-------- NUCLEAR (by country)

-------- britain

Hope Against Trident

From: Stephen Kobasa <skobasa@pop.snet.net>

YOU CAN STOP TRIDENT!
Angie Zelter, Public Meeting,
Peace Walk - Aldermaston to Faslane,
Wesley Memorial Hall, Oxford, 28th June, 2000.

Good evening.

Trident Ploughshares is one of the latest in a long and honourable line of citizen's initiatives to try to rid the world of nuclear weapons. It is dedicated to peaceful acts of practical disarmament. The whole campaign is based on international law and the basic human right to life. People from many different nations come together as 'global citizens' and begin the task of peacefully dismantling the nuclear system This involves the safe destruction of fences and equipment just as it does when it is part of an 'official' international disarmament agreement. It is not criminal damage but practical and lawful 'people's' disarmament.

Of course, the government and its institutions do not see it this way. Since Trident Ploughshares began in August 1998 - there have been 604 arrests, mainly at the disarmament camps, held every three months, at Coulport and Faslane in Scotland. There have been 67 trials completed and 730 days have been spent in prison, not including the days in police custody. Although around £10,000 worth of fines have been imposed so far, only a very small proportion of these have been paid as most disarmers are refusing to pay.

We now have 169 'global citizens' from 14 different countries who have Pledged to Prevent Nuclear Crime and have taken part in a two-day workshop on nonviolence. Having citizens from other countries joining in our disarmament work with us, appearing in the courts and spending time in our prisons, has been much harder for the authorities to deal with. The Government and the Courts like to pretend that British nuclear weapons are purely a British affair but they find this position untenable when foreigners appear in court to explain why they feel threatened by Britain and why they are joining with many other nationalities as 'global citizens' and why they have pledged to peacefully disarm British Trident.

The Pledge is based upon our right, under international law, to take nonviolent, accountable, and safe actions to disarm the British Trident nuclear weapons system. The Pledge and the common training form the basis of our ability to co-operate safely and easily with other Pledgers when we come together in the camps. We may not personally know each other but we know we share a common basis for action.

We make sure our plans, motivations and organisational structures are open to the public, the government and military. We have a freely-accessible web-site which contains all our materials including our Tri-Denting It Handbook. We send updated lists of all Pledgers to the Government every three months, along with our continued requests for dialogue and negotiation.

At the very beginning of the campaign we formed a dialogue and negotiation team which produced the first Open Letter to the Prime Minister on 18th March 1998 and which has been sending regular three monthly letters ever since. This group contains people connected at an international level with the Conference on Disarmament, the Middle Powers Initiative and the New Agenda Coalition, so that the information and the requests made to the UK Government are in line and consistent with the international peace movement.

We net-work with several other organisations like the World Court Project, CND and Global 2000 in our lobbying work and have kept up a constant stream of Parliamentary Questions which are now yielding some useful answers. We encourage Parliamentarians to sign our Petition of Support and now have around 80 including 13 from the new Scottish Parliament, 9 from the Welsh Assembly, as well as 14 MEPs. They help get answers to our letters, ask questions for us and are now beginning to join us in our disarmament actions.

Our Petition of Support is very similar to the Pledge that each Trident Ploughshares Pledger signs and is thus a good indication of the general support the campaign is getting. We recently had an Archbishop, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Wales, sign in support. The Petitions of Support are signed by organisations, famous people and individuals, giving us a good spectrum of support from many different parts of society that we can publicise, so that we cannot be easily marginalised.

We have also written to the police authorities and heads of the judicial system even suggesting to the Attorney General and Lord Advocate that they should arrest all 169 of us for signing the Pledge if they think we are conspiring to commit crimes but that in our opinion it is the Government and Military who should be arrested for grave breaches of international humanitarian law. We work in this safe, open and accountable manner because we want our methods for opposing Trident to be consistent with our vision of what we would like to see in its place.

Our careful reliance upon nonviolence and open accountability have led to very good relations with the general public and with the civil police, who are noting the embarrassment of the Ministry of Defence as we regularly breach the high security areas, gain access to Military police boats to do citizens war crime inspections and swim onto supposedly secure nuclear submarines. As a measure of our good relations with the civil police I take it as a vote of confidence that after initial suspicions from the police around Aldermaston in the run up to the camp in May, they took our advice and visited the police around Faslane and Coulport and were thereafter much more amenable even helping with our car parking problems. This is a useful example of how radical resistance and confrontation against evil systems can nevertheless be done with good humour and respect to individuals. I am sure that our strict guidelines on no alcohol or drugs has helped tremendously in ensuring good personal relationships, which are essential in any real peacemaking.

The Ministry of Defence Police's Annual Report stated last year, 'The largest policing event of the year was that of the Trident Ploughshares 2000 fortnight of activity in August'. It goes on to say that over a five- week period an additional 500 officers, above normal tasking levels were deployed. This shows it would not take much to overstretch them considering that they only have a total of around 4,000 officers for the whole of the UK! However, more importantly, the Report uses phrases such as 'declared open actions' and also states 'Throughout the period, activists pursued various forms of non-violent direct action to express their feelings against nuclear weapons and the Trident programme in particular'. It is significant that in court the majority of police witnesses readily agree that we are peaceful and courteous. So they have certainly got part of our message. The other part - that they should be arresting the military personnel for engaging in conspiracy to commit mass murder - is proving more difficult for them to take on board, though I am sure we have some hidden support for our views!

All Trident Ploughshares Pledgers must be in affinity groups and agree to the safety and nonviolence groundrules but thereafter they work as autonomously as they wish. They have chosen various kinds of disarmament actions which have ranged from blockades, to fence-cutting, to swimming onto the submarines and destroying equipment, to dismantling a research lab, to painting War Crime Warnings on Military equipment and handing out leaflets to Military Base workers urging them to 'Refuse to be a War Criminal'. We encourage as much diverse and active disarmament work as possible as long as it is safe and peaceful. We also encourage de-commissioning work at as many different Trident related sites as possible. Our Handbook lists around 35 different Trident related sites in the UK and we have carried out crime prevention activities at 7 so far, concentrating on Faslane, Coulport, Aldermaston and Barrow.

The majority of the disarmament actions have caused minimal damage for maximum court-clogging disruption. There have also been at least six attempts at substantial disarmament damage in the last 18 months, with two groups managing to complete their actions causing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage and delaying the operation of the Trident related equipment. In February of 1999, for instance, Rachel and Rosie swam on to Vengeance at Barrow and destroyed the testing equipment on the conning tower - their trial will be heard at Manchester Crown Court on September 11th. We call all of this damage - 'disarmament' and 'nuclear crime prevention'.

The effect of all the cases at Helensburgh District Court, which have arisen from actions at Faslane and Coulport, has been cumulative. One of the Magistrates has admitted that the administration is overwhelming them which is why so many mistakes are being made and why so few people are being called to court. It is encouraging that more and more local people are getting involved. And the ample sprinkling of foreign nationals keeps the international perspective to the fore so that the whole campaign does not become stultified by parochialism. We stress the global impact of threatening to use weapons of indiscriminate mass murder at all times and in many different languages. A happy side-effect of this international co-operation has been the provision of welcome employment for local linguists who come to the court to translate the proceedings for some of our foreign activists.

The media were slow to report the emerging public discussion, awareness and concern at the ongoing nuclear arms race. They thought the nuclear arms issue had gone away with the ending of the Cold War. However, Trident Ploughshares Pledgers have been passionately witnessing in court. In many different and compelling ways they have been exposing the destructive horror of Trident's nuclear warheads, the undermining of international law, the plans for the next generation of nuclear weapons and the criminal support for Star Wars. Then, the acquittal of three of us at Greenock Sheriff's Court last year helped propel the debate right into the limelight in Scotland and the nuclear weapons issue is now high on the agenda.

You may remember a few of the headlines from the Scottish newspapers of 22nd October last year:

'Outcry as Sheriff rules nuclear weapons illegal.' [The Scotsman - 22/10/99]

'A Sheriff made legal history and caused a political storm after ruling that the Government's deployment of nuclear weapons was illegal under international law ... It is the first time a country's law courts have declared its nuclear defence system illegal and the political fall-out from Sheriff Gimblett's decision will be felt by other nuclear powers.' [The Herald - 22/10/99]

The furore continues, with resolutions and notices in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, and at Westminster supporting our acquittal.

It is interesting to examine why our acquittal at Greenock is still causing ripples. I think it is because the law has traditionally been used against the people rather than the state. Yet now, the people (the Trident Ploughshares Pledgers) have turned this around and have openly challenged the whole legal basis, and thus legitimacy, of the Armed Forces.

Such a challenge has, of course, been mounted time and time again over the last 55 years of anti-nuclear campaigning. Nuclear weapons have always been unlawful and the Shimoda case in Tokyo, in the sixties, showed very clearly that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were war crimes. However, few citizen's campaigns have used the law in such a pointed and consistent manner as Trident Ploughshares. Trident Ploughshares has based its whole campaign on international law and has used it to de-legitimise nuclear weapons and legitimise our own actions and we have done it in a highly public and confrontational manner so it cannot be ignored. And we have kept the moral arguments to the fore as well, by emphasising the links between morality and law. Trident Ploughshares uses the ICJ Advisory Opinion of 1996 as a strong legal foundation and can be seen as a way to implement this Opinion and to pressurise our Governments to uphold international law.

Our argument is very straightforward.

Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction and thus cannot be used with any precision or any pretence at righting any wrong. It is basically mass murder on a catastrophic scale with the potential for escalation to the use of thousands of nuclear weapons, which could put an end to all life on earth. Law is based upon morality and is respected in so far, and only in so far, as it conforms to common human morality. Governments, Soldiers and Armed Forces gain their legitimacy and power from the law and thus the law is of immense importance to them. The only thing that distinguishes a soldier from a common murderer is that he has been given legal permission to do certain kinds of killing on behalf of society. This legalised killing is carefully controlled by laws - the most important of which are international humanitarian laws. Our acquittal at Greenock, cleared us of criminal intent and at the same time clearly pointed out the criminal intent of the British nuclear forces.

The acquittal has encouraged many more people to join in the disarmament work and to feel confident about saying they are preventing crime not causing it. When Tommy Sheridan, the SSP member of the Scottish Parliament, was in court for his plea hearing after blockading with us in February, it was great to hear him say that he was upholding international law and to wonder why he was being charged at all considering he would have been treated as a hero if he had disarmed a gun in the High Street.

In view of all the controversy the Government have been forced to institute a very rare legal process in Scotland called a Lord Advocate's Reference. This is because our acquittal cannot be appealed and they are challenging it by the back door in this manner to try to stop any other Judges giving similar acquittals. The process is meant to be an inquisitorial one whereby certain questions are put to the High Court Judges by the Lord Advocate for them to clarify the law. The validity of citizens acting to prevent international crime in Scotland as well as the content of international law will come under scrutiny. The proceedings will start on October 9th at Edinburgh High Court and we hope there will be a large audience. However, important though this challenge is to the Judiciary, our direct and peaceful people's disarmament will continue until there are no nuclear weapons left in the UK. Whatever the state of the Scottish legal system, international humanitarian law must and will take precedence.

On February 14th we succeeded in blocking all road entrances into the Faslane base for several hours. There were 185 arrests including 10 Church ministers and 2 Parliamentarians. A further 55 people were arrested in May at Aldermaston. We will see what happens this August at Faslane. I hope you will all be joining the blockade on August 1st - people power needs to be applied and the pressure needs to be applied in Scotland at the moment. You are all needed. So, please be at Faslane on August 1st.

We can start to dismantle the nuclear weapon system - start the disarmament process ourselves. We are not committing a crime we are preventing a crime. We are not powerless - on the contrary, we have a great deal of power. Let us use it carefully, peacefully, and accountably. Together.

Thank-you.

-------- egypt

Equipment Blamed in Radiation Deaths

Associated Press
June 27, 2000 Filed at 2:22 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Egypt-Radiation.html

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A medical instrument used to treat cancer was determined Tuesday to be the source of radiation that killed two people and sickened five in a northern Egyptian village, officials said.

Authorities removed a radioactive cobalt rod -- about 2.5 inches long and an inch in diameter -- from the victims' home on Tuesday, Information Minister Safwat el-Sherif said, according to the Middle East News Agency.

Authorities still don't know how the family got the piece of hospital equipment. Two of the family members hospitalized with radiation sickness said they'd had it in their home for about a year, thinking it was a valuable piece of metal, El-Sherif said.

Instead, such radioactive rods are used in cancer treatment, placed near tumors in hopes of making them shrink.

The rod was taken to the Nuclear Energy Authority, El-Sherif said.

Hassan Fadel Hassan, 60, took his wife, sister and four children to a hospital Thursday after the whole family developed skin discoloration. Hours later, Hassan's 9-year-old son died. The family moved from the hospital near their Mit Halfa home, a few miles north of Cairo, to one in the capital, where Hassan died Sunday.

His 9-year-old daughter, Hanem, was in critical condition.

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan Won't Embark on Arms Race

Associated Press
June 26, 2000 Filed at 10:47 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Pakistan-India-Nuclear.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's leader said Monday that his nation will not give up its policy of nuclear deterrence but also will not embark on a costly nuclear arms race with its hostile neighbor, India.

``We only want to maintain a minimum credible deterrence to deter any aggression against our homeland,'' the state-run news agency quoted Gen. Pervez Musharraf as saying. ``We will not enter into a nuclear arms race with India and never will we subject our people to economic deprivation.''

Pakistan and India exploded underground nuclear devices in 1998 and declared themselves nuclear powers. Since then, the international community has tried to get the two countries to renounce nuclear weapons. Both have refused.

It is not known how many weapons either country possesses or whether either country has taken a step to deploy nuclear weapons.

Talks between the two countries have broken down, and India has refused Pakistan's offer to restart negotiations.

Since independence of the subcontinent in 1947, the two neighbors have haggled over Kashmir, a disputed territory divided between the two countries and claimed in its entirety by both.

-------- us nuc facilities
-------- iowa

USA Today
06/28/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/iamain.htm
Iowa

Palo - Iowa's only nuclear power plant remained off-line as crews sought the cause of a power surge. The Duane Arnold Energy Center was shut Friday for the second time this year. Officials said the surge never posed a health or safety threat. The plant provides power to more than 200,000 homes.

-------- new mexico

News from around the nation

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Wednesday, June 28, 2000
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/natn2812.shtml

New Mexico: Los Alamos residents whose homes were destroyed by wildfire last month began moving into temporary homes yesterday. In a barren lot on the north side of Los Alamos, 43 of a planned 114 mobile homes were ready for tenants yesterday. A fire that was set May 4 at nearby Bandelier National Monument to clear brush quickly raged out of control. More than 200 homes were ultimately destroyed.

---

Layers to Los Alamos

Washington Post
Wednesday, June 28, 2000; Page A25
By Paul C. Light
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-06/28/020l-062800-idx.html

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson testified before the Senate last week that he is mystified about the latest security breach at Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory. "It is unacceptable and incomprehensible to me," Richardson said of recent reports about lost computer drives, "and I will not rest until I know precisely what happened."

Richardson will never find the answers talking solely to the research scientists at Los Alamos. If he wants to know why the message about nuclear security is not getting down to the bottom, he should pull out the Department of Energy phone book and ask what happened at every link in his chain of command.

Richardson should start by asking his chief of staff to explain the recent breach, then ask to be transferred to his two deputy chiefs of staff, and end his first round of calls with his senior policy adviser for nuclear security affairs. Total calls: four.

Richardson should then dial up his deputy secretary for a talk, and finish this second string of calls by asking to be transferred to the deputy secretary's senior policy adviser, followed by his special assistant. Total calls: three.

Richardson should next talk to his undersecretary for nuclear security, who also acts as the administrator of the newly created Nuclear Security Administration and also holds the title of principal deputy administrator for military application.

Richardson should then talk to principal deputy administrator of the Nuclear Security Administration and with the principal assistant deputy administrator for operations, who can transfer him down to the assistant deputy administrator for military application and stockpile operations, and from there continue dialing on downward to the associate deputy assistant administrator for nuclear weapons surety, then down to the director of the office of nuclear weapons security and control, and even further down to complete this third round of calls with the director of the Albuquerque operations office, and the assorted division chiefs, office directors and branch chiefs who oversee the security effort. Total calls: 15 to 20.

After he's done with his headquarters staff, Richardson should call the president of the University of California, which administers the Los Alamos contract on behalf of the U.S. government, then ask to be transferred down to the senior vice president for business and finance, who can transfer him again to the vice president for financial management, then to the assistant vice president for laboratory administration, then the executive director for laboratory operations, and finally down to the manager for facilities management and safeguards and security and the rest of that staff. Total calls: six to 10.

Once he's penetrated the UC system, Richardson should talk to the director of the Los Alamos lab about what happened, then ask to be transferred down to the deputy laboratory director for laboratory operations, then down to the associate laboratory director for nuclear weapons and finally down to the director of the security and safeguards division. Total calls: five to 10.

If Richardson still doesn't get the answers, he can call his inspector general, then ask to be transferred down to the principal deputy inspector general and down to the assistant inspector general for investigations, the deputy assistant inspector general, then down to the special agent in charge of his western region, then down to the assistant special agent in charge of his southwest region and finally to the field staff, who might actually know something about the breach. Total calls: seven to 10.

The more he lets his fingers do the walking through the hierarchy, the more Richardson will understand the reason why the security problems persist.The problem is not too few managers, but too many. Fifty calls and Richardson will still be hard pressed to point a finger at any one person who can be held ultimately responsible for what goes right or wrong on nuclear security. No wonder Richardson has never delivered on his spring 1999 promise to fire everyone responsible for the Los Alamos mess: He'd have to release much of the headquarters hierarchy.

Richardson believes just the opposite. "This could simply be a case of an individual who made a mistake and was terrified to come forward because they knew how seriously the department now takes security," he told the Senate.

Would that it were true. It's more likely that someone made a mistake and knew quite well that it would take months for anyone to discover the problem, and even longer for the discovery to percolate upward in one of the densest of federal hierarchies.

Firing Richardson won't solve the problem. He would just be replaced by another secretary who would perch 50 layers from the front lines. Moreover, Richardson can hardly be blamed for layers that were created in previous waves of reform.

But Richardson should be held accountable for appointing the same people to hold posts in the new National Nuclear Security Administration and the old undersecretaryship for nuclear security. This "dual-hatting," as Richardson calls it, creates considerable confusion about just who has the authority to act.

The secret to sending a firm signal about nuclear security is to stop playing the childhood game of "telephone" in the hierarchy. It's a wonder any message gets to the bottom at all.

The writer is director of the Brookings Center for Public Service and a contributing editor at Government Executive magazine.

---

Report Faults Energy Dept. as Failing to Gain Lab Staff's Support for Tighter Security

New York Times
June 28, 2000
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/062800los-alamos-theft.html

WASHINGTON, June 27 -- The Energy Department has failed to convince scientists at the government's nuclear weapons laboratories of the need for tougher security and counterintelligence measures to prevent espionage, according to a new Congressional report.

Because senior officials have not won the support of the scientific community at the three national weapons laboratories, their efforts to impose tougher security rules have fallen short, according to the report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

New regulations imposed by the Energy Department in the wake of accusations of Chinese nuclear espionage at Los Alamos National Laboratory were not accompanied by a strong effort by department officials to sell the changes to the rank-and-file at the laboratories, the report said. As a result, there has been open rebellion against plans to subject key weapons scientists to polygraph examinations, while counterintelligence training efforts at the laboratories have been dismal.

"No organization, governmental or private, can have effective counterintelligence without active, visible and sustained support from management and active 'buy-in' by the employees," the report said.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's plan to require about 800 laboratory employees to undergo polygraph examinations as part of a more stringent counterintelligence program has drawn intense criticism from laboratory employees over the past few months. Laboratory employees have worn buttons to work with slogans like "Just say no to the polygraph."

"The attitude toward polygraphs at the laboratories runs the gamut from cautiously and rationally negative to emotionally and irrationally negative," the report found. "Moreover, since the polygraph is a highly visible part of the overall counterintelligence effort, the entire counterintelligence program has been negatively affected by this development."

The report was the result of a review of counterintelligence at the laboratories conducted by a special panel headed by Paul Redmond, former chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Redmond panel was created by the House intelligence committee in response to the furor over charges that China may have stolen nuclear data from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The study was conducted before the latest security problem: hard drives containing sensitive information about nuclear weapons that were missing for several weeks.

The report acknowledged that the scientists have some legitimate concerns about whether such a large polygraph program could be implemented fairly. But the report also noted that part of the problem was that the scientists believed they were "indispensable and special, and thus should be exempt from such demeaning and intrusive measures as the polygraph." The report criticized the Energy Department's effort to explain the need for polygraphs to employees as "ineffectual." The Redmond panel found that while the resistance to polygraphs had in some cases been "unreasonable," the Energy Department's response had been "dictatorial and pre-emptory."

The panel urged the Energy Department to get local managers at the laboratories more heavily involved in selecting the employees who should undergo polygraph examinations because of the sensitive nature of their work.

The panel also recommended that the Energy Department and the laboratories model their counterintelligence programs after those used at the National Security Agency, the government's secret code-breaking and eavesdropping arm. The agency, like the national laboratories, employs many highly educated people with strong academic backgrounds. While the laboratories employ physicists and other scientists, the security agency employs world-class mathematicians and cryptographers.

"The key factor in N.S.A.'s success in the training and awareness appears to be that its overall integrated security and counterintelligence program has been in existence for many years, and the mathematicians enter a culture where, from the very beginning of their employment, security, counterintelligence and the polygraph are givens in their daily work," the report said.

The Energy Department, it continued, "is now starting virtually from scratch and would do well to learn from the positive experiences of agencies such as N.S.A."

-------- us nuc weapons

Cato Institute Study Says Global Missile Defense Could Decrease U.S. Security Sense of Invincibility Could Cause Conflict With States Possessing Weapons of Mass Destruction

PRNewswire
June 28, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=p0627142.900&level3=788&date=20000628

WASHINGTON, June 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Proposals to build a national missile defense (NMD) that would, in fact, be capable of providing global protection could actually make the United States less secure, according to a new study released today by the Cato Institute.

Many of the "national" missile defense plans in circulation would be able to do more than protect U.S. soil, says Ivan Eland, Cato's director of defense policy studies. A "layered" defense comprising some combination of land-, sea- and space-based components could create a system truly international in scope. That holds potential risks for the United States, Eland says.

"If a thicker and wider missile defense causes U.S. policymakers to feel more secure against a direct missile attack and less vulnerable by threatened attacks to its allies," he says, "they may be more tempted to engage in reckless overseas military adventures against potential regional adversaries possessing weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles."

Eland also thinks it's unwise to build a missile defense protecting U.S. allies when those allies can afford to build missile defenses on their own. "The United States should refuse to cover wealthy allies -- nations that spend too little on their own defense and already benefit from significant U.S. security guarantees -- with a missile shield," he says. He prefers President Clinton's idea of sharing missile defense technology with allies who would then build their own systems.

Eland sees little reason to move beyond a limited ground-based missile defense that would protect only the United States, and even that system should prove itself in rigorous testing before the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars. "A limited threat deserves only limited public resources to counter it," he says, adding that "no decision to produce any weapon system -- especially one as complex and uncertain as NMD -- should be taken until the system undergoes thorough developmental and operational testing under real-world conditions."

"The current -- and the next -- administration would be well served by continuing to develop only the land-based system," he concludes.

Foreign Policy Briefing no. 58
(http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-058es.html)

The Cato Institute is a nonpartisan public policy research foundation dedicated to broadening policy debate consistent with the traditional American principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.

SOURCE Cato Institute
CONTACT: Patti Mohr of the Cato Institute, 202-789-5293
Web sites: http://www.cato.org http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-058es.html

---

House OKs Radiation Payments

Salt Lake Tribune
Wednesday, June 28, 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.sltrib.com/06282000/nation_w/62682.htm
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/natn2812.shtml
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=062800&ID=s819777&cat=

WASHINGTON -- The House voted Tuesday to expand a federal program that pays up to $100,000 to Westerners sickened by Cold War uranium mining and nuclear weapons tests.

The bill adds to the list of cancers and other diseases that make former miners or nuclear test "downwinders" eligible for payments under the 1990 law.

The measure also expands sites where miners and downwinders can seek compensation and adds open pit uranium miners and those who transported or milled uranium.

The expansion will provide compensation to about 9,600 people "who lost their health and, in many cases, their lives working for this country's nuclear defense program," said Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah.

"We as a nation owe these people," Cannon said before the House approved the bill on a voice vote.

The measure now goes to the White House for President Clinton's signature. The Senate approved it in December.

Some former miners have said the latest bill does not go far enough because it does not increase the compensation amount, cover miners who worked after 1971 or include all illnesses miners say radiation caused.

The law is meant to help Westerners who became ill because of their involvement in Cold War nuclear weapons production.

Much of the uranium used in nuclear weapons was mined in the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, and above-ground nuclear tests were detonated in New Mexico and Nevada.

The Justice Department has paid 3,302 claims worth $244 million and denied another 3,500 claims.

------

U.S. Eyes Starting Missile Defense ABM Treaty Issue Left for Next Year

Washington Post
Wednesday, June 28, 2000; Page A01
By Thomas E. Ricks and Steven Mufson Washington Post Staff Writers
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-06/28/160l-062800-idx.html

If a crucial flight test goes well next week, President Clinton is likely to give a "limited green light" for a national missile defense system, a middle course that the United States would argue does not violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and that would leave the toughest decisions to his successor, according to administration officials.

"That's the direction we're heading in," said a senior Pentagon official involved in discussions of the presidential decision, scheduled to be made by late October. He characterized the most likely outcome as "a handoff of this option to the succeeding administration."

"We are not irrevocably committing the country to either going ahead or not," explained another senior administration official. "All we're talking about is some very long-lead construction work. The issue will be open for the next president to decide either way."

National security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger cautioned that it is premature to predict what Clinton will decide, because much will depend on next week's test and continuing consultations with Russia, China and U.S. allies in Europe. "None of the people you've talked to have spoken to the president about this," he said. "I have talked to him about this, and he has not decided."

The first phase of the proposed missile defense system would consist of 100 interceptor missiles based in Alaska and an advanced radar station on Shemya Island at the tip of the Aleutian chain, the westernmost fringe of the United States. Because of the short construction season on that remote site, buffeted by high winds and rough seas, the Pentagon says a go-ahead decision must be made this fall if the missile shield is to be working by the target date of 2005.

The "limited green light" that is gaining favor within the administration would authorize the Pentagon to negotiate some initial construction contracts in November and arrange this winter for barges to carry construction materials to Shemya in March and April, when the seas are relatively calm, keeping the project on schedule.

But because actual construction of the radar station would not begin until the summer of 2001, Clinton could complete his term in office without formally abrogating the 1972 ABM Treaty, administration officials said. That decision would be up to the next administration.

While such a course may look like a classic Clintonian compromise, it would still carry significant risks. Most notably, it isn't clear how Russia and China would react.

John Steinbruner, a University of Maryland expert on Russia's nuclear arsenal, predicted that the Kremlin would chafe at a U.S. decision to proceed with a missile shield but might tacitly accept a plan that avoids immediate confrontation and leaves more time for negotiation. "The Chinese are another matter," he added. "They're saying that, 'Even if the Russians cave, we won't.' "

Some political strategists say that a decision by Clinton to build a missile shield would help insulate Vice President Gore against Republican charges of leaving the United States vulnerable to attack by countries such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. But if Clinton frames his decision as leaving maximum flexibility for the next administration, Gore could come under pressure in the final weeks of the presidential campaign to take a clear stand on whether he would proceed with construction over the objections of Russia, China and America's European allies.

Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush has called for a bigger, more technically ambitious and far more expensive missile defense system that would protect not just the 50 states, but also U.S. allies and troops overseas. And although he has called for talks with Russia, he has promised to build a missile shield even if Russia continues to object.

According to Pentagon and White House officials, the Clinton administration is assuming that next week's test of its simpler system will go fairly well. On July 7, an interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific will attempt to knock down a dummy warhead fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Key factors in the test include not only the ability of the "kill vehicle" to hit the dummy 144 miles above the Earth at a combined speed of 12,000 miles per hour, but also the ability of early-warning satellites to detect the launch and convey that information to a command and control center, which in turn sends the data to Kwajalein.

Within weeks, the CIA also is expected to conclude a "national intelligence estimate" of the foreign policy consequences of building a missile shield. In the words of one administration official, this is "a very complex question that involves a trade-off of the additional security one gets from being able to deal with third-country missile threats, versus the negative consequences of going ahead." Among those possible consequences are a Russian threat to abandon other arms control treaties and joint efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

By early August, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen is scheduled to give the White House his recommendation. Officials say they expect him to say that a limited missile defense system is feasible and advisable.

But a senior administration official conceded that neither next week's test, nor the CIA and Pentagon reports, is likely to tell Clinton anything he doesn't know already: The missile intercept system is technologically unproven and the international fallout is likely to be serious. Some experts say that it could provoke an arms race in Asia by prodding China to expand its nuclear arsenal, which might prompt first India and then Pakistan to follow suit.

Building the X-band radar on Shemya Island clearly will constitute a violation of the treaty--at some point. But government lawyers have advised the White House that the treaty does not define exactly when that would be: when ground is cleared, when cement is poured, or when tracks are laid for the new radar.

"It's a continuum," a senior administration official said. "There is no bright line, and therefore it's hard to make any kind of absolute judgment."

But because of timing provisions in the ABM Treaty, a decision this fall to go ahead with missile defense could force the next administration to make a series of difficult decisions during its first weeks in office, when many key posts may still be vacant as the new president's nominees await congressional confirmation.

Article 15 of the treaty requires six months' notice prior to withdrawing from the pact. Counting six months back from next summer's construction schedule, the new administration would have to tackle the issue sometime between Inauguration Day in January and early March.

---

House Expands Radiation Payments

Associated Press
June 27, 2000 Filed at 5:35 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Radiation-Compensation.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted Tuesday to expand a federal program that pays up to $100,000 to people sickened by Cold War-era uranium mining and nuclear weapons tests.

The bill adds to the list of cancers and other diseases that make former miners or nuclear test ``downwinders'' eligible for payments under the 1990 law. The measure also expands the sites where miners and downwinders can seek compensation, and adds open-pit uranium miners and those who transported or milled uranium.

The expansion will provide compensation to about 9,600 people ``who lost their health and in many cases their lives working for this country's nuclear defense program,'' said Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah.

``We as a nation owe these people what this bill allows for,'' he said before the House approved the bill on a voice vote.

The measure now goes to the White House for President Clinton's signature. The Senate approved it in December.

Much of the uranium used in nuclear weapons produced during the Cold War was mined in the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, while above-ground nuclear tests were detonated in New Mexico and Nevada.

The sponsors of the 1990 law sought the enhancements, saying the original law was too narrow and too many people with legitimate claims were denied. As of March 1, the Justice Department had paid 3,302 claims worth $244 million and denied another 3,500 claims.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the changes would cost about $750 million during the next five years.

Still, some former miners have said the latest bill isn't broad enough because it does not increase the compensation amount, cover miners who worked after 1971 or include all the illnesses miners say radiation caused.

Among other things, the bill would extend eligibility to uranium workers from South Dakota, North Dakota, Idaho, Oregon and Texas. The current law covers Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Washington state.

Other provisions include:

--Adding leukemia and cancers of the lung, thyroid, brain, kidney, esophagus and stomach to the list of cancers that make miners eligible for compensation. Kidney disease and two lung ailments also would be added to the list.

For downwinders -- people who lived in areas of Nevada, Utah and Arizona most affected by nuclear fallout from tests -- the added cancers include leukemia and those of the brain, bladder, colon, ovaries and salivary glands.

--Eliminating provisions that give less money to downwinders or miners who smoked.

--Cutting the average time a person had to work in uranium mines from just under 20 years to less than four.

-- Requiring the Justice Department to take American Indian law and custom into account when processing applications. Navajo officials have complained that widows of dead miners have been denied compensation because they were married in traditional Indian ceremonies and do not have marriage certificates.

--Spending up to $20 million a year for community health centers and state health departments to screen for claims.

---

Lockheed Gets Major Anti-Missile Contract

Reuters
June 28, 2000 Filed at 6:46 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-lockhee.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a key step for U.S. missile defense, the Pentagon said on Wednesday it had awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT.N) a $3.97 billion contract to begin final development of the ``THAAD'' theater anti-missile defense system.

Under the contract in an evolving program to develop a defense against tactical shorter-range missiles, the defense firm would complete engineering and manufacturing development of the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) within seven years.

The announcement followed two back-to-back successful tests of the system at White Sands, New Mexico, last year in which projectiles fired from the Army's test range there hit dummy attacking missiles at the edge of space.

The THAAD system, primarily designed to protect U.S. troops and bases from nuclear and other theater ballistic missiles, is one of several anti-missile defenses being developed by the United States against both area and intercontinental missiles.

The program found a successful track in June and August of last year in the two successful tests, which followed six successive failures in attempts by THAAD projectiles to hit dummy attacking missiles in flight.

The contract announced on Wednesday does not include full-scale production of the THAAD weaponry, but would move to complete the evolving system to meet strict requirements set up by the U.S. Army for initial deployment in 2007.

``During the EMD (engineering and manufacturing development) program, the system design will evolve to satisfy the Army's key operational requirements while developing weapon system components that are not only effective, but are affordable, ready for production and available to Army soldiers for a first unit equipped in 2007,'' the Army said.

A series of up to 40 flight tests would be part of the long THAAD manufacturing development phase and are not expected to begin until at least 2002.

But rockets and other components of the system could be manufactured on a limited basis as testing advanced, according to Pentagon officials.

The THAAD system is not part of the proposed limited U.S. national missile defense system, which would be designed to protect the nation from future long-range missile attack by states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

---

IBM's Fastest Computer to Simulate Nuclear Weapons Tests

Reuters
June 28, 2000 Filed at 8:15 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-ibm-dc.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. (IBM.N) on Wednesday was set to unveil the fastest computer in the world, which the U.S. government will use to simulate nuclear weapons tests.

The supercomputer, able to process more in a second than one person with a calculator could do in 10 million years, was made for the Department of Energy's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI). The system could ease congressional opposition to the United States signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, banning all actual nuclear weapons testing worldwide.

``Without underground testing, we need simulations to make sure the stockpile is safe, reliable and operational,'' said David Cooper, a member of the President's Council on Computing and chief information officer of Lawrence Livermore Labs in California, where the system will be run.

Called ASCI White, the supercomputer will churn the factors involved in a nuclear detonation, including the weapon's age and design. This could eventually allow the government to manage its entire stockpile of nuclear weapons without any real nuclear tests, Cooper said.

The U.S. Senate last year failed to ratify the test ban treaty, insisting on the nation's right to continue testing nuclear weapons underground.

``If you polled the weapons designers right now, they would say that (actual) testing is still more effective,'' Cooper said.

The new supercomputer is a major step toward full simulation but is not yet capable of testing the nuclear weapons stockpile to standards set by experts.

A system that could replace actual nuclear tests must have a computing capability of 100 teraflops, or trillions of operations per second, versus the ASCI White computing capacity as tested by IBM of 12.3 teraflops, Cooper said.

``We're still on a timescale to do (100 teraflops) by 2004,'' he added.

The system contains 8,192 copper microprocessors and is 1,000 times more powerful than its chess-playing predecessor ''Deep Blue,'' which defeated World Champion Gary Kasparov in the historic 1997 chess showdown between man and machine.

IBM is selling the system, which will take up the floor space equivalent to two basketball courts and weighs as much as 17 full-sized elephants, to the DOE for $110 million.

But designing the most powerful computer in the world has other pay-offs to IBM, including bragging rights that could allow it to take a greater share in the supercomputer market, as well as the use of the advanced technology in its lower-level computer products.

``We're seeing more and more that deep computing will become a critical element in how real businesses run every day, and that it's not just in the territory of the propeller heads,'' said Nicholas Donofrio, IBM senior vice president technology and manufacturing.

IBM officials and analysts said parts of the design of ASCI White, which connects 512 separate computers together with high performance switches and software, could be built into computers used for everything from electronic business to designing cars.

IBM often sells its leading edge technologies to its own rivals in the computer industry, using the proceeds to continue to fund its enormous research and development budget.

``We could take elements of this system and sell it to other people,'' said Donofrio. ``Some of the things that might find their way from ASCI White into the other people's systems are the switch or chips that do the memory control.''

``This is part of IBM's product road map,'' said DH Brown analyst Richard Partridge. ``They have the government fund the extreme end and make sure they address all the difficult problems before they create products for tasks that are not as difficult as nuclear weapons stockpile management.''

In 1999, IBM became the leader in the traditional supercomputer market, in which some 250 computers that range in price from $2 million to $100 million are sold every year, for use in weather predictions, research and encryption, according to Joseph. IBM now has 30 percent of that market, Joseph said.

``This system becomes the biggest computer on earth,'' said Joseph. ``Having that kind of market presence is everything in the traditional supercomputer market and will allow them to take more market share.''

---

Lockheed Martin gets Army $4 bln engineering, mfg pact
Lockheed Martin $4 bln Army pact for THAAD program

Bridge News
June 29, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=b0628474.8rg&level3=27715&date=20000629

New York--Jun 28--Lockheed Martin received a $4 billion contract from the Army Space and Missile Defense Command to begin the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense program. --Cody Lyon, Bridge News

The following is the text of today's announcement with emphasis added by BridgeNews. BridgeStation links to company data have been inserted at the end:

U.S. Army Awards Lockheed Martin Engineering and Manufacturing Development

Contract for THAAD program

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., June 28 -- The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Huntsville, AL, today awarded Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) an approximate $4 billion contract to begin the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program.

Today's contract announcement comes almost one year after the THAAD team recorded its historic first intercept of a simulated theater ballistic missile target -- June 10, 1999. Following that watershed event in Theater Missile Defense history, the THAAD team continued to demonstrate its commitment to mission success. On Aug. 2, 1999 the team achieved its second intercept, further demonstrating the feasibility of hit-to-kill technology and paving the way for the program to move into EMD.

"Today is a great day for the service men and women of our country, our customer, Lockheed Martin and the entire THAAD team," said Jim Berry, president, Lockheed Martin Missiles & Fire Control. "We committed to our customer that we would design, develop and field a defensive missile system to protect our soldiers from the ever growing threat of theater ballistic missile attack. Today, we are one step closer to making that commitment a reality. I salute the entire THAAD team for their perseverance and dedication in moving this program in to EMD and look forward to future Mission Success."

"We learned important lessons from the Program Definition/Risk Reduction phase of the THAAD program and are now fully prepared to move forward -- shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S. Army and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) -- on this critical national initiative," said Ed Squires, Lockheed Martin THAAD vice president. "I am extremely proud of what the entire THAAD team has accomplished. We view the EMD program as an exciting challenge and an important opportunity to make a real and lasting contribution to national and international security."

"It's with great pride that we award the THAAD EMD contract to Lockheed Martin ... ," said U.S. Army THAAD Program Manager, Col. Patrick O'Reilly. "By working together, the THAAD government and industry team has set the stage for a highly successful EMD program. By achieving this critical milestone, we now are one more step closer to getting this urgently needed system to the American soldier as soon as possible. It is a great day for whole THAAD team."

The THAAD system is being developed in two phases. The first phase of the program is the main focus of the EMD contract. During this phase, the THAAD team will demonstrate the system's design and operational capabilities through a series of ground and flight tests. The team will also validate system manufacturing processes through low-rate initial production. The purpose of this phase is to complete the missile and radar hardware and other system elements necessary to satisfy the Key Performance Parameters specified in the system's Operational Requirements Document (ORD). This phase of the program will provide a substantial war fighting capability to the U.S. Army by 2007. The second phase, which will come later, will complete planned battle management and other software enhancements to provide full ORD compliance.

Squires noted that this two-phased approach offers the Army "an affordable, flexible, low-to moderate risk program that effectively balances the competing demands of operational effectiveness, availability, risk and cost." The result is a program that will provide an operationally effective theater missile defense capability in the near term, while preserving the ability to maintain system effectiveness against the evolving theater ballistic missile threat.

For Lockheed Martin, THAAD represents the culmination of several decades of development and testing activities conducted under earlierBMDO programs -- including the Homing Overlay Experiment and the Exo-atmospheric Re-entry Interceptor Subsystem. Technologies such as body-to-body intercept and target tracking and characterization, originally conceived and developed under these programs, have been applied to THAAD so the U.S. Army and its allies can field a robust, flexible and mobile theater missile defense.

THAAD EMD engineering work will be performed at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Sunnyvale, CA and Huntsville, AL facilities under the program direction of Lockheed Martin Missiles & Fire Control, Dallas, TX. The THAAD program is managed by the BMDO and executed by the U.S. Army Program Executive Office, Air and Missile Defense, and the U.S. Army THAAD Project Manager in Huntsville, AL.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global enterprise principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced-technology systems, products and services. The Corporation's core businesses are systems integration, space, aeronautics, and technology services. Lockheed Martin had 1999 sales surpassing $25 billion.

---

IBM Announces New Supercomputer

Associated Press
June 28, 2000 Filed at 8:00 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-IBM-Supercomputer.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- IBM announced Wednesday it has built the most powerful supercomputer in the world, able to perform 12.3 trillion operations per second, three times faster than the next-fastest computer.

An earlier version proved capable of defeating the world's greatest chess player in a 1997 tournament. The latest machine is intended to continue the advance toward matching and eventually surpassing the computing capacity of the human brain.

The computer, called Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative White, or ASCI White, covers 9,920 square feet of floor space, equal to two NBA basketball courts, and weighs 106 tons.

IBM will deliver ASCI White to the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory this summer. Under the ASCI contracts, the department pays a company -- in this case, $110 million -- to build a computer that can simulate the testing of nuclear weapons.

In time, said IBM and Livermore officials, this computer could lead to the end of nuclear testing.

Last year, when the Senate rejected a treaty to ban nuclear testing worldwide, the Clinton administration argued that using computer simulation instead of actual nuclear explosions was a reliable way of appraising the U.S. weapons stockpile.

Opponents questioned the capability of current computer modeling and said the treaty would harm efforts to maintain the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

To perform a full three-dimensional nuclear simulation in 1985, it would have taken the fastest supercomputer available 60,000 years, said David Schwoegler, spokesman for the lab. When a supercomputer reaches 100 trillion operations per second, the lab can do the same test in a month. They expect that to happen by 2004.

In creating ASCI White, IBM exceeded one of the most venerable axioms of computing, Moore's Law. The rule, offered by Intel founder Gordon Moore in the early days of electronic computing, maintains that computer power will double every 12 months to 18 months.

``We've been walking on Moore's Law, using it as a floor rather than a ceiling,'' Schwoegler said.

IBM's ASCI Blue Pacific, until now the fastest supercomputer, was demonstrated 21 months ago. That computer could perform 3.87 trillion operations a second. IBM's contract required the new computer to run at 10 teraflops, or 10 trillion operations per second.

``It is certainly a technical milestone that we are very proud of,'' said Nicholas D'Onofrio, IBM's senior vice president of technology and manufacturing.

ASCI White was built mostly from components of existing commercial computers, D'Onofrio said, and can do far more than just model nuclear explosions.

IBM's Blue Pacific, now in use at Livermore, will soon be shared with the university research community.

IBM officials said that the new system could contribute to breakthroughs in financial models, genetic computing and allow a country to monitor national air space with a single machine. The existing 18-hour computing cycles needed to create a global weather model could be reduced to seconds.

ASCI White has 8,192 microprocessors and is 1,000 times more powerful than ``Deep Blue,'' which defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997.

``The sheer scale of it is an impressive feat,'' said Hank Dietz, a professor and supercomputer expert at the University of Kentucky at Lexington. ``The only machine I know of that's larger is Intel's ASCI Red, and these are much faster processors.''

The human brain, it is estimated, computes about 1,000 times faster than ASCI White, which requires 1.2 megawatts of power, enough electricity to power 1,000 homes.

At IBM's current rate, a supercomputer could exceed the brain's capacity in 10 years. Even now, it would take one person with a calculator 10 million years to do the same number of calculations ASCI White can do in one second.

``It is very exciting, especially since we are beginning to get up there in capacity to the human brain,'' D'Onofrio said. ``We pegged Deep Blue at about a lizard brain. This one (ASCI White) has the computing capacity of about a mouse brain.''

-------- australia

Uranium company to make changes after leak

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
This Bulletin: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 18:34 AEST
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-28jun2000-87.htm

The Federal Resources Minister, Nick Minchin, says he will make sure a mining company responsible for a leak from a uranium mine will implement the recommendations of a report on the incident.

The Minister has decided not to prosecute Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) over the leak of tailings water from the Ranger uranium mine, surrounded by Kakadu National Park.

He was questioned about the incident by the Australian Democrats in the Senate today.

Senator Minchin says ERA has agreed to implement the 17 recommendations in a report by the Office of the Supervising Scientist.

"We will obviously be working to ensure that they honour that commitment and they do implement all those recommendations," he said.

"They're embarrassed by their failure in this instance to properly observe the requirements laid upon them for immediate notification, and they're acting to rectify that error."

-------- MILITARY (by country)

-------- china

China news agency denied Pentagon view

Washington Times
June 28, 2000
By Rowan Scarborough
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000628221521.htm

The State Department said yesterday it has barred China's state-run news agency from occupying an apartment building it bought June 15 near the Pentagon while the United States reviews the location's security implications.

"As of right now, the Xinhua News Agency has been put on notice by the department through the embassy of the People's Republic of China that they may not occupy or use the building they have purchased without first seeking department approval," said department spokesman Philip Reeker.

"We will continue to look at this. We take the issue very seriously," he said.

Meanwhile, State officials have informed senior lawmakers that the department intends to make a final decision to reject the purchase. A denial would force the Xinhua News Agency to find another site for its bureau and staff quarters.

"They have informed us on a staff-to-staff level that is their intent," said Dan DuBray, a spokesman for Rep. Harold Rogers, Kentucky Republican. Mr. Rogers is chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that controls State Department spending.

Under the 1985 Foreign Missions Act, the final decision rests with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, whom the law empowers to force a foreign mission to sell U.S. property.

Xinhua failed to seek U.S. approval to buy the seven-floor Pentagon Ridge Apartments, as required by the Foreign Missions Act. China experts say Xinhua is part of Beijing's extensive intelligence-collection network. China denies that Xinhua does any spying.

Mr. Reeker said that on Monday the Chinese Embassy produced a letter the mission said it sent on May 22 requesting permission.

Mr. Reeker said the copy was not addressed to any particular office and that the department cannot find the purported original. He said the department is treating the letter as China's belated request. The State Department now has 60 days, from Monday, to decide whether to approve or reject the sale.

"The State Department has no record of receiving the original of this notification letter," Mr. Reeker said. "I'll note again that Xinhua did not observe this requirement in making its decision to purchase the building."

The department's action comes the day after the House voted overwhelmingly to bar the use of State Department funds to approve the transaction. A Republican plans to introduce a similar version in the Senate.

"Beijing wants to set up its party propaganda organization and intelligence branch with a bird's-eye view of the Pentagon," said Sen. Robert C. Smith, New Hampshire Republican. "This administration has made a habit of pandering to the Chinese government. Although I am told that the State Department intends to disapprove this site for Xinhua 'news service,' I reserve the right to force their hand, if necessary, by offering a stronger version of the language approved yesterday by the House."

Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also joined the fray. He introduced a bill that would block a pending move by the Chinese Embassy in Washington until Mrs. Albright has forced Xinhua to sell the Pentagon Ridge building.

"The potential for this building to be a source of unparalleled espionage is not a theoretical matter," Mr. Shelby said.

While the House measure would not take effect until after the 60-day review period ends Aug. 26, Rep. David Vitter, Louisiana Republican, said his amendment was meant as a signal to State to disapprove the sale. The vote was 367-34. Only Democrats opposed it.

"This location allows the Chinese government to gather intelligence from the Pentagon using a variety of means," Mr. Vitter said.

The congressional pressure comes amid complaints that the Clinton administration has become lax in protecting U.S. secrets. The State Department, for example, admits it lost a laptop computer containing classified information. In another incident, a conference room wall was rigged with a listening device linked to a Russian diplomat monitoring conversations outside the building.

Under the Foreign Missions Act, the Defense Department and the FBI must submit recommendations to State during the Xinhua review.

Last week, Pentagon spokesmen downplayed any risk from having Xinhua as a neighbor after The Washington Times disclosed the sale.

Yesterday, Kenneth Bacon, spokesman for Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, said, "In making that recommendation, we will consider a number of things, including the state of our own passive defenses today, and what sort of threat we see from the Chinese occupancy of that building."

Mr. Bacon said the Pentagon is currently checking security measures in the wake of lapses at several agencies. Spy experts say China could use the Pentagon Ridge location to attempt to eavesdrop.

"I should point out that we review our passive defenses on a regular basis," Mr. Bacon said. "We review our security proceedings on a regular basis. We have done so with particular zeal in the last couple of months, after some of the other events in the government, and we will continue to do that."

In Beijing yesterday, the Communist government again attacked The Washington Times for quoting experts who say Xinhua is part of China's intelligence network. Over the weekend, a Xinhua spokesman called on the newspaper to "admit its mistake publicly."

Yesterday, Zhu Bangzao, a China foreign ministry spokesman, kept up the criticism.

"The purchase is a purely commercial activity," Mr. Zhu said at a regular briefing, according to an Agence France-Presse report. "The report by The Washington Times is based on ulterior motives. Xinhua news agency's foreign branches are legitimate establishments."

The Times has quoted four sources - an author and congressional expert on China; a former CIA officer; a China expert and consultant; and a Pentagon intelligence analyst - as saying Xinhua is involved in intelligence collection. Xinhua operates bureaus in more than 100 countries. In the United States, it owns property in California, New York and Northern Virginia.

State spokesmen say Xinhua knew of the law. Just two years ago, it applied for U.S. permission to purchase a building in California for its reporters and staffers.

-------- korea

U.S.-N. Korean Missile Talks Set for July 10

Reuters
June 28, 2000 Filed at 2:14 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-n.html

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States said on Wednesday that missile talks with North Korea would resume next month in Malaysia after a 15-month hiatus.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher made the announcement during Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's Middle East trip.

Albright traveled to South Korea last week to find out how the first North-South summit had gone and her trip to China before that also focused on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's recent visit there.

The Stalinist state appears to be trying to open up to the outside world after decades of isolation, years of famine and a regular slot on the U.S. list of state sponsors of ``terrorism'' which robs it of aid.

U.S. officials had already announced the resumption of talks could be announced during her round-the-world trip which ends in Berlin Thursday.

``The United States and North Korea will hold missile talks on July 10-12 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,'' Boucher said in a statement.

North Korea confirmed last Wednesday that it was keeping in place a moratorium on missile testing it agreed to last September.

The U.S. delegation will be led by Assistant Secretary of State for Non-proliferation Robert Einhorn. The leading North Korean delegate will be Jang Chang Chon, Director General for U.S. affairs at the foreign ministry, Boucher said.

The talks will address the development, deployment, testing and export of North Korean missiles, one of which Pyongyang test-fired in August 1998.

Although it has reined in Pyongyang's nuclear program, Washington remains deeply concerned about its missile development, estimating that it could build a rocket capable of delivering a bomb over an American city by 2005.

---

Defending the troops

Washington Times
June 28, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-2000628211741.htm

The president of South Korea defended the presence of U.S. troops in his country in talks this month with the leader of North Korea, saying their deployment prevents regional domination by China or Japan, according to a former South Korean ambassador to the United States.

Hong Choo-hyun, ambassador here from 1991 to 1993, told the Kyodo News Service that North Korea's Kim Jong-il "showed understanding" toward the explanation offered by President Kim Dae-jung.

The North Korean dictator, who at first complained about the stationing of U.S. troops, grasped the South Korean "viewpoint of the geopolitical situation surrounding the Korean Peninsula," Mr. Hong said.

Kim Dae-jung told his counterpart the Americans were stationed there to "keep stability" in the region, Mr. Hong told Kyodo, the Japanese news service.

"The South Korean president added it would be better for the forces to be kept in South Korea to prevent Japan and China from engaging in efforts to gain hegemony in the region," Kyodo reported, quoting Mr. Hong.

To contact James Morrison, call 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail morris@twtmail.com

---

KOREAS: TALKS STUMBLE

New York Times
June 28, 2000
World Briefing

Red Cross talks between North and South Korea to reunite families separated by the Korean War stumbled because of disagreements over the repatriation of Communist spies held in the South. Officials began a four-day session, but the talks adjourned in 80 minutes and will not resume until tomorrow as North Korea insisted that South Korea repatriate convicted North Korean spies before reunions of separated families take place. (AP)

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

New Gore Energy Policy Will Help Families Purchase Energy-Efficient Cars, Trucks and Homes Energy-Efficient Cars and Trucks Will Help Consumers Save at the Pump

Al Gore for President,
June 28, 2000
http://www.algore2000.com/briefingroom/releases/pr_0628_OH_1.html

Columbus - June 28, 2000 - Al Gore today unveiled new energy policies that would help working families purchase more energy-efficient cars, trucks and homes. Gore would give families up to $6,000 to purchase more fuel-efficient cars and Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), along with other tax breaks for the purchase of energy-efficient pick-up trucks, 18-wheelers, building equipment and homes. These fuel-efficient vehicles will further reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, helping consumers save money at the pump.

"We can have a next-stage prosperity where you don't have to build your lives around a fuel source that is distant, uncertain and easily manipulated," said Gore. "We will demand and develop new technologies to free ourselves from gas-tank price-gouging, and we will sell those technologies to the world. We'll build a new generation of fuel-efficient vehicles -- and then make it easy for families to afford them."

Gore's energy policy is designed to stimulate economic growth, create new jobs and clean up the nation's air and water -- with no new taxes, no new bureaucracies, and no onerous regulations. Yesterday, Gore promoted incentives to help curtail brownouts, clean up aging power plants, and reduce the nation's dependence on unreliable foreign oil. Tomorrow, Gore will detail incentives for cities to establish more efficient methods of transportation.

Gore today unveiled policies to help working families purchase more energy-efficient cars, trucks and homes:

* CARS AND TRUCKS Gore's plan would give consumers a tax credit up to $6,000 for the purchase of more fuel-efficient cars or SUVs. These vehicles promise double or even triple gas mileage -- up to 80 miles per gallon -- without sacrificing size or performance. Gore's plan would also provide a tax credit up to $5,000 for the purchase of fuel efficient pick-ups or other trucks, and up to $15,000 for more fuel-efficient 18-wheelers. Gore led initiatives, such as the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) and the 21st Century truck initiative that helped create the market for new, more fuel-efficient cars and trucks.

* HOMES AND BUSINESSES To help families reduce their utility bills, Gore's plan would provide consumers with a tax credit up to $2,000 to purchase energy-efficient new homes or to upgrade the efficiency of their current homes. Although utility companies often charge a higher rate for cleaner sources of energy, Gore's plan would also ensure that families have a real choice by providing a tax credit that would partially reimburse consumers for purchasing cleaner energy. The plan would extend a 20 percent tax credit to businesses for the purchase of energy-efficient building equipment, including water heaters and natural gas heat pumps. In addition, Gore would expand the current 10 percent tax credit provided to homes or business that use solar energy to generate electricity or heat water.

* HOME WEATHERIZATION Gore's plan would help low-income families save money by helping them insulate their homes, with improvements such as installing insulation, upgrading heating and cooling systems, and eliminating air leaks. For every $1.00 invested, the Weatherization Assistance Program program returns $1.80 in energy savings.

* STATE AND LOCAL EFFORTS Gore's plan would provide additional resources to help state and local governments that have launched their own efforts to help families and businesses reduce energy use and cut energy bills. The plan would support users of natural gas, fuel oil and Liquid Propane Gas as well as users of electric energy.

* EMPOWERMENT ZONES Gore's plan would build on empowerment zone legislation by creating a competition to select 20 communities that develop a comprehensive plan to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, while stimulating economic growth and creating new jobs.

Since his time in the Senate, Gore has been recognized as a leader on energy policy and the environment. Along with Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, Gore led the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles that has helped spur new technologies such as hybrid electric and gas-powered engines. Gore launched the Administration's Livable Communities initiative that provides citizens and communities with tools to stimulate growth, ease congestion and clean up air and water supplies. Gore helped lead domestic and international efforts to combat global warming.

Gore unveiled his new consumer tax breaks at the site of a house -- under construction -- that will be an example of a first step toward more energy-efficient homes. Gore was joined for a tour by Eric Schottenstein, President of Joshua Homes, a company that builds all of its houses to be more energy-efficient. Houses are equipped with double pane thermal break vinyl windows, thermal break weather stripping on all exterior doors, and a foam sealer between the foundation and frame.
-------- imf / world bank

RALLY! RALLY! RALLY!
STOP THE WORLD BANK CHINA PROJECT IN TIBET

MONDAY, AUGUST 30TH 11:30 am - 3:30 pm
World Bank Building 1818 H STREET, NW WASHINGTON, DC

Featuring: Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, Members of Congress, representatives from the human rights and environmental movement, Tibetan music and dance, & much, much more!

On June 24th, the World Bank Board of Directors approved a $40 million loan to China to fund the resettlement of 58,000 Chinese farmers into Tulan County -- a traditional Tibetan and Mongolian area. The project promotes China's policy of colonization at the expense of ethnic minorities, and it also violates the Bank's own environmental and social policies. Join us on August 30th at the World Bank and make your voice heard in opposition to this project!

For more information contact: ICT in DC 202.785.1515 Milarepa in SF 415.553.8533 SFT in NY 212.594.5898 USTC in NY 212.481.3569

Sponsored by US Tibet Committee, Students for a Free Tibet, the Milarepa Fund, International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, Center for International Environmental Law, Friends of the Earth and the International Campaign for Tibet

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The following background information was written by the U.S. Tibet Committee. Please note that the coalition is working to create background information that reflects the views of the entire coalition and that the following information is being provided in lieu of coalition materials currently being drafted.

*U.S. Tibet Committee

*The World Bank: Undermining Tibet's Future Executive Directors Approve China's Westward Colonization

On June 24th, 1999, the World Bank Board of Directors approved a $160 million loan in support of China's Western Poverty Reduction Project. The project includes a loan to finance population transfer of 57,775 Chinese farmers onto fragile nomadic lands located within a so called 'Tibetan and Mongolian autonomous prefecture'.* Though ostensibly designed to alleviate poverty, the project promotes China's policy of colonization of Tibet, and violates the World Bank's own environmental and social policies. Afraid and unwilling to challenge China, its biggest client, the Board of Directors overruled American and German opposition and approved a flawed project. The approval of this project sends a clear signal that the World Bank does not respect its policies; it also means that the Bank is providing financial and institutional support to the Chinese government's population transfer, the greatest threat to the survival of the Tibetan people, and sets a dangerous precedent to all occupied territories:

Environmental groups, Tibet support groups, students, bank-watching organizations, musicians, politicians, grassroots activists and concerned citizens have joined Tibetans to challenge this project. The result of this alliance has been a torrent of opposition, including an enormous fax and e-mail campaign. A week before the vote, the International Campaign for Tibet (on behalf of local people) filed a claim to the Inspection Panel to investigate these policy violations and the associated harm - this claim is still pending.

Why are we so concerned about this project? The Bank claims the project will help the poor by decreasing population pressure in the "move-out" area, east of Tso-ngo-po (Kokonor Lake), and settling them in a sparsely populated "move-in" area, Tulan Dzong (Chinese call it Dulan county) south west of Tso-ngo-po, both in Amdo province of Tibet. But consider the following:

• The development plan for this project is unsustainable. The project aims to convert high altitude, fragile grazing pastures into intensive agricultural farmlands (similar projects within Tibet during the 1950's and 1960's resulted in massive famines and loss of life). This type of agriculture will rely heavily on intensive use of pesticides, two dams and extensive irrigation, and leveling the earth, which is likely to degenerate and erode the soil. According to the Environmental Assessment, the goal of the project is to completely alter the natural ecosystem.

• The new settlers will vastly outnumber the Tibetan and Mongolian communities (Further reducing the Tibetan population from 23% to 14%; and the Mongolian population from 14% to 7% ).

• People living in the project "move-in" area have stated that they fear violent ethnic confrontation, particularly since the project will intensify the competition over already-scarce resources. Letters smuggled out of the region by Tibetans state that if the project is implemented "...the World Bank will have participated in passing a death sentence to us here."

• Officials will increase police presence in the area 'for the people's protection'. This low-level militarization of the area will primarily serve to silence dissent rather than protect people.

• Bank monies will be used to build extensive infrastructure in the region, which will enable increased resource exploitation by the Chinese, increased migrants workers, increased control and assimilation of the area by China.

• Furthermore, this population transfer will have little impact on conditions in the move-out area. According to the World Bank's own figures, the population transfer will only marginally reduce the population density of the move-out area - - - from 114.3 to 109.3 people per square kilometer. Bank staff failed to account for the high immigration rate of mainland Chinese into the region and overlook the government's political agenda in the project.

The World Bank has policies that are supposed to minimize the environmental and social impacts of a project. If the Board approved the project, doesn't that mean it meets World Bank policies?

Unfortunately, no. The project was designed and approved without the adequate environmental and social analysis-violating several of the Bank's most important policies, including those on Environmental Assessment, Indigenous Peoples, Information Disclosure and Involuntary Resettlement. The Bank management's willingness to violate its own policies was exacerbated by intense political pressure from China, including threats of economic reprisals against opposing countries and withdrawal from the Bank. The World Bank has been guaranteed by China that "Prison labor will not be involved or benefit from this project." Why is this still an issue of concern?

Actions speak louder than words. The move-in area has a high concerntration of laogai ('reform-through labor' camps). The local economy depends heavily on prison labor, which is used extensively in land reclaimation, road construction, and grain processing. With the high likelihood of this project becoming entangled with the pervasive prison labor economy, it is disturbing that the World Bank and China have refused to publicly release two existing studies on prison labor in the project area.

If the World Bank refused to provide funding for this project, would the Chinese government continue to implement the project? If so shouldn't the Bank stay involved to try to improve the project?

"If" is a speculative expression for an uncertain future. The Bank will have absolutely no impact on what China will or will not do. It is presumptuous to believe that the Bank can influence China's behavior. The Bank should not finance a project that does not meet its standards, that is in violation of its policies and procedures, and that will cause irreversible harm to the Tibetan and Mongolian nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples living in the project area. Furthermore, financing this project provides an air of legitimacy the Chinese government's violent occupation of Tibet, giving an international seal-of-approval (and public monies) to China's illegal population transfer policy. The continued population transfer of ethnic Chinese into Tibetan territories is one of the greatest threats to the survival of the Tibetans, and has already made them a minority in many parts of their own land.

What does the campaign want?

The simple short answer is to stop the project from going forward. The Bank's business is alleviating poverty, not destroying a people and a culture or becomeing an agent for colonialism.

Isn't the only reason that this project has received so much attention because activists and Tibet sympathizers have interfered? If it weren't for them, wouldn't this be a routine approval process?

Yes, if Tibetans, Mongolians, and the international community hadn't raised objections to this project, then certainly the Board would have approved the project not knowing the management's policy violations and threats to the local people and environment. The Bank is unaccustomed to considering public input to their projects though they are funded by public monies and directly affect billions of people around the world.

---

Campaign Briefing
New York Times
June 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/062800campaign-briefing.html

THE CONVENTIONS

PROTEST PLANS MONITORED Some advance anxiety is on display in Philadelphia, five weeks before the Republican presidential convention, as organizers of a protest march voice suspicions that the police are tracking their plans and photographing them. Some groups have promised extensive protests and possible civil disobedience, while police officials have promised to keep the city orderly for the conventioneers. "The Secret Service, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and the Philadelphia police have all videotaped our news conferences," said Mike Morrill, an organizer of the Unity 2000 protest march planned for July 31, the eve of the convention. There is nothing illegal about that, but Mr. Morrill said the police were "doing lots of things to intimidate demonstrators in general." Police departments routinely gather intelligence in advance of demonstrations. But the Philadelphia American Civil Liberties Union said it would check to see that proper procedures were being followed. Francis X. Clines (NYT)

---

World Bank review attacks $40 million resettlement loan

Washington Times
June 28, 2000
By David Sands
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000628222647.htm

Critics yesterday seized on a damning internal World Bank report to argue that a planned $40 million loan to help resettle Chinese farmers into a remote region once claimed by Tibet should be permanently scuttled.

The World Bank review, leaked to several news organizations Monday, is the latest blow in a mounting public relations nightmare for the bank, which tentatively approved China's application a year ago over the objections of the United States, Germany and a number of pro-Tibet human rights organizations.

"If the World Bank had followed its own policies, the report shows, this loan never would have and never should have come to the board," said Kay Treakle, managing director of the Bank Information Center, a longtime opponent of the Tibet loan.

"What the report shows is that there are deeper problems about the World Bank's commitment to the social and environmental policies it says it wants to follow," she said.

"There are some projects that just can't be fixed, and this is one of them," said John Ackerly, president of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet.

According to the report, an internal audit concluded that the bank's loan officers seriously underestimated the disruption the program would bring to the environment and to the 4,000 Tibetan and Mongol herdsmen already living in the region.

In addition, project managers used inaccurate maps that omitted whole villages in evaluating what China calls the Western Poverty Reduction Project.

The $40 million loan is part of a larger $160 million bank-financed anti-poverty project undertaken by the Chinese government. Under the program, nearly 58,000 low-income ethnic Chinese farmers would be relocated to land in Qinghai province traditionally occupied by Tibetans, Mongolian herdsman and other ethnic minorities.

In addition to the resettlement program, the project would improve irrigation, roads, schools and dams in the resettled areas.

In approving the loan, the bank said it would boost the incomes of the relocated farmers, attract social services to the region and cause minimal disruption to the local inhabitants.

The controversy over the project has been so great that World Bank President James Wolfensohn has delayed disbursing any funds while a new series of impact studies are conducted. The new studies will keep the World Bank money in limbo for at least a year.

But the World Bank's executive board meets next month to consider the internal report and vote on whether to kill the loan altogether.

In Beijing yesterday, government officials showed no signs of backing down, saying critics of the loan were more interested in embarrassing China than they were in helping a few thousand herdsmen.

"Some people, out of ulterior motives, have created something from thin air, distorted facts and used this project to produce a work of fiction," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao told reporters yesterday.

"Preparatory work for this project was conducted strictly according to the various rules of China and the World Bank, including those on resettlement, environmental protection and social security," the Chinese official contended.

But the internal World Bank report directly challenged that assertion, saying loan officers had bent or broken internal policies in seven of the 10 criteria under review.

In particular, the review concluded, the bank did not consider other, less sensitive areas in China for the resettlement program.

Three outside specialists say they found many of the people now living in the region were afraid to express their concerns about the resettlement idea, which would rewrite the region's ethnic makeup.

"Those who opposed the project clearly felt threatened and asked that their identity be kept secret," according to a draft of the report obtained by Bloomberg News.

The question of China's control of Tibet is one of the most sensitive facing the Beijing government. The exiled Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, was born in the very land in Qinghai province targeted by the resettlement program.

The province, formerly known as Amdo, was annexed by China in the 18th century and renamed Qinghai. The territory lies just to the northeast of present-day Tibet, which China annexed in 1951.

Mr. Wolfensohn, who was in Paris when the first press reports of the internal review appeared, said Monday that the China loan was destined to be controversial, no matter what the World Bank did.

"Even an immaculate presentation, including details and commentary on the procedures, would never meet the requirements of those who oppose China's current stance on Tibet," he said at a Paris press conference.

• This article was based in part on wire service reports.

-------- puerto rico

129 Vieques Protesters Are Detained

New York Times
June 28, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/062800pr-vieques.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/425433.asp

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico -- Navy ships and warplanes bombarded Vieques Island's disputed training ground with dummy shells and bombs after more than 100 Puerto Rican activists were detained for sneaking under the base fence in a vain effort to stop military exercises.

The issue was expected to come up at a White House meeting Wednesday between President Clinton and the leaders of Puerto Rico's major political parties that originally was called to discuss the U.S. territory's ultimate status.

The military exercises have riveted this Spanish-speaking society of 4 million people. It remained unclear how long the training would continue. Recent Navy announcements suggested they could go on until Sunday. But unlike the past two days, no announcement designating danger zones was posted in Vieques on Tuesday night.

Exercises had stopped in April 1999 after two 500-pound bombs were dropped off target, killing a civilian security guard and sparking protests laced with anti-American sentiment.

Tuesday brought the first reported violent confrontation in 14 months of agitation. The Navy claimed fisherman lobbed 12-inch metal bars that injured two sailors at sea and that a video recording of the incident was turned over to the FBI. One of the fishermen, Yabureibo Zenon, flatly denied the charge.

On Tuesday, guards arrested 135 Independence Party demonstrators who invaded the bombing range, some cutting the chain-link fence, others simply lifting it up to crawl under.

"Go home, Yankees! This is our land!" Elba Diaz, a 43-year-old Vieques housewife, shouted at helicopters overhead that were scanning the area with search beacons.

Shelling from the ships was delayed for 45 minutes, starting at 8:45 a.m., the Navy said. Then fighter jets screamed overhead and thuds and booms could be heard, presumably from an aerial bombardment.

Protesters claimed some of their band might still be at large after the shelling started -- charges supported by the Navy's confirmation later that the Independence Party vice president Fernando Martin and five others were not arrested until about 4 p.m. Still, the group could have been far away from the actual target area, which occupies only the eastern tip of the almost 10-mile wide Navy area.

Vieques, where 9,400 people live, is the site of the Navy's prime Atlantic Fleet training ground. Activists committed to ousting the Navy say the bombing destroys fishing grounds and endangers residents. The Navy maintains the bombing is safe and provides crucial training.

The first fatality on the range in six decades of bombing united Puerto Ricans as never before to demand that the Navy leave the island. Dozens of protesters invaded the range and occupied it for about a year before being peacefully evicted last month.

The Navy insists the opposition is coming from a small minority of Puerto Ricans. It says Vieques is the only place its Atlantic Fleet can hold simultaneous land, air and sea exercises with live fire before deploying abroad.

Five months ago, President Clinton negotiated an agreement with the Puerto Rican government allowing the Navy to resume training using non-explosive ordnance. Clinton also promised a referendum, perhaps next year, in which Vieques residents would choose whether to evict the Navy or allow it to stay and resume live bombings.

Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Rossello said Tuesday the protesters' incursions on the range could endanger the referendum. "They are putting at risk what is clearly the only instrument available at this time for a final resolution of the situation of Vieques to the benefit of the people of Vieques," he said.

The dispute also has raised concerns about a deeper rift between the Caribbean territory and the United States -- colonizer to some, benefactor to others.

The protests "are endangering the relations between Puerto Rico and the United States, and therefore the welfare of all Puerto Ricans," The San Juan Star said in an editorial.

-------- russia

Russia Nuclear Chief Threatens N-Treaty Sanctions

Russia Today
06/28/00
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=173148

MOSCOW, Jun 28, 2000 -- (Reuters) The commander of Russia's strategic missile forces stepped up his rhetoric against U.S. plans to build a national missile shield on Tuesday by suggesting Russia might pull out of joint arms inspections.

The United States and Russia are at loggerheads over Washington's proposed nuclear umbrella which would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, seen as central to all other arms reduction pacts by Russian military strategists.

Colonel-General Vladimir Yakovlev wrote in the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta that any U.S. breach of the ABM treaty would "cause problems for them".

"First and foremost it could lead to the tearing up of all treaties and the (Russian) withdrawal from joint inspections of nuclear weapons. Isn't it useful for the Americans to know what's going on here?" he said.

Yakovlev is Russia's top strategic arms general, but decisions on treaties have to be taken by politicians and any such move would have to be authorized by President Vladimir Putin.

His comments also come at a time when the military budget has been stretched by the war in Chechnya, a conflict that relies solely on conventional weapons.

The general had already weighed into the debate last week by saying Russia might react by pulling out of a Soviet-era agreement eliminating medium-range missiles, comments which earned him front-page exposure in some Russian papers.

In his article in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Yakovlev said: "The answer to a new American anti-ballistic missile system could range from changing the military purpose of silo-based and mobile Topol and Topol-M systems, right up to a return to outlawed but highly effective missile complexes."

He was referring to ideas of reviving aging Topol missiles and redesigning the new Topol-M missile to carry three warheads, as opposed to one, making it much harder to shoot down by systems such as the proposed U.S. missile defense.

U.S President Bill Clinton is due to decide on whether or not to build the National Missile Defense later this summer, after a prototype test.

Putin and Clinton agreed at a summit earlier this month to continue talks on the issue. A proposal by Putin to create an alternative joint system to knock down missiles immediately after launch has fallen on deaf ears in Washington.

Interfax news agency said Russian and U.S. arms experts were due to hold talks on ABM and the proposed START-3 arms reduction pact in Moscow later this week.

---

Russian Plans on Treaty Unclear

Associated Press
June 28, 2000 Filed at 12:17 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-US.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- The United States still has no clear idea of the proposed Russian alternative to its national missile defense plans, weeks after President Vladimir Putin announced it, a top U.S. defense official said Wednesday after talks with Russian military officials.

Russia strongly opposes American proposals to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty so it can develop a limited national missile defense system. In early June, Putin proposed an alternate plan that he claims wouldn't break the treaty.

But details of the plan haven't been released, and Russian officials said little new about the proposal during three days of talks with American defense officials in Moscow this week, said Edward Warner III, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction.

``The Russians were asked some questions and were willing to understand some of the issues,'' Warner told The Associated Press. ``But they did not provide us with any information about the systems that they have under development.''

Warner was in Moscow for a meeting of the Defense Consultative Group, which consists of defense officials from both countries.

Moscow says the U.S. missile defense plan is a threat to its security because it could be expanded to defeat a Russian missile attack, making Russia's nuclear arsenal useless. The United States insists that is not the case, saying the defense aims to stop missile attacks by small states with nuclear potential such as Iran and North Korea. Putin has warned that Moscow will pull out of all nuclear arms agreements if the ABM treaty is breached.

Warner said the Russian side in the talks, led by Gen. Valery Manilov, first deputy chief of the Russian General Staff, showed no sign of changing its adamant opposition toward modifying the ABM treaty.

``There certainly was no breakthrough this time,'' Warner said. ``They don't want to open the door to any missile defense beyond the very geographically limited system permitted under the current treaty.''

Officials have said Putin's proposed alternative would use a so-called boost-phase defense, in which interceptor missiles would destroy enemy nuclear missiles just after launch. That differs from the American system, which would destroy warheads in space or as they descend.

The Russians have not said whether their plan involves boost-phase defense. Some analysts have said Russia's plan is poorly developed and may be more of a political bargaining tool than a legitimate defense strategy.

Warner said the two sides discussed boost-phase defense alternatives, but the Americans made clear the opposition such a plan would face at home. The U.S. defense proposal calls for the initial phase to be ready by 2005, and American officials say boost-phase defense isn't yet technically feasible.

``There was the problem of the timeliness by which one could have this capability,'' Warner said. ``Certainly the current strong movement of the Congress and the plans the administration has been developing have been all premised on the fact that you need to have an operational system by roughly 2005.''

Still, Warner said the two sides agreed on further cooperation, including plans for joint peacekeeper training and reciprocal military visits. The two will also resume a training program to protect jointly deployed troops against nuclear missile attacks, known as theater missile defense.

Russia had been cooperating with NATO in military exercises until early 1999, when Moscow froze virtually all ties with the U.S.-led alliance after it began its air campaign in Yugoslavia. Russia resumed relations with NATO earlier this year.

---

Raytheon Says Settles Discrimination Suit

Reuters
June 28, 2000 Filed at 9:40 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-raytheo.html

BOSTON (Reuters) - Defense contractor Raytheon Co. (RTNa.N) said on Wednesday it settled a discrimination suit brought by three women employees after a federal agency and an arbitrator both found they were passed over for higher-paying jobs.

``The matter has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties,'' said Raytheon spokesman David Polk, who declined further comment.

The Boston Globe reported that the company had earlier denied wrongdoing in the case, but agreed to settle when the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and an arbitrator found Raytheon violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

According to the Globe, an arbitrator awarded the three women $870,000. Raytheon sought to have the award overturned, but a federal judge ruled in favor of the women, the Globe said.

The case involved work on a contract to dismantle old Soviet bombers and missiles. The work was to be done in Moscow, and the three women were passed over for higher-paying positions there, while all nine men in the same unit were sent to Moscow or transferred to other jobs, the Globe said.

The Globe said the three women had withdrawn their complaint before the EEOC.

---

Su-24M bomber crashes at military airfield.

Itar-Tass
June 28, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=v0627013.5ts&level3=788&date=20000628

MOSCOW, June 27 (Itar-Tass) via NewsEdge Corporation - A Su-24M bomber has crashed at a military airfield of the Voronezh garrison during the landing. The pilots managed to get catapulted, a spokesman for the Russian Defence Ministry told Tass.

The incident took place at 19.35 on Monday. The pilots made a gross mistake during the landing of the plane after a training mission. The plane landed off the runway and caught fire.

The fire was put out. No casualties or destruction in the area of the plane crash were reported. The case is being investigated.

-------- spying

Spy panel director who killed himself was under a probe

Washington Times
June 28, 2000
By Bill Gertz
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000628221310.htm

The staff director of the House Intelligence Committee who killed himself June 4 was under investigation by the committee, which oversees the U.S. government's most sensitive secrets, The Washington Times has learned.

John Millis, 47, a former CIA operations officer who had been placed on administrative leave by the committee, was found dead at the Breezeway Motel in Fairfax City, Va., Police Chief Doug Scott said. Police ruled he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

As committee staff director, Mr. Millis had access to the U.S. intelligence community's most intimate secrets. He knew about all U.S. covert action operations, which require written presidential notifications.

He also was privy to the most sensitive information collected by CIA agents, electronic eavesdropping and photographic satellites.

According to police, Mr. Millis had called a friend and said he was distraught over being placed on administrative leave with pay by committee Chairman Rep. Porter J. Goss, Florida Republican. Mr. Millis also said he was facing administrative and criminal penalties as possible outcomes of the investigation.

The friend then dialed *69, the automatic call-back sequence, and was connected to the Breezeway Motel in Fairfax. The friend explained to the motel operator that Mr. Millis was threatening to commit suicide.

Police were called and upon arriving found Mr. Millis dead in the bathroom.

Mr. Goss could not be reached for comment. The committee's staff and Mr. Goss' spokeswoman did not return several telephone calls seeking comment on the circumstances surrounding Mr. Millis' departure from the committee.

However, several U.S. government officials said Mr. Millis was fired and that the investigation was related to improper activities by him.

Chief Scott said the investigation into his death was handled with extreme care in light of the case of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr., whose shooting death in 1993 was ruled a suicide. The investigation into Mr. Foster's death, however, left many unanswered questions and spawned conspiracy . Chief Scott said the detective who investigated Mr. Millis' death made sure there were no unanswered questions that might indicate a conspiracy, because of his CIA background and role as the committee staff director.

"Our detective knew that going in," Chief Scott said. "That's why he was very careful in processing the scene and checking for anything that might be suspicious."

After Mr. Millis was found dead, FBI agents and Capitol Police were sent to the motel to look for classified documents, but found none. Security officials, however, recovered classified documents from a safe in Mr. Millis' home.

An FBI spokesman said the FBI was not investigating Mr. Millis for unauthorized disclosures.

Mr. Goss said in a statement at the time of Mr. Millis' death that he was stunned by the loss.

"It seems that there are always more 'whys' than there are answers when a tragedy like this occurs," Mr. Goss said. "It also seems that words alone are insufficient to alleviate the enormous pain we feel. John will be greatly missed by members and staff alike."

The statement made no mention that Mr. Millis was under investigation.

CIA Director George J. Tenet said in a statement that "we in the intelligence community are shocked and saddened by this tragic loss. We worked closely with John for many years. He was a tenacious advocate for a strong national intelligence capability."

Mr. Millis had publicly criticized former CIA Director John Deutch, calling him the worst director in the agency's history. During a speech at the Smithsonian Institution Feb. 15, Mr. Millis said Mr. Deutch inflicted "major damage" to the CIA's espionage branch.

The criticism prompted some officials to speculate that Mr. Millis may have improperly disclosed information about an investigation of Mr. Deutch by the CIA's inspector general.

---

Xinhua's Va. Move Blocked

Washington Post
Wednesday, June 28, 2000; Page A04
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Compiled from reports by Helen Dewar, the Associated Press and Reuters
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-06/28/110l-062800-idx.html

The United States has told the Chinese news agency Xinhua not to move into a new building it has bought near the Pentagon unless the State Department approves the sale retroactively, a spokesman said.

The State Department says the government news agency bought the building in violation of the 1982 Foreign Missions Act, which requires foreign governments to obtain advance approval for any real estate purchases or leases in the United States.

Members of Congress said they were worried that the Chinese might use Xinhua personnel to spy on the Pentagon, the Defense Department's headquarters in Virginia, directly across the Potomac River from Washington.

---

Oracle-Microsoft Flap Highlights Espionage Threat

Reuters
June 28, 2000 Filed at 7:27 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-microsoft-spying.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The disclosure that Oracle Corp. hired a private detective agency to investigate groups that support rival software giant Microsoft Corp. has drawn renewed attention to boardroom spy tricks that can range from office-bugging to sex traps.

The private-eye tactics used in the software industry intrigue disclosed Tuesday underlined the high-stakes corporate competition that can in some cases boil over into plots befitting a corporate James Bond.

R. James Woolsey, President Clinton's first CIA chief, said the biggest spy threat to U.S. corporations came not from one another but from foreign intelligence organizations working on behalf of their countries' companies.

``Whether it's using sex or stealing briefcases while you're out at dinner,'' U.S. business people, particularly those in high technology with military applications, were often targets when traveling abroad, he said in a telephone interview.

But the flap pitting Oracle against Microsoft cast light on the bitterness dividing the corporate titans vying for dominance of the multibillion-dollar global software market. Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison has long been a bitter critic of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Microsoft's competitive tactics.

Oracle, the world's second biggest software maker, acknowledged it had hired a detective firm to investigate groups sympathetic to Microsoft, the industry leader.

The detective agency, the Investigative Group International (IGI), allegedly offered janitors cash for trash from the Washington office of one of the pro-Microsoft trade groups, the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT).

Microsoft condemned Oracle's involvement in hiring IGI. An ACT spokeswoman, Allison May Rosen, said on Wednesday that her organization was mulling legal action against both the detective firm and Oracle for alleged dirty tricks.

Jeffrey Zuck, president of the association, said he was ''shocked and saddened'' by the purported $1,200 offered to a cleaning crew on June 6, the second such alleged undercover effort in Washington to gather documents that might embarrass Microsoft.

Oracle said it had been seeking to uncover links between Microsoft and the groups during Microsoft's landmark antitrust battle with the government.

``Left undisclosed, these Microsoft front groups could have improperly influenced the outcome of one of the most important antitrust cases in U.S. history,'' Oracle said in a statement.

The company -- named after a CIA project that was its first commercial contract -- said it had no knowledge of any illegal activities by its contractor. It said it had ordered IGI to stick to the law.

SEX TRAPS

IGI founder Terry Lenzner, once hired by Clinton as part of his response to the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, said that his work for Oracle was carried out in ``strict accordance'' with professional ethics and the law.

``Dumpster diving'' may not break any U.S. law, but it is just one tactic that may be used by firms -- or foreign intelligence agencies -- to gather competitive intelligence on rivals or steal their secrets.

Sex is an old standby, according to investigators. Just this week, the General Accounting Office, the audit arm of Congress, highlighted the use of the tactic to win over U.S. nuclear scientists, even in countries deemed non-threatening to the United States.

One U.S. scientist admitted to ``extensive sexual contact with women from the host country and another 'sensitive' country while on foreign travel,'' the report said. ``This included a prostitute, a waitress and two female employees at the facility where he was visiting.''

E.C. (Mike) Ackerman, a retired CIA operative and president of Ackerman Group, a Miami firm that helps Fortune 100 companies on security issues, said he dealt only in teaching companies to defend their business secrets, ``not the other side of the equation.''

``I think you draw the line at using transmitters, at using bugs, at compromising people'' to steal secrets, he said.

David Keyes, who oversaw about 700 FBI computer crime investigations in 1997 and 1998, said the greatest threat to corporate secrets was the disgruntled insider. Some may be capable of installing an electronic ``trapdoor'' in a computer network to boost a competitor.

``Corporations that do not pay attention to their network security are very vulnerable to these kinds of attacks,'' said Keyes, now a consultant to government and industry with KPMG, the accounting and professional services firm.

-------- terrorism

French Hold Suspected Terrorist Tied to bin Laden

New York Times
June 28, 2000
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/france-terror.html

PARIS, June 27 -- The police here have detained an accused terrorist who is linked to the network of Osama bin Laden and to an Islamic fundamentalist cell in Canada that plotted to bomb American buildings, an investigator said.

The suspect, Abdelssalem Boulanouar, a 34-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origin, was arrested when he arrived on Saturday after being deported from the Philippines, where he had served a six-month sentence for possession of explosives, according to an investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He is believed to have close ties to Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian arrested in December at the border with Canada with bomb material in his car. Mr. Ressam, whose trial is to begin in July in the state of Washington, is accused of plotting to blow up American buildings and faces up to 130 years in prison.

The two men are part of a group led by Fateh Kamel, an Algerian veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, that kept apartments in both France and Montreal, the investigator said. Three years ago, they raised money through armed robberies in northern France and planned to bomb a meeting of the Group of 7 industrialized nations. The French police learned their names from personal phone books found in raids, but much of the group scattered.

Mr. Boulanouar apparently went to the Philippines, where he has links to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which is fighting to create an Islamic state there and is thought to be behind a spate of bombings. Mr. bin Laden, the Saudi-born millionaire suspected of masterminding the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, is thought to pay for the training camps used by the Moro Front and its rival, the Abu Sayyaf group. The latter is now holding about 20 foreign hostages.

Under French law, proof that Mr. Boulanouar was a member of a terrorist cell could be enough to jail him for 10 years, the source said. The French police do not believe that he is a suspect in the Kenya and Tanzania bombings or in the plot to bomb American buildings.

-------- us military

Marines: Osprey Has Deficiencies

Associated Press
June 28, 2000
By ROBERT BURNS AP Military Writer
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=h0627175.701&level3=788&date=20000628

WASHINGTON (AP) via NewsEdge Corporation - The Marine Corps on Tuesday acknowledged 23 ``deficiencies'' in its MV-22 Osprey, but said it is confident they can be fixed before the Pentagon decides whether to enter full-scale production of the hybrid aircraft.

The shortcomings were publicly identified last year and the Navy's director of air warfare granted waivers to allow the Osprey to enter a phase of development called operational evaluation before the corrections were made, Marine spokeswoman Capt. Aisha M. Bakkar-Poe said.

``None (of the deficiencies) are anything that would have any effect at all on the combat effectiveness of the aircraft,'' she said.

A decision on whether to enter full-scale production of the Osprey is scheduled for late this year. The Marines hope to field their first squadron of Ospreys in 2001.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the 23 deficiencies are cited in a draft of a Pentagon inspector general report. Bacon said he discussed the issue Tuesday with the head of Marine Corps aviation, Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, who told Bacon that none of the 23 problems are safety issues.

McCorkle also said there is no connection between the deficiencies and the April 8 Osprey crash that killed 19 Marines. That accident investigation is not finished, but it is expected to cite pilot error rather than mechanical failure.

The Osprey crashed while participating in a simulated rescue operation as part of an evaluation of the aircraft's effectiveness in Marine Corps missions. That evaluation has resumed and is expected to be completed this summer, Bacon said. Afterward the decision will be made on entering full-scale production.

Among the deficiencies cited by the Pentagon's inspector general is the absence of defensive weapons on the Osprey, Bacon said. He said the Marines are installing defensive weapons on it but are behind schedule because Congress withheld money for that work.

Another problem: it takes too long to fold up the Osprey's wings after landing on a carrier. That and all the other shortcomings are being addressed, Bacon said.

The Pentagon declined to release the inspector general's report because it is not yet complete. Bakkar-Poe, the Marine spokeswoman, said the final report is expected by late July.

Critics question whether the Osprey is safe and worth the $36 billion price tag. The Marines consider it crucial to their future because it is intended to replace their aging fleet of troop-carrying helicopters.

The Osprey, which takes off and lands like a helicopter but flies like an airplane, is manufactured by Boeing Co. and Bell Helicopters Textron. The Marines plan to buy 360 Ospreys, the Navy 48 and the Air Force 50.

---

Boeing Demonstrates Ways to Reduce Joint Strike Fighter Maintenance, Life-Cycle Costs

PRNewswire via NewsEdge Corporation
June 28, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=p0628131.201&level3=27715&date=20000629

ST. LOUIS, - Boeing last week demonstrated its Joint Strike Fighter autonomic logistics system and key enabling technologies, verifying how they will significantly reduce the aircraft's life-cycle costs.

The four days of demonstrations and technical briefings, for government officials, spanned all elements of the Boeing autonomic logistics system. These include training; mission planning; prognostics and health management, or PHM; the Joint Distributed Information System, or JDIS; the supply chain management concept; and integrated product data management system.

"The Boeing autonomic logistics system will significantly reduce scheduled maintenance and reduce the manpower required to operate and sustain the JSF over its service life," said Dean Hooks, Boeing JSF PHM and JDIS manager. "We demonstrated how our autonomic logistics technologies have been integrated into the weapon system and how they will reduce JSF life-cycle costs by more than 30 percent over legacy systems."

Boeing previously demonstrated a number of its autonomic logistics technologies to government officials in August 1999.

In one of the demonstrations, Boeing simulated how a network of computers and aircraft sensors on board the JSF would trigger an autonomic response to a pending maintenance action. If a failure occurs or is predicted to occur, the Joint Distributed Information System facilitates a series of actions to provide the right maintainer the right repair information and the right replacement part. Human interaction is minimized as data flows from the air vehicle through the maintenance infrastructure and ultimately to the Boeing JSF One Team supplier community.

"Autonomic logistics will make JSF parts deliverable anywhere in the U.S. or U.K. in 24 hours, or worldwide within 48 hours," Hooks said. "Our system will ensure JSF customers have planes ready to fly when required and are not grounded awaiting maintenance or parts."

Another Boeing demonstration showed how training can be done effectively in a virtual environment, significantly reducing the amount of time it takes to train JSF maintainers.

"We successfully demonstrated how using the virtual environment, in lieu of traditional hardware mockups, can lead to equivalent training at drastically reduced development cost," said Dixie Mays, Boeing JSF Training Systems manager. "Using engineering 3-D data throughout our autonomic logistics system for training courseware, as well as interactive electronic technical data, leads to a weapon system that is easy to keep concurrent with the air vehicle design. The military services will no longer suffer from the traditional time lags where they are waiting for their maintenance and technical data to catch up with the air vehicle design."

The Boeing JSF autonomic logistics technologies leverage commercial-off-the-shelf hardware and software. They also build on the Boeing JSF One Team's full range of military and commercial expertise, including the 777 aircraft's proven autonomic logistics capabilities.

"Reducing logistics operations and support costs is a necessity," Hooks said. "These demonstrations showed that we have reduced risk and are ready to move into the next phase of the program."

SOURCE The Boeing Company
CONTACT: Chick Ramey of The Boeing Company, 206-662-0949
Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/109119.html or fax, 800-758-5804, ext. 109119
Web site: http://www.boeing.com (BA)

---

Two Sanders Engineers Receive Lockheed Martin Nova Awards

Business Wire via NewsEdge Corporation
June 28, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=b0627110.100&level3=27715&date=20000628

NASHUA, N.H. - Gregory Griffin and William Dobbs, senior principal systems engineers for Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Company, have each received Lockheed Martin's 2000 NOVA award, the Corporation's highest recognition for individual or team achievements. The sixth annual award ceremony was held Friday, June 23 at the National Air & Space Museum, Washington, D.C.

The NOVA award program was established in 1995, upon Lockheed Martin's formation, to honor 50 individuals and teams across the Corporation who have made outstanding contributions to Lockheed Martin's mission and business objectives. Awards are made annually in four categories - Exceptional Service, Leadership, Teamwork, and Technical Excellence.

"The NOVA award honorees represent an extraordinary level of individual and collective achievement that earns customer satisfaction, builds shareholder value and enhances Lockheed Martin's reputation," said Robert B. Coutts, executive vice president of the Lockheed Martin Systems Integration business area, of which Sanders is part. "These talented people are what sets Lockheed Martin apart from its competitors and enables our Corporation to grow as we successfully take on some of the world's most complex technical challenges."

Griffin, who received a Technical Excellence award, was honored for his work on the high-priority, fast direction-finding function for the U.S. Air Force's F-22 program. He led the development of an innovative approach to improve the F-22 electronic warfare radio frequency subsystem's performance against several emitters.

Griffin, who joined Sanders in 1997, received a bachelor's degree in electrical science and systems engineering from Southern Illinois University, and a master's degree in electrical engineering from Syracuse University. He resides in Bedford, N.H., with his wife Joni and their two children.

William Dobbs was a member of the 25-person team that received a NOVA Teamwork award for supporting the U.S. Navy's CVN 77 program. Dobbs was the sensors team lead for the eight-month concept development and proposal effort. His team was responsible for selecting state of the art sensor systems and exploring the best approach to integrate both topside and below deck components into the integrated warfare system for the Navy's CVN 77 transition ship.

Dobbs, who resides in Merrimack, N.H., with his wife Anita, joined Sanders in 1969. He received both a bachelor's degree and master's degree in physics from Texas A&I University, today known as Texas A&M University-Kingsville.

The NOVA award derives its name from the Latin word for "new," and its astronomical definition as "a stellar outburst of creative power," with the star motif building on the Lockheed Martin symbol. The NOVA awards program recognizes those "stars" who contribute their own creativity to the overall success of Lockheed Martin.

Sanders is an operating company of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, and a major producer of aircraft self-protection systems and tactical surveillance and intelligence systems for all branches of the armed forces. Other major business areas include microwave, mission and space electronics; infrared imaging; and automated mission planning systems. Lockheed Martin, headquartered in Bethesda, Md., is a global enterprise principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced-technology systems, products and services. The Corporation's core businesses are systems integration, space, aeronautics, and technology services.

---

To boost recruiting, Army is switching ad agencies

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Wednesday, June 28, 2000
News from around the nation
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/natn2812.shtml

The Army hired a new advertising agency yesterday in hope of improving its pitch to potential recruits. Leo Burnett Worldwide Inc., based in Chicago, will work with two minority partners: Cartel Creativo, which specializes in Hispanic advertising, and Images USA, which specializes in marketing to blacks.

The Army is about 30 percent black and about 8 percent Hispanic.

The contract, expected to be worth about $95 million a year, is structured so that Leo Burnett's compensation is tied to the Army's success in meeting recruiting goals. So far this year, the Army is running about 3,600 enlistees short of its goal of 80,000 recruits for the year, Army Secretary Louis Caldera said.

Asked why the Army is dropping its current advertising agency, Young & Rubicam Inc. of New York, which has held the account for 12 years, Caldera said, "We wanted to do business in a different way."

Young & Rubicam did not compete for the new contract.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Marines say Osprey has 23 non-safety defects

The Marine Corps yesterday acknowledged 23 "deficiencies" in its MV-22 Osprey, but said it is confident they can be fixed before the Pentagon decides whether to enter full-scale production of the hybrid aircraft. The shortcomings were publicly identified last year, and the Navy's director of air warfare granted waivers to allow the Osprey to enter a phase of development called operational evaluation before the corrections were made, a Marine spokeswoman, Capt. Aisha Bakkar-Poe, said.

A decision on whether to enter full-scale production of the Osprey is scheduled for late this year. The Marines hope to field their first squadron of Ospreys in 2001.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the 23 deficiencies are cited in a draft of a Pentagon inspector general report. Bacon said the head of Marine Corps aviation, Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, told him yesterday that none of the 23 problems involved safety.

McCorkle also said there is no connection between the deficiencies and the April 8 Osprey crash that killed 19 Marines. That accident investigation is not finished, but it is expected to cite pilot error rather than mechanical failure.

-------- us politics

Clinton Says Gore Should Not Suffer for 'Bogus' Scandals

New York Times
June 28, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/28cnd-clinton.html

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton said Wednesday he has been saddled with "bogus" scandals and that Vice President Al Gore should not suffer for them in his own campaign for the White House.

He said Gore himself has been implicated only in "this campaign finance thing," over Democratic fund-raising excesses in 1996. A top Justice Department investigator has recommended that Attorney General Janet Reno appoint a special counsel to pursue the matter.

On that issue, Clinton told a White House news conference, "I think the best thing is for the American people to make their own decision." Reno has rejected earlier recommendations that she seek an independent investigation and has not acted on this latest one.

While GOP Gov. George W. Bush of Texas leading Gore in the public opinion polls, Clinton said the surveys are volatile because "people are still trying to figure out what they're going to do."

Clinton said Gore is the candidate best qualified to be president. "He's right on the issues" and on economic policy, and has the experience for the job.

On other questions, Clinton:

--Said he would be inclined to sign a bill to permit food and drug sales to Cuba if he is persuaded it will work and will not intrude on other policy aims. But he said he would not support the easing now of broader trade sanctions against Fidel Castro's regime.

--Said the oil industry has to know "we're running a serious investigation" into soaring gasoline prices. He noted pump prices have dropped by about 8 cents a gallon since the Federal Trade Commission inquiry was ordered.

"We need a long term energy policy" to avoid recurring price spikes in the future, the president said.

--Said that "inherently there's nothing wrong" with suspending all of part of the federal gasoline tax to ease prices, but that Congress would then have to deal with the impact of lost revenues on highway construction projects.

--Laughed at what he called a loser of a question for him, whether Bush has the intelligence to serve as president. He said intelligence, experience and curiosity all are qualities a president needs. He did not judge Bush on them.

"I think what you know counts because I think the more you know the better position you're in not only to draw your own conclusions but to take advice," Clinton said.

--Repeated that the administration upheld the rule of law in the Elian Gonzalez case, as the Cuban boat boy's father prepared to take him home, the way finally cleared Wednesday by the Supreme Court. "Do I with it had unfolded in less dramatic less traumatic ways for all concerned," he said of the seven-month case. "Of course I do."

---

Gore says ruling makes election crucial

USA Today
06/28/00- Updated 01:27 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/e98/e2193.htm

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Vice President Al Gore said the ''razor-thin'' majority in Wednesday's Supreme Court decision affirming abortion rights shows what is at stake for women in the presidential election.

Gore, the Democratic presidential candidate, pointed to the 5-4 decision and said his Republican opponent, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, opposes abortion rights.

''Now here's the point: The next president will nominate at least three and probably four - perhaps four - justices to the Supreme Court. One extra vote on the wrong side of those two issues would change the outcome and a woman's right to choose would be taken away,'' Gore said.

''Since Governor Bush has said that his models for future nominations would be Justices (Antonin) Scalia and (Clarence) Thomas, it is obvious that he intends if he ever gets the chance to try to change the court's opinion on a woman's right to choose.''

November's ballot, Gore continued, will not only decide the presidency and congressional races but also ''the future of the Supreme Court, and that, in turn, will decide whether or not we keep a woman's right to choose or see it taken away.''

Justices Thomas and Scalia were among the dissenters on the 5-4 decision striking down Nebraska's so-called ''partial-birth abortion'' ban, and also on a 6-3 decision giving states greater leeway to restrict anti-abortion demonstrations outside health clinics.

Gore said his ''models'' are Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, two who supported the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

The vice president was in Ohio to make energy proposals at a campaign stop, saying consumers would get tax credits of up to $6,000 for buying electric cars and $2,000 for energy-efficient new homes.

He outlined his proposals, which would cost more than $48 billion over 10 years if approved by Congress, at a home featuring new energy-saving technologies.

''The best innovations are of little use if they are stuck in a lab - unaffordable and unattainable to you, your family or your business,'' Gore said in remarks prepared for his appearance.

In addition to tax credits for energy-efficient homes, cars and sport utility vehicles, Gore was proposing: _Credits of between $4,000 and $15,000 for the purchase of qualifying pickups, delivery trucks and 18-wheelers. _Doubling to 20% the investment tax credit for solar water heating systems and rooftop solar panels. _A $1,000 tax credit for homeowners to retrofit existing heating, cooling and hot-water systems. _Increased help to low-income families to ''weatherize'' their homes. In Philadelphia on Tuesday, Gore promoted a 10-year, $75 billion package of tax incentives for businesses and entrepreneurs to develop and use fuel-efficient, nonpolluting technologies. Pennsylvania and Ohio are two of the handful of states targeted by both Gore and Republican George W. Bush for the November presidential election. As Republican lawmakers were criticizing the Clinton-Gore administration in Washington for not doing more to bring down gasoline prices, Gore framed his energy proposals as a way ''to make sure Americans will be free forever from the dominance of big oil and foreign oil.'' At a Democratic Party fund-raiser late Tuesday, Gore suggested that today's sticker shock at the pump recalled the oil crisis of 1979-80. ''We're going through an echo of that now, but it's nothing compared to what it was then,'' Gore said. In a round of satellite interviews with Midwest TV stations, Gore tried to place blame with Bush. ''My opponent comes out of the oil industry. His experience is as an oil company executive and he (once) called for higher oil prices to boost the oil company profits,'' Gore said. Bush, for his part, tried to turn the spotlight back on President Clinton and Gore. ''The vice president seems to forget who's been in office for seven years ... and the price of gas has risen steadily since they've been in office,'' the Texas governor said in Michigan. As alternatives to crude oil, Bush promoted natural gas and increased domestic exploration. He also said that as president he would ''work with my friends'' in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to persuade them to increase production.

---

THE VICE PRESIDENT
Gore Unveils $125 Billion Energy Plan

New York Times
June 28, 2000
By FRANK BRUNI
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/062800wh-gore.html

PHILADELPHIA, June 27 -- Offering a sweeping vision of a future in which pollution is conquered and cars run without a "drop of oil or gasoline," Vice President Al Gore today proposed tax breaks and other incentives for both reducing America's dependence on oil and cleaning up the environment.

And he made clear that he wanted to claim these issues in the presidential election not only with his soaring oratory but with the amount of money -- more than $125 billion over 10 years -- that he was willing to devote to them.

The plans that the vice president outlined today -- mostly various forms of tax breaks for businesses that provided or invested in more efficient, less conventional or less polluting sources of energy -- represented an estimated $75 billion in lost federal tax revenue or spending over 10 years, aides said. But they said that the additional proposals that Mr. Gore was expected to make on Wednesday and Thursday would bring that figure up to more than $125 billion.

Mr. Gore framed that investment as both an opportunity and an obligation created by the country's current period of extraordinary prosperity.

"There can be a next stage of prosperity in which American creativity builds not just a better product but also a healthier planet," Mr. Gore said outside an energy plant here that was a model for the use of newer, cleaner, more efficient technology.

"We will say to the nation's inventors and entrepreneurs: if you invest in these new technologies, America will invest in you," Mr. Gore continued. "And we will prove, once and for all, that we can clean up pollution, make our power systems more efficient and more reliable, and move away from dependence on others all with no new taxes, no new bureaucracies, and no onerous regulations."

While economists and business executives often worry that more clean-air efforts and stringent environmental regulations would hamper industry and limit the creation of new jobs, Mr. Gore's approach emphasized the carrot of tax savings rather than the stick of restrictions, and it anticipated the growth of new companies and new jobs on the cutting edge of fuel technology.

But Mr. Gore's pitch was more than just an exhortation for a cleaner environment. It also reflected the sudden emergence of high gasoline prices as a potent issue in the 2000 presidential elections. Republicans have assailed the Clinton administration for an energy policy that they say has left the country too vulnerable to the whims of foreign oil producers.

Mr. Gore even folded into his speech a call for the Federal Trade Commission's investigation into possible price-gouging by the oil industry to include public hearings, possibly with testimony from consumers.

Earlier this month, when Mr. Gore embarked on what he called a "prosperity and progress" tour, he said he would spend this week talking about environmental policy. But since then, gas prices have become an increasingly heated point of contention between Republicans and Democrats, and today, the word energy accompanied and even preceded the word environment in the headlines atop the written remarks and policy summaries that Mr. Gore's aides distributed to reporters.

And Mr. Gore frequently alluded in his 26-minute address to the problems of American dependence on "big oil," a phrase undoubtedly meant as a dig against his Republican rival, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, a former oil company executive.

Democrats have said that Mr. Bush's former professional ties and the enormous sums of campaign money he has received from oil companies would make him unwilling to press for lower prices at the gas pump.

In any case, Mr. Gore said in his speech, "Our next-stage prosperity must be built on our ability to make sure Americans will be free forever from the dominance of big oil and foreign oil."

Mr. Gore said that America today stood "on a new frontier of energy independence and environmental protection" and should not fail to explore it. "It is an old, timid way of thinking to build our lives and livelihoods around a fuel source that is distant, uncertain and easily manipulated," he said. "It is a new, bold way of thinking to demand and develop new technologies to free ourselves from gas-tank price-gouging."

Later, in a satellite interview with an ABC affiliate in Green Bay, Wis., Mr. Gore attacked Mr. Bush more directly.

"I have never been afraid to take on big oil," Mr. Gore said. But, the vice president added, "My opponent comes out of the oil industry. His experience is as an oil company executive. He called for higher oil prices to boost the oil companies' profits."

Officials with the Bush campaign noted that Mr. Bush had endorsed the Federal Trade Commission's investigation into oil companies and said that Mr. Gore was merely trying to deflect attention from the Clinton administration's responsibility for gas prices that have risen as much as 50 cents a gallon in some areas of the Midwest. Mr. Gore, as it happens, will be taking his new energy message to that region over the next few days.

Mr. Bush's aides further said that what Mr. Gore unveiled today was really a set of environmental proposals, none of them especially visionary, that were recast and reconfigured to sound like an energy plan because the political landscape had changed so quickly.

"The vice president seems to forget who's been in office for seven years," Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Michigan this afternoon. "This is an administration that's been in charge and the price of gasoline has risen steadily."

The plan that Mr. Gore began to outline today centered on an unspecified "menu of financial mechanisms," as material distributed by his aides called it, of tax incentives, loans, grants and bonds to help "power plants and industries that come forward with projects that promise to dramatically reduce climate and health-threatening pollution."

Some of Mr. Gore's proposals represented expansions of current federal programs, while others were new. They included doubling the tax credit for businesses that turn wind or landfill methane into electricity and giving accelerated tax deductions to companies for the purchase of equipment that makes cleaner and more efficient use of fuel. In the coming days, Mr. Gore's aides said, the vice president will talk about tax breaks for consumers who use solar energy or buy products, like cars, that do not use traditional sources of fuel like oil.

Mr. Gore's proposals seem to veer in somewhat different directions from those of the last Democratic president to offer a sweeping set of proposals on energy use, Jimmy Carter. As a way of trying to reduce dependence on foreign oil, Mr. Carter set import quotas on the amount of foreign oil accepted into American ports. And he encouraged the development of alternative sources of fuel, including coal, oil shale, unconventional gas and the sun. Mr. Carter asked that utility companies cut their use of oil by 50 percent over a decade, and switch to other fuels, particularly coal.

And most famously, he ordered thermostats turned down in the winter as a conservation measure and wore a sweater in the chilly White House.

---

Bush Would Use Power of Persuasion to Raise Oil Supply

New York Times
June 28, 2000
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/062800wh-bush.html

WAYNE, Mich., June 27 -- Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said today that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude.

"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply," Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. "Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot."

Implicit in his comments was a criticism of the Clinton administration as failing to take advantage of the good will that the United States built with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Also implicit was that as the son of the president who built the coalition that drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, Mr. Bush would be able to establish ties on a personal level that would persuade oil-producing nations that they owed the United States something in return.

"Ours is a nation that helped Kuwait and the Saudis, and you'd think we'd have the capital necessary to convince them to increase the crude supplies," he said.

Asked why the Clinton administration had not been able to use the power of personal persuasion, Mr. Bush said: "The fundamental question is, 'Will I be a successful president when it comes to foreign policy?' "

He went on to suggest, as he did in answer to other questions, that voters should simply trust him.

"I will be," he said in answer to his own question about whether he would be a successful president. "But until I'm the president, it's going to be hard for me to verify that I think I'll be more effective."

Mr. Bush made his comments in a news conference here after a brief meeting with participants in a local private welfare-to-work program. This was his only public event of the day, which began with a fund-raising breakfast in New York that raised $3 million, private meetings with the editorial boards of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and then, after his news conference, ended with a private meeting with financial contributors at the Masco Corporation in Taylor, Mich.

Accompanying Mr. Bush was the Michigan governor, John Engler, a Republican. Mr. Bush jokingly pre-empted a question about his vice-presidential selection process by saying Mr. Engler was on his short list and then adding: "What do you expect me to say? He's standing right here."

On a more serious note, Mr. Bush said that he had disagreed with the Supreme Court's 7-to-2 ruling on Monday that upheld the reading of Miranda warnings to criminal suspects.

"We should never undermine the right of a person arrested to have their rights read to them," he said. "I did believe, though, that voluntary confessions should be allowed without a Miranda reading. The court didn't agree with my position. I'm now going to uphold the law."

As for how he would handle the rise in gasoline prices, he said he would not use the strategic petroleum reserves, saving them for a national emergency.

He also said he did not support a repeal of the federal gasoline tax of more than 18 cents a gallon, saying he was worried about what effect that would have on the transportation budgets of the states.

Mr. Bush said that the news on Monday that projections of the federal budget surplus were up to $4.2 trillion only confirmed his own earlier estimates. He said he did not expect to increase the size of his proposed tax cut -- $1.3 trillion over 10 years -- just because more money might be available.

"I'm pleased with the way my plan now sits," he said. "Things may change over time."

He brushed off President Clinton's proposal, driven by the new surplus estimates, that he would accept a Republican proposal to cut the marriage tax penalty in exchange for the inclusion of a prescription drug benefit in Medicare.

"In terms of horse-trading with the Congress, it's up to the president and the Congress," Mr. Bush said.

He was also asked to respond to remarks made this morning by Chris Lehane, press secretary to Vice President Al Gore, to reporters in Philadelphia. Mr. Lehane had criticized Republicans, and Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, in particular, for releasing reports last week that a Justice Department official had called for a special prosecutor to investigate Mr. Gore's fund-raising activities.

Mr. Lehane said that the Republicans were "turning the U.S. Congress into a scandal-industrial complex" and that Mr. Bush was "the C.E.O." of that.

Mr. Bush dismissed Mr. Lehane's comments, saying, "It's frankly the type of politics people in America are sick of, this kind of finger pointing, calling names and trying to divert attention."

He returned to the subject after a subsequent question about how he would court independent voters in Michigan. He said he would "make the case that I'm the person that can change the tone of Washington, D.C.," and added, "Just give me a chance to be the president."

---

POLITICAL MEMO
Both Parties See Ally in Gore Transcript

New York Times
June 28, 2000
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/062800inquiry-fund.html

WASHINGTON, June 27 -- When Vice President Al Gore announced last week that he was releasing the transcript from his April 18 interview with Justice Department investigators, he confidently declared, "I think the truth is my friend in this."

Democrats are convinced that he is right. Attorney General Janet Reno is unlikely to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Mr. Gore's 1996 fund-raising activities, they say. And voters will be inclined to view Mr. Gore as having been truthful in the interview and forthright in releasing the transcript.

But Republicans clearly believe Mr. Gore's transcript will also be their friend. Even if Ms. Reno does not appoint a special prosecutor, they say, the mere whiff of scandal from the transcript will hurt the vice president this November.

And perhaps more useful, Republican strategists argue, will be Mr. Gore's words themselves. In the frequently combative four hours of questioning, conducted under oath, the vice president often comes across as evasive or legalistic, they assert. Many of his answers are too carefully parsed. And more than a few times, his memory -- considered to be quite excellent -- fails.

For that reason, Republicans argue, Mr. Gore's performance that day can only bolster their contention that he, like President Clinton, plays fast and loose with the truth.

"When I read one of his answers, I laughed out loud because it sounded so Clintonesque," said Mark Miller, executive director the Republican Leadership Council, a centrist group. "He was trying to define the word 'raising.' And I just said to myself, he's learned from the master."

Mr. Miller was referring to a passage in which Robert Conrad of the Justice Department's task force on campaign finance abuses, quizzed Mr. Gore about White House events in which contributors, or potential contributors, met with Mr. Clinton or Mr. Gore over coffee. Had anyone told Mr. Gore that those coffees would be used to raise money, Mr. Conrad asked.

Mr. Gore replied, "Well, let me define the term 'raising,' if I could, because if you mean by it, would they be events at which money was raised, the answer is no." In fact, Mr. Gore said, the coffees were a means to show potential contributors "respect," and that the pitch for money would come later. Hence, they were not fund-raisers, he argued.

Mr. Conrad followed up. Did Mr. Gore know that, according to a Senate Republican report, more than 103 White House coffees had helped raise $26.4 million? And given that report, would it not be fair to describe the coffees as "a fund-raising tool?"

"I hesitate to wordsmith it," Mr. Gore replied. "I would not call them fund-raising tools."

To some political analysts, such hair-splitting echoes President Clinton's response to a question about whether he was having an affair with Monica S. Lewinsky: "It depends on what the definition of is, is." Or Mr. Gore's explanation for why he had not broken the law when he made fund-raising phone calls from the White House, that there was "no controlling legal authority."

Of that reply, Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, said: "If he had not used that tortured expression a few years ago, which has become a mantra for evasion and subterfuge, I would think this would be less damaging."

Mr. Gore's aides argue that the public will see Mr. Gore's answers as reasonable and forthright, given the contentious conditions of the interview. More important, they assert that the public no longer cares about the continuing scandal investigations, and that there may even be an electoral backlash against Republicans who continue to push for more.

"The Republicans think this plays into Clinton fatigue," said Chris Lehane, Mr. Gore's press secretary. "But the thing people are fatigued with is scandal."

Mr. Gore's argument with Mr. Conrad over the definition of "fund-raiser" spilled over into questions about his 1996 appearance at the Hsi Lai Temple in Los Angeles. In 1996, Mr. Gore described that event as "community outreach." In 1997, he called it "a political event" at which "finance people were going to be present." And to Mr. Conrad, he called it a "finance-related event."

Asked to define that, Mr. Gore said the event was not a fund-raiser because, "There was no solicitation of money. I did not see any money or checks exchange hands."

But several people who attended the temple event, including Buddhist monks and nuns, later gave checks to the Democratic Party, in many cases using money that was not their own. The organizer, Maria Hsia, was convicted in March for hiding $109,000 in illegal contributions and making false statements to federal regulators about the luncheon.

In yet another passage, Mr. Gore seemed to raise questions about the sincerity of form letters to his supporters. One letter contained "the kind of routine overstatement that is quite common," Mr. Gore said.

"So, when you refer to them as great friends, you don't necessarily mean that?" Mr. Conrad asked.

"I do mean it," Mr. Gore replied. "But I don't mean it in the way that you and I would use the phrase with a lifelong friend that you met in college or something."

---

Excerpts From the Vice President's Speech on Energy Policy

New York Times
June 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/062800wh-gore-text.html

PHILADELPHIA, June 27 -- Following are excerpts from Vice President Al Gore's speech today on energy policy, as released by his campaign:

Today, I'm proposing a new Energy Security and Environment Trust, a bold and unprecedented commitment to achieve an even more prosperous economy, powered by cleaner, more reliable energy, in a healthy, truly livable environment.

First, we will modernize and improve our nation's power systems, to prevent future power outages before they affect you and your family.

We will ensure reliable and affordable electricity by providing new incentives to industry to improve our power lines. And we will give special incentives to companies that want to use their own, more efficient power systems on-site, or use renewable energy, such as wind or solar power.

Second, we will do more to protect our kids and our parents from the smog and soot that cause asthma.

One of the best ways we can do this is by giving new incentives to industry to transform dirty old power plants into modern, clean sources of energy.

For that, we will need enforceable, market-based standards that are comprehensive instead of piecemeal.

And we need to end monopolies, and instead let competition bring us clean energy and smaller energy bills.

We are blessed with abundant supplies of coal, petroleum and natural gas; we have to use these resources wisely.

With new technology, we can make all our energy sources cleaner, safer and healthier for our families. We will bring together the best minds from the private sector and create an open competition to design the best incentives for old power plants and industries to change, to improve, to modernize and move ahead.

Through the power of free markets, we will take a dramatic step forward for our children's health, which will also be a dramatic new step toward a stable climate.

Third, while we modernize our power systems and reduce pollution here at home, we must aggressively pursue the global market for new energy technology that is expected to reach $10 trillion in the next two decades, as other countries also take steps to overcome pollution and the threat of global warming. As the world implements the Kyoto treaty, we must ensure that all developed and developing nations do their part.

Fourth, as we reduce America's dependence on big oil and imported oil for the long term by finding new and better ways to produce clean, affordable, and reliable energy here in America we will work even more closely with industry and labor to bring cleaner cars, trucks and buses to showrooms and streets around the world.

This is a multi-hundred-billion-dollar industry; we've got to seize the lead, before Japan or any nation beats us to it.

Fifth, we will cut taxes so families can start buying those 100-mile-per-gallon cars as they hit the showrooms.

Even the best innovations are of little use if they are stuck in a lab, unaffordable and unattainable to you, your family or your business.

But tax credits can make them competitive, and then mass production will bring the prices down even further.

We will also give tax credits so that it is not far-reaching fantasy to put a solar roof on your home, or to renovate your home to make it more energy efficient, but an affordable and money-saving practicality.

We will also make major new investments in light rail and mass transit, to make your neighborhoods more livable and to liberate families from having to buy gas at any price, if they'd really prefer not to.

Finally, we will do more than use the technologies of the future; we as a nation will aggressively invest in the skill and creativity of the people who discover them, and the factory workers who produce them.

There will be no new bureaucracies; no new agencies or organizations, because the era of old government is over.

We'll measure performance carefully and ensure that we reach our goals with common-sense standards.

But it is America's innovators and entrepreneurs, investors and working men and women who will forge the real solutions, not the federal government.

I know these challenges are not easy.

And for me, they have never been without controversy. But my commitment to the environment has always run deeper than politics. We have to do what's right for our earth because it is the moral thing to do.

It involves all of our lives, from the simple security of having safe, reliable, affordable electricity for your home; to America's ability to keep building and selling the best new cars, trucks, and technology to the world; to guarding our children from the summer smog that is made worse by global warming, and securing for our grandchildren the expectation of a joyful array of seasons that we took for granted when we grew up ourselves.

---

Gore offers $75 billion program to save fuel

Washington Times
June 28, 2000
By Andrew Cain
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000628223136.htm

Vice President Al Gore, appealing to what he called a "new mainstream" of environment-conscious voters, yesterday proposed $75 billion in tax breaks and incentives to boost fuel conservation.

"It is an old, timid way of thinking to suggest that those who put the good of the earth at the heart of the American dream are somehow outside the mainstream," Mr. Gore said.

"It is new, bold thinking to realize that the mainstream has shifted like a mighty river."

Mr. Gore, speaking at an energy production plant in Philadelphia, looked to the future even as gas prices soar above $2 per gallon in critical Midwestern battleground states.

"We will prove once and for all that we can clean up pollution, make our power systems more efficient and more reliable and move away from dependence on others, all with no new taxes, no new bureaucracies and no onerous regulations," Mr. Gore said.

A spokesman for Texas Gov. George W. Bush said Mr. Gore offered "recycled proposals" that do nothing to decrease dependence on foreign oil.

"This is more about Al Gore trying to avoid paying a political price because of high gas prices than it is about reducing prices at the pump," Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Eight years after he wrote "Earth in the Balance" - detailing his "strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine" - Mr. Gore still is trying to nail down the support of environmentalists without appearing an extremist.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush - a Republican who led his Democratic rival in the presidential race by 13 points in a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll released Monday - is seeking to broaden his coalition by reaching out to Hispanics and blacks who traditionally support Democrats.

Environmental groups are among the Clinton-Gore administration's staunchest supporters and they again are expected to line up behind the vice president.

The Sierra Club, which will not endorse a candidate until the fall, yesterday praised Mr. Gore's remarks.

"Vice President Gore's plan to clean up America's aging power plants could stop their smokestacks from belching so much global-warming pollution and lung-burning soot and smog," said Carl Pope, the organization's executive director.

"Tough, comprehensive standards like those outlined by Vice President Gore will help Americans breathe easier and protect our climate."

Daniel Weiss, political director of the Sierra Club, said "the differences couldn't be clearer" between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush.

"It's like the difference between [pioneering naturalist] John Muir and the 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' guy," he told Reuters news agency.

But there are cracks in Mr. Gore's environmental coalition.

Last year, a Sierra Club board member urged colleagues not to endorse Mr. Gore, citing his "tawdry environmental record" and his willingness to leave nature "hostage to the highest bidder."

"With this legacy, no real environmentalist could ever endorse Al Gore," Michael Dorsey wrote in an internal e-mail.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, the Green Party's nominee, is attacking Mr. Gore from the left, accusing the vice president of supporting Corporate America at the expense of the environment.

Mr. Nader says he is not concerned that he could take enough votes from Mr. Gore to help Mr. Bush win in California or in Midwest battleground states.

Friends of the Earth endorsed former Sen. Bill Bradley over Mr. Gore in the Democratic presidential primaries.

Mr. Bush recently proposed his own five-point plan to encourage conservation through grants and tax credits.

Environmentalists praised Mr. Bush's proposal to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund at $900 million annually.

Mark Whiteis-Helm, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, said at the time that there is "some divisiveness in the environmental community" about the strength of Mr. Gore's record on the environment.

But he said environmentalists prefer Mr. Gore's record to Mr. Bush's record in Texas and they are likely to line up behind the vice president.

---

GOP using high gas prices to intensify attacks on Gore

Washington Times
June 28, 2000
By Donald Lambro
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000628214429.htm

Soaring gasoline prices have suddenly become the hot issue of the 2000 elections, throwing Vice President Al Gore and the Democrats on the defensive and giving Texas Gov. George W. Bush and the Republicans new political ammunition to use against them.

With gasoline prices topping $2 per gallon in campaign battleground states in the Midwest, the Bush campaign stepped up its attacks yesterday against Mr. Gore for his role in pushing administration policies that have raised gasoline taxes while the United States has grown more dependent on foreign oil.

In an attempt to blunt the political attacks against him on the issue, Mr. Gore proposed a $75 billion package of tax incentives yesterday to conserve fuel and curb pollution.

But the Bush campaign immediately attacked his plan as nothing more than a political document that would not give motorists any relief from rising gas prices.

"Today's proposals are more about Al Gore trying to avoid a political price because consumers are paying more at the pump than it is about reducing gas prices," said Scott McClellan, a Bush campaign spokesman.

"Even the Clinton administration's energy secretary, Bill Richardson, said the administration was 'caught napping' while there was a drastic increase in gas prices under their administration," Mr. McClellan said.

"Our dependence on foreign oil under this administration has gone from 50 percent in 1992 to 56 percent this year," he said.

Mr. Bush has been having a field day quoting from Mr. Gore's book on the environment, "Earth in The Balance," in which the vice president urged "higher taxes on fossil fuels" as "one of the logical first steps in changing our policies" on the environment.

The vice president is especially vulnerable on the issue of higher gasoline taxes because he cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate in 1993 for a budget plan that raised the federal tax at the pump by another 4.3 cents per gallon.

Meanwhile, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas Republican, introduced a bill Monday that would suspend the entire 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax until Labor Day to give beleaguered motorists a price break until oil prices come down.

Mrs. Hutchison will be joined by several Republican senators today at a news conference in the Capitol to promote the bill and to attack the administration for policies that she says have made America even more dependent upon foreign oil.

"There's a lot of Republican rank and file and leadership interest in raising the profile of this issue and seeing what legislative remedies there are," said a Senate Republican official. "The problem is how to get to a vote on something that we can send to the president."

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde will also hold hearings on the issue today, with witnesses from the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the oil industry.

"There's a lot of interest among our members on this," said John Feehery, press secretary for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican.

"A lot of members have expressed themselves on this issue. There is support in the House for suspending the gas tax. People are talking about it," Mr. Feehery said.

With polls showing substantial support among voters for suspending or at least cutting the gasoline tax, the problem is also becoming a dominant issue in some Senate races as well.

In Michigan, Sen. Spencer Abraham, a Republican, is attacking his Democratic opponent, Rep. Debbie Stabenow, for supporting the administration's energy policies.

After Mr. Abraham held a well-attended hearing last Friday on gasoline prices in Warren, Mich., in the heart of Macomb County, Mrs. Stabenow's campaign manager said that she had called for a suspension of the gasoline tax earlier this year. But a top aide to Mr. Abraham said yesterday, "I've never seen it."

"It's a hot-button issue in Michigan right now. Everybody's talking about it," said Joe Davis, a spokesman for Mr. Abraham.

Michigan, the home of the nation's automotive industry, is a pivotal state in this year's presidential contest.

And political strategists there say Mr. Gore is having an especially hard time because of rising gasoline prices and a statement he made in his book that the automobile's "cumulative impact on the global environment is posing a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that of any military enemy we are ever again likely to confront."

---

Senators decide it's too late for a probe of Gore

Wasinigton Times
June 28, 2000
By Jerry Seper
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000628222522.htm

Naming a special counsel to investigate Vice President Al Gore's role in a Buddhist temple fund-raiser would now be moot because the Justice Department took nearly four years to question him about it under oath, Senate Republicans said yesterday.

"It appears to me that it may well be too late at this point to have a special counsel, because it would interfere with the election in 2000," said Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of a Senate subcommittee investigating the Justice Department's handling of the 1996 campaign finance probe.

The Pennsylvania Republican, who first called in April 1997 for an outside counsel in the case, told Attorney General Janet Reno during a five-hour hearing he doubted a special counsel could be named to investigate Mr. Gore before the Democratic convention in August. Even if one were appointed, Mr. Specter said, it was "not even realistic" to suggest the probe could be completed before the November election.

"Now, it may be that the only alternative America has at this point in this election, is to leave it to the political process," he said.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, also criticized the attorney general for the "lateness" of the Gore interview, saying the Justice Department failed to conduct a proper investigation of the temple accusations after they first surfaced.

"I believe your staff failed you. And in a sense, you failed to supervise in making that declination of the independent counsel at that early date without even commencing any investigation," he said. "I think that was an error, and that has caused us to be [still investigating] at this late stage."

Republicans noted that the department learned in 1996 of the event at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif., at which $65,000 was illegally raised for the Democratic National Committee, but never interviewed Mr. Gore about his role in the fund-raiser until April 18 of this year.

Maria Hsia, longtime Gore fund-raiser, was convicted in March on five felony counts for her part in hiding thousands of dollars of illegal contributions she solicited during the fund-raiser. Mr. Gore told Mr. Conrad he did not know the event was a fund-raiser, although documents show that his staff knew.

Republicans said Mr. Gore had been interviewed by a task force four times before he was ever questioned about the temple event.

The hearing was called in the wake of revelations last week by Mr. Specter that Miss Reno's new campaign task-force chief, Robert J. Conrad Jr., had - like FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and former task force chief Charles G. LaBella -recommended a special counsel be named to investigate Mr. Gore's fund-raising activities, including the temple event.

Mr. Conrad's recommendation came after he and four FBI agents interviewed Mr. Gore for four hours in April.

Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, New Jersey Democrat, agreed with his Republican colleagues it was "too late" to call for a special counsel, but suggested the task force expand its investigation to include the 2000 campaign and both parties.

He said Congress had "failed" to amend campaign finance laws and the Justice Department should focus on ongoing abuses.

Mr. Torricelli also recommended that Miss Reno begin an internal inquiry to discover the source of the leak on the Conrad recommendation. He called the leak "a violation of the law" and recommended the guilty party - if found - be prosecuted.

"I do not pretend to be giving advice on how you administer the Justice Department, but Madam Attorney General, someone has let the department down, someone has violated the laws of the United States in revealing information that should have belonged to you and your associates alone - not the media, not me, not this committee, not any partisan political activity. Someone let you down," he said.

"I hope you are vigorous in finding out how that happened," he said.

During the hearing, Republicans never suggested that Miss Reno had political motives for waiting before questioning Mr. Gore about the temple fund-raiser.

When Mr. Specter and Mr. Sessions asked the attorney general directly why she had waited to conduct the interview until it was too late - since now the matter cannot be resolved in a timely fashion before the November elections - she declined to answer.

"I can't talk about the course of a pending investigation. I don't think that's right or proper to try something in a committee hearing as opposed to a court," she said, suggesting the Gore inquiry was continuing and a decision on whether a special counsel ultimately would be sought is pending.

Miss Reno, however, vigorously defended herself and the department in refusing to seek the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the vice president, saying she made "the best judgment I could, and I will continue to try to do that."

"Sound bites and quick conclusions are not conducive to thorough analysis," she said. "I think those matters should be handled properly and professionally, not in headlines but in courtrooms."

Miss Reno has twice refused to seek the appointment of an independent counsel for Mr. Gore, and she bristled at suggestions by Mr. Specter that she had "discounted everything you could" in examining the evidence against the vice president.

"No, I looked at everything I could," she said.

Meanwhile, the Gore campaign yesterday attacked Mr. Specter, accusing him of trying to damage the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

"He's been engaging in McCarthy-like tactics," said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, referring to former Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy's communist-hunting hearings of the 1950s, adding that the veteran Republican senator was "turning the U.S. Congress into a scandal-industrial complex." He accused Texas Gov. George W. Bush of being "the CEO" of that complex.

Mr. Specter angrily denied the accusation during yesterday's hearing, saying he would "take the matter up with the vice president" to determine whether he had authorized the statement. If so, he said without elaboration, he would "take it up in some detail."

---

Investigating Gore

New York Times
June 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l28gor.html

To the Editor:

You are right to blame Attorney General Janet Reno for "dereliction of duty" in failing last year to appoint an independent counsel to investigate Vice President Al Gore's 1996 fund-raising efforts (editorial, June 25). But you are wrong to propose, as a remedy, that the Justice Department share with the public any information that contradicts Mr. Gore's statements to investigators "and let the voters decide."

Criminal investigations cannot be resolved by political elections.

Mr. Gore is entitled to cross-examine his accusers in court. Many voters may read accounts of government evidence but miss accounts of evidence for the defense.

The current administration has too often mixed politics and judicial process to the detriment of our judicial system. The public interest is best served by permitting criminal investigations and political elections to proceed independently.

WILLIAM NICOSON Reston, Va., June 25, 2000

---

Like a stonewall

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • June 28, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-house-200062819427.htm

Attorney General Janet Reno's resolute stonewalling shows no sign of crumbling. Miss Reno, in rambling testimony during a Senate subcommittee hearing yesterday, gave no indication that she would favorably respond to another recommendation that a special counsel be appointed to investigate the abuses.

Last Thursday Sen. Arlen Specter, whose Judiciary subcommittee has been conducting an invaluable investigation of the Justice Department probe of campaign-finance abuses, publicly revealed that yet another task force chief has recommended to Miss Reno that a special counsel be appointed to investigate Vice President Al Gore for perjury and other crimes. Mr. Gore's staff responded the next day by releasing the 123-page transcript of a four-hour interview that task force chief Robert J. Conrad Jr. and two FBI agents conducted with Mr. Gore on April 18. Despite numerous previous interviews, it was the first time Miss Reno's task force actually queried the vice president about the Buddhist temple fund-raiser more than four years ago.

Ostensibly released to show that Mr. Gore had nothing to fear from the answers he had given, the transcript in fact reveals that the vice president was full of contempt. It's worth recalling that Mr. Gore previously had the audacity to tell the FBI that too much iced tea had forced him to leave one meeting to go to the men's room the very moment discussion took place of an illegal fund-raising strategy. Thus, Mr. Gore was later able to plead ignorance and to deny he had lied in his earlier depositions. In fact, four witnesses have testified that the vice president was present when the strategy was discussed.

During the latest interview, Mr. Gore contemptuously denied that the 103 White House "coffees" held in 1995 and 1996 with major campaign donors were "fund-raising tools" used to raise millions of dollars in soft money for the Democratic Party. Asked directly if the coffees were "a fund-raising tool," Mr. Gore again replied, "I don't know. They were on his side of the house." That would be President Clinton. Mr. Gore also claimed he had briefly attended only one coffee. In fact, he hosted at least 23 coffees and attended eight others hosted by President Clinton.

Altogether, as Sen. Arlen Specter noted at the subcommittee hearing yesterday, those attending the coffees contributed $26 million to the Democratic National Committee, including nearly $8 million within one month of attending a coffee. Consider a briefing memo written for Mr. Gore before he attended a fund-raising strategy session in the White House Map Room in February 1996. One of the talking points prepared by the vice president's chief of staff encouraged him to tell the president and other participants: "[W]e can raise the money - BUT ONLY IF - the president and I actually do the events, the calls, the coffees, etc." In other words, the coffees really were de facto, premeditated fund-raisers, and Mr. Gore played an integral role.

Regarding the Buddhist temple event in April 1996, the vice president would have Mr. Conrad believe that he was the only party functionary in attendance at the temple luncheon who did not know that well over $50,000 had been raised. But the deceit was so obvious that even Mr. Gore could not keep his story straight during the interview. At one point he inadvertently acknowledged that the temple event was in fact "a fund-raiser," requiring his attorney, James Neal, to correct him. "[Y]ou said previously you didn't, you still don't know whether it was a fund-raiser," Mr. Neal reminded the vice president. "Well, that's right," Mr. Gore replied. "Let me, let me amend that."

Regrettably, Miss Reno gave no indication yesterday that she will amend what even the New York Times has described as "her brazen dereliction of duty as attorney general."

---

Reno defends her decision

USA Today
06/27/00- Updated 09:56 PM ET
By Kevin Johnson and Susan Page, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue08.htm

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Janet Reno, under sharp criticism Tuesday by Senate Republicans, steadfastly defended her decision not to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Vice President Gore's campaign fundraising in 1996.

Reno, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, also defended top Justice Department aides who repeatedly have discouraged her from launching an independent inquiry of Gore, the presumed Democratic nominee for president.

In an appearance before the sharply partisan, Republican-led panel, Reno testified that no one, including President Clinton, had pressured her to back off a campaign inquiry.

Reno's remarks came less than a week after reports that the Justice Department's new campaign-finance task force chief was urging the appointment of a special counsel to examine Gore's fundraising.

The attorney general has not responded to the recommendation of Robert Conrad, who joined former task force leader Charles LaBella and FBI Director Louis Freeh in calling for an independent inquiry. Republicans have pounced on the recommendations, and Reno's inaction, as a sign that the attorney general is beholden to the Democratic administration that appointed her more than seven years ago. Reno maintains that many of the complaints about Gore's fundraising are rooted in rumors and innuendo, and that she would appoint a special prosecutor if there were evidence to indicate wrongdoing.

Gore's participation in a fundraiser in 1996 at a Buddhist temple in California has been a key point of dispute in the investigation. Gore has told investigators he thought the event was an "outreach" program and was unaware it was a fundraiser.

Maria Hsia, a longtime Gore supporter who arranged the vice president's visit to the California temple, was convicted in March of hiding $109,000 in illegal contributions and making false statements to federal regulators.

Among those firing questions at Reno on Tuesday was Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who repeatedly has called on Reno to intensify the fundraising probe. It was Specter who revealed last week that Conrad was the latest Justice Department prosecutor to urge Reno to name a special counsel to investigate Gore. After Specter asked Reno what was keeping her from beginning a Gore investigation, she shot back.

"You can tell me I'm wrong," Reno said, with a fan of documents spread before her at the witness table. "But I would have greater confidence in you telling me I'm wrong when you have all the facts."

Asked whether she had been pressured in any way to dispose of the Gore matter for the sake of politics or because her own job might hang in the balance, Reno said she had not. "Did the president ever pressure you to come out (of the investigation) a certain way or in a certain manner?" asked a friendly questioner, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

"No, sir," Reno said.

"Did the vice president ever pressure you to come out a certain way or in a certain manner?"

"No, sir," Reno repeated.

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, was targeting Reno aides who had discouraged the appointment of a special prosecutor, particularly Lee Radek, head of Justice's public integrity section.

"Mr. Radek's operation has a reputation," Grassley said. "The reputation of that office is that it's a black hole. Mr. Radek is called 'Dr. No' by the investigative community because he declines their cases almost automatically."

Reno directed a polite smile at Grassley, then defended her colleague.

"That man," Reno countered, "is an extraordinary public servant. He has pursued corruption in cases where other prosecutors have (disqualified) themselves. He calls it like he sees it."

Gore was not present for the session, which drew a large crowd to the spacious hearing room. His campaign staff lashed out at the committee's GOP leadership, Specter in particular.

"Sen. Specter's action reeks of McCarthyism," Gore spokesman Chris Lehane told reporters in Philadelphia, where the vice president was campaigning. "I'm surprised Sen. Specter didn't hold this hearing in Wheeling, W.Va.," site of a speech by Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy about communists in the U.S. Army in the 1950s.

"He's been engaging in McCarthy-like tactics," Lehane said. Specter and Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., have made Congress "into a scandal-industrial complex, and George W. Bush is the CEO of that," he said.

Lehane said he suspected that Specter's actions were coordinated with the Bush presidential campaign on a day Bush faced charges about his ties to the oil industry, but he said that he had no evidence of that.

Specter said he planned to confront Gore about Lehane's remarks to determine whether the vice president endorsed the attack.

Back in the committee room, senators and Reno continued to spar.

In their queries, many senators said they were not questioning the attorney general's "integrity or independence." Even so, they expressed confusion about how Reno could defend decisions not to hand the Gore matter to an outside prosecutor.

Despite her disagreements with other top Justice Department officials, including FBI Director Freeh, Reno said she believes she has their confidence. Evidence of that, she said, is a badge she received recently from the FBI that recognizes her as "an honorary special agent."

"It could not have been given without Director Freeh's" approval, she said. "It was presented to me after we had our disagreements."

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Clinton, GOP offer placebos

USA Today
06/28/00- Updated 08:39 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/nceditf2.htm

Clinton, GOP offer placebos instead of reliable drug plan For those seniors trying to juggle grocery bills and ever-increasing prescription-drug costs, relief appears within sight.

Republicans are quickly slapping together a Medicare prescription-drug-benefit plan to counter President Clinton's more generous version. Not to be outdone, Clinton is upping the ante, offering to OK Republicans' $250-billion marriage-penalty tax cut if they agree to a drug benefit of equal size. With a projected surplus of $1.87 trillion over the next decade, both sides are tapping it freely to win plaudits from an influential voting bloc, even if chances of passage this year are slim.

So seniors would do well to hold off on the celebrations based on these election-year promises. The drug plans being rushed to market by Republicans and the White House contain fatal flaws, making them unworkable, unsustainable or enormously expensive. And by racing to fill the seniors' drug gap, lawmakers threaten to undermine not only Medicare, which teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, but also broader efforts to fix the nation's defective health system.

That's not to say that the need for a senior drug benefit isn't compelling. Medicare has lumbered along for three decades without one, despite the fact that just about every private insurance plan provides coverage for prescription drugs.

The result is that almost one-third of seniors have no drug coverage. And the rest - who get the benefit from former employers or buy it on their own - are on pretty thin ice. Companies have been carving out drug benefits to keep their retirement costs low, and so-called Medigap plans that offer coverage are pricey. All of which will get worse as drug prices continue to escalate. They were up more than 17% last year, according to a report Monday by Express Scripts, a pharmacy-benefits manager.

But the proposals on the table fall far short of what's needed.

- House GOP plan. Republicans want to subsidize private insurance companies that offer a stand-alone drug benefit. The plan would pay half of drug costs after an annual $250 deductible and would limit out-of-pocket expenses to $6,000 a year. The promise is that private insurers will offer seniors a choice of plans, and competition among plans will keep costs in line.

But the insurance industry doesn't think it will work. And for good reason. Only those few seniors who are most likely to spend a lot on prescription drugs will sign up. Most probably won't join, since half of seniors spend less than $500 a year on drugs. That design flaw could derail the program.

- White House plan. Clinton tries to avoid this problem, but creates a raft of separate ones. Under his plan, the new benefit would be grafted onto the existing Medicare program. Seniors wouldn't face a deductible, the premiums would be heavily subsidized by taxpayers, and annual out-of-pocket costs would be capped at $4,000.

But the costs will almost certainly be far higher than the $253 billion Clinton projects over 10 years. That has been the sorry history of every other new Medicare benefit introduced. Under Clinton's plan, there's little reason for retirees' employers or private insurers to maintain drug coverage. And costs would increase as more seniors shifted into the Medicare drug program.

What's more, Clinton would bribe Medicare HMOs with billions of dollars each year to continue offering the drug benefits that many provide seniors under current Medicare contracts. Worse still, under the cloak of the drug benefit, he would return $40 billion to doctors' and hospitals' pockets, money Congress painfully stripped out of the program just three years ago.

Larding the existing Medicare program with all of these new costs is reckless on its own, given that the program is on such shaky financial footing. Left unchanged, Medicare runs annual deficits starting in 2010 that top $1 trillion by 2050.

More troubling, however, is that by tossing drug goodies to seniors today, the White House and Congress squander a golden opportunity not only to reform Medicare for future generations, but also to fix the nation's deeply flawed health-care system.

Today's and tomorrow's seniors would be better served if a drug benefit were part of a carefully planned reform of Medicare. Done right, such reforms could give seniors access to decent drug benefits and put the program on a sound footing.

And the 40-plus million who lack insurance altogether would be better off if Congress didn't squander billions of dollars on an ill-conceived drug benefit, money that otherwise could go to designing a universal health-care plan that guaranteed price competition and consumer choice.

There might even be ample resources to begin doing both. But only if Congress and the White House stop the short-term political games long enough to plan for the future. Today's debate: Affordable prescriptions Seniors need Medicare reform, not election-year promises.

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Clinton's Drug Plan Attacked by Industry
Shielded From Scrutiny, Lobbyists Step Up Campaign Before Vote

New York Times
June 28, 2000
By JOHN M. BRODER
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/062800medicare-lobby.html

WASHINGTON, June 27 -- First, the drug makers rolled out advertisements featuring "Flo," an arthritic bowler who warned against a Clinton administration proposal for a new Medicare prescription drug benefit.Now the industry is enticing twenty-somethings to call their grandparents and urge them to lobby against the Clinton drug plan.

The global drug industry, operating through a group that can legally conceal the source of its money and the targets of its spending, has accelerated its lobbying against the administration's drug proposal, which it contends will lead to price controls and throttle pharmaceutical research. The stepped-up campaign coincides with a vote in the House as early as Wednesday on competing Republican and Democratic Medicare drug proposals.

Citizens for Better Medicare, a group created a year ago by drug manufacturers under a provision in the tax law that exempts it from disclosure of its activities, has spent more than $2 million in the past three weeks on radio and television advertisements opposing the administration's drug proposal, according to the Democratic National Committee, which is tracking the group's advertising.

Last month, Citizens for Better Medicare tried to draw young visitors to its Web sites by offering free $10 calling cards to telephone their grandparents to talk about Medicare drug coverage. Demand for the free cards was so great that the group is now asking people to call their grandparents "on your own dime."

Since its inception last July, Citizens for Better Medicare has spent more than $30 million on television advertising alone and unknown amounts on radio, print and Internet advertising, according to analysis by the Democratic National Committee of the advertising purchases of the recent television spots are running in the same regions of the country as a new D.N.C. ad campaign advocating the administration's prescription drug plan.

The group operates under a tax provision that allows it to engage in issue advocacy but not to campaign for or against candidates. But it has targeted its advertising to the districts of a number of Democrats who support expanded Medicare drug benefits, skating close to the rule that prohibits direct involvement in elections.

The most recent drug industry advertisements warn against allowing "big government" into people's medicine chests. They also charge that millions of seniors will lose their drug benefits if the Clinton plan is enacted. Citizens for Better Medicare urges a "bipartisan approach" that would leave covering the cost of prescription drugs in the hands of private insurers.

Critics say the group is little more than a front organization for the drug industry that is lobbying to kill drug benefits while also offering a vague compromise plan that has little support in Congress.

"They say they're all for better Medicare, but the point is this is a very, very deceptive campaign," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut. "Look at their name: these are not citizens, they are not for a better Medicare. This is a pharmaceutical industry front group, pure and simple. Their interest is to distort the issue and frighten the elderly rather than have a debate on an affordable drug coverage for seniors."

Timothy C. Ryan, the executive director of Citizens for Better Medicare, acknowledged that the majority of the group's money comes from drug makers, but said the aim was not to thwart legislation, only to insure that any drug plan not create a costly new bureaucracy or lead to government price controls on medicine.

"Ultimately this is a philosophical debate about whether you stand for greater or lesser government control as we devise a plan to help seniors better afford their medicines," he said.

He added that while Citizens for Better Medicare and the pharmaceutical companies oppose Democratic plans for drug coverage, they are not fully supportive of the Republican alternative, either. It would provide subsidies for the elderly to purchase private prescription drug insurance.

"We would like to see comprehensive reform," Mr. Ryan said. "In an election year with a lot at stake, that seems unlikely."

Citizens for Better Medicare describes itself on its web site as a broad-based coalition of "patients, seniors, pharmaceutical research companies, doctors, caregivers, hospitals, employers and health care experts." The group lists more than 40 members, including the well-known National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Lesser-known members include the Alliance for Aging Research; the Alliance for Lung Cancer Advocacy, Support and Education; the Association of Black Cardiologists; the Healthcare Marketing & Communications Council and the Kidney Cancer Association. All receive substantial support from drug companies, according to a study published last week by Public Citizen, a group founded by Ralph Nader.

Citizens for Better Medicare was established as the lobbying and grass roots organizing arm of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association Mr. Ryan left the association, where he served as marketing director, to lead Citizens for Better Medicare last summer.

"It was a phony coalition when it was started and it's a phony coalition now," said Martin A. Corry, director of federal affairs for the American Association of Retired Persons. "They were created by the pharmaceutical industry and are almost entirely funded by the pharmaceutical industry. They're not fooling anybody."

Citizens for Better Medicare was set up under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, which governs political activity by non-profit organizations. It does not have to report its income or divulge its spending, so long as it sticks to issue advocacy and does not advocate the election or defeat of candidates.

Such groups can accept money from any source, including foreign corporations and individuals. Several of the biggest members of the pharmaceutical association are the United States subsidiaries of European pharmaceutical concerns, including Bayer A.G., Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc., Glaxo Wellcome P.L.C., Hoechst Marion Roussel A.G. and Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Inc.

Citizens for Better Medicare is one of the prime targets of members of Congress who have introduced legislation to require greater disclosure by so-called 527 groups.

In its advertising, Citizens for Better Medicare has targeted a number of House Democrats who co-sponsored a bill that would require drug companies to offer discounts to pharmacies for medicines they sell to Medicare recipients. The advertisements name Reps. Leonard Boswell of Iowa, Darlene Hooley of Oregon, Bill Luther of Minnesota and Mark Udall of Colorado, but stop short of telling viewers to vote against them.

But the group reserved particular wrath for Brian Schweitzer of Montana, a rancher and first-time candidate who is challenging Sen. Conrad Burns, the two-term incumbent Republican.

Mr. Schweitzer last winter led a widely-publicized bus trip of seniors to Canada to dramatize the much lower cost of prescribed medicines there. Citizens for Better Medicare responded with an ad broadcast across Montana. "Brian Schweitzer wants Canadian-style government-controlled health care on prescription medications here in America," the narrator intoned. "Tell Brian Schweitzer no thanks."

Mr. Ryan called Mr. Schweitzer's bus trip a "stunt" and said that the drug industry wanted to explain that drugs were cheaper in Canada because Canada imposes price controls under its national health system.

But Mr. Schweitzer said the industry's tactic backfired, boosting his name recognition and creating a groundswell of support.

"It was clear what they were trying to do -- prop up the failing reelection bid of Conrad Burns," Mr. Schweitzer said in a telephone interview. He estimated that Citizens for Better Medicare has spent between $500,000 and $750,000 in radio and television advertising in Montana, including $60,000 in radio ads last week alone.

"If they think they're going to fool the people of Montana, they don't know Montanans," Mr. Schweitzer. "If they think they're going to scare Brian Schweitzer, they don't know Brian Schweitzer. This is one rancher in Montana who's getting pretty damn mad."

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Clinton will speak at Schweitzer fund-raiser

USA Today
06/27/00- Updated 07:59 PM ET
By Greg Wright, Gannett News Service
http://www.usatoday.com/news/e98/e2186.htm

WASHINGTON - President Clinton is scheduled to attend a fund-raiser here on behalf of Montana Democratic Senate candidate Brian Schweitzer, who is lagging behind incumbent Republican Sen. Conrad Burns in raising money.

The event will be held Wednesday at the home of Ron and Beth Dozoretz and will be hosted by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. Clinton is scheduled to make a speech, White House officials said.

Ron and Beth Dozoretz were key Clinton presidential campaign fund-raisers and Beth Dozoretz served as finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee in 1999, the first woman to hold such a post in either party.

Beth Dozoretz said she doesn't know Schweitzer personally but had heard about him from associates. She said he is running an ''outstanding'' and ''skilled'' campaign in Montana and she wanted to help him in his fund-raising efforts.

Just a week ago, the Dozoretzes hosted a $10,000-per-person campaign fund-raiser for Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams at their home. That event, which was also attended by Clinton and America Online head Steve Case, raised $862,000, The Washington Post reported.

The invitation to the Schweitzer fund-raiser billed it as a reception honoring the ''future colleague'' of Baucus and Daschle.

Schweitzer, 44, a farmer from Whitefish, had raised $497,313 for his campaign and had $313,918 on hand by June 2, according to the Center for Responsive politics, which tracks campaign contributions. Over 70% of Schweitzer's contributions came from individuals and 24% from political action committees, the center said.

That pales beside Burns, who had raised $2.05 million and had $1.18 million in cash on hand by June 2, the center said. Fifty-eight percent of contributions from Burns' campaign came from individuals and about 37% from political action committees.

Schweitzer came to Washington earlier this month to get advice on how to run his campaign from Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee staff. The DSCC has more than $19 million in its war chest and officials said they will use the money to help Schweitzer and 17 other Democratic Senate incumbents and hopefuls win races.

The DSCC had already come to Schweitzer's aid in May when it ran television advertisements defending him against the pharmaceutical industry. In his campaign, Schweitzer has called for more affordable prescription drugs for the elderly, but a group backed by the pharmaceutical industry accused him of seeking price controls on medicines.

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Clinton inclined to allow Cuba food aid

USA Today
06/28/00- Updated 02:19 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncswed05.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton said Wednesday he would sign a bill to allow the sale of food and medicine to Cuba if he can be convinced it would work. But he said he would not now go further to normalize U.S. relations with Fidel Castro's Communist regime.

He said he supports the current sanctions law. ''I don't believe that we can change the law until there is a bipartisan majority which believes that there has been some effort on the part of the Cuban government to reach out to us as well,'' Clinton told a White House news conference. House Republicans have agreed to a bill that would permit the sale of food and medicine to Cuba in the most substantial easing of trade sanctions in 40 years. Clinton said he supports that aim.

But, he said, ''I have some concerns'' about the bill, questioning whether it really would lead to increased sales to Cuba and whether it would fit with other U.S. foreign policy objectives. The president said it may include travel restrictions that would impede the administration's person-to-person openings to Cuba.

Even so, Clinton said it is not time to ease the broader anti-Castro sanctions reinforced after Cuban fighter jets shot down unarmed American protesters flying off Cuba's coast in 1996.

Clinton began his news conference with a lecture to Congress seeking action on his legislative program, particularly the Democractic plan for prescription drug benefits for senior citizens.

The lack of that coverage is ''a fatal flaw'' in American health care, he said, and the Republicans would not cure it.

He said the GOP bill awaiting House approval ''amounts to an empty promise,'' benefitting drug makers, not the elderly.

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Campaign Briefing

New York Times
June 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/062800campaign-briefing.html

THE REPUBLICANS

BIG BREAKFAST FOR BUSH Gov. George W. Bush of Texas knows how to give a breakfast. By offering scrambled eggs at the River Club overlooking the East River in Manhattan yesterday, he was able to extract $3 million from about 55 donors for the Republican National Committee. Neither the campaign nor the committee would identify any of the people at the event. The location was kept secret from reporters until the event was over. Karen Hughes, Mr. Bush's spokeswoman, said private events were, well, private. This also applies to a lunch that Mr. Bush is to attend today in Cleveland, where each couple will pay $25,000 to raise $1 million for the committee. The breakfast was unusual in that such big-ticket events are rarely held in the morning. (Usually donors get at least lunch.) A Bush fund-raiser said the donors came from across New York State, although most were from Manhattan and many were from Wall Street. Katharine Q. Seelye (NYT)

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Bush, Gore Influence Congress

Associated Press
June 28, 2000 Filed at 12:52 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/p/AP-Presidential-Pull.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/e98/e2191.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More and more, members of Congress are being pulled into the orbits of presidential hopefuls Al Gore and George W. Bush.

In matters large and small, the presidential campaigns of the Democratic vice president and the Republican Texas governor are influencing, sometimes even shaping, legislative conduct.

But in different ways.

Gore and congressional Democrats have aligned themselves closely on major issues to push a mutual agenda -- issues like prescription drug coverage for older Americans and a so-called patients' bill of rights.

Bush generally has kept his distance from Republicans in Congress, although on several occasions he has gently chided his party's Capitol Hill division.

Increasingly, Republicans who control Congress appear to be attempting to accommodate Bush even if he doesn't ask.

The Senate voted this month to give the next president the ability to make unilateral cuts in the nation's nuclear arsenal, while in effect keeping current restrictions in place on President Clinton.

Although the Senate bill would help whoever wins in November, Bush has made a specific campaign proposal for deep cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, now about 7,200 warheads, whether Russia goes along or not.

Bush's proposal would be illegal under current law.

Sponsors of the bill said the Bush campaign did not ask for the change, and campaign officials refused to comment on it.

Because he served in both the House and the Senate, Gore has many friends and acquaintances on Capitol Hill and frequently goes visiting.

Furthermore, with the constitutional role of Senate president, Gore has the authority to vote to break Senate ties.

This authority was exercised with a flourish last week as Senate Democrats ``summoned'' Gore off the campaign trail to rush back to the Capitol in case his vote was needed on a White House-backed bill on hate crimes.

The vote wasn't even close. The bill passed 57-42. Instead of casting a tie-breaking vote, Gore found himself presiding over a news conference.

Republicans later suggested the outcome was never in doubt, and Gore was brought in mostly for political grandstanding.

Bush doesn't have as many close relationships with members of Congress as Gore does. His top congressional allies are Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga., and Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

``There's a good deal of contact, but it's not like we're flying in formation,'' Coverdell said of his relationship with Bush.

He said Bush's positions on many issues naturally coincide with those of Senate Republicans, even though ``we got at cross purposes on Kosovo. Sometimes that's hard to avoid.''

Coverdell said the Bush campaign checks with him ``from time to time'' but that mostly it's just to find out what's going on.

``Governor Bush has not tried to weigh in on a lot of issues,'' said former Bush rival Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. ``But when he has, as with Kosovo and on the earned income tax credit, he's been effective.''

Last year, Bush made his disagreement with House Republicans clear when he labeled as ``a bad idea'' their plan to save money in the budget by delaying income-support payments to poor workers. They immediately withdrew it.

Then, last month, Bush subtly lodged objections to legislation by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., that would set a July 1, 2001, deadline for withdrawing troops from Kosovo. The proposal was withdrawn after a Bush spokesman suggested the governor felt it amounted to ``legislative overreach.''

His latest dispute with the lawmakers came Tuesday when he differed with an effort by House Republicans to allow American food into Cuba for the first time in 40 years. ``I have opposed lifting the sanctions and I still continue to do so,'' Bush said during a campaign appearance in Wayne, Mich. ``I am very skeptical as to whether or not Fidel Castro will let food get to his people.''

Gore's relationship with congressional Democrats hasn't been all smooth sailing. He disagrees with most of them on the administration-backed bill to establish permanent normal trade relations with China. The bill is strongly opposed by organized labor, a top Democratic constituency.

The China trade bill, however, is the exception rather than the rule.

There isn't any ``usual trend'' for the spells that presidential candidates can cast over Congress, said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. ``It's complicated, depending on whether the candidates are trying to distance themselves from their party in Congress or put their fates together.''

``It's been on and off with Bush and the Republicans in Congress,'' Mann said. ``For one thing, he believes he's more popular than they are.''

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Tom Raum covers national and international affairs for The Associated Press.

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Campaign Briefing

New York Times
June 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/062800campaign-briefing.html

THE THIRD PARTIES

ILLINOIS BALLOT GROWS The two leading third-party presidential hopefuls, Patrick J. Buchanan and Ralph Nader, have filed petitions for a ballot spot in Illinois. Mr. Buchanan, the probable Reform Party nominee, showed up on Monday in Springfield, the capital, to file, saying he had collected some 67,000 signatures from supporters, more than twice the 25,000 required. "Illinois is a crucial swing state, and if you're not on the ballot in Illinois, you're not a serious candidate," he declared. The papers to put Mr. Nader, the Green Party nominee, on the ballot were also filed on Monday, by party officials. Both men say they expect to make the ballot in almost every state by Election Day. The two are still well down in the single digits in most national polls, but in states where Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore are in a tight race, like Illinois, they could be an influential factor. (NYT)

-------- human genome

U.S. Hopes to Stem Rush Toward Patenting of Genes

New York Tiems
June 28, 2000
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/062800sci-genome-patents.html

Long before scientists had completed the task of reading the human genome, parts of it had already been claimed for commerce. In what has often been compared to a land grab, companies and universities have filed for patents on hundreds of thousands of genes and gene fragments.

Amid concerns that such patents are being granted too liberally and that they could hinder innovation,the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is about to implement new guidelines that will make it harder to patent genes. But critics say the new rules are still too lax.

Some opponents say that it is a moral affront to patent living things or parts of living things. They argue that a gene is not an invention, but something that exists in nature, which should be the common heritage of mankind.

"The notion that some company has a monopoly on my genes is like claiming ownership of the air," said Jonathan King, a professor of molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

According to the Patent and Trademark Office, however, the law allows patenting of discoveries from nature, such as penicillin, if they are isolated and purified by the hand of man. "From a patent law standpoint, genes are treated just like any other chemical found in nature," said Q. Todd Dickinson, commissioner of the Patent Office. The patent office has now issued patents on 6,000 genes, more than 1,000 of them human genes.

Indeed, genes have been patented for years. Many of the first were for drugs. For example, erythropoietin, for anemia, was found by cloning genes that coded for particular proteins. In those early days, scientists knew the function of the protein and worked backwards, taking years to isolate a single gene.

But now high-speed gene sequencing and other techniques are allowing genes or fragments of genes to be discovered en masse, without knowing the functions of the proteins produced by the genes. These genes, rather than representing a product in themselves, are now guides to future product discovery. And there is concern that if these genes are patented it would discourage other scientists from doing research using the same genes. Some compare it to trying to gain ownership of the alphabet, rather than of a novel or play.

Earlier this year, for example, Human Genome Sciences, based in Rockville, Md., was granted a patent on a gene for a protein that turned out to serve as the entryway for the AIDS virus to infect cells, even though the company did not know what the gene did at the time. The gene's function was subsequently discovered by other researchers. Still, Human Genome can receive royalties on any drug that targets this entry portal -- or even block development of such a drug.

"You have people who haven't contributed to subsequent discovery being able to lay claim to those discoveries," said Rebecca S. Eisenberg, a professor of law at the University of Michigan.

Some doctors fear that genetic testing of patients could become prohibitively expensive if each gene is patented. Research scientists are already searching for clues to disease by seeing which genes are active in diseased cells. But the chips used to study the matter might become impractical if the rights to each gene had to be licensed.

Even some big drug companies, which normally preach the importance of patents for spurring innovation, have expressed concern about the ramifications of patenting genes.

Dr. Bob Levy, senior vice president for science and technology at American Home Products, calls the gene patenting situation a "minefield." Finding out who owns rights to what takes an increasing amount of time, Levy said at a health care conference earlier this year organized by Chase H&Q, an investment bank. Royalties paid to holders of patents on genes, research mice and other tools can total 12 percent to 14 percent for a single drug, he said, making some products uneconomical to produce.

As a result of these concerns, 10 big drug companies formed a consortium last year to study differences in the genome between one person and another. These differences, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, could be important in testing susceptibility to disease. The consortium is putting them in the public domain to prevent other companies from patenting the SNPs before their function is known. "It's to ensure we have the basic alphabet," said Arthur Holden, chief executive of the consortium.

Some executives say concerns that innovation will be blocked are unwarranted, pointing out that patents are designed to encourage innovation, not retard it, by giving an incentive to inventors. Also, the contents of patents must be published so that others can learn from it.

William A. Haseltine, president of Human Genome Sciences, the leading patenter of human genes, said the electronics industry continues to innovate rapidly and reduce prices despite numerous patents.

Stephen P.A. Fodor, chairman and chief executive of Affymetrix Inc., which makes gene chips, said only one patent holder has refused to allow its gene to be placed on a chip. Most patent holders want people to do research on their genes in hopes of finding a drug, which would bring really big royalties, he said.

Scientists often make a distinction between the genome itself - the entire sequence of 3 billion chemical units in human chromosomes - and individual genes. It was a confusion between the two that caused the stocks of biotechnology stocks to plummet in March after President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a statement saying the genome should be publicly available.

White House officials later emphasized that genes themselves should be eligible for patents.

The crucial issue for patent examiners has been how much of the gene's function must be known to satisfy the requirement that any patentable invention be useful. Until now, the companies have filed for patents in massive numbers without knowing the functions of many genes, claiming that, at a minimum, they can be used as animal feed. The patent office has granted some of these patents.

Applications are pending for more than half a million fragments of genes, which are known as expressed sequence tags, said John Doll, director of biotechnology at the Patent Office. Some applications claim that a fragment is useful because it can allow scientists to find the entire gene.

But now, in response to criticism, the patent office is raising the bar by requiring that more of the gene's function be known. "Nobody would go to the time and cost of isolating a protein from a diseased cell merely to put it in dog food," Doll said.

Under the new guidelines expected to take effect in the next few months, gene fragments will probably not qualify for patents. At the other extreme, fully characterized genes whose function is known - such as a gene that predisposes woman to breast cancer and can be used in a diagnostic test - will continue to be patentable.

There is still a vast ground in the middle, consisting of full-length genes whose function is not known for sure but is guessed at by computer analysis. The National Institutes of Health, the National Academy of Sciences and oppose patents on these genes.

With the technology in so much flux, gene patenting is likely to be the subject of numerous court battles and might be revisited by Congress. For companies that have staked their futures on owning the rights to genes, and for science in general, a lot is riding on the outcome.

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Eureka! A Key to the Code of Life

New York Times
June 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/06/28/letters/l28gen.html

To the Editor:
Re "Genetic Code of Human Life Is Cracked by Scientists" (front page, June 27):

The breathtaking sequencing of the human genome gives mankind access to knowledge with immense potential. Hand in hand come burdensome responsibilities. Two clear dangers are present. First, commercial exploitation must not become the driving force in its application. Second, fear of misapplication cannot be allowed to prevent realization of the full benefits that these new insights offer.

Processes are needed to balance the divergent perspectives and interests that will seek application of these breakthroughs.

Social policies must catch up with the scientific revolution. The challenge of forging such policies will prove as daunting and as crucial as sequencing the genome itself.

JAY H. KLEIMAN , M.D. Skokie, Ill., June 27, 2000 The writer is a cardiologist working in pharmaceutical research.

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To the Editor:
Re "Genetic Code of Human Life Is Cracked by Scientists" (front page, June 27):

The deciphering of the human genome is a scientific triumph. Would that we had an equal triumph in assuring access to basic medical care for all Americans.

This persistent and growing problem of access gives the hoopla surrounding the potential of genetic information for medicine a sadly paradoxical twist. Unless and until we solve the health-care access problem through a commitment of enthusiasm and resources equal to that which the genome project received, this triumph will be one more way to divide the haves from the have-nots.

MARTHA HOLSTEIN Chicago, June 27, 2000 The writer is a research scholar at the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith and Ethics.

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To the Editor:
President Clinton's comments regarding the deciphering of the human genome -- "Today we are learning the language in which God created life" (front page, June 27) -- could not be further from the truth.

As a molecular biologist directly involved in sequencing and analyzing DNA, I find this statement to be misleading and in some ways dangerous, as it could give more ammunition to creationists to further their destructive social and political agenda.

What the sequencing and subsequent analysis of DNA tell us is that we are much closer to every living organism than we previously thought. They provide further conclusive evidence (at the molecular level) that complements our existing fossil (anatomical), physiological and biochemical evidence in support of evolution.

MICHAEL HADJIARGYROU Stony Brook, N.Y., June 27, 2000 The writer is an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering program at SUNY-Stony Brook.

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To the Editor:
Why the euphoria about the genome project (front page, June 27)? Its findings are supposed to cure incurable diseases, save lives and improve the quality of life. These goals are years and billions of dollars away. While the years pass and the billions disappear, millions of children will starve to death.

Millions more children will suffer and die of diseases that we can cure for a few dollars right now.

A little skepticism for scientists would be advisable. Not long ago, we were told that nuclear reactors would give us cheap, clean, safe power forever.

MARCUS MOMMSEN Rifton, N.Y., June 27, 2000

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To the Editor:
Re "Genetic Code of Human Life Is Cracked by Scientists" (front page, June 27):

Does anyone else think it's ridiculous to announce that the human genome has been mapped when there's more than 10 percent left to go? Has our scientific community become so slipshod that it considers less than 100 percent good enough to be considered a job well done?

What's next? Will we have to rewrite the history books to make Apollo 10, not Apollo 11, the first flight to land on the Moon?

GEOFFREY JAMES Hollis, N.H., June 27, 2000

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After the Genome Announcement

New York Times
June 28, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/28wed2.html

Now that decipherment of the human genome has been so grandly trumpeted, practical and highly personal questions inevitably arise. What difference will this make to me? How soon will it help or hurt me? The answers were not always easy to discern in the torrent of commentary after Monday's triumphal announcement that a public consortium of academic institutions and a private company had each determined the exact sequence of the vast majority of chemical letters in the human genetic material. It is those letters that determine, when they are strung together as genes, how all the cells in the human body develop and function. In the commonly used metaphor, the genome is a blueprint for life.

In the long run, there seems no question that deciphering the genome will help propel research and medicine to a deeper level of understanding. Using so-called gene expression chips, scientists will be able to detect which genes are active in a heart cell and which are active in a kidney cell, shedding light on what makes those cells develop differently. They will also be able to compare gene activity in normal cells and cancer cells, in an effort to identify all the genes involved in causing the cancer and then to find a way to intervene at the molecular level. That would leave today's primary treatments for cancer -- cutting the cancer out, or zapping it with radiation, or hitting it with a toxic brew of chemicals -- looking like crude and barbaric relics of a less sophisticated past.

But what is often lost in the excitement is how long the process of discovery may take. Everyone expects some medical breakthroughs, in the form of drugs or diagnostic tests based on the new genetic understandings, to emerge in the next 5 to 10 years, but no one can say for certain just what the breakthroughs will be. Dr. Francis Collins, head of the publicly funded Human Genome Project, hazarded a guess that within the next decade there will be tests to tell people what genetically influenced diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease, they are at increased risk for, and that in 15 to 20 years drugs will be targeted on the precise molecular problem contributing to, say, cancer or mental illness. But Dr. Collins seemed much less sanguine about manipulating the aging process to extend the human life span, calling that far less certain to happen over the next 40 to 50 years, though it could.

Nobody really knows.

Indeed, the truth is that simply knowing the exact sequence of chemical units in the human genetic material does not tell scientists much about how the genes function, how they interact with each other, or what proteins they produce to catalyze events in the body's cells. The proteins are the real center of interest in biology and the most likely targets of drug treatments. Their mysteries will be far harder to penetrate than was the genome. That is why eminent biologists have been saying there is a century of work ahead.

Nevertheless, having the entire genome laid out on computer databases will be a great advantage because researchers can search for relevant genes at speeds unimagined in the recent past. At Monday's ceremonies, key scientists in the genome work recounted how genes that took a decade of hard work to find in the 1980's could be found today by a single postgraduate student in anywhere from 15 seconds to two weeks, just by searching a database. That enormous amplification of research power alone warrants all the exuberance over the genome project.

-------- activists

Greenpeace Holds Ground Off France

Associated Press
June 28, 2000 Filed at 8:53 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-AP103.html

CHERBOURG, France (AP) -- Greenpeace activists refused to give up a protest off the northern coast of France on Wednesday, despite the loss of a camera installed on an underwater pipe discharging waste from a nuclear reprocessing plant.

Instead, the environmental group said it had installed a funnel on the end of the pipe. The funnel divides the waste into six streams, each controlled by a valve that can be closed.

Divers from the plant at La Hague on Tuesday said they had ``involuntarily'' cut the cable of the Greenpeace webcam which was feeding live pictures of the waste to the Internet.

Activists on board the MV Greenpeace said Wednesday they were trying to repair the cable and would remain in French waters despite a police order to leave. A French navy ship was still in the area but keeping its distance.

``We want to illustrate the ease of ending the discharges, you just close the valve,'' said Diederik Samsom, a Greenpeace spokesman who is on the MV Greenpeace.

The La Hague plant is operated by French state-run nuclear group Cogema, which says the waste is a mixture of water and radioactive material waste, which is carefully monitored before going into the sea.

Samsom said the pipe could be closed by shutting the valves on the funnel.

``If we closed it, Cogema would have to store the waste, which would reduce dischargers but only temporarily,'' he said.

The Greenpeace action, which started Monday, is timed to coincide with an international conference on the marine environment in Denmark. The activists are hoping to persuade the conference to approve a motion to ban all nuclear reprocessing.

The annual OSPAR conference, which started Monday in Copenhagen, is attended by high-ranking officials from the 16 countries that are part of the OSPAR convention that protects the marine environment of the North-East Atlantic.

Greenpeace had been broadcasting live pictures from the webcam, placed 100 feet underwater, to the OSPAR conference and to its own Internet site until the cable was cut on Tuesday. It said in a statement that its site had received 53,000 hits in 36 hours.