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

-------- china

China Helps Pakistan Build Missiles, Says NY Times

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 10:46 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/wl/china_pakistan_dc_1.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence agencies have told the Clinton administration and Congress that China has continued to aid Pakistan's effort to build long-range missiles that could carry nuclear weapons, the New York Times reported.

The newspaper in its Sunday edition said that in a series of classified briefings in Congress, most recently Thursday, the agencies described how China stepped up the shipment of specialty steels, guidance systems and technical expertise to Pakistan, China's longtime strategic ally, after India and Pakistan set off rival nuclear tests in 1998.

The revelations are complicating President Clinton's effort to win quick Senate passage of a bill establishing normal trade relations with China, the daily said.

Chinese experts have also been sighted around Pakistan's newest missile factory, which appears to be partly based on a Chinese design, and shipments to Pakistan have been continued over the past 8 to 18 months, the newspaper quoted several officials with access to the intelligence reports as saying.

The New York Times said the Clinton administration was sending a large delegation to Beijing Tuesday to raise the issue in detail.

The delegation will be headed by John Holum, senior adviser to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for arms control.

Legislation granting permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to China was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in May and is awaiting Senate approval.

Once approved by the Senate and signed into law by Clinton, PNTR would end the annual ritual of reviewing Beijing's trade status and guarantee Chinese goods the same low-tariff access to U.S. markets as products from nearly every other nation.

In exchange for the trade benefits, China would open a wide range of markets, from agriculture to telecommunications, to U.S. businesses under the terms of a landmark agreement signed in November 1999, a major step in China's bid to join the World Trade Organization.

-------- europe

Cohen on role of European allies for NMD deployment

From: Regina Hagen <regina.hagen@jugendstil.da.shuttle.de>

[In a DoD news briefing transcript (it was an interview with US Secretary of Defense Cohen and two journalists held on July 1, 2000) I found the following bit. To me it is a proof JUST HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO WORK ON THE EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS! We should feel encouraged by Cohen's words!

In Peace, Regina]

Extract from news briefing:

Novak: Mr. Secretary, would you like to see a final, final decision on the missile defense question made before President Clinton and you leave office?

Cohen: Well, I would like to be in a position to make a recommendation to President Clinton based on the four criteria that he has set forward for me to examine.

Number one, is there a threat? I believe by the year 2005, a threat will be present that could threaten the security of the United States, yes. Do we have the technology? That remains to be determined. That's one of the reasons we have to await the outcome of the next test which will take place on July 7, and then to analyze its success or failure. And the third question is, what about the costs? I believe that the costs are affordable.

The fourth criterion would be the impact on arms control and our allies. And that's an issue that requires some reflection. We have spent the past year trying to persuade our allies this is something that's in our national security interests and will benefit them as well. And we're going to need the support of our allies because without their support, we will have -- it will be impossible to have an effective NMD system because you need forward-deployed radars.

So we are in the process of taking all of those factors into account. Novak: But you think that can all be resolved in the next six months? Cohen: I think that as far as the technology and the cost factors, the threat, I think those can be resolved. Again, the next test will be important, not dispositive, but important.

The fourth criterion would be the toughest one for the president to deal with.

Regina Hagen Darmstaedter Friedensforum Teichhausstrasse 46 D-64287 Darmstadt Germany Tel. [49] (6151) 47 114 Fax [49] (6151) 47 105

-------- india / pakistan

India Test Ban Consensus Expected

Associated Press
June 30, 2000 Filed at 6:48 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-India-Nuclear-Tests.html

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- India's prime minister said Friday that he expects to achieve a national consensus on signing the global nuclear test ban treaty by the end of the year, an Indian news agency reported.

``We are preparing a national consensus in this matter and efforts will be continued in the coming months in this direction,'' United News of India quoted Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as telling reporters who accompanied him to Italy and Portugal this week. Vajpayee returned to India on Friday.

He was quoted as saying no deadline can be set, but he expected the consensus to be reached by the end of this year.

Vajpayee has held discussions about the issue with leaders of main political groups in the past two months.

The United States has been pressing India and its rival, Pakistan, to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) after both countries conducted nuclear tests in 1998 and declared themselves nuclear powers.

Both countries have said they would not carry out any further nuclear tests and would eventually sign the treaty.

-------- korea

N. Korea Threatens Nuclear Renewal

Associated Press
July 1, 2000 Filed at 11:12 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-NKorea-Nuclear.html
http://www.herald.com/content/today/digdocs/062356.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/world/070100/nkorea_nuke.sml

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea on Saturday renewed its threat to restart its nuclear program if Washington does not compensate for the loss of electricity caused by delays in building nuclear power plants in the reclusive communist state.

The United States pledged to provide North Korea with two modern nuclear power plants by 2003 in a 1994 accord meant to freeze the North's nuclear program, suspected of being used to build atomic bombs.

But construction has been delayed by funding problems and tension over the North's long-range missiles. Now officials say a delay of several years is inevitable.

North Korea says the delays mean a huge loss of electricity badly needed to rebuild its devastated economy.

``If the issue of compensation ... fails to find a smooth solution, the (North) will have no option but to turn out electricity by graphite-moderated reactors depending on its rich natural resources and its own technology,'' the North's official Korean Central News Agency said.

The North's outdated Soviet-designed, graphite-moderated reactors can be used to extract weapons-grade uranium, a key ingredient for making atomic bombs, experts say.

Also Saturday, a delegation of the U.S.-led Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, which is building the modern reactors in the North, arrived in the North to discuss the $4.6 billion project, KCNA said.

On Thursday, President Clinton released a $20 million installment in energy aid to North Korea, saying the regime appears to be living up to a commitment to freeze its nuclear weapons program.

-------- russia

'Russia selling nuke parts to North Korea, Iran'

The Hindu
Saturday, July 01, 2000

WASHINGTON, JUNE 30. Russia is selling missile technology and components to North Korea and nuclear weapon components to Iran, The Washington Times reported today.

Quoting U.S. Intelligence officials who wished to remain anonymous, the paper said a report by the national security agency stated that missile component companies in Russia and Uzbekistan were cooperating to sell missile parts to North Korea.

The parts included a special aluminium alloy, laser gyroscopes used in missile guidance and connectors, and relays used in missile electronics, the officials said.

The security agency also reported that Russia was collaborating with a North Korean missile company in sending Scud B missile components to Yemen.

Officials said the gyroscopes for Scud B missiles were first sold to North Korea's Changgwang Sinyong company in Kazakhstan and then resold to Yemen.

Lifting some sanctions against North Korea earlier this month, the U.S. had said that Changgwang Sinyong company would remain subject to restrictions.

The U.S. imposed sanctions against the company in April for its missile proliferation activities like its role in sending missiles to Iran.

The agency, in a separate report on June 8, said that Russia was sending tritium gas to a nuclear weapons research centre in Teheran.

The gas is used to enhance the explosive power of nuclear warheads.

However, Russia says that it is only helping Iran to build a nuclear power plant under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

A senate aide who specialises in weapons proliferation is quoted by daily as saying, ``this is one more example of the Russian Government's failure to control missile technology and nuclear exports. Whether the Government is incapable or uninterested in controlling its borders is immaterial.''

The Republican Congressman, Mr. Curt Waldon, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, said, ``Russian arms proliferation shows the complete breakdown of the Clinton administration arms control policies.''

---

Russian Assails U.S. on Missile Plan

International Herald Tribune
Paris, Saturday, July 1, 2000
By David Hoffman Washington Post Service
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/SAT/IN/miss.2.html

MOSCOW - Russia's military leadership has begun backpedaling from a statement by Presidents Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin during their summit meeting in Moscow last month expressing mutual concern about the threat of ballistic missile proliferation.

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Putin declared June 4 that the globe faced a ''dangerous and growing threat'' from proliferation of weapons ''including missiles and missile technologies.'' But Thursday, the military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda published an article by General Leonid Ivashov, head of the Defense Ministry's department of international cooperation, referring to the U.S. evaluation of the threat as nothing more than ''fairy tales.''

When estimating the threat of missile strikes, he wrote, the United States gives priority to the ''technological ability of this state or another to build missiles.'' Meanwhile, he wrote, there is a ''complete absence of evaluation of the motivation'' for those states to use such missiles. In fact, he wrote, decisions on missile development are made ''on the basis of rising regional challenges.''

His comments followed two other recent declarations by Russian military leaders against U.S. missile defense plans. The commander of strategic rocket forces, General Vladimir Yakovlev, warned that Russia would pull out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty if the United States went ahead with the system. And Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said the system had been proposed in a quest for ''strategic domination.''

Mr. Putin has had broad support from the military, and it is not clear whether he is concerned by the military's latest statements or whether he sanctioned them.

---

Putin Signs Foreign Policy Doctrine

Associated Press
June 30, 2000 Filed at 7:30 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Foreign-Policy.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin approved a foreign policy doctrine Friday aimed at restoring Russia's global clout and countering U.S. dominance in international affairs.

The ITAR-Tass news agency said the paper outlines policies on national security, defense and cultural ties. It also calls for an enhanced role for the Foreign Ministry, the report said, without elaborating.

The Kremlin press service confirmed that Putin had signed the document, but gave no details. It said the doctrine was to be published next week.

The document was apparently part of the national security doctrine Putin signed earlier this year, which broadens the Kremlin's authority to use nuclear weapons and accuses the United States of trying to weaken Russia.

The foreign policy doctrine replaces one adopted in 1993. Russia was then building political and military partnerships with the West.

But Russia's attitude to the West has hardened following the eastward expansion of NATO and the alliance's intervention in Yugoslavia. Moscow and Washington are also at odds over Washington's desire to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Russia, China, India and France have all opposed what U.S. global dominance following the Cold War and have attempted to create a counterbalance.

Putin's promises to restore Russia's global influence, and his tough defense of Russia's military campaign in Chechnya in the face of international criticism, are popular among Russians, and helped him win March presidential elections.

-------- us nuc facilities

Energy Department to Renegotiate Lab Contracts

Washington Post
Saturday, July 1, 2000; Page A04
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Compiled from reports by staff writers D'Vera Cohn, Don Phillips and Walter Pincus and the Associated Press.
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/01/062l-070100-idx.html

The Energy Department said it will renegotiate its contract with the University of California to manage the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories--and will demand major improvements in security at both facilities.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has come under congressional pressure to tighten security in the wake of allegations of espionage at the nuclear labs and the recent disappearance of two computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets.

But Richardson said he will "absolutely not" step down over the security lapses. "I don't walk away from a fight," he said on NBC's "Today."

-------- new jersey

Air Force secretary: New plan due on Fort Dix cleanup "Someone has to bear the burden," he said of the delays at the BOMARC site, contaminated with plutonium.

Philadelphia Inquirer
07/01/00
By Marc Levy INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/07/01/city/JBOMARC01.htm

McGUIRE AIR FORCE BASE - The highest-ranking Air Force official yesterday broke three months of silence on the agency's stalled plan to clean up the plutonium-contaminated BOMARC site, saying an alternative plan would be forthcoming this year.

F. Whitten Peters, secretary of the Air Force, said military officials and New Jersey's congressional delegation were working on a plan to clean up 8,500 cubic yards of plutonium-laced soil, cement and steel from Fort Dix land leased by the Air Force.

However, he said an undetermined municipality likely would be the transshipment point for the contaminated soil, a designation that brought fierce local opposition when the Air Force publicized its plans earlier this year.

"At some point, someone has to bear the burden," Peters told reporters after he delivered an address to a graduating class at McGuire's Air Mobility Warfare Center.

Previous cleanup plans were abandoned when two Ocean County mayors, Stephen F. Childers of Lakehurst Borough and Michael Fressola of Manchester Township, opposed the $6 million job, saying they did not want the waste unloaded from flatbed trucks onto freight cars at a railhead in their towns.

The waste would then be moved by train to a low-level radiation disposal site in Utah's West Desert.

Plutonium 239 is a cancer-causing agent that is harmful to humans if breathed or ingested. The plutonium has not seeped into the water table beneath Fort Dix, according to government studies.

Childers and Fressola voiced concerns that the plutonium could become airborne during a cleanup, and that the Air Force had not built in enough precautions to ensure that the waste would not escape its containers.

Air Force officials said the plan's precautions had gone well beyond federal law to guard against what they called a minimal health risk.

At least one scientist, Andrew Karmar, the radiation safety officer at the University of Rochester in New York, said that there were other toxic substances more dangerous than plutonium, and that removing it posed a greater risk than leaving it where it was.

And of the three active low-level radiation sites in the United States, all have leaked, or experienced waste spills on or near the grounds.

"It's going to leak in Utah eventually, anyway," said Diane D'Arrigo, who is the radioactive waste project director for the nonprofit Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington.

The soil was tainted on June 7, 1960, when up to 11 ounces of plutonium 239 spilled from a nuclear warhead after a high-pressure helium tank exploded and ruptured the fuel tanks of a BOMARC air-defense missile.

BOMARC stands for Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center - a collaboration between Boeing and the University of Michigan, which developed the missile for the Air Force.

The warhead, one of 56 stored there at the time, was destroyed in the fire. To contain the contamination, the Air Force entombed the site with steel-reinforced cement.

It was, by most accounts, one of the worst publicly acknowledged nuclear accidents up to that time.

Peters yesterday dismissed the possibility of leaving the contaminated soil on site, and said the Air Force had one of the best records of any agency in the United States for contamination cleanups.

"Leaving it there is not a good option," he said.

Marc Levy's e-mail address is mlevy@phillynews.com

A note to our readers: We recently have upgraded our online publishing system. If you are experiencing any problems with the Inquirer Web site, please let us know. Include the date and time of the problem and a brief description. Send your comments to comments@staff.philly.com

mailto:comments@staff.philly.com

-------- new mexico

Gov't To Limit UC at Los Alamos Lab

Associated Press
July 1, 2000 Filed at 2:04 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Nuclear-Labs.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Energy Department, reacting to a series of security lapses, says it will strip the University of California of its security and some management responsibilities involving nuclear weapons programs at two laboratories.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson told the university its contracts for managing the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico and the Lawrence Livermore facility in California ``must be restructured ... to make much-needed improvements to security and other facility operations.''

The university ``will still be actively involved'' in scientific aspects of the nuclear weapons programs, but some other management responsibilities, especially security, would be transferred elsewhere, Richardson said in an interview Friday. He called the university's security management unacceptable.

The restructuring is expected to be worked out by September as part of a renegotiation of the government's contract with the university, Richardson said.

``The university welcomes the opportunity to work with DOE in this effort and to create a path forward that meets all security needs,'' university President Richard Atkinson said in a statement.

Richardson said it was important to keep the university's ``strong science and academic expertise'' as part of the weapons program ``so weapons scientists feel comfortable for their future.''

The university, which has managed the nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos since 1943 and the Manhattan Project, which exploded America's first nuclear device in the New Mexico desert, has come under sharp criticism for security lapses in recent years.

The two-month disappearance of two computer hard drives from a vault at Los Alamos caused a growing number of lawmakers in Congress to question whether a university atmosphere can mix with security needs of the nuclear weapons programs.

``There's still a culture of lax security,'' Richardson said.

The government contract with the University of California expires in 2002. DOE officials said the contract is expected to be re-negotiated this year.

``The department will immediately begin negotiations with the university to bring into their operations specific security and management expertise to implement (security) improvements,'' a DOE statement said.

The new chief of DOE's nuclear weapons agency, Undersecretary John Gordon, was placed in charge of overseeing the contract renegotiating and to address with the university ``the serious shortcomings ... at our weapons laboratories,'' the department said.

Richardson was angered by the disappearance of the hard drives, but even more incensed by not having learned of the security breach for nearly a month after it became known to some Los Alamos scientists.

Last year, the secretary also was highly critical of the university's handling of a sophisticated laser program at the Lawrence Livermore lab. After repeatedly assuring the $1 billion laser program was on schedule and within budget, Richardson was told without warning there would be a $300 million cost overrun and substantial delays.

---

Energy Chief to Divest University of Lab Security Duties

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/070100los-alamos-security.html

WASHINGTON, June 30 -- Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced today that he planned to strip the University of California of its responsibility for security at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories after a series of major security lapses at the troubled Los Alamos laboratory.

The University of California, which has held the government contract to manage Los Alamos since the laboratory opened during World War II to develop the atomic bomb, will continue to run the scientific and research aspects of both Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore.

But Mr. Richardson said he would immediately seek to renegotiate the university contract and would find a different organization to handle security and facilities management at the two laboratories.

"The University of California's performance in managing security at our weapons laboratories is unacceptable and must be immediately addressed," Mr. Richardson said today. "Safeguarding security at our nation's weapons laboratories warrants nothing less."

Mr. Richardson said he had asked Gen. John A. Gordon, the director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the new, semi-independent agency that oversees the government's nuclear weapons sites, to handle the contract renegotiations with the University of California and to recommend a new organization to handle laboratory security by Sept. 5.

"Finding an effective way to improve the security and management at the laboratories without compromising the strength of their cutting-edge science and research will be one of my top priorities," General Gordon said in a statement today. The general met with the provost of the University of California on Thursday to inform him of the decision to change the management of laboratory security.

The president of the University of California, Richard C. Atkinson, offered only a cautious statement in response to Mr. Richardson's actions.

"The U.S. Department of Energy has advised us that it will explore ways in which additional expertise might help address security issues," Mr. Atkinson said, adding, "The university welcomes the opportunity to work with D.O.E. in this effort and to create a path forward that meets all security needs."

The University of California's contract to manage the two weapons laboratories has been under scrutiny since last year, following the Wen Ho Lee case. Dr. Lee was fired from Los Alamos in March 1999 for security violations uncovered in connection with the government's investigation of accusations of Chinese espionage at the laboratory.

After Dr. Lee was dismissed, investigators discovered that he had downloaded vast amounts of secret nuclear data from the classified computer network at Los Alamos and copied it onto portable tapes, some of which are now missing. He was arrested in December on charges of mishandling classified material. He has not been charged with espionage.

Criticism of the University of California's management has increased over the past month after the discovery that computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets had disappeared from a vault at the Los Alamos site. The two hard drives were found by a laboratory employee, but the F.B.I. is now conducting a criminal investigation at the laboratory to determine who removed them.

Lax security at Los Alamos has become a major issue in Congress, and lawmakers have repeatedly questioned Mr. Richardson about whether he would hold the University of California accountable and end its long hold on the laboratory contract.

The debate over the university's status as laboratory contractor has also raised broader issues about the inherent conflict between science and security in weapons development.

Scientists at the national weapons laboratories believe strongly that an open exchange of ideas is needed to achieve the best science, even in the national security area. The scientists cherish the notion that one of America's premier universities manages the laboratories, fostering an academic environment. But to protect American military advantages, the government wants to keep secret the advances achieved at the weapons laboratories. The result is an endless tug of war between the scientists and security and counterintelligence officials that dates back to the Manhattan Project.

The University of California's contract does not expire until 2002, but Mr. Richardson said in an interview today that the security crisis at Los Alamos had convinced him that he must renegotiate the agreement now, and that he had already decided to take security matters away from the university.

"We want to keep U.C.'s assets, basically providing a good environment for science, and get rid of their liabilities, basically security," Mr. Richardson said. "There is no reason why we should keep their weak management and security components."

While the university runs both Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, the nation's third nuclear weapons laboratory, is managed by the Lockheed Martin Corporation.

---

The Security of Science

Washington Post
Saturday, July 1, 2000; Page A24
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/01/027l-070100-idx.html

The June 22 editorial on Los Alamos stated that "science without security is worse than useless." Once upon a time, science was a method by which investigators searched for universal principles, verified their hypotheses and shared their results with the world. Publishing was an essential component of true science.

The original nuclear bomb designers were scientists who left their university positions to become engineers of weapons of mass destruction. For a while, they continued to do science in addition to designing bombs. For example, they created and named new chemical elements. They measured the high-energy density environments inside nuclear fireballs and extrapolated to make theories about the interiors of stars. In the wartime environment, they kept their engineering work secret to avoid encouraging imitation by German scientists, who were, after all, the discoverers of nuclear fission (in 1938). They were aware that science and secrecy are fundamentally incompatible.

"Science" has come to mean nuclear weapon design and "security" has come to mean secrecy. This corruption of terms is one of the legacies of the Faustian bargain struck by the physicists of the 1940s.

HOWARD MORLAND
Arlington

-------- washington

Nuclear site appears safe as fire dies

Evansville Courier & Press
07/01/00
By The Associated Press
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200007/01+fire070100_news.html+20000701

RICHLAND, Wash. - The wildfire that raced across nearly half of the Hanford nuclear complex was all but extinguished Friday, and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson gave assurances that the flames did not spread radiation.

The 190,000-acre blaze was ignited by sparks from an auto wreck Tuesday and exploded into a 30-mph inferno in less than a day.

Hanford was the chief producer of plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal for 40 years and is now the storage site for some of the most lethal wastes on the planet.

By the time Richardson declared the fire contained early Friday, it had burned 45 percent of the 560-square-mile reservation, plus 20 homes in and around the towns of Benton City and West Richland, just south of Hanford's boundaries.

Fifteen people were injured, most suffering smoke inhalation. One man was seriously burned as he tried in vain to save his home.

"There does not appear to be any contamination whatsoever," Richardson said Friday. When asked whether he was absolutely certain, Richardson replied: "I never say 'absolutely' any more. We are satisfied at this time there are no radiation releases."

David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass., said he did not doubt Richardson's claims.

Lochbaum said that early monitoring would have turned up any "tremendous concentrations."

The fire burned across three old radioactive-waste disposal sites - a trench and two dried-up ponds.

The fire also burned near some excavated drums containing uranium wastes but was diverted by firefighters.

The most lethal waste is in 177 storage tanks buried six feet underground that could explode if a spark were introduced inside.

Flames got within two miles of the tanks late Thursday, Energy Department spokesman Julie Erickson said.

State tests taken on and off the Hanford complex, and at the three old disposal sites, all showed no sign of radiation releases, said Debra McBaugh, a Washington Health Department spokeswoman.

---

Hanford fire under control Fire line

Sokane Spokesman Review
July 1, 2000
Ken Olsen - Staff writer
http://www.spokane.net/covers/people/staff.asp?ID=bio158

RICHLAND _ All but the last bits of fire, smoldering in several brushy draws, were out by the time fresh fire crews reported for duty on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation Friday morning.

"It's contained; it's stopped; it's going to look pretty sad by the end of today's shift," said Dale Warriner of the Washington Department of Natural Resources, one of the agencies fighting the blaze. "Yesterday was a good day. The winds that were predicted didn't happen."

Friday was forecast to be equally friendly to firefighting, and Hanford planned to start sending some of the 850 firefighters home. The aerial firefighting force was clipped to six helicopters and no airplanes from Thursday's nine airplanes and seven helicopters.

Meanwhile, other firefighters were on their hands and knees, looking for hot spots in a 300-foot-wide perimeter in the unburned portion of the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve. That work was being done in lieu of digging a fire line in the fragile reserve, prized because it was not tainted by radioactive pollution or other significant human intrusion during Hanford's years as a plutonium weapons factory.

Some of the sagebrush will survive, Warriner predicted, which will help the scorched acres recover.

Hanford workers are searching for a few pieces of soil monitoring equipment that contain radioactive Americium 241 and beryllium. The radioactive material is part of the mechanism these permanent monitors use measure soil moisture.

Fire officials predicted they easily survived the fire without losing any of the radioactive material.

The rest of the damage tally: a guard shack, trailer and small storage building on the Arid Lands Reserve, and 20 homes and 53 outbuildings in Benton City. Fire also blackened plants and sage on about 200,000 acres across the reservation and in Benton County.

The fire also moved across three old sites where liquid radioactive waste was dumped between the 1950s and 1970s. At its worst, the fire crossed a fence into the zone where 177 nuclear waste tanks, with 54 million gallons of radioactive waste, are buried.

Federal and state officials continued to insist no radioactive materials were released into the atmosphere as a result of the fire. But they conceded some small release was possible when pressed on how such a blanket statement could be absolutely true -- given that some plants pull nuclear waste pollution from the soil.

Still, the radioactive plants are at the center of the reservation and the radioactive particles are heavy. So if any radioactive particles were kicked into the air, they settled back to the ground before getting off of Hanford, said Debra McBaugh of the Washington Health Department.

The Health Department sent out three air-monitoring crews Thursday, and has so far found radiation levels exactly where they would be expected without a fire.

"Our hypothesis is zero release and we go out and do extensive monitoring to prove our hypothesis," McBaugh said.

Other scientists agreed that it is likely no radioactive waste was released.

"I don't have any reason to doubt that," said David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass. He said early monitoring would have turned up any "tremendous concentrations."

U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson made a whistle stop in the lobby of the Richland federal building Friday morning. With 16 television cameras rolling, radio shows taping and reporters scribbling, Richardson delivered his condolences to the families who lost their homes and the relatives of the woman killed in the automobile accident that started the fire Tuesday. He praised firefighters and Tri-Cities residents for a heroic effort.

"This was a stubborn fire to contain," Richardson said.

He pushed local officials to ask for financial assistance from Congress to cover the damages. U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Tri-Cities, was by Richardson's side, in what seemed a "made for the campaign season" moment.

Most of Hanford's 8,500-strong workforce stayed home again Friday. They likely will return to work next week.

Hanford was created by the Manhattan Project during World War II to make plutonium for nuclear weapons -- a purpose it pursued for decades, generating the nation's biggest volume of radioactive wastes. Its primary mission now is cleanup.


---

Hanford N-complex wildfire subdued

Philadelphia Inquirer
07/01/00
Associated Press
http://www.phillynews.com/content/daily_news/2000/07/01/national/FIRE01.htm

RICHLAND, Wash. - The wildfire that raced across the Hanford nuclear complex was all but extinguished yesterday, and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson gave assurances that the flames did not spread radiation.

The 190,000-acre blaze, which was ignited by sparks from an auto wreck Tuesday and exploded into a 30-mph inferno in less than a day, was the second fire to sweep a federal nuclear weapons installation in two months.

Hanford was the chief producer of plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal for 40 years, and is now the storage site for some of the most lethal wastes on the planet.

By the time Richardson declared the fire contained early yesterday, it had burned 45 percent of the 560-square-mile reservation, plus 20 homes in and around the towns of Benton City and West Richland, just south of Hanford's boundaries.

Fifteen people were injured, most suffering smoke inhalation. One man was seriously burned as he tried in vain to save his home.

"There does not appear to be any contamination whatsoever," Richardson said yesterday.

---

Crews Douse Hanford Fire; No Radiation Leaks Found Blaze: 45% of the nuclear complex was burned, but Energy secretary says there appears to be no contamination. Critics question how it got so big.

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, July 1, 2000
From Associated Press
http://www.latimes.com/editions/orange/ocnews/20000701/t000062186.html

RICHLAND, Wash.--The wildfire that raced across nearly half of the Hanford nuclear complex was all but extinguished Friday, and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson gave assurances that the flames did not spread radiation.

The 190,000-acre blaze, which was ignited by sparks from an auto wreck Tuesday and exploded into a 30-mph inferno in less than a day, was the second fire to sweep a federal nuclear weapon installation in two months.

The fire also raised questions about why it became such a huge inferno.

Richardson and others near the fire lines blamed unpredictable winds, dry conditions and 100-degree temperatures.

But critics said the blaze showed that the government was not prepared to protect the site that holds the nation's largest volume of radioactive waste from nuclear weapons.

Hanford was the chief producer of plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal for 40 years and is now the storage site for some of the most lethal wastes on the planet.

By the time Richardson declared the fire contained early Friday, it had burned 45% of the 560-square-mile reservation, plus 20 homes in and around the towns of Benton City and West Richland, just south of Hanford's boundaries.

Fifteen people were injured, most suffering smoke inhalation. One man was seriously burned as he tried in vain to save his home.

Richardson said his agency would start a fire-recovery fund for those who lost homes and property here.

"There does not appear to be any contamination whatsoever," Richardson said. When asked whether he was absolutely certain, Richardson replied: "I never say 'absolutely' anymore. We are satisfied at this time there are no radiation releases."

David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass., said he did not doubt Richardson's claims. Lochbaum said that early monitoring would have turned up any "tremendous concentrations."

The fire burned across three old radioactive-waste disposal sites--a trench and two dried-up ponds. It also burned near some excavated drums containing uranium wastes but was diverted by firefighters.

The most lethal waste is in 177 storage tanks buried six feet underground that could explode if a spark were introduced inside. Flames got within two miles of the tanks, Energy Department spokeswoman Julie Erickson said.

In May, a fire set to clear brush near Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico raged out of control, forcing evacuation of more than 20,000 people and destroying more than 200 homes in Los Alamos and nearly 40 temporary buildings at the laboratory.

---

Hanford fire got close to toxic waste Mysterious material buried in barrels

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Saturday, July 1, 2000
By ROBERT McCLURE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/drum01.shtml

The fire at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation burned within a half-mile of more than 1,200 barrels of waste of unknown origin that contain radioactive and toxic elements, Hanford records indicate. Sparked Tuesday by a traffic accident, the fast-moving blaze consumed more than 190,000 acres, forced a one-day evacuation of about 7,000 area residents, destroyed 20 homes and injured 15 people.

The fire burned across three old radioactive waste-disposal sites -- a trench and two dried-up ponds.

Monitoring so far has turned up no sign of radiation releases, but more tests are planned on plants and air-monitoring filters, said Debra McBaugh, a state Health Department official.

Tests came back yesterday on 54 samples taken Thursday on and off the nuclear reservation, and from the three old disposal sites. None showed any sign of radiation releases, McBaugh said.

Authorities in some cases stationed firefighters near areas where toxic materials are stored. It was unclear last night if such precautions were taken at the dump site where the mysterious barrels were unearthed in 1998.

When the barrels were found, Hanford officials sought advice from a sister nuclear facility where what appeared to have been similar wastes had burned. The Hanford officials wondered: What could be done if the barrels here ignited?

The answer, in essence: Very little. Flames would probably shoot 20 to 50 feet into the air. All one could do is stay back.

"Water could rarely be brought to bear in sufficient quantity to extinguish," Jim Bailey wrote in an e-mail from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. "Dirt would only aggravate by causing the billowing type smoke which led (sic) to airborne contamination."

Hanford officials, though, said there really is not much to fear from the mysterious barrels.

For one thing, Route 4, a four-lane road and handy firebreak, was between the drums and the flames. Even if the fire had jumped the road, there are few plants around the old dump site, Hanford officials said. It's very unlikely the barrels could get hot enough to burn, they said.

"Any fire loading around there -- brush material -- would be very light," said Steve Sautter, manager of Hanford's joint information center.

An Environmental Protection Agency representative working to safely dispose of the drums had a different take.

"There's an awful lot of grasses, cheatgrass and that sort of thing, and there is still sagebrush dotted here and there," said Dave Einan, an EPA project manager. "So there is fuel that would get it close to the burial ground."

Einan said dirt removed from the drums was deposited around the edge of the site, leaving little to no plant material right next to the drums.

The barrels, located about a mile from homes across the Columbia River in Franklin County and about 3 miles from Richland, were accidentally discovered when a crew was digging in the area, Sautter said.

"They found one and they found five and pretty soon they were up to 1,200 to 1,500," he said.

About 350 were uncovered. The rest remain buried.

Of the 350, tests were run on 50, according to records obtained by the Government Accountability Project through the federal Freedom of Information Act.

"External drum markings do not provide useful information about the drum contents," one memorandum says.

Tests showed the contents included toxic materials such as barium, lead, trichloroethene, benzene, tetrachloroethene and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

The PCBs help retard fire, but not in the concentrations found in the drums, Einan said. Likewise, solvents mixed into the waste would promote fire, but are probably not present in sufficient quantities to have much of an effect.

The uranium is unirradiated, meaning it has a relatively low level of radiation, Sautter said. However, small chips of uranium, such as what appear to make up the main volume of the waste, can spontaneously catch fire.

Apparently for that reason, they were packed in mineral oil, which prevents spontaneous combustion -- but will burn if ignited.

The drums that were unearthed remain on site, surrounded by patches of dirt dug from the trench in which they were buried. Officials believe the dirt would be an additional factor discouraging the spread of fire to them.

However, the e-mail from Bailey, an engineer at Oak Ridge, warns that even buried drums can catch fire.

He said the barrels there had sometimes burned accidentally, but at times before 1970 they were intentionally burned. He did not say why.

"Our local experience is that a large (uranium) chip fire in past times in a trench could and usually did spread through the soil space separating two trenches even when as much at 10 (feet) separated the trenches," he wrote, although in another reference he set that distance at 10 inches instead of 10 feet.

Should a fire occur," Bailey continued, "other materials present in the trench could create airborne particulates to carry DU (depleted uranium) away from immediate area."

It's unclear where the drums came from, Einan said. They might be from Hanford, or they might have been brought in from another nuclear facility, he said.

A partial description of the barrels obtained by Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group, shows a wide range of material characteristics: orange, yellow, greenish-brown, rust-colored, white, and tan; powdery, chalky, sandy, liquid, sawdustlike, oily, kitty-litterlike, cloudy white semi-translucent wastes and material similar to cardboard; lead acid batteries and "very dirty black oil."

If there were a fire approaching the barrels, it's likely that people living nearby who might be in the path of smoke would be evacuated before any harm could be done. So, is there really any health threat?

"I honestly don't know for sure," said Einan of the EPA. "I don't want to experiment with it."

---

Response to wildfire is faulted
Criticism comes as Richardson praises firefighting efforts

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Saturday, July 1, 2000
By GORDY HOLT, LEWIS KAMB and HECTOR CASTRO SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/fire011.shtml

RICHLAND -- A wildfire that raced through the arid land around the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was contained yesterday, leaving behind scorched earth, ruined homes and questions as to how the fire grew so quickly.

Yesterday, as Energy Secretary Bill Richardson toured the area, he said that firefighters did everything they could have to control the blaze, which consumed more than 190,000 acres and destroyed 20 homes.

Richardson and others near the fire lines blamed natural conditions -- unpredictable winds, dry landscape and 100-degree heat -- for turning what began as a roadside blaze into America's fastest-moving fire in the past decade.

But critics said the Energy Department just wasn't ready.

Gerald Pollet, director of the Seattle-based Hanford watchdog group Heart of America Northwest, called the department's fire-contingency plans "totally inadequate."

The fire began Tuesday afternoon near the nuclear reservation's western boundary after a head-on collision on State Route 240, which runs across the federal site.

Phyllis Arnold, 67, of Mattawa died when her car slammed into a tractor-trailer rig. The truck caught fire, and flames ignited roadside grass and sagebrush.

Driven by whirling winds that sometimes reached 30 mph, the flames virtually flew up and over Rattlesnake Ridge from the road where the accident happened.

Firefighters came close to containing the blaze early Wednesday, but, fueled by tricky crosswinds and arid sagebrush and grasses, it picked up momentum and spread out of control.

By nightfall the fire had crested the 3,200-foot ridge, then headed downhill into Benton City.

Up to 1,000 firefighters from around the state dug fire trenches, dumped aerial retardants and tried to pinch off the blaze at its perimeters.

Yesterday, 15 Seattle firefighters returned from the Tri-Cities area after an overnight trip to Hanford to help provide protection to a low-level radioactive waste site near the center of the nuclear reservation.

Battalion Chief Bill Hepburn, who runs the city's wildlands firefighting program, said his three-engine crew, along with Auburn and Kent fire units, guarded underground sites that house radioactive medical wastes and other low-level material.

The fire eventually forced a one-day evacuation of about 7,000 area residents and injured 15 people, including one man who was seriously burned defending his home.

Robert Pierce, 49, of Benton City was badly burned and taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he was listed in serious condition with burns to his back and arms.

The wildfire came just weeks after a disastrous fire at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that destroyed 200 homes.

Like that blaze, the Hanford fire raised concerns about contamination, with watchdog groups warning that the soot and smoke from the burnt soil and brush could send radioactive contaminants in the air.

Hanford was created by the Manhattan Project during World War II to make plutonium for nuclear weapons -- a purpose it pursued for decades, generating the nation's biggest volume of radioactive wastes.

Its primary mission now is cleanup.

Aerial and ground monitoring by state and federal field experts, and an independent analyses of smoke, air and ground samples in state Health Department laboratories, indicated no above-normal radiation levels from the fire, said Debra McBaugh, a Health Department environmental radiation group manager.

"We've found nothing in our samples that show (radiation levels) over what we've found prior to the fire," McBaugh said.

But Pollet doubted the state's findings.

"If you burn contaminated sagebrush and soils and don't find anything above normal, you're doing something wrong," Pollet said. "It's that simple."

Pollet said his organization's own sampling near fire lines late Thursday indicated contamination levels two to three times above normal for sustained periods.

The sampling was done with radiation detection devices known as dosimeters, he said.

The scorching flames also consumed thousands of acres of rare plant terrain in the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve -- part of the recently designated Hanford Reach National Monument.

The federally protected status of the terrain reportedly restricted some firefighting efforts during the three-day blaze.

But Keith Klein, the Energy Department's Hanford site manager, said, "There'll be lots of time to second-guess what happened on the fire line."

While there are certain to be questions about how the fire was handled, there were also signs that life was returning to normal for residents of the fire ravaged land.

The 1,000 firefighters from around the state began to sign out and head home yesterday, leaving in staggered shifts.

One helicopter patrolled the area with water to drop on hot spots. Six others were on stand by.

But as firefighters began to pull out, pole climbers, line pullers and wire splicers from the region's power and telephone companies began to pour in.

On a temporary basis, electricity and telephone service is returning quickly to Benton County, but it may take weeks before new equipment can be obtained and installed to make the repairs permanent.

And it could be months before everything is back to the way it was before the fire, said Richard Ross, a veteran GTE cable splicer.

Ross and his crew mates were ankle-deep in a blackened dust attempting to fix a telephone system.

Land experts were also busy, planning for rehabilitation duties, said Don Ferguson, a fire command staff spokesman.

"This type of ecosystem is generally fire-adapted," Ferguson said. "I anticipate it'll recover pretty well."

The Associated Press and P-I reporter Neil Modie contributed to this report.

---

Wash. Fire Frightens Residents

Associated Press
July 1, 2000 Filed at 9:23 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Hanford-Fire-Ecology.html

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) -- Smoke turned the sun blood-red. Panicked residents fled their homes. Nearly a thousand firefighters swarmed across the parched brush.

And Bill Rickard, plant ecologist, took it all in stride.

He has studied the grass and brush lands around the Hanford nuclear reservation for four decades, and he says wildfire -- though fierce and frightening -- is a force that neither can nor should be stopped.

``I've seen Rattlesnake Mountain black like this four times in 40 years,'' said Rickard, retired after a career with government contractors studying the Hanford site's ecology. ``Fire has always been a natural part of things in the West.''

Such a long view is a stretch for many Westerners made nervous by this dry, hot summer. Wildfires have charred 1.6 million acres nationwide since January, the most burned in the first half of any year since 1996.

Most of those fires have been in the West, and two were especially destructive: A blaze set in May near Los Alamos, N.M., to clear underbrush blasted out of control and destroyed more than 200 homes. This week's Hanford fire, sparked when a car wreck ignited dry brush, destroyed 20 homes and 190,000 acres as it raced across a nuclear reservation where lethal radioactive waste is stored.

Scientists say both blazes drive home the point that the arid West is meant to burn, whether it's done on purpose or left to chance.

Pressure to prevent unpredictable blazes like the Hanford fire is part of why federal officials started the fire that escaped control near Los Alamos. It's also why a moratorium on prescribed burns, imposed by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt amid outrage over the Los Alamos fire, was lifted after 30 days for all Western lands outside national parks.

There's too much land waiting to burn for a complete moratorium on intentional fires to last very long,federal officials said.

``We do prescribed burns on about 2 million acres a year,'' said Mike Gauldin, an Interior Department spokesman. ``Over the last 50 years of keeping fire out of the forests, we have built up kindling -- underbrush that makes fires much worse when they do occur. We burn that brush to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic fires and protect communities in the midst of those wildlands.''

The Los Alamos fire was set with the best of intentions, said Karl Wood, a professor of forestry at New Mexico State University.

``They just did it at the wrong time, in the wrong way, under the wrong conditions,'' Wood said. ``There were a lot of wrongs. The federal agencies think they know how to burn, but it's more than lighting a match.''

The trick is to burn at the right time of year, with the right humidity and wind conditions to keep a fire burning unwanted underbrush while sparing larger, desirable trees or shrubs, experts say.

Outside designated wilderness areas, where lightning-struck fires often are left to run their course, most land managers acknowledge that past meddling with nature requires more meddling now.

Even a ``natural'' fire is no longer all that natural, given the changes wrought by decades of grazing, fire suppression, logging and introduction of exotic weeds, said Joy Belsky, an ecologist for the Oregon Natural Desert Association.

Well-planned, intentionally set fires can be an effective tool to maintain some semblance of ecological balance, she said.

``The science is so clear that they need these fires,'' she said, ``or they're going to have something much worse.''

Something, for example, like this week's fire at Hanford. The temperature was hovering around 100 degrees and the wind was blowing strong when the fire started, resulting in one of the fastest-moving wildfires -- at 30 mph -- ever seen in the West.

Intentional burns are not usually part of the management scheme at Hanford, where site managers don't want to stir up radioactive wastes lurking in the soil and vegetation. But even if fires were set there, this would not have been the week to do it, said Don Voros, a regional supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

``You probably couldn't have asked for a worse time to start a fire,'' Voros said.

---------

Feds: Wind, Dry Weather Heated Fire

Yahoo News
Updated 9:15 PM ET June 30, 2000
By LINDA ASHTON, Associated Press Writer
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/000630/21/news-hanford-fire
http://www7.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/hanford01.htm
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/07/01/national/WILDFIRE01.htm
http://www.sltrib.com/07012000/nation_w/63451.htm

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - The wildfire that raced across nearly half of the Hanford nuclear complex was all but extinguished Friday, and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson gave assurances that the flames did not spread radiation.

The 190,000-acre blaze, which was ignited by sparks from an auto wreck Tuesday and exploded into a 30-mph inferno in less than a day, was the second fire to sweep a federal nuclear weapons installation in two months.

Hanford was the chief producer of plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal for 40 years and is now the storage site for some of the most lethal wastes on the planet.

By the time Richardson declared the fire contained early Friday, it had burned 45 percent of the 560-square-mile reservation, plus 20 homes in and around the towns of Benton City and West Richland, just south of Hanford's boundaries.

Fifteen people were injured, most suffering smoke inhalation. One man was seriously burned as he tried in vain to save his home.

"There does not appear to be any contamination whatsoever," Richardson said Friday. When asked whether he was absolutely certain, Richardson replied: "I never say `absolutely' any more. We are satisfied at this time there are no radiation releases."

David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass., said he did not doubt Richardson's claims. Lochbaum said that early monitoring would have turned up any "tremendous concentrations."

The fire burned across three old radioactive-waste disposal sites - a trench and two dried-up ponds. It also burned near some excavated drums containing uranium wastes but was diverted by firefighters.

The most lethal waste is in 177 storage tanks buried six feet underground that could explode if a spark were introduced inside. Flames got within two miles of the tanks late Thursday, Energy Department spokeswoman Julie Erickson said.

State tests taken on and off the Hanford complex, and at the three old disposal sites, all showed no sign of radiation releases, said Debra McBaugh, a Washington Health Department spokeswoman. The EPA is also setting up nine monitors around the perimeter of the nuclear complex.

High wind fanned the flames through dry sagebrush, grass and scrub trees. About 7,000 people evacuated Wednesday but were allowed back on Thursday.

Richardson said his agency would start a fire-recovery fund for those who lost homes and property here.

The agency did the same after the disastrous fire in Los Alamos, N.M., which destroyed 200 homes and nearly 40 temporary buildings at the laboratory that built the atomic bomb.

Lessons learned in that blaze helped firefighters here, Richardson said. Brush was cleared and gravel spread at sensitive sites. Roads and plowed firebreaks were sprayed with water or flame retardant.

After the fire, at an inactive research reactor, blackened wasteland extended right up to the road surrounding the site, and stopped.

Citing other Los Alamos lessons, Richardson added: "We locked up all the plutonium."

Energy Department personnel also said all sensitive documents - also an issue in New Mexico - had been locked in fire-safe and secure areas when the fire became a threat.

Hanford was created during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic build. It made plutonium for decades, generating the nation's biggest volume of radioactive waste. Its primary mission now is cleaning up that waste.

------

Feds: Wind, Dry Weather Heated Fire

Associated Press
June 30, 2000 Filed at 7:46 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Hanford-Fire-What-Happened.html

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) -- How could a routine little roadside blaze, sparked by a truck fire in a fatal traffic accident, grow into an inferno that burned nearly half the 560-square-mile Hanford nuclear complex?

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and others near the fire lines blamed unpredictable winds, dry conditions and 100-degree temperatures for turning Tuesday's fire into a monster.

But critics said the blaze showed that the government was not properly prepared to protect the site that holds the nation's largest volume of radioactive waste from nuclear weapons.

The fire consumed more than 190,000 acres, forced a one-day evacuation of about 7,000 residents, destroyed 20 homes and injured 15 people. It came just weeks after a disastrous fire at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico that destroyed 200 homes.

``There's going to be a lot of time to try to second-guess,'' Hanford site manager Keith Klein said Friday.

Richardson said Friday that firefighters did everything they could to try to control the fire, adding: ``I believe the Department of Energy acted effectively and rapidly.''

But Gerald Pollet, director of the Seattle-based Hanford watchdog group Heart of America Northwest, called the Energy Department's fire-contingency plans ``totally inadequate.''

Those plans spell out when Hanford firefighters should seek outside help and how to protect contaminated areas, said Michael Minette, spokesman for the Hanford Joint Information Center. Fires of varying sizes break out most years on the reservation's arid grasslands, and the plans are revised to reflect lessons learned after each one.

This blaze died out in part because winds eased Thursday and Friday.

``The fact that the winds died down meant it wasn't impossible to stop the blaze, like it was on Wednesday when it was out of control,'' Minette said. ``But without the firefighters, this fire would still be burning.''

Pollet questioned why more firefighters weren't called in immediately.

Minette referred that question to Hanford fire officials, who did not immediately return calls.

The fire began Tuesday afternoon near the reservation's western boundary after a head-on collision on Washington 24, which runs across the federal site.

Phyllis Arnold, 67, was killed when her car collided with a tractor-trailer rig, which caught fire, and flames ignited roadside grass and sagebrush.

State Trooper Dave Leary reached the remote site about 20 minutes later, and three or four trucks from Hanford's 120-member firefighter force were already spraying water on the blaze -- by then 200 yards wide, Leary said. County firefighters also responded.

High winds thwarted that initial effort.

The fire ``just basically took off,'' Leary said. ``It's easy for these fires to get away in this kind of terrain and the dry conditions.''

Five hours later, as two planes dropped flame retardant, the fire had grown to 3,500 acres and was climbing into the nearby Rattlesnake Hills.

At that point, the Fish and Wildlife Service was overseeing the response because the fire was burning on Hanford's Arid Lands Ecology Reserve -- an unspoiled area of shrubs and wild grasses that is part of the newly designated Hanford Reach National Monument. About 80,000 of the acres charred by the fire are on the reserve, Minette said.

Federal law intended to protect the fragile ecosystem restricts firefighters' use of bulldozers and the heaviest firefighting trucks. But officials insist those restrictions did not hamper firefighting.

``On a sensitive area, we try to use techniques that are as light on the environment as possible, but can still get the job done,'' said Dale Warriner, a spokesman for the interagency firefighting effort.

On Wednesday afternoon, high winds blew the fire out of control, overwhelming the 275 firefighters on hand.

The blaze mushroomed from 25,000 acres to 100,000 acres in a couple of hours, and the interagency team took over, bringing in crews from around the state.

By Wednesday night, the fire had spread to the outskirts of Benton City and West Richland, 26 miles southeast of where it started and on the southern border of the reservation. It was moving so fast that several homes burned before their owners were ordered to evacuate.

``It looked like the flames were going to come down the valley and destroy the entire town,'' said Marty Peck, who left his Benton City home moments before flames consumed a mobile home on his property. ``But then the wind shifted, and the fire started heading back into the mountains.''

-------- wisconsin

Study challenges EPA radium limits
Waukesha pleased by early results finding no tie to increase in bone cancer

By Mike Johnson
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
July 1, 2000.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wauk/jun00/radium01063000a.asp

Waukesha - Bone cancer is not more prevalent in Wisconsin communities that have radium in their water, according to the preliminary findings of a first-of-its-kind study intended to persuade the federal government to loosen its radium standards.

The findings in the study, commissioned by the City of Waukesha, have been filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., where officials are moving toward stricter enforcement of the radium standard.

Waukesha is among 600 communities nationally, including 50 in Wisconsin, that are in violation of the radium limit, which they want the EPA to raise.

The study has national and international implications, said Daniel Warren, president of the Waukesha Water Utility Commission, which estimates the city would have to spend $50 million for its water system to meet the existing standard.

"I don't see how the EPA could ignore this," he said. "A lot of people around the world are interested in this."

EPA officials said, however, that it is unlikely the agency will back down from the 5 picocuries standard, which was established in 1976 but never fully enforced. The EPA has been reviewing the standard and could begin enforcing the standard as early as November.

Any exposure to radium includes a risk of cancer, said Miguel Del Toral, regulations manager for the safe drinking water program for the EPA's regional office in Chicago.

"There is no safe (level of) risk. . . . Therefore, I don't think we will raise the MCL," the maximum contaminant level allowed, he said.

But Warren said: "Our contention has been that the EPA's health risk models which are used to estimate the risk of ingesting radium and the resultant occurrence of bone cancer overestimate the risks.

"If the EPA models were accurate, the study would have shown there was a higher occurrence of bone cancer in communities that have radium in their drinking water, and it would have shown the more radium in the drinking water, the greater the number of bone cancer cases."

In fact, preliminary findings show there is no difference in the occurrence of bone cancer between people who have radium in their water and those who don't, Warren said.

Waukesha's water last year averaged 11.6 picocuries of radium per liter, more than twice the existing EPA standard, according to the Waukesha Water Utility's annual report. A picocurie is a measure of radioactivity, or the pace at which a radioactive element such as radium decays.

To reduce the level of radium - a natural radioactive element found in deep underground aquifers - to meet the existing EPA standard, the city would have to make capital improvements to its water system and increase its operating budget by $1 million annually, Warren said. Residential water bills could triple to pay for the work.

Like Waukesha, many of the communities with radium in their water view the rule as unduly stringent.

The EPA, however, says there is evidence that long-term exposure to radium causes bone and other cancers.

Other communities that would have to upgrade their water systems include Johnson Creek, Fond du Lac, Mukwonago, Eagle, New Berlin and Peshtigo. Most of the systems are within a band that curves from De Pere through Fond du Lac to Racine County.

Waukesha commissioned the $200,000 study in November 1998 to determine whether there is a relationship between radium in water and the occurrence of bone cancer. Warren said it is the nation's first study to look at the actual effects on a human population instead of relying on the EPA's risk models.

The study, which is expected to be finalized next month, is being conducted by the Medical College of Wisconsin and the state Division of Health.

The group studied consisted of 320 Wisconsin residents with an initial diagnosis of bone cancer, or osteosarcoma, between 1980 and 1999. The study also used data from the state Department of Natural Resources on radium measurements in drinking water from across the state between 1978 and 1999.

"Based on the data collected, the study concluded that there was no evidence linking the current radium levels in Wisconsin drinking water to an increased risk of exposure to osteosarcoma across all age groups," Donald P. Gallo, an attorney for the city, wrote in information submitted to the EPA.

And the study concludes that "very few additional cases of osteosarcoma would be expected, even at the highest levels of exposure found in Wisconsin drinking water," Gallo said.

EPA officials are skeptical of the preliminary results.

"It's very unlikely you'd be able to have a study that would make that kind of link," said Chris Nelson, an environmental engineer with the EPA. "Bone cancer is a relatively low occurrence cancer anyway. . . . You're going to have a hard time seeing it. People are moving in and out. People typically do not spend their entire lifetime" in one area.

But Waukesha Mayor Carol Lombardi said the preliminary results contain "very solid data" that is "very encouraging."

"We're not getting any more cancer here than any other city in the U.S.," she said.

Warren said he would like to see the EPA raise the standard to 20 picocuries for each form of radium - radium 226 and radium 228.

Those levels are safe and conservative, he said.

If the study results don't "cause the EPA to pause in their rule making, I don't think they are giving a fair hearing to the information," Warren said.

------ us nuc weapons

Money for Radiation Victims a 'Major Victory'

Salt Lake Tribune
Saturday, July 1, 2000
BY JIM WOOLF THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.sltrib.com/07012000/utah/63417.htm

Legislation that would provide an additional $750 million for people injured during America's Cold War rush to develop nuclear weapons has cleared Congress and is awaiting the signature of President Clinton.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, offers financial compensation of up to $100,000 to thousands of people who suffered certain health problems as a result of their work in uranium mines, uranium mills, the transportation of uranium ores, or who were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation from open-air nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site.

If the injured person has died, his or her heirs may be eligible for the payment.

"I consider this a major victory for the state of Utah," said Hatch, noting that many of those eligible for the payments live in Utah. "It is now in the hands of President Clinton, and I know that he will do the right thing and sign this bill into law."

Hatch was sponsor of a 1990 law known as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which offered financial compensation to people living directly "downwind" from the Nevada Test Site who were exposed to high levels of radioactive fallout and to some of those who worked in underground uranium mines.

The new bill amends RECA to include additional categories of people who now are known to have suffered health problems as a result of radiation exposure. For example, workers in underground uranium mines previously were compensated only if they suffered from certain types of diseases. The amendments expand the list of eligible diseases. Also, people who were exposed as a result of working in uranium mills or transporting uranium ore now would be eligible for compensation for the first time.

"I am excited that we are making progress towards providing much-deserved compensation to the people who dutifully worked to provide our country with uranium at a time in history when we needed it most," said Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, who helped push the RECA amendments through the House of Representatives.

The amendments are a "major victory" for Navajos who were largely excluded from the 1990 bill, said Lori Goodman, spokeswoman for a Dilkon, Colo.-based group known as DinZ CARE (Citizens Against Ruining our Environment; DinZ is a Navajo word meaning "the people").

She said thousands of Navajos developed cancer and other illnesses as a result of working in the three uranium mills and 1,200 uranium mines on the Navajo reservation. They now will be eligible for payments.

The amendments also clear up several administrative problems that disqualified some Navajos from receiving compensation under the 1990 bill, Goodman said. For example, the original law said a spouse of a deceased worker needed to have a marriage certificate to receive the payment. But many Navajos do not have such certificates. Also, the 1990 bill required 10 years of detailed medical records to qualify for compensation. Such records do not exist for those tribal members who used traditional healing techniques.

"Senator Hatch's staff has been incredible" in helping make the modifications needed by Navajos, Goodman said. "We wouldn't have gotten here without them."

Melton Martinez, co-chairman of the Navajo RECA Reform Working Group, agreed the amendments are a breakthrough for tribal members.

"The bill doesn't cover everything we've been fighting for," he said, "but it's an important start." Hatch said his bill ensures that many more of those damaged by radiation will receive the compensation they deserve.

"Our government can never truly make right the unanticipated illness and injury caused by our nation's nuclear testing program," he said. "But we should do all we can, and it is my fervent hope that this bill shows Congress' commitment to righting a wrong in which the government played a substantial role."

---

It Isn't Working

New York Times
July 1, 2000
ABROAD AT HOME / By ANTHONY LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/lewis/070100lewi.html

BOSTON -- The state of our political system -- the depressing state -- was illuminated by a report in The New York Times last week. The story, by Michael R. Gordon with Steven Lee Myers, showed how petty domestic politics had imposed heavy costs, financial and diplomatic, on plans for a U.S. missile shield.

The Clinton administration thought of building the anti-missile system at Grand Forks, N.D., where an exception written into the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty allows a U.S. installation. But then computers showed that the single system would not cover the far western end of the Aleutian Islands, with a population of a few thousand.

That discovery killed the plan. Why? Because the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee is headed by Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. No one was willing even to ask him about the idea of leaving those few constituents of his unprotected.

So the plan now being considered by President Clinton would put a huge radar installation on a remote Aleutian Island and deploy 100 interceptors in central Alaska. The change will add $2 billion to the cost of the system -- and require problematic negotiation with Russia about amendment or abandonment of the ABM treaty.

That tale illustrates a curious aspect of contemporary American life. In business, we expect hard-nosed leaders to make decisions based on cost and comparative advantage -- and we thrive economically as a result. But in public policy, fewer and fewer decisions are made on the substantive merits.

The so-called missile shield is an example in another sense, even more profound. President Clinton is considering a "thin" system, designed to deal with the possibility of long-range nuclear missiles coming from such countries as North Korea. Republicans in general, and Gov. George W. Bush in particular, are arguing for a much bigger and more expensive system that would also cover American troops abroad and our allies.

The thin system is a halfway measure. It reminds one of what Winston Churchill said about the name of a fellow M.P., Sir Alfred Bossom: "It's neither one thing nor the other."

The purpose of the thin idea is plainly political. President Clinton wants to protect himself -- and Vice President Gore -- from Republican charges that they are weak on defense.

Ironically, it seems doubtful that the tactic will succeed. Despite enormous scientific doubts about the workability of antimissile devices, and extravagant cost, Americans have liked the dream of an invulnerable shield since President Reagan floated it. Governor Bush is likely to score with his call for an all-out system.

Nor would the limited plan now being considered by President Clinton obviate the diplomatic and security dangers of any antimissile system. Forty-five China scholars and diplomats, including President Reagan's ambassador to Beijing, have warned that an early decision to begin building any new system would provoke China into "negative steps that would undermine American security."

Politics also underlies another dangerous decision: the proposal, just approved by Congress, to send more than $1 billion in aid to Colombia to fight drugs. Here again President Clinton embraced an idea whose ramifications have hardly been thought through in order to protect himself from being called soft on drugs.

Drugs are a subject that has paralyzed American political leadership for a generation and more. The war on drugs fills our prisons without reducing drug use. But only a few politicians have been brave enough to say that the emperor has no clothes.

The other day the chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, Judith S. Kaye, ordered the courts to begin offering treatment instead of jail time to nonviolent criminals who are addicts. It took a judge to do what every study has shown is more effective and far less expensive.

Our sluggish democracy has always depended on courageous political leadership. It took a strong president and dedicated Congressional leaders, working together, to end American isolationism after World War II -- and to act on civil rights in the 1960's. When will we get the leadership to deal forthrightly with today's problems?

<a name="military"></a>

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

-------- iran

Russia, Iran Work Together on Military

Washington Post
Saturday, July 1, 2000; Page A20
World In Brief
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/01/145l-070100-idx.html

MOSCOW--Russia and Iran pledged to boost military cooperation and expressed concern at U.S. involvement in their backyards, officials involved in talks in Tehran and Moscow were quoted as saying.

Intensified military cooperation between Russia and Iran is viewed with deep suspicion by the United States.

Washington has criticized an agreement for the Russians to help construct a nuclear power station at Bushehr, saying Iran is using the deal to acquire nuclear weapons secretly.

The Russian Tass news agency, in a report from the Iranian capital, cited Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov as saying military officials from the two countries had agreed to hold regular consultations.

-------- iraq

Iraq Restarts Missile Program, Does Tests

Reuters
July 1, 2000 Filed at 12:50 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-us.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/ts/iraq_usa_dc_2.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/ts/iraq_usa_dc_1.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A year and a half after American and British warplanes attacked its missile factories, Iraq has restarted its missile program and flight-tested a short-range ballistic missile, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The newspaper said eight tests -- including one on Tuesday -- involved Al Samoud, a ballistic missile that could carry conventional explosives or chemical and biological weapons, the newspaper said, attributing the information to Clinton administration and American military officials.

The Pentagon had no comment on the report, but noted that there had been a lot of evidence that Iraq was building new weapons systems.

``I think Iraq's intentions to build some sort of an indigenous missile capability are well known,'' said Pentagon spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Vic Warzinski. ``But I don't have any details at this stage.''

The newspaper said that because the missile's range is less than 150 kilometers or 95 miles, it does not violate United Nations restrictions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War.

But the flight tests show that production plants and research labs destroyed in the 1998 U.S. and British strikes have been rebuilt, the report said.

The missile's range, shorter than that of the Scud missiles Iraq fired at Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, does not pose a significant threat to Iraq's neighbors or American forces in the Gulf, the officials told the newspaper.

But they view the testing as evidence Iraq is still working to perfect its ballistic missile technology, which could be adapted to missiles with a longer range.

The program has intensified U.S. fears that, with the prolonged absence of international weapons inspectors, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may already be working on though not testing longer range missiles.

``We're starting to see things up and functioning,'' Gen. Anthony Zinni, commander of American forces in the Gulf region, told the newspaper. ``What he learns from these tests, the technological developments and the other things he picks up are transferable to longer-range missiles.''

Work on longer-range missiles by Iraq would violate United Nations restrictions and would give the United States the difficult choice of how to respond.

Officials told the newspaper that the new missile did not appear to be ready for deployment and their analysis of the test found significant problems with it.

---

Iraq Reported To Have Missile Plan

Associated Press
July 1, 2000 Filed at 4:37 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Iraq-Missile-Tests.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000701/wl/iraq_missile_tests_1.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/iraq000701.html
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/specials/mideast/iraq/A31038-2000Jul1.html
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/07/01/bc.iraq.missiletests.ap/index.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/427993.asp?cp1=1

NEW YORK (AP) -- Iraq has restarted its missile program and has conducted flight tests of a short-range ballistic missile, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The tests -- eight since as early as May 1999, including one on Tuesday -- have involved Al Samoud, a liquid-fueled ballistic missile that could carry conventional explosives or the chemical and biological weapons that Iraq is still suspected of hiding, according to Clinton administration and military officials cited by the newspaper.

``We're starting to see things up and functioning,'' Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf region, said in an interview Monday.

The tests come eight months after American and British warplanes badly damaged Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's missile factories after Iraq halted all cooperation with international inspectors searching for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the missiles that can carry them. Iraq had agreed to forsake those weapons as a condition for the United States and its allies ending the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

The new missile's range, shorter than that of the Russian-made Scud missiles fired at Israel and Saudi Arabia during the war, does not pose a significant threat to Iraq's neighbors or American forces in the region, officials said. But those officials view the testing as evidence that Iraq is still working to perfect its ballistic missile technology, which could be adapted to longer-range missiles, the Times said.

``What he (Hussein) learns from these tests, the technological developments and the other things he picks up, are transferable to longer-range missiles,'' said Zinni.

With a range under 95 miles, the new missile does not violate United Nations restrictions.

Officials told the Times the new missile did not appear to be ready for deployment, adding that American satellites, radar and aircraft monitoring the test flights had found significant problems with Al Samoud -- which in Arabic means resistance.

``They can't get the guidance to work right. They can't get the engines to work right. It's not close to going into production, but they are persistent,'' said one unnamed official cited by the newspaper.

---

Iraq Tests Short-Range Missile

Yahoo News
Saturday , July 1, 2000 ; A10
By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30792-2000Jul1.html
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/01/150l-070100-idx.html

Iraq flight-tested a short-range ballistic missile earlier this week, a senior Clinton administration official said last night.

He said the U.S. government monitored the flight but didn't object because under the United Nations resolutions restricting Iraqi weapons programs, Iraq is allowed to test short-range missiles.

"I don't think this is the first flight test since Desert Fox," the administration official said, referring to the short series of air and missile strikes the U.S. launched against Iraq in December 1998 after U.N. weapons inspectors said the Iraqi government was continually interfering with their efforts to monitor attempts to revive Iraqi biological and chemical weapons programs. He said he wasn't sure how many times Iraq had tested since then.

The official said the U.S. government isn't particularly concerned by this week's test because it is legal, because it has happened before, because it appears to be a technical test of the rocket--rather than of a warhead--and because there is no indication that Iraq is trying to put chemical or biological warheads atop the test missiles.

U.N. Security Council Resolution 687, the measure that spelled out the terms of the cease-fire that ended the Persian Gulf War, permits Iraq to build and test ballistic missiles with a range of less than 150 kilometers (about 93 miles).

"Our position hasn't changed," he said. "If we see evidence of a reconstitution of WMD [weapons of mass destruction], we are ready to take appropriate action at a time and a place of our own choosing."

Iraq has openly worked on short-range missiles such as the Ababil-100, which has a range of about 150 kilometers, since August 1994, when the U.N. weapons monitors placed video cameras in some Iraqi facilities, according to the history compiled by the Federation of American Scientists.

News of the latest Iraqi flight test was first reported in early editions of Saturday's New York Times.

---

Flight Tests by Iraq Show Progress of Missile Program

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/070100iraq-missile.html
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/iraq014.shtml
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/07/01/MN106690.DTL

WASHINGTON, June 30 -- Eighteen months after American and British warplanes badly damaged its missile factories, Iraq has restarted its missile program and flight-tested a short-range ballistic missile, Clinton administration and American military officials said this week.

The tests -- eight in all, including one on Tuesday -- have involved Al Samoud, a liquid-fueled ballistic missile that could carry conventional explosives or the chemical and biological weapons that Iraq is still suspected of hiding, the officials said.

Because its range is less than 150 kilometers, or under 95 miles, the missile does not violate United Nations restrictions imposed on Iraq after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. But the flight tests show that production plants and research labs destroyed in four nights of American and British strikes in December 1998 have been rebuilt and have resumed work, the officials said.

The missile's range, shorter than that of the Russian-made Scud missiles that Iraq fired at Israel and Saudi Arabia during the war, does not pose a significant threat to Iraq's neighbors or American forces in the Persian Gulf, the officials said.

But they view the testing as evidence that Iraq is still working to perfect its ballistic missile technology, which could be adapted to missiles with a longer range.

Iraq's program has intensified fears within the administration and the Pentagon that in the prolonged absence of international weapons inspectors, President Saddam Hussein may already be covertly working on, though not testing, longer-range missiles. Such work would violate the United Nations restrictions and would confront the United States with the difficult choice of how to respond.

"We're starting to see things up and functioning," Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf region, said in an interview on Monday, before the most recent missile test. "What he learns from these tests, the technological developments and the other things he picks up, are transferable to longer-range missiles. I mean it's not a stretch."

The United States and Britain attacked Iraq in 1998 to punish Mr. Hussein's government for halting all cooperation with international inspectors searching for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as the missiles that can carry them. Iraq agreed to forsake those weapons as a condition for the United States and its allies ending the gulf war in 1991.

A significant number of the targets struck in the 1998 raids -- 12 of 100 over all -- were industrial and military factories involved in Iraq's missile program, including one in the Taji military complex north of Baghdad and the nearby Ibn al-Haytham missile research center, where Al Samoud is made.

American officials acknowledged earlier this year that Iraq had managed to rebuild many of the structures damaged or destroyed, but the extent of its missile program and its continued testing has not previously been disclosed.

"We never claimed it was permanent," a senior Defense Department official said of the damage done 18 months ago. "Whatever you can build, you can rebuild."

Officials said the new missile did not appear to be ready for deployment. They said their analysis of the tests -- monitored by American satellites, radar and aircraft patrolling the "no flight" zones over northern and southern Iraq -- found significant problems with the missile.

"They have all kinds of problems with it," an official said. "They can't get the guidance to work right. They can't get the engines to work right. It's not close to going into production, but they are persistent."

Before the war, Iraq had many missiles, so presumably it still has the technology to build them, even though for a decade it has been proscribed from working on longer-range missiles and from buying equipment.

The disclosure of the missile tests comes at a time when the administration's policy toward Iraq has faced intensifying diplomatic criticism and international concern that economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations are punishing the Iraqi people, not Mr. Hussein's government.

The administration's policy is also emerging as an issue in the presidential campaign between Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.

"The word policy is probably an overstatement in describing the administration attitude toward Iraq," Richard Perle, a former assistant defense secretary and now an adviser to Governor Bush's campaign, said to a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday. "Paralysis is probably more appropriate."

Since the attacks in 1998, there have been no international inspections of Iraq's weapons programs, and for months before there there was little meaningful monitoring because of Iraq's refusal to cooperate.

Earlier this year, the United States joined the other members of the United Nations Security Council in approving a new inspection system, but the system's new director, Hans Blix, has moved slowly to assemble a team of inspectors.

Despite an offer to ease the sanctions if the new inspections find no evidence of weapons programs, Iraq has insisted that it will not cooperate with any new inspectors.

Iraq began work on Al Samoud -- which in Arabic means resistance -- after the Persian Gulf war. The missile is believed to be a variant of the Soviet-era SA-2, the type of surface-to-air missile that shot down the U-2 spy plane flown by Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union in 1960.

Iraq first tested the missile in 1997 under supervision of the previous team of international inspectors, which sought to ensure that the missile remained within the prescribed range.

With the American and British strikes in 1998, Pentagon officials said they set back Iraq's missile program one to two years. But the damage to the missile centers now appears to have derailed the program far less significantly.

Flight tests resumed as early as May 1999, when Iraq fired a test into the desert west of Baghdad. Since then Iraq has conducted seven more tests, including the one on Tuesday, the officials said.

All of the missile flights have stayed within the United Nations limits, they said. "They are being very careful," one said. "They are not giving us any reason to go clobber them."

Previous American reports, including one by the State Department in 1998, have said Iraq imports missile parts and other equipment through "clandestine procurement networks," and the officials said Iraq was still seeking to acquire parts on the international arms market.

American intelligence experts also estimate that Iraq still has 20 to 40 Scud missiles that it has hidden since the end of the Gulf war.

--

Iraq Seizes Attack To Rip Sanctions

Yahoo News
Thursday June 29 7:24 PM ET
By LEON BARKHO, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000629/wl/iraq_un_attack_1.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.N. workers paid condolences Thursday to relatives of an Iraqi colleague killed in a shootout at a U.N. office in Baghdad, an incident the government of Saddam Hussein quickly seized on to highlight the impact of international sanctions.

Relatives of Marewan Mohammed Hassan, who handled computer databases at the Food and Agriculture Organization office in Baghdad, cried as a taxi pulled up to the family home carrying his body. Hassan's sisters collapsed.

On Wednesday Fowad Hussein Haydar forced his way into the FAO offices armed with two machine guns and began firing randomly, provoking a shootout that left two people dead and six wounded.

Iraqi authorities gave the gunman the unusual opportunity of a press conference at a Baghdad police station. Haydar's expressed motive for the shooting spree - frustration with harsh U.N. economic sanctions - is one the government can relate to.

Relatives and visitors, who said Hassan had married less than a month ago, stood near the taxi to pay respects before it drove off with the casket on top, taking the body for burial in the northern city of Kirkuk. Hassan was born in Kirkuk, 170 miles north of Baghdad.

``It was a painful and criminal act,'' Tariq Hassan Abdeen, a U.N. consultant with the Rome-based FAO, said at the Hassan family home. ``The deceased was an example among his U.N. colleagues of hard work and high morals. We are all so sorry for his loss.''

Hassan's father, Mohammed, was in tears. He said another son had died 10 months ago of cancer: ``He was the only remaining son I had.''

No government officials appeared to be at the family home, crowded with relatives and about 50 U.N. workers from the FAO and other offices.

Haydar's remarks were aired on state-run television and carried almost in full in the front pages of all state-controlled newspapers.

``The reason is the embargo, the death and murder of thousands of Iraqi children and elderly. I wanted to relay a message,'' he said. The 38-year-old said he had intended to kidnap FAO director Amir A. Khalil and then negotiate his demands, but that guards opened fire.

Baghdad diplomats contacted by The Associated Press said Thursday the shootout was an isolated incident.

Still, a European diplomat said on condition of anonymity that the government could consider such an attack useful as a reminder to the world community of the plight of Iraqis.

Privately, government officials said they deplored the loss of life. But, like Haydar, they repeated claims that sanctions have killed more than a million Iraqis and have devastated a once-prosperous society.

Iraq has been trying to refocus world attention on U.N. economic sanctions, which have crippled the economy and driven millions of Iraqis below the poverty line. The sanctions were imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and cannot be removed until U.N. inspectors verify Iraq is rid of all weapons of mass destruction and the capability to rebuild its arsenal.

Iraq and the United Nations are locked in a standoff over how to restart weapons inspections, stalled since late 1998. Iraq has vowed not to let the inspectors into the country again until after the world body lifts the sanctions.

A memorial service was planned for Friday in Baghdad for the other U.N. staffer killed, Yusuf Abdilleh, a Somali administrative officer.

---

Iraq, Yugoslavia Affirm Anti-U.S. Struggle

Yahoo News
Thursday June 29 5:06 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000629/wl/yugoslavia_iraq_dc_1.html

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslav and Iraqi ministers on Thursday affirmed their countries' struggle against U.S. domination, the state news agency Tanjug reported.

Tanjug said Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic and Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh had ``exchanged information on reconstruction and development of the two countries and their struggle against the hegemony and domination of the United States in the Middle East and Southeast Europe.''

The two ministers also discussed raising the volume of trade between their countries, which have both experienced Western-backed air strikes and international isolation, through the U.N. Security Council ``Oil for Food'' program.

Yugoslavia and Iraq signed an economic and oil cooperation accord in November and set up a joint commission, co-chaired by Saleh, to boost ties.

Iraq has condemned last year's NATO bombing of Yugoslavia which Western leaders said was intended to halt Belgrade's repression of Kosovo's mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians.

Belgrade has criticized U.S. and British air strikes on Iraq and continued sanctions against that country.

Saleh met other senior Yugoslav officials on Thursday and visited Yugoslavia's sole car manufacturer Zastava, which has resumed operations at reduced capacity after heavy damage to its facilities in NATO's March-June 1999 air campaign.

Iraq is interested in cooperation with factories such as Zastava which produce passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, Saleh said.

---

FAO chief meets with Baghdad employees after burial of slain colleague

Yahoo News
Saturday, July 1 1:36 AM SGT
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/000701/world/afp/FAO_chief_meets_with_Baghdad_employees_after_burial_of_slain_colleague.html

BAGHDAD, June 30 (AFP) - The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation arrived in Baghdad Friday where he met with employees in the wake of a shooting earlier this week that left two of their colleagues dead and another seven people wounded.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf also visited those wounded in the attack on the FAO offices and went to the grave of one of the men killed and who was buried near Baghdad earlier in the day.

Diouf said he would also meet with Iraqi authorities to discuss with them "the work of FAO employees in Iraq."

According to UN sources, Iraqi Agriculture Minister Abdel Ilah Hamid accompanied Diouf to the cemetery and characterized the shootings as "an aggressive act that we totally reject."

The minister told journalists he would use the opportunity of Diouf's visit to discuss with him the state of agriculture in the country, including the drought that is affecting some regions, as well as the FAO program in Iraq and the obstacles created by UN sanctions.

Earlier in the day, an Iraqi government representative, foreign diplomats and UN officials paid their respects at the funeral of Yusuf Abdullah, deputy head of the FAO offices in Iraq's capital, who was killed in the Wednesday shooting.

Another victim of the gunman who burst into the FAO offices, an Iraqi computer expert with the UN organisation, has been buried in his home-town of Kirkuk, northern Iraq.

The gunman said he wanted to draw attention to the "genocide of thousands of Iraqis" under the UN embargo, which has been in force ever since Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Car mechanic Fuad Hussein Haidar told a press conference at a police station after his surrender that he had wanted to take hostage the FAO chief for Baghdad but started shooting after coming under fire from security guards.

The FAO, which employs around 40 staffers in Baghdad, operates in northern Iraq under a UN humanitarian deal and also runs a regular country programme.

Since the shooting, the UN Security Council has reaffirmed the need to ensure the security of all personnel working for the UN programme in Iraq and its support for humanitarian agencies.

The Security Council said it was awaiting the results of an investigation by Iraqi authorities "as soon as possible".

---

U.N. Staff Bury Colleague

Yahoo News
Friday June 30 5:17 PM ET
By LEON BARKHO, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000630/wl/iraq_un_attack_2.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Hundreds of U.N. workers and others paid respects Friday to an official of the world body killed in an office shootout by a gunman who said he was protesting sanctions against Iraq.

The casket of Yusuf Abdilleh, a Somali administrative officer with the Food and Agriculture Organization, lay draped in the blue U.N. flag and surrounded by wreaths in the FAO building whose windows and doors still bore the bullet holes of Wednesday's firefight.

Abdilleh and a colleague died after an Iraqi gunman forced his way into the building, took a U.N. consultant hostage, and provoked a shootout with security forces. Three other U.N. staffers and four Iraqi guards were injured.

The gunman, Fowad Hussein Haydar, told reporters after his surrender that he was protesting the effects of the U.N. sanctions maintained on Iraq since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Abdilleh, 59, worked in Iraq for 15 years ``with full dedication. He was a very peaceful man,'' a tearful Amir Khalil, the FAO director in Iraq, said in his funeral oration.

``I think we have to bury him in the community he served,'' he said.

Describing the attack as ``a criminal act,'' Khalil said the deaths of the two FAO staffers would not impede the organization's delivery of relief aid and services to the Iraqis.

``We have a mandate and nothing will deprive us from doing our mandate,'' Khalil said,

The government has stopped short of condemning the incident. The gunman's declared motive - frustration with sanctions - is one that the government shares. But Deputy Agriculture Minister Abdullah al-Ani and a Foreign Ministry consultant, Hisham Abdulrazzaq, attended the service.

U.N. guards carried Abdilleh's coffin out of the building in the city's smart Jadiriya district. Escorted by traffic police, the coffin was taken to a cemetery in west Baghdad and buried as a Muslim cleric conducted prayers.

Abdilleh's relatives did not attend the funeral as his wife and three children live in London, an FAO spokesman said.

The other person killed, Marwewan Mohammed Hassan of Iraq, was buried Thursday in the northern city of Kirkuk.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the FAO, arrived in Baghdad on Friday and stopped at Abdilleh's grave. He also visited the hospital where the injured U.N. workers were recovering.

-------- israel

ISRAEL: CHINA PLANE PLEA

New York Times
July 1, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/world-briefs.html

A leading cabinet member, Haim Ramon told Israeli Radio that I srael should halt the sale of a $250 million airborne radar system to China in order to repair frayed ties with Washington. Martin Indyk, the American ambassador to Israel, told Israeli legislators that American-Israeli ties would suffer if C hina got the plane, which the United States believes could endanger its forces in the region.

William A. Orme Jr. (NYT)

---------- korea

2 Koreas Finish Deal to Reunite Families

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By CALVIN SIMS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/070100korea-deal.html

TOKYO, June 30 -- Red Cross officials from North and South Korea signed an agreement today to begin reuniting families separated by more than 50 years of conflict on the Korean peninsula.

The accord, the first significant step toward achieving goals set at landmark talks between the Koreas two weeks ago, also provides for the return of North Koreans who were imprisoned in the South.

In the first phase of family reunions, about 100 South Koreans will travel to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, while 100 North Koreans will go to Seoul for four-day meetings with relatives starting Aug. 15, according to South Korean news media reports from North Korea, where the agreement was signed.

Ultimately, the deal is expected to reunite thousands of Koreans who were separated from relatives when the peninsula was divided into the Communist North and capitalist South at the end of World War II.

South Korean officials estimate that there are nearly eight million people in the South, about 660,000 of them over 60 years old, who have relatives living in the North.

The Korean War broke out 50 years ago this month, and although a 1953 armistice suspended the fighting, North and South are technically still at war. Only a handful of separated families have been allowed to take part in officially sanctioned reunions in the past.

"This South-North agreement is the first concrete result following the summit meeting, and it means that we have entered the realization phase in dealing with the separated family issues," said Park Ki Ryun, secretary general of the South Korean Red Cross. "We will try our best to ensure that exchanges will occur without complications."

Asked what his expectations for the family reunions were, Choi Seung Chul, the head of North Korea's Red Cross, said, "Things will work out very well."

For family reunions after the first round in August, Red Cross officials agreed to set up a permanent visitation center. The officials said they had not yet decided where to establish this meeting place. However, they mentioned as possible candidates scenic Mount Kumgang, on North Korea's east coast, and Panmunjom, the village in the heavily armed demilitarized zone along the two countries' border.

The agreement, reached after four days of talks between representatives from the Red Cross of both Koreas at Mount Kumgang, also calls for the return of all North Koreans who served prison terms in the South who want to return home.

The North Koreans, most of whom were convicted of spying for the North, would be allowed to go in early September. The prisoners were kept in the South Korea for several reasons: most refused to denounce Communism, the two countries were still at war, and the South sought to use them as bargaining chips in negotiations with the North.

The South Korean Defense Ministry has said that about 50 of the 88 former prisoners, who are mostly elderly, have indicated that they want to return to North Korea.

There was no mention in the agreement of former South Korean soldiers who may still be imprisoned in the North. The South Korean government says that hundreds of its soldiers taken prisoner during the 1950-53 war are still being held. North Korea has denied this.

To facilitate meetings between separated family members, North and South Korean officials will trade lists of 200 separated relatives and begin checking to see whether the individuals on the list are still alive.

The visitation center will not be set up until the North Korean prisoners are returned, the reports said. The center is expected to identify hundreds of separated family members a month and bring them together.

In recent years, an unofficial trade in family meetings has sprung up in the border region with China, where South Koreans often pay thousands of dollars to handlers who arrange reunions with their family members. Many of the encounters take place on islands in the Yalu River, where Koreans meet long-lost relatives or learn of their deaths.

---

New York Times
July 1, 2000
World Business Briefings
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/world-biz-briefs.html

ASIA

HIGH TECH IN NORTH KOREA Further expanding its opening to the outside world, North Korea asked the Hyundai Group, Sou th Korea's largest conglomerate, to build a high-technology district of computer venture companies near a scenic mountain on the nation's eastern coast. Kim Yun Kyu, president of Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company, said government-level talks would begin soon on what he called the "inter-Korean Silicon Valley project." Hyundai will also participate in fixed-line and wireless telecommunication projects in the North, Mr. Kim said.

Samuel Len (NYT)

-------- OTHER

-------- imf / world bank

Tibetans in U.S. Rally Against World Bank China Loan

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 9:46 PM ET
By Patrice Dickens
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/pl/tibet_usa_dc_4.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of Tibetans and their supporters rallied on Saturday to urge the World Bank to scrap a contested plan to resettle nearly 60,000 poor farmers in traditional Tibetan lands.

Gathered in front of a huge Tibetan flag in a park opposite the White House, actor Richard Gere, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, Thai activist Sulak Sivaraksa, and Tibetan leader Samdhong Rinpoche exhorted the 4,000-strong crowd to action.

``It's not acceptable. They should cancel the (World Bank) program,'' said Maguire, who won the peace prize in 1976 for her efforts to end the violence in Northern Ireland.

``The Tibetan situation can only be solved with an all-inclusive dialogue,'' she added.

Earlier the crowd chanted, ``We want justice. We want freedom. We want it now,'' as it marched through downtown Washington to the Chinese embassy, stopping at the World Bank along the way.

It was the latest in a series of protests against the bank and took place on the eve an address to the American people by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama is also due to meet Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during his visit to Washington.

The World Bank's $160 million loan, approved last year, would help pay to resettle about 60,000 poor farmers, many of them Chinese, moving some of them to lands where the Dalai Lama was born.

A scathing report by the World Bank's independent Inspection Panel unveiled earlier this week said the bank failed to follow its own rules in assessing the potential social and environmental consequences of the project, including its impact on minority groups.

It said the bank, which will revisit the issue next week, did not make adequate efforts to consult the public and conducted no meaningful analysis of alternatives.

Now critics hope the bank will stop financing the project, which Tibetan exile groups have blasted as tantamount to ''cultural genocide.''

``As we celebrate Independence Day in America, we should recall those who are still living under totalitarian regimes, such as Tibetans,'' said John Ackerly, president of the International Campaign for Tibet.

``The World Bank's project is a serious threat to the already threatened Tibetan culture. We implore the World Bank to cancel this misguided project.''

China annexed Tibet in 1951, prompting bitter protests, and has ruled Tibet from Beijing for nearly 50 years.

-------- spying

Chinese Spy Activity Against the U.S.

NewsMax.com
July 1, 1999
Colonel Stanislav Lunev
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1999/7/1/141400

Chinese intelligence activity against the U.S. has a long tradition. In the first half of this century Chinese special services were occupied with domestic problems and limited their spy business in America to collecting general military and political information. Imperial Chinese and later warlords were considering the U.S. as a place for future expansion and possible retreat from unexpected changes inside China.

For nearly the first three decades of Communist China's existence, when the U.S. didn't have official diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC), the PRC's political and military spy services established in the U.S. networks of intelligence officers operating under cover of being local citizens or friendly foreigners. Because Chinese intelligence penetration inside American institutions was limited, Beijing concentrated its spy activity against the most important targets in the U.S., those connected with research, development and production of nuclear, missile and other types of mass-destruction weapons.

But after the U.S. recognized Communist China and the two countries established diplomatic relations, Chinese intelligence deployed hundreds of the most experienced and highly trained spies to America. They began working against this country in military uniform as Chinese defense, military, army, navy and air force attachés and their deputies and assistants, and under civilian cover as diplomats, journalists, trade mission representatives and other specialists with diplomatic immunity.

The practical business of intelligence has been conducted mainly by the intelligence directorates of the Ministry of State Security and the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). These directorates include tens of thousands of highly trained professional intelligence officers operating worldwide. In America they have their field offices in practically every location of official Chinese representation--embassies, general consulates, the United Nations and trade missions.

The total number of Chinese intelligence operatives varies from place to place, but in general about one-third of permanent Chinese positions--for example, diplomatic positions--are occupied by political intelligence officers and one-third by military intelligence officers. In addition, agents infiltrate the ranks of legitimate visitors to the U.S. Each year about 15,000 Chinese students arrive and 10,000 representatives travel in about 3,000 delegations, including dozens of military delegations that visit the most sensitive areas of the American national security system.

After the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Chinese political and military intelligence services received special funding to start hundreds of "private" banks, firms, companies and joint ventures. These special companies are required first of all to make a profit, to explain and justify their existence, but they also must provide every possible support for their real bosses in the PLA and political intelligence services. They also must engage in espionage according to their positioning in the market.

Thus these companies provide "deep cover" for professional intelligence officers, who must never take any risk that might result in divulging their identities. If they make a mistake, they will face a criminal trial. These intelligence officers use traditional methods for penetrating American secrets: they recruit fellow Americans and friendly foreigners who have access to the most important military, political, economic and scientific information.

One of the primary factors in the success of Chinese intelligence, however, is the exploitation of the vast immigration of Chinese to communities in America. The intelligence services do not bother to look for assistance among first-generation immigrants, who have made few connections and have no access to higher levels of the country. Rather, they look among second- and third-generation Chinese, who are citizens and do not have legal limitations on their life in the U.S. These Chinese do business, take part in political and social life, and work inside government institutions. They have access to all manner of domestic information and even state secrets.

Of course, the vast majority of Chinese Americans are not susceptible to working for the Red Chinese intelligence services, but in general the Chinese community is a real base for the active spy business. Chinese intelligence operatives have used this community very successfully to establish "agents of influence," extremely important for influencing local politicians and businesses. The word "agent" in this context is used only conditionally, and only in connection with the word "influence," because these agents are not spies in the real sense of the word.

Sometimes a respected representative of a well-known Red Chinese bank, company or firm will approach a Chinese American with a profitable business proposal with no--or very few--violations of local laws. Only the Chinese side knows that the proposal being made by the bank, company or trading firm originated in the Chinese special services and operates in the interest of those services. The collaboration looks like a business contact between local citizens and private companies with Chinese connections. But in reality, in modern Red China there are no truly private enterprises of any consequence; everything is either directly or indirectly under state control.

The use of agents of influence is extremely important in the American multiparty system. In this system, Chinese intelligence can donate to the different powers and influence current and future policy of local governments, changing that policy in accordance with Beijing's will. This is a complex goal, but it is one that already has been achieved and may be achieved again.

Communist China is developing rapidly, at the expense of its own people. It is seeking greater power in the modern world, and that means greater military and industrial possibilities. As a result, Red China is looking to the U.S. for military, political, economic and scientific information and up-to-date technologies, and it is trying to influence American policy in its interests. Chinese intelligence is collecting all possible information about American commerce and the infrastructure and is penetrating inside practically all areas of local life.

Chinese intelligence operations may not always look like the spy business they are. For example, the Chinese intention to develop ocean-going capabilities for its navy is well known. But the Chinese navy does not yet have such capabilities at a time when it needs to have information about the Pacific Rim. So Chinese entrepreneurs are actively in the market for abandoned port facilities in strategic locations.

In Long Beach, California, the former U.S. naval facilities have been declared to have no value for the U.S., but they could be very valuable for Red China's future worldwide intelligence operations. The same is true in Latin America, where a so-called Hong Kong company has leased former U.S. naval structures at both ends of the Panama Canal, and at other sites in Asia and Australia.

The recently published Cox Committee report informed the American public of Chinese penetration into U.S. secrets. But what the public learned of spy activity is only the tip of the iceberg. In reality, Chinese intelligence penetration is much deeper and more widespread, and results of this spy activity will influence American life into the next century.

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China's Penetration of the United States

Col. Stanislav Lunev
June 17, 1999

Published recently by the U.S. Congress, the Cox Report on Chinese intelligence activity in the U.S. is an eye-opener for the American public. Of course, this report couldn't disclose all the facts about Communist Chinese intelligence penetration inside American society, which began a long time ago and has become a full-scale spy attack against the most important institutions of the U.S.

It is well known to specialists that Red China's intelligence services have been operating abroad very actively and carefully for a very long time and that they also have been extremely successful worldwide. Drawing upon an ancient tradition of strategic espionage that goes back to Sun Tsu's famous book, The Art of War, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has given this kind of activity the very highest priority.

With thousands of years of tradition, Chinese intelligence has been operating in the U.S. for about four decades. Inheriting old China's intelligence experience, Red China modernized its spy machine with help from the well-known Soviet KGB and the little-known Soviet GRU in the 1940s and 1950s and developed its own operations against America since the formation of Communist China.

During the Cold War, the intelligence agencies of the East and West were busy with their own spy games and didn't pay enough attention to what the Chinese were doing. This gave Beijing plenty of time to maneuver between the superpowers. Even now, with the Cold War "officially" over, Western nations still are dealing with China without careful examination of its cultural, historical and military traditions.

Espionage is extremely important for China, not only for traditional military and political purposes but also for economic development, particularly development of defense and industrial manufacturing and trading organizations.

There are two main Chinese intelligence services: political intelligence/foreign counterintelligence from the Ministry of State Security and military intelligence, directed from the Second Directorate of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff.

The chief intelligence officer, General Ji Shengde, is well known in America because of his direct involvement in illegal money transactions during the last presidential election campaign in August of 1996.

These services are under the tight control of the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party(CCP), through his deputies in the ministries of national defense and state security. Thus the main policies, directions and targets for intelligence collection are established by secret decisions of the Politburo, which lays out primary strategy, keeps the intelligence community working in the necessary directions and concentrates efforts against the most important targets.

Most practical issues are handled directly in the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the CCP, in charge of supervising the entire Chinese military machine, including military-industrial institutions and organizations. This commission collects, analyzes and summarizes the needs of Chinese industry for foreign technologies, foreign production and proprietary information. It receives requests from Chinese industry and directs the intelligence community to act upon those requests.

Chinese communist leaders are very practical people. They cannot afford to maintain an extremely expensive intelligence bureaucracy unless it can pay for itself by boosting economic development. Of course, their intelligence operatives at the same time are collecting hard information on military and political secrets of other countries, but their main mission is to provide practical support to develop the defense-industrial complex.

The CMC is supervised by General Liu Huaqing, father of Liu Chaoying, a Chinese aerospace executive and lieutenant colonel in the PLA, who was directly involved in the U.S. fund-raising scandal. The CMC provides each year a top-secret "tasking list," delivered to all intelligence units in the field on a regular basis. The list includes information about foreign leaders who might influence current affairs and state policy. This list also includes specifications for particular items, and quantities, needed for military production.

This unified command enables Chinese leadership to organize effective cooperation among different intelligence services in order to fulfill strategic operations, the most important concerned with the development of mass-destruction weapons.

It was well known before the Cox Report that the Chinese nuclear and missile industries were created with assistance from the Soviet Union. The Cox Report exposed the fact, known previously only to specialists, that the Chinese missile arsenal was created by native Chinese specialists trained in the U.S. who took part in American missile programs. The information was transferred by Chinese intelligence to the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Dozens of these native Chinese specialists were delivered by Chinese intelligence agencies from the U.S. to the PRC in the 1950s and 1960s, and Chinese nuclear and missile programs were based on American technology and Soviet machinery and equipment. In the 1980s and 1990s the basis shifted fully toward the U.S. as China used American technology, machinery and equipment, received by China legally or illegally from the U.S. and other Western countries.

With a small but robust nuclear arsenal, Communist China isn't interested just in Asia anymore. It is seeking development and recognition as a world power. The Chinese intelligence community will play a much more important role, maybe even the decisive role, in Red China as it finds its future geostrategic situation in the world. Unfortunately, America remains a primary and successful target for the Chinese intelligence machine.

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Federal Anti-Activist Intelligence Network

Covert Action Quarterly
Thu, 08 Jun 2000 20:52:59 -0700
By Frank Morales

On May 4, 2000, the Intelligence Newsletter, based in Paris, France, published a report which stated that "sources close to the Washington DC Metropolitan Police have given Intelligence Newsletter details about intelligence units that gather information on anti-globalization militants in the US and elsewhere." (1)

In addition, the same sources said that during the April 17 Break the World Bank DC protests, "reserve units from the US Army Intelligence and Security Command helped Washington police keep an eye on demonstrations staged at the World Bank/IMF meetings."

In addition, the French intelligence service report notes that "the Pentagon sent around 700 men from the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir to assist the Washington police on April 17, including specialists in human and signals intelligence. One unit was even strategically located on the fourth floor balcony in a building at 1919 Pennsylvania Avenue with a birds-eye view of most demonstrators."

According to the report, information on the protest movements is collected and stored by six Regional Information Sharing System (RISS) centers funded by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Assistance. Ostensibly these intelligence centers are set up to counter organized crime, drugs and terrorism but it takes no great stretch to comprehend how civil disobedience, once defined as a terrorist threat and/or criminal conspiracy would, or has become a target.

According to the Intelligence Newsletter report, "the RISS also act against any political activist group deemed to be a threat and over the last year has found itself focusing on anti-globalization groups." In addition, the report notes that in order "to justify their interest in anti-globalization groups from a legal standpoint, the authorities lump them into a category of terrorist organizations.

Among those considered as such at present are Global Justice (the group that organized the April 17 demonstration), Earth First, Greenpeace, American Indian Movement, Zapatista National Liberation Front and Act-Up." Although this story has yet to be verified, given the existence of RISS and the paranoid proclivities of the US national security state and its civil disturbance planning apparatus, we should assume the report is accurate.

According to RISS program documents (2), the agency is set up to "share intelligence and coordinate efforts against criminal networks that operate in many locations across jurisdictional lines." The program "serves more than 5,300 member law enforcement agencies" across the country including the FBI, DEA, IRS, Secret Service, Customs and the BATF. It is overseen by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, State and Local Assistance Division, 810 Seventh Street, NW, Washington, DC (202-305-2923). Its immediate overseer is the Institute for Intergovernmental Research (IIR), PO Box 12729, Tallahassee, Florida, (850-385-0600).

The IIR also sponsors the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training program (SLATT) which provides, via its "extremist research experts", "training and information to state and local law enforcement personnel in the areas of domestic anti-terrorism and extremist criminal activity." (3)

The FBI's National Security Division Training Unit is a partner with IIR in providing SLATT training nationally.

According to a 1999 Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) report on RISS, the six federally funded Regional Information Sharing System centers are financed "to support law enforcement efforts to combat multi-jurisdictional criminal conspiracies and activities." (4)

The six centers, the Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network, Newtown, PA, the Mid-States Organized Crime Information Center, Springfield, MO, the New England State Police Information Network, Franklin, MA, the Rocky Mountain Information Network, Phoenix, AR, the Regional Organized Crime Information Center, Nashville, TN, and the Western States Information Network, Sacramento, CA, are set up in such a way that "each center's staff possess sufficient flexibility to tailor the individual center's priorities and operations to the particular-perhaps unique - needs of the region."

According to the BJA report, the centers "maintain pools of specialized investigative equipment for loan to participating member agencies", including "photographic, communications (and) surveillance" equipment In addition, "all six RISS Intelligence Centers have confidential funds available to member agencies for the purchase of investigative information, contraband, stolen property, and other items of an evidentiary nature. The net amount of confidential funds provided by the centers to member agencies totaled $265,526 for 1998."

According to the Intelligence Newsletter report cited earlier, it's the Mid-Atlantic Network, based in Newtown, Pennsylvania, whose region includes New York and the District of Columbia, that is particularly efficient in activist spy work. According to the report, that center "distributes intelligence on the groups to other police departments via RISSNET, enabling investigators to find links between the movements and look into their finances, telephone calls and membership lists."

According to Mid-Atlantic Network documents, it was "initiated by the US Congress in 1974 to aid law enforcement agencies in targeting, identifying, and removing multi-jurisdictional criminal elements." The Network offers a "secure database containing information concerning known or suspected criminals, businesses, organizations and their related identifying information", along with "training in the seizure of computers." (5)

As mentioned earlier, the Intelligence Newsletter report claims that hundreds of Army intelligence operatives were present during the DC anti-World Bank demo. Again, with a premonition of tens of thousands of protesters, it is quite likely that the report is accurate. After all, one can rest assured that the Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan, code-named Garden Plot, is especially fixated on defending the seat of government (corporate) power in America. (6)

That DC was flooded with intelligence operatives and assorted government spies is, lamentably, quite likely. The US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), cited in the French report, is a "a major army command", which "conducts dominant intelligence, security and information operations for military commanders and national decision makers." (7)

Based at Fort Belvoir, Flagler Road, Virginia, (the Nolan Building) since 1989, INSCOM recently redesignated a number of units including "the Continental United States Military Intelligence Group that supported the National Security Agency and a number of field stations."

According to military documents, during the course of the 90's, "INSCOM was drawn into contingency operations other than war all over the globe." These "contingency operations" or domestic military operations other than war, are law enforcement "support missions" in civil disturbance suppression. Quite possibly they are run out of the "Emergency Operations Center" at Fort Belvoir. These operations have been enhanced with the recent creation of the "National Ground Intelligence Center."

Further, according to INSCOM, "the mission of the Special Security Group that had disseminated Sensitive Compartmented Information since World War II was drastically realigned. The unit was redesignated and resubordinated to the 902nd Military Intelligence Group." Some of this "sensitive" information is contained in so-called top secret SAP programs.

In this regard, INSCOM is in the business of "providing counterintelligence support to the Army's growing number of Special Access Programs -- highly sensitive projects which required exceptional security measures."

Actually, the gathering of intelligence during the DC protest involves an even higher source, given that "in 1993 the Secretary of Defense ordered service human intelligence assets consolidated under Defense Intelligence Agency control", at which time "INSCOM turned over most of its human intelligence operations" Intelligence Newsletter, No.381, "Watching Anti-WTO Crowd", May 4, 2000,

http://www.intelligenceonline.com/ Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS) Program, www.iir.com/riss/ State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) Program, www.iir.com/slatt/ Bureau of Justice assistance, The RISS Program, 1998,

http://www.iir.com/Publications/RISSProgram1998.pdf Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network,

http://www.iir.com/riss/magloclen/index.htm Frank Morales, "US Military Civil Disturbance Planning: The War at Home", CovertAction Quarterly #69, Spring/Summer 2000,

http://www.covertaction.org/ US Army Intelligence and Security Command,

http://www.vulcan.belvoir.army.mil/--- from list aut-op-sy@l... ---

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F.B.I. Watched an American Who Was Killed in Chile Coup

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/070100chile-fbi.html

WASHINGTON, June 30 -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation collected intelligence on an American student living in Chile who was killed soon after Gen. Augusto Pinochet's takeover of Chile in 1973, according to newly declassified documents made public today.

In a December 1972 report from one informant, the F.B.I. said that the student, Frank R. Teruggi Jr., had attended a "Conference on Anti-Imperialist Strategy and Action" held by former Peace Corps volunteers who, the F.B.I. said, "espouse support of Cuba and all third world revolutionaries."

Though Chilean authorities have never confirmed that Mr. Teruggi was executed, he was arrested at his apartment days after the coup and tortured at the National Stadium, witnesses said. His body was discovered in the morgue 10 days later, riddled with bullet holes.

The document was one of several hundred released today as part of a major declassification project -- ordered by President Clinton last year -- on rights abuses under General Pinochet's 1973-90 dictatorship.

But today's release, which represented the final government disclosures on three Americans killed in Chile during the dictatorship, disappointed family members and human rights activists. While the documents offered some details, they broke no new ground as to the circumstances under which the Americans died. In addition to Mr. Teruggi, they were Charles Horman, an American journalist whose plight was portrayed in the 1982 movie "Missing," and Boris Weisfeiler, a mathematics professor who disappeared in 1985.

The Central Intelligence Agency released only six documents concerning Mr. Horman's death. It released a dozen or so more on the death of Mr. Teruggi, all concerning the attempts of the dead man's father to see a document the agency refused to release 24 years ago. The intelligence agency continued to withhold that document today, arguing that its information was provided by a foreign intelligence service.

Joyce Horman, whose husband was killed at age 31, held up documents no more than an inch thick, many with chunks of black lines keeping whole paragraphs secret. "Either they're withholding documents," she said, "or they really didn't do anything to protect an American citizen or to investigate his detention in Chile at that time."

The only new insight Ms. Horman gleaned came from an informant who approached the United States Embassy in 1987 to say that Mr. Horman had been killed in the National Stadium the night of Sept. 19, 1973, for being a "foreign extremist." On learning that the man they had killed was an American citizen, stadium officials panicked and had his body dumped on the streets, he said. But American Embassy officials had doubts about the informant's credibility, and lost contact with him.

About half of the documents released today involved Mr. Weisfeiler, 44, who apparently was picked up by the military while hitchhiking in Chile. His body was never recovered.

At her home in Newton, Mass., Mr. Weisfeiler's sister, Olga, spent the day combing through the documents, and they confirmed what she had gradually come to suspect since a Chilean lawyer reopened her brother's case this year: that her brother had been tortured and killed at a secretive concentration camp.

The F.B.I. report, though covering events in 1971, was written the following year, after Mr. Terruggi took up residence in Chile and before the 1973 coup. In addition to noting his attendance at the Peace Corps conference, the report said a Chicago-area group, whose goals it described as furthering the "Socialist revolution," had sent Mr. Terruggi to Chile.

Though the documents released today do not indicate that the F.B.I. shared its information with Chilean authorities, the insinuations reappeared in the Chilean military's references to him after he was killed.

The F.B.I. report did not allege any illegality in Mr. Teruggi's actions, and he traveled to Chile to support the elected Socialist government of Salvador Allende. But after his killing, Chilean military officers portrayed him as a revolutionary in Chile to "discredit the governing junta," an unfounded charge because the junta did not exist until a few days before his death.

A spokeswoman, Tracy Silberling, said there would be no comment on the bureau's report on Mr. Teruggi.

---

Iran Jails 10 Jews 2 Muslims for Spying

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 1:10 PM ET
By Ali Raiss-Tousi

SHIRAZ, Iran (Reuters) - A Revolutionary Court sentenced 10 Iranian Jews on Saturday to between four and 13 years in jail for spying for Israel, while acquitting three others in a case that has alarmed the Western world.

Defense lawyers and court officials told reporters after the final closed-door hearing in this southern city that Hamid ''Danny'' Tefileen and Asher Zadmehr each received 13 years for their part in the Israeli spy ring.

Ramin Nematizadeh, an army conscript accused of passing intelligence from his barracks, was sentenced to four years. Seven others were sentenced to terms of five to 11 years, they said. The jail terms began with arrest over a year ago.

According to the prosecution, Tefileen held wild parties to lure Muslim informants, while Zadmehr was one of the gang's leaders. But they said Nematizadeh appeared to have been an unwitting participant in the scheme.

Two Muslims, Ali Akbar Safaei, an industrialist with military contacts, and Mehran Yousefi, a military officer, were sentenced to two years for collaborating with the spy ring. Two other Muslims were acquitted, while cases against five others remain open.

Lead defense lawyer Esmail Nasseri said he was gratified none of the Jews received the death sentence, and he said he was confident the jail terms would be reduced on appeal.

``We are happy with today's events because at least our clients and their families are sure there will be no death sentence. It was a small victory for us that we have passed this cumbersome hurdle,'' Nasseri said.

No Lashes

The court clerk who read out the official sentence during the closed-door hearing later told reporters none of the accused had been sentenced to lashes, a common element of judicial punishments in the Islamic Republic.

The head of the local judiciary, Hossein Ali Amiri, said Judge Sadeq Nourani had gone easy on the accused.

``From my experience as a lawyer, I can say the judge has sentenced leniently,'' Amiri said after the verdicts. ``He could have given a much harsher sentence based on the acts committed.

Iranian hard-liners had demanded the Jews be executed, alarming overseas Jewish groups and Western capitals.

Israel condemned Iran for the convictions and vowed to press for the men's release. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke called the trial a ``kangaroo proceeding.''

The European Jewish Congress said the convicted Jews were innocent victims of fabricated charges in a ``medieval'' trial.

France, speaking for the 15-nation European Union, condemned the conviction and said it hoped the rulings would be overturned.

Clinton Calls For Review

President Clinton said in a statement he was ``deeply disturbed'' by the outcome of the case, adding that it was clear the Jews were not accorded due process of law.

``We call upon the government of Iran to remedy the failings of these procedures immediately and overturn these unjust sentences,'' Clinton said.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi hailed the verdicts and said the court had successfully deflected pressures from the country's critics, in particular Israel.

``The Zionist regime did all in its power to mobilize various circles and countries against Iran by raising false claims so as to derail the legal proceedings against the spy suspects from their natural course,'' Asefi said.

The special parliamentary deputy for Iran's 30,000-strong Jewish community called the jail terms excessive. ``We did not think the sentences would be this harsh,'' said Morris Moatamed.

He said Jewish emigration from Iran, which has the biggest Jewish community in the Muslim Middle East, had grown since the case began.

Outside the court, one of Tefileen's sisters sobbed uncontrollably, while other family members blamed the foreign press corps for focusing attention on the case.

``I want him to be released now, I want him to come home,'' Nematizadeh's mother told reporters on learning the verdict.

Religious Study Group Implicated

The head of the local judiciary said the spy case had its origins in a religious studies circle, first formed before the 1979 Islamic revolution by a man identified as Eshaq, a former chief rabbi of Shiraz.

Amiri told a news briefing that Zadmehr and Nasser Levi-Haim, a civil servant and Hebrew teacher, assumed control of the group after Eshaq left in 1991 for the United States.

Spying, motivated largely by religious conviction to help Israel as the Promised Land, dated back about 15 years.

Reading in part from a 71-page court finding, he said key espionage targets included the big Shiraz airbase and a helicopter complex in the central city of Isfahan.

Amiri said Iran's counter-intelligence service learned of the operations and the suspects were rounded up.

The Iranian judiciary has been at pains to reassure foreign observers and the families of the accused that the proceedings would be fair whatever the faith of the defendants.

Nasseri, the head of the defense team, echoed that sentiment before entering the court to hear the rulings. ``Their religion will not have a negative effect on the verdict.''

Much of the state's case rested on admissions made by nine of the Jews that they had had contact with Israel.

However, the defense maintained throughout the trial, which began on April 13, that the prosecution had failed to prove that any material that may have been passed to the Jewish state was secret. It also questioned the veracity of the admissions.

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Alfred Ulmer, 83, Officer in Intelligence Agencies

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By ERIC PACE
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/obit-a-ulmer.html

Alfred C. Ulmer Jr., a former official of the Office of Strategic Services and the CIA, died on June 22 in Virginia Beach, Va. He was 83.

Ulmer did intelligence work in the Navy in World War II and then joined the OSS. He served in Turkey, Egypt, Italy and Austria, overseeing intelligence operatives who were gathering information about the German military in North Africa and the Balkans, his family said.

The service was disbanded by President Truman late in 1945, and Ulmer joined the CIA not long after it was founded in 1947. He retired in 1962 and received the agency's Intelligence Medal of Merit.

In his CIA years, he was stationed in Madrid, Athens, Paris and Washington. He ran the agency's Far East operations from 1955 to 1958.

"God, we had fun," he said in a 1994 interview. "We went all over the world and we did what we wanted."

Thomas Powers wrote in his book "The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA" (1979) that in 1956 Frank Wisner, a senior CIA executive, told Ulmer, "It's time we held Sukarno's feet to the fire."

At the time, Sukarno was Indonesia's leader. Powers wrote that the director of central intelligence, Allen Dulles, and his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, "did not want to overthrow Sukarno exactly, just force him to suppress the PKI" -- Indonesia's large Communist Party -- "send the Russians packing and get on the American team."

So the agency aided anti-Sukarno rebels, but they were confronted successfully by Sukarno's forces and, Powers wrote, Allen Dulles decided that the rebels must be told that the United States had to disengage. "The result," Powers said, "was a humiliation for the United States."

In a major covert operation in Japan, the agency spent millions of dollars in the 1950s and '60s to support the conservative party that dominated the country's politics for a generation, the Liberal Democratic Party.

Ulmer was born in Jacksonville, Fla., and graduated from Princeton in 1939. After the CIA, he worked in the financial world.

His marriage to Doris Gibson Bridges ended in divorce. He is survived by a son, Nicholas, of Geneva; a daughter, Marguerite Ulmer Power, of Virginia Beach; five grandchildren; a brother; and two sisters.

-------- terrorism

One Dead, 30 Injured in Colombia Terror Attack

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 8:48 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/wl/colombia_violence_dc_1.html

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A terrorist attack against police headquarters Saturday in Colombia's second largest city killed at least one person and wounded 30, officials said.

Two homemade rockets were launched from the bed of a pickup truck parked outside the metropolitan police headquarters in Cali, according to Gen. Tobias Duran Quintanilla, operations director of the national police.

A second attack on a police academy in Cali left no victims or damages, officials said.

In the police headquarters attack, one of the rockets hit a car near the police station, killing its driver, Gen. Duran Quintanilla told the Radionet network.

Television images showed the mangled remains of the car and damage to surrounding buildings.

Cali Red Cross president Alicia Laurido in a telephone interview said 30 people were treated at local hospitals for injuries.

Two other explosives-packed gas cylinders aimed at the police station were deactivated by police.

Cali Mayor Ricardo Cobo attributed the terrorist attack to leftist rebels. ``It was the subversive groups. Who else could it be?'' he told Radionet.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the nation's most powerful guerrilla group, often uses explosives-filled gas cylinders to launch attacks on police stations in rural towns.

The 17,000-strong FARC is engaged in slow-moving peace talks with the government to end the rebel's 36-year war against the state, but no cease-fire agreement has been reached.

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YUGOSLAVIA: ANTITERROR BILL DROPPED

New York Times
July 1, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/world-briefs.html

The government withdrew an antiterrorism bill after a fight with Serbian hard-liners of the coalition Radical Party, who are said to have wanted guarantees that they would not bec ome targets of the law. Lawyers and opposition activists say the draft law trampled on human rights and was designed to muzzle critics of President Slobodan Milosevic.

-------- us politics

Gore Praises the 'Values and Virtues' of Hispanics

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/070100wh-gore.html

WASHINGTON, June 30 -- Mixing praise for Latin American culture with appeals to Hispanic "values and virtues," Vice President Al Gore asserted this evening that his approach to education, health care and the economy would "unleash the promise of every brave young Latino in this nation."

"The values and virtues that are at the heart of the Latino experience -- honor and responsibility, faith and family, caring and community -- are the same values that are most important in keeping America strong," Mr. Gore said in a speech before the League of United Latin American Citizens. "I want to give all hard-working Americans of all backgrounds the chance to live out their values and reach for their dreams."

In a 30-minute speech liberally salted with Spanish phrases, Mr. Gore made a handful of policy pledges specifically intended for Hispanic voters, including affirming his support for bilingual education.

"I say to you tonight, Todavia no han visto nada," Mr. Gore said. "You ain't seen nothing yet."

But he focused more heavily on the broad themes that are central to his candidacy and that he repeatedly suggested have special value for immigrants and their children: improving education, safeguarding the booming economy, extending health care to all children and strengthening the Social Security system.

"We can create a future where new Americans and all Americans can open the doors to their own homes and swing open the wrought-iron gates to education and opportunity and live out their lives in peace and plenty," he said.

Mr. Gore's speech came at the end of the organization's weeklong convention, which opened on Monday with a speech by the vice president's likely Republican rival, Gov. George W. Bush. In a much shorter address, Mr. Bush called for splitting the Immigration and Naturalization Service into two agencies and for making it easier for relatives of permanent residents to enter the country.

The competition between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush for Hispanic voters has stepped up in recent days, when some recent polls have shown Mr. Bush cutting into the Democrats' historic domination among Hispanic voters.

In a poll from interviews 2,721 likely Hispanic voters released today by The San Jose Mercury News, Mr. Gore was shown winning 50 percent of the Hispanic vote, compared with 34 percent for Mr. Bush. In 1996, President Clinton won more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Nationwide, Hispanics are projected to represent 5.4 percent of the electorate. But their numbers are significantly greater in the states with the most electoral votes: Texas, New York and California.

Douglas Hattaway, a spokesman for the Gore campaign, said polls showing Mr. Bush making inroads among Hispanic voters are meaningless so early in the campaign. "You can't compare poll numbers this far out from an election with results of previous elections," he said.

"Hispanic voters see that Al Gore is focused on issues they care deeply about, like education and health care," he continued. "And the more they learn about both candidates the wider this margin will grow."

Mr. Gore was accompanied tonight by several Hispanic members of the Administration, including Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and Aida Alvarez, the head of the Small Business Administration.

Mr. Gore did not mention Mr. Bush in his remarks. But he criticized Senate Republicans for holding up the nomination of Enrique Moreno to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

"I believe that it is time to call upon Congress to stop playing politics with judicial nominations and confirm Enrique Moreno," he said to loud applause.

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THE PRESCRIPTION DRUG ISSUE
Gore Tries Pitching Himself as Drug Industry Opponent

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/070100wh-gore-drugs.html

WASHINGTON, June 30 -- Attacking the pharmaceutical industry for engaging in "corporate chutzpah" and for "gouging the consumer unfairly," Vice President Al Gore said today that he would take on the drug manufacturers next week at campaign stops in battleground states from California to Pennsylvania.

In an interview on the veranda of his home here, Mr. Gore cast himself as a longtime critic of what he said were the industry's excessive prices and profits.

He does, in fact, have a long record on the topic, dating to his days as a young Tennessee congressman in the early 1980's, when he played a crucial role in defeating legislation that would have granted drug companies patent extensions on lucrative medicines.

So Mr. Gore is dusting off his Congressional record and past speeches to stake out policies at odds with the manufacturers. A review of his record, though, and a detailed talk with the vice president make clear that his views are more nuanced than his language suggests. And some of the same drug makers that Mr. Gore now criticizes have hired his friends and advisers to represent them as lobbyists. The pharmaceutical industry, which responded icily to Mr.Gore's statements today, has in some cases embraced his positions. For instance, drug manufacturers are among the biggest beneficiaries of the government's tax credit for research and development, and Mr. Gore favors legislation that would make that credit permanent.

And while he argued for greater disclosure of the industry's pricing practices, the vice president allowed that some information probably should remain proprietary. Mr. Gore has also been a strong supporter of the biotechnology industry, which through collaborations and mergers is becoming part of the prescription-drug business.

"I don't see myself as a basher of the pharmaceutical companies," Mr. Gore said. "I see myself as opposing the excesses that have accompanied their enormous market power, excesses that have come at the expense of consumers."

Drug executives, who have contributed far more to the campaign of Mr. Gore's Republican rival, Gov. George W. Bush, have mixed feelings about Mr. Gore.

His support for innovation and new technology endears him to them, and he is not nearly as vociferous a critic as the Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader. But industry executives are becoming more nervous about Mr. Gore as the presidential campaign progresses. And when asked about today's escalating attack, their trade association responded in kind.

"It's truly sad to hear the vice president arguing for reducing incentives for biomedical innovation," Alan F. Holmer, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement. "If his rhetoric became government policy, patients would suffer. Thankfully, no one will be fooled by political posturing four months before an election."

With his heightened, anti-industry stand that consumers are "being ripped off" by drug makers, Mr. Gore is positioning himself as a champion of a far-reaching Medicare prescription drug benefit for senior citizens.

At the same time, his campaign's polls show that the issue resonates strongly with voters. So Mr. Gore is also trying to sharpen the distinctions between himself and Mr. Bush, who supports a benefit that would rely more heavily on private insurers, an approach the industry favors.

The drug industry is one of the nation's most lucrative, and secretive, businesses. It consistently ranks as the most profitable industry in the Fortune 500 list of companies; in 1999, the industry's net profit after taxes was 18.9 percent of revenues, as compared with 15.8 percent for the next most profitable industry, commercial banking, and 5 percent over all, according to a recent compilation by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Drug makers argue that their prices are justified by the high costs, and risks, of researching and developing new medicines. And they say they need substantial profits to plow back into research and development, clearing the way for the next generation of wonder drugs. To the industry, any threat to profits or drug prices is a threat to innovation.

That concern is reflected in the contributions the two major presidential contenders have received. To date, Mr. Bush's campaign has received $221,715 from drug company executives, while Mr. Gore has received $50,700, election records show.

Mr. Bush has not made the prescription-drug issue a cornerstone of his campaign, but one of his top health advisers said that the Texas governor is opposed to tampering with the industry's ability to develop life-saving medications.

"Anything that would dampen innovation, particularly price controls, ought to be avoided," said Bill Roper, who was a top health official in the administration of Mr. Bush's father, and is now dean of the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina.

"We need to trust the marketplace," Mr. Roper added.

The Bush campaign did not make the Texas governor available for an interview.

Mr. Gore said today that he, too, opposed regulating drug prices or profits. "I don't see it as the government's role," he said.

But he did say the industry's profits were out of line, and he favors policies that would, in effect, cut into profits and curb prices.

For example, Mr. Gore said he supported a legislative amendment, recently passed by the House of Representatives, requiring drug makers to agree to reasonable prices for treatments invented in collaboration with government scientists.

There are more than 90 such collaborations under way with the National Cancer Institute alone. But the industry has consistently opposed a pricing clause, and its protests were a main reason why the National Institutes of Health abandoned such a provision in 1995. "If I had been in the Congress, I certainly would have voted for it," Mr. Gore said.

In a similar vein, Mr. Gore supports requiring drug companies to pay a fee to the government for medicines developed with the help of government grants. Some of today's top-selling drugs got their start in the federally financed laboratories of university scientists, and Mr. Gore said that the public "ought to have some right not to be gouged on the purchase of products that they themselves helped to develop."

At the same time, the vice president favors a proposed rule that would make it more difficult for companies to use the regulatory process to delay competition -- a rule the industry opposes. And he is against a highly publicized provision that has been circulating in Congress to extend the patent for Claritin, the top-selling allergy medication.

Mr. Gore's stance on Claritin puts him somewhat at odds with a close adviser and friend, Peter Knight. Last year, Claritin's manufacturer, the Schering-Plough Corporation, hired Mr. Knight to help develop a lobbying campaign for the patent extension, among other issues.

Mr. Knight has since left the lobbying business, and Mr. Gore insisted today that he has never talked with him, or other friends who have represented drug makers, about industry issues. "All the positions I've taken," he said, "are against their clients."

Mr. Gore was clearly well-briefed for the hourlong interview, and seemed to relish the opportunity to go on the offensive against an industry he has long taken an interest in. At one point, he recalled a meeting he had 18 years ago with Representative Richard Bolling, then the chairman of the House Rules Committee -- a meeting that led to the defeat of the patent-extension legislation the industry coveted.

At the time, Mr. Gore said, he was particularly irked that the industry refused to make public data that would have supported its position. "It was the most astounding example of corporate chutzpah I had ever run across," he said.

And in a serendipitous moment for the vice president, his 11-year-old black labrador, Shiloh, wandered onto the veranda midway through the conversation.

As it happens, Shiloh takes medicine for arthritis. "This dog here," Mr. Gore said, "gets a cheaper price for the same drug than humans."

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The Green Candidate: Unlike '96, Nader Runs Hard in '00

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/070100wh-nader.html

OAKLAND, Calif., June 28 -- It was nearing 10 o'clock at night, but in the sweltering lecture hall that served as the stage for this political rally, the Green Party's nominee for president of the United States was still going strong.

He sharply criticized an "apartheid economy" that was benefiting only the rich, and he bemoaned the state of affairs in a country with "far more problems than it deserves and far more solutions than it applies." And he scoffed at the notion that he might be a spoiler, drawing enough votes away from Al Gore to tip the election to George W. Bush.

"You can't spoil a system," the candidate, Ralph Nader, said, "that's spoiled to the core."

The audience of 300 people or so loved it, repeatedly breaking into applause and giving the 66-year-old Mr. Nader a standing ovation coming in and heading out.

It is impossible to know whether, as current polls suggest, Nader's Raiders will have more impact on the race than the Buchanan Brigades of the likely Reform Party nominee, Patrick J. Buchanan. But one thing is clear on the campaign trail with Mr. Nader, the country's best-known consumer advocate: he is running an exceedingly more energetic race than he did four years ago, when he essentially stood in as a protest candidate, spending less than $5,000, speaking rarely and taking 1 percent of the vote.

"This is the difference between a person running and a person standing still," he said by way of comparison to his 1996 White House bid.

He has campaigned in every state this year -- flying commercial coach class, frequently using his senior-citizen's discount -- and appears well on his way to his goal of raising $5 million, with the help of the direct-mail network he has built over the years and plugs from several big Hollywood names.

He may wind up as a passing phenomenon in this campaign, like former Senator Bill Bradley or Senator John McCain. But for now, Mr. Nader is attracting a lot of attention -- among the news media, among left-leaning voters who see him as a more reliably liberal voice than Mr. Gore, and among leaders of organized labor, who agree with his stands on trade. Mr. Nader is a staunch critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, both of which he depicts as evidence of a "corporate globalization" that harms worker rights and the environment.

Polls in recent weeks have put him at 5 percent to 10 percent of the vote.

It would be a stretch to call Mr. Nader a natural politician, and his one-and-three-quarter-hour nomination acceptance speech on Sunday in Denver may have been a tad long. But he seems highly animated, and has a lot of sound bites down. He even claims to be enjoying his life as a politician, though he chooses a rather grim analogy to explain why.

"Oh, I have programmed myself so that if something is important to do, it's enjoyable," he said in an interview on Monday, after speaking at a women's center in the Mission District of San Francisco.

"I mean, there are some professional people who do that, too," Mr. Nader continued. "A good doctor, if he believes it's important to treat people, he'll enjoy treating people, even though outsiders may say, 'Oh, my God, what horrible tragedies and near misses, what pain you're dealing with.' "

In Mr. Nader's depiction, most of the country is in pain.

"At no time in our history have the children of America been in such crisis," he said in San Francisco the other day. And most wage earners, he told the crowd here, are working harder and longer than ever but have less purchasing power than they had in 1968.

Mr. Nader sees the West Coast -- with its mix of liberals, radicals, environmentalists and others who lean to the left -- as a fertile ground for his campaign. And indeed in California, where Mr. Nader has been involved in tort initiatives and has campaigned for so-called "patient protection" and H.M.O.-reform initiatives, polls show his support in the 5 percent to 7 percent range.

Though the number is small, much of that support comes at the expense of Vice President Gore, who most analysts believe has to carry California to win in November. But even with Mr. Nader campaigning hard in the state, Democrats here profess to be little concerned about his impact.

Rather than reaching out to Mr. Nader and his backers, they have so far been dismissive.

"Ralph Nader is a 66-year-old Corvair in this race ready to be rear-ended," said Bob Mulholland, campaign adviser to the California Democratic Party. "This is the most serious vote of people's lives and they're not going to throw it away."

Mr. Mulholland said his party would not "waste one ad" campaigning against the Green candidate.

"Nader became famous because of the Corvair and he's been doing college campuses ever since," he said. "And now he wants to be president? It's a joke; it's ridiculous. Only in America can someone completely irrelevant run for president."

Politically, Mr. Nader's message is a bit complicated. He says that he hopes his candidacy will energize turnout for Democratic candidates in close races for the House of Representatives, and thus help turn power over to House Democratic leaders, and away from the Republicans in the House leadership whom he calls "beyond the pale."

But at the presidential level, Mr. Nader has nothing but venom for Mr. Gore and President Clinton, whom he accuses of offering "some of the most intensive demonstrations of political cowardliness in American history." He says the race offers voters two "Republicrat" candidates, barely distinguishable.

"The only distinction between Bush and Gore is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when big corporations knock on the door," Mr. Nader said the other day in Los Angeles, campaigning outside a public housing project.

A seasoned political strategist might suggest that while Mr. Nader remains so hot, he should be barnstorming the country. He did follow up his nomination acceptance in Denver with the swing here, and he said he plans many such swings. But afterward, he headed back to Washington, D.C., where aides said he planned to spend the rest of the week.

Here in Oakland, speaking on Monday at a downtown school called the University of Creation Spirituality, Mr. Nader elicited hisses of agreement from the crowd when he blasted several big-name Democrats in California, including Gov. Gray Davis and Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Among the central planks of his campaign are pledges to enact universal health insurance, to change labor laws to make it easier for unions to organize and to eliminate corporate welfare.

If there was any good news for Mr. Gore out of the rally here, it would seem to be that Mr. Nader's crowd was, by and large, so left-leaning that many voters there were not even the vice president's to lose. Several people in the audience said they had voted for Green or Libertarian Party candidates in the past.

What seemed to resonate with them most was Mr. Nader's "honesty -- just the sense that nobody is going to own him," as Corine Thornton, a 77-year-old retired waitress, put it. She voted for Mr. Nader four years ago, Ms. Thornton said, because "I just was no longer satisfied with voting for the lesser of two evils."

Mateo Williford, a 28-year-old self-described "traveling activist," rejected the idea that a vote for Mr. Nader was a wasted vote.

"If we're ever going to have the possibility of three, four, five political parties," he said, "we have to make the choice to start bringing those in."

Still, some people were not even sure about the whole electoral effort on Mr. Nader's behalf.

"I'm disappointed that all this energy is being put into the political system," said Jonah Zern, 22, a recent Cornell University graduate with a degree in environmental policy. "I mean, the idea that one person can represent 250 million people is absurd."

Mr. Nader is not without potential vulnerabilities. Eyebrows were raised recently when the financial disclosure statements of Mr. Nader, America's most famous corporation-basher, revealed that he was worth nearly $4 million, in large part because of some savvy stock investments in high-technology companies.

Mr. Nader scoffed at the notion that there was anything untoward about reaping such gains. He said that he lived on about $25,000 a year, giving away 80 percent of his after-tax income, and that any of his gains represented a "de facto philanthropic fund" for his favorite causes.

No one really expects it, but what if Mr. Nader wound up in "that corporate prison we used to call the White House," as he describes it, dealing with the lawmakers "who have turned Capitol Hill into Withering Heights"?

Would he find it all daunting? Mr. Nader thought about the question for a while, and replied no: "First of all, I've been in Washington too long, I've seen what kind of characters were in power, who should have been daunted but weren't."

So, no, 'daunting' was not the right word.

"I would find it challenging to be president," he said. " 'Daunting' has almost a stuck-in-the-headlights, taken-aback sense, that maybe you're surprised by what you find yourself having to cope with. I don't think that would be the case."

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Why Nader Belongs in the Race

New York Times
July 1, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l01nad.html

To the Editor:
Re "Mr. Nader's Misguided Crusade" (editorial, June 30):

You oppose Ralph Nader's run for president because it may pull some votes from Vice President Al Gore. Also, implicit in your editorial is the notion that the Democratic and Republican Parties represent almost the entire political spectrum; therefore, they alone should set the agenda for presidential campaigns.

But Mr. Nader's run injects something sorely lacking in the current campaign: true political discourse about issues affecting Americans. That discourse further educates the public in ways that Democrats and Republicans would never do.

Thus, Mr. Nader provides an important public service, because there is nothing that politicians and those wielding power fear more than intelligent and informed citizens.

RICHARD W. ROSENBLITT Philadelphia, June 30, 2000

To the Editor:
You may well have a point regarding the role of Ralph Nader's ego in his campaign activities as the Green Party candidate (editorial, June 30). But more pertinent are Mr. Nader's remarks about the candidates' ties to corporate interests.

Aside from the campaign rhetoric and issue differences, both parties' candidates are subject to these influences at the public's expense.

These two candidates do not offer the "clear-cut choice" you suggest; whatever candidate is elected will result in more Beltway business as usual.

It will take third-party attempts to create a grass-roots movement to reduce the two major parties' power at the polls for a significant change in the way this land is governed.

Who can disagree that change is needed?

MILES LOTT New York, June 30, 2000

To the Editor:
Re "Mr. Nader's Misguided Crusade" (editorial, June 30):

Your argument is so persuasive that one hopes that Ralph Nader may yet see this opportunity again to display the integrity and courage he has so often displayed in the past and, having made his case for some major policy changes, now withdraw from the race.

Whatever the shortcomings of the present nominating system, it did provide the vehicle for challengers to front-running candidates: Patrick J. Buchanan, Gary L. Bauer, Bob Dole, Bill Bradley and others. That's where Mr. Nader could have made his case for the nomination and for policy alternatives. Even without delegates selected in primaries, he can still call on the nominating conventions to support his policies. It is not too late for him to redeem his reputation for integrity.

HYMAN BOOKBINDER Bethesda, Md., June 30, 2000

To the Editor:
I appreciate your June 30 editorial "Mr. Nader's Misguided Crusade," acknowledging the political power of Ralph Nader and the Green Party. But before you declare him a spoiler, consider that he has already won a partial election victory.

This week, when Al Gore proposed an energy plan with a light-green tint, he no doubt pulled a few votes from the Nader camp. If Mr. Gore can keep going and co-opt the Green Party positions on campaign reform, labor issues and world trade, he just might take enough votes from Mr. Nader to win the election. And I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Nader declared such an outcome a victory, exonerating himself from charges of egotism.

GLENN CHENEY Hanover, Conn., June 30, 2000

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Newsweek Poll Puts Bush, Gore in Dead Heat

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 7:04 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/ts/campaign_poll_dc_3.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Newsweek poll released on Saturday showed Texas Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites) and Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) in a virtual dead heat, unlike a series of recent surveys that showed Bush with a comfortable lead over his Democratic challenger in the presidential race.

The survey of 607 registered voters showed Gore with 46 percent to Republican Bush's 45 percent, well within the survey's four percentage point margin of error. Nine percent of those surveyed were undecided.

In a four-way race, with Gore and Bush challenged by Green Party candidate Ralph Nader (news - web sites) and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan (news - web sites), Gore received the support of 40 percent of voters surveyed; Bush, 41 percent; Nader, 6 percent; and Buchanan, 2 percent. Eleven percent indicated they were undecided.

Larry Hugick of Princeton Survey Research Associates, which conducted the June 29-30 survey for Newsweek, said the results differed from recent polls showing Bush with a double-digit lead over Gore because Newsweek polled registered voters.

Hugick said the other surveys screened ``likely voters,'' which may have overestimated the Republican count at this phase of the campaign.

Among those polled by Newsweek, 65 percent said Bush had strong leadership qualities, compared with 52 percent for Gore. But 74 percent saw Gore as intelligent and well-informed, compared with 67 percent for Bush.

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Clinton Says E-Signatures to Spur Economic Growth

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 10:08 AM ET

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - President Clinton, speaking on Saturday in an address broadcast only on the Internet, said a new law making electronic signatures as valid as their ink counterparts would spur economic growth.

In his second weekly Web cast, Clinton said from Philadelphia the e-signature law that he signed on Friday had far-reaching positive ramifications for the economy.

``This new law will give fresh momentum to what is already the longest economic expansion in our history, an expansion driven largely by the phenomenal growth in information technologies, particularly the Internet, with its almost unlimited potential to expand their opportunities and broaden their horizons,'' Clinton said.

Clinton said James Madison, the country's fourth president, called the contract clause of the Constitution a ``bulwark in favor of personal security and private rights,'' one that was expanded with the e-signature law.

``Under this landmark new legislation, on-line contracts will now have the same legal force as equivalent paper ones,'' Clinton said.

``Companies will have the legal certainty they need to invest and expand in electronic commerce. They will be able not only to purchase products and services on-line, but to contract to do so.''

To sign the bill on Friday, Clinton used a smart card encoded with numbers and, in case that caused any legal problems, also a pen. The signing took place on the grounds where the Declaration of Independence was signed with a quill pen.

The new bill is officially known as the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, and eliminates legal barriers to using electronic technology to form and sign contracts, collect and store documents and send and receive notices and disclosures.

Clinton said firms could potentially save billions of dollars by sending and retaining monthly statements and other records in electronic form.

``Eventually, vast warehouses of paper will be replaced by servers the size of VCRs,'' Clinton said.

``Customers will soon enjoy a whole new universe of on-line services. With the swipe of a smart card and the click of a mouse, they will be able to finalize mortgages, sign insurance contracts or open brokerage accounts.''

The president said the law also gives on-line signers the same protections and records, such as financial disclosures, currently received when they sign paper contracts.

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Clinton Wants to Create Northeast Heating Oil Reserve

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 10:09 AM ET
By Steve Holland
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/pl/clinton_energy_dc_4.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton vowed on Saturday to create a home heating oil reserve for the Northeast on his own authority unless Congress does so.

In his weekly radio address, Clinton told Americans as they hit the highways for a long July 4 holiday weekend that he was working hard to take action that would bring down gasoline prices.

And he expressed concern about a repeat of high heating oil prices in the Northeast looming for this winter unless there is a reserve.

The House of Representatives authorized late on Tuesday the creation of a 2 million barrel Northeast heating oil reserve, but failed to provide the $10 million needed to pay for it. The Senate still has to act on the reserve proposal.

Clinton said he had asked Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ''to take the steps necessary to create a reserve through administrative authority if Congress does fail to act, so that a heating oil reserve will be in place next winter.''

Richardson said on Wednesday he was worried about low home heating oil supplies for the Northeast this winter as he appealed to Congress to approve an emergency reserve in case of supply disruptions in the region.

``We're very concerned about the supply situation,'' Richardson said when asked by a member of the House Government Reform Committee for his heating oil forecast for the Northeast this winter.

``We don't want to repeat what happened last winter,'' he said, referring to tight heating oil supplies at the time that caused prices to spike in the region.

The Clinton administration has been trying to grapple with higher gasoline prices at the pump across the United States, particularly in the Midwest, where prices shot above $2 a gallon.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether oil companies are engaging in illegal gasoline practices in the Midwest.

Clinton suggested there might be some truth to the price-gouging charge, saying that in the two weeks since the probe began, prices had fallen 8 cents a gallon in the Midwest and more than 12 cents a gallon in the Chicago region.

Clinton has come under fire from Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush (news - web sites) who says he should try harder to convince OPEC nations to increase oil production which would allow U.S. prices to come down.

In his radio address, Clinton insisted that he was ''continuing to work with foreign countries to close the gap between oil production and consumption.''

He said Republicans are to blame for failing to support his proposals for new technologies to more efficiently develop domestic oil reserves and promote wind, solar and other alternative sources of energy.

``They want to revert to an old 19th century approach that endangers our environment instead of one that invests in the future,'' he said.

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Clinton, Barak Discuss Mideast Peace Prospects

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 3:09 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/pl/mideast_clinton_dc_5.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak discussed Middle East peace prospects in a telephone call on Saturday but no decision was made about a possible three-way summit with the Palestinians, the White House said.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the call lasted 45 minutes and also covered the case of 10 Iranian Jews who were sentenced to prison terms of four to 10 years by an Iranian Revolutionary Court on charges of spying for Israel.

The official described the call as a ``serious conversation'' on the issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward a peace settlement.

``Regarding the peace process, no decisions have been made,'' the official said, who added that it could not be ruled out that Clinton would also talk to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Barak's office said in a statement released in Jerusalem that Barak and Clinton would speak again in coming days.

The Israelis and Palestinians have set September as the deadline for a peace agreement for resolving the most difficult differences between them, including final borders, the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees.

They are also working against another deadline -- Clinton's Jan. 20, 2001, departure from the White House after which momentum in the peace process will almost certainly slow as a new president takes office.

Israeli officials have pushed for a U.S.-brokered summit in the near term, arguing that the more time trickles away while Clinton is in office, the lower his chances of persuading Congress to approve the large aid packages expected to underpin any deal.

Palestinian officials have argued, however, that a summit was doomed to fail without a further narrowing of the gaps, and have asked for up to three more weeks of lower-level talks in Washington starting next week before a summit.

Clinton said on Thursday, ``I just don't know'' whether the time is right for a summit between Israeli and Palestinian leaders to try to hammer out a final peace agreement.

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Lott Urges Clinton to Accept Republican Tax Cuts

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 11:36 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/pl/congress_republicans_dc_2.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott on Saturday urged President Clinton to support Republican-backed tax cut bills that would eliminate estate and gift taxes and reduce taxes for married couples.

In a weekly radio address given by Republicans, Lott said Americans pay too many taxes, invoking the July 4 holiday when Americans celebrate independence and the fight against taxes that sparked the American Revolution.

``As families plan their celebrations of the Fourth, they're likely to feel an unpleasant kinship with those earlier Americans, the overtaxed men and women of the 13 colonies,'' the Mississippi Republican said.

``Some of them, remember, dumped British tea into Boston harbor rather than pay a tax on it -- and that touched off the brutal British retaliation that began the Revolutionary War,'' he added.

After lawmakers return from their weeklong July 4 recess, the Senate plans to take up two Republican-backed tax cut bills that face a veto by Clinton.

The Senate first is scheduled to vote on a House-passed bill that would phase out estate and gift taxes over 10 years. The White House says the bill would cost the federal treasury $50 billion a year when the taxes are fully repealed and that most of the benefit would go to the wealthiest of Americans. Only about 2 percent of estates are subject to the estate tax.

The House passed the bill in June with 65 Democrats joining the Republican majority in supporting it.

``We hope the president won't veto that long overdue reform, which has already passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming margin,'' Lott said.

The Senate is also expected to take up a bill that would cut taxes for all married couples by raising the standard deduction and expanding the 15 percent and 28 percent tax brackets.

``We hope the president won't veto that one either,'' Lott said.

The tax cut for married couples would cost the federal treasury about $250 billion over 10 years. Clinton has said he would prefer a more modest tax cut that was more targeted to couples suffering a so-called marriage penalty. Many working couples pay more taxes because they are married than they would if they were single. But some, mostly single-income couples, pay less than if they were single.

Clinton has said he would be willing to accept the larger Republican marriage penalty tax bill if Republicans would accept a prescription drug benefit for the elderly of equal size. So far, congressional Republicans have been cool to the president's offer to make a deal.

---

Arkansas Court Panel Sues to Strip Clinton of Law License

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/070100clinton-disbar.html

WASHINGTON, June 30 -- A committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court filed suit in Little Rock today asking a state court to enforce its recommendation that President Clinton be stripped of his law license for falsely denying under oath that he had a sexual relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky.

The filing set in motion the preparation for a full-fledged trial in a Little Rock courtroom, perhaps as early as this fall, over Mr. Clinton's fitness to be a lawyer.

The lawsuit before the Pulaski County Circuit Court became inevitable last month when the committee said that the President should be disbarred for what it said was "serious misconduct" in his testimony in the sexual misconduct lawsuit filed against him by Paula Corbin Jones.

David E. Kendall, a Washington lawyer who is representing Mr. Clinton in the Arkansas case, said tonight, "We fundamentally disagree with the complaint filed today and will defend vigorously against it."

The case will be heard without a jury. It was first randomly assigned by a computer today to Judge John Ward of the Pulaski County Circuit Court. But Judge Ward immediately withdrew from the case, noting that Mr. Clinton first appointed him to the bench in 1988, when Mr. Clinton was governor of Arkansas.

Judge Ward said in an interview that "it would create an impression of impropriety should I accept that case."

The case will be sent back to the computer to be assigned to someone else, but court officials acknowledged that might not be an easy task.

Judges in Arkansas are elected, but governors fill unexpected vacancies in the middle of judicial terms. Because Mr. Clinton served as the state's governor for many years, he was able to appoint dozens of state judges.

Even those he did not appoint ran for their seats in partisan elections and are therefore either associated with the Democratic or Republican Parties. Some of the other seven judges on the court suggested that they would ask to be excused from presiding over a trial involving Mr. Clinton.

The president's lawyers have 30 days to respond to the formal request for disbarment. Court officials said that would mean that the trial could occur as early as this fall.

But Prof. John DiPippa of the University of Arkansas Law School at Little Rock said tonight that issues like finding a suitable and willing judge were only one factor that could delay the trial. In addition, Professor DiPippa said Mr. Clinton's lawyers would be able to postpone the trial perhaps even until the president left office by filing various motions.

If the trial occurred while Mr. Clinton was still president, he would probably not appear in his own behalf. When the committee reached its conclusion recommending disbarment, Mr. Clinton said his lawyers would mount a vigorous defense, but he would not participate personally while still in office.

Professor Dipippa said that no matter what the judge decided, the ruling might be appealed directly to the State Supreme Court. He added that such cases were routinely appealed whether the trial judge decided in favor or against the lawyer.

The heart of the case against Mr. Clinton involves his testimony during a January 1998 deposition in Paula Jones's sexual misconduct suit. In the presence of the federal judge presiding over the case, Susan Webber Wright, Mr. Clinton said that he had not had sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky.

That August, he told a federal grand jury that he had, in fact, had an inappropriate intimate relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. Judge Wright cited Mr. Clinton for contempt of court, fined him and recommended that the State Supreme Court consider disciplinary action against him.

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Clinton Signs Law on Campaign Finance Disclosure

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 2:12 PM ET
By Steve Holland
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/ts/clinton_finance_dc_2.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton on Saturday signed the first campaign finance restriction in 21 years, forcing secretive tax-exempt political groups to disclose donors and spending ahead of the November elections.

``This is good news for the American people,'' Clinton told reporters on the White House South Lawn shortly after signing the legislation in the Oval Office.

With secret money pouring into campaign races, both the House of Representatives and the Senate in recent days voted overwhelmingly to plug a growing loophole in election laws.

The loophole allows so-called ``527 groups'' to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money without disclosure as long as they do not urge the election or defeat of specific candidates.

It is the first campaign finance legislation to clear both chambers of Congress since 1979, and its backers were thrilled by the groundswell of support.

``It will help clean up the system by forcing organizations to come clean about their donors,'' Clinton said.

Clinton denounced the way a special interest group, Citizens for Better Medicare, has used the loophole in recent months to build support against his proposed Medicare prescription drug benefit and called on the group to open its books and disclose its donors.

The group has raised and spent $65 million fighting the Clinton plan through television ads, most of the money coming from the pharmaceutical industry.

``The American people have no earthly idea who Citizens for Better Medicare is, who's paying for the ads. The bill I just signed lifts the curtain. It makes groups like this reveal the sources of all future funding,'' he said.

But he said the damage has already been done by Citizens for Better Medicare because ``the special interest money is already in the bank, the attack ads are already on the air.''

In the spirit of the law, he said, ``I think that Citizens for Better Medicare ought to respect the legislation, open their books and disclose the sources of the funds which have paid for these ads. Let the American people judge if this organization truly is for better Medicare.''

The organization did not immediately reply to a telephone message seeking its reaction to Clinton's appeal.

Clinton also urged Congress to go even further by passing comprehensive campaign finance reform that would limit ``soft'' money, which are unregulated large contributions, and give candidates free or reduced TV air time.

The 527 groups, named for a section of the federal tax code that provides tax-exempt status for political groups, are relatively new but flourishing. They skirt disclosure laws by claiming they are not engaged in political activity but instead are focused on issue advocacy.

They came into focus during the Republican presidential primaries when Arizona Sen. John McCain (news - web sites)'s environmental record was attacked by a shadowy group that turned out to be financed by supporters of Texas Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites).

The bill requires 527 groups to register with the Internal Revenue Service within 24 hours of organizing. Those groups with receipts of more than $25,000 would have to file quarterly reports with the IRS and disclose spending that totals more than $500 and contributions of $200 or more.

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Clinton, Barak Discuss Mideast Peace Prospects

Yahoo News
Saturday July 1 3:10 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/ts/mideast_clinton_dc_3.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak discussed Middle East peace prospects in a telephone call on Saturday but no decision was made about a possible three-way summit with the Palestinians, the White House said.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the call lasted 45 minutes and also covered the case of 10 Iranian Jews who were sentenced to prison terms of four to 10 years by an Iranian Revolutionary Court on charges of spying for Israel.

The official described the call as a ``serious conversation'' on the issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward a peace settlement.

``Regarding the peace process, no decisions have been made,'' the official said, who added that it could not be ruled out that Clinton would also talk to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Barak's office said in a statement released in Jerusalem that Barak and Clinton would speak again in coming days.

The Israelis and Palestinians have set September as the deadline for a peace agreement for resolving the most difficult differences between them, including final borders, the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees.

They are also working against another deadline -- Clinton's Jan. 20, 2001, departure from the White House after which momentum in the peace process will almost certainly slow as a new president takes office.

Israeli officials have pushed for a U.S.-brokered summit in the near term, arguing that the more time trickles away while Clinton is in office, the lower his chances of persuading Congress to approve the large aid packages expected to underpin any deal.

Palestinian officials have argued, however, that a summit was doomed to fail without a further narrowing of the gaps, and have asked for up to three more weeks of lower-level talks in Washington starting next week before a summit.

Clinton said on Thursday, ``I just don't know'' whether the time is right for a summit between Israeli and Palestinian leaders to try to hammer out a final peace agreement.

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Clinton Helps Raise Cash Likely to Go to Already Flush Corzine

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/070100sen-nj-dem.html

ENGLEWOOD, N.J., June 30 -- The small, immaculately catered luncheon that drew President Clinton to a stately home here today was billed as a benefit for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. But the anticipated recipient of much of the more than $1 million raised was the candidate who may have the least need for donations and the president's fund-raising help: Jon S. Corzine. Mr. Corzine, the Wall Street multimillionaire who broke all records in spending nearly $35 million on his primary race, has been a boon to Democratic candidates across the country, because he has made heavy contributors out of wealthy friends in New Jersey and New York who were previously uninvolved in politics. Many were here today.

Senator Robert G. Torricelli, the chairman of the fund-raising committee, who has begun to take a more direct hand in guiding Mr. Corzine's campaign as well, missed the event because of a vote in Washington on aid to Colombia.

But more than 40 people did show up, paying at least $20,000 apiece, in addition to about a dozen local politicians.

Among those who dined on medallions of poached Maine lobster tail under a backyard tent were former executives at Goldman, Sachs & Company, where Mr. Corzine was co-chairman until he resigned last year, and other investment firms.

Mr. Corzine will be entitled to receive up to $829,000 from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Although Mr. Torricelli has told Mr. Corzine's associates to expect most of that in the fall, he could opt instead to send it to candidates with thinner resources of their own.

But today's guests found Mr. Corzine a deserving recipient. "He shouldn't be expected to have to pay for his entire campaign himself," said State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, one of the top Democratic rainmakers in New Jersey.

The host of the luncheon was Orin S. Kramer, a fund manager who gave so much to Democrats last year that he was forbidden to donate to any federal races this year. He introduced Mr. Corzine as "the single best-liked, most respected C.E.O. on Wall Street."

But Mr. Corzine seemed to still be smarting from the primary. "I actually have found a couple of people who don't like me," he said. "Sometimes they write editorials for newspapers."

Introducing the president, Mr. Corzine said he was grateful to find Mr. Clinton "on this side of the river," given the "magnetic draw across the Palisades" to New York and Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate race against Representative Rick A. Lazio.

The president's appearance, one Democratic official said today, was as much a thank-you to Mr. Corzine for the money he has helped to raise as an endorsement of his candidacy.

"I believe the reason that Jon has done so well," Mr. Clinton said, "is that it was, like, now here's this guy who could be off making a gazillion dollars and laying around three days a week, and he actually cares about whether poor kids get a decent education, will their parents have a safe place to make a home, and all that other stuff.

"Here comes Jon riding in on his horse, the guy's never run for office before, and he's actually committing the unpardonable sin of saying exactly what he thinks, even when it gets him in trouble, and trusting the people to get it right," the president said.

"I encouraged him once -- I knew he was getting a little weary from the cost as well as the strain of the primary campaign," Mr. Clinton added. "I said, 'When the people have enough time and information -- and they need both -- they nearly always get it right.'"

---

Campaign Briefing

New York Times
July 1, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/070100campaign-briefings.html

THE REFORM PARTY

PEROT WILL NOT RUN Ross Perot, a two-time presidential candidate, decided yesterday against putting his name on the Reform Party's primary ballot, removing a big potential roadblock for Patrick J. Buchanan's candidacy.

A Perot spokesman, Russell Verney, said Mr. Perot decided against running because he had no intention of actually competing for the White House against Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, the Republican contender, and Vice President Al Gore, his Democratic rival. A daylong series of meetings at Mr. Perot's office in Dallas included "intense pressure" to put his name on the ballot in an effort to stop Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Verney said. But Mr. Perot felt it would be unethical to seek the nomination but not really run, he said. Another difficulty was that Mr. Perot would have appeared only on about half the states' ballots in November. His decision to forgo a place on the primary ballot leaves two candidates who say they have enough support to win spots there: Mr. Buchanan, a former Republican, and the Natural Law Party candidate, John Hagelin. (AP)

THE REPUBLICANS

PROMOTING A NEW NO. 2 With former Senator John Danforth of Missouri having taken himself out of the running, Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma has become the speculative name-of-the-moment as a potential running mate for George W. Bush. Mr. Keating's name surfaced at midweek on the Internet as the latest favorite of the Republican presidential contender, though with caveats that everything could change. The Bush campaign took the rumor in stride. "It's not true," the campaign spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said. "The governor has made no decision." Mr. Bush is to meet at his Texas ranch on Monday with Dick Cheney, the former defense secretary who is heading the vice-presidential search, but only for an update, Mr. Fleischer said. (AP)

THE SENATE

KENNEDY CHALLENGER OFF BALLOTJack E. Robinson, the entreprenuer who had hoped to be the Republican challenger to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, did not have enough valid signatures to put his name on the ballot, leaving Massachusetts without a Republican contender for the Senate. The state ballot law commission ruled yesterday that 153 of the 10,139 signatures Mr. Robinson turned in on June 6 were invalid, leaving him 14 short of the 10,000 signatures he needed to secure a spot on the ballot. The commission, a panel of three Republicans, one Democrat and one independent appointed by the governor, found that 90 those invalid signatures were forgeries. Mr. Robinson has five days to appeal the ruling. Without a Republican on the ballot, Mr. Kennedy will face only Carla Howell of the Libertarian Party on Election Day. (NYT)

THE UNIONS

CLINTON TWEAKS G.O.P. President Clinton said in Philadelphia yesterday that Republicans would talk a good game when they arrived for their convention in late July but were not eager to point out the serious differences that divide the two parties. "You'll have the awfulest time trying to figure out what the differences are," Mr. Clinton told a group of union members.

"They're going to love everybody and help everybody." Speaking at a gathering of the American Federation of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, Mr. Clinton recited a litany of issues on which Democrats and Republicans diverge, from the patients' bill of rights to the minimum wage to gun control. Mr. Clinton also questioned Gov. George W. Bush's commitment to Hispanics, saying he had not urged Republican senators to confirm Enrique Moreno, a Texan whom Mr. Clinton nominated to be a federal judge. "If he had asked them to give him a hearing, they would have done it," Mr. Clinton said of Mr. Bush. "He didn't say a word." Marc Lacey (NYT)

CONTRADICTING BUSH A "Texas Truth Squad" made up of union members from George W. Bush's home state chose the city where he will be nominated for president to begin a national speaking tour intended to besmirch the governor's record. The squad, consisting of a teacher, a prison guard, a food worker and a social worker, made its debut on Thursday at a union luncheon in Philadelphia presided over by John J. Sweeney, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which has endorsed Vice President Al Gore. Squad members asserted in a series of short speeches that during Mr. Bush's two terms as governor, Texas has consistently ranked near the bottom in providing health insurance for children, retirement pensions, environmental protection and pay for state workers. Taking special aim at Mr. Bush's claim to be an education reformer, the group said he had diverted money from public schools and tried to raid teacher retirement funds at a time when the state ranked 45th in the College Board test scores.

The squad is scheduled to make at least a dozen appearances around the country before Election Day. (NYT)

THE HOUSE

CROSSING PARTY LINES Representative James A. Traficant Jr., Democrat of Ohio, has said he will break ranks and vote to keep a Republican, Representative J. Dennis Hastert, as speaker of the House next year, a pledge that complicates his own party's bid to gain control on the House in the fall elections. In an interview on the nationally syndicated "Hannity & Colmes" radio program, Mr. Traficant, a maverick who is serving his eighth term in the House, said, "Hastert's a good man, and I'm going to vote for for him for speaker, and I don't give a damn who knows it." The vote for speaker is the first major roll-call taken when a new Congress convenes. The party that wins that vote controls the flow of legislation to the floor for the next two years and appoints chairmen of all committees and subcommittees. If Mr. Traficant does as he says he will, Democrats will have to win seven seats in November to gain control. (AP)

TODAY'S SCHEDULES
GEORGE W. BUSH Daytona, Fla.
AL GORE No public events

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French Rally Around Unlikely National Hero

New York Times
July 1, 2000
By SUZANNE DALEY
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/070100france-mcdonalds.html

MILLAU, France, June 30 -- Fearing that the trial of José Bové would turn their quiet little town into an actual battleground for the forces of anti-globalization, most store owners kept their iron gates closed today. The McDonald's restaurant, which Mr. Bové is charged with ransacking last year, was blockaded by two dozen police vehicles.

But as the trial opened, the atmosphere seemed more like a French Woodstock than a Seattle. Thousands of teenagers with green hair gathered along with middle-aged men with pigtails and retirees wearing T-shirts that said, "The world is not merchandise and I'm not either." Others set up tents and strummed guitars in the streets in support of Mr. Bové, the sheep farmer who has become something of a national hero with his fight against multinational corporations and what he calls the industrialization of agriculture.

Since the McDonald's attack, Mr. Bové has become a national celebrity. He now has a busy speaking schedule, a more prominent job with his union and dinner invitations from high-level government officials, including Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

Some of those who set up their tents in the fields around this town and then boarded shuttle buses to the courthouse said they had come to pay homage to a hero, a man who was willing to stand up to the forces of globalization and the American government. Mr. Bové, who has an amiable grin under his handlebar mustache, added to the carnival air by riding into Millau's main square with his nine co-defendants on a cart pulled by a tractor -- a not-so-veiled reference to the way the condemned once went to the guillotine.

And when he finally climbed the courthouse stairs, he stood at the door with his fist raised long enough for the pack of news photographers to get good shots.

Inside the courtroom, the defendants, dressed in sports shirts, laughed and joked as the charges were read and they were asked to respond to them. One, accused of spraying the McDonald's with orange paint, said he was only sorry he had not used green paint. Another, accused of using a screwdriver to commit vandalism, acknowledged that he had, but said it was a small screwdriver.

Mr. Bové, was a bit more serious. At one point he compared himself to Gandhi, saying that Gandhi, too, had been accused of violence in his day. "The dismantling of McDonald's was a strong action, symbolic and nonviolent," Mr. Bové told the court, adding that the fast-food giant's arrival in Millau was a "provocation."

The trial is expected to last two days.

Mr. Bové was a little-known farmer and union official until last August, when he and the nine other men took a tractor, pick axes and power saws to the local McDonald's. Mr. Bové said at the time that he was incensed by what he saw as the unfairness of the United States to tax French delicacies like Roquefort cheese and paté de foie gras in retaliation for Europe's decision not to import hormone-treated American beef.

"That tax decision was outrageous," said Arianne Gurreau, a schoolteacher who was camping with her boyfriend. "I think the judge needs to see that there are all these people who think what he did was correct. We are fighting for values here, for the right to care about what we eat."

Many came with their own fights inspired by Mr. Bové. "What prompted us to come is the problem of water," said Giselle Joffre, a retired government worker. "In our town it is terribly expensive because we are working with a big company. It is the same with all these multinationals doing what they want."

This was clearly not what many Millau residents had braced for. Most had seen pictures of protesters, including Mr. Bové, at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle and feared that this demonstration would be just as disruptive.

"People were so scared," said Christianne Chazal-Martin, the owner of a gift shop near the courthouse who decided to stay open. "First one got talking and then another, and they went on and on about how bad it was going to be."

Mr. Bové's attack on the McDonald's here last August was only one of a number of assaults on the fast food chain, which is often a target of anti-American protesters.

But Mr. Bové became instantly famous when he was thrown in jail for it, and then refused to pay bail for three weeks in protest. Eventually, he did pay the bail with money supplied by a group of supporters, many of them American.

Mr. Bové faces charges that could result in a fine of as much as $70,000 and up to five years in jail. But it is considered unlikely that he or any of his co-defendants will serve any jail time for the vandalism, which resulted in $110,000 worth of damage.

Mr. Bové's lawyers, including a former president of a prominent human rights organization, have lined up more than a dozen witnesses, most of whom are also farming advocates from other countries. Much of the first day was spent arguing about pictures of the McDonald's after the ransacking.

Mr. Bové's lawyers pointed out that some of the windows remained unbroken.

Organizers of the demonstration had hoped to gather 30,000 people for the opening of the trial, though police officials said they believed the number was closer to half that. With speakers, a farmers' market and a free rock concert in the evening, however, there was plenty to do. Many said they came as much to have fun as to make a political statement.

"We came first for the party," said Michael Phélippeau, 16, who came with his friend Dennis Roulleau and was wandering from booth to booth with his sleeping bag under his arm. "but my father is a farmer, and I am here representing my family, too. We believe in what Mr. Bové believes in. We don't want the multinationals to tell us what to eat."

----

MOCK HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE CASK AND EXPERTS TOUR SETS OFF CROSS COUNTRY TO WARN AMERICANS ABOUT "RADIOACTIVE ROADS AND RAILS"

For Immediate Release Contact: Kevin Kamps or Michael Mariotte July 1, 2000 202-328-0002 From: michael mariotte nirsnet@nirs.org

VIDEO/PHOTO OPPORTUNITY: Full-size mock high-level nuclear waste truck cask (20 feet long, 8 feet tall) on a trailer with banners, traveling across America's heartland

Washington, D.C. - Like a Paul Revere ride of the Atomic Age, the Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS) will haul a mock nuclear waste cask across eight States to warn Americans about the dangers of high-level radioactive waste transportation. The "Radioactive Roads and Rails" ride will kick-off at the Cook nuclear plant in Michigan, travel along targeted high-level waste transport routes across Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah, and culminate at Yucca Mountain, Nevada - site of the proposed permanent national repository for high-level atomic waste. The cask tour will arrive at Yucca Mountain on August 6th, the 55th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and will join a commemoration event at the nearby Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Site.

"Comparing these high-level atomic waste shipments to the Hiroshima bomb gives an idea of just how much harmful radioactivity is inside," said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist at NIRS. "Each truck cask could hold up to 40 times the long-lasting, deadly radiation that was released by the Hiroshima bomb; each train cask could hold up to 200 times what was released at Hiroshima. The American people don't deserve these lethal shipments, especially to an earthquake-riddled, inappropriate site in Nevada."

Transport analyses developed by the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects as well as by the U.S. Department of Energy show that tens of thousands of truck and train shipments would traverse 43 states--past the homes of 50 million Americans--over three decades if the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain were to open. Recent legislation in the U.S. Congress would have launched shipments to Yucca Mountain as early as 2007, but President Clinton vetoed the bill. If the private, nuclear industry-initiated Skull Valley, Utah dump is approved by the NRC, shipments could hit the roads and rails as early as 2003.

"Rushing the launch of these shipments makes no sense, because the proposed dump sites are not suitable," said Michael Mariotte, NIRS executive director. "Yucca Mountain is an earthquake zone that leaks water like a sieve. Burying the waste there would virtually guarantee that massive amounts of radiation would escape into the environment, contaminating the air and ground water. The nuclear industry's scheme at Skull Valley, Utah is even more rushed, and smacks of the worst type of NIMBYism (Not In My Bad Yard). These nuclear utilities know how dangerous their lethal garbage is, and they'll do anything to move it off their land, including trying to buy off a small, destitute band of Native Americans, who already are reluctant caretakers to some of the nation's most toxic residues. The nuclear industry should be hanging its head in shame."

"Transporting this toxic trash is inherently dangerous. Emergency responders across the nation are not adequately prepared, trained, nor equipped to deal with a high-level radioactive waste accident," said Kamps. "Our goal is to meet with emergency responders, public officials, business people, and concerned citizens across the country, to educate them about the dangers they may face, and how they can act to protect their communities."

Experts on the dangers of high-level radioactive waste storage, transport, and disposal will join the cross-country tour at numerous stops along the route. The speakers bureau includes Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, of Radioactive Waste Management Associates in New York City; Judy Treichel of Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force; geologist Steve Frishman and nationally-recognized radioactive waste transportation consultant Bob Halstead.

"High-level radioactive waste shipments in Germany and elsewhere have brought out tens of thousands of protestors from all walks of life," said Mariotte, who witnessed such shipments in Germany in 1997 and 1998, when they were halted. "For the past three years, we've been laying the groundwork for massive protests in the U.S. if these shipments ever occur. People will act to protect their communities; our goal is to ensure these actions occur in a disciplined, non-violent, effective fashion. Not a single shipment will be allowed to pass without substantial public protest. But we're all better off if the government can just admit Yucca Mountain is unsuitable, and no atomic waste ever will be transported there."

Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Project also is conducting Radioactive Roads and Rails educational events this summer in California, Colorado, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Contact Lisa Gue at (202) 454-5118 (lisa_gue@citizen.org) for more information.

The Radioactive Roads and Rails campaign kicks off a summer of action, including demonstrations in Philadelphia at the GOP National Convention and action camps in August in New England and the Great Lakes Region.

Regularly updated photos and diary entries from the Radioactive Roads and Rails tour will be available at NIRS' website: http://www.nirs.org. Kevin Kamps and members of the speakers bureau will also be available for interviews, whether by phone or in person. Contact Kevin at (202) 328-0002 or kevin@igc.org to arrange interviews.

A full schedule of the tour follows.

Radioactive Roads and Rails Schedule
June 19 to August 6, 2000
Cook Nuclear Plant (Michigan) to Yucca Mountain, NV
Contact: Kevin Kamps, NIRS, cellphone: 202-262-9518

Sat., July 1 to Tues., July 4: Chicago, IL
Wed., July 5: Gary, IN
Thurs., July 6: South Bend, IN
Fri., July 7 to Sun., July 9: Indianapolis, IN
Mon., July 10: Springfield, IL
Tues., July 11 & Wed., July 12: St. Louis, MO
Thurs., July 13: Jefferson City, MO
Fri., July 14: Columbia, MO
Sat., July 15: Kansas City, MO
Mon., July 17 & Tues., July 18: Omaha, NE
Wed., July 19 & Thurs., July 20: Lincoln, NE
Fri., July 21 to Tues., July 25: Cheyenne & Laramie, WY
Thurs., July 27 to Sat., July 29: Salt Lake City, UT

Mon., July 31 to Wed., Aug. 2: Central to Southern UT, including Skull Valley, and St. George, directly downwind from the Nevada Test Site, heavily affected by nuclear weapons testing radiation fallout.

Thurs., Aug. 3 to Sat., Aug. 5: Las Vegas, NV

Sun., Aug. 6: Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain, NV The tour will culminate at the site targeted for the national permanent high-level nuclear waste repository, located on sacred Western Shoshone Indian land and crisscrossed by earthquake fault lines. We will join a commemoration of the 55th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan at the Nevada Test Site, where the U.S. military exploded nearly a thousand nuclear weapons tests since 1951.