at the lab, prompting a security overhaul by the Department of Energy. Lee, 60, is scheduled for trial later this year.
Los Alamos is a company town. Nearly every family gets a paycheck from the lab, or does business with it. The lab workforce of 7,000 includes hundreds of Ph.D's making up one of the wealthiest, best-educated communities in the country.
Lab scientist Dave Becker, 39, and his wife came to Los Alamos from Austin, Texas, five years ago; their daughter, Emily, turned 1 last week. They intend to rebuild and foresee Los Alamos as their home for years to come.
``We like Los Alamos for its beauty,'' said Becker, bouncing Emily in his lap at a relief center in nearby Pojoaque. ``It's more hospitable than Texas. There are no fire ants. And people have a clear sense of what their mission is.''
Some residents say the company-town atmosphere can be oppressive at times -- they cite gossip, nosiness and the inevitability of encountering familiar faces on every shopping sortie.
But there are advantages -- excellent schools and community activities, minimal crime, a camaraderie fueled by common interests.
Throughout the Cold War, Los Alamos was devoted primarily to developing and testing America's nuclear weapons. Its core defense task now is to maintain the existing weapons stockpile.
Younger is convinced the nation will keep a large enough stockpile to ensure that Los Alamos remains vital.
``We went through some difficult times in the early '90s, when some people in government suggested we didn't need nuclear weapons,'' he said. ``But every president since Truman has affirmed the importance of the nuclear deterrent.''
Langdon Bennett, a 35-year-old explosives specialist, agreed.
``Call me a pessimist, but the world's not going to be as nice a place as you want it to be,'' said Bennett, who arrived from North Carolina four years ago with his wife and two children. ``I'd be just as happy if nuclear weapons did disappear -- there are other jobs in the world.''
Turner, whose father worked at the federal nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said he has been heartened by the public response to the fire at a time when he sensed many Americans were unenthused about their nuclear arsenal.
``It surprised me -- the outpouring of everybody helping us,'' said Turner, 42. ``For the first time, we feel like part of the broader community.''
On the Net:
Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://www.lanl.gov/worldview
Virtual Los Alamos: http://www.losalamos.com/
---
Tour Given of Los Alamos Lab
Associated Press
May 14, 2000 Filed at 4:22 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Fires-The-Lab.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- In a move officials called unprecedented, Los Alamos National Laboratory gave an extensive tour of its facilities to reporters Saturday, trying to allay fears that a wildfire damaged key research and nuclear waste areas at the high-security facility.
``This is an attempt to show you we are not hiding anything,'' said Gene Habiger, director of security and emergency response for the Department of Energy. ``If anyone thinks the government, the Department of Energy, can suppress the truth, they're wrong.''
The agency and the laboratory have come under criticism in recent days, accused by anti-nuclear activists of not being forthcoming about the extent of damage and possible health concerns caused by the fire that scorched northern New Mexico.
The blaze began as a government-prescribed burn to clear brush in the Bandelier National Monument, adjacent to the lab. But the fire quickly got out of hand, fueled by dry conditions, hot temperatures and winds of 50 mph.
Lab officials said that while the flames started grass fires on lab property, burned brush and destroyed several trailers, they did not get into critical areas where nuclear materials or hazardous waste are stored.
Long cloaked in secrecy, the lab is one of the nation's most important nuclear weapons research facilities and was responsible for the growth of the town around it.
Pressured to provide more details, the DOE and lab officials agreed to take reporters on a 2 1/2 hour tour of the 43-square-mile lab. The tour included stops at key installations, including the nation's only active plutonium facility, which is normally off limits to the public and under 24-hour armed guard.
At each stop, officials pointed out that despite the danger of the fire, the lab's emergency procedures worked and prevented the damage or loss of any significant structures.
``Was there ever the risk of total disaster? If you mean disaster in the sense of losing one of these facilities, I would say we were a long way from that,'' said Stan Busboom, the lab's security director.
The plutonium facility, known as Technical Area 55, sits on a high mesa surrounded by deep ravines filled with juniper and heavy brush. While much of the ground surrounding the facility was charred, officials pointed to where firefighters were able to stop the flames about 50 feet short of the high-security fence surrounding the site.
All through the lab grounds, fallen ponderosas and the cobweb-like juniper bushes continued to smolder Saturday.
Dick Burick, deputy director of operations at the lab, credited ``hero firefighters'' for preventing damage at another research facility known as TA18. The site, where nuclear experiments are conducted, sits in a deep gulch and was at one time nearly circled by fire.
One of the areas of greatest concern, a waste storage site known as TA54, also was untouched by flames. The site is used to store certain types of nuclear waste temporarily until it can be shipped elsewhere for permanent disposal.
A 1998 Energy Department study explored the possible effect of a devastating wildfire at the laboratory. It said that in a worst-case scenario higher levels of radiation would be released in the plumes of smoke, but the effect would likely be negligible.
Despite the tour, some still criticized what they saw as a lack of information.
``The trouble is we really don't know what burned when and we basically had no information from the laboratory of any sort of detailed, technical kind that any outside person could interpret to provide credibility,'' said Greg Mello, director of the anti-nuclear Los Alamos Study Group. ``There definitely was danger.''
---
Residents Learn Their Fate as New Mexico Fire Slows
New York Times
May 14, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/051400nm-alamo.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., May 13 -- Randy Foster tossed an armload of clothes into his truck, grabbed his dog and fled as the town around him was about to burn. He left behind his new motorcycle as hot ash began singeing the back of his neck.
"It was time to go," he said.
Today, Mr. Foster, a Los Alamos police officer, returned for the first time to what remained of his neighborhood. Walking through his yard in blue jeans soiled with ash and soot, he found the artifacts of a life lost: charred metal, blackened rubble and the skeleton of his bike, most of it melted away in a firestorm that has turned 36,000 acres of northern New Mexico into a scorched no man's land.
Most frustrating was what Mr. Foster could no longer identify.
He turned over a hunk of fused metal in his hands, blackened by picking through the debris that was once his living room.
"I have no idea what this is," he said. Then, after a pause, it came to him. "Oh, wait a minute, that's my VCR."
More than a week after the National Park Service started the blaze to remove dry brush and grass, the fire that had destroyed 260 homes and threatened the Los Alamos National Laboratory no longer looked invincible, and Los Alamos began to come to grips with the scale of destruction.
Most of the 25,000 people who were evacuated will not be allowed to return to their homes for at least a week, although the National Guard will begin escorting groups into Los Alamos as early as Sunday to pick up clothes, medicine and other essentials. Most learned of their homes' fate on Friday, when a list of destroyed houses was posted on the county's Web site.
"We are experiencing a miracle at the moment: Our house, which we were absolutely sure was gone, is standing," said Karen Brandt, who had checked into a Santa Fe motel with her husband and her mother.
Fire Chief Doug MacDonald assured residents, "I can say with a high degree of confidence that we will not have more structures burned in Los Alamos or White Rock."
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt promised residents that they would have answers by Thursday about why the Park Service started the blaze at Bandelier National Monument. Park Superintendent Roy Weaver was placed on paid leave pending an investigation, and Mr. Babbitt said all prescribed fires in the West would be put on hold for a month, although government agencies could still grant exceptions.
At a Red Cross shelter in Santa Fe, residents waited for word of the supervised visits, trying to determine in the meantime what remained.
A few made their way into town, past the checkpoints meant to keep them out. Others, like Mr. Foster, whose jobs gave them access, trickled in to survey the devastation, which could cost $1 billion.
White ash dusted the remnants of his two-story condominium like a light spring snow, and the twisted metal resembled a junkyard more than the wreckage of a home.
Mr. Foster said working 12-hour shifts helped him keep his mind off the loss, but he was still bitter over how feeble he felt in the face of a fire that seemed relentless.
Faring better was the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a key facility in the nation's nuclear weapons program that gave rise to the town.
Some trailers were burned, but the laboratory's major installations emerged unscathed. The lab planned to resume limited operations on Monday, the laboratory director, John Browne, said.
The fire in the nearby canyons and valleys was only 5 percent contained today, but temperatures that dropped to 35 degrees and calm winds allowed emergency crews to bring airplanes, helicopters and bulldozers into the attempt to subdue the blaze. The fire spread little overnight, although a shroud of smoke blanketing the valley today prompted police officers and relief workers to wear protective masks.
Months of drought in New Mexico have left the state vulnerable to outbreaks like the Los Alamos fire. Though the fire season has just begun, already more than 200,000 acres have burned -- nearly four times the total for last year.
In southern New Mexico, a fire that had charred 20,700 acres lost momentum, and firefighters said it was 50 percent contained. The fire, which was caused by a downed power line, destroyed 14 buildings and forced 125 people from their homes in the Sacramento Mountains. The villages of Sacramento and Weed were evacuated, along with several nearby canyon enclaves.
About 450 firefighters were using bulldozers, airplanes and a helicopter to fight that blaze today.
---
Everything Is Under Control
New York Times
May 14, 2000
By JOHN B. KENNEY
http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/051400los-alamos-fire-review.html
Officials have begun to express anger at the National Park Service, which set what it had hoped would be a controlled fire.
-- The New York Times, May 12, 2000, in an article about a large wildfire in Los Alamos, N.M.
Oct. 24, 2000 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced today that it would conduct a controlled meltdown at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Mass. The meltdown is part of an annual safety measure, one official said.
"It keeps the thing from going all kooky," said the Pilgrim safety chief, Edward McGahan.
"When the weather is dry like this, the rods, the core, all that nuclear stuff could melt or explode or something," Mr. McGahan added.
"See, this way, if we do it on purpose, it can't meltdown on its own by accident."
Nov. 16, 2000 Officials at Hoover Dam said today that they would blow up the dam this weekend. Speaking at a news conference, Tom Drymalski, the director of safety, said: "There's all that water building up and there's, like, pressure. So this guy Phil, from maintenance, said, 'Dude, what would happen if the dam broke?' So then we got to thinking that we should blow it up and rebuild it."
Questioned by reporters about the effect of releasing 28,537,000 acre-feet of water, Mr. Drymalski said, "Well, we hadn't really thought of that, but it'll probably be pretty cool."
March 9, 2001 "It's impossible to know what the Belgians will do," said an angry Pentagon official today at a news conference to announce that the United States would drop a nuclear bomb on Belgium Monday afternoon. "They're Belgians. What if they attack first?" Gen. William Landay said. He added that it was not uncommon for the Pentagon to try to avoid disaster by actually creating it.
"People underestimate Belgium," he said. "I bet you didn't know that the Belgians tried to invade this country just two weeks ago but were turned away at Customs because of expired passports."
July 3, 2001 Police in Washington, D.C., announced that all officers on the force would be required to shoot themselves at the beginning of each shift. The move was immediately hailed by law enforcement agencies nationwide. "These are violent times," said the Washington police chief, Lars Gustafson. "I don't want to stand here while our guys are out there getting shot on the street. I would much rather they do it themselves. This way, I think, we're all better prepared."
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Firefighters Get Short Breather in Los Alamos Blaze
Washington Post
Sunday, May 14, 2000; Page A02
By Rene Sanchez Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/14/179l-051400-idx.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., May 13-Battling time and fatigue, firefighters took advantage of a morning of favorable weather to try to prevent the runaway blaze that has devastated this community from inflicting more damage on hillside homes or the nation's biggest nuclear weapons laboratory.
But the unpredictable wildfire, which was accidentally ignited a week ago by the National Park Service, remained resilient today in some canyons near Los Alamos and was growing in nearly all directions.
"We're still getting some hot spots in a few areas," Steve Coburn, the assistant fire chief in Los Alamos, said this morning. "We really need it to burn itself out in the next few days because the winds could pick up on Monday."
But winds increased this afternoon, and a swift end to the blaze seemed unlikely. "This fire is going to burn for weeks," the U.S. Forest Service's Jim Paxon told reporters this afternoon. He added that it could still threaten the town and the laboratory. "This thing is growing, and we don't know where it's going to end up."
Because of the potential danger, Los Alamos remained closed to residents today as thick bands of smoke smeared the skyline and scorched houses smoldered. Many of the area's 18,000 residents are camped in shelters and motels 30 miles away in Santa Fe. Several hundred National Guard troops patroled streets here as planes and helicopters deluged canyons with water.
President Clinton declared the area affected by the fires to be a "major disaster."
The wildfire that has charred about 35,000 acres was set by the Park Service as part of a "controlled burn," a routine tactic to clear underbrush. National Weather Service officials said they warned officials at Bandelier National Monument seven hours before they ignited the fire that dry, windy conditions made doing so extremely risky.
No one has been injured, but more than 250 homes have burned to the ground. People who packed cars with belongings and fled the blaze in haste may not be allowed to return here for several more days, although escorted groups may return Sunday to collect medicine and clothing. The wildfire also burned sacred sites on nearby Indian reservations. Preliminary state estimates of overall damage are nearing $1 billion.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the federal government first built the atomic bomb as part of the secret Manhattan Project in the 1940s, has been mostly spared from the blaze. A few trailers and vehicles on its 42-square-mile site were singed or torched and a few grass fires continued to flicker there today, but no buildings, labs or hazardous waste sites were damaged. Officials say that all radioactive material, such as plutonium, is safe.
Continuing tests by environmental analysts have shown no unusual levels of radiation or other toxic materials in the air, authorities said, and water has not been contaminated. But some environmental watchdog groups are dispatching their own scientists here.
About 1,000 firefighters from around the state are working to contain the blaze. Scores of fresh reinforcements arrived today, but fire crews are stretched thin because other wildfires have erupted in isolated parts of New Mexico.
"I think we'll make a lot of progress today," said Charles Jankiewicz of the Forest Service.
When the wildfire first swept through Los Alamos four days ago, officials feared that the entire community would be lost. But today it was apparent that business areas and some neighborhoods had only minor brushes with the blaze. In other areas, blocks of homes have been destroyed. Stoked by high winds, the fire jumped across trees in the densely wooded community in such a random and shifting manner that homes just yards apart suffered different fates.
"It was all just blind luck for some people," said Lawry Mann, chairman of the Los Alamos County Council. "Others have lost everything."
Amid public outrage here over the cause of the raging wildfire, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has ordered a 30-day ban on "controlled burns" in forests across the West. But he defended the practice.
"These forests are made safer by periodic fires," Babbitt said. "It's a very important part of western land management."
Babbitt has asked federal investigators for a preliminary assessment by the end of the week of what went wrong in this instance. Roy Weaver, the Bandelier superintendent who authorized igniting the underbrush that exploded out of control, has been placed on indefinite administrative leave.
"It will be a slow process for this community to put their lives back together," said Rep. Tom Udall (D-N.M.)
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Los Alamos Residents View Destroyed Homes from School Buses
Fox News
05/14/00
http://www.foxnews.com/national/051400/nm_fires.sml
For the first time since a blaze destroyed their homes, residents of Los Alamos, N.M., were allowed to view the charred remains of their neighborhood from the windows of yellow school buses which snaked through the town in a convoy.
A man walks past what was the entrance of a new home in western Los Alamos
So far, the blaze has destroyed 261 homes, scorched more than 42,000 acres and caused an estimated $1 billion in damage. On Saturday officials said it was spreading in three directions all around the Los Alamos laboratory and was near a town and two Indian reservations.
While many residents of Los Alamos whose homes were destroyed did tour the neighborhood, most of the 389 who took the trip were not allowed off the buses; the few that disembarked took pictures of their former residences but were warned not to get too close.
Some residents of the mountain community of 11,000 that was suddenly emptied of life four days earlier chose not to return, and participated at Mother's Day celebrations at local shelters.
"No matter what comes of this, I have the most valuable things," said Jacki Mang, now living in a shelter for displaced families. "We got out of there with our lives and our kids," she said.
Meanwhile, the residents of White Rock were allowed to return to their homes Sunday, three days after they were evacuated. The fires caused no damage there.
Los Alamos residents will not be allowed to return to their homes permanently until the end of the week, perhaps later, emergency officials say.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt promised residents they will have answers by Thursday about why the National Park Service started the blaze May 4 at neighboring Bandelier National Monument. Park Superintendent Roy Weaver was placed on paid leave pending an investigation, and Babbitt said all planned fires in the West would be put on hold for a month.
"If mistakes were made people will be held accountable, there's no question about that," Babbitt said Sunday on ABC's This Week
The blaze began as a government-prescribed burn to clear brush in nearby Bandelier National Monument, adjacent to the lab. But the fire quickly got out of hand, fueled by dry conditions, hot temperatures and winds of 50 mph.
The winds were expected Sunday to be less stiff than on Wednesday, but still stronger than on previous days, leaving the approximately 1,000 firefighters scrambling to keep under control the 5 percent of the fire they'd announced as under control on Friday.
Dr. John Browne, the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratories, N.M., center, flanked by other officials discusses the fires
"This thing is growing and we don't where it's going to end up," U.S. Forest Service fire information officer Jim Paxon said during a news conference Saturday. "It will be a long time before we get this fire contained ... this fire is going to burn for weeks."
Reporters Allowed First-Ever Tour of Nuclear Facility
Saturday, reporters got to tour Los Alamos National Laboratories for the first time ever, to put to rest fears that the high-security nuclear research facilities at the birthplace of the atomic bomb were unharmed by an uncontrolled firestorm that swept through it last week.
"This is an attempt to show you we are not hiding anything," Gene Habiger, director of security and emergency response for the Department of Energy, said. "If anyone thinks the government, the Department of Energy, can suppress the truth, they're wrong."
The agency and the laboratory have come under criticism in recent days, accused by anti-nuclear activists of not being forthcoming about the extent of damage and possible health concerns caused by the fire that scorched northern New Mexico.
Lab officials said that while the flames started grass fires on lab property, burned brush and destroyed several trailers, they did not get into critical areas where nuclear materials or hazardous waste are stored. A DOE spokesman told FOXNews.com Thursday that the specially designed bunkers in which the materials are kept were meant to withstand much more punishment than a mere fire.
The lab is one of the nation's most important nuclear weapons research facilities and was responsible for the growth of the town around it. According to Princeton University's Frank von Hippel, an adviser to the lab's nuclear nonproliferation program, it is currently the only U.S. site for the fabrication of weapons-grade nuclear components.
Despite the tour, some still criticized what they saw as a lack of information.
"The trouble is we really don't know what burned when and we basically had no information from the laboratory of any sort of detailed, technical kind that any outside person could interpret to provide credibility," said Greg Mello, director of the anti-nuclear Los Alamos Study Group, long a critical observer of the lab's treatment of radioactive matter. "There definitely was danger."
The AP contributed to this report
---
Los Alamos starts journey to recovery Fire is moving away from scorched city
Boston Globe
05/14/00
By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff, 5/14/2000
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/135/nation/Los_Alamos_starts_journey_to_recovery+.shtml
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. - The fire-ravaged town of Los Alamos began the long, difficult journey toward recovery yesterday.
That progress depended not only on the continuing heroism of hundreds of firefighters who are battling the flames marching across the skyline, but also members of the community.
On a day when the main thrust of the fire moved away from Los Alamos, hundreds of townspeople gathered outside a desert high school to pick up mail, embrace neighbors, and exchange tales of one of the most terrifying weeks of their lives.
In the distance, the Jemez Mountains belched billows of white smoke that moved northeast on winds that had increased overnight from Friday's relative calm.
But outside Pojoaque High School, more than a dozen miles from Los Alamos, much of the town stood patiently in long lines as the US Postal Service sifted through letters in an hours-long scene reminiscent of a battlefront mail call.
For many of these families, the addresses on their mail no longer exist.
''Everything's gone, everything,'' said Viola Stowe, a high school math teacher in Espanola. ''There's nothing left.''
Stowe stood with two daughters at the Red Cross shelter set up at the school and recalled the frightening scene of watching towering flames cross the mountaintops at night and bear down on Los Alamos. As soon as the fire jumped the ridge, Stowe said, she realized her home was in danger.
The news that her home had burned was delivered not by emergency officials, but by television broadcasts. Helicopters had hovered over the charred foundation of Stowe's house to show an example of the devastation, and camera crews zoomed in on the wreckage.
A familiar teapot confirmed the loss, which Stowe and her daughters witnessed over and over again in the hours of coverage devoted to the blaze.
''Oh man, I lost computers, all my furniture, dishes,'' Stowe said. ''I took some pictures, pictures of my parents, but the baby pictures are gone. Seventeen years of accumulation.''
She contemplates her future now in days, not years.
''I could cry, and I would be angry and upset,'' Stowe said, pausing. ''But why worry? It's gone.''
Stowe will live with a friend in Espanola until school ends in two weeks. After that, the course is unknown.
That uncertainty also describes the fire itself. US Forest Service spokesman Jim Paxon said yesterday the blaze had consumed 33,000 acres, and that only 5 percent of the inferno had been ''contained,'' or surrounded. The path of the fire yesterday took it to the Santa Clara Indian Reservation, where a voluntary evacuation occurred but a cherished Native American ruin lay endangered.
Paxon said that despite the increase in wind speed, a combination of cool temperatures and low humidity was working in favor of the 1,600 firefighters confronting the blaze. Those conditions were expected to continue into today, but a new front with warmer, drier weather was predicted to follow.
However, he said that ''this fire, for the most part, is getting out of the area of concern.'' But the inherent unpredictability of a wildfire prompted Los Alamos Fire Chief Doug MacDonald to caution that he cannot guarantee the fire will not threaten Los Alamos again.
No one has been injured so far, but more than 250 homes have burned to the ground. It is not known when people who packed cars with belongings and fled the blaze in haste may be allowed to return here, although escorted groups may return today to collect medicine and clothing. The wildfire also burned sacred sites on nearby Indian reservations.
The damage includes the grounds of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where reporters were shown the results of the blaze that swept through the nuclear-weapons research facility on Wednesday and Thursday.
The fire destroyed a few administrative trailers on the grounds, where tens of thousands of barrels of radioactive waste are stored and delicate nuclear experiments with highly enriched uranium are conducted.
Lab director John C. Browne said the facilities for these experiments are designed to withstand punishment much more severe than this fire, whose flames swept close to the experiment site.
The most worrisome fire on lab grounds occurred near the plutonium-handling sector, MacDonald said. ''This area was the scene of one heck of a firefight,'' the chief recalled. ''My men had fire all around them, and they weren't going to move out. They let the fire move around them.''
The flames advanced to within 50 feet of a fence surrounding the facility. The fire also approached to within a half-mile of a storage area for 20,000 drums of radioactive waste. Anthony Stanford, the lab's director for waste storage, said the drums will not burn and pressure is allowed to escape.
Still, lab officials said that a small increase in radioactivity has been recorded. However, they attributed this rise to the normal heightened levels that follow the burning of vegetation in wildfires.
The lab will be unable to evaluate a wide range of data until midweek, but authorities said they do not expect to find any dangerous emissions.
''If we had a serious radiological problem now, we'd know it,'' Browne said.
''I'd go downwind in a heartbeat and live there the rest of my life,'' said General Gene Habiger, director of security operations for the US Department of Energy.
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.
---
A Fire Out of Control
Washington Post
Friday, May 12, 2000; Page C13
TODAY'S NEWS From staff and wire reports
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/12/129l-051200-idx.html
* A fire set on purpose by New Mexico park rangers burned out of control yesterday.
The National Park Service started the fire in Bandelier National Monument a week ago to burn underbrush. "Controlled burns" are common, but this time high winds and dry conditions swept the flames along. Flames from blazing ponderosa pines leaped 200 feet high, and a pillar of yellowish-gray smoke rose 20,000 feet into the air.
At least 18,000 acres were scorched by midday. As many as 400 homes were destroyed and thousands of people had to flee.
The Los Alamos nuclear laboratory--where the first atom bomb was invented--was shut down by fire. Explosives and radioactive material were protected in fireproof facilities, lab officials said.
U.S. Senator Pete Domenici from New Mexico was among the politicians who wants to look into the decision to set the fire. "Somebody made a mistake and obviously we have to find out who," he said. "Did someone do something that should not have been done considering the dry conditions and the wind?
---
Latest Developments
Los Alamos Residents Tour Damage
Yahoo News
http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/fc/US/Wildfires_and_Forest_Fires/
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000514/ts/new_mexico_fires.html
(AP) - Made refugees by fire, hundreds of evacuated residents of Los Alamos solemnly returned Sunday in convoys of yellow school buses to the seared homes, blackened yards and still-smoking vistas of their abandoned town.
---
U.S. Starts Fire Fund for Los Alamos Lab Workers
Reuters
Sunday May 14 6:01 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000514/pl/losalamos_fund_1.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department said on Sunday that it had set up a fund for Los Alamos National Laboratory employees and contractors who lost property to the wildfires that have swept northern New Mexico and damaged the lab.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said the Northern New Mexico Fire Recovery Fund was authorized to accept donations from public and private sources.
``The Department of Energy has an obligation to help our federal and contractor employees as well as the communities suffering because of the fire,'' Richardson said in a statement.
While relief agencies are providing immediate assistance, Richardson said, ``this fund is intended to assist our employees and communities as they will surely face many unforeseen and uncovered expenses in coming months.''
Fire -- beginning as a controlled burn ordered by U.S. park officials -- has burned some 42,000 acres (17,000 hectares) of land, including one-third of the 43-square-mile (111-square-km) Los Alamos compound, where scientists built the first U.S. atomic bomb during the Second World War.
The laboratory, which employs about 8,000 contract workers, and the Energy Department administrative office for the lab, which employs 56 federal workers and nine contract workers, have been closed because of smoke damage.
Officials were also concerned that wind gusts could revive the blaze there.
Richardson praised the University of California, prime contractor at the laboratory, for an emergency response plan that includes a $150,00 relief-fund donation, low-interest loans, paid leave and counseling services.
---
Planned Fire Turns Wild
New York Times
JAMES STERNGOLD
May 14, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/051400thisweek-review.html
A federal government effort to thin dense pine forests with a controlled burn near Los Alamos, N.M., suddenly burst into a disastrous wild fire. Heavy winds sent flames racing through tinder-dry canyons and then residential areas, and even across portions of the highly sensitive nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos. The local head of the National Park Service, which set the fire, was suspended, more than 25,000 people had to be evacuated and at least 260 homes were destroyed. The nuclear lab suffered no major damage and officials said there was no release of radioactivity.
Still, officials said, it could take weeks to get the facility running fully again. Officials also said it could take weeks before services could be restored so that residents of the area can move back to their homes -- those that still stand.
---
Secret nuke lab gives tour to allay fears
Arizona Daily Star
Sunday, 14 May 2000
The Associated Press
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/000514nfires2fthelab.html
http://www.accesswaco.com/shared/news/ap/ap_story.html/National/AP.V0715.AP-Fires-The-Lab.html
http://www.newsday.com/ap/topnews/ap984.htm
Guards man the entrance to the fire-rimmed Los Alamos lab; reporters got a rare look yesterday inside the facility.
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. - In a move officials called unprecedented, Los Alamos National Laboratory gave an extensive tour of its facilities to reporters yesterday, trying to allay fears that a wildfire damaged key research and nuclear waste areas at the high-security facility.
"This is an attempt to show you we are not hiding anything," said Gene Habiger, director of security and emergency response for the Department of Energy. "If anyone thinks the government, the Department of Energy, can suppress the truth, they're wrong."
The agency and the laboratory have come under criticism in recent days, accused by anti-nuclear activists of not being forthcoming about the extent of damage and possible health concerns caused by the fire that scorched northern New Mexico.
The blaze began as a government-prescribed burn to clear brush in Bandelier National Monument, next to the lab. But the fire quickly got out of hand, fueled by dry conditions, hot temperatures and winds of 50 mph.
Lab officials said that while the flames started grass fires on lab property, burned brush and destroyed several trailers, they did not get into critical areas where nuclear materials or hazardous waste are stored.
Long cloaked in secrecy, the lab is one of the nation's most important nuclear weapons research facilities and was responsible for the growth of the town around it.
Pressured to provide more details, the Energy Department and lab officials agreed to take reporters on a tour of the 43-square-mile lab. The tour included stops at key installations, including the nation's only active plutonium facility, which is normally off limits to the public and under 24-hour armed guard.
At each stop, officials pointed out that despite the danger of the fire, the lab's emergency procedures worked and prevented the damage or loss of any significant structures.
"Was there ever the risk of total disaster? If you mean disaster in the sense of losing one of these facilities, I would say we were a long way from that," said Stan Busboom, the lab's security director.
The plutonium facility, known as Technical Area 55, sits on a high mesa surrounded by deep ravines filled with juniper and heavy brush. While much of the ground surrounding the facility was charred, officials pointed to where firefighters were able to stop the flames about 50 feet short of the high-security fence surrounding the site.
All through the lab grounds, fallen ponderosas and cobweb-like junipers continued to smolder yesterday.
Dick Burick, deputy director of operations at the lab, credited "hero firefighters" for preventing damage at another research facility known as TA18. The site, where nuclear experiments are conducted, sits in a deep gulch and was at one time nearly circled by fire.
One of the areas of greatest concern, a waste storage site at TA 55, also was untouched by flames. The site is used to store certain types of nuclear waste temporarily until it can be shipped elsewhere for permanent disposal.
A 1998 Energy Department study explored the possible effect of a devastating wildfire at the laboratory. It said that in a worst-case scenario, higher levels of radiation would be released in the plumes of smoke, but the effect would likely be negligible.
Despite the tour, some still criticized what they saw as a lack of information.
"The trouble is we really don't know what burned when, and we basically had no information from the laboratory of any sort of detailed, technical kind that any outside person could interpret to provide credibility," said Greg Mello, director of the anti-nuclear Los Alamos Study Group. "There definitely was danger."
---
Bomb's birthplace breathes history
Los Alamos once was pristine high desert
Denver Rocky Mountain News
05/14/00
By Lisa Levitt Ryckman
http://insidedenver.com/news/0514lab4.shtml
To physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Los Alamos seemed like the ideal place to build the bomb.
Remote, isolated, high atop a mesa in the New Mexico desert. Just two roads in, both treacherous. Far from foreign spies and saboteurs, easy to guard and defend.
In 1943, it was a national security dream. In 2000, it became a natural disaster nightmare.
"There had been talk over the years of maybe moving it into a major urban center, because security became less of an issue," said James Kunetka, a Los Alamos historian and author of the book City of Fire: Los Alamos and the Birth of the Atomic Age 1943-1945.
"It never occurred to them that a fire would be the one big danger they'd have to face."
Sitting atop a high desert mesa surrounded by pine forest, the lab and the homes of its scientists and staff were at the mercy of the inferno.
"We can assure the country and New Mexico that our nuclear materials are safe," said Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.
But the specter of fire racing through the nation's foremost nuclear complex will no doubt raise new questions about the wisdom of the lab's location.
In the 1930s Oppenheimer, who said his two great loves were physics and the desert, bought a cabin near the Pecos Mountains, one range over from the Pajarito Plateau, home then to the ultra-exclusive Los Alamos Ranch School for boys. A few years later, when the military started looking for a site for a laboratory to build nuclear weapons, Oppenheimer thought of Los Alamos - secluded and idyllic, his idea of the perfect setting for a few dozen scientists to spend the rest of World War II developing the ultimate weapon.
Years later, former students at the private school recalled the day that a dark-blue military sedan arrived, and Oppenheimer emerged with Major Gen. Leslie Groves, army engineer and commander of the top-secret Manhattan Project that would build the world's first atomic bomb.
After that, planes flew over the site regularly and other military personnel showed up. The land was surveyed, condemned and purchased by the government under its power of eminent domain. The boys' school had two months to get out; in March 1943 the scientists started moving in.
"Oppenheimer genuinely thought it was just going to be some scientists and a very small lab," Kunetka said. "They didn't expect it to grow very much."
It was one in a series of major miscalculations. The rustic charm of the boys' school disappeared as the Army took over, ripping out virgin forests and building what looked like a shantytown, with unpaved streets that turned to mud in the rain. There were shortages of fresh vegetables and meat.
The main road to the site was a torturous, boulder-strewn ribbon of unpaved switchbacks so steep that travelers feared for their safety and larger trucks could barely navigate. Paving didn't help; steady travel by heavy vehicles destroyed it after mere weeks. Rebuilding the road became a major undertaking.
"You can imagine scientists coming from Harvard and Princeton, with their ivy-covered walls, getting to the top of the mesa and seeing everything cut down and muddy," Kunetka said. "Their wives reportedly would break down and cry."
Oppenheimer had thought that 100 or so scientists would spend the war developing nuclear weapons then turn the land back over to the boys' school. But by 1945, there were 4,000 people at Los Alamos, and the small lab Oppenheimer had envisioned had spread to two adjoining mesas and a canyon.
"Everybody thought the laboratory would eventually close down and move away, but the advent of the Cold War kept it important," Kunetka said. "Until the mid-'50s, it was the only place nuclear weapons were designed and made."
Today, at the lab, security is top-notch, with ring after ring of electrified fences, extensive electronic surveillance and guard gates. Nuclear material is stored as much as 12 feet underground and covered with concrete slabs.
A fire in the mid-'90s licked the edges of the Los Alamos reservation but did no damage. But some of the same problems that plagued the area's first residents remain.
"Back then, they consistently ran out of water," Kunetka said. "Now 50 some odd years later, they ran out again."
The "City of Fire" was overrun by firestorm.
Contact Lisa Levitt Ryckman
atryckmanl@RockyMountainNews.com
or (303) 892-2736.
-------- tennessee
DEADLY METAL
Few agree to settlement plan from DOE sites
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/lett0514.htm
Re: "Deadly metal: Skepticism greets plan to pay for nuclear ills," May 7 Perspective.
This article echoes what I'm hearing from dozens of affected present and former workers at the Department of Energy sites not being considered in the compensation proposal.
Affected community residents are not even mentioned in the proposal. Also, almost no one, with the possible exception of some of the widows/widowers of victims, accepts the administration's plan of $100,000 or medical benefits as sufficient.
A single hospital stay for a seriously ill beryllium victim will wipe out the funds, leaving no money or insurance. Proper monetary compensation plus lifetime medical is what the victims' groups are trying to achieve. A group from Oak Ridge is making its plea before Congress. The ill workers from Oak Ridge have impressive documentation of their ailments being work-related.
The acceptance of beryllium disease as occupational has been a fact for years. Some trust has been restored by individuals within the Department of Energy, and for these we are grateful. We are now looking to the DOE and Congress to truly "do the right thing." GLENN BELL Beryllium Victims Alliance Oak Ridge, Tenn.
-------- utah
Satisfied His Name Is Cleared, Envirocare Chief Semnani Heads Back to Work
May 14, 2000
BY BRENT ISRAELSEN
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.sltrib.com/05142000/utah/49189.htm
These past 3 1/2 years have not been a happy time for Utah radioactive-waste mogul Khosrow Semnani.
He has been accused publicly of bribing a state regulator, manipulating the legislative process and the judicial system, and putting the environment at risk.
In less public circles, his enemies have reportedly spread rumors that he sleeps around, is a bigamist, financially supports Middle East terrorism and even sends nuclear weapons materials to his native Iran.
He has been hounded by the news media, dethroned from his job by the government, sued by competitors, investigated by the FBI and a small army of other federal agencies, and eventually charged with a misdemeanor tax violation, to which he reluctantly pleaded guilty.
He also has had to pay more than $10 million in out-of-court settlements, fines and attorney fees.
In short, Semnani has been dragged through the mud since it was revealed in late 1996 that he had made secret payments to a state regulator. The revelation turned into a major scandal.
Little by little, however, Semnani has been cleaning up his image. Prosecutors called him a victim of extortion by the regulator. The lawsuits have been dismissed. Envirocare of Utah has been declared a safe, lawful operation.
Today, Semnani wipes another bit of mud from his smartly fitting wool suit and returns to work a free man, unshackled by government restriction.
"I'm ready to put it behind me and go to work," a cheery Semnani said Friday.
Semnani, who immigrated to the United States 32 years ago, is the founder and owner of Envirocare, a private Utah corporation that operates a low-level radioactive landfill in the remote desert of Tooele County, about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City.
The site, which went into operation in the early 1990s, quickly became the premier dumping ground for government-sponsored radioactive waste cleanup projects around the country. It grew rapidly to become a cash cow to the county, the state and, of course, Semnani.
In November 1996, Larry F. Anderson, director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control, filed a bizarre lawsuit against Semnani in a Utah court, accusing Semnani of failing to live up to a "financial arrangement" the two men had. The suit stated Semnani already had paid Anderson $600,000 for consulting fees and owed him an additional $1 million.
Semnani countersued, saying he was being extorted by Anderson, who held the regulatory power to interfere with Semnani's business.
Revelations of a financial arrangement between Semnani and Anderson prompted an FBI investigation and lawsuits from two of Semnani's competitors. It also forced the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take a hard look at Envirocare's operations to see whether the Semnani-Anderson relationship had created any corner-cutting in environmental regula- tions.
Because of the controversy swirling around Semnani and his company, the DOE asked him to step aside in May 1997 so the government could continue to do business with Envirocare. Semnani agreed and turned his presidency over to loyal lieutenant Charles Judd.
After a 16-month investigation, federal prosecutors decided Semnani was guilty of nothing more than an obscure tax code violation for failing to alert the Internal Revenue Service that he had made payments to Anderson. Semnani pleaded guilty and was fined $100,000. A federal grand jury later indicted Anderson on six counts of extortion, fraud and tax evasion in a case that has yet to go to trial.
The NRC, DOE and EPA have since given Envirocare satisfactory reviews, finding the Semnani-Anderson relationship did not compromise the waste dump.
And Semnani's competitors dropped their lawsuits after he agreed to pay them undisclosed sums of money.
In this latest step on his road to vindication, Semnani now returns to work. But things will not be entirely the same as before.
He has assigned himself chairman of the company's four-person board, leaving Judd as president.
Is that a move designed to keep Semnani's tarnished name in low profile? After all, the company's big push now is to woo Utah politicians to give it permission to accept a new class of more hazardous radioactive wastes.
Semnani denies it. "Charles is doing a good job. He knows what's going on, and I can still give my input," he said.
Though feeling vindicated now that he can return to Envirocare, Semnani has a score to settle with an out-of-state company he believes spread "outrageous lies" against him.
He recently filed a defamation lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Waste Control Specialists, a Pasadena, Texas, company competing with Envirocare for business in that state.
It was WCS, he claims, that spread the most personal attacks about him.
"I've dealt with a lot of people. . . . Those attacks, that was the worst part. It was not a good feeling."
-------- us nuc weapons
How Low Should Nuclear Arsenal Go?
Upcoming Summit Spurs Debate Over Additional Cuts in Strategic Stockpile
Washington Post
Friday, May 12, 2000; Page A04
By Walter Pincus and Roberto Suro Washington Post Staff Writers
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/12/094l-051200-idx.html
A fast-approaching summit meeting between President Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow has ignited a vigorous debate within the Clinton administration, Congress and the U.S. defense establishment over how deeply America's nuclear arsenal should be cut.
The United States has 7,200 strategic nuclear warheads ready for immediate use, and Russia has 6,000. The START II agreement, which Russia just ratified, will reduce those arsenals to between 3,000 and 3,500 by 2007.
But three years ago, Clinton and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed to seek a third strategic arms reduction treaty, or START III, that would limit each side to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads. And at the June 4-5 summit, the Russians want to talk about going further, to 1,500 each.
Pentagon and State Department officials said yesterday that the military is reviewing options in the 2,000 to 2,500 range but that it has no plan to go below 2,000.
While that clearly is the U.S. position going into the summit, the White House is quietly seeking assessments of the impact on deterrence, and the structure of U.S. nuclear forces, if the U.S. arsenal dipped below that level.
Among those who believe in the feasibility of deep cuts are some surprising figures, including Richard Perle, a longtime hard-liner on arms control who was the Pentagon's chief nuclear strategist during the Reagan administration, and Brent Scowcroft, President George Bush's national security adviser.
"It is time for serious rethinking of the whole nuclear question," Perle said in an interview. "We should no longer be concerned about Cold War arithmetic. . . . War plans using 1,000 [or more] warheads no longer make sense."
Some officials at the National Security Council and the Pentagon want to show flexibility at the summit, believing the United States must consider limits of 1,500 to 2,000 to entice Russia to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow a limited missile defense system.
But the Joint Chiefs of Staff and top officers of the U.S. Strategic Command, which is in charge of nuclear targeting, are wary of going below 2,000. On Tuesday the Joint Chiefs met to debate the advice they would give Clinton going into the summit and unexpectedly found themselves uncertain how to proceed, Pentagon officials said. A meeting scheduled yesterday with Defense Secretary William S. Cohen was postponed because the service chiefs had not reached unanimity.
"We set the 2,000 to 2,500 range in 1997, and we have not moved off that as a country," said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. "Obviously, the Russians will propose--they already have proposed--lower numbers. So at some point, we have to look at lower numbers if they're going to keep proposing lower numbers. And at the appropriate time, we'll do that. Right now, the discussion in this building has focused on the 2,000 to 2,500 warhead range that's been laid out in Helsinki."
Resistance to deep cuts is rooted in the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction--the belief that, to ensure deterrence, the United States must maintain enough warheads to survive a Russian first strike and still be able to deliver a devastating retaliatory attack.
To meet that requirement--reiterated in a 1997 presidential directive--the Pentagon maintains an estimated 2,260 nuclear warheads on alert, prepared to be launched in less than an hour at Russian targets.
The top-secret Pentagon blueprint for nuclear war, known as the Strategic Integrated Operation Plan, or SIOP, calls for about 1,100 warheads to be aimed at Russian nuclear sites, 500 at conventional military targets, 500 at defense factories, and about 160 at "leadership" targets such as bunkers, according to defense experts. Two years ago, some 500 targets were added to cover China and so-called rogue states, but they require only a few warheads on alert.
According to a top Pentagon official, the SIOP is not a response to the present Russian government, "with whom we have good relations." Rather, he said, the U.S. military is following orders to remain prepared in case "bad guys emerge" in Moscow.
Some experts inside and outside the government, however, believe the SIOP "is driven by Cold War thinking," in the words of Bruce G. Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information.
Scowcroft believes that "we have to start over" in thinking about a much smaller U.S. nuclear force, taking into consideration the effect it would have in encouraging other countries not to develop or expand their nuclear arsenals.
In Perle's view, the United States ought to reduce its thousands of warheads unilaterally, if necessary. But, he quickly added, it should "recognize that the new security environment, whatever one thought about the old, requires that we deploy a robust defense against ballistic missiles."
Deep cuts in the U.S. arsenal would save money, but probably not a large sum compared with total defense spending of $300 billion a year. According to the Congressional Budget Office, putting the START II reductions into effect by 2007 would save $700 million a year through 2008 and about $800 million thereafter.
A reduction to 2,500 warheads could save $1.5 billion a year, according to the CBO.
One factor resisting deep cuts is the military downsizing they would require. Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff members have tried to work out the implications of a decrease to 2,000 warheads, complaining that the administration has not done so. They concluded the United States would have to withdraw its 94 remaining B-52 bombers or scale down the submarine-launched missile force, cutting the number of warheads on each Trident missile from eight to two.
---
Anti-missile supporters and foes see different things
Huntsville Times
05/14/2000
http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/May2000/14-e31298.html
WASHINGTON - In a recent science-fiction novel, the lead character has surgery on his eyes to make the world look like a 1940s-era black-and-white detective movie.
He lives in a harsh futuristic society, but that isn't what he wants to see, so he opts for the comforts of old movie sets and scenes.
Lots of people in Washington these days seem to have had a similar kind of surgery, particularly when it comes to the hot political topic of missile defenses.
Space & technology news
That issue has always brought out opposing opinions, but they're heating up now that President Clinton is coming closer to deciding whether to start putting that system in the field.
Clinton is supposed to make that decision this summer or early fall, after the National Missile Defense program goes through its third intercept test, currently slated for the end of June.
Everybody knows that deadline is coming up. Hardly anybody agrees on what it means for the country.
Many proponents on the right seem to have had eye surgery to make the world look like the Cold War is still happening.
White House officials are trying to negotiate with Russia to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow the Pentagon to begin fielding that system, if that's what he decides to do.
Some GOP members in Congress, however, want to scrap that key arms control treaty entirely and let the military build a more capable defense system, complete with space-based lasers and whatever other kind of technology comes along.
Some, like Sens. Trent Lott and Jesse Helms, have warned the White House they will oppose any efforts to amend a treaty that they want to kill outright.
They seem to have their eyes set to the mid-1980s, when the Reagan administration wanted to build a leak-proof missile shield that could repel even a large Soviet attack.
The White House does not see that kind of world at all. It sees threats from North Korea and maybe Iran and Iraq, and that's about it. The missile defense it wants to install (which is being handled largely by the Army in Huntsville) is aimed at knocking down just a few incoming missiles.
Actually, the White House has come to see this threat only recently. Just a few years ago, administration officials considered any threat to be 15 years away. Some revised intelligence estimates moved that timetable up considerably.
Opponents of the missile defense system see something else. They, too, see a Cold War, but it's not the old one. They fear a new arms race will erupt if the United States insists on moving ahead with a defense system.
They have complained that the missile threat is vastly overstated, as are the capabilities of the system that's supposed to defend against it. The system isn't being adequately tested and will be easily fooled by decoys, according to a new report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
''With so few tests planned before the deployment decision, there will be insufficient information to determine whether the system is reliable and effective,'' says another new report on the program, this one produced by the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers and the Council for a Livable World Education Fund.
Russian officials wear glasses that see a little bit of everything. They see no threat from North Korea, but they do see the potential for an arms race if the United States builds the shield.
They also see a return to the ''Star Wars'' days of the 1980s, because they don't believe America will be satisfied with a limited defense system.
---
US planned one big nuclear blast for mankind
Antony Barnett, Public Affairs Editor
May 14, 2000
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,220679,00.html
The US Air Force developed a top-secret plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon as a display of military might at the height of the Cold War. In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Dr Leonard Reiffel, 73, the physicist who fronted the project in the late Fifties at the US military-backed Armour Research Foundation, revealed America's extraordinary lunar plan.
'It was clear the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of one-upmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on earth,' he said yesterday. 'The US was lagging behind in the space race.'
'The explosion would obviously be best on the dark side of the moon and the theory was that if the bomb exploded on the edge of the moon, the mushroom cloud would be illuminated by the sun.' The bomb would have been at least as large as the one used on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
'I made it clear at the time there would be a huge cost to science of destroying a pristine lunar environment, but the US Air Force were mainly concerned about how the nuclear explosion would play on earth,' said Reiffel.
Although he believes the blast would have had little environmental impact on Earth, its crater may have ruined the face of the 'man in the moon'.
Reiffel would not reveal how the explosion would have taken place. But he confirmed it was 'certainly technically feasible' and that at the time an intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile would have been capable of hitting a target on the moon with an accuracy of within two miles.
Reiffel was approached by senior US Air Force officers in 1958, who asked him to 'fast-track' a project to investigate the visibility and effects of a nuclear explosion on the moon. The top-secret Project A119, was entitled 'A Study of Lunar Research Flights'.
'Had the project been made public there would have been an outcry,' said Reiffel.
Many Cold War documents are still classified in the US, but details of Project A119 emerged after a biography of celebrated US scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan was published there last year.
Sagan, who died in 1996, was famous for popularising science in the US and pioneering the study of potential life on other planets. At the Armour Foundation in Chicago - now called the Illinois Institute of Technology Research - he was hired by Reiffel to undertake mathematical modelling on the expansion of an exploding dust cloud in the space around the moon. This was key to calculating the visibility of such a cloud from the Earth.
At the time scientists still believed there might be microbial life on the moon and Sagan had suggested a nuclear explosion might be used to detect organisms.
Despite the highly classified nature of the work, Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson, discovered that he had disclosed details of it when he applied for the prestigious Miller Institute graduate fellowship to Berkeley.
Yet, until today, the full nature of Project A119 has never been revealed. Friends of Sagan believe he never would have wilfully revealed classified information, but Reiffel has come forward to put the 'historical record straight'.
Reiffel continued: 'It was well known that the existence of this project was top secret. Had Sagan wanted to make any disclosures to any party, as his boss at the time, I would have had to take forward any such request and Air Force permission would have been extremely unlikely in those very tense times.'
In a letter to the science magazine Nature, Reiffel said: 'Fortunately for the future of lunar science, a one or two horse race to detonate a nuclear explosion never occurred. But in my opinion Sagan breached security in March, 1959.'
Reiffel produced eight reports between May 1958 and January 1959 on the feasibility of the plan, all of which were destroyed in 1987 by the foundation. Reiffel would not discuss details of these reports, believing they were still classified, but it was clear the conclusion was that the explosion would have been visible from Earth
He does not know why the plans were scrapped, but said: 'Thankfully, the thinking changed. I am horrified that such a gesture to sway public opinion was ever considered.'
Dr David Lowry, a British nuclear historian, said: 'It is obscene. To think that the first contact human beings would have had with another world would have been to explode a nuclear bomb. Had they gone ahead, we would never have had the romantic image of Neil Armstrong taking "one giant step for mankind".'
Lowry believes Project A119 has relevance today with the US proposing a missile defence system in space. He said: 'The US has always wanted to militarise space and some of the fanciful ideas currently being put forward will seem as incredible as the idea of nuking the moon in the Fifties seems today.'
A Pentagon spokesman would not confirm or deny the plans.
----
U.S. missile shield development could trigger a new nuclear threat
Milwaukee Jornal Sentinel
May 13, 2000
By Richard Foster http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/may00/fostcol4051300.asp
Although the United Nations and several European nations oppose the Clinton administration's moves toward deployment of a missile defense system, it is Russia's objection that mostly occupies the State Department's attention.
That's natural enough, both because Russia used to be (and still is) a missile superpower and because Russia (along with the United States) is a signatory of a treaty that prevents the kind of missile defense the administration is thinking about developing. The U.S. is making strenuous but thus far unsuccessful attempts to persuade the Russians to revise this treaty.
Yet Russia is not the only, or even the largest, foreign country to oppose the so-called Star Wars missile shield. China, too, is dead set against it, and the problems created by China's objection are at least as formidable as the threats this shield is supposed to defend against.
Until now, China has shown the good sense to stay out of the arms race. While the U.S. and Russia have about 6,000 nuclear warheads each - both have promised to halve that number - the Chinese have no more than two dozen land-based missiles, each equipped with a single warhead. These weapons have never been considered much of a threat to this country or its allies.
Indeed, the missile shield being pondered in Washington now is not supposed to be a hedge against China, or even Russia, but is a response to the putative threat posed by such rogue nations as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
The Chinese have stayed out of the missile business mainly because their first priority is economic development. The Chinese economy needs to grow by 5% a year just to create enough jobs for the 50 million young people who enter the job market every year. China doesn't have a lot of money to squander on nuclear weapons.
But a U.S. missile shield could change China's thinking. In the past, the Chinese have grumbled about the Star Wars initiative because the shield - if it worked - could render China's two dozen missiles useless.
Last week, however, China's top arms negotiator gave his country's most detailed public warning yet of the consequences of a Star Wars deployment. The official, Sha Zukang, explicitly warned that such a shield could force Beijing to significantly expand its own nuclear forces to an extent large enough to overcome the defensive capability of the shield.
Sha said China preferred to spend its money on economic development but it had to ensure the effectiveness of its nuclear deterrent, either by expanding its missile force or by taking other steps. To the Chinese (and many others), it is utterly inconceivable that a mighty country such as the U.S. would or could feel threatened by a small country such as North Korea.
What this adds up to is a no-win situation for everybody. Far from keeping America safe from attack, the shield could actually create a threat that doesn't now exist: a few hundred or even thousand Chinese nuclear missiles. And if China is in a position to overcome the U.S. defense, so are North Korea and other rogue nations. In other words, the defense wouldn't be a defense.
This is precisely the argument that's been made by the scientific critics of Star Wars. Just last month, for example, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program reported that the planned U.S. defense could either be overwhelmed by a large number of missiles or frustrated by simple countermeasures.
When American officials talk to the Chinese these days, they talk mostly about the impending House vote on whether to give China permanent normal trade status. Trade is important, all right, but isn't it also important to avert the emergence of nuclear threats to our country? The U.S. should be talking to China about arms control, and it ought to do more listening.
Richard Foster is a Journal Sentinel editorial writer and columnist.
-------- us politics
Bush Versus Gore Means an All-Baby-Boom Race
New York Times
May 14, 2000
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/051400wh-boomer-race.html
WASHINGTON, May 13 -- After decades of caricature as the most self-indulgent and permissive generation in American history, baby boomers -- including Al Gore and George W. Bush -- are realizing it is time to get with the program.
Despite their differences in political orientation, the two parties' presidential candidates, both of whom were born into the vanguard of the boomer generation, are delivering the same message on the campaign trail: "responsibility." It is a message that goes to the personal and the political and speaks, the candidates hope, to a generation once famous for its idealism and its determination to do the right thing.
Moreover, the campaigns have sensed a new wrinkle, so to speak, in the ever-scrutinized lives of the boomers that has emerged as they have aged -- the oldest boomers are now in the unusual position of contemplating their own retirements even as their parents are living longer and requiring more care. At the same time, some, like Mr. Gore, whose mother is 87 and whose mother-in-law lives with him and his wife, are even becoming grandparents.
This nexus of life-defining events for the biggest cohort in American history (the 76 million people born between 1946 and 1964) has infused the presidential campaign with a new urgency, especially regarding Social Security and health care. Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore have devoted much time on the campaign trail to Social Security and both plan to deliver major addresses on the topic on Monday.
"It's a response to what's happening in society," said John Rother, director of legislation and public policy for AARP, one of the biggest and most effective lobbying groups in the country. "It's driven by demographics, the economy and technology. There's a growing awareness, particularly of people who are Bush's and Gore's age, that their parent's generation is becoming frail, we don't have support systems that are in very good shape, and the anxiety about your own retirement is on the top of people's minds."
Al Gore was born March 31, 1948, making him 52. George W. Bush was born July 6, 1946, making him 53. And while they had different coming-of-age experiences during the 1960's and 1970's -- Mr. Gore was closer to the counterculture than was Mr. Bush, but still by no means a radical -- both are invoking their generational roots as themes in their campaigns and are developing "responsibility" as rationales for their candidacies.
This campaign marks one of the few times that candidates from both parties have been so close in age.
For the first two baby boomers are running for president, representing a definitive break with the World War II era. Given the unprecedented prosperity, these factors give the nation a chance to reset its compass and restructure its priorities.
Here was Governor Bush in a recent interview with "The News Hour" on PBS:
"I'm a strong candidate because I come from the baby boomer generation, recognizing that we've got to usher in an era of responsible behavior, which starts with behaving responsibly in the office."
Here was Vice President Gore at a fund-raiser Thursdayin Los Angeles, explaining the strong economy:
"We got rid of the politics of illusion and said to the American people: 'We have got to make the real hard choices. We have to accept responsibility for our own future.' That's why it was so tough to pass the changes that have helped to unleash all this potential. Tough, tough, tough."
Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, says the invocation of responsibility is a harkening to fundamental values.
"The notion that people ought to be responsible for their actions is one of the top-most widely shared values in this country," he said. "So it's no surprise that politicians talk in that idiom."
But there is also a strong degree of self-interest in their appeals, particularly when it comes to issues like Social Security and Medicare. Politicians used to focus issues like Social Security and Medicare solely on the over-65 crowd.
But now, Mr. Mellman noted, "people are worried about taking care of their parents, and the leading edge of the baby boom are worried about their own retirement and some are worried about both at the same time, which is a newer phenomenon."
A political focus group of mostly middle-aged people conducted earlier this month in Bala Cynwyd, a suburb of Philadelphia, by Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster, found unanimity on one subject -- despite the prosperous economy, people are anxious about health care and Social Security.
"As baby boomers get older, people start to feel it as well as think it," Frank Ratel, 60, an accountant, said during the focus group.
Mr. Rother of AARP said: "The assumption among many people is that it's only seniors who care about Medicare and Social Security, but nothing could be further from the truth. Our polling shows it is boomers who are the most interested in prescription drug coverage because you're thinking about your mom and at the same time wondering about your own future. When you're in your 50's, you don't know what kind of shape you're going to be in. This is a greater concern of people in their 50's than it is for people 65 and older."
The crunch for baby boomers is becoming increasingly obvious. Almost 50 percent of the people who filed for bankruptcy in 1999 were baby boomers. Some academics, like Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy expert at Harvard Law School, argue that, contrary to the popular image of affluent boomers spending their way to consumer heaven, this is "the most vulnerable generation" because of the confluence of potential failures that they face, from the loss of a job to catastrophic illness to the effects of divorce and the need to care for aging parents.
The likelihood of bankruptcy increases with age, as those facing retirement face mounting costs, particularly for prescription drugs and long-term care. Both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush are offering proposals to help people meet these needs.
The Social Security system has a surplus now, but the government predicts that the trust fund will begin paying out more than it takes in by 2015 as the baby boom generation retires. Without a major fix, the system could go broke by 2037.
But for both candidates, the notion of "responsibility" goes beyond strengthening Social Security, which they would do by different means.
Mr. Bush emphasizes personal responsibility as a direct counterweight to what he perceives as the irresponsibility of President Clinton (the first baby boomer president). The goal of his candidacy, Mr. Bush says, is to restore honor and dignity to the White House.
And the signal inherent in his message is an appeal to family values, long seen as Republican turf.
Mr. Bush has emphasized the theme since he began his campaign last June, saying "My first goal is to usher in the responsibility era -- an era that stands in stark contrast to the last few decades, where our culture has said: If it feels good, do it, and if you've got a problem, blame someone else."
Mr. Bush has also used his emphasis on compassion to temper any impression that responsibility means harshness or sacrifice.
For Mr. Gore, responsibility is a multipurpose concept, and he tends to use it both subliminally and overtly. He too is trying to distance himself from the actions of President Clinton. But he also wants to present himself as the logical successor to Mr. Clinton as the steward of the nation's current prosperity, and so he offers himself as the responsible heir apparent.
This, of course, necessitates presenting Mr. Bush as the "irresponsible" alternative, a neat way, learned from President Clinton, of transforming a policy matter into a values judgment. Repeatedly, Mr. Gore casts Mr. Bush's proposals as "reckless," a quality Mr. Gore conjures up with his relentless referencing to Mr. Bush's "risky tax scheme." The contrast between the responsible Mr. Gore and the irresponsible Mr. Bush has fast become the organizing principle of the Gore campaign.
Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Gore is using the idea of responsibility to reinforce one of the basic tenets of his party. While Mr. Bush's reference summons family values, Mr. Gore's highlights the Democrats' traditional advantage on preserving entitlement programs. The "risky tax scheme" that he invokes is a direct threat to two tenets of Democratic orthodoxy -- Social Security and Medicare -- that baby boomers are now either depending on to help their parents or expecting to receive themselves.
"It references the basic policy dilemma of his presidency," said Elaine Kamark, Mr. Gore's chief domestic policy adviser. "The challenge has gone from how to manage the insolvency of these programs to who can keep control of the surplus. The money guys on Wall Street understand this very well. They want confidence. You get it by running a straight, sound fiscal policy."
Because Mr. Gore had children relatively early for his generation, he is now a grandparent. "His life cycle is slightly ahead of his generation, so he can see ahead to the centrality of some of these issues," Ms. Kamark said. Still, Mr. Gore is more a creature of the popular image of the baby boom than is Mr. Bush.
Mr. Bush exudes a more retro 1950's youth, one of hijinks and drinking and frat parties, remarkably detached from the Vietnam War or any kind of rebellion or existential angst. As he told an interviewer for GQ: "I don't remember any kind of heaviness ruining my time at Yale."
The vice president seems much more a product of his time. He invariably dangles his boomer credentials before his audiences, mentioning the touchstones of his generation -- the assassinations, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, Watergate, his "disillusionment with politics," though never rebellion, and his admission that he smoked marijuana.
-------- genetic engineering
A Case of Letting the Gene Out of the Bottle
New York Times
May 14, 2000
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/051400gene-biotech-review.html
IN the annals of bureaucratic slip-ups, this one was a beaut. Last December, an obscure government agency known as the European Patent Office mistakenly issued the first patent to allow the cloning of a human being. More alarmingly, critics say, it may have granted scientists the right to change the genetic makeup of the entire human species.
The patent, issued in Munich, is No. EP-0695351B1. It gives its holder, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the sole right to make, use and sell human beings created in its laboratory. The university has the legal right, at least for the next 20 years, to prevent competitors in 19 European countries from copying its techniques without paying the university a fee.
True, the University of Edinburgh, where Darwin once studied, intended none of this -- it wanted only to patent certain laboratory methods that may prove useful in fighting diseases like Parkinson's. The patent office intended none of this, either -- someone forgot to require the correct legal disclaimers during nearly six years of patent review. Greenpeace, the environmental group, discovered the flawed patent and mounted a noisy protest in February, after which the office acknowledged its error.
Moreover, there are no reported techniques for producing people (except for the time-honored one) and even if there were, European research rules ban human cloning. If renegade Scottish scientists chose to clone humans anyway, the scientists would presumably be arrested under anti-slavery laws.
Whatever anyone did or did not do, this case of "Brave New World" meets the Marx Brothers will not be untangled anytime soon. The appeals process for overturning the 1999 patent is sure to take years. An unrelated 1997 patent involving pig production is flawed in the same way, according to Greenpeace researchers, who filed an appeal, but the patent office disagrees.
Patents have long been issued by governments, granting the exclusive right to profit from commercially applicable inventions. Biopatents, however, are recent and are based largely on one laboratory mouse. In 1988, Harvard University patented the first "transgenic" animal, a genetically altered mouse predisposed to getting cancer. After a patent moratorium in the United States ended in 1993, biotech investors turned bullish on brave new mice (and cows, pigs and, most famously, Dolly, the cloned sheep) because of biopatents.
Patents don't stop with four-legged animals. Private companies and a United States-British consortium, the Human Genome Project, have been racing for years to compile the complete catalog of mankind's genes, or genome. It may be only weeks before a research team claims credit for explicating a human being as a list of chemical "letters" longer than 800 Bibles. In March, President Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain proposed that data from the human genome be made publicly available without the legal restrictions of patents.
Patent lawyers, however, say the Clinton-Blair proposal does nothing to diminish the value of gene patents. "Making the alphabet publicly available has not reduced the value of novels," said Colin Sandercock, a patent lawyer specializing in biotechnology in Washington, D.C.
But patent law will have to be revised and strengthened in the biotech age, some lawyers say. In Europe, at least, an appeals process can overturn challenged patents as in the Edinburgh case. But in the United States challenged patents simply lead to drawn-out litigation without a clear resolution.
Biotechnology, meanwhile, has raced so far ahead of patent law that scientists are encouraged to try to patent everything in their labs. Eric Jüngst, a former director of the ethics program at the Human Genome Project, compares overly broad patents to the Oklahoma land rush of the 1890's. "You had every incentive to say, 'I claim everything between here and the river,' no matter what was in between," said Mr. Jüngst, a professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Broad patents may grant far-reaching rights at a time when genetic engineering is still in its infancy. For example, something called germline manipulation may have more long-term consequences than human cloning, experts say. A clone, after all, is simply an identical twin separated in time. But animals, including human beings, whose genetic makeup, or germline, has been altered pass on a new set of genes to their children and their children's children, and so, through many generations, have a potential impact on the species.
"Narrowly speaking, you can't patent a gene because everyone's genes are their own," said David Magnus, a philosophy professor who led a recent scholarly conference at the University of Pennsylvania titled "Who Owns Life?" But, he said, scientists can and do patent the use of genes and parts of genes known as "expressed sequence tags."
In the future, when someone's susceptibility to, say, breast cancer is cured with a patented gene therapy, Mr. Magnus said, the patient is not patentable nor are her children.
But the repaired genes are the scientist's patented genes, he said. Noting that it would be a "public relations disaster," Mr. Magnus nonetheless noted that "it may be legally possible for the scientist to restrict your right to have children and pass on the patented genes, without his permission."
In the Edinburgh case, the patent application applies to a mousetrap not yet invented. It was drafted in 1994 without disclaimers like "transgenic non-human animal" that are routine today. "In the context of this invention," the approved patent reads, "the term animal cell is intended to embrace all animal cells, especially of mammalian species, including human cells."
Moreover, the laboratory techniques described in the patent apply to special human cells known as stem cells, which are a kind of primordial clay that may someday be cultured into organ tissue and, perhaps, entire human beings.
For its part, the European Patent Office said its 200 biopatent examiners would be even more vigilant in reviewing the 6,500 applications received last year, up from 5,100 the year before. The Edinburgh application was more than 200 pages.
---
Coping With Supersalmon
New York Times
May 14, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/14sun2.html
Just as we were getting used to genetically engineered corn and potatoes, along comes a strain of salmon that grows to market size in only 18 months, twice as fast as normal salmon. These hormonally hyperactive creatures -- called Frankenfish by their detractors -- may in fact turn out to be the first genetically modified animal to make it onto American dinner plates. But before they do, regulators here and in Canada have two obligations -- to see whether these fish pose a threat to the environment and, if they do, to ensure that they are properly regulated.
According to a recent story in The Times, Aqua Bounty Farms, a subsidiary of A/F Protein, a biotechnology company, has applied to the Food and Drug Administration for approval to market the fish in the United States.
The company, which has several thousand prototype fish swimming in tanks on an island near New Brunswick, Canada, says it has orders for 15 million eggs from aquaculture companies that want to raise these fish. All it needs is approval from the F.D.A.
The F.D.A. claims regulatory authority because it regards as a drug the genetically engineered growth hormone that transforms ordinary Atlantic salmon into supersalmon. The agency promises a rigorous food safety review as well as a review of the superfish's potential impact on the environment.
Unfortunately, the F.D.A. is ill equipped to deal with environmental questions. Its scientists are not trained in that field and its interests do not lie in that direction. A more obvious choice would be the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the Commerce Department, or the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service, both of which have scientists who know more about marine life.
There are two main fears. One is that genetically engineered fish, should they escape into the wild, will mate with wild salmon, diluting the wild salmon's genetic makeup and diminishing its ability to survive in nature. The other is that the supersalmon will invade the wild salmon's habitat, competing for food and space. At least one computer model suggests that the intermingling of wild fish and genetically engineered salmon could wipe out entire populations of wild salmon.
The company says its superfish are so pampered that even if they escaped, they would not survive long enough to do any harm. This does not reassure those who worry about the decline of wild Atlantic salmon. Ordinary farm-raised salmon were also thought to be too domesticated to cause trouble in the wild. But they have escaped in large numbers, competing for habitat and spawning in the same streams as wild salmon. And while the extent of the biological pollution caused by farm-bred salmon is a matter of hot debate, some scientists believe that interbreeding is at least partly responsible for the decline of wild Atlantic salmon stocks.
A special panel convened by the White House last year to coordinate federal policy on genetically engineered foods is now looking into the salmon issue -- specifically, whether the Fish and Wildlife Service can claim jurisdiction under statutes covering "injurious" wildlife and aquatic nuisances. Another possible approach would be to invoke the Endangered Species Act.
At the prodding of two conservation groups, Trout Unlimited and the Atlantic Salmon Federation, the Interior Department has proposed classifying salmon populations in eight rivers in Maine as endangered. If these populations are so designated after the required period of public comment, the federal government would be empowered to impose strict controls on any activity seen to threaten the species, including commercial fishing, logging and fish farming of all kinds.
The Atlantic salmon is an obvious candidate for protection. Its numbers in North America, including Canada, have dwindled from 1.5 million 30 years ago to 350,000 today. Most of these are in Canada. The population returning to the eight rivers in Maine can be measured in the hundreds. The last thing these beleaguered creatures need is competition from a bunch of brutish newcomers.
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