NucNews - August 19, 2000

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

"Russia-China," the New World Superpower 
 
NewsMax.com 
August 19, 1999 
Col. Stanislav Lunev 
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1999/8/18/185851 
 
Seminal change has taken place in the balance of world power, and scant notice has been be paid to this dramatic shift. Russia and China, for decades hostile enemies, are moving ever closer to forming a political and military alliance to challenge the United States and the West. Fearing an aggressive NATO in the wake of the Yugoslavia campaign right on Russia's doorstep, the Russian Federation seeks new military allies as a counterbalance to NATO. So the Russian elites are now turning to "the great neighbor to the East," China, as the foremost among their new partners. 
 
China also fears NATO. Chinese leaders believe that NATO, especially after NATO bombed its embassy in Belgrade, is not genuinely a defensive organization. Also, President Clinton's justification for the Kosovo war, the human rights issue, has been worrisome for China. What is to stop the Western countries from attacking China for human rights abuses in Tibet and other areas with large national minorities, numbering in all close to 100 million people. 
 
"Democratic" Russia and totalitarian Red China are proving to be natural allies. Both have buried the hatchet on the ideological differences that imbued hatred between the two states for almost three decades. And China continues to present to the whole world the prospect of "real socialism- -Chinese style" under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This, no doubt, has impressed Kremlin leaders, who never really wanted democracy, just the riches that come from it. 
 
Economic ties between the two neighbors are stronger than ever and are continuing to stablilize. The shelves of Russian stores are filled with Chinese food products and industrial goods, and trains full of high-quality Russian raw materials cross the Chinese border every day, supplying Chinese industry and increasing its competitiveness on the world market. 
 
Internationally both countries are standing together. This became apparent during the Kosovo crisis when China and the Russian Federation officially condemned NATO and supported Yugoslavia's ruling regime. The military ties between Russia and China began to develop in 1992. These were, and still are, characterized by active military sharing on the highest levels, with ongoing cooperation in the development and production of the most modern weapons systems. The Russian-Chinese Intergovernmental Commission on Military and Technical Cooperation is working quite well. It meets twice a year in Moscow and Beijing under the headship of the Russian First Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission. 
 
The last session of the Intergovernmental Commission took place in June and was attended by then Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who, on June 9, met privately with Chinese delegation-head Zhang Wannian, deputy chief of the Central Military Commission of the CCP. According to the Russian press, Mr. Stepashin made it absolutely clear that building close ties with China is one of Russia's top foreign-policy priorities and that the two nations desire a strong strategic partnership. Also, he told his Chinese visitor that he was born in China where his father was an advisor to the Chinese military. "Meeting you, I am in a way continuing my father's work," he told Mr. Zhang. 
 
Clearly President Yeltsin, who has favored an alliance with China to counter Washington, looks with favor on these developments. And the military relationship is moving at great speed. Both nations have already introduced compatible weapons systems. By integrating the weapons systems of the Russian Armed Forces and the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the two countries are rapidy becoming a superpower. 
 
Moreover, cooperation between Russia and Red China is expanding in the area of intelligence, which is laying the foundation for a climate of mutual trust in Russian-Chinese relations, including guarantees of each other's mutual security. Thus, all the necessary preconditions for the strategic alliance between the Russian Federation and Communist China are in place. And this alliance could threaten the United States and the West much sooner than anyone thinks. 
 
President Yeltsin is set to visit China sometime this summer or fall (the precise date is not yet established). Perhaps a formalized treaty may come of the visit, or a verbal agreement, which is sometimes more important to the Chinese leadership. 
 
The West should be alarmed by such an alliance. The two countries together would combine the largest conventional army, the Chinese army, with the largest atomic arsenal, the Russian nuclear stockpile. Again, this menacing shift of power, which will likely be realized in the next few months, will have dramatic consequences for our civilization that cannot be overestimated. 
 
-------- australia

A glowing recommendation

Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 19/08/2000
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0008/19/text/review8.html

What began as just another reception at the home of Australia's Ambassador to Argentina soon became a night of great celebration. It was one of the last dinners Martine Letts would host in the grand old ambassadorial residence in Buenos Aires before completing her posting.

The affable career diplomat had invited a group of executives from Argentina's leading nuclear technology company, INVAP, to dine with her on the night of June 5 so she could be the first to tell them the good news.

At the same time, halfway around the world in Canberra, that news was being broken at an official function by the Industry Minister, Senator Nick Minchin. The Howard Government had awarded INVAP the $326 million contract to build a new medical research reactor at Lucas Heights. It was a great victory for INVAP, by far its largest contract ever and the one it hoped would finally deliver the international recognition it had dearly sought for so long. At last, it could add an OECD customer to a client list dominated by Third World dictatorships.

The Australian wines flowed freely at the ambassador's home that night.

The following morning, Letts joined all the heads of Argentina's nuclear industry at Government House in Buenos Aires for a rare press conference by an obviously delighted President Fernando de la Rua.

"This is good news for all Argentines," the President said proudly. "We have won this bid by competing with the most important companies in the world." De la Rua invited the ambassador to add a few words, noting the assistance she had given the company in promoting the bid.

"This signifies an important change in relations between Argentina and Australia," Letts said. "This is the first really important Argentine investment in Australia. It will help us strengthen the relationship between our countries at the highest level ever."

It was good news all around. Yet very little was known about the background of the company Australia was embracing so readily to undertake such a politically sensitive project.

Back in Canberra, Minchin was attempting to head off the inevitable controversy over the selection of the Argentine group.

"INVAP has a solid track record constructing research reactors, with five constructed around the world over the past two decades," he said in a media statement.

"Argentina has ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is a responsible and active participant in the activities of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA]."

But just how "solid" is INVAP's record? And how "responsible" has Argentina really been as a member of the international nuclear community? The company completed work on its first overseas facility in 1989, supplying a one-megawatt reactor to the military dictatorship in Algeria.

Such a small reactor cannot produce uranium with anywhere near the enrichment levels necessary for bomb-making, yet it still managed to become the centre of an international nuclear firestorm.

In mid-1992, British intelligence agents claimed the reactor, in Draria, outside Algiers, was being used to stockpile high-grade uranium for Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program in Iraq.

Britain's Sunday Times reported that Saddam had sent 10 tonnes of uranium to Algeria at the end of the Persian Gulf War to hide it from the prying eyes of the (IAEA) and the United Nations weapons inspectors.

INVAP denied any knowledge of the facility being used as an Iraqi hiding place. It was not the first time an INVAP project had become embroiled in international controversy. And it would not be the last.

In the mid-'80s, INVAP entered discussions with Ayatollah Khomeini's fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iran to help build up the country's nuclear industry at a time when the bloody war with Iraq was at its peak.

The contract with Iran was brokered by the IAEA, which suggested INVAP modify the country's existing reactor to use less-volatile fuel, to produce uranium well below bomb-grade enrichment.

The US was uneasy about the deal from the outset. It became considerably more concerned when it heard that Iran had also asked INVAP to build an additional medium-sized research reactor and another plant to produce what is known as "heavy water".

Heavy water is used with a minimum of uranium to power large-scale reactors and produce spent fuel that can be transmuted into bomb-grade plutonium. The US State Department learnt to its great distress that Iran was negotiating with China to build a facility for exactly that purpose and pressured the Argentines into dropping the contract.

That left INVAP without an international client until Egypt invited tenders for an experimental reactor in 1993. INVAP won that bidding process and the resulting 22-megawatt research reactor was commissioned in 1998.

The only other facility built by INVAP outside Argentina is a small reactor in Fidel Castro's Cuba, which is used to produce radio-pharmaceuticals.

INVAP's income has collapsed since the Egyptian project. The company's 1999 returns show that its sales revenues had plummeted from $US47 million ($79 million) in 1996 to $US26 million.

"INVAP is a company which obtains most of its income from large projects, and a slight slump is normal after one such project has been completed," the company's chief executive, Hector Otheguy, said in reply to written questions from the Herald this week.

But INVAP did feel the pinch hard enough to put its hand out to the Argentine Government. The 2000 Budget papers show that the company asked for a cash injection of $US132 million to fund its research on a reactor prototype known as CAREM.

That request was eventually denied amid uproar from the Argentine scientific community, which argued that the money could be put to much better use in other areas.

INVAP has been conducting tests on the CAREM technology for some years. In 1998, the company was hauled before the Federal Court of Justice in the Patagonian city of San Carlos de Bariloche for allegedly conducting some of those tests without the necessary government approvals.

Senator Minchin told Federal Parliament this week that the case was dismissed in September 1998. However, the man who lodged the initial complaint, Argentine environmentalist Dr Raul Montenegro, contends that it was simply deferred and remains active on the court's list.

He said the major complication with the case was that the provincial government of Rio Negro, whose regulations INVAP allegedly breached, was also the company's major shareholder.

Montenegro is a professor of evolutionary biology at the National University of Cordoba and president of Argentina's leading environmental group, the Environment Defence Foundation (FUNAM).

He is a long-time critic of INVAP, accusing it of engaging in the unsafe disposal of large quantities of radioactive waste in the Patagonian countryside and of continually misrepresenting its corporate history.

Now, Montenegro is also critical of the work the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) did during the tendering process for Lucas Heights, claiming that it has not looked deeply enough into INVAP's credentials.

"I have read ANSTO's documents describing the excellent, nice background of INVAP," Montenegro said this week.

"But ANSTO has only spoken with INVAP. Australia should also hear about all the problems with the nuclear program in Argentina and the problems with the management of radioactive waste."

The Senate voted this week to establish a select committee inquiry into aspects of the tendering process, a move that was immediately dismissed by Minchin as a political stunt by the Opposition and the Democrats.

Montenegro said he would be pleased to supply the hearings with a "long collection of problems" associated with INVAP in Argentina. Moves are already under way to have him give evidence via a video link-up.

The environmental lobby in Argentina is eager for Australians to know that INVAP's relationship with Third World despots did not end with the severing of its contract in Iran.

In September last year, the Zimbabwean strongman, Dr Robert Mugabe, made an official visit to Buenos Aires to meet President De la Rua and discuss the possibility of developing a large nuclear power plant to address Zimbabwe's acute electricity problems. The Argentine President said he would have INVAP work on a proposal.

Minchin told the Senate this week that the "initial information" sent by INVAP was as far as the discussions went.

However, the Herald has learnt that the Argentine ambassador to Zimbabwe, Enrique Parejo, held meetings with at least six key Zimbabwean Government ministers in February to present a proposal from INVAP to build a research reactor that could later be replaced by a large power-generating facility.

INVAP's Hector Otheguy said the discussions with Zimbabwe have had "no further consequences".

The Australian Federal Government and ANSTO would no doubt hope it stays that way.

-------- israel

Scientists Question Size of Israeli Nuclear Cache Mideast: Satellite image of secret facility indicates the count may be half that previously believed, U.S. experts say. Others claim pictures may be misleading.

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, August 19, 2000
By ROBERT LEE HOTZ, Times Science Writer
mailto:Lee.Hotz@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/20000819/t000077902.html
http://www.journalstar.com/nation?story_id=1204&date=20000819&past=
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200008/19+nuke081900_news.html+20000819

Israel may possess only half as many nuclear weapons as previously believed, according to a prominent group of American scientists who on Friday made public a high-resolution satellite image of Israel's top-secret nuclear reactor facility.

Long a subject of speculation and controversy, Israel's nuclear military capabilities are among the most closely held secrets in the Middle East. Israel has never publicly confirmed or denied having nuclear weapons, although the fact of their existence is not in doubt.

Widely published estimates have suggested that the country has as many as 400 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. But the new image of the Dimona Negev Nuclear Research Center shows that the reactor there probably could not have produced enough plutonium during the last several decades for many more than 200 bombs, according to analysts with the Federation of American Scientists, which studies national security issues.

Independent U.S. national security analysts, however, cautioned that even the best pictures of the nuclear weapons complex could be misleading. The Israeli government operates the reactor facility with a self-conscious security eye to what can be observed from orbit, they said.

"The Israelis have put enormous amounts of attention and care to methods of concealment," said Avner Cohen, a senior research scholar at the National Security Archive and the University of Maryland who is author of the book "Israel and the Bomb."

"They are very much aware of the abilities of satellites," Cohen said. "Even though now we have for the first time a very nice visual sense of the site, this is not sufficient to draw firm conclusions about what is going on inside."

The pictures of the classified nuclear complex are the newest in an online archive of satellite images showing secret nuclear weapons complexes and missile facilities around the world. They were taken July 4 by a private surveillance satellite called Ikonos, operated by Space Imaging Corp. in Colorado, and posted Friday by the federation's Public Eye Project on the Internet at http://www.fas.org.

The black-and-white image reveals in new detail an elaborate complex encompassing a heavy-water reactor, a fuel reprocessing installation, two cooling towers, office buildings and waste disposal sites sprawling across tens of square miles of the Negev Desert between Beersheba and the Dead Sea, about 25 miles from the Jordanian border.

About 2,700 scientists, technicians, administrative staff and other workers are employed there. The facility is concealed from sightseers by groves of palms and landscaped gardens. It also is set off by three cordons of security fencing and defended by what may be antiaircraft missile sites.

To draw their conclusions, the federation analysts gauged the Dimona reactor's capacity for producing weapons-grade plutonium by counting the cooling towers clearly visible in the picture taken from orbit. They also compared the new imagery with recently declassified pictures taken by U.S. spy satellites in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Taken together, these satellite images suggest that the Dimona reactor could have produced about 20 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium every year, about half what some experts have speculated. That is enough plutonium for no more than "between 100 and 200 bombs over the last third of a century," said federation analyst John Pike.

In the United States, Israel enjoys a special legal protection from prying public eyes in space that is not provided to other countries.

"Even though American remote sensing satellites can take pictures at 1-meter resolution, U.S law requires [the firms] to sell it at 2-meter resolution" if the pictures show sites in Israel, said Mark Brender, the satellite firm's director of Washington operations. "It is still pretty good."

Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories about: Nuclear Weapons - Israel, United States - Intelligence Services, Scientists. You will not be charged to look for stories, only to retrieve one.

---

Weapons estimate revised

Pioneer Planet
Published: Saturday, August 19, 2000
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/2/news/docs/017704.htm

JERUSALEM

Israel might possess only half as many nuclear weapons as previously believed, according to a group of American scientists who on Friday made public a high-resolution satellite image of Israel's top-secret nuclear reactor facility. Published estimates have suggested the country has as many as 400 nuclear weapons. But the new image of the Dimona Negev Nuclear Research Center indicates that the reactor probably could not have produced enough plutonium for much more than 200 bombs, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

-------- russia

Rescue Capsule Fails to Dock With Sub

NewsMax.com
Saturday, Aug. 19, 2000
UPI
http://www.NewsMax.com/articles/?a=2000/8/18/172435

MURMANSK, Russia - A Russian rescue capsule briefly latched on to the sunken Kursk submarine, but it was unable to properly dock with the escape hatch, which was said to be damaged, state-run RTR television reported Friday.

RTR correspondent Arkady Mamontov, the only reporter allowed on the main rescue ship, said the rescue pod had docked for between 10 and 15 minutes, but was unable to properly attach itself to the damaged platform around the hatch and could not pump out water to create an air lock.

The report raised new concerns over the ability of a British mini-submarine to eventually dock with the Kursk, which was carrying a crew of 118 and remains stuck at the bottom of the Barents Sea, at a depth of 320 feet. The LR5 mini-sub and a dozen civilian divers from Norway were due to arrive Saturday.

Officials had estimated this week that there was enough oxygen to last only until Friday.

The RTR reporter said rescue operations were continuing at a frantic pace, and that 10 attempts by Russian pods to attach to the submarine had been made over the past 24 hours, with an 11th attempt continuing, as the ship carrying the British LR5 sailed to the area.

The Russian rescue craft have to resurface to recharge as batteries run low, but several capsules are taking turns in their so-far futile attempts.

A naval official involved in the rescue operation said it appeared the landing platform around the emergency exit hatch had been deformed, preventing a proper, air-tight connection.

Adm. Vyacheslav Popov, the commander of the Northern Fleet to which the Kursk belongs, told RTR that he was extremely concerned with the situation as, according to estimates and calculations, the air pressure on board the sunken sub was much higher than normal, which could significantly cut the time the crew could survive.

The Kursk went down Saturday with 118 sailors and officers on board, and naval experts now believe that many of the crew perished in the first two minutes after disaster struck the vessel.

"The rescue team is collapsing from exhaustion, but continues to work," Popov said.

"All the energy of our fleet has been concentrated on one task: to save people, to save our sailors. The rescue team is not going to rest. They understand that down below are their comrades," Popov said. "I will remain here until we complete our mission."

Popov confirmed reports circulating in the northern port city of Murmansk, where many of the relatives of the sub's crew have gathered, that there had been no sign of life from inside the Kursk since Monday.

Earlier, officials had said that the last SOS signal tapped out by survivors on the inside of the damaged sub's hull had been Wednesday morning.

"I can confirm that there has been no sound since the 14th. I hope, I believe, that the crew is saving its energy," Popov said.

The RTR correspondent, who has been allowed exclusive access to the rescue operation that is continuing at the site of the disaster, 85 miles from the Russian naval base of Severomorsk, said the near-successful docking had taken place sometime during the night or early Friday.

Russian rescue pods have been fighting low visibility and strong currents on the ocean floor, unable to dock with the sub's only usable emergency hatch because of the degree at which the submarine is tilted.

Russian media, concentrating on the growing role of the British LR5 mini-sub as the Kursk crew's last hope, have been tracking the movement of the vessel along the Norwegian coast, with television and radio stations providing hourly progress reports.

Newspapers and television channels not under the Kremlin's control have pulled out all the stops in their criticism of the navy's - and the president's - decision to delay accepting British and other foreign aid offers until Russia's own rescue attempts had failed, leaving little time for international crews to arrive at the scene and attempt to save the crew while they still had a sufficient amount of oxygen.

Putin on the Defensive

On Friday, President Vladimir Putin responded to the criticism and the increasing public anger over his decision to continue vacationing at the Black Sea resort of Sochi while more than 100 of his sailors were struggling to stay alive.

"Of course, my first wish was to fly to the region," Putin told reporters covering a summit of leaders of former Soviet republics at another Black Sea resort, Yalta.

"I didn't do so, and I think I did the right thing because the arrival of non-specialists at the disaster area would not help and would only hamper work," Putin said.

The Kremlin said Putin would return to Moscow later in the day, Reuters reported.

The president defended the two-day delay in announcing the disaster, saying the navy had needed time to find out precisely what had happened to the submarine.

Putin said he had asked Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev about the chances of saving the Kursk and its crew immediately upon being informed of the accident, and was told that "there is an extremely small chance for rescue, but it exists."

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen told reporters Friday that the Russian minister had finally responded to a letter offering U.S. help. Questions had been raised over the lack of a formal response from Russia to the Americans' repeated offers of help.

---

Putin Defends Moscow's Response to Submarine Crisis

Washington Post
Saturday, August 19, 2000 ; A15
By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A51554-2000Aug18

MOSCOW, Aug. 18 -- President Vladimir Putin, seeking to subdue a political uproar over the government's handling of the Kursk submarine crisis, said today that military officials responded "immediately" when the sub failed to make a scheduled contact on Saturday night and informed him quickly that the chances of rescuing any survivors from the sunken vessel were slim.

Putin's clarifications were delivered to a Russia engulfed by an atmosphere of despair and recrimination over the sinking during a military exercise and the fate of the 118 crew aboard. There was no sign of life from the vessel today, and rescue efforts failed for the fourth day.

When told of the problems with the Kursk, "my first question was how things stood with the nuclear power" aboard the ship, Putin said. He was told there was no threat of leakage or explosions. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev then told him that "chances the crew will survive are few, but they exist."

In the frigid waters of the Barents Sea today, mini-submarines made 10 forays to the area where the stricken sub is lying at a depth of about 350 feet. At least one of the rescue subs filled partly with water and had to be pulled to the surface, Russian television reported. One docking attempt was successful but was aborted because the sub's escape hatch was so badly damaged that a watertight seal to the rescue vessel could not be made. Naval officials said strong currents and poor visibility in the silty waters also were hampering the four rescue capsules in use.

British and Norwegian rescue teams were traveling by ship to the scene but were not expected to arrive until Saturday evening. The teams include divers as well as a state-of-the-art British mini-sub on its first crisis mission. But if the escape hatch is bent, it is uncertain whether the foreign crew will be able to succeed where the Russians have failed.

The United States will work through NATO, rather than on its own, to help in the rescue effort and is most likely to provide technical expertise, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said in Washington.

Cohen spoke to reporters after receiving a letter from Sergeyev, thanking the United States for prior offers of assistance and suggesting that U.S. officials formally join consultations at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Western participation in rescue and recovery efforts.

"We stand ready to provide whatever assistance would be required and called for," Cohen said at a Pentagon news conference.

A team of three or four experts was being assembled today for possible deployment to the rescue scene within 24 hours if the Russians ask for it, Cohen said. In addition, the United States was ready to help coordinate international efforts and provide some special diving suits, he said.

Adm. Vyacheslav Popov, commander of Russia's Northern Fleet, said the Kursk was felled by a massive internal explosion when it went down Aug. 12. Officials said Thursday that the Kursk had been in a collision, but Popov said the explosion could have been triggered from inside.

"There may be two causes of the explosion--an external impact, that is to say a collision, or internal," he said on the RTR television channel.

Putin, under sustained fire this week for the first time since he took office Dec. 31, sought to respond to public and press questioning of whether rescue efforts were delayed for reasons of secrecy and whether the naval command responded with its full resources. Contradictory information about the sinking, including its date and cause, raised suspicions that the government had something to hide. Putin was attacked for failing to cut short his Black Sea vacation to take charge of the crisis.

Speaking in Ukraine, where he was meeting with leaders of former Soviet republics, Putin said, "Right away, as soon as the submarine did not make contact at 11 p.m. on Aug. 12, it became clear that the military was facing an emergency. Rescue work began immediately. The fact that this information got to the mass media late is a different thing. One can criticize it, but one can also understand that the sailors needed to sort things out themselves before official information was given."

In answer to criticism of his decision to continue his vacation, Putin said he considered flying to the disaster site. "But I stopped myself," he said, because he would only have gotten in the way.

Criticism of Putin had focused on his failure to return to Moscow. He returned today.

The president contended that Russia did not reject foreign help, although other officials said publicly earlier in the week that Russia could handle the crisis on its own. Indeed, Putin said he was assured early on by Sergeyev and Navy commander Adm. Vladimir Kuroyodev that "Russia has all the means for rescue work." He said other officials quickly contacted foreign colleagues about possibly providing assistance. The delay in settling on Britain and Norway, a decision announced Wednesday, was due to deciding "which craft was suited for this job."

"It did not make sense just to bring scrap metal there," Putin concluded.

Officials continued to give pessimistic assessments of the fate of the sailors. Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov told reporters in Murmansk, near the submarine's home port, that "there have been no sounds for quite a long time from" inside the submarine. He also suggested casualties were heavy.

"A rather big part of the crew was in the part of the boat that was hit by the catastrophe, which developed at lightning speed," he said. "The situation is critical." According to government television, water quickly flooded into the front of the Kursk and knocked control rooms out of action.

Klebanov repeated the Russian contention that the Kursk hit a "huge, heavy object" about 60 feet below the surface. He offered no explanation of why the Kursk's sensing equipment had not spotted the object.

The civilian head of the Transport Ministry's northern seas region said no commercial vessels were in the area. Cohen reiterated today that "no American ships"--in the area to monitor last week's exercise--were involved in the Kursk's accident.

The Pentagon has denied that any of its ships, which monitored last week's exercise, were nearby.

Speculation here about a possible collision with an American vessel took on Cold War tones. The Sevodnya newspaper reported that Russian vessels picked up a radio broadcast from a U.S. submarine asking to dock at a Norwegian port. The report said the American sub moved slowly, "which could be a sign of serious damage."

However, retired naval officers interviewed by Sevodnya said they doubted that the other submarine could have kept going after the kind of cataclysmic collision that would have sunk the Kursk.

In any case, suspicions of an American connection were further fed in the media by the visit of CIA Director George J. Tenet to Moscow today. The Interfax news agency said the visit was planned before the Kursk went down. But Vladimir Gundarov, a reporter for Krasnaya Zvezda, the official army newspaper, said it "was not by chance" Tenet was visiting Russia.

Staff writer Roberto Suro in Washington contributed to this report.

----

Soviet-Style Secrecy Endures in Sub Crisis

Washington Post
Saturday , August 19, 2000 ; A01
By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A51781-2000Aug18

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, Aug. 18 -- Boris Kolyada almost broke down in tears when he first heard the news of the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk. Until his retirement two years ago, he was a sub commander himself, and he felt a kinship with the stranded crew.

But when asked, in view of intense public interest, whether the Russian navy ought to release the details of events leading up to the accident, he answered with a sharp no.

"Not every housewife in Russia needs to know what's going on in the Barents Sea," he said.

His response betrayed a mind-set that navy veterans and civilian observers say dominates the thinking of the Russian military and government: the urge for secrecy. A paralyzing fear of openness, the critics assert, explains why the government waited a day and a half to announce the Kursk was missing and accounts for the subsequent conflicting reports that have left Russians befuddled and suspicious.

Militaries are secretive the world over, but in Russia the lack of accountability can be traced to a virulent tradition inherited from the Soviet Union. In Soviet times, an accident like the Kursk's would be kept secret. Now, total secrecy eventually gives way to the pointed questions of experts and common citizens who are willing to speak up--but not without officials first entangling an event in misstatements, evasions and apparently fanciful versions and counter-versions.

"This is a new country, sure, but its leaders were brought up under the old system. It's impossible to change their mentality," said Yevgeny Aznabayev, another veteran submarine officer.

Aznabayev was on a nuclear submarine that suffered an explosion in the Atlantic Ocean in 1986, five years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The sub limped into Havana harbor. Back in Russia, the wives of crewmen were told to gather suitcases of clothing for the sailors' return, but were not told why. And four widows were not informed that their husbands had died. They arrived at the base with the clothing and only then learned of the accident and the deaths of their husbands. "It was cruel," said Aznabayev. "But secrecy ruled everything."

The official impulses toward deception in the past week recalled Soviet times, military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer wrote in today's Moscow Times. He pointed out that the navy waited more than a day and a half to announce the sinking, and that the first accounts said the Kursk had simply "descended" to the seabed. Reports went on to say that oxygen and electrical power were being provided from surface ships and that the crew was alive. Later, it emerged that the sub had crashed into the seabed and neither oxygen nor power had been delivered to the stricken vessel.

Felgenhauer attributed the apparent lies to Soviet habits, which "die hard." To the military mind, revealing secrets is a graver offense than letting crew members die, he asserted. "Russian admirals know too well that disclosing secrets to the West may easily land them in the clink, while risking the lives of sailors will not," he wrote.

Some of the secrecy and misinformation in the case of the Kursk seems designed to protect individual bureaucracies. The Kursk's designers have discounted any theory implying that a design flaw made the accident worse. The navy high command's insistence that the accident was caused by a collision diverted attention from possible malfunctions or incompetence. President Vladimir Putin, having declared himself a promoter of the armed forces, said today that he is not looking for guilty parties.

It is a measure of change in post-Soviet Russia that hiding or twisting the truth does not go unpunished in public opinion. Russians from all walks of life have unleashed criticism on military spokesmen as well as Putin for the lack of information. Newspapers across the political spectrum also attacked the endless zigzagging in official statements.

So far, the outcry about government misinformation distinguishes the Kursk episode from other national crises. The public tolerated misinformation on the progress of the war in Chechnya. Underreporting of casualties, optimistic tales of conquests and coverups of military atrocities raised few complaints.

This time, criticism of the government has been harsh. "Our state is explaining things by euphemism," wrote the newspaper Izvestia. "Lies and fear are the features of Russian authority. Russia has been persecuting and punishing its people for so long that by now it has simply forgotten how to save their lives."

Today, the government opened a campaign to mollify the public. Putin appeared on television to give assurances that rescue efforts were going full speed. He corrected the navy's report that the Kursk had sunk Sunday, saying it went down Saturday. But he gave no explanation for the discrepancy.

Television stations showed images of rescue subs in action after reporters complained that they had no access to the rescue site. Northern Fleet commander Vyacheslav Popov appeared on TV for the first time, and in a brief interview, mentioned five times that saving the crew is the priority.

In the past week, a succession of contradictions in government statements has put Russians on an emotional seesaw. One day, Adm. Vladimir Kuroyodev, the navy commander, said the crew had only enough oxygen to survive until Friday. The next day he said oxygen would last until Aug. 25. On Thursday, the deputy naval chief of staff, Vice Adm. Alexander Pobozhiy, said oxygen was sufficient for another two or three weeks. No one explained how these divergent conclusions were reached.

Ilya Klebanov, the deputy prime minister in charge of investigating the sinking, said Tuesday that Russia would not ask foreign governments for rescue assistance. Today, Putin said naval officials were in touch with foreign counterparts immediately after the disaster to work out ways to get help.

On Wednesday, navy spokesman Igor Dygalo reported that coded messages from inside the Kursk were being heard, an indication that crew members were still alive. Shortly afterward, Kuroyodev said no sound had been heard since Tuesday.

A peculiar trait of the information flow has been the habit of offering assessments without supporting facts. In particular, Russian officials have pressed theories of what caused the sinking without evidence. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said Thursday that the boat sank because of a collision. He based the opinion on the belief that the sub had suffered extensive damage. Throughout the week, officials also have cited an on-board explosion and a mine as likely causes.

Often in Russia such conjecture signals that an incident will go unresolved. After an air crash, a murder or a car theft, investigators habitually expand the number of theories over time rather than eliminate them. In the case of the 1998 assassination of politician Galina Starovoitova, for example, investigators strung out ever more fanciful scenarios, including one in which her aide, wounded in the head the night she was shot, was the culprit and had shot himself to cover up the crime.

A notable exception to this pattern has been the series of bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities in recent months, which officials immediately blamed on Chechen separatists.

----

Heat decay fuels reactor fears

Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 19/08/2000
The Guardian
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0008/19/text/review2.html

There are about 1.2 tonnes of enriched uranium in the twin reactors which powered the submarine Kursk, a modern Oscar II class.

Constant monitoring by the Norwegians has found no evidence of a radioactive leak, however, despite the two explosions reported, which must have ruptured the hull. But the massive damage to the bow revealed by five hours of Russian video and the news that the submarine was crippled in a flash increased fears last night that the crew had no time to shut down the reactors.

Kursk is 18-metres wide and has two hulls which are designed to withstand an impact from an average torpedo. If it was sunk by an explosion in the torpedo compartment then it was probably a very big explosion.

The power output is given as 190 megawatts for each reactor, and each reactor on Kursk is likely to contain around 600 kilograms of uranium, so there will be about 1.2 tonnes on the submarine. Uranium 235 has a half life of 710 million years. When a submarine reactor is shut down, a significant amount of heat is still produced by radioactive decay. For this reason, there normally has to be a supply of electricity to power the cooling pumps, but these reactors are designed to cool by convection, without the need for power.

Igor Kudrik, a nuclear researcher at the Norwegian group Bellona, says if this system has been disrupted there is a danger of a reactor cracking in the heat, allowing sea water to surge in. This would produce a plume of radioactive water on the current.

A meltdown of the core was less likely. But this heat decay will remain a potential problem for several weeks.

Over a longer period the metalwork which contains the radioactive material will decay, allowing it to be released into the sea.

---

Permanent Nuclear Nightmare Contamination remains Soviet's deadly legacy

San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, August 18, 2000
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
mailto:cthall@sfgate.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/08/18/MN39883.DTL

While rescuers struggled yesterday to save the crew trapped aboard the Kursk, horrified observers around the world warned that a much wider-ranging disaster may be unfolding with the slow decay of the Soviet-era war machine.

Worries about a potential threat to the ocean environment and human health were circulating long before the Russian submarine sank -- just the latest incident in a continuing saga of budget woes and official neglect for Russia's nuclear fleet.

A sunken submarine might withstand corrosive forces for many decades, but the odds are overwhelming that radioactive materials will eventually find their way into the sea, ultimately posing a threat of radiation poisoning to marine organisms.

More than 100 Soviet-built subs await decommissioning, most of them said to be tied up in ports where they are ostensibly being guarded. In fact, they are virtually abandoned, according to nuclear watchdog groups in the United States and Europe.

The doomed Kursk rests in the relatively shallow waters of the Barents Sea, where ocean currents would be most likely to spread contamination far and wide. Meanwhile, at least five other nuclear-powered subs, two American and three Soviet, have sunk in much deeper water, some nearly four decades ago.

``Eventually, unless it's all retrieved, this material will leak into the ocean and get into the food chain,'' said Diane D'Arrigo, a radioactive- waste specialist at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group. ``It's a significant concern.''

The Kursk represents one of the more modern nuclear-powered vessels in Russia's beleaguered Northern Fleet, now a crumbling relic of the once-formidable Soviet navy.

``The Northern Fleet is in bad shape,'' said Thomas Jandl, director of the U.S. arm of Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group that has closely tracked Russia's military for years.

He cited breakdowns in troop morale and discipline caused by money shortages so bad that payrolls cannot always be met, leaving almost nothing for adequate maintenance and training. Accidents are an ever-present danger even when authorities try to follow international arms-disposal agreements.

In June, for example, a worn-out crane being used to unload a disarmed nuclear missile dropped its payload at a dock near Vladivostok, creating a toxic cloud that killed five people.

Gordon Thompson, a nuclear engineer at the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, a think tank in Cambridge, Mass., said the issue of how to deactivate Russian nuclear submarines safely has been building for more than a decade.

``There are a bunch of these subs now awaiting decommissioning, most of them stored with pretty minimal supervision,'' he said. ``There's a concern about those subs sinking. There are also barges containing radioactive material that are often moored alongside, and those also could sink and wind up contaminating the oceans.''

``The quantity of material we are talking about is considerably greater than just what's on this one sunken sub,'' he said.

Thompson noted that the Russians have been reluctant to discuss some of the key details about military operations needed to get an accurate picture of the problem, which has made it hard to estimate the cost of a cleanup.

The costs of doing nothing are even more difficult to calculate.

Radioactive materials are potentially toxic for tens of thousands of years. ``It might be decades before environmental contamination would ensue, but you are dealing here with some very long-lived radioactive materials,'' Thompson said.

Enough exposure can cause cancer, DNA damage and birth defects many years later, effects that may be difficult to blame on any particular pollution source.

Some experts say the biggest problem might be if the Kursk breaks up during a rescue operation or in attempts to raise it to the surface. But the more likely eventuality is that it will remain on the sea floor.

Jandl said there is virtually no chance of any significant contamination from the Kursk itself if that happens -- even if the stricken sub turns out to have been carrying a full arsenal of nuclear-tipped warheads, which Russian military officials have denied.

A much more serious problem, he and other experts said, has to do with the decommissioned nuclear-powered vessels and listing barges, nearly all of which are loaded with dangerous cargo. Many of these corroding hulks are clustered around the northern port region of Murmansk, home to half a million people.

``There is a broader issue here,'' Jandl said. ``Even at this point, with the Kursk still sitting there at the bottom of the ocean, it presents much less risk than hundreds of other old chunks of war apparatus that nobody is talking about.''

Dismantling one submarine costs about $25 million, said Cristina Chuen, research associate at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She noted that until only recently have other countries besides Norway and its neighbors begun to take the problem seriously.

The United States and other NATO powers also have their share of military-related toxic disposal issues, but those problems seem to pale against the near-anarchic situation in the cash-starved former Soviet system.

``America had a plan to dismantle subs even while they were being built,'' Chuen said. ``Although some things have changed, the issue was planned out ahead of time, and there's money set aside for it. In Russia, they didn't plan to decommission these subs anytime soon. They thought they would just dump all the radioactive waste into the sea.''

Now, the problems caused by such neglect seem to be getting more intractable -- even with international assistance.

A Japanese-financed program to construct a nuclear-waste processing facility -- to limit open-sea dumping -- wound up costing at least double the initial $25 million construction estimate. With few operating funds in sight, the project has yet to begin full-scale operations after years of delay.

It might take 100 years for the radioactive material to start entering the ocean environment. Although it is hard to gauge how bad such pollution might be, some experts argue that it is a problem that must be reckoned with soon.

``Right now, we have all these reactors sitting in submarines slowly corroding somewhere,'' Chuen said. ``The longer it sits there, the harder it is to do something about it.''

------

Some Russians Feared Worst for Sub

Associated Press
August 19, 2000 Filed at 3:05 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Anguish.html

MURMANSK, Russia (AP) -- When word finally came Saturday that the men on the sunken submarine Kursk were almost certainly dead, few people in this navy city were surprised. It was the news they had been expecting all along.

``We have known for a long time that this would happen,'' said Valentina Boldyreva, a retiree. Like many others discussing the tragedy Saturday, she had known there was little chance of rescuing anyone.

``It was just a waste of time,'' she said sadly. ``It's horrible.''

The Russian navy, which gave wildly contradictory accounts of the chances of rescuing the 118 men who went down Aug. 12 on the Kursk, said Saturday there was little hope that anybody could still be alive. Word had been leaking out for days that the Kursk was shattered by a huge explosion, and glum-faced navy officers said most of the crew probably died in seconds.

The Kursk, one of the newest and most powerful nuclear submarines in the Russian navy, belonged to the Northern Fleet, which is headquartered in the Murmansk region above the Arctic Circle. Relatives of the Kursk's crew, who had been trickling into Murmansk from all across Russia, were closeted Saturday at a nearby navy facility.

Murmansk stretches for 11 miles along the Kola Bay, with navy bases dotting the area. The gray concrete apartment blocks on the hills are home to many who served in the navy or have friends or relatives who still serve. For days, they had watched every television bulletin and exchanged endless rumors.

Sergei Ramnev, a sailor who knows how heartless the sea can be, shook his head with contempt when he heard the top brass saying that hope had run out.

``I expected nothing else. If an explosion happened and there was no light, there could have been no other outcome,'' he said.

Peoples' despair and resignation was mixed Saturday with anger and disgust about how the government handled the rescue effort.

Why, people asked, did the government wait so long before accepting offers of help from Britain and Norway? Help finally arrived Saturday, a week after the Kursk sank.

``It was absurd that they were misleading us for so long. It was clear that if people were not saved in the first two or three days that they're no longer alive,'' said Galina Klimova, an engineer.

President Vladimir Putin was criticized by the press and many ordinary people for not interrupting his summer vacation to return to Moscow to deal with the crisis.

``Putin's conduct was ludicrous. He looked fresh and well-rested and talked calmly about ... that we need to support the victims,'' Tatyana Volkov said. ``As if they could be supported at the bottom of the Barents Sea.''

---

Endless Disasters Hitting Russia

Associated Press
August 19, 2000 Filed at 12:15 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Endless-Disasters.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- The loss of a Russian nuclear submarine is just one more catastrophe in a nation that has been transformed by years of decline and stagnation from a superpower into a technological junkyard.

Disasters ranging from crashing airplanes to industrial accidents have become commonplace in Russia, an increasingly poor country that can't afford to purchase new equipment or maintain aging Soviet-era machinery. In industry and the military, the problem has been compounded by carelessness, lack of training and pilfering.

President Vladimir Putin describes the increasingly worn-out equipment as one of the main obstacles to economic growth. ``Only 5 percent of our enterprises are actively using modern technologies,'' Putin said at a recent meeting with scientists.

Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu has repeatedly warned that Russia faces disaster as everything from airplanes to elevators go without the maintenance vital to keep aging machinery running safely. In their annual forecast released in January -- one which drew quick comparisons to Nostradamus' darkest prophecies -- Shoigu's experts predicted that the country could face a steady string of technological disasters starting from fires, collapsing buildings and breaking pipelines and ending with leaks of radiation and poisonous chemicals.

Experts have warned that if the current shortage of funds for new equipment and maintenance goes on, most of Russia's industrial equipment could be unusable by 2007. Companies struggling to stay afloat and workers desperate to get any kind of pay continue to use aging equipment that should have been junked years ago, experts say.

``This danger is augmented by the popular neglect of safety rules in the run for profit,'' said Marina Ryklina, a spokeswoman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.

Unlike in Soviet times, when discipline and fear of punishment were stronger, safety rules are commonly ignored in modern Russia. A string of plane crashes were blamed on overloading after pilots accepted bribes to take extra cargo, weighing down their aircraft.

Natural gas explosions have become commonplace in apartment buildings because of a lack of maintenance. In rural areas, people hack holes into oil pipelines to siphon fuel, often causing fires or explosions.

Hundreds of people are electrocuted every year while trying to pilfer communication wires, electric cable and train and plane parts for sell as scrap metal. Large areas are left without electricity after power lines are looted.

Compounding the problem, many Russians say, is a tendency to minimize or dismiss danger -- a trait that is sometimes boasted of as a national characteristic.

Thousands of people drown in Russia every summer, mostly men who swim when drunk. Drownings in Russia and other ex-Soviet republics are up to 500 percent higher than in Western nations, according to officials.

The Russian military is a glaring example of the breakdown, experts say. Even though the Kursk was one of the most modern vessels in the navy, its safety systems apparently failed to work.

``Not a single rescue system functioned on this top-of the-range submarine, so what can be said about the older ones?'' said Alexander Golts, a military analyst for the weekly magazine Itogi.

Insisting it is still a world power, the navy refuses to scrap hundreds of rusting Soviet-era ships and submarines even though there is no money for maintenance. Navy officials admit that 70 percent of their ships need major repairs, and scores of vessels simply sank because their hulls rusted out.

``Why should we keep a huge and expensive nuclear fleet if we are short of funds to send it to sea for even three days?'' the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta said Friday. ``We must live in accordance with our means and not turn the seamen into kamikaze when they go on an exercise.''

Low military wages have contributed to a steady decline of skill and morale.

Officers, who earn the equivalent of $100 a month when they get paid, have to moonlight as gypsy cab drivers or security guards to feed their families. Theft is endemic in the military, with servicemen stripping ships and planes of parts and metal to sell for food and other necessities.

Earlier this year, four Russian sailors and a retired officer were arrested on charges of stealing radioactive fuel from a nuclear submarine. And an officer on another nuclear submarine stripped the vessel of a filtration unit that controlled the air supply. The crew would have suffocated if the theft hadn't been discovered in time.

---

Russian Admiral Acknowledges Explosion Inside Sub

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER with STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/081900russia-sub.html

MOSCOW, Aug. 18 -- The commander of Russia's Northern Fleet acknowledged today that a terrible internal explosion devastated the nuclear submarine Kursk before it went down last Saturday, confirming Western intelligence reports of huge underwater explosions.

The report by Adm. Vyacheslav Popov on Russian television came as the Russian Navy finally docked a rescue vehicle to the spine of the wrecked submarine after many unsuccessful attempts. But rescuers said they had found the deck area around a rear escape hatch so deformed that they were unable to make a water-tight connection and enter the sub.

One hundred eighteen men were on board the Kursk when it sank. Navy officials said they would keep trying to reach them, and there remained the possibility that a British submersible, which is to arrive on Saturday night, might manage to enter the Kursk with a more flexible docking mechanism.

Admiral Popov said the last sounds of crew noise from the submarine were monitored on Monday. Other naval officials have been saying survivors were tapping on the hull of the vessel through Tuesday.

The admiral also said he was "very worried that according to our calculations, the pressure in the submarine is higher than the normal atmosphere," indicating a dangerous threat to normal respiration. He said estimates of the time limit for the crew's survival "have been based on the fact that the air pressure is normal," adding, "The situation is very grave."

Most Russian officials have said the oxygen in the Kursk would be depleted by today.

Though Admiral Popov confirmed internal explosions, he did not rule out earlier Russian claims that the Kursk sank after a collision with an unidentified object or vessel. He said the investigation into what set off the explosion centered on an outside impact, for instance a collision, or something inside. He did not elaborate.

Some American officials in Washington said today it was conceivable that a collision had preceded the large explosion detected aboard the Kursk. Others said such a collision also would have been heard by Western intelligence sensors monitoring the Russian naval maneuvers in the Barents Sea last weekend.

One theory circulating among American defense officials today was that the Kursk was in the process of firing an antisubmarine rocket from one of its forward weapons tubes when the rocket jammed in the tube. With the warhead outside the hull still attached to the rocket body and flaming engine, that would have set off a fire and an explosion, the first of two monitored by Western intelligence sensors.

In the 2 minutes and 15 seconds between the explosions, the crew might have had the chance to try to free the missile and douse the fire, the American officials theorized.

But after the two minutes, they say, the missile's warhead of high-yield conventional explosive could have detonated with the force of one to two tons of TNT, causing extensive damage to deck structures in the front and near the conning tower.

The American experts estimated that a high-yield exploding warhead and a shock wave from the explosion could have destroyed an estimated 40 percent of the submarine, splitting and deforming parts of the hull. This may have given the appearance that the ship had been pummeled by the glancing blow of another ship and opened a gaping hole in the hull.

Norman Polmar, an independent naval expert, said one torpedo carried by this type of submarine was designed to be fired underwater, shoot up through the air and then drop back into the water to home in on another submarine.

American officials have said the Russians had been practicing missile and torpedo firings in a large naval exercise just before the explosions were heard.

Mr. Polmar said that in the 2 minutes and 15 seconds before the torpedo's warhead exploded, it is possible that sailors in the back of the submarine would have shut watertight doors. He said those crew members could have survived as the sub plummeted to the bottom, while most men in the front of the sub would have perished quickly.

Other experts said the sub's batteries lay below the front compartments. So they probably would have been knocked out, making it unlikely that survivors would have had any battery power and decreasing the odds that any could have survived more than three or four days.

A Norwegian seismic institute joined with Western governments in saying today that it detected two underwater explosions in the area where the Kursk went down. The explosions were a little more than two minutes apart, the first one much smaller than the second.

"The first explosion we recorded was probably the equivalent of less than 100 kilograms of TNT," said Frode Ringdal, scientific director of the institute, referring to about 220 pounds. But the second explosion, occurring at 7:30 a.m., Coordinated Universal Time, was the equivalent of one to two tons of TNT, he added. The explosion sent powerful shock waves through the water that could be detected by seismic equipment on Norway's northern coast, near where American intelligence sensors aboard submarines operating in the Arctic Sea area also detected the powerful explosions.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir V. Putin, facing biting criticism in the Russian media and among some leading political figures for vacationing at a Black Sea resort while any survivors on board the Kursk slowly asphyxiated 350 below the surface of the Barents Sea, flew back to Moscow after attending the opening in Yalta, Ukraine, of a meeting of leaders of former Soviet republics. There, he defended his five-day delay.

"Of course, my first wish was to fly to the region, to the fleet base in order to study the situation on the spot," Mr. Putin told reporters before leaving Yalta.

"But I decided against that, and I think I made the correct decision," he said, explaining that "the arrival in the disaster area of high-ranking officials who are not specialists" does not "help rescue either people or equipment."

Still, criticism was intense. The leader of Russia's liberal Union of Right Forces Party, Boris Y. Nemtsov, said in a statement today that Mr. Putin, "as commander-in-chief" has "no right to vacation while his subordinates, Northern Fleet sailors, face this drama."

Mr. Putin defended his actions by saying the first assessment he received of the sea disaster from Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev, the defense minister, indicated that "the chances the crew will survive are few, but they exist, and specialists will do their utmost." The Russian leader said he had also been assured that "Russia has all the means for rescue work." When this proved not to be the case, Mr. Putin said active discussions were carried out with Western countries as soon as help was offered.

Though there were reports in Murmansk that Mr. Putin would fly straight to the northern submarine base to console the families, Russian officials remained silent about whether Mr. Putin had reached Moscow.

Tonight, the Russian government announced that each family of Kursk crew members would be allocated the equivalent of about $18,000 in immediate financial assistance to cover their needs.

Earlier in the week, Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov, the Russian Navy's commander, said he would remain optimistic "until Aug. 18." Other navy experts have suggested that any surviving crew members already have run out of oxygen and that most of the 86 officers, 31 enlisted men and one civilian perished in the first minutes after a catastrophic blow or explosion tore ruptured the hull and destroyed the watertight containment of the ship.

The Murmansk edition of the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda today published a full listing of the 118-member crew of the Kursk with an editorial note stating that after repeated attempts to obtain the list through officials navy channels, the newspaper finally resorted to bribery and paid 16,000 rubles for the list, the equivalent of about $650.

Inflaming the mystery were many unconfirmed reports and theories spun out in the Russian press, several of them asserting that the Russian Navy suspected that one of the two American submarines said to have been operating in the area might have been involved in a collision with Kursk and then sought refuge at a Norwegian port.

Those reports were further fanned by the arrival in Moscow of George J. Tenet, the United States director of central intelligence. Mr. Tenet's agenda was not clear, but Russian officials said Mr. Tenet's visit had been planned before the Kursk disaster.

The United States has denied that any of its submarines was involved in the disaster.

---

Russian Navy Says All on Sunken Sub Are Probably Lost

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/00/08/19/late/19russia.html

MOSCOW, Aug. 19 -- The Russian Navy said today that all 118 members of the crew of the wrecked nuclear-powered submarine Kursk are now probably dead, or will be before a British rescue submarine and a team of Norwegian divers can undertake another desperate attempt to open a rear hatch and look for survivors.

In a statement broadcast on Russian state television from the Northern Fleet headquarters at Severomorsk, Adm. Mikhail Motsak, the chief of staff, said the powerful explosion that ripped through the vessel a week ago had killed most of the crew in the first minutes of the disaster. There was extensive flooding of the submarine's nine compartments, he said, meaning that any sailors who survived the explosion had to endure flood conditions that further compressed any breathable air in the submarine to what he called lethal "high-pressure pockets."

"Slow flooding in the tail sections was taking place, which inevitably shortened the time for the crew to survive there and shortened the maximum time of sustaining life that we could count on," Admiral Motsak said. "It is possible that pressure in the compartments is very high. There are air pockets there, but in fact we crossed that critical line for the sustaining of life which is envisaged in all the guiding documents. This line, in fact, was being crossed yesterday, today and maybe tomorrow."

The absence of any crew noises emanating from the boat since Monday led the navy command to conclude "that the critical state of the personnel has come," he said, adding, "No matter how hard it is to say this, it is quite likely that we will have to admit the worst expectations."

The admiral, speaking in a grim voice, said the accident "was the worst catastrophe that I personally have known, and the worst in the history of the submarine fleet." He described some of the drama that had accompanied the detection of noises from the crew after the giant attack submarine, with twin nuclear reactors in its power plant, went down in 350 feet of water.

"We heard noises by crew members acting in accordance with the rules of organizations of communication with sunken submarines," he said. "Analysis of the noises from the tail sections showed that the crew members were telling us that water was coming into the sections -- it was infiltrating -- and they asked us to supply air." Later, he said, some crew members, desperate to escape the flooding, might have tried to open the rear hatch of the Kursk, causing sea water to flood in and kill them.

"The systems responsible for a tight seal in that compartment broke down," he said, perhaps because "some submariners tried to leave the sub from more than 100 meters depth, which is not envisioned."

Only deep sea divers, he said, can verify whether the hatch seal has been broken. If it was, he said, that would explain why navy rescue vehicles that have managed to dock on the hatch have not been able to evacuate water from the airtight corridor that must be established for rescue to occur.

Rescue crews have reported that when they tried to pump water out of this docking corridor, water just kept flooding in. At first, navy officials believed that deformed deck plates around the hatch were preventing a tight lock. Now, Admiral Motsak said, they also believe that the rear compartment under the hatch may be flooded and so water was rushing into the docking corridor from inside the submarine.

The causes of the explosion that proved fatal to the ship and crew are still unknown, the admiral said. He went through the range of options, saying that while the navy believed that the ship might have been involved in a collision, there might also have been an internal explosion of unknown origin.

Investigators also believed, he added, that it was possible that the 14,000-ton submarine had hit a World War II mine. He said that between 1992 and 1999, six such mines have been discovered in the Barents Sea.

The admiral said it was difficult to pronounce the crew beyond hope "because I have known the submarine's commander," Capt. Gennadi Lyachin, "for many years."

"I appointed him to that post," Admiral Motsak said, "I went to sea with him to inspect the training of that crew, and this was one of our best crews."

He said the rescue operation would now move to the "second stage," but he did not specify whether that would mean calling off the current rescue operation, or whether it would proceed at a more deliberate speed aimed at penetrating the 490-foot submarine to begin evacuation of bodies.

At least two efforts to dock on the wrecked hull took place in the hours before the admiral spoke today.

Admiral Motsak said that the navy would eventually raise the submarine to remove its weapons and nuclear reactors from the seabed, but that "it may take time."

A British-built minisubmarine loaded on the Norwegian ship Normand Pioneer was within sight of the rescue flotilla in the Barents Sea. Navy officials said some period of consultations among Russian, British and Norwegian rescue teams would be necessary before the British vehicle could make its first dive, late tonight or early Sunday.

A navy spokesman, Igor Dygalo, cautioned that the arrival of foreign experts and their equipment "should not be viewed as a panacea."

"We do not know the degree of damage inside the submarine and do not know what the crew has done," he said.

Naval experts in the United States and Russia said a buildup of air pressure inside any flooded compartments could have killed members of the crew within a few days of the sinking.

Adm. Eduard Baltin, the former commander of Soviet submarine forces in the Pacific, said the most dangerous condition in such an accident was the rupture of high-pressure air pipes in the submarine. He said this would cause a buildup of pressure that can reach 10 times normal atmospheric pressure, a level that is lethal to humans and which can burst the seals separating airtight compartments.

---

Trapped Crew's Families Lash Out as Hope Fades

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/081900russia-murmansk.html

MURMANSK, Russia, Aug. 18 -- The weather lightened today, but tempers lashed out, on the day when authorities had said that 118 Russian sailors trapped under the sea would run out of air.

Morose and angry, families gathered here, in the biggest city in the Arctic Circle, and in the nearby naval town of Vidyaevo, in a final vigil.

At Vidyaevo, home to many of the sailors on board the Kursk, the nuclear submarine that sank last weekend, drawn-looking government officials explained the sputtering rescue efforts to mothers and wives in the town's officers club. On local television, pictures of a dazed woman, unable to sit up, preceded frames of women hurling accusations at the officials, their voices shrill and full of pain.

"Can't you say anything? This is a shame before the whole world," one woman yelled.

"More waiting, another week?" another shouted.

"How long can this go on?" yelled another. "They are closed up in a canning jar!"

Officials stared back in silence, their shoulders slumped. Once they discovered the cameramen, uniformed guards demanded they leave.

Life is difficult enough in this northern place where gardens don't grow, and where satellite television broadcasts barely reach. The town has two schools, and the officers club is its main meeting place. Residents have not had hot water for three months now. City authorities shut it off in the summer, as they do in many of Russia's northern cities.

"Women held the officials responsible," said one woman, who gave her name only as Galina, and whose daughter Sveta is terrified that she has lost her husband, Victor Kuznetsov. Galina has lived in Vidyaevo for more than 20 years.

"It would have been better if the officials didn't come at all," she said, over the phone. "Either they needed to put a checkmark on their lists, or they were pressured to come by their bosses."

Family members continued to arrive from all over the country, frantic for news. As of this morning, 25 relatives of crew members had arrived in Murmansk and were taken to Vidyaevo. Many had endured long train rides, and one woman traveling with her sister even told of having to pay a bribe to get a seat.

It was rumored that President Vladimir V. Putin would arrive late today. He has been criticized by the Moscow press for not being at the scene of the disaster. But no one here seemed to blame him, and said only that Mr. Putin should fire the military leaders responsible for such bad decisions.

The governor of the Kursk region, the submarine's namesake and home to seven of the sailors on board, arrived this morning.

News reports fleshed out new details for the local people, who have been intently watching their televisions. State television RTR sent afternoon newscasts from one of the base boats, the Pyotr Veliki, and showed, for the first time, the striped yellow rescue vehicles plunging into choppy sea.

Interviews with the rescuers, in orange rain gear, attached faces to some of the people involved in these long days of rescue attempts that until now have been off limits to the public. The stony-faced captain of the rescue operation, Vyacheslav Popov, spoke for several minutes about the task.

He gave little cause for reassurance.

"The conditions are very difficult," he said. "Half the fleet is here. We've been working only to save the people, save our people, save our sailors."

The news coverage has become eerily routine. Flocks of journalists in expensive raincoats stop passengers arriving in the train station, combing crowds for signs of crew members families. Northern Fleet headquarters today began to hold regular press conference twice daily. People tune into news broadcasts every morning, but with little hope.

Meanwhile, in Vidyaevo, Galina was picking cranberries today to soothe her nerves. Her daughter, Sveta, 23, is planning to celebrate the third birthday of her son Dima next week, and Galina expressed the hope that the family will be reunited by then.

"We do have faith," she said.

----

Was the Kursk carrying nuclear weapons?

From: "Steven Starr" - shadesahoy@mail.socket.net
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 22:55:45 -0500

I would like to call into question the validity of the Russian government's insistence that the Kursk was not carrying nuclear weapons. I believe it was highly unlikely that the only Oscar II sub in the Russian Northern Fleet was armed only with conventional warheads.

Janes Defense Weekly states that, "Commissioned in 1995, the Kursk was the Northern Fleet�s most modern SSGN, and was maintained at a high level of combat readiness."

The following is a description from Jane's of the weapons carried by the Kursk:

Missiles: SSM: 24 Chelomey SS-N-19 Shipwreck (Granit) (improved SS-N-12 with lower flight profile); inertial with command update guidance; active radar homing to 20-550 km (10.8-300 n miles) at 1.6 Mach; warhead 750 kg HE or 500 kT nuclear. Novator Alfa SS-N-27 may be carried in due course.

A/S: Novator SS-N-15 Starfish (Tsakra) fired from 53 cm tubes; inertial flight to 45 km (24.3 n miles); warhead nuclear 200 kT or Type 40 torpedo.

Novator SS-N-16 Stallion fired from 65 cm tubes; inertial flight to 100 km (54 n miles); payload nuclear 200 kT (Vodopad) or Type 40 torpedo (Veder).

Does it make sense that the only Oscar II sub the Russians can put to sea would be carrying strictly conventional weapons?

Consider the international ramifications of admitting that there are a large number of nuclear warheads sitting at the bottom of the Barents sea? Especially if some of them are on top of SS-N-19 missiles and A/S Novator torpedoes.

I think we are missing an enormous opportunity by failing to bring up this topic for discussion.

The following articles are from Jane's, from which this information is taken.

Sincerely, Steven Starr

--

Kursk: did collision trigger explosion?

Jane's Defense Weekly,
By Richard Scott JDW Naval Editor,
London 18/08/00

Uncertainty surrounds the cause of the sudden and massive damage which took the Russian �Oscar II� nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine (SSGN) Kursk (K 141) and its 118 crew to the bottom of the Barents Sea.

The 14,000-ton submarine apparently experienced two major explosions which devastated the front of the boat. However, it remains unclear whether these were the cause of the catastrophe, or occurred as a result of a previous incident near the surface which saw the Kursk plunging to the bottom.

As Jane�s Defence Weekly went to press, Russian naval and government sources were suggesting that the Kursk was involved in a collision with a surface ship at periscope depth. However, initial claims that the SSGN collided with a foreign submarine have been discounted.

An alternative theory is that a weapon malfunction had triggered a massive explosion in the boat�s forward weapon compartment. The Kursk was apparently about to conduct a torpedo firing as part of a North Fleet exercise at the time contact was lost.

Reports from seismologists in Norway say that a monitoring station registered two explosions at the time the Kursk sank. The first, recorded just before 0730GMT on 12 August, registered 1.5 on the Richter scale. A second, stronger explosion measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale � equivalent to 1-2tons of TNT underwater � was recorded just over 2 mins later.

Video film of the Kursk lying more than 100m down on the seabed shows the starboard side of the submarine�s hull ripped open by the force of the blast. Damage extends back to the sail, suggesting that those spaces forward of the reactor compartment � including the control room and accommodation spaces � were rapidly flooded, leaving no time for personnel in those compartments to escape. According to the Russian Navy, both the submarine�s reactors have been shut down. They also insisted that there were no nuclear weapons on board.

Attempts to rescue any surviving crew in the after compartments were hampered by bad weather, strong currents and turbid waters in the vicinity of the Kursk. To assist the Russian effort, the UK deployed its LR5 submarine rescue vehicle, while Norway sent a diving team.

Commissioned in 1995, the Kursk was the Northern Fleet�s most modern SSGN, and was maintained at a high level of combat readiness. It made a high-profile deployment to the Mediterranean in September 1999 and was due to return later this year as part of a planned task group deployment to the region.

Crippling economic constraints have plagued the Russian Navy in recent years, forcing the early retirement of numerous ships and submarines, and the disruption of fleet repair and maintenance activities.

However, there is nothing yet to suggest that the loss of the Kursk, a modern submarine with a well-trained crew, was the result of any inadequacy in maintenance or training.

OSCAR II (ANTYEY) (TYPE 949A) (SSGN)
ACTIVE: 8
BUILDING: 1

Name No Builders Launched Commissioned
VERONESH K 173 Severodvinsk Shipyard Dec1988 Dec1989
SMOLENSK K 410 Severodvinsk Shipyard Jan1990 Dec1990
CELJABINSK K 442 Severodvinsk Shipyard June1990 Jan1991
WILIUCZINSK (ex-Kasatka) K 456 Severodvinsk Shipyard July1991 Nov1992
OREL (ex-Severodvinsk) K 266 Severodvinsk Shipyard May1992 Jan1993
OMSK K 186 Severodvinsk Shipyard May1993 Oct1993
KURSK K 141 Severodvinsk Shipyard May1994 Jan1995
ST GEORGE THE VICTORIOUS (ex-Tomsk) K 512 Severodvinsk Shipyard 18 July1996 May1997
BELGOROD K 530 Severodvinsk Shipyard Aug1999 -

Displacement, tons: 13,900 surfaced; 18,300 dived
Dimensions, feet (metres): 505.2 � 59.7 � 29.5 (154 � 18.2 � 9)
Main machinery: Nuclear; 2 VM-5 PWR; 380 MW; 2 GT3A turbines; 98,000 hp(m) (72 MW); 2 shafts; 2 spinners

Speed, knots: 28 dived; 15 surfaced
Complement: 107 (48 officers)

Missiles: SSM: 24 Chelomey SS-N-19 Shipwreck (Granit) (improved SS-N-12 with lower flight profile); inertial with command update guidance; active radar homing to 20-550 km (10.8-300 n miles) at 1.6 Mach; warhead 750 kg HE or 500 kT nuclear. Novator Alfa SS-N-27 may be carried in due course.

A/S: Novator SS-N-15 Starfish (Tsakra) fired from 53 cm tubes; inertial flight to 45 km (24.3 n miles); warhead nuclear 200 kT or Type 40 torpedo.

Novator SS-N-16 Stallion fired from 65 cm tubes; inertial flight to 100 km (54 n miles); payload nuclear 200 kT (Vodopad) or Type 40 torpedo (Veder).

Torpedoes: 4-21 in (533 mm) and 2-26 in (650 mm) tubes. Combination of 65 and 53 cm torpedoes (see table at front of section). Total of 28 weapons including tube-launched A/S missiles.

Mines: 32 can be carried.
Countermeasures: ESM: Rim Hat; intercept.
Weapons control: Punch Bowl for third party targeting.
Radars: Surface search: Snoop Pair or Snoop Half; I-band.
Sonars: Shark Gill; hull-mounted; passive/active search and attack; low/medium frequency.
Shark Rib flank array; passive; low frequency.
Mouse Roar; hull-mounted; active attack; high frequency.
Pelamida towed array; passive search; very low frequency.

Programmes: There is some doubt whether K 530 will be completed. Name/Number attribution is still uncertain, and Omsk may have been renamed Petropavlosk Kamchatsky.

Structure: SSM missile tubes are in banks of 12 either side and external to the 8.5 m diameter pressure hull; they are inclined at 40� with one hatch covering each pair, the whole resulting in the very large beam. The position of the missile tubes provides a large gap of some 4 m between the outer and inner hulls. Diving depth, 1,000 ft (300 m) although 2,000 ft (600 m) is claimed.

Operational: ELF/VLF communications buoy. All have a tube on the rudder fin as in Delta IV which is used for dispensing a thin line towed sonar array. Pert Spring SATCOM. K 173, K 410, K 266 and K 141 are based at Litsa South in the Northern Fleet and the remainder at Tarya Bay in the Pacific. In 1999 one Northern Fleet unit deployed for the first Russian SSGN patrol in the Mediterranean for ten years. At the same time a Pacific Fleet unit sailed to the western seaboard of the United States. The first three of the class K 148, K 132 and K 119 are laid up awaiting disposal . The only two Oscar Is are laid up in the Northern Fleet.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

-------- california

Obituaries in the News
Associated Press
August 19, 2000 Filed at 8:52 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Deaths.html

ATLANTA (AP) -- Harllee Branch Jr., a former president of Georgia Power Co. who led the company to the construction of its first nuclear generating plant, died Wednesday of a stroke. He was 94.

Branch was president of Georgia Power Co. from 1951 to 1957 and served as chief executive of its parent, Southern Co., from 1957 to 1970.

Under his leadership, the company began building its first nuclear powered unit, Plant Hatch, in 1968.

Branch served President Lyndon Johnson's administration as a member of the Federal Advisory Council on Employment and President Richard Nixon appointed him to the National Commission on Productivity.

-------- new mexico

Prosecutors Say Scientist's Meeting in Beijing Was Suspicious

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/081900lee-trial.html

ALBUQUERQUE, Aug. 18 -- Prosecutors sought to bolster their case today against a former Los Alamos scientist accused of mishandling nuclear weapons secrets by arguing that a visit to Beijing in 1988 had transformed him into a virtual spy for China.

The government argument was the strongest statement to date that the scientist, Wen Ho Lee, was functioning as a spy, even though he is not charged with espionage.

The government's aim in making these points, which came during testimony by an F.B.I. agent, appeared to be to impress the judge with the risks of releasing Dr. Lee on bail, as his lawyers are seeking.

The defense countered that Dr. Lee had done nothing to conceal the meeting and that nothing classified had been discussed. Judge James A. Parker of Federal District Court expressed exasperation about the hearing's having lasted three days rather than the expected half-day.

The F.B.I. agent, Robert Messemer, described an approved professional visit Dr. Lee made to Beijing in 1988 as highly suspicious. Dr. Lee has said that he was visited in his hotel room by two senior Chinese weapons scientists, Zheng Shaotang and Hu Side, and that he was asked about a mathematical problem related to nuclear weapons.

Mr. Messemer said that the meeting typified standard Chinese spying maneuvers in a number of ways. It excluded other American scientists, including Dr. Lee's wife, and that Dr. Lee had been asked a fairly narrow technical question. In addition, the question was posed not by an intermediary, but by the scientist who might use the information.

The government contends that Dr. Lee did not disclose this meeting at the time and only described what happened when he was interviewed by the F.B.I. early last year. But Mark Holscher, one of Dr. Lee's lawyers, countered that in an official report filed after the trip Dr. Lee mentioned he had met with Mr. Zheng and had not been questioned about the matter until last year.

The judge did not announce his decision and indicated that he might not for several days so he could review the transcripts.

---

A 'Spoiled Brat' Transformed Into Her Father's Defender

New York Times
August 19, 2000
PUBLIC LIVES
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/081900lives-profile.html

ALBUQUERQUE -- By her own admission, Alberta Lee was a contentious handful as a teenager and a willful, self-absorbed young woman whose lack of direction concerned her conservative immigrant parents.

"I was the spoiled brat of the family," Ms. Lee, 26, stated bluntly. "I had a hard time getting on my feet."

She finds it easy sharing such reflections because in the past 18 months she has left that needy girl light-years behind. She speaks proudly of the sense of purpose that has transformed her into a confident woman, then notes bitterly that the man whose own life-changing experiences forced her to grow has not been able to share the experience. That is because the man, her father, is being held in a federal prison.

Ms. Lee is the daughter of Wen Ho Lee, the scientist formerly with Los Alamos National Laboratory who is charged with mishandling some of the country's most sensitive nuclear weapons secrets. A small, reed-thin man tucked into a plain gray suit, Mr. Lee has sat in a federal courtroom here much of this past week seeking, for the third time since his arrest in December, to be released on bail. He is represented by a team of lawyers and one lioness who now gives speeches, raises funds for her father's defense, exhorts his lawyers, meets with civil rights groups and cajoles or browbeats reporters.

Ms. Lee, who says she still cannot hold back the tears when she visits her father, says she is determined to do more than just see him exonerated. Because she and his supporters believe he has been singled out by the government because he is Chinese-American, she wants to use his case to fight against discrimination.

Her determination has astounded those who know her.

"There's a positive side to all this, how my sister sort of matured," said her brother, Chung Lee, 27, a soft-spoken medical student. "I never would have imagined she could have done this. It's amazing really."

Victor Hwang, the managing attorney of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, a civil rights group that filed a brief supporting Dr. Lee's assertion that he is a victim of racial discrimination, said Ms. Lee has "been one of the most interesting people to work with. She's the first person I've seen who has had this kind of growth. She's still in shock and denial, like, 'How can this happen?' But then she goes back and works very hard."

Ms. Lee described herself as a somewhat rebellious, emotional young woman while growing up in Los Alamos, sometimes more than her conservative father could handle. She recalled how once, when a friend showed up with torn jeans, her father was aghast and offered to patch them up right then and there. "That's how conservative he is," Ms. Lee said. "It also shows how, you know, clueless he is."

But while her father was in many ways a man of tradition, who spoke Mandarin at home, Ms. Lee never had strong feelings about her Chinese heritage. She attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where she took a few courses on Asian-American history, but said they made little impression. "I just felt that the problems with discrimination didn't apply to me," she said.

It was only when her father became entangled in the criminal investigation that she began to see her ethnicity in a different way.

She was working as a technical writer with a computer company in North Carolina, in late 1998, living with her boyfriend, now her fianc�, when she started getting worried phone calls from her father and brother. Her father was being investigated, she was told. Suddenly she felt herself once again in the uncomfortably familiar role of family drama queen. She urged her father to get a lawyer, but was ignored.

"My dad and I told her, 'Just chill out,' " said her brother, Chung. "I'd just be telling her she was overreacting."

Ms. Lee found the experience doubly painful. "Maybe that's the theme of this whole story, that I had to fight my whole life for someone to listen to me in my family, even on this," she said. "I don't mean to sound super bitter, but I feel that way."

ONCE her father's name surfaced, after officials said they suspected that he had given nuclear secrets to China, she found that not only were people listening, but that they eagerly sought her out. She gave her first speech on her father's birthday, last December, just a few weeks after he was arrested. Her real coming of age, she said, dates from a few months later, when she was asked to address a group of Asian-Americans at Harvard.

"That was really when I realized you could make an impression on a crowd," she recalled. "I really felt like, 'Now, I have a voice, I have a purpose.' I realized I wasn't just speaking for my father. I was speaking for Asian-Americans, too."

So now she is booked for speaking engagements through October, while still holding a job as a technical writer in San Francisco, and helping support some family members.

"Honestly, I don't think she was viewed within the family as someone they would really listen to before this," said Brian Sun, the family's lawyer. "But Wen Ho tells me now how proud he is. He just asks me to make sure she doesn't overdo her involvement. He wants her to have her own life."

As ever, Ms. Lee has her own ideas and is talking about becoming a civil rights lawyer.

"She really believes her father's fate rests with her," Mr. Hwang said. "She feels tremendous pressure. The main flaw I find in her is she hasn't developed much selectivity in who she will deal with. She won't let any opportunity go by without making the effort. I'm afraid she's going to burn herself out."

----

U.S. Argues Against Lee's Release

Associated Press
Saturday, August 19, 2000 ; A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A50979-2000Aug18

ALBUQUERQUE, Aug. 18 -- A fired nuclear scientist could help someone build a bomb or help a country's nuclear weapons program if he is released from jail, a federal prosecutor told a judge at a bail hearing today.

"Hundreds of millions of people could be killed," Assistant U.S. Attorney George Stamboulidis said. "The breadth of the potential harm is so great that . . . even a reduced risk is too great to take that gamble."

Wen Ho Lee is charged with illegally transferring top-secret nuclear weapons files to unsecure computers and computer tapes at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Stamboulidis urged U.S. District Judge James Parker to again refuse bail for Lee, who has been in custody since December. Lee, 60, could face life in prison if convicted of the 59 counts involving the file transfers.

He is not accused of espionage. Instead, the prosecution has suggested Lee meant to use the files to help get a new job.

Defense attorney Mark Holscher said: "There is no evidence in the record that Dr. Lee has the political motivation, the financial motivation or the destructive intent" to do anything harmful with the material he is accused of downloading.

Holscher said, however, that Lee was "naive" and had made some stupid mistakes.

After court adjourned, the scientist's daughter, Alberta Lee, said: "I think the notion of my father having the intention to kill hundreds of millions of people is completely absurd."

Parker indicated that he would rule later, possibly next week, on whether to grant bail. Holscher said $2.2 million in bond money has been assembled by Lee's family and friends.

Defense Attorney John Cline said the material Lee allegedly downloaded was not the "crown jewels" of American science. He said the information could not be used to build a nuclear bomb. Cline added that the information was not even classified secret by the government. He said such material is allowed to be sent via public mail.

Earlier today, an FBI agent whose testimony was key in denying bail to Lee said that the scientist passed non-FBI polygraph examinations with flying colors.

However, Agent Robert Messemer said the polygraphs administered by Wackenhut Corp. on behalf of the Department of Energy did not follow guidelines accepted by the FBI. Messemer said the FBI does not agree with the Wackenhut polygraph outcome, and that he believes Lee was "deceptive" during an FBI examination.

Messemer was also asked about contacts Lee had with Chinese scientists in China in 1988. He said two high-ranking Chinese nuclear officials visited Lee in a hotel room.

Messemer said Lee did not mention the contact in a debriefing, but Holscher said Lee included it on a written report. Holscher said the discussion concerned information in the public domain since 1969, so Lee did not consider it an approach for classified information.

But Messemer said Lee should have told the debriefer anyway. He said it was significant because the scientists ranked so high in China's nuclear establishment, and it would have been useful to know what Lee was asked.

Messemer acknowledged Friday that during a March 7, 1999, FBI interrogation, Lee was threatened with a potential death penalty if he did not cooperate. Messemer said he was aware of the threat but not present.

Stamboulidis objected that the defense implied Lee was threatened with death if he didn't cooperate. Stamboulidis asked Messemer if the interrogation implied Lee would be murdered if he didn't cooperate.

"I concluded he was not under any immediate threat of death if he did not cooperate and he was free to leave at any time," the agent said.

Another FBI agent withdrew from the Lee investigation after the interview, but Messemer said he could not confirm that she quit over the death penalty issue. He said he understood the agent withdrew because she became ill.

-------- texas

Re: US to import 50t DU metal waste from UK

From: Peter Diehl - peter.diehl@sz-online.de,
19 Aug 2000

Philotechnics' import application is available at ADAMS now. The TIFF image file (460k) is available at ADAMS - http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/ADAMS/index.html

Surprise, surprise ... some citations:

"(e) Ultimate disposition: Land burial of depleted uranium aircraft counterweights at Waste Control Specialists, L.L.C. facility in Andrews County, TX."

and:

"Because the counterweights will be disposed of in a facility that is not a radioactive waste disposal site and is not subject to the jurisdiction of the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission and because they are not regulated domestically as a low-level radioactive waste, specific approval by the state agency responsible for licensing the Waste Control Specialists' site, the Texas Department of Health, is not required."

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Laser Project Is Delayed and Over Budget
Report Highlights Troubles at Nuclear Weapons Testing Project

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081900sci-laser-missiles.html

A giant laser being built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will cost nearly $2 billion more than the laboratory originally announced, and will be delayed by at least six years, according to a report released on Thursday by the General Accounting Office.

The project, the National Ignition Facility, or N.I.F., had been expected to cost $2.2 billion and to be finished by 2003 or 2004. By heating and compressing pellets of nuclear fuel with 192 converging laser beams, the project is designed to help in the study of nuclear weapons without exploding them.

So many technical questions surround the project, the report found, that "the cost of N.I.F. could grow even higher and completion of the project could take even longer" than the revised estimates suggest.

The report by the accounting office, the investigative arm of Congress, also found that the former director of the project withheld information about the problems from the laboratory at Livermore, Calif., and from the Energy Department, which runs it.

The project forms part of the nation's program to ensure the safety and reliability of its nuclear stockpile. Because other parts of this "stockpile stewardship" program may have to absorb cost overruns at the ignition facility, its political support has eroded.

Senator Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who heads the energy subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which recommends funding levels for the project, said that the accounting office's numbers were "not out of the estimating ballpark from what we expected."

But Senator Domenici said that despite its importance as an element of stockpile stewardship, "N.I.F. is a very controversial one now because of these very excessive, these huge overruns."

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has pledged to cover the overruns largely using money from Livermore's part of the stockpile stewardship budget. On June 1, he sent a letter to Senator Domenici asking that the project's construction allocation for the fiscal year 2001 be increased by $95 million, more than doubling the Clinton administration's original request. The money "will come from other Stockpile Stewardship Program activities," Mr. Richardson wrote.

The proposal is likely to meet with resistance, partly because some of the money would probably come from other laboratories' stewardship budgets. Senator Domenici said he did not favor the change and predicted that the effort would fail.

"My own assessment would be that that G.A.O. report will haunt it," the senator said.

He added that he would press the Energy Department to study alternative versions of the project that would use a smaller number of laser beams and cost less to build.

Madelyn Creedon, deputy administrator for defense programs at the Energy Department, said in an interview that money for the overruns could be found within the stewardship program without damaging it.

The department "is in the business of maintaining the stockpile," Ms. Creedon said. "It's not in our best interests to skew the balance of the program."

The report also found that the ignition facility's director until last year, E. Michael Campbell, deliberately failed to report the problems to senior management at Livermore and at the Energy Department. That decision led to a major embarrassment for Mr. Richardson, who in June 1999 gave a speech hailing the project as on time and within its budget shortly before learning of the problems.

Mr. Campbell left the laboratory in August 1999 when it was disclosed that he never completed a doctorate from Princeton that he had allowed the laboratory to believe he held. The overruns and delays became public at about the same time.

"Whatever things were going through his mind, he convinced himself and his senior people that everything was O.K.," said Gary Boss, the assistant director at the accounting office who oversaw the report.

Mr. Campbell, now a vice president at General Atomics, a privately held government contractor, objected to the findings. He said that in any project as large and complex as the ignition facility there was bound to be a range of opinion about how to proceed and when to report shortcomings.

"I'll be accused of enthusiasm and commitment to the project and excitement about it, but that's it," Mr. Campbell said yesterday. "I can't apologize for that."

The conclusions on Mr. Campbell's responsibility were in line with findings earlier this year by Mr. Richardson. But in a sharp contrast to a report by a panel appointed by the secretary, the accounting office investigation largely exonerated Dr. Victor H. Reis, a former assistant secretary of energy who was the principal architect of the stockpile stewardship program.

Dr. Reis had been insulated from the problems by lower-level Energy Department officials who "should have been more aggressive in acting on their suspicions," Mr. Boss said.

But the report found numerous shortcomings in the fiscal management of the project. Aside from over $1 billion in overruns on the construction, more than $600 million for fabricating the nuclear fuel pellets, or targets, for the laser should have been included in the original construction estimates, but were not, the report said.

While conceding the construction overruns, Ms. Creedon said the money for target fabrication had always been in the laser's operating budget, though not in the announced construction costs.

"It's not that this is not known to Congress or that this is an overrun," she said. "It just sort of depends on how you rack, stack and package it."

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

-------- colombia

Colombia Cites 'Human Error' in Child Killings

Reuters
August 19, 2000 Filed at 1:08 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-colombi.html

BOGOTA (Reuters) - The Colombian government has admitted that an army ambush of a school group and the killing of six students may have been caused by ``human error.''

``This is not an issue of a human rights violation but of possible human error,'' Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez told a news conference late Friday.

Six children aged six to 11 were killed Tuesday in a confused incident near the town of Pueblo Rico in violence-wracked Antioquia province when army troops apparently opened fire on 60 students on a field trip. Five others were injured.

``There was never any intention by the soldiers to kill the children,'' Ramirez said.

Local media reported Saturday that a military criminal tribunal had ordered the 41 soldiers and officers involved in the incident suspended from combat duty pending an investigation to establish responsibility for the shooting.

The army initially said the youngsters had been accidentally caught in the cross-fire of a clash between troops and rebels of the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's second largest rebel force. But survivors insisted there were no guerrillas in the area at the time of the shooting.

President Andres Pastrana has said he would personally oversee the probe into the killings.

-------- drug war

Drug suspect extradited

Pioneer Planet
Published: Saturday, August 19, 2000
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/2/news/docs/017704.htm

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - The alleged leader of one of Colombia's most powerful drug cartels was sent to the United States Friday to stand trial, days after drug dealers threatened violence if authorities carried out the extradition. A small army of security forces escorted Alberto Orlandez Gamboa onto the tarmac at Bogota's international airport, where he left on a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration plane. Gamboa will face charges in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that he conspired to import and distribute thousands of pounds of cocaine from Colombia to the U.S.

-------- indonesia

Indonesian Military Wins Legal Amnesty

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 19, 2000 ; A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A51871-2000Aug18

DILI, East Timor, Aug. 18 -- Indonesia's top legislative body amended the constitution today to prevent any new human rights laws from applying to military abuses committed in the past.

The change, approved overwhelmingly, effectively provided an amnesty to the country's disgraced armed forces for their sometimes brutal tactics in the former Indonesian province of East Timor and other parts of the strife-torn archipelago.

The amendment is expected to scuttle large portions of a new human rights law making its way through parliament. That groundbreaking law would have created special courts to try human rights cases, bypassing Indonesia's notoriously corrupt judiciary. It also would have criminalized an officer's failure to stop abuses by soldiers under his command.

Both provisions were aimed at prosecuting senior military leaders for their roles in the East Timor violence, including the armed forces commander at the time, Gen. Wiranto. Human rights investigators have accused Wiranto of failing to prevent his soldiers from engaging in widespread destruction in East Timor after the territory voted for independence last August.

The Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association called the amendment "disturbing."

"They are saying that past violations will not be tried and will be neglected," said Handardi, the group's executive director, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

The amendment was part of Indonesia's first bill of rights, which attempts to guarantee civil rights in the emerging democracy. The amendment also provides Indonesians with freedom of speech and outlaws torture and discrimination.

The provision at issue protects people from being charged under a law that was not in effect when a crime was committed. Although legislators pointed out that such a provision is a universal legal principle, human rights activists contended an exception should have been made to deal with the military.

The vote, by the People's Consultative Assembly in Jakarta, likely will intensify calls for an international human rights tribunal for East Timor akin to those for war crimes committed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Indonesian leaders have long objected to such a tribunal, insisting they would be allowed to bring perpetrators to justice under domestic laws.

"How can you talk about democracy and civil rights without bringing the perpetrators of all the crimes in East Timor to justice?" said Aderito de Jeses Soares, a human rights activist in Dili who is a member of the East Timor Jurists Association. "Bringing the military to justice should be the starting point for democracy."

Legislators contended the amendment will not foil prosecutions of human rights violations. They argued that crimes such as murder, rape and arson always have been illegal in Indonesia. "This regulation is not an obstacle to prosecuting past cases," said Yakob Tobing, the head of the assembly commission that drafted the amendment.

But human rights lawyers argued that without new courts and provisions that hold officers responsible for failing to rein in their troops, senior military leaders will not be able to be brought to justice.

In a separate decision that represents another key victory for the military, the assembly passed a decree that allows the armed forces to retain their 38 seats in the 700-member legislative body until 2009. Government reformers had hoped the military would be removed from the assembly this year.

-------- korea

Candor and the Kursk

Saturday, August 19, 2000 ; A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A54195-2000Aug19

DISASTER AND democratization are linked in recent Soviet and Russian history. The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, too catastrophic to deny, forced the Soviet Union to end its systematic coverup of defects in its civilian nuclear program. Accountability for the disaster was imposed on responsible officials, and changes in nuclear policy were implemented. Chernobyl had terrible human consequences, but one salutary political result: It catalyzed Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika.

In a different way, the sinking of the submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea poses a test for the post-Soviet political system still taking shape in Russia. Under President Vladimir Putin, the trend has been toward more official suffocation of independent media and less governmental candor, especially in military matters. A steady stream of disinformation has emanated from the Kremlin regarding the war in Chechnya, for example.

Chaos and confusion must have gripped the navy officers in the storm-tossed area when the Kursk went down. And military establishments generally, not just the Russian one, are instinctively tight-lipped. Still, Russia's handling of the accident seems of a piece with the broader recrudescence of old Soviet standards of candor and competence. The Russian navy took two days to admit what had happened. Officers have put out conflicting information about facts as basic as the cause of the sinking--even suggesting, apparently with no foundation, that a U.S. sub might be to blame. Worst of all, offers of help from the United States, Britain and Norway were initially refused. British and Norwegian help has now been accepted--almost a week after the sub sank. U.S. assistance, however, is apparently still more than the Russian military can countenance. In light of the Clinton administration's effort to engage and reassure Moscow, this is frustrating and, as a measure of Russian officialdom's basic capacity for trusting the former Cold War adversary, sobering.

Russia's electronic and print media have covered the plight of the crew's families and voiced skepticism about the government's performance. "If this were a NATO submarine, the crew would already have been rescued," one Russian newspaper declaimed. Given Mr. Putin's recent hostility toward press critics, this coverage suggests that all is not lost for press freedom in Russia. But no matter how the Kursk drama ultimately ends, many questions must still be addressed: Was the accident preventable? Why the refusal to let other countries help? And, most fundamental, what does this incident reveal about whether Russia truly possesses the money and trained personnel to operate safely the large fleet of nuclear-powered ships--not to mention the vast arsenal of nuclear weapons-- that the great-power ambitions of its current leaders seem to require?

----

U.S. to Close Its Seoul Firing Range

Washington Post World In Brief,
August 19, 2000
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A54224-2000Aug19

SEOUL--The United States has agreed to stop using a firing range in South Korea following complaints from local residents, South Korea's Defense Ministry said.

Anti-U.S. protesters have held rallies demanding the closure of a strafing area and a nearby bombing range since May, when a U.S. Air Force pilot with engine trouble was forced to drop six 500-pound bombs near a village.

Residents said the bombs shattered windows and caused other damage in Maehyang-ri village, on the Yellow Sea southwest of Seoul. They have been demanding compensation and the closure of both the strafing and bombing ranges.

Gen. Lee Han Ho, deputy director of the South Korean air force, said in a news conference that the U.S. Air Force would close the strafing range and stop using live bombs at the bombing range. Lee also said approach paths for jets would be moved offshore, residents would be notified of exercises, and the special area for emergency bomb drops would be moved 700 yards further offshore.

-------- russia

Where worlds collide

The Economist
August 19th - 25th 2000
http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/current/index_sa5744.html

BAKU, TBILISIANDYEREVAN - THERE are more than 3,000 kilometres (1,800 miles) of international borders in the Caucasus. Only the smallest, the 9 km stretch between Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan province and Turkey, is truly friendly. The two countries understand each other linguistically, economically, politically and, increasingly, militarily. A former adviser to the Azeri president has even suggested a confederation, creating a short cut for Azerbaijan into NATO and, eventually, the EU.

There should be that kind of closeness, and carelessness about formal sovereignty, everywhere in the Caucasus: both between the three former Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and with their neighbours: Russia, Turkey and Iran. Russian is a common language across much of the region; there are common cultural heritages (Christian, Persian, Ottoman and Soviet) and common economic problems and opportunities. The Caucasus is-or should be-a splendid transit route between east and west, north and south, for goods, money, people and ideas.

For energy firms, the Caucasus is a way out for the oil and gas around the Caspian Sea. Proven reserves are estimated at 18 billion-35 billion barrels-about as much as America and the North Sea combined. This could rise threefold if a big new find off the Kazakh coast proves as promising as results announced in July suggest.

But most borders in the Caucasus divide rather than unite. Armenia and Azerbaijan are still technically at war. Turkey blockades Armenia in sympathy. Russia keeps a tight grip on its southern border. Iran is chilly to Azerbaijan, Georgia to Armenia. Even when political ties are cordial, as with Georgia and Azerbaijan, physical ones are not. Roads are bumpy and narrow, railways slow and squalid. Customs offices in all the region's countries are notorious for stealing time and money from travellers. The easiest flight connections are via Moscow or Istanbul.

This is surprisingly disappointing. After the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the three republics of the Caucasus seemed to have the best chances of all the other inmates of the Soviet prison when communism started collapsing. Georgia was the former Soviet Union's favourite wine maker and tourist destination; Armenia had high technology and a large, rich, influential diaspora; Azerbaijan had oil, agriculture, and the helping hand of Turkey. All had been independent before, after 1918, if only briefly. Unlike Soviet creations such as Moldova, each had a national cultural identity.

But while the reinvented Baltic states have returned happily to Europe, the three countries of the Caucasus have suffered a miserable decade of war, bad government, isolation and impoverishment. In Georgia, a wrong-headed nationalist government and Russian-backed separatists in the provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought two disastrous civil wars. Armenians fought and won a war for their Nagorno-Karabakh ethnic exclave in Azerbaijan. Oil wealth in Azerbaijan stayed in the pockets of the ruling elite. Living standards all across the region have plunged relentlessly.

The most pathetic example is Abkhazia, once (give or take a few cockroaches) the C�te d'Azur of the Soviet Union. By its own account, it is a success story. "Every hour of every day works in favour of independence. Poverty is the mother of invention. Abkhazia has huge possibilities," intones the president, Vladislav Ardzinba, rattling off Soviet-era nut-production statistics to underline his point. But his country is one of the most depressing sites on the Eurasian landmass. Uniquely for a self-described capital city, Sukhumi has no Internet connection, no mobile phones, and no hotel of any kind. In one day of the civil war in 1992, it lost all its main cultural buildings-equivalent to a terrorist attack in Washington destroying the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Centre. Nobody has tried to rebuild them, or the ghostly city's many other ruins. There is practically no work, no money, no hope, and seemingly no effort. The airport is littered with bits of crashed planes. Nobody bothers to clear them away.

For all its rulers' bombast, Abkhazia exists on Russian sufferance. Without Russian military help, the Abkhaz, who made up less than a fifth of the pre-war population, would have lost the civil war. Russian energy keeps it ticking over now, just. But apart from the rulers and their thuggish security people (who live well enough) almost everyone who can leave has done so, either as refugees to Georgia, or as economic migrants to Russia. That leaves, essentially, the old, sick, handicapped, lazy, or drunk. The only decent jobs in town are working for the earnest foreign soldiers at the United Nations mission, which monitors the Russian-run peacekeeping forces. Cynics pun that these forces are actually piece-keepers, protecting the Kremlin's real interest in its former empire: Abkhazia's 180 km of Black Sea coastline.

Abkhazia is a concentrated example, but the same cocktail of bad government, spite-thy-neighbour and poverty poisons life in the rest of the Caucasus. South Ossetia, another Russian-backed puppet state that survives on the money it makes, more or less illegally, from a tunnel leading through the Caucasus mountains to Russia, is a bit less isolated but still poor. Nagorno-Karabakh is richer, a kind of political Disneyland for the Armenian diaspora whose donations support it. But it has little to show for its military success. The resulting breach between Armenia and Azerbaijan practically cuts the Caucasus in half.

Couldn't they get along?

The political and military stalemate disguises an economic and social catastrophe. Public health services are collapsing; a tuberculosis epidemic, for example, is raging unchecked in Azerbaijan's jails. People are voting with their feet. Western diplomats estimate that fully 2m people have emigrated from Armenia since independence-more than half the population. According to the same figures, Georgia and Azerbaijan have each lost around a fifth of their population (1m and 1.5m people respectively). It is the best people who are going: "The DHL minority-decent, honest, law-abiding-is the most endangered in the Caucasus," quips Alex Rondeli, a Georgian analyst.

There is no shortage of clever solutions for this mess. A Brussels think-tank, the Centre for European Policy Studies, has just produced a bag of ingeniously cooked fudge*-including, for example, the creation of a South Caucasus Community, based on "modern European models of shared sovereignty, interdependence and multi-tier (sometimes asymmetric) governing structures." Translated, this means, for example, a common passport for all three countries, a lot of foreign money (including for Russia's southern fringe) and a security pact backed by big outsiders.

The reaction has been cool so far. Azerbaijan and Georgia want the victors to back down before becoming friends. Armenia and the puppet states would like the status quo entrenched. But places like Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Northern Ireland, Montenegro and Hong Kong show how far formal sovereignty and independence can be fudged when politics or convenience require, even if the result is not always happy. At a practical level, an American expert, Paul Goble, has suggested an ingenious territorial swap in which Armenia would give Azerbaijan a corridor to its exclave of Nakhichevan, in exchange for Azeri concessions on Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia is cool towards this, because it would cut off access to its only friendly neighbour, Iran. But a senior official says that with outside monitoring, some sort of corridor would be worth discussing.

Peace making has shown little progress. The best news is that only a handful of people get killed each year. Political leaders do talk to each other: the Armenian and Azeri presidents will meet again this Friday, August 18th, in Yalta at a regional summit. Georgia made a huge concession recently by referring to Mr Ardzinba as a "president". But even such limited steps are risky. Hundreds of thousands of refugees in Georgia and Azerbaijan see the separatist leaders who drove them from their homes as criminals and traitors, not partners in peace. The victorious sides believe only independence saved them from extermination by their neighbours. There has been almost no preparation of public opinion for peace deals, which would strike many as sell-outs. Some suggest that the mysterious killing of Armenia's prime minister in October last year was a (so far successful) attempt by hardliners to sabotage a tentative peace deal with Azerbaijan.

Certainly there seems little reason for any of the weaker parties to back down on their own. If there is going to be bad government, most people's inclination is to prefer their own. Abkhazia is depressing. But if you are Abkhaz, returning to the unpredictable, corrupt, ethnocentric and perhaps vengeful rule of the Georgian government probably looks even worse.

As poverty increases, so may instability. Georgia's most miserable region is Armenian-populated Javakheti, where the main employer is a large Russian military base. Azerbaijan has a large ethnic minority, the Lezghin, on the border with the volatile Russian republic of Dagestan. Latent territorial claims abound. Those who blame Russian meddling for the conflicts fear it is only a question of time before shooting starts again.

The long-term way out of this must involve the creation of well-governed, prosperous countries that people want to live in, not leave. That is a huge task. The Baltics aside, no state in the former Soviet Union works well. Communist rule is not the only culprit. The Caucasian virtues of family loyalty and extravagant hospitality are not those from which transparent and accountable bureaucracies naturally spring. The governing elites set such a bad example that no ordinary citizen feels inclined to pay taxes or obey laws.

The short-term fix is external pressure. Russia could make its proxy states accept a fudged deal on independence by turning off the energy tap. The West could push its allies, Georgia and Azerbaijan, to be more flexible; and Turkey to open its border with Armenia. Turkey might also look more kindly on visitors wanting to make informal contacts, rather than deporting them, as happened recently to one delegation. And America could be less twitchy about talking to Iran.

On Russia's toes

Although all sides pay lip service to high-flown 21st-century notions of peace-making and conflict-resolution, the real story is an old-fashioned geo-political tussle. Russia's spies and soldiers see the Caucasus as their backyard. They may grudgingly accept that their formal sovereignty is over, but they do not want to be squeezed out of the region in the way they were from the Baltic. In May, a top Russian military planner, General Leonid Ivashov, said American involvement in the region was "risking an explosion"; he threatened counter-measures if Georgia and Azerbaijan continued to flirt with NATO, and said Russia would like to keep two military bases in Georgia indefinitely.

The biggest argument is over Russia's Vaziani base near Tbilisi, which Georgians see as a menace: it helped the leader of an unsuccessful coup escape to Russia in 1995. Russia has promised to leave by July 2001; it has already started to pull equipment out. But the senior Russian commander in the region, General Nikolai Andreyev, said in July that the base's future status has yet to be decided-adding also that the neighbouring airfield would in any case keep working.

There are other ominous hints about Russia's future policy towards the former captive nations. Next door, in Central Asia, the Kremlin has in the past year successfully re-established its geo-political clout by playing on fears of Islamic insurgency. It is taking a much tougher line on dividing the Caspian Sea. And it talks nastily to Georgia and Azerbaijan about their supposed support for rebels across the border in Chechnya-something both countries sharply deny. There has been an odd campaign in Armenia to join the Russian-Belarussian Union, a mysterious entity which, if it ever gets off the ground, looks likely to become a Moscow-dominated confederation not entirely unlike the old Soviet Union.

One particular sign of the Kremlin's intentions may be the growing use of Russian passports, now handed out to practically any former Soviet citizen who wants one. This is creating substantial numbers, one day perhaps even a majority, of Russian citizens in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Javakheti, and thus a lobby for ever-closer ties with Moscow. A linked policy may be the threat to impose a visa requirement on Georgians and Azeris-something that would hurt both countries, given the huge role that working and trading in Russia still plays in many people's lives.

Pessimists believe that Russian policy has changed little since 1816, when a Russian officer recommended: "Maintain a continuous state of dissension among their diverse nations and never forget that their unity could be fatal for us." From a paranoid, zero-sum viewpoint in Moscow, this still makes perfect sense. If, eventually, a rich, stable Georgia were to join the EU (and assuming Russia cannot) it would further highlight the dismal results of two centuries of Russian colonialism on the other side of the Caucasus mountains. Optimists, among them Georgia's President Edvard Shevardnadze, take a different view, believing that Mr Putin may show signs of seeking an accommodation with various parties in the Caucasus: even including, in due course, the Chechens.

Yet the West is taking no chances on Mr Putin's mood, and is trying to build up Georgia and Azerbaijan to withstand the Russian squeeze. Although both have recovered from the nightmarish anarchy of the mid-1990s, there is little else to boast about. Extraordinary corruption in both countries drives away foreign investors. Georgia is still chronically unstable, while Azerbaijan's political system is frozen rigid by the Machiavellian 77-year-old president, Heidar Aliev. Russian influence, particularly economic, remains strong in both countries, while disappointment with the West increases.

A second big flaw with western policy is that the Armenian diaspora hampers aid to Azerbaijan, and encourages it to Russia's main ally, Armenia. A huge amount of American aid goes to Armenia. The Council of Europe, a Strasbourg-based talking shop, wanted to keep both Armenia and Azerbaijan out until they had made peace. Then diaspora pressure, via America, pushed successfully for Armenian membership. As a result, Azerbaijan, with its muzzled press and rigged elections, is to be let in too, making a mockery of the formal criteria.

Western policy in the Caucasus has been so unsuccessful so far that some even doubt its sincerity. Maybe all the talk about civil society and good government is misleading. Perhaps western energy firms prefer weak corrupt states, safe for oil wells and pipelines, rather than headstrong democracies that may start worrying about the environment, or their own citizens' share of the cake.

That is probably too cynical. Western efforts in all three countries to build civil society, educate young people, beef up security and retrain bureaucrats are patently well-meaning, if sometimes optimistic (paying for an American lawyer to head the new securities commission in Georgia is one particularly valiant example). And there are still grounds for hope. Every year of independence does entrench statehood, at least for those people who stay to enjoy it. The new oil discovery in the Caspian means that the American-backed plan to build a new pipeline across the Caucasus, creating an export route independent of Russia, looks less wobbly and over-ambitious than it did before. A joint gas pipeline route to Turkey for Azeri, Turkmen and Kazakh gas is also planned. Co-operation on coal and steel was the foundation of the European Community; oil and gas could play the same role in the Caucasus.

The ultimate responsibility lies with Russia. If President Vladimir Putin truly wants prosperous, strong, independent neighbours, then the Caucasus is the place to prove it. If he wants to play the geopolitical games of the past, then the West will block him as far as it can. The result of that will be more of the same: a depressing, and dangerous, stalemate.

-------- u.n.

For the story behind the story...
UN Millenium Conference To Be Held In Basement?

NewsMax.com
Saturday August 19, 2000 5:29 PM EST
http://www.NewsMax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2000/8/19/162947

NewsMax.com hears from one Latin American ambassador to the United Nations that officials are red-faced over plans for the much heralded Millenium 2000 conference.

The conference, set to be held Sept. 6 through 8 at the New York headquarters of the UN, will draw dignataries and world leaders to discuss the UN's role in the new millenium.

New York police and federal officials see the conference as a perfect time for a perfect crime, and are fearing a major terrorist attack.

One police study found that a a car or truck laden with explosives driving by Manhattan's adjacent FDR Drive could wreak havoc on the General Assembly hall, the place where the Millenium conclave was to be held.

Rather than close the FDR Drive, one of Manhattan's vital arteries, police have been asking UN authorities to hold their meetings in the safer UN basement and other nearby facilities.

Claustrophobic UN officials are balking, and want to close down the FDR Drive. To hell with commuters!

So far the deal details haven't been agreed to. Expect the UN will assert jursidiction, commuters should plan on biking to work.

-------- u.s.

Associated Press
August 19, 2000 Filed at 8:52 p.m. EDT
Obituaries in the News
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Deaths.html

Herbert James Coleman

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Herbert James Coleman, a former managing editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology and a Defense Department official until his retirement in 1994, died Aug. 13 of a heart attack. He was 79.

Coleman worked at Aviation Week from 1958 until 1986 when he retired from the highly regarded technical publication as managing editor. He then went to work at the Pentagon where he headed the Current News & Research Service, which publishes the Early Bird, a daily news summary for top government officials.

Coleman was a Minnesota native and flew 31 combat missions over Europe during World War II as a bomber aboard a B-17 ``Flying Fortress'' bomber.

He had served as vice chairman and governor of the National Press Club.

Survivors include his wife and three sons.

-------- OTHER
-------- environment

Study Proposes New Strategy to Stem Global Warming

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081900sci-environ-climate.html

An influential expert on global warming who for nearly 20 years has pressed countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases now says the emphasis on carbon dioxide may be misplaced. Instead, he and a team of scientists have concluded that the quickest way to slow warming is to cut other heat-trapping greenhouse gases first.

This strategy could help policy makers overcome a fundamental conflict in the debate over global warming: carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas in the air, is an unavoidable byproduct of burning fossil fuels like coal and oil -- and combustion of fossil fuels is the foundation of industrial societies.

The expert, Dr. James E. Hansen, and his colleagues conclude in a new analysis that the warming seen in recent decades has been caused mainly by other heat-trapping emissions -- methane, chlorofluorocarbons, black particles of diesel and coal soot and compounds that create the ozone in smog -- which are easier to control than carbon dioxide, with many of them already on the decline.

The team, which reported its findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the burning of fossil fuels, although substantially raising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, also produces a pall of particle haze that reflects as much of the sun's energy back into space as the release of carbon dioxide has trapped in the air, Dr. Hansen said.

The haze from combustion is likely to be cleaned up in coming years, removing its cooling sun-blocking effect, said Dr. Hansen, who is director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. And over the course of the century, he added, carbon dioxide levels will still have to be reduced to prevent further warming. Meanwhile, emissions of carbon dioxide from human activities may be decreasing; he said they shrank slightly in 1998 and 1999, even as the global economy grew.

As a result, he said, the world may find it easier and less costly to slow climate change than he and other scientists had thought, at least in the short term.

"The prospects for having a modest climate impact instead of a disastrous one are quite good, I think," Dr. Hansen said in an interview.

Some climatologists greeted Dr. Hansen's new paper with dismay, saying they feared it would be misused by skeptics about global warming or by critics of a proposed treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, which would commit industrialized nations to big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Representatives of industries most vulnerable to restrictions on carbon dioxide welcomed the findings, saying they raised provocative questions about the need for vigorous action on the climate.

The strong reaction is largely a function of the major role that Dr. Hansen has played in propelling the greenhouse debate onto the public stage. In 1981, he was a principal author of one of the first papers spelling out the links between rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and rising global temperatures.

In 1988, when a scorching American heat wave was at its peak and fires were consuming the Amazon, he testified before a Senate committee that human activities were changing the climate.

In the analysis, Dr. Hansen and his colleagues culled data and scientific papers on topics from rice production, which releases methane, to urban pollution, a source of ozone and sooty particles, to obtain detailed estimates of the rate of change in different greenhouse emissions. He then used established formulas for calculating how different amounts of the gases in the future would affect the inflow of energy from the sun and escape of heat from the earth.

Carbon dioxide is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. But the other gases Dr. Hansen and his team cite are more prodigious trappers of heat. Moreover, Dr. Hansen said, in contrast to the difficulties of controlling carbon dioxide, technologies already exist for capturing or eliminating many of the other kinds of emissions.

"These are much more tractable," Dr. Hansen said, citing as an example existing systems for capturing methane produced by decomposing organic material in landfills.

Also, because many of these gases cause serious, costly health problems or can harm agriculture, there are "strong economic reasons for wanting to eliminate them," he said.

Some scientists criticized aspects of the new study, but agreed that an initial focus on the other greenhouse gases could achieve significant slowing of climate warming, as long as carbon dioxide cuts were also made.

Dr. John P. Holdren, a professor of environmental science and public policy at Harvard University, said any focus on cutting just one set of gases now would be a mistake. "This is not an either-or problem," Dr. Holdren said. "It's a both-and problem. We're going to need all the cuts we can get."

The paper has prompted a significant amount of scrambling by scientists and lobbyists who are trying to shape the response to global warming. Several hundred scientists in dozens of countries are working on final revisions to the latest installment of a United Nations assessment of climate change.

It also comes as the presidential candidates are being pressed by private environmental groups to add more detail to their positions on global warming.

Vice President Al Gore has frequently cited Dr. Hansen's work. In 1997, Mr. Gore played a major role in negotiations in Kyoto, Japan, on the proposed treaty.

The White House said yesterday that the Kyoto plan was the best approach to slowing warming, adding that it placed equal emphasis on reducing all of the greenhouse gases largely because of insistence by American negotiators, including the vice president.

Gov. George W. Bush of Texas has said the Kyoto proposals were "inadequate and unfair to the United States." A spokesman for the Bush campaign, Ray Sullivan, yesterday called the new Hansen paper intriguing, adding that there were still questions to be answered.

Dr. Robert T. Watson, the chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said he had received a flurry of phone calls from other scientists in the last few days expressing worries that Dr. Hansen's study could be misportrayed.

"They said this could easily be interpreted as the guy who got Vice President Gore all excited about global warming now saying everything's fine," Dr. Watson said, adding: "If this paper is viewed that way, it'd be a horrible distortion. If anything, our projections for warming are higher than they used to be, and we're seeing discernible changes in ecosystems that we can link back to climate."

Representatives of industries that have sought to limit restrictions on fossil fuels said the paper poked provocative holes in the science behind the Kyoto plan and other proposals to stem warming.

Dr. Hansen stressed that he is still convinced that global warming is under way, that people are a significant cause, and that work should be done to cut the rate of change -- perhaps not quite as much work as researchers thought.

---

Ages-Old Polar Icecap Is Melting, Scientists Find
The North Pole is melting.

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081900sci-climate-pole.html

The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday. At least for the time being, an ice-free patch of ocean about a mile wide has opened at the very top of the world, something that has presumably never before been seen by humans and is more evidence that global warming may be real and already affecting climate.

The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago.

"It was totally unexpected," said Dr. James J. McCarthy, an oceanographer, director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and the co-leader of a group working for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is sponsored by the United Nations. The panel is studying the potential environmental and economic consequences of marked climate change.

Dr. McCarthy was a lecturer on a tourist cruise in the Arctic aboard a Russian icebreaker earlier this month. On a similar cruise six years ago, he recalled, the icebreaker plowed through an icecap six to nine feet thick at the North Pole.

This time, ice was generally so thin that sunlight could penetrate and support concentrations of plankton growing under the ice. Dr. McCarthy said the icebreaker's Russian captain, who has made the voyage 10 times in recent years, said he had never before encountered open water at the pole.

Another lecturer, Dr. Malcolm C. McKenna, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, said the ship, the Yamal, crunched through miles of unusually thin ice and intermittent open water on the approach from Spitsbergen, Norway, to the pole. When the ship reached the pole -- which Dr. McKenna and his wife, Priscilla, confirmed with a hand-held Global Positioning System navigation device -- water lapped its bow.

"I don't know if anybody in history ever got to 90 degrees north to be greeted by water, not ice," Dr. McKenna said in an interview. He instantly snapped pictures to document the phenomenon in photographs.

The Yamal eventually had to steam six miles away to find ice thick enough for the 100 passengers to get out and be able to say they had stood on the North Pole, or close to it. They saw ivory gulls flying overhead, the first time ornithologists said they had ever been sighted at the pole.

Over the last century, the average surface temperature of the globe has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, and the rate of warming has accelerated in the last quarter century. (That's a significant amount, considering that the world is only 5 to 9 degrees warmer now than it was in the last ice age, 18,000 to 20,000 years ago.) Scientists and policy makers are still arguing about whether this is a natural fluctuation or an effect of industrial society's releasing heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere.

"Some folks who pooh-pooh global warming might wake up if shown that even the pole is beginning to melt at least sometimes, as in the Eocene," Dr. McKenna added.

The Eocene was the geological period when the world's climate grew significantly warmer. Around 55 million years ago, according to sedimentary and fossil evidence, tropical vegetation spread inside the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Water and jungles dominated the polar environments, and in the generally warm world, mammals for the first time grew in number, size and diversity.

Previous studies of satellite and submarine observations have seemed to establish a warming trend in the northern polar region and raise the possibility of a melting icecap.

Scientists at the Goddard Space Science Institute, a NASA research center in Manhattan, compared data from submarines in the 1950's and 60's with 90's observations, demonstrating that the ice cover over the entire Arctic basin has thinned by 45 percent. Satellite images have revealed that the extent of ice coverage has significantly shrunk in recent years.

Dr. McCarthy said he would report the encounter with open polar water to environmental scientists and consult other scientists to see if new satellite remote-sensing data have detected the extent of the melting.

Recalling the reaction of passengers when they saw an iceless North Pole, he said: "There was a sense of alarm. Global warming was real, and we were seeing its effects for the first time that far north."

In their models of climate patterns, scientists have long suggested that the northern polar region would be affected earlier and more seriously than the southern region.

They said the greater expanse of land in the northern hemisphere should respond more rapidly to temperature change, presumably leading to marked climate change.

-------- police

Brazilian policemen convicted

Pioneer Planet
Saturday, August 19, 2000
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/2/news/docs/017704.htm

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - Two police officers were convicted of murder Friday for their roles in one of Brazil's bloodiest land disputes, a 1995 incident in which police stormed a squatters' camp. A third officer was acquitted in the trial, the first court proceeding stemming from the clash that left 10 squatters and two police officers dead. The seven-member jury in Porto Velho, capital of the Amazon state of Rondonia, took three hours to convict Airton Ramos de Morais and Daniel da Silva Furtado. They were sentenced to 18 years and 16 years in prison, respectively.

-------- terrorism

FBI Says Cyberthreat Grows

NewsMax.com
Saturday, Aug. 19, 2000
UPI
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/8/18/150034

WASHINGTON - The Internet has come under increasing assault from computer viruses and other cyberthreats so far this year, and the trend is growing, the nation's top cybercop said Friday.

Michael Vatis, who heads the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, said "the threat is growing exponentially." Despite law enforcement successes, "the government's resources as a whole are not keeping pace."

In a world increasingly dependent on computers and Internet communications, NIPC is on the front line in the fight against cyberattacks on the public or private sector. The center is mostly staffed by the FBI, but includes representatives from U.S. intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, other U.S. departments and the private sector.

"We have seen a steady trend in terms of the number of cases and also in terms of the severity of the incidents, Vatis said, citing the emergence of massive denial of service assaults against e-commerce in February and the "ILOVEYOU" worm later in the spring.

Both assaults emphasize the international nature of cybercrime.

The "ILOVEYOU" worm was "the most destructive virus," Vatis told UPI, worse than last year's Melissa.

Appealing to the vanity and curiosity of the average computer user, the "Love Bug" was downloaded from e-mail onto millions of computers and caused billions of dollars in damages when it wiped out essential files. NIPC is still issuing alerts on its variants. Several Love Bug suspects are being investigated in Manila, the Philippines.

The dedicated denial of service, or DDOS, attacks against Yahoo!, eBay and a host of high-profile e-commerce Web sites may have been launched in part by a Canadian teen-ager using software cyberweapons available "in the wild" on the Internet. The teen, known as "Mafiaboy" on the 'Net, faces charges north of the border.

In a DDOS attack, "daemons" or "packets" implanted in what may be scores of innocent, third-party "zombie" computers are ordered by a controller to assault a target. In the February attacks, the "zombies" launched an endless string of e-mail with "spoofed" - phony - return addresses. When the victims tried to answer the e-mail at the "spoofed" addresses, they were caught in a vicious cycle they could never complete.

Vatis warns that "the tools or exploits available to hackers are increasing in complexity," but sees a hopeful sign.

"Companies are paying a lot more attention to security as a result" of attacks in 2000. "I think for 2001 I would expect to see the defensive side improving," Vatis said.

"Security hopefully will be better, and I think awareness already is better."

There were also some significant technical advances. Earlier this month, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency and SRI International announced the development of the EMERALD project with monitors "that are independently tunable and dynamically deployable to key observation points throughout large networks."

The system "targets the external threat agent who attempts to subvert or bypass a domain's network interfaces to gain unauthorized access to domain resources or prevent the availability of these resources," DARPA said.

Vatis testified before Congress in May that an estimated 30 computer viruses were emerging each day, though most tend to be benign, and about 50,000 were infesting the Internet.

"I don't know what the current numbers are," he said Friday. "That was based on what the anti-virus vendors estimated. My belief is that it's still somewhere in the ballpark."

'Hacktivism' Threat

One threat that hasn't fully been realized so far in 2000 in "hacktivism," defined as illegal hacking for a political purpose.

"We've seen people engaged in widespread Web page defacement, and denial of service attacks against Web sites for political reasons. There hasn't been an overwhelming trend," Vatis said. "We had hacktivist activity against the WTO meetings last year in Seattle."

The cyberattacks corresponded with widespread street violence when the World Trade Organization summit was held in Seattle in September.

Though there appeared to be no serious cyberattacks on the political conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles this summer, Vatis and other officials are wary.

NIPC has issued an alert for possible hacktivism against the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, Australia; the Summer Olympic Games in Sydney; and the 55th annual summit of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Prague, Czech Republic. All the events take place in September.

As for terrorist activity on the Internet, "I'm really limited as to what I can say," Vatis said.

"I think it's fair to say that we have not seen a significant attack by a group that's intent on intimidation for political purposes. But that is something that I think is certainly a possibility."

Terrorists continue to use the new technology for "secure communication, fund-raising and propagandizing," Vatis said.

"We've also seen terrorist groups focus attacks on infrastructure."

He cites an IRA cyberattack on electric power that was thwarted in Britain, and a similar attack on a Western power grid thwarted by the FBI.

Cyberterrorism

The absence of a widespread terrorist cyberattack is deceptive, Vatis believes.

"I've heard people skeptically say, 'How come we haven't seen this yet?' My response is that that if you have a couple of teen-agers who can cause such widespread damage shouldn't we be concerned with what a more (sophisticated) terrorist group or foreign nation can do?"

The national security side of NIPC's mission is even more covert.

"I can't talk publicly or openly about what we know," Vatis said.

But "the most significant threats in this arena" are, No. 1, putative attempts by a foreign intelligence service to access high-tech research and development in cyberspace, and, No. 2, a foreign nation engaging in "information warfare" against the United States by launching cyberattacks against U.S. infrastructure or the military's command, control and communications.

Vatis pointed out that CIA Director George Tenet has told Congress that other countries are designing systems "to engage in information warfare, and that's something that we at NIPC are concerned about and taking steps to prepare for."

Spotting and pinpointing responsibility for a cyberattack is much more complicated than for a nuclear attack, he said. U.S. sensors can spot the exhaust plume of a missile being launched. "You pretty much know you're going to have a nuclear attack," Vatis explained.

"But when you see a denial of service you don't know what it is until you look at it further. As a result, law enforcement plays a national security role" in cyberspace.

"Which is why the NIPC is part of the FBI," Vatis said, "because we don't want a system where the government jumps to conclusions without accurate information."

Another worry for Vatis is the NIPC's budget, which will remain flat in fiscal 2001. He hopes to counter the lack of budget growth "by going to other government agencies and seeking additional help. But it's a very tight budget year for the FBI in general, and we're taking all available steps to make sure we try to keep pace with the problem."

NIPC has about 200 staffing slots in Washington and will seek more in fiscal 2002.

"Our principal concern now is having the slots to fill, not filling them" with young scientists and agents eager to perform high-tech public service. "But long term," Vatis said, "recruiting and especially retention is in issue" in the face of soaring salaries in the private sector.

-------- activists

For the story behind the story...
Prudhomme Audited on Eve of Clinton Rape Protest

NewsMax.com
Saturday August 19, 2000; 6:29 PM EDT
http://www.NewsMax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2000/8/19/172746

Katherine Prudhomme, the Derry, New Hampshire housewife who once challenged Vice President Al Gore to say whether he believed Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick, was hit with an IRS audit on Friday, just hours before she was scheduled to appear at a rape awareness rally outside Hillary Clinton's Manhattan campaign headquarters.

"My husband got the IRS's letter yesterday," Prudhomme told NewsMax.com. "They looked at our records from 1998 and decided we have to pay more money."

Prudhomme said she's never been audited before and had no dramatic changes recently in her family income, which she described as "middle class."

"I feel like we're being harassed," said the feisty crusader. "My husband went over our return last night and couldn't find any red flags that might have triggered an IRS investigation."

Along with those who heard her annouce the news outside Clinton's New York senate campaign offices Saturday afternoon, Prudhomme suspects that the audit may have been triggered by a different kind of red flag: her determined questioning of Gore about Juanita Broaddrick last December -- and her annouced intention to get Hillary Clinton to address the same issue.

"Well, I don't know what to make of her claim," the veep told Prudhomme with a nervous laugh in his voice, "because I don't know how to evaluate that story, I really don't."

Prudhomme's tax examination comes on the heels of an IRS audit of Broaddrick herself, who had the books of her nursing home business scrutinized in May by an agent who couldn't find anything wrong.

The New Hampshirite wasn't so lucky. The IRS says she and her husband owe a whopping $1500. "I think the timing is pretty suspicious," Prudhomme complained, "coming the very day before was had this demonstration."

The odds of yet another Clinton accuser being hit by an IRS audit are mind boggling. Before Prudhomme, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Liz Ward Gracen and Broaddrick had their tax returns investigated. Gracen even said she was hit with a tax probe after an anonymous caller threatened "you could be audited" if she didn't lay low during Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.

The rally that Prudhomme suspects caught the IRS's eye was attended by "Friends of Juanita Broaddrick" from around the tri-state area, including many who frequent the website FreeRepublic.com where the event was publicized.

"Thousands of passers-by heard our message," Prudhomme told NewsMax.com after giving a speech to the crowd condemning Clinton's Broaddrick rape as a "hate crime,"not "a personal mistake" -- the words Gore used in his response to her nine months ago.

After her remarks, Prudhomme entered Hillary 2000 headquaters and personally handed a videotape of Broaddrick's devastating February 1999 NBC interview to a campaign aide with instructions that it be given to the first lady. "The man who took the tape wouldn't tell me who he was," she said.

Mrs. Clinton reportedly was out of town for the weekend.

Besides Prudhomme, the anti-rape protest had the support of Marie-Jose Ragab, president of the Dulles chapter of the National Organization for Women. Ragab sent the following statement, which Prudhomme shared with the crowd:

"We are honored to be here today and thank Katherine and the 'Friends of Juanita Broaddrick' for inviting breakaway Dulles NOW to participate in their rally. The unfaltering support it has given to Mrs. Broaddrick has brought encouragement and hope to many women similarly victimized and we admire the dedication they have shown to advance the cause of human rights.

"Standing in stark contrast to the strangely silent women's groups formerly convulsed in outrage over Anita Hill's soda can, Katherine Pruhomme embodied the very spirit of true feminism when she courageously asked Vice President Gore in front of a televised audience: 'Do you belive Juanita Broaddrick?'

"Possibly aware that no controlling legal authorities were firmly in place at the time of the assault, Mr. Gore's vague reply was indicative of how desperately Democratic faithful want to ignore her very existence.

"Asked the same question Betty Friedan repeatedly professed that she had never heard of Juanita. NOW's Patricia Ireland found her both credible and responsible for the unspeakable crime. Health Secretary Shalala said she had reached no conclusion, busy as she was serving the president. Susan Estrich exhorted all to 'move on.'

"This gathering is a reminder that the story of Mrs. Broaddrick has not and will not 'move on' and that it looms larger every day. Katherine and her friends have come here to ask again, 'Do you believe Juanita?' As a candidate for high public office it is a fair question for Mrs. Clinton to answer."

NewsMax.com gratefully acknowledges the help of FreeRepublic.com in preparing this report.

-------- genetically engineered food

Genetically altered seed hurts family farms, protesters say

Saint Louis Post Dispatch
Saturday, August 19, 2000
By Tina Hesman Of The Post-Dispatch
Virginia Baldwin Gilbert of the Post-Dispatch provided information for this story.
mailto:thesman@postnet.com
mailto:vhick@postnet.com
http://www.stlnet.com/postnet/stories.nsf/News%2FToday's%20Post%2FToday%2FA%20section/07E750887A100A0B86256940002D91CA?OpenDocument&Headline=Genetically%20altered%20seed%20hurts%20family%20farms%2C%20protesters%20say

* More than 100 activists demonstrate at Monsanto's headquarters in Creve Coeur. Later, three are arrested outside Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond's office in Clayton.

Genetically engineered seed is bad business for family farmers. That was the claim of more than 100 activists who converged on Monsanto's Creve Coeur headquarters at noon Friday to protest the company's production and sale of genetically engineered seed.

Later, Clayton police arrested three of the demonstrators after further protests outside the office of Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo.

Backed by 14-foot-tall puppets of "killer corn" and "corporate giants," the activists contended that genetically engineered crops yield less - 11 percent less, says a University of Nebraska study - and cost more than conventional crops. That's a combination that could spell disaster for family farmers, said Bryce Oates of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center.

"With a lower yield, genetically modified crops are going to lose the economic feasibility contest every time," Oates said.

According to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 54 percent of this year's soybean crop is genetically engineered, up from 47 percent last year. The department does not keep yield figures separately for genetically engineered crops, but it predicts overall soybean yields will increase by 4 percent from last year.

Demonstrators contend that corporations like Monsanto and the American government are indiscriminately promoting genetically modified crops - known as GMOs - on world markets despite consumer concerns.

"Anyone knows that you've got to give the customer what they want, but we're not doing that," said Bill Christison of the National Family Farm Coalition. Monsanto and the U.S. government are "trying to choke GMOs down their throats," he said.

Christison, a soybean farmer from Chillicothe, Mo., was one of a handful of farmers who participated in the demonstrations.

For organic farmer Janet Morse of Putnam, Ill., genetic engineering of food crops raises more than economic concerns. "It's untested. It's unproven and it could be unsafe," Morse said.

Monsanto spokesman Gary Barton said that the protesters were ignoring the benefits of genetically engineered crops to thousands of farmers around the world. The company believes that educated farmers and consumers will embrace the technology, he said.

When the demonstration moved to Bond's office later in the afternoon, about 50 protesters filled the steps and sidewalk in front of the building at 7700 Bonhomme Avenue and demanded to see the senator.

Flanked by police, Sharon Lentin, a Bond aide, met briefly with protesters outside the senator's Clayton office building.

After being denied a meeting with Bond, the demonstrators staged a spontaneous parade through the streets of Clayton. When the group reached Bemiston Avenue south of Forsyth Boulevard, the sidewalk and street were partially blocked by construction. Several marchers began walking in the street.

After police asked the demonstrators three times to return to the sidewalk, the officers arrested three of the most vocal protesters. Police Sgt. T. Stockman told the demonstrators the three were arrested for failing to follow the reasonable instructions of a police officer.

After chanting demonstrators confronted the handful of police officers, police Lt. Kevin Murphy spoke with one of the protesters, a man who identified himself as a St. Louis resident, to resolve the standoff.

"We got some arrests," the man told fellow protesters. "We wanted some arrests, we got them."

The group left.

Said Tammy Shea, a protest organizer: "It's kind of overkill. We're a peaceful group."

Bond criticizes protest

In a statement, Bond said: "Because the stakes are so high for millions of people around the world who need extra nutrition and vaccinations, the biotechnology debate ought to be based on science, not emotion. Unfortunately, today we saw the emotion, not the science."

Another activist was arrested Thursday after climbing a utility pole near Monsanto's headquarters on Lindbergh Boulevard to unfurl a banner, said Creve Coeur police.

E-mail: thesman@postnet.com\Phone: 314-862-2143 \postnet.com/links Find Web sites for and against biotechnology

----

OneList subscribers:

1. NucNews 00/08/19 - Oboe update; Announcements; Candidates; Political Sites From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

2. OCT 7 ACTIONS LIST From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

3. Envoronmentalistys compared to Nazis in article From: Guin <guinstigator@yahoo.com>

-----------

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 17:53:43 -0400
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

NucNews 00/08/19 - Oboe update; Announcements; Candidates; Political Sites

1) Oboe 5 Detonated 8-18-00 -The U.S. Department of Energy was finally able to conduct the subcritical nuclear test "Oboe 5" on Friday, August 18, 2000 at 5:09 p.m. PDT well over a day late. The extended delay was attributed to technical difficulty involving alignment of diagnostic equipment. [Charlie Hilfenhaus, Alliance of Atomic Veterans Director, Atomic Workers Division <mailto:chilfenhaus@juno.com>] -There might be one more "Oboe" test ("Oboe 6") this fiscal year, but that's not absolutely certain. Fiscal Year 2001 may or may not see any subcritical nuclear tests - it depends upon funding coming through. [Sally Light, new Executive Director of Nevada Desert Experience as of Sept. 1. <mailto:sallight1@earthlink.net>]

2) Activist Announcements

- A poll for you to vote in, regarding nuclear power (running 50/50): http://www.policy.com/news/dbrief/dbriefarc769.asp [From: mailto:hughesj@songs.sce.com]

- Meeting on Mon., Aug. 21 at 7:30 PM, 327 East 25th Street, Baltimore, to plan an Aug. 23rd / 5:30 PM protest against the August 25th war games.[<mailto:mobuszewski@afsc.org>] The story below appeared in the Aug. 17, 2000 Baltimore Sun: Baltimore Memorial Stadium slated for 'combat training' use Navy unit to conduct tests with explosives http://www.sunspot.net/content/cover/story?section=cover&pagename=story&stor yid=1150420207038

- VIGIL OUTSIDE THE CHINESE EMBASSY IN WASHINGTON, D.C. ON AUGUST 25, 2000 FROM 10:00 AM TO 11:00 AM The Chinese authorities are sending to Washington, D.C. a delegation of "religious leaders", which includes a Tibetan lama from Amdo, who is known for his pro-Chinese leanings. They are addressing a press conference at the Chinese Embassy on August 25, 2000. This delegation is participating in the controversial Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders in New York beginning on August 28. You may be aware that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is being excluded from this historic conference of world religious leaders, which is partially hosted by the United Nations and part of the meeting is being held at the UN General Assembly hall. It is an outrage that they have excluded the Dalai Lama. As one of the world's greatest advocates of non-violence, the Dalai Lama is someone who should be welcomed in the United Nations. Nearly a year after invitations went out to over 1,000 religious leaders, the Dalai Lama was invited to participate in the concluding sessions, but not in the sessions held within the UN building. [Bhuchung Tsering <mailto:tenzinict@peacenet.org>]

- FINAL DEADLINE - Petition to End Sanctions on Iraq The Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) will shortly be meeting with the White House to present all of the petitions from the last 20 months of the Million Signature Campaign. If you have any petitions still circulating, please mail them in ASAP. MILLION SIGNATURE CAMPAIGN Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) 1101 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003 http://www.saveageneration.org epicweb@aol.com 202-543-6176

- PAX CHRISTI USA "BREAD NOT STONES" NATIONAL BUS TOUR ON FEDERAL SPENDING PRIORITIES Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement, has put together a travelling tour, complete with a large tour bus, huge blow-up displays, street theatre, programs, and handouts, to emphasize the importance of evaluating federal spending priorities. As part of Pax Christi's election year activities, as well as its long range "Bread Not Stones" project, the bus tour raises the question of military spending and asks, as Jesus asked, "if your children ask for bread, would you give them a stone?" [Max Obuszewski <mailto:mobuszewski@afsc.org>, Chuck Michaels - 410-321-5770 (o) - <mailto:cwmichaels@igc.org>]

- Bonn International Center for Conversion - http://www.bicc.de/

- Scottish CND Campaign News - http://www.cndscot.dial.pipex.com/news/index.htm 18 Aug 00 Radiation hazards on Kursk - http://www.cndscot.dial.pipex.com/news/000817a.html

- EPA MAPS TOXIC POLLUTANTS ACROSS AMERICAN AIRSCAPE WASHINGTON, DC, August 18, 2000 (ENS) - A clear picture of which toxins may be tainting your neighborhood air is now online. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has posted new interactive maps estimating concentrations of the most toxic air pollutants across the United States. For full text and graphics visit: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/aug2000/2000L-08-18-06.html To map the toxics in your area, visit: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/uatw/nata

- News, analysis and follow up initiatives arising from the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York in May, 2000 can be found under a new button entitled NPT FOLLOWUP at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/postnptrevcon/postrevconindex.htm. Government Disarmament Directory - http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/frames/Gov_Disarm_Contacts/Gov_Disarm_D ir_Frameset.html [Felicity Hill <mailto:flick@igc.org>

- ANNALS OF WAR -- OVERWHELMING FORCE What happened in the final days of the Gulf War? BY SEYMOUR HERSH (re Barry McCaffrey) http://cryptome.org/mccaffrey-sh.htm

3) Presidential Candidates' Schedules

- Al Gore - August 19-20, 2000 - Riverboat Tour? - http://www.algore2000.com/

- Ralph Nader - August 20, 2000 Ralph is slated to appear on ABC's "This Week With Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson" this Sunday. For local listings, check out the homepage for "This Week" at: http://more.abcnews.go.com/onair/thisweek/thisweekindex.html. Also Nader will appear on CNN's Both Sides with Jesse Jackson - http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/both.sides/ To keep up-to-date on coverage check Nader's News Links page: http://votenader.org/newslinks.html

- GW Bush - August 21, 2000 - Milwaukee WI, Des Moines IA 11:20 a.m. - Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, The Midwest Express Center, 400 West Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53203, (414) 908-6167 2:45-3:30 p.m. - The Downtown School, 400 Locust Street, Suite 140, Des Moines, Iowa 7:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. - Iowa Republican Party Dinner, The Polk County Convention Complex , 501 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa

--

Because of the lousy news coverage of Nader's ideas, here's

4) Nader's "Concord Principles" http://votenader.org/issues/Concord.html :

An Agenda for a New Democracy

Control of our social institutions, our government, and our political system is presently in the hands of a self-serving, powerful few, known as an oligarchy, which too often has excluded citizens from the process.

Our political system has degenerated into a government of the power brokers, by the power brokers, and for the power brokers, and is far beyond the control or accountability of the citizens. It is an arrogant and distant caricature of Jeffersonian democracy.

Originally written by Ralph Nader in 1992, The Concord Principles sets forth ten arguments of how democracy has been abused, and the constructive tools that citizens can use to regain their rightful participation in their own destiny. Nader urges all Presidential candidates to adhere to these principles in their campaigns and in whatever public offices they may hold.

First: Democracy must empower and enable citizens to obtain timely and accurate information from their government, enable citizens to band together in civic associations in pursuit of a just society, and communicate their judgments through modern technology.

Second: The American people should have reasonable control over the public lands, public media airwaves, pension funds, and other societal assets which the public legally owns, rather than having these public assets controlled by a powerful few.

Third: We need modern mechanisms so that civic power for self-government and self-reliance can correct the often converging power imbalance of Big Business and Big Government that weakens the rights of citizens.

Fourth: Citizens should have measures to ensure that their voting powers are not diluted, over-run, or nullified. Such measures include easier voter registration, state-level binding initiatives and referendums, public financing of campaigns, and term limits not to exceed 12 years.

Fifth: Citizens must have full legal standing to challenge in the courts the waste, fraud, and abuse of government spending. Overly complex, mystifying jargon in our laws and procedures must be simplified and clarified so that the general public is not shut out from readily understanding and challenging them.

Sixth: Citizens should be accorded computerized access in libraries and in their homes to the full range of government information. Inserts in billing statements from monopolized utilities and financial companies should invite consumers to join consumer action watchdog groups. The public, which owns the tv/cable/radio media airwaves, which are leased for free to large commercial businesses, should have its own Audience Network to inform, alert, and mobilize democratic citizen debate and initiatives.

Seventh: Effective legal protections are needed for ethical whistleblowers who alert Americans to abuses or hazards to health and safety in the workplace, or contaminate the environment, or defraud citizens. Such conscientious workers need rights to ensure they will not be fired or demoted for speaking out within the corporations, the government, or in other bureaucracies.

Eighth: Working people need a reasonable measure of control over how their pension monies are invested, rather than it being controlled by banks and insurance companies.

Ninth: Shareholders, who are the owners of companies, should not have their assets wasted or worker morale victimized by executives who give themselves huge salaries, bonuses, greenmail, and golden parachutes, self-perpetuating boards of directors, and a stifling of the proxy voting system to block shareholder voting reforms.

Tenth: Our country's schoolchildren need to be taught democratic principles in their historic context and present relevance, with practical civics experiences to develop their citizen skills and a desire to use them, and so they will be nurtured to serve as a major reservoir of future democracy.

Nader-recommended site: http://www.transparency.org/

- "The 50 States Project [http://www.50statesonline.org] is an on-going state-by-state analysis of lawmakers' conflicts of interest, based on their sources of income and assets, committee assignments, leadership positions and legislative duties." [http://www.publicintegrity.org/]

5) Links to (some) Political Websites (from The Nation) [From: Chrysalis Farm http://www.thefutureisorganic.net - mailto:bright@famrc.org]

Center for Public Integrity--The Buying of the President 2000 The Center for Public Integrity is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to examine public service and ethics-related issues. Founded in 1989, the center has most recently published The Buying of the President 2000. http://www.publicintegrity.org

D2K Network The D2K network is composed of various groups and individuals working to coordinate and support protests during the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, August 14-17. D2K supports "a total change a total change of priorities from the production of things to the caring for people and the environment." http://www.d2kla.org

The Shadow Conventions Hosted as a "citizens' intervention" during the Republican and Democratic assemblies by a coalition focusing on campaign finance reform, poverty, the growing wealth gap and the failed war on drugs. http://www.shadowconventions.com

Ficus 2000 Official website for the Ficus 2000 campaign for Congress. According to Ficus campaign strategist Michael Moore, the potted house plant is running "because you deserve better." http://www.ficus2000.com

Democratic National Committee The website for DNC provides news and events with regard to Democrats, the "GOP Watch 2000," voter outreach, Democratic Links and an archive in both English and Spanish. http://www.democrats.org

Republican National Committee A staid, slate-blue website with a GOP directory, news, debates, and numerous Gore-bashing tidbits. http://www.rnc.org

Reform Party The Reform Party, devoted to improving the political future by creating a "third political choice" for US citizens, provides this site with information about the party's principles, contact information for offices around the country, news, events, candidate and campaign updates and online links to register to vote. http://www.reformparty.org

Association of State Green Parties The ASGP is working with Ralph Nader's campaign for the presidency. http://www.greenparties.org

Green Party USA The website for the Green Party USA provides comprehensive insight into the central values of green parties, news and events, upcoming campaigns and a list of links to Green Party-related sites. http://www.greenparty.org

Green Parties Worldwide This site links to domestic and international Green and environmental parties, including several Green US presidential campaigns. http://www.greens.org

Labor Party The official website for this pro-union third party that advocates economic justice, the decorporatization of US politics and government, an end to corporate welfare, a revitalization of the public sector and universal access to publicly-funded, quality healthcare and education. http://www.igc.org.lpa

Libertarian Party Site promoting the Libertarian Party and featuring news, libertarian candidates nationwide, links and special features such as the definitive "Are you a Libertarian?" poll. http://www.lp/org

The Independent Movement Site for the movement that proclaims, "together, we will work towards returning a real representative democracy to the United States, where our elected officials respond only to their constituents and not parties and special interests." http://www.chesapeake.net/~fmarron/bmarron/Independent.htm

The New Party A website for the New Party, a progressive political party committed to breaking "the stranglehold that corporate money and corporate media have over our political process," which features updates on its living-wage campaign, New Party endorsed candidates and member information. http://www.igc.org/newparty

Working Families Party Website and information for the Brooklyn-based party dedicated to enfranchising blue-collar, working families. http://www.con.wesleyan.edu/~jwiener/workfam

Socialist Party USA Website for the party that proclaims socialist ideals such as changing the system of production to be needs-based rather than profit-based-- replete with links, news and access to The Socialist magazine. http://sp-usa.org

US Pacifist Party The USPP sees "military traditions and institutions as the key obstacle to the solution of social evils." The website includes information on the USPP candidate for 2000. http://www.igc.apc.org/uspp

The Constitution Party The former US Taxpayers Party and national body of constituent state Independent Parties, this site provides important links to Independent Parties across the country as well as upcoming events and speeches and articles. http://www.constitutionparty.com

National Committee to Draft Ralph Nader for President Hosted by the members of the Green Internet Society, this site is a source for information on Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. http://www.nader2k.org

Nader 2000 A public website devoted to disseminating information about the presidential candidacy of Ralph Nader, in no way affiliated with the Nader 2000 Primary Campaign or any other official Ralph Nader campaign committee. http://www.nader2000.org

The Nader Page This site offers a compilation of editorials, news releases and correspondence by Ralph Nader, his newsletter, the "Nader Letter: Banks and Consumers," and excerpts from David Bollier's Citizen Action and Other Big Ideas: A History of Ralph Nader and the Modern Consumer Movement. http://www.nader.org

Public Citizen Founded by Ralph Nader in 1971 as the consumer's eyes and ears in Washington, and supported by more than 150,000 people, Public Citizen fights for safer drugs and medical devices, cleaner and safer energy sources, a cleaner environment, fair trade and a more open and democratic government. http://www.citizen.org

Public Campaign Public Campaign is a nonpartisan organization that aims to dramatically reduce the role of special-interest money in America's elections and the influence of big contributors in American politics, with programs such as "Clean Money, Clean Elections" and explanations for those who don't think this issue concerns them. http://www.publicampaign.org

Project Vote Smart This national nonpartisan effort researches, tracks, provides independent factual information on and forces the accountability of more than 13,000 candidates and elected officials, providing voting records, campaign issue positions, performance evaluations by special interests and lists of campaign contributions. http://www.Vote-Smart.org

Center for Responsive Politics The Center for Responsive Politics is "the online source for money in politics data." Its site has specific information and numbers on campaign finance spending, lobbyists and business contributions to politicians (broken down by industry, region and amount). http://www.opensecrets.org

Alliance for Democracy The mission of the Alliance for Democracy is to free all people from corporate domination of politics, economics, the environment, culture and information; to establish true democracy; and to create a just society with a sustainable, equitable economy. http://www.igc.org/alliance

Public Disclosure The site of Public Disclosure, which is dedicated to making government documents easily accessible to the public, includes campaign finance research and analysis and links to government disclosure and reform projects, as well as to several nonprofit and media groups. http://www.publicdisclosure.org

Common Cause Common Cause's "Washington Watchdog" features a glossary of significant words and concepts in the areas of campaign finance reform and ethics in government, while enabling readers to find out who their Congressional Reps are and how to contact them. http://www.commoncause.org/issue_agenda/glossary.htm

Real Choice As a guide to alternative political parties in the United States, this site provides information about alternatives to the current two-party system, as well as ideas on improving the accuracy and quality of political information that is generally available to the American public. http://home.earthlink.net/~realchoice

EMILY's List EMILY's List, a political network for pro-choice Democratic women candidates for key federal and statewide offices, features information on women in Congress and in state legislatures, listings of candidates they recommend for 2000, information on their WOMEN VOTE! Project and polling information. http://www.emilyslist.org

US Public Interest Research Groups As part of USPIRGs state-based coordinated effort to preserve the environment, protect consumers and promote democracy, mainly through canvassing and lobbying, this website features a discussion group, e-mail action alerts, news reports, a Congressional scorecard and information on how to get involved. http://www.uspirg.org

League of Women Voters The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan political organization, encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues and influences public policy through education and advocacy. http://www.lwv.org

Women's Voting Guide This nonpartisan Web site allows readers to indicate the issues most important to them and to compare their positions with the related positions of their current Congressional representatives. http://www.womenvote.org

The Commission on Presidential Debates Site for the organization, which was established in 1987, "to ensure that debates, as a permanent part of every general election, provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners." http://www.debates.org 4Politics Information and updates on potential year 2000 presidential candidates, with daily news stories on the major candidates. There are also links to coverage from the campaign trail, C-span's guide to coverage of the candidates, and recent Gallup Poll results. http://4politics.com/the.shtml

US Election Campaign Information This exhaustive public information Web site, put out by the Tennessee Technological University's History Department, offers an extensive list of links to sites for: the 2000 presidential candidates, information on Congressional, state and local campaigns, a background on US elections, elections-related reference sources and numerous public opinion polls. http://www.tntech.edu/www/acad/hist/elec.html

Yahoo on Campaign Finance Reform Yahoo's exhaustive website posts campaign finance reform stories from leading newspapers on a daily basis and offers links to related magazine articles and editorials, audio and video files and links to related sites. http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/US/Campaign_Finance

Bush Watch Bush Watch is a daily political internet magazine critical of Bush's campaign, also providing progressive commentary on issues such as tax cuts, healthcare and foreign policy. http://bushwatch.com

George W. Bush Unofficial Web Site A spoof of the George W. Bush campaign, including Zack Exley's satirical "Amnesty 2000" initiative, and links to other Bush-related sites. http://www.gwbush.com

Al Gore Unofficial Web Site Parodying Al Gore's candidacy. http://www.allgore.com

It's Your Country In addition to John McCain's official website, this domain elaborates on his campaign finance reform efforts. http://www.itsyourcountry.com

-------------

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 18:38:50 -0400
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>
Subject: OCT 7 ACTIONS LIST

October 7, 2000 International Day of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space

No Star Wars! No Nuclear Rocket! Keep Space for Peace !

List in Formation:

� Albuquerque, N.M. � Asheville, N.C. � Baku, Azerbaijan � Beale AFB, CA. � Cape Canaveral AFS, FL. � Edwards AFB, CA. � Fylingdales, England � France � Great Neck, N.Y. � Hartford, CT. � Holland, MI. � Kathmandu, Nepal � Leicester, England � London, England � Los Angeles, AFB, CA. � Madison, WI. � Menwith Hill, England � Nevada Test Site � Northampton, MA. � Penn State University � Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany � Seoul, Korea � Stockton, CA. � St. Paul, MN. � Toronto, Canada � Tucson, AZ. � Valley Forge, PA. � Vandenberg AFB, CA. � Vancouver, Canada � White House, Washington DC

Please join this growing list of actions on October 7 by organizing an event in your community on this day of international protest to stop the militarization of space. Hold your event at a military base; DOE laboratory; NASA facility; U.S. Embassy; an aerospace industry corporation; or an academic institution that is working on military space. The next NMD test is planned for sometime this fall. Let's keep building the pressure on Clinton, Congress and the weapons industry.

Let us know if you plan to hold an action on October 7 so that we can add it to our international media advisory.

__ Please add my name to your mailing list. __ Count us in! We will organize an action on October 7 in our community. __ Enclosed is a donation toward your Peace in Space campaign.

Organization:____________________________________________________________

Location of planned October 7 action:______________________________________________

Name:_________________________________Address:_________________________

City: __________________________________ State/Zip: ____________________

Phone: (______)________________________ E-mail: __________________

Nation:____________

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 90083 Gainesville, FL. 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com

-------

Destroyer of Worlds

Message: 3 Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 16:45:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Guin <guinstigator@yahoo.com>
Subject: Envoronmentalistys compared to Nazis in article

NewsMax.com
August 18, 2000
Diane Alden
CommentMax
http://www.newsmax.com/commentmax/articles/Diane_Alden.shtml

It is called by many names, including sustained development, eminent domain, ecosystem management, biodiversity, or whatever term du jour collectivists are using at the moment.

By whatever name it is called, however, it is still a pagan utopian dream rooted in the worship of nature, its roots planted deep in early human history.

The last time nature worship as government policy raised its nihilistic, anti-human head was when Hitler came to power. The philosophy of National Socialism contained extreme reverence for nature. Preferring to acknowledge the forces of the natural world as opposed to the human or spiritual and the Divine, it offered the underpinning to Germany's racism.

Unfortunately, the religion of National Socialism has come back to haunt America in the form of radical environmentalism. In Germany it was called Volk, or as scientist and environmentalist Alston Chase says, "they believed that preserving society required the re-establishing of connections with nature by reviving the primitive agrarian culture or Volk."

As historian Robert A. Pois observes, National Socialism was a "religion of nature." In 1933 the Third Reich launched a ruralization program where subdivisions and private property were declared illegal.

According to Chase, "forests and wildlife, symbolizing Germany's pre-Roman past had to be preserved; SS training included a respect for animal life of near Buddhist proportions. Vivisection was banned and Hitler's Germany became the first European nation to establish nature preserves.

Chase also says that the modern environmental movement is not as diabolical as the environmental notions held in Hitler's Germany; however, he indicates he does not like the obvious uncomfortable similarities.

In the United States modern environmentalism is basically altruistic. It stems from a Walt Disney outlook on nature rather than a Hitlerian overview. The results of both Philosophies, however, are much the same.

The environmental belief system encompasses a sentiment that man is nothing special on the earth. Human qualities are assigned to nature and to animals - qualities that they simply do not possess.

Additionally, in the process of "saving" the environment, nature has become a godlike end in itself.

This new religion and its practitioners are akin to the crusades and crusaders of the Middle Ages. The power it wields over every aspect of American life is every bit as deadly as the power of any religious crusade. It demonizes its enemies and justifies its activities in the name of some greater good.

The environmental movement destroys human worlds and rationalizes it away by saying it is for the "greater good." This is always the answer of tyranny and demi-gods.

As Kieran Suckling of the Southwestern Center for Biodiversity of New Mexico stated recently, "(The survival of) a Loach Minnow is 10 times more important than, say, Jim and Betty's ranch."

The new religion and its prophets evolved as the people of the United States and the developed world became prosperous beyond anything ever dreamed in mankind's history. When man no longer had to worry about his survival, he made up things to worry about.

This prosperity has offered nearly unlimited opportunities to pursue folly and decadence. One of these follies appears benign and good. But at its core it is every bit as pagan as the worship of trees and rocks by the Druids or the human sacrifices of the Maya and Inca tribes of South America.

In today's world this human sacrifice is government sanctioned. However, it only kills the spirit and the various ways of life.

It has managed to infiltrate the seats of power, especially at the national level. To a lesser extent it exists at the state and local levels. Closer to home, the citizen still maintains some control over the disposition of his property and his destiny.

Wielding more influence than almost any other single-issue group in the history of the modern world, the environmental movement has mutilated the truth.

Consistently it refuses to subject its scientific information to peer review. Nor does it allow divergent opinions to its orthodoxy. The only compromise it offers nonbelievers is "my way or the highway."

Like all quasi-religious movements it depends on the true believer. One must have total faith in its creed as promulgated by the high priests in The Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, and 90 percent of environmental groups.

The problem for the average American begins when that movement and these organizations and their well-heeled supporters have a pernicious influence on government policy. Policies affect millions of people, not just the true believers in the movement.

Since the environmental movement began to pick up steam in the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of regulations and rules passed by Congress are being executed by unelected bureaucracies. The Endangered Species Act, the Wilderness Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, and many laws passed in the last 40 years are the "controlling legal authority." They have capriciously confiscated and closed down entire industries and sections of the country.

The consortium of government, the environmental movement, elite foundations and the global governance crowd are moving toward restricting or destroying private property. It is an elitist notion that maintains that only a small group of individuals have the vision or sense to know what is good for the planet earth. This special group has the answers to what is best for all of nature. Man is merely incidental in this picture.

Until now most of the damage has been inflicted on the American West. East Coast busybodies and West Coast socialists have killed several American industries that depend on the use of natural resources. Mining, logging and livestock grazing are about to go under. In the case of logging and mining, the greens anticipate with glee their impending death.

This has not gone down easily with those most affected. Loggers scratched their heads as the spotted owl was used to disguise the intent of environmental forest policy. The goal was to close down logging in the Northwest. For the most part they have succeeded.

The truth is that they intend to close down logging everywhere in the United States. The wood products industry in places like Georgia and Alabama is just beginning to feel the crush of the environmental embrace.

United States mining companies dealing in iron ore and coal production, as well as gold and silver, have found that leaving the country is less costly and time consuming than going to court and fighting the government-supported environmental movement.

At the moment, fires are consuming millions of acres in the West, acres that federal land managers have badly mismanaged. Those who live in the East and Midwest say, "So what?" They think it isn't going to make a difference to them unless they want to vacation in the West.

Well, they'd better get ready, because the same wickedness, which has nearly destroyed the resource users in the West, is headed their way.

Grim Reaper Heads East

Not all Americans have been lobotomized by the green propaganda machine. There are thousands fighting this ill-conceived elitist notion of how things should be. The American West is notorious for such movements as the Sagebrush Rebellion and now the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade.

On July 4th of this year in the beautiful area near Elko, Nevada, people from all over the United States came with shovels to open up 900 feet of road the United States Forest Service had closed - a road that had been used by the locals for over a hundred years.

Earlier, the environmental movement and the federal government speciously discovered a fish they claim is endangered. The closing of the road will do nothing to save the fish except in the fevered brains of the green crusaders. This event was rather a last straw for the people of rural Nevada.

According to J. Zane Walley of the western Paragon Foundation, the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade is heading east, to counter what they believe is another injustice about to take place in the farm country of Ohio.

Over 200 years ago George Washington deeded farmland in an area known as the Darby to veterans of the American Revolution. The same families have held this farmland since that time. The federal government and the environmental movement set their sights on the area in 1994. As usual, they are about to feudalize the territory by making it a government "refuge."

However, the white hats are riding to the rescue.

Walley states, "The S.O.S., or Shovels of Solidarity, will be meeting with the S.O.D., Stewards of the Darby, in London, Ohio, Saturday, Sept. 2. This will involve a 2000-mile convoy crossing portions of rural America in eight states from Nevada to Ohio. Shovels collected in support of the fight against the Forest Service closure of the Jarbidge Road in Nevada will be delivered to the Darby Farmland Rally, where a mass rally is scheduled."

Furthermore, "This is in resistance to a secretly planned condemnation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with the intent of converting to a wildlife refuge over 53,000 acres of prime farmland. This would constitute a 'taking' of private property held by some 500 families many of whom have occupied these ancestral homes and farms since Revolutionary days over 200 years ago."

A convoy bearing the shovels will be led by the "Grim Reaper," a semi-trailer painted with a listing of the Montana sawmills closed since 1990 and showing the number of jobs lost.

The convoy will leave from Elko, Nevada, on Monday, August 28, at 8:30 a.m. and will be joined by people along the way who are concerned about government land grabs throughout the entire United States. "Rallies at stops either for lunch or overnight will give people a chance to hear and share the many problems being faced mutually throughout the country. Donations of money and shovels (new or used) to help the cause will be welcomed."

According to Julie Smithson, a full-time truck driver and spokesperson for Stewards of the Darby (SOD), a group formed to oppose the taking of the Darby lands, Fish and Wildlife Service is working with The Nature Conservancy, The National Audubon Society, Rivers Unlimited, and a montage of other environmental groups to force the farmers from their land by identifying the Darby as a high-priority area for protection of biological diversity.

Smithson stated, "As far back as 1994 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was secretly 'studying' our area. We have documentation proving that a $25,000 grant was given to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) by The Columbus Foundation 'for Darby Bioreserve' but, even as recently as late 1997, no one in our area was aware of these actions. They accomplished their studies of our private lands in secrecy!"

Smithson also observed: "The United States Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed from 21,000 to 57,692 acres for a wildlife refuge. They have chosen for this refuge some of the best farmland in the United States - land that has been farmed by some of the same families for 200 years. The proposed refuge would dispossess these families and transform a productive agricultural economy into a non-productive service economy."

The Draft Environmental Assessment "identifies a need for 166,000 more additional Acres ... for mid-migration habitat for an estimated 25.7 million ducks."

SOD has intensively researched similar federal land taking in other areas of the U.S. They firmly believe that the plan by FWS is to render their farmland useless with restrictions by using the presence of several endangered shellfish found in the Darby watershed, thusly turning them into "willing sellers."

Smithson parallels the proposed takings of private Darby lands to a 1994 federal land grab in Washington County, Maine.

"For several years," she explained, "Washington County had been the target of federal, state and preservationist efforts at setting aside privately owned land as parks or protected areas.

"The local landowners formed a property-rights group, the Washington County Alliance, in 1988 to protect their property but they lost to the federal agencies.

"In 1994, the Alliance conducted a survey of people who had sold land to the FWS in that county. The survey confirmed that half of responding landowners selling to FWS indicated they sold under regulatory agency pressure although they were misleadingly labeled 'willing sellers' in official literature and testimony."

Smithson further noted: "Due to the many options available to FWS regarding our land, we are faced with the specter of eminent domain, the more recent term 'friendly condemnation,' and the persuasive arguments to sell our 'property development rights,' restrictive covenants, perpetual easements, or 'conservation easements,' to the Fish and Wildlife Service."

SOD questions why FWS is even attempting to seize their land after praising them for their good stewardship.

William Hartwig, regional director, stated, "It is no accident that this biologically rich stream flows through land cared for by conservation minded farmers in Madison, Union and Campaign counties. Over the years, their use of conservation practices such as crop rotation and conservation tillage has enabled them to maintain economically viable farming operations while at the same time protecting the area's natural heritage. It is because of their actions that we have something worth saving today."

The Darby Watershed Project Manager Bill Hegge mirrored Hartwig's statement, observing that, "Unlike the Darby Creek system, the other streams throughout Ohio and their fish and fauna have been greatly modified since settlement times. In contrast with other land uses, the long-term practice of agriculture has enabled the aquatic system to sustain its current level of biodiversity."

Wes Beery, agricultural coordinator for The Nature Conservancy, disagreed with FWS, Stating: "Farming can't help affecting the Darby. More than 80 percent of the land is used for agriculture. The problems that show up in Darby are sediments, many simply caused by farming the landscape."

The impending federal land grab has reincarnated the Log Cabin Rebellion. Darby farmers have been in Washington before the U.S. House Resources Committee bluntly speaking their piece. They recently presented written testimony stating:

"Our area is under threat of being declared a National Wildlife Refuge by the actions of corrupt officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, acting in collusion with The Nature Conservancy, which is attempting to impose one of its restrictive 'Bioreserve' projects on our farming community. The Columbus Foundation and Affiliated Organizations, a consortium of urban foundations unconcerned about rural economies and the property rights of farmers, gave The Nature Conservancy a grant of $25,000 in 1996 'For Darby Bioreserve, including hiring RiverKeeper to promote citizen-based protection of Big and Little Darby Creeks.'

"Despite massive opposition to the project by our local citizens, FWS continues to act under the influence of The Nature Conservancy and their funders, the Columbus Foundation consortium, to cripple our farm community. We request that Congress fully investigate this foundation-funded attempt to destroy the economy of our local farm community.

Local residents also drafted a declaration entitled "Our Land Is Our Responsibility," which reads in part:

"We, the residents of the area publicized as the Darby Prairie National Wildlife Refuge Study Area, want our voices heard! We, who live and work in this farming community, believe the impact to area businesses would jeopardize their very existence.

"In the case of the proposed Darby Prairie National Wildlife Refuge, most of the land has been acquired by our farmers over many generations. At an average of 4.5 persons per home, this equates to the possible residential displacement of over 7,500 people from the Darby Study Area alone, with a loss of approximately 4,000 taxpayers to the community.

"Those of us who have been entrusted with the privilege of caring for the land know well the proper care and nurturing required to maintain, protect and preserve our farmlands, and sustain a well-established wildlife habitat through conservation management. With an eye to the future, and the experience of almost 200 years, we know that our land is our responsibility!"

Smithson sums up the spirit of the Darby. "Distilled in their veins is the blood of their forefathers and the premise upon which this United States of America was founded. This fertile land has cradled their dead, raised their food, provided trees for shelter from the winds of storm and winter, and resurrected their ancestors in the eyes of their children and grandchildren. They rightly claim the stewardship that they exercise. No distant government, nipping at their heels, can expect the surrender of all values held dear, without one hell of a fight."

Journalist Sarah Foster interviewed James Beers, Chief of Refuge Operations for the Fish and Wildlife Service for eight years, who dismissed such promises as "window dressing." In his former position within the service, he oversaw law enforcement, training, information systems, budget, "everything."

"I don't believe that any of them can say that eminent domain will not be used," he told Foster. "The government can exercise eminent domain at any point they want. Three years, five years down the road they can say, 'You know, it's very important that we have this farm here because it's important to our water supply for this, that and the other, and we have to exercise eminent domain.' Nobody, not the Fish and Wildlife Service, not the secretary of Interior, not even the president can say, 'We will never exercise eminent domain.'

"That is an academic point," he continued. "They have the authority for eminent domain, and the fact that they want to say right now - or even if they put in writing that they can foresee no reason to exercise it - you still won't have any recourse. You can't go into court and say, 'Gee, in the DEIS (Draft Environmental Impact Statement) back in the year 2000 it says they wouldn't exercise eminent domain, and here it is 2006, and they want to exercise it.'

"Think about it," he urged. "The government can't give away a right or responsibility. That's all window dressing."

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling - Keep Them Shovels Rolling!

The Shovel Brigade is headed east in an attempt to show solidarity with the people who farm and live on the land known as the Darby. Five thousand to 10,000 citizens from all over the country will call attention to the proposed destruction of a yet another way of life.

Fox News Cable has promised to cover the event and CNN might be there as well.

Regardless of what happens at the rally, the collectivists, the government and the quasi-religious environmental movement will not give up their claims over the Darby.

Like a noxious mist killing everything in its path, the narcissistic green movement moves east. The 'greens' in and out of government have the resources to litigate and outlast the people of the Darby and their supporters.

Like all destructive and arrogant movements, however, the "green" crusade, eventually, will be relegated to the same place other grand notions are buried: as a footnote to historical follies.

For the time being, the worshippers of 'green' gods will persist in functioning like the Indian goddess Shiva - the Destroyer of Worlds.

The rally in Ohio starts at 9:30 a.m. ET, Sept. 2. It will last "until we wear out," Smithson said. Among the speakers will be Helen Chenowith-Hage, R-Idaho, State Sen. Merle Grace Kearns, R-Plain City, and Henry Lamb of Sovereignty International.

For information and updates on the Grim Reaper convoy from Elko, Nevada, to London, Ohio; rallies at stops along the way; and the Darby Farmland

Rally: e-mail clardon@digisys.net or
mailto:clardon@digisys.net
JSmit10695@aol.com.
mailto:JSmit10695@aol.com

----

Diane Alden is a research analyst, writer, historian and political economist. She writes columns for NewsMax.com, Etherzone, Enterstageright, American Partisan and many other online publications. She also does occasional radio commentaries for Georgia Radio Inc. Reach her at wulfric8@yahoo.com or

mailto:wulfric8@yahoo.com
www.inflyovercountry.com.
http://www.newsmax.com/commentmax/articles/www.inflyovercountry.com

-------------------------------------------------------------

DOEWatch List ----A Magnum-Opus Project --- Subscribe online: http://www.onelist.com
DOEWatch page: http://members.aol.com/doewatch

1. Platts Saturday, August 19, 2000
From: "Paul Maser" <pmaser@govmail.state.nv.us>

2. NRC Relies on Falsified Safety Studies
From: magnu96196@aol.com

3. 1 of 2 ------ The Hot Zone By Eileen Welsome Part 3 of a series
From: magnu96196@aol.com

4. 2 of 2---------The Hot Zone By Eileen Welsome Part 3 of a series
From: magnu96196@aol.com

5. Part 1 of 2 ---- Forbidden Fruit By Stuart Steers
From: magnu96196@aol.com

6. Part 2 of 2--------Forbidden Fruit By Stuart Steers
From: magnu96196@aol.com

7. Israel TV Shows Nuke Reactor Photos
From: magnu96196@aol.com

8. Scientist Marie Curie She Gave Her Life To Learning And Helping Humanity
From: magnu96196@aol.com

9. Re: Radiation dosimeter
From: "Paula Elofson-Gardine, Exec. Dir." <pelofson1@home.com>

------------

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 07:28:08 -0700
From: "Paul Maser" <pmaser@govmail.state.nv.us>

Platts
Saturday, August 19, 2000

Washington (Nuclear News Flashes) August 18, 2000 Finland's Loviisa plant reports second water leak Ten cubic meters of radioactive water leaked into the steam generator room at Finland's Loviisa plant today, the second leak in two days during annual maintenance at unit one. Yesterday, 20 cubic meters of radioactive water leaked into the lower part of Loviisa-1's reactor building while a pump was being tested during annual maintenance. Plant management said there was no injury to personnel and no outside release. Finnish nuclear regulators are monitoring the situation but say it appears to be under control. Water was being removed on Friday and the outage was expected to continue normally.

Washington (Nuclear News Flashes) August 18, 2000 Energy Northwest mum on Columbia Station repairs Columbia Station was operating at 60% power today while officials of Energy Northwest, formerly Washington Public Power Supply System, refused to say when the 1,164-MW BWR might be taken off line for recirculation pump repairs. Spokesman Don McManman said a leak was spotted on one of the seals of a recirculation pump at Columbia, formerly WNP-2, last Saturday. Yesterday,
the plant entered single-loop operation, dropping from 90% power to 60% after the loop with the faulty pump seal was shut down. Each of the plant's two pumps has two seals and, though the hobbled pump's second seal hadn't shown any evidence of leaks, operators would have had to scram the plant if that pump's good seal failed. Ultimately, the decision on when to bring the plant down will be made by plant operators, said McManman. He indicated though the utility would probably first discuss that with the Bonneville Power Administration, the plant's only customer. McManman said the repair work could take several days to complete.

------------

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 11:03:11 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

NRC Relies on Falsified Safety Studies

http://www.ucsusa.org/energy/nuc_risk.html

This is the executive summary of the UCS report "Nuclear Plant Risk Studies: Failing the Grade"

An accident at a US nuclear power plant could kill more people than were killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.1 The financial repercussions could also be catastrophic. The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant cost the former Soviet Union more than three times the economical benefits accrued from the operation of every other Soviet nuclear power plant operated between 1954 and 1990.2

But consequences alone do not define risk. The probability of an accident is equally important. When consequences are very high, as they are from nuclear plant accidents, prudent risk management dictates that probabilities be kept very low. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) attempts to limit the risk to the public from nuclear plant operation to less than 1 percent of the risk the public faces from other accidents.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) examined how nuclear plant risk assessments are performed and how their results are used. We concluded that the risk assessments are seriously flawed and their results are being used inappropriately to increase -- not reduce -- the threat to the American public.

Nuclear plant risk assessments are really not risk assessments because potential accident consequences are not evaluated. They merely examine accident probabilities -- only half of the risk equation. Moreover, the accident probability calculations are seriously flawed. They rely on assumptions that contradict actual operating experience:

The risk assessments assume nuclear plants always conform with safety requirements, yet each year more than a thousand violations are reported.

Plants are assumed to have no design problems even though hundreds are reported every year.

Aging is assumed to result in no damage, despite evidence that aging materials killed four workers.

Reactor pressure vessels are assumed to be fail-proof, even though embrittlement forced the Yankee Rowe nuclear plant to shut down.

The risk assessments assume that plant workers are far less likely to make mistakes than actual operating experience demonstrates.

The risk assessments consider only the threat from damage to the reactor core despite the fact that irradiated fuel in the spent fuel pools represents a serious health hazard. The results from these unrealistic calculations are therefore overly optimistic.

Furthermore, the NRC requires plant owners to perform the calculations, but fails to establish minimum standards for the accident probability calculations. Thus, the reported probabilities vary widely for virtually identical plant designs. Four case studies clearly illustrate the problem:

The Wolf Creek plant in Kansas and the Callaway plant in Missouri were built as identical twins, sharing the same standardized Westinghouse design. But some events at Callaway are reported to be 10 to 20 times more likely to lead to reactor core damage than the same events at Wolf Creek.

The Indian Point 2 and 3 plants share the same Westinghouse design and sit side by side in New York, but are operated by different owners. On paper, Indian Point 3 is more than 25 percent more likely to experience an accident than her sister plant. The Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear plants in Tennessee share the same Westinghouse design. Both are operated by the same owner. The newer plant, Watts Bar, was originally calculated to be about 13 times more likely to have an accident than her sister plant. After some recalculations, Watts Bar is now only twice as likely to have an accident.

Nuclear plants designed by General Electric are equipped with a backup system to shut down the reactor in case the normal system of control rods fails. On paper, that backup system is highly reliable. Actual experience, however, shows that it has not been nearly as reliable as the risk assessments claim. To make matters worse, the NRC is allowing plant owners to further increase risks by cutting back on tests and inspections of safety equipment. The NRC approves these reductions based on the results from incomplete and inaccurate accident probability assessments.

UCS recommends that the NRC immediately stop cutting safety margins and postpone any further cuts until the faults in the probability assessments are corrected. The US Congress must provide the NRC with the budget it needs to restore the safety margins at America's nuclear power plants.

1 US House of Representatives, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations, "Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences (CRAC2) for US Nuclear Power Plants (Health Effects and Costs) Conditional on an 'SST1' Release," November 1, 1982; and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "A Safety and Regulatory Assessment of Generic BWR and PWR Permanently Shutdown Nuclear Power Plants," NUREG/CR-6451, Washington, D.C., August 1997.

2 Richard L. Hudson, "Cost of Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster Soars in New Study," Wall Street Journal, March 29, 1990.

UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS 2 Brattle Square Cambridge, MA 02238 617-547-5552

------------

Message: 3
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 11:22:10 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

The Hot Zone

By Eileen Welsome
Part 3 of a series Rocky Flats From Cold War to Hot Property

http://www.westword.com/issues/2000-08-03/feature2.html/page1.html

Kaiser-Hill says is can do the job by 2006. But will ROcky Flats ever come clean?

In the computer-generated photographs of Rocky Flats in the year 2006, the squat, proletarian buildings where plutonium was once shaped into deadly pits have been airbrushed away. The artist was wise to get rid of them: Those vast, concrete edifices were an anachronism, a Cold War artifact from a loony, paranoid era when Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe on a table and threatened to bury us. Truth is, those buildings never belonged on that high mesa, with its uninterrupted views of the Platte River Valley and the Rocky Mountains.

Now, with the click of a mouse, an artist has returned Rocky Flats to the way it must have looked in 1951, when officials from Dow Chemical and the Atomic Energy Commission arrived in Denver and decided to build their doomsday plant here. Gone are the guard towers, the barbed-wire fence, the parking lots and automobiles. In their place are miles of wide-open prairie scratched with faint chalky lines where roads once existed.

Today, of course, Rocky Flats looks nothing like this pastoral, computer-generated image. But the current contractor, Kaiser-Hill, and its overseers at the Department of Energy are hell-bent on turning the idyllic image into reality in just six short years. It is an enormous challenge -- and one that is entirely self-imposed.

Nobody is standing over the DOE or Kaiser-Hill, threatening to fire them or cut their funding if the deadline is not met. In fact, many environmental activists think the headlong rush toward completing cleanup by 2006 means that corners will be cut and the site won't really be decontaminated when Kaiser-Hill closes shop and leaves town. And other doubting Thomases -- the General Accounting Office and accounting consultants Ernst & Young among them -- have already gone on record, saying the chances that Kaiser-Hill will meet the target date are slim. But company officials remain confident that they will make that deadline. A lot depends upon it -- not the least of which are incentive fees worth millions of dollars.

One more thing should be noted regarding the computerized image of Rocky Flats: It reveals nothing about what will remain behind at the former nuclear-weapons site once the cleanup is finished. Beneath the rolling hills, with their waving fields of native grasses, will be specially engineered caps, tanks, drains and monitoring wells that will have to remain viable for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. Parts of the sewer system, as well as old process lines that pumped radioactive and hazardous chemicals from building to building, may be left in place. Also remaining behind could be the concrete foundations from some of the production buildings, their gaping holes filled in with so-called clean rubble from other demolished structures.

Under the current scenario put forth by the DOE and Kaiser-Hill, the soil at Rocky Flats would contain plutonium levels much higher than those found at other nuclear-weapons sites. Instead of the contaminated dirt being carted off, though, approximately 1,600 acres of the future site could be fenced off as "restricted open space," according to a conceptual land-use map recently prepared by Kaiser-Hill.

And that's not all. Beneath the restored landscape, multiple plumes of contaminated groundwater, like severed tributaries of the River Styx, would continue to ebb and flow. North Walnut Creek, South Walnut Creek and Woman Creek, the three streams that flow eastward across the site, would also contain levels of plutonium and other chemicals much higher than what Colorado once deemed acceptable.

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'Cleanup' doesn't mean completely clean in the Department of Energy lexicon," says Len Ackland, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder who spent nearly a decade researching the plant's activities and recently published a book titled Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West. "When government officials and the contractor talk about the plant being cleaned up by 2006, they don't mention that more than 100 acres will be covered with caps. It's a real sleight of mind to talk about cleanup by 2006."

But Kaiser-Hill officials, as well as federal and state regulators, maintain that the residual contamination is nothing to worry about: The air, water and soil will be clean enough for the occasional open-space user. Besides, getting rid of all the trillions of stray molecules of plutonium, americium and uranium is neither technically nor economically feasible -- nor is it required by law, they contend.

Many neighbors of the plant who are familiar with the cleanup effort, however, believe the radioactivity that's left behind will surely result in a certain number of cancer deaths in generations to come. "They keep asking us to come up with a number that we can say is acceptable for a certain number of people to die," says Joe Goldfield, a retired chemical engineer and member of a citizens' panel that has been trying to encourage Rocky Flats to adopt more stringent soil standards. "Hell, I don't want to be in a position like this. I want things cleaned up so nobody dies."

In Building 771, workers wear bright-yellow coveralls, two pairs of gloves, two sets of booties, a hard hat and safety goggles. But it's the ominous-looking respirators slung casually around their necks that tip visitors off that something deadly serious is going on. Building 771 is the place where it all began, where the syrupy green plutonium liquid from the Hanford Reservation in eastern Washington was transformed into the cores used to ignite atomic and hydrogen bombs. This is the building that workers called the Hellhole, where plutonium exploded, burned, spilled and leaked every day for forty years.

There's still plenty of plutonium around -- in the overhead ducts, behind the painted walls and above the false ceilings. In fact, there's enough plutonium in this building alone to blow Denver into smithereens. Hence the need for security precautions that at first seem a little like the backdrop for a Tom Clancy novel: armed guards, metal detectors, security cameras, badges and barbed-wire fencing.

Before 771 or any of the other heavily contaminated buildings in the Rocky Flats Industrial Area can be demolished, the plutonium and uranium must be removed, stabilized, packaged in special containers and shipped off-site. This sounds simple enough, but one look at the quantities and the complexities of the materials involved shows what an arduous and dangerous task it will be.

When the DOE made the official decision to close Rocky Flats in 1994, approximately 6.7 metric tons of uranium and 9.8 metric tons of plutonium metal and oxides remained on the premises, according to various government reports. An additional 3.1 tons of plutonium is believed to be present in the 106 metric tons of residues that were left over from various production processes. These residues consist not only of contaminated rags, cloth, gloves and paper, but also plutonium fluorides, plutonium salts, plutonium sand, slag and crucibles. Incredibly, the residues have been accumulating at the plant since 1952. The amount of plutonium in these leftovers was considered too high to throw away, so the mixtures were stored in the hope that there would some day be a way to extract and recycle the radioactive metal. But that day never arrived, and now thousands and thousands of barrels are scattered throughout the site.

In addition, there are untold kilograms of plutonium still to be removed from the plant's ducts, filters, glove boxes and process lines. Inside the ducts, the small mounds of plutonium resemble "sand dunes," says Jim Stone, a former mechanical engineer at Rocky Flats and the first employee to publicly warn of the buildup. One reason there is so much plutonium in the interlocking network of pipes, ducts, glove boxes and filters, Stone explains, is that the exhaust systems were not properly maintained or cleaned. Filters were often clogged or missing altogether, and release valves in the glove boxes were frequently left wide open, sucking huge amounts of plutonium dust directly into the ducts.

No one really knows how much plutonium has been trapped in the ductwork. Hazel O'Leary, the much-maligned Energy secretary known for her "Openness Initiatives," said in 1994 that there were some 1,191 kilograms of "inventory difference," or unaccounted-for plutonium, at Rocky Flats. That's more than a ton of plutonium, enough to destroy the world many times over. Soon after O'Leary's admission, a Rocky Flats official estimated that there could be 200 to 300 kilograms of plutonium in the process lines and duct systems alone.

Building 771 has 26 miles of pipes. In each foot of pipe, there could three grams or more of plutonium. A gram of plutonium, which is denser than lead, is hardly bigger than a BB, yet it is so carcinogenic that one-millionth of a gram, or a microgram, can trigger a fatal cancer. One spark or one drop of water that inadvertently falls on a pile of plutonium pushed together in the right configuration could ignite a criticality, or an uncontrolled chain reaction. Complicating the decontamination and dismantling work is the fact that diagrams and blueprints indicating where things are supposed to be are notoriously unreliable or nonexistent.

"Building 771 is a bomb waiting to go off," says Jim Kelly, a longtime union leader at the plant who spent most of his career working in 771. "They don't realize how many hundreds of times that floor was painted, how many thousand of times the walls were painted, how many hundreds of times new false ceilings were put in to hide what's really up there." Rocky Flats was no different than General Motors or the Coca-Cola Company, he adds: "In time, people deviated from the blueprints. They put a switch here, they built a wall there."

As if getting the plutonium out of the ductwork and glove boxes were not enough of a nightmare, Kaiser-Hill will then have to package the plutonium and send it off the premises. (That doesn't mean the nuclear garbage will vanish when it leaves Colorado; it simply becomes some other state's nightmare for the next 240,000 years, which is the time it takes for plutonium to completely lose its radioactivity.)

Because of a plethora of state and federal regulations, Rocky Flats is extremely limited in where it can dispose of its radioactive leftovers. Most of the waste has been sent, or will be sent, to DOE repositories or specially designed DOE waste facilities in other parts of the country. The enriched uranium has already been shipped to Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the plutonium pits have been delivered to the national labs in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Livermore, California, or to the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas; about 1,500 pounds of "scrub alloy," the molten salt used to scrub americium from plutonium, as well as other residues that contain high concentrations of plutonium, will be shipped to the DOE's Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

Much of the remaining waste is destined for the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, or WIPP, the underground salt caverns in Carlsbad, New Mexico. WIPP is reserved for a special kind of waste called transuranic waste: nuclear garbage contaminated with any elements heavier than uranium (hence the 'trans') in concentrations of more than 100 nanocuries per gram. (A nanocurie is a billionth of a gram.) The Rocky Flats waste bound for WIPP will be contaminated with isotopes of cesium, strontium, uranium, americium, protactinium, thorium, polonium and plutonium. So far, 1,013 drums have gone to the underground repository, and shipments are expected to increase greatly during the decontamination, decommissioning and demolition work.

Rocky Flats has also managed to ship off thousands of the ill-fated pondcrete and saltcrete blocks to Envirocare, a commercial facility in Utah (see "This Place Is a Dump!" in the July 27 issue). These are the mushy cubes of sludge from the solar evaporation ponds that was mixed with cement and supposed to harden like rocks; instead, the cubes retained the consistency of Play-Doh, oozing and contaminating the ground. Another 16,424 cubic meters of waste has been sent to the Nevada Test Site. There are other categories of garbage -- low-level waste, low-level mixed waste and certain hazardous wastes -- that have not yet found a home. If Rocky Flats can't find a dumping ground for these "orphan" wastes, the General Accounting Office has warned, it's possible that they will be stored on the premises, "greatly diminishing the likelihood of closing the site by the end of 2006."

After the buildings have been decontaminated and the wastes properly disposed of, Rocky Flats will have to get down to the scary business of demolishing the 691 facilities -- that translates to 3.5 million square feet -- that have been erected on the premises. So far, 92 structures have been demolished, including Building 779, one of the first large plutonium-contaminated facilities. The building contained higher levels of radiological and hazardous contamination than Kaiser-Hill expected; consequently, the contractor raised its estimate for the cost of demolishing all of the plant's buildings from $332 million to $912 million. Kaiser-Hill has also been forced to substantially increase its estimates for the amounts of various wastes that will be produced.

Another piece of nasty business is figuring out what the hell is under all of those buildings. A network of tanks, drains and pipelines running above and below the ground shuttled chemical and radioactive wastes from place to place. Also running underneath the buildings is a sewer system that was technically reserved for uncontaminated waste but subsequently became tainted with chemical and radioactive wastes that were flushed from laboratories, production buildings and laundries. Radionuclides, acids, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), solvents, paints, beryllium, oils and human tissue are just a few of the things that went down the drain. Some of the buildings, such as 771, are actually below the water table, and freestanding water has been found in the basements. The challenge for the cleanup crews is figuring out where the contamination is and how to remove it without spreading it farther.

With all of the ongoing activity, Rocky Flats has become almost as dangerous in cleanup as it was when the nuclear pits were rolling off the assembly lines. According to a DOE Web site, the following incidents have been logged:

� In March 1996, while workers were venting twelve drums of liquid waste in Building 776, an enormous amount of plutonium contamination was inadvertently released. The radioactivity was estimated to be more than a million disintegrations per minute (in comparison to normal background counts, which range anywhere from two to twenty disintegrations per minute). Instead of stopping everything, as required by regulations, Kaiser-Hill allowed work to continue and did not survey the area for radionuclide concentration. "As a result, two workers involved in this activity, and others nearby, continued to work under substantially greater hazard conditions," the DOE chided.

� In April 1996, five workers in Building 771 were exposed to varying levels of contamination while transferring plutonium-contaminated waste to plastic bags. One worker, the DOE reported, received a dose equivalent to 400 millirem, which is a little higher than the annual dose that most Colorado residents receive from background sources. Although a radiation monitor was required to be present for the entire event, the monitor had left the area before the job was finished, and several men had removed their respirators before the plutonium waste was safely sealed away.

� In August and September 1996, when Kaiser-Hill was attempting to clean up Trenches 3 and 4, where large amounts of depleted uranium and radioactive sludge had been buried, one to two pounds of depleted uranium were inadvertently left on the ground and exposed to the wind for more than two hours. According to the DOE, Kaiser-Hill didn't sample for possible airborne radioactive material and also failed to post signs warning that the area was contaminated.

� On February 2, 1999, a worker in Building 779 was inadvertently exposed to both plutonium and americium when he cut his index finger with a saw. The employee received a dose of 65 rem to the injured finger, which is considered to be a significant exposure.

� Between February 8 and February 29 of this year, a ventilation system in Building 371, where plutonium is stored, malfunctioned, contaminating a room with radioactivity levels that measured in excess of 40,000 counts per minute. The effort subsequently exposed a cleanup crew to radiation, cost $60,000, and led to the suspension of work for an entire month.

� Between February 1 and June 5 of this year, some thirteen dangerous incidents occurred while material was being moved by forklifts. According to the DOE, several containers of low-level waste were "damaged or breached," and several workers narrowly escaped injury.

On several occasions, Kaiser-Hill has been reprimanded by the DOE for not following proper procurement procedures. The contractor purchased 69 special storage containers for transuranic waste earmarked for the Waste Isolation Pilot Project and filled nine of them before realizing they were defective. Kaiser-Hill was also found to be using storage cans that were not of the proper thickness and had purchased garments used to protect workers from radioactive contamination that were splitting at the seams, DOE records show.

Scattered across the hillsides and ravines of Rocky Flats are dozens of monitoring wells. Seemingly random, they radiate from the industrial area to the plant's four boundaries and even beyond. The water drawn from these wells tells the scientific story of what lies beneath the rocky land.

In the "Upper Hydro-Stratigraphic Unit," the name for the shallow aquifer that runs beneath the site, there are at least six contaminated groundwater plumes that collectively encompass an area equal to more than 300 acres. With their fat, misshapen limbs, the blobs of toxic water swell in the rainy season and shrink during dry months. Several of the plumes contain volatile organic compounds and radioactive metals in concentrations much higher than what the Environmental Protection Agency has deemed acceptable.

The groundwater plumes are mostly the result of ad hoc, careless decisions made by officials who ran Rocky Flats in the '50s and '60s. Instead of properly disposing of contaminated oils and solvents, the plant simply pushed wastes out the door, dumping them in trenches, burning them in pits, or spraying them over the land. Over the years, these contaminants seeped into the ground and then into the shallow aquifer.

One of the largest groundwater plumes is under the buildings in the Industrial Area. But plant officials will not be able to fully assess its size or chemical makeup until some of those structures are demolished and holes can be drilled. Another large plume is located below the 903 Pad, where thousands of drums of plutonium-contaminated oils and solvents were stored; a third lies underneath the East Trenches, where thousands of kilograms of depleted uranium were buried; a fourth sprawls beneath the solar evaporation ponds.

Once groundwater has been contaminated, there's no easy way to clean it. Often the best method -- and the cheapest -- is to let microbes in the soil take care of the problem. For several of the most serious plumes, Kaiser-Hill has devised passive collection systems in which the water is collected in pipes and directed into underground vaults or tanks where the contaminants are then cleansed with iron filings. Dave Shelton, vice president of Kaiser-Hill's environmental systems and stewardship program, says the water that comes out on the other side is "excellent."

According to the Rocky Flats Closure Agreement, a sweeping document approved by the DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Kaiser-Hill is obligated only to clean up the groundwater that bubbles up and mixes with surface water. What that means is that there will still be contaminated groundwater under the site when the contractor pulls out. But fortunately for Rocky Flats and the rest of Colorado, none of the contaminated groundwater seems to have traveled down as far as the Fox Hills Sandstone, a deep aquifer located several hundred feet below the surface. Rocky Flats officials also maintain that the amount of groundwater beneath the site is rather small and will actually dry up to an even greater extent when the plant is shut down for good. And in what might be the most fortuitous development of all, Rocky Flats officials contend (and state and federal regulators agree) that none of the groundwater flows beyond the plant's boundary.

The same cannot be said for surface water.

Three streams -- North Walnut Creek, South Walnut Creek and Woman Creek -- flow east across the plant's property. Beginning in the 1950s, Rocky Flats officials started constructing holding ponds on the creeks. Theoretically, the contaminants were supposed to settle out in the ponds before the water was released downstream. Despite these measures, however, plutonium, americium and other radionuclides used at Rocky Flats inevitably found their way into Great Western Reservoir, which was located directly downstream and formerly supplied the drinking water for Broomfield, and Standley Lake, which currently supplies water to Westminster, Northglenn and Thornton.

Following the FBI raid of Rocky Flats in 1989, officials from these suburban cities were inundated with calls from panicked residents concerned about the quality of their drinking water. Although Rocky Flats denied that the contaminants in the two reservoirs posed any health hazard, the DOE nonetheless has spent $100 million in the last decade building diversion canals and reservoirs, even purchasing water rights to ensure that communities downstream would be insulated and protected from the water flowing off-site. The DOE has also purchased replacement water rights for the city of Broomfield, which abandoned Great Western as a drinking-water supply. And the DOE funded the construction of the new Woman Creek Reservoir above Standley Lake. Today, after the reservoir water has been tested and deemed safe, it is pumped into Walnut Creek rather than Standley Lake itself.

Although it has committed to huge water projects, Rocky Flats has repeatedly sought relief from state water regulators with regard to certain chemicals and radionuclides being discharged into streams and holding ponds on the plant's property, as well as water flowing downstream. Some of the temporary modifications have been granted for only a decade or so, but others represent permanent changes to the water standards.

With Christmas coming on and temperatures dropping into the single digits overnight, no one was thinking much about water on the morning of December 9, 1996. But the hearing room of the Water Quality Control Commission was packed that morning with state and federal regulators, as well as officials from the DOE and Kaiser-Hill and representatives from the cities of Westminster, Broomfield, Thornton and Northglenn.

One of the most important issues on the commission's agenda that day was the adoption of a newly revised statewide standard for the amount of plutonium that would be allowed in surface water. Citing new scientific evidence, the commission decided to lower the amount of plutonium in the state's surface waters by a factor of ten, from 15 picocuries per liter to 0.15 picocuries per liter. (A picocurie is a trillionth of a curie.) Since the radioisotope americium is nearly always found in the presence of plutonium, the commission also added a new basic standard for americium of 0.15 picocuries per liter.

For any newcomer to the proceedings, this sounded like bad news for Rocky Flats. But the adoption of the revised standard was only the first step in a sequence of decisions that were made that morning. Simultaneous with the adoption of the revised statewide standard, regulators also deleted the "site-specific standards" that had formerly been issued for water flowing off-site from Rocky Flats. And those standards -- 0.05 picocuries for plutonium and 0.05 picocuries for americium -- were actually stricter than the newly revised guidelines. The net effect of the commission's decision: Water that would soon be leaving the site could contain three times as much plutonium and americium as was allowed under the old standards.

Con't to part 2----

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Message: 4
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 11:22:20 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

2 of 2---------The Hot Zone

By Eileen Welsome Part 3 of a series

This past decade, Rocky Flats has received other modifications -- some temporary, some permanent -- to water standards. In some cases, state regulators granted the changes because the water leaving the site no longer flows directly into drinking-water supplies downstream. In other cases, they approved the modifications because Rocky Flats simply needed regulatory relief during the cleanup period. Some of those changes include:

� The deletion of domestic- and agricultural-use classifications for groundwater. The elimination of these two categories means that Rocky Flats is obligated to clean up only the groundwater that commingles with the surface water on the site.

� An increase in the amount of uranium allowable in Woman Creek from 5 picocuries to 11 picocuries per liter and the amount of allowable beta-emitters (radionuclides that emit electrons) from 5 picocuries to 8 picocuries per liter.

� The removal of drinking-water standards for iron, manganese, chloride and sulfate on water leaving the site.

� Temporary modifications that allow Rocky Flats to discharge more nitrates into streams within the plant's boundaries, as well as certain chemicals such as carbon tetrachloride, benzene, 1,2-dichloroethane, 1,1-dichloroethene, tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene.

� An increase in the allowable amount of beryllium in surface water from 0.0076 micrograms per liter to 4 micrograms per liter.

Rocky Flats has been given wiggle room with regard to numerous other chemicals as well. For example, some of the instruments used to analyze water pollutants are not sensitive enough to detect the allowable limit set by state regulations; in those cases, the detectable amount, which can be several magnitudes greater than the state standard, is considered to be the compliance threshold.

According to retired environmental engineer Joe Goldfield, one of many citizens trying to keep up with the Rocky Flats cleanup effort, such a relaxation of standards is not the normal sequence of events when it comes to pollutants. As more is learned about the toxic effects of a particular chemical, he says, the standards are usually tightened. "It's extraordinarily rare when allowable levels of toxic materials actually increase," Goldfield says. "In fact, it's almost unheard of."

But it wasn't the amount of plutonium that Rocky Flats was discharging into the water that first caught Goldfield's attention. It was the plutonium in the soil.

In 1996, the Department of Energy released a technical-sounding document titled "Action Levels for Radionuclides in Soils for the Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement." The document is written in dense language, but its message could have a profound impact on what, exactly, will be cleaned up in the years to come. According to that document, the DOE is planning on leaving as much as 1,429 picocuries of plutonium in the soil -- provided the site is designated as open space.

Joe Goldfield was flabbergasted by the numbers and decided to dig a little deeper. What he found left him even more astonished. "I found soil standards that had been set at many places around the world," he remembers, "and the ones at Rocky Flats stood out like a sore thumb."

For example, at Enewetak Atoll, a small slip of land in the Pacific Ocean where dozens of atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs were detonated in the '40s, '50s and '60s, Goldfield found that no more than 40 picocuries of plutonium could be left in each gram of soil. At Hanford, the vast nuclear reservation in Washington where plutonium was manufactured in huge reactors, the level was 34 picocuries. And at the Nevada Test Site, another location where hundreds of actual bombs had been detonated above and below the surface, the allowable amount was 200 picocuries.

Goldfield figured that the 1,429 figure was equal to 36,000 times background levels. Calculating the impact another way, he estimated that 3,140 radioactive particles per minute would be emitted for each gram of soil that contained the plutonium levels proposed by Rocky Flats. "This incredible bombardment by radioactive particles of humans living on such soil must have some negative health effect!" he later wrote.

A number of other people familiar with the proposed cleanup standards were equally alarmed and soon banded together to fight the issue. Eventually they got the DOE to fund an independent review of soil cleanup levels by the Risk Assessment Corporation, a scientific organization based in South Carolina and headed by John Till, a respected scientist who has conducted numerous studies at nuclear-weapons sites across the country.

As Till and his fellow scientists carefully analyzed the data, Till, too, was struck by the fact that Rocky Flats had developed cleanup standards that were the "least restrictive" of those of any site in the United States. Finally, after eighteen months of study, his group released its recommendation: No more than 35 picocuries of plutonium should remain in the soil. Till's number was one-twentieth of what the DOE was recommending. How could two competent scientific teams come up with such different numbers?

Among other things, Till used different assumptions than the DOE. Instead of an occasional open-space user or an office worker, he based his calculations upon a rancher who lived and worked on the site. But the driving issue behind his analysis was figuring out the plutonium levels that would minimize the cancer risks for generations to come. "In my mind, there is no question whatsoever that in a hundred years there will be development on Rocky Flats," he said during a recent presentation.

The DOE did not spend adequate time analyzing the issues, Till argues. "Our figures are based upon state-of-the-art science and site-specific data," he says. "They are better and more defensible. We took more time and made more realistic calculations and took into account uncertainties."

Rocky Flats officials say they're still reviewing Till's findings. Although they haven't rejected his recommendations outright, numerous cleanup documents recently released by Kaiser-Hill and the government still rely on the same old numbers.

The controversies over cleanup standards for both soil and water illustrate several of the perplexing issues surrounding Rocky Flats. Both plant officials and federal regulators maintain that the level of cleanup should be driven by who will use and live on the site in the coming years. Many of the neighboring cities, as well as state and federal officials, would like to see the property designated as open space or as a wildlife refuge. But there are others, albeit a minority group, who would like to see some development. And even if everybody agrees today that Rocky Flats should remain undeveloped, there's no guarantee that in fifty, or a hundred, or even 500 years from now, potential residents of the site will have the same opinion or even remember that a nuclear-weapons plant once existed there.

With so much at stake over so long a period of time, many activists think the 2006 deadline is shortsighted. "As a practical matter, if you have to meet real water-quality standards and real soil standards, that date is unachievable," says Don Hancock, a spokesman for the Southwest Research and Information Center, a New Mexico-based organization that monitors nuclear-waste issues.

Al Alm, a former DOE assistant secretary for environmental affairs, is widely credited with coming up with the 2006 deadline. A slow-talking businessman with decades of experience in both the private and public sectors, Alm got his start at the Atomic Energy Commission during the Kennedy administration, then went on to work at the Bureau of the Budget, the President's Council on Environmental Quality and the EPA. When Alm returned to the DOE in 1996, one of his first projects was to determine what was being done to clean up decrepit nuclear-weapons production sites around the country. What he found instead, he says, was a "perpetual motion machine" that was going nowhere. With cleanup deadlines set in the far-off future, the bureaucracy had grown fat and lazy. "There are two things you need to make a program more efficient," he explains. "You have to create incentives and you have to create a goal. Any institution that doesn't have a goal or competition becomes extremely inefficient."

So Alm and his senior managers decided that they would try to clean up as much as possible of the plant over a ten-year period. "It costs an incredible amount of money to keep Rocky Flats open," Alm says. "If the purpose of the program is to protect human health, then the faster you get it done, the better you're protecting human health."

Alm's idea soon caught fire. Congress loved it. The contractors embraced it. Federico Pe�a, the former Denver mayor who served briefly as secretary of the DOE, supported it. But environmentalists, accustomed to the DOE's long history of broken promises, worried about it. "Even the word 'closure' for a place like Rocky Flats is terribly misleading," said Bob Schaeffer, a consultant for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a national group of organizations working to address issues of nuclear-weapons production and waste cleanup. "The place is going to need long-term stewardship to deal with the residual contamination."

At Rocky Flats, the 2006 deadline is now a fact of life, something as immutable as the moon or the stars. Outside the gates, however, few people believe that plant officials will actually make the deadline. The DOE's own handpicked accountants, Ernst & Young, concluded that there were numerous issues facing Rocky Flats that "significantly reduced their confidence" in the closure plan being successfully implemented. And even the General Accounting Office, which has a long familiarity with the Colorado facility, said it was "questionable" whether the government and Kaiser-Hill would meet the target date. In fact, the GAO pointed out, a risk analysis prepared by Kaiser Hill itself concluded that the contractor had only a 1 percent chance of closing the site by 2010.

But Kaiser-Hill officials remain committed. And the fine print in the company's two-inch-thick renewal contract helps explain why. If Kaiser-Hill successfully completes the cleanup by December 15, 2006, it gets to collect an extra $15 million in incentive fees. If it misses the deadline, it could lose as much as $20 million.

According to the contract, which became effective February 1, Kaiser-Hill will earn $3.96 billion in basic costs plus $340 million in incentive fees through the year 2006 for cleaning up Rocky Flats. That's on top of the $3.7 billion and the $102 million in incentive fees that the company has already received for work done between 1995 and 1999.

Bonuses have always been a touchy issue at Rocky Flats, and officials for both the DOE and Kaiser-Hill are quick to point out that the incentive fees are not bonuses. Rather, they represent legitimate profits that the contractor is entitled to earn on top of the basic costs associated with the work itself. Explains Frazer Lockhart, the DOE's deputy assistant manager for closure project management: "The word, 'bonus' is a very bad mischaracterization of what the fee represents. If you hired a contractor to remodel your house, you would expect that he would get paid to do the work and get some profit for their effort. That's what the fees represent."

Kaiser-Hill is rewarded with incentive fees for doing nearly everything from the most mundane chore, such as reducing the amount of sanitary waste in the cafeteria, to highly dangerous and complex tasks that include draining waste lines and cutting up glove boxes. Incentive fees are doled out for each step along the way -- from the "characterization" of what's exactly within a drum, a waste pit or a building, to removing the material, repackaging it and shipping it off-site. The DOE can withhold part or all of the fee if the government is unhappy with the job, but publicly available records indicate that that doesn't happen very often.

Even if Kaiser-Hill does make the deadline, the GAO points out that the total cleanup cost could go as high as $8.4 billion, and the number would be even greater if a more stringent cleanup level were required. That figure also does not include the millions to billions of dollars that will be needed to monitor and maintain the site for untold decades after the plant has been shut down for good.

Jim Kelly, the longtime union leader at Rocky Flats, grimaces a little when he thinks about Kaiser-Hill demolishing Building 771, the first plutonium-production facility ever built. He knows the plutonium is everywhere -- in the walls, the ceilings, the basement, the tunnels and vaults. "The day they take a wrecking ball to 771 will be a disastrous day for the state of Colorado," he says. "That's the monument to my truth."

Even if Kaiser-Hill manages to safely demolish the buildings, Joe Goldfield thinks the company will find enormous amounts of plutonium beneath them. Based on one DOE document, he estimates that there could be anywhere from 2.5 kilograms to 7.5 kilograms of plutonium under the buildings. "They know there's a lot of stuff there," he says.

The wrecking ball is slated to hit the buildings mostly heavily contaminated with plutonium in the latter years of the contract. After that, the final restoration begins. One of the key issues will be figuring out a way to cover and contain the remaining contamination. Documents made public so far indicate that officials intend to construct three, and possibly four, large caps. The areas to be covered include the solar evaporation ponds, the two landfills and possibly the heavily contaminated plutonium-production facilities. The caps could top as much as 100 acres and require more than 2 million cubic yards of sand and gravel.

Many environmental watchdogs question the use of such caps. The coverings, they point out, will undoubtedly fail long before the plutonium has decayed to safe levels. Nor has it been proven that the caps will prevent contaminants from escaping. "We need a cleanup that doesn't rely on engineered controls such as caps," says LeRoy Moore, consultant to the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. "The DOE's plans seem driven by cost and an arbitrary closure deadline rather than protection of public health and environmental integrity."

It's not yet clear what Kaiser-Hill plans to do about the contaminated soil. The company could scrape off the upper layers and recontour the land, but the task would add millions to the cleanup bill and leave the contractor with the problem of disposing tons of radioactive dirt.

A "conceptual land use" map recently prepared by Kaiser-Hill contains some hints of what the future may look like. On that map, a total of 1,400 acres has been designated as "restricted open space." This restricted area runs in a broad swath eastward across the site and encompasses much of the land that was contaminated with plutonium from the 903 Pad, the site where thousands of barrels of plutonium-contaminated waste were stored in the '50s and '60s.

Scattered throughout the site will be numerous other artifacts from Rocky Flats' toxic past. As many as 89 ground wells may have to be monitored on a semi-annual basis to ensure the contaminated water is not moving off-site. Every ten years or so, the iron filings being used to clean the groundwater will have to be replaced, and the spent filings, which will then become low-level waste, shipped off-site. Holding ponds and diversion ditches will also have to be cleaned periodically.

For all of these activities, the DOE has budgeted approximately $385 million through the year 2070. Jim Stone, the engineer who blew the whistle about plutonium in the ducts at Rocky Flats, says the additional costs simply prove his point that the area will not be truly decontaminated when the contractor walks away. "Why would you need monitoring equipment if the site was really going to be clean?" he asks.

And who knows what the world will look like seventy years, seven centuries or even seven millennia from now? There may well be no United States and no state of Colorado. But one thing is certain: The plutonium will be just as radioactive as the day that it arrived at the weapons plant once called Rocky Flats.

---------------

Message: 5 Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 11:35:30 EDT From: magnu96196@aol.com Subject: Part 1 of 2 ---- Forbidden Fruit By Stuart Steers

Forbidden Fruit

By Stuart Steers
Arvada wants to bite off a chunk of Rocky Flats
http://www.westword.com/issues/2000-08-10/feature2.html/page1.html

The July issue of Arvada's municipal newsletter makes the city sound like the biggest supporter of open space in the metro area. "Open Space Preservation Continues: Mountain Backdrop, Trail Corridors Top Priority," says the headline on the cover of The Arvada Report. Inside, an article enthuses about Arvada's commitment to keeping land free of development and claims that "decades of solid planning have created the basis for a spectacular system of parks, recreational areas, and open space connected by a series of trails." A map shows huge sections of publicly owned land on both sides of Colorado Highway 93, including the former Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant, all shaded in forest green to reflect the emerging greenbelt on the western side of the city.

This enthusiasm comes as a surprise to many of Arvada's neighbors, however, since the city has a long history of encouraging massive development on its west side -- the only part of the city with empty land -- and has tangled with residents of those areas for much of the past decade. A sweeping plan to develop 18,000 acres from Standley Lake to the foothills fell apart last year after dozens of property owners in the area protested, and the city is currently fighting residents of Coal Creek Canyon over a proposed mountainside subdivision.

But the city's latest effort may prove to be the most controversial: It is pushing for the construction of a swank development on 1,121 acres immediately south of Rocky Flats. The project, called Vauxmont Intermountain Communities, would be a mix of million-dollar homes, townhomes and office parks. And critics and observers in surrounding cities believe Arvada desperately wants to find a way to annex even more land for this dream -- land inside the buffer zone around Rocky Flats.

Since all of Arvada's neighbors, including the cities of Westminster, Broomfield, Boulder, and Superior, as well as Boulder and Jefferson counties, have endorsed the idea of prohibiting any development on Rocky Flats's 6,000 acres -- much of which is contaminated with plutonium, the most carcinogenic substance known to science -- and want to turn the former bomb factory into permanent open space or a national wildlife refuge, talk of development has infuriated them.

An exchange of letters in March between Arvada Mayor Ken Fellman and Boulder County Commissioner Paul Danish in which the two officials accuse each other of lying shows just how bitter the dispute has become.

In one letter, Fellman threatened to pull Arvada out of the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, the group charged with negotiating with federal officials over cleanup issues, unless Danish publicly apologized to him for a perceived slight. "When you listen to me represent Arvada's position in Coalition meetings, and you do not challenge that position, one might assume that you believe the speaker," Fellman wrote. "Yet, when you are publicly quoted as suggesting Arvada has another position, you are in essence calling me a liar. And you do so in an underhanded manner. You ought to at least have the courage to say that you have been listening to Arvada express its position for months, and explain why you believe we are not being honest."

In his reply, Danish accused Arvada of contradicting itself over whether Rocky Flats should be turned into open space. "When I weigh what you say in your letter against what you have done over the past year, I find it very hard to take your protests seriously," wrote Danish. "Arvada has repeatedly opposed Congressman [Mark] Udall's bill to prevent development on the Rocky Flats site."

--------------------------------

Danish goes on to note that Arvada proposed a land swap that would have opened up 640 acres for development inside the Rocky Flats buffer zone. He suggests that Arvada eventually hoped to annex that property and garner the tax revenue. "I find it impossible to credit the proposition that Arvada would broker this proposal if it had even the slightest reason to believe that the developed land would remain outside its city limits," wrote Danish. "Frankly, sir, I don't know if you are lying to me, but since you want candor, let me assure you that you don't enjoy my trust. My first reaction to your threat to resign from the coalition unless you receive an apology from me was to be in the same category as a child threatening to hold her breath until she dies unless she gets her way. However, upon reflection, I have to wonder if it isn't a pretext for terminating cooperation with your neighbors and pursuing a unilateral pro-development agenda."

Fellman insists that Arvada's motivations have been distorted by neighbors like Boulder County, however, and that the city has been unfairly painted as wanting to bulldoze every square mile of Rocky Flats. "It makes sense to keep the options open to have a research or educational facility there," he says, adding, "We have policy disagreements with our neighbors. No matter how many times I tell them what Arvada wants to do, they can still call me a liar. We have no secret plan to develop Rocky Flats. Our number-one priority is to clean the damn place up to the highest possible level."

But on a host of issues, from development to control of the Rocky Flats fire department to whether or not a fence should surround the property after cleanup, Arvada has been like a rude dinner-party guest, interrupting the host and noisily moving around the china. The result is an atmosphere of suspicion and outright hostility that's unusual between municipalities in metro Denver.

------

To understand Arvada's obsession with Rocky Flats, you need to look south.

On the southern boundary of Rocky Flats, along Colorado Highway 72, acres of prairie interspersed with light-industrial buildings seem like an odd locale for civic dream building. But this is the spot where Arvada hopes to take its place among the elite suburbs of the metro area, turning the dusty grassland with a view of the former bomb factory into another Denver Tech Center.

Where jackrabbits and rattlesnakes now rule, the city hopes to see lushly landscaped grounds hosting top-tier office buildings graced by elegant fountains and marble terraces. Already christened Vauxmont Intermountain Communities (after the English architect Calvert Vaux, one of the designers of New York's Central Park), the planned 1,121-acre development calls for 8.7 million square feet of office and industrial space with more than 15,000 employees. Vauxmont would also include more than 700 single-family homes -- some costing as much as $1 million -- and more than 800 condominiums and townhomes.

However, if location is everything in real estate, Vauxmont has some problems. On every side of the property, toxic wastes and environmental contamination threaten to spoil Arvada's dream.

Just across highway 72 is the former Rocky Flats Industrial Park, a collection of abandoned buildings that once hosted several chemical companies. A toxic stew of solvents, arsenic, heavy metals and volatile organic and inorganic compounds has seeped into the ground and water on the site. The Environmental Protection Agency has been working with the former tenants and owner of the property to come up with a cleanup plan, but in the meantime, the area is heavily contaminated with potentially lethal chemicals.

"When you have very high levels of these chemicals, they can produce a risk to indoor air," says Paula Schmittdiel, remedial project manager for the Environmental Protection Agency. "The vapors can be harmful."

Schmittdiel says the biggest problem is toxic plumes moving through the groundwater underneath the site. The vapors could settle around the foundations of buildings on, or even close by, the property and rise up into the interior. That means that office workers or anyone else inside the buildings could be exposed to highly dangerous chemicals. "One of our big concerns is future development that may occur on these properties or adjacent properties," she says. "There has been some migration off-site. At the moment, there's not a huge risk, but looking down the road, it's not going to be long before there will be development in the area. The Vauxmont property is immediately across the road, and that's a concern."

Just south of the polluted industrial park is another major headache for would-be developers. For decades, Public Service Company has stored millions of cubic feet of natural gas in former coal mines near the tiny town of Leyden. PSC insisted for years that none of the gas had leaked onto adjacent property, but in 1998, a Jefferson County jury found that the company had contaminated the land and groundwater of Richard Loesby, who owns seventy acres next door, and awarded him $1.9 million in damages. The jury also found that PSC knew about the leaks for thirty years and didn't do anything to prevent them. Earlier this year, PSC revealed that another leak had been discovered, this one less than half a mile from hundreds of homes in nearby subdivisions.

As the threat of further litigation loomed, the company finally gave up, announcing in March that it would shut down the Leyden facility. Arvada had pressured PSC to close the project, fearing that it could threaten the plans for Vauxmont. The company said it would close the gas mine by 2004, although emptying the mine of natural gas and replacing it with water may take longer than expected.

With problems like these, bringing Vauxmont to fruition will be a formidable task. But Arvada is pushing the project hard. "We don't want people who live in Arvada to have to drive to the Tech Center to work," says Fellman. "We need more commercial and industrial jobs."

------------------------------

Because of the way Colorado's tax system is structured, towns like Arvada are dependent on retail development that generates sales tax revenue, as well as office and industrial development that produce higher property-tax revenue. That's why almost every city in Colorado is eager to encourage the construction of retail centers and office complexes. Arvada has had the additional frustration of watching its residents head to the Westminster Mall to do much of their shopping, and with the opening of the FlatIron Crossing mall this week in Broomfield, even more money will float away.

For years Arvada pegged its hopes for a westside renaissance on a wildly ambitious plan to redevelop 18,000 acres all the way into the foothills. Known as the Jefferson Center, that proposal called for massive development around the intersection of highways 72 and 93, including a shopping center, office parks and subdivisions.

In the late 1980s, Arvada, Jefferson County and developer Howard Lacy signed an intergovernmental agreement that regulated all development from Standley Lake into the foothills. The agreement covered all the property in the area, including land that wasn't owned by Lacy or his business partners, and created a Jefferson Center Metropolitan District with extraordinary power over land use. Many of the smaller landowners in the area were outraged that their property had been included in the district, which they believed was a violation of their right to have land-use decisions be made by their elected officials. Nearly sixty property owners asked Jefferson County to allow them to opt out of the district.

In early 1999, Jefferson County declared the agreement null and void, and last August the Arvada City Council voted to dump the plan. The decision may have been prompted by the City of Boulder's purchase of 1,100 acres for open space at the entrance to Coal Creek Canyon, effectively killing any plans for major commercial development on the west side of highway 93. (Boulder spent $5.75 million for the land, even though it is well outside its city limits, saying it wanted to prevent new development that would block mountain views along the Boulder-Golden corridor.)

The Vauxmont proposal is the only part of the Jefferson Center plan still alive, and it may now be Arvada's best hope for a splashy commercial development. To improve the chances of Vauxmont's completion, Arvada has been pushing for the construction of a western segment of the 470 beltway, an idea that has so far failed to get off the ground. Local voters rejected the idea by a four-to-one margin in 1989, and Golden is adamantly opposed to it, fearing the beltway would overwhelm its neighborhoods with traffic. Vauxmont developer Bruce Nickerson, who was also involved in the Jefferson Center, didn't return telephone calls seeking comment.

Fellman bristles at the suggestion that Arvada is doing anything improper by encouraging Vauxmont. He notes that both Broomfield and Westminster have encouraged new office parks and shopping malls along highway 36. Broomfield has eagerly pushed the Interlocken office park, which has brought thousands of new jobs to the city, while simultaneously restricting the number of new housing permits. "If you're putting in new jobs and limiting housing, you're encouraging sprawl," says Fellman. "We're trying to find a balance. Communities that want to stop sprawl need to provide jobs for their citizens so they don't have long commutes."

However, many of Arvada's neighbors think the city's interest in Vauxmont is more a matter of the bottom line than high-minded urban planning. "They probably see Vauxmont as their last chance to expand their tax base," says Westminster City Manager Bill Christopher. "Vauxmont represents one of the last opportunities for them, especially if they can't do anything with Rocky Flats."

---------------

Doris Depenning and Tom Hoffman and their group, Friends of the Foothills, led the struggle to stop the Jefferson Center, and they've spent years arguing that the land west of the highway should be preserved as open space for the entire metro area. Against great odds, they've been largely successful.

Their battle began in 1989 when Arvada started annexing land in Coal Creek Canyon. For a long time, the foothills west of Rocky Flats had been a sleepy and isolated backwater. The area attracted people who wanted to live away from the city, people who built homes in scattered rural developments served by wells and septic tanks. Many of the residents worked at Rocky Flats or in the western suburbs, but they felt like the problems of the big city were left behind as they drove up highway 72 into the mountains.

In the early 1990s, though, Arvada's boundaries shot past highway 93 and now extend several miles up the canyon. As part of the Jefferson Center plan, Arvada made it clear it wanted the intersection of highways 93 and 72 to become a major commercial district, with offices, hotels, and maybe even a regional mall.

Depenning and many of her neighbors were shocked to discover that their property was surrounded on all sides by land in the Jefferson Center metro district, and they were outraged over what they felt was an underhanded scheme to transform the area into an urban destination. "We felt like all the dominoes were falling into development," says Hoffman.

Residents raised money to fight the plan, organized dozens of community forums and attended Arvada City Council meetings. As a result, a funny thing happened on the way to the developer's groundbreaking: The Jefferson Center plan began to fall apart in the face of the constant protests and legal challenges, and the idea of preserving the mountain backdrop between Golden and Boulder became increasingly popular. With a huge swath of open land at Rocky Flats, many people began to see the area along the highway as a "line in the sand" where the metro area's relentless growth should be off limits. Why not turn what had been the Denver area's worst nightmare -- a weapons plant stockpiled with enough plutonium to kill every-one in Colorado -- into the heart of a greenbelt?

Boulder's 1999 acquisition of hundreds of acres on the west side of highway 93 was a turning point. Jefferson County has also purchased several properties in the area, and Arvada and the Denver Water Board purchased 2,825 acres immediately south of the Boulder property for a future reservoir. If you look at a map, it's easy to see how these lands could one day be linked to Eldorado Canyon State Park and the other parts of the Boulder open-space system.

-------------

Message: 6
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 11:35:42 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Part 2 of 2--------Forbidden Fruit
By Stuart Steers

Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar recently proposed that all the governments in the area get together to try to create a plan for a comprehensive open-space corridor. Whether that will happen is still not clear. In the meantime, the Friends of the Foothills are busy fighting another development in their backyard.

Not far up the canyon, the Ten Eyck family is planning a 95-home subdivision on the slope of an east-facing mountain. Residents have fought that plan, arguing that the homes would be visible from highway 93 and mar the mountain backdrop. At one time, Arvada and the Coal Creek Canyon residents worked out a compromise that would have kept homes off the top of the mountain, where they would be most likely to be seen from the highway. But the Ten Eycks challenged the compromise in court, claiming they had the right to put in 95 homes under the zoning approved as part of the Jefferson Center plan. Arvada then reversed course and approved the development before the case ever went to trial.

Now several Coal Creek Canyon residents are suing Arvada, alleging that the land was improperly annexed and that Arvada had wrongly prevented them from putting the zoning issue on the city ballot. "This kind of stuff diminishes Arvada," says Depenning. "Somebody is suing them all the time because of something."

Fellman insists that Arvada wants to protect the mountain backdrop, and he says the Ten Eyck development has not yet won final approval from city council. "I'm opposed to any homes in the mountain backdrop," he says. "We haven't approved any homes for Ten Eyck on the ridgeline."

Doris Depenning keeps a map in her living room that shows the length of highway 93 from Golden to Boulder and notes what land is publicly owned. Over the last few years, she's been able to add several green cutouts to mark open space, and she hopes that one day Rocky Flats will take its place as part of that panorama. But she worries about the large chunks of privately owned land that could still become a sea of rooftops and asphalt driveways.

"This could be a jewel for the whole metro area," she says. "Because a lot of people haven't given up on this vision, we feel like there's great hope this can be done."

---------------

But that vision could be in jeopardy.

For more than a year, the local governments that surround Rocky Flats have been meeting to try to present a united front in negotiations with federal officials over the future of the site. The U.S. Department of Energy has said it hopes to complete the cleanup by 2006. But many issues remain to be settled. Will all of the 6,000 acres remain as open prairie? Is some redevelopment appropriate? Should local governments be given control of future land-use decisions? And just how much of the radiation that contaminates much of the site should have to be removed before the federal government pronounces it clean and sends its crews home?

The fate of the heavily contaminated industrial buildings where tons of plutonium are awaiting removal hasn't been decided, but even after the cleanup, most observers expect them to become a no-man's land encased in concrete and barbed wire ("The Hot Zone," August 3). The argument is over the buffer zone around those buildings, a large area consisting mainly of sage, yucca and grass. Parts of the buffer zone have potentially harmful levels of radiation in the soil. Exactly how much of that will have to be removed by the government has yet to be determined.

"The coalition has not taken a position on the cleanup levels yet," says David Abelson, executive director of the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, adding that the group is focusing on future uses for the site. He makes it clear, however, what the majority of local governments don't want the land to be used for. "The coalition has rejected the idea of development in the buffer zone," he says.

"We wouldn't want to see the buffer zone eroded," adds Westminster's Christopher. "Once you break that defense and get the nose under the tent, where does it all end? That land would likely end up in the city of Arvada."

The coalition is now working with Congressman Mark Udall and Senator Wayne Allard to make a decision about the future of the property. Udall has proposed designating all of Rocky Flats as open space, while Allard wants to turn it into a national wildlife refuge. Staff members from Udall and Allard's offices have been meeting to try to craft a joint bill, and they hope to submit a unified proposal sometime this fall.

The compromise will undoubtedly have the blessing of the coalition members -- all except Arvada. In a June 16 letter to Allard, Fellman opposed the federal wildlife refuge idea. "Federal ownership of the Rocky Flats site is not in the best interest of this region," he wrote. "Federal agencies do not share the interests of local residents and communities."

-------------------------------------

Instead, he said Arvada wants the site to be turned over to local governments to "assure compatibility with community interests and preservation of future use options." He argued that national wildlife refuge designation would be too restrictive and warned that "human access will become more and more limited and mixed uses will not be permitted."

Fellman also sent a letter to Udall that included a rewrite of the 2nd District congressman's bill. The rewrite deletes references to wildlife habitat and threatened and endangered species, language leaving ownership of the land with the federal government, and references to the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments as a participating party. It then includes a long list of local cities that should be consulted about future plans for Rocky Flats -- including Thornton, Northglenn and Golden, but curiously omitting Boulder. Fellman also included in his rewrite wording that would allow a portion of the buffer zone to be "redesignated as an industrial area" and transfer control of the property to "local or state managing agencies" within two years.

To make its case in Congress, Arvada hired the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm of Patton Boggs last month. Mike Dino, a former aide to Denver Mayor Wellington Webb who now works in Patton Boggs' Denver office, has been representing the city.

In Arvada's proposal, Fellman also suggests a minimum cleanup level of 651 picocuries of plutonium and other radioactive isotopes in each gram of soil, the same as the DOE's suggested level. Since many of the neighboring cities will demand a much more thorough cleanup -- Westminster and Broomfield have suggested a level of 35 picocuries per gram of soil -- this suggestion has raised further suspicions about Arvada's intentions.

Fellman insists that Arvada's suggestion doesn't preclude a higher level of cleanup, but he says that if the land is designated as open space, "that could encourage Congress to give less money for cleanup." The federal government may argue that since no one will live or work full-time on the property, a lower level of cleanup should suffice, he adds. "Out of one side of our mouth, we're saying we want the highest possible cleanup,and out of the other side, we're saying we want it to be a wildlife refuge with limited human use. I think that's inconsistent."

Arvada's neighbors, on the other hand, say they have a right to demand both. "We aren't saying or implying we support a lower level of cleanup by supporting an open-space land use," says Christopher, adding that since Westminster uses Standley Lake -- which is downstream from Rocky Flats -- for its municipal water supply, the threat of contamination from runoff is a major concern for the city. "We want the highest cleanup possible. Our foremost objective is to make sure Congress appropriates the necessary funds to do that job and do it right."

Critics of Arvada, like Dave Chandler, an Arvada resident who ran unsuccessfully for city council, say the city's stance on cleanup levels makes no sense. "It's another one of those internal contradictions," Chandler points out. "They run around talking about how the Udall bill has no cleanup levels, then they propose standards that are lower than what everyone else is proposing. This kind of inconsistency is why they're so quickly being marginalized in this Rocky Flats discussion." (Chandler maintains a Web site, Earthside.com, that regularly chastises Arvada officials.)

Suspicions have also been raised about Arvada's interest in running fire protection for Rocky Flats. When the company that manages Rocky Flats, Kaiser-Hill, asked local fire departments if they might want to take over the job, only Arvada spoke up. But when the managers of the Arvada Fire Protection District traveled to the federal nuclear facility in Los Alamos to investigate, they came back horrified at the complications of trying to protect a high-security area, which included obtaining top secret "Q" clearances for firefighters and dealing with huge amounts of red tape.

Nevertheless, the city still said it was interested -- a move that prompted Arvada's neighbors to question whether the city's real goal was to win a favored position with Kaiser-Hill and the DOE. Arvada maintained that it was only interested in the new equipment and 59 skilled firefighters it would get as part of the deal. (Kaiser-Hill later dropped the idea, concluding it was better off running its own fire department.)

The latest spat is over whether a fence should surround the buffer zone after the cleanup is completed. Arvada claims that having a fence would stigmatize the property, frightening people from going near the land. Boulder County's Danish calls that irresponsible, since there will likely still be some low-level contamination there. "If you don't want people to be warned of the dangers because it's bad for business, that doesn't cut it with me," he says.

--------------------

Officials in the neighboring cities are now downplaying the conflict with Arvada, though, hoping to salvage at least some level of cooperation.

"I try to get along with people," says Hank Stovall, mayor pro-tem of Broomfield. "The last thing we need is local governments sniping at each other. I don't want to get into a shouting match where we're criticizing Arvada."

Like Westminster, Broomfield has the rights to a creek that flows through Rocky Flats. In the 1980s, when public alarm about Rocky Flats was at a high pitch, Broomfield secured an alternate supply of water from Carter Lake (west of Berthoud). However, Stovall says Broomfield would still like to find a way to use the water flowing through Rocky Flats to water city parks and golf courses, but only if it meets strict safety standards. The concern over water supplies is what has led Broomfield and Westminster to work together to press for a more rigorous cleanup of Rocky Flats. "As an elected official, I can't stand by and allow a dirty cleanup of that site," says Stovall.

While the municipal body slamming over the future of the former nuclear-weapons plant has led to bruises and wounded feelings, the question of just how much contamination should be allowed at the edge of metro Denver is deadly serious. In the not-too-distant future, schoolchildren may be hiking and looking out for coyotes on the prairie at Rocky Flats, and office buildings and homes may press up against what for years has been regarded as a no-man's-land.

What local governments are dealing with at Rocky Flats goes way beyond political egos, notes Danish, since plutonium remains radioactive for more than 240,000 years.

"I think term limits will get all of us by then," he says with a smile.

------------

Message: 7
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 13:20:57 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Israel TV Shows Nuke Reactor Photos

The Associated Press
By RON KAMPEAS

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel's state-run television on Tuesday broadcast satellite shots of Israel's nuclear reactor, a sign of an increasing willingness to discuss the country's nuclear weapons capability.

The television broadcast photos of the reactor near Dimona, in the Negev desert, taken in 1968 and 1971, and appearing on the Federation of American Scientists Web site. The site does not source the satellite shots.

By clearly noting that the shots were drawn from the Web site, the TV complied with Israeli censorship laws, which allow local media unfettered license to quote foreign reports. The FAS monitors non-conventional weapons capabilities throughout the world.

Still, the broadcast would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Mordechai Vanunu, a one-time technician at the reactor, was jailed for 18 years in 1986 after he published photos in the London Sunday Times.

The pictures were featured during a televised debate over whether Avner Cohen, an Israeli writer living in self-imposed exile in the United States, should return to Israel to face charges that he broke the law with his 1998 book ``Israel and the Bomb.''

Authorities here have said they want to question Cohen.

Cohen, who joined the debate via satellite feed from Washington, said his book revealed nothing new and was based on published reports. His book argues that Israel and the United States worked out an understanding in 1970, believed to be still operative, in which the United States would look the other way as long as Israel kept a low profile and did not carry out nuclear tests.

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said Cohen faced charges because his book placed Israel at risk.

Israel has opted for a policy it describes as ``opacity,'' refusing to confirm or deny whether it bears nuclear weapons.

Historians and academics publishing works on the Israeli military now routinely bypass the military censor if they are confident they have not revealed military secrets; as late as the mid-1990s, the censor ordered books removed from bookstores solely because the writer had not asked for prior permission to publish.

--------------

Message: 8
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 20:15:00 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Scientist Marie Curie
She Gave Her Life To Learning And Helping Humanity

August 21, 2000
By Jennifer Lloyd
Investor's Business Daily
http://www.investors.com/editorial/lands.asp?v=8/19

It was 1906, and Marie Curie was tired. Her husband, Pierre, had just been run over and killed by a dray in Paris.

She was left to rear their two children alone. What of the scientific research she and her husband had been pursuing as a team? Passionate about the work, she pressed on rather than give up. She became head of the laboratory Pierre had supervised at the Sorbonne in Paris and even took on teaching his classes.

Her devotion to the study of radioactivity helped her discover radium and polonium and paved the way for nuclear physics, cancer therapy, carbon dating and the modern understanding of the atom. Her research won her two Nobel prizes, for physics in 1903 and for chemistry in 1911. Her innovative X-ray techniques are still used today.

Curie (1867-1934) was a pioneer. She was the first woman in Europe to receive a doctorate in science, win the Nobel Prize for physics, lecture and head the laboratory at the Sorbonne.

Curie was fascinated to learn about a phenomenon discovered by Henri Becquerel in 1896 - invisible rays given off by the element uranium during its decay. Inspired, Curie called this "radioactivity," and decided to study it for her doctoral thesis in physics.

Curie immersed herself in the study of these invisible rays. Using an electrometer built by her physicist husband, Pierre, and his brother, Jacques, and also using their piezoelectric techniques, Marie determined the strength of the radiation emitted from pitchblende, a radioactive compound of the mineral uraninite.

She spent hours in her lab, writing down in minute detail every step she took and every reaction that occurred.

Her careful records showed Curie that the radioactive emissions were four times as high as what she expected from their uranium content. Curious, she combed through her research again.

By 1898, she�d concluded that there was an unknown radiating element in the pitchblende. Inspired and fascinated, she decided to try to unearth the secret element.

Yet she needed another viewpoint to aid her. From that point on, Curie and her husband, Pierre, worked together.

Pierre was also an up-and-coming physicist, specializing in crystallography and magnetism. They shared a tenacious enthusiasm for their work. Together, they formed a stellar team.

They wasted no time. They followed up on Marie�s hypothesis, using the same meticulous methods she�d already used. Within their first year of working together, Marie and Pierre had discovered two new spontaneously radiating elements: polonium (named for Marie�s native Poland) and radium.

The next step was isolating quantities of these elements for determining their chemical properties. This enormous task involved handling literally tons of minerals.

In 1903, the Curies and Becquerel received the Nobel Prize for physics. The Curies didn�t rest on their laurels, but continued in their efforts to find applications for radioactivity. Pierre focused on the physical study of radiation while Marie strived to isolate radium in the metallic state.

Marie was tenacious. "One never notices what has been done: one can only see what remains to be done," she said.

Pierre discovered the danger of radium by testing it on his skin, which caused a wound. Far from upset, the couple saw possibilities.

"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood," Marie said. If the radium broke down the skin, might it not also break down harmful tumors?

Although the Curies could see that exposure to radiation was harming their health, Marie was determined to press on with her research. Looking at the long term, she foresaw how radiation could be used to treat disease and diagnose injuries.

Curie got her chance when World War I broke out. The "X-ray" emanating from the radium, she realized, could be used to detect shrapnel and bullets to aid surgery. She helped introduce the use of X-ray vans to get to patients who couldn�t be moved. She also helped hospitals get X-ray equipment and personally trained 150 women to help run the machines.

The couple had little money, but Marie Curie found ways around that. They both borrowed equipment from friends at universities and jury-rigged what they could in their lab. Even the winter temperature in the lab - which dropped nearly to freezing - didn�t keep them from their work.

Marie usually focused on the positive. "One of our pleasures was to enter our workshop at night; then, all around us, we would see the luminous silhouettes of the beakers and capsules that contained our products," she said of the couple�s tiny lab.

She loved her work. "A scientist in the laboratory is not a mere technician," she said. "He is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairytales."

Marie�s powers of concentration and enthusiasm for learning were obvious from the time she was a child. Born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, to an educated but poor family, she was able to read by age 4. The death of her mother and lack of finances prevented her from going to college right away.

Not to be denied, Marie and her elder sister, Bronya, took turns working to put each other through college. Bronya went first.

By the time Marie�s chance came, she was primed to focus her abilities on the scientific study that she thrived on. She began attending lectures at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1891. She married Pierre, whom she met in Paris, in 1895.

After Pierre�s death in 1906, Marie didn�t let her loss overwhelm her. She threw herself into her work, taking on her husband�s classes at the Sorbonne and raising their two daughters.

In 1908 she became a titular professor at the Sorbonne, and in 1910 her treatise on radioactivity was published.

Curie�s belief in her own abilities carried her through her difficulties. She struggled with the prejudices of the time, including the suspicions the French had of foreigners and the sexism that prevented her from becoming a member of the French Academy of Science.

"Life is not easy for any of us," she said. "But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained."

Her accomplishment of determining the atomic weight of radium earned her the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1911. In 1914 the University of Paris founded the Radium Institute, which became her vehicle for solidifying her wish for "easing human suffering." It was renamed the Curie Institute when she died.

With the help of her daughter Irene (who went on with her parents� work, winning the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935), Curie focused on the use of X-rays. Constantly seeking more knowledge, Curie began studying the chemistry of radioactive substances and their medical uses.

To carry out her aim of helping humanity, Curie lectured tirelessly in Europe and the U.S. on the need for more scientific and medical research. To make sure her work would be continued after she died, she set up the Curie Foundation in Paris.

Curie died in 1934 of leukemia, caused by her exposure to the radium she studied. She was laid to rest at the Pantheon in Paris, the first woman to receive the honor based on her own merits.

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