-------- NUCLEAR (by country)
-------- australia
ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
Olympics Safe, Australian Officials Say
Washington Post
Sunday, August 27, 2000; Page A24
Associated Press
WORLD In Brief
Compiled by Virginia Hamill
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-08/27/209l-082700-idx.html
SYDNEY--Australian officials said yesterday the Sydney Olympics were safe from terrorist attack after a possible plot against the country's only nuclear reactor was exposed.
It was revealed Friday that New Zealand police last March stumbled across evidence of a possible plan to attack the reactor. The information was discovered during an operation in Auckland against a suspected organized crime ring with links to Muslim rebels in Afghanistan.
With the Games scheduled to start Sept. 15, officials were quick to say there was no direct evidence of a terrorist threat.
-------- india / pakistan
Little chance of a India-Pakistan summit
Washington Times
August 25, 2000
By Janaki Bahadur Kremmer
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200082522748.htm
NEW DELHI - The leaders of nuclear-armed India and Pakistan travel to New York in early September but the chance of a summit to end the artillery and guerrilla fighting on their borders is small, despite U.S. encouragement.
However Indian-American businessmen are trying to arrange a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush. They believe that as president, Mr. Bush would be more friendly to India's booming high-tech businesses than the Democrats.
Hopes for a meeting between Mr. Vajpayee and Pakistan's chief executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, are focused on the U.N. General Assembly opening from Sept. 6 to 8 in New York, which both will attend.
"The ball is in India's court," said national security analyst Naseem Zehra from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. "Gen. Musharraf has repeated over and over again that he is ready to talk - any time, anywhere."
Many analysts in the region believe the United States is pushing for the two to meet in New York, but officials in Washington say that while they would welcome such a summit they are not playing a matchmaker role.
"We are not behind the scenes trying to instigate Vajpayee and Musharraf to meet in New York," said a senior State Department official yesterday.
"This is not something we could propose, even though we would support it. It must be at the initiative of the two parties themselves."
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted some positive signs in the troubled region, including a brief cease-fire in Kashmir between Indian troops and the largest Pakistan-backed Muslim insurgent group, Hizbul Mujahideen.
But he said a resumed Pakistan-India dialogue, at the summit or any lesser level, is only one of the "four R's" President Clinton called for during his visit to the two countries in March. The other three are: respecting the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, rejecting violence and mutual restraint.
The official also said that India's new prominence in U.S. eyes will be demonstrated when Mr. Vajpayee visits Washington after the U.N. meeting.
Mr. Vajpayee will be hosted at a luncheon by Vice President Al Gore on Sept. 15; by Mr. Clinton at an official dinner Sept. 17; and he will address a joint session of Congress.
The atmosphere for any sort of dialogue between India and Pakistan has been soured by recent violence and gunbattles in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, where more than 25,000 people have been killed in the last 11 years.
An Indian army spokesman said yesterday that Indian troops had killed 10 Pakistani soldiers and wounded several others while repulsing an attack. Pakistan said its troops had repulsed an unprovoked Indian attack across the truce line, and two of its soldiers had been killed and two were missing.
So far, India has refused to talk to Gen. Musharraf because it believes his government supports the violence in Kashmir.
"On the one hand, Pakistan says it is willing to participate in talks, on the other it continues to be deeply involved in violence, killings and cross-border terrorism," said Mr. Vajpayee on India's independence day Aug. 15. "The world knows who has sabotaged the peace efforts."
However, the prime minister kept alive the prospects of negotiations in the future, leading analysts to believe that there may be a chance of some sort of meeting in the United States.
But the future of Kashmir, the biggest issue between them, is too sensitive to be discussed right now, said foreign affairs analyst Amitabh Mattoo from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
Other topics that might be brought up under prodding from the United States include the threat of atomic war since each country set off nuclear tests in 1998.
"Hypothetically speaking, they could discuss the prior notification of a missile test, improvement of communications at the highest levels of military operations and carry on consultations on nuclear doctrines," Mr. Mattoo said.
But Pakistan has repeatedly stated that no dialogue is possible if it does not include the subject of Kashmir, and Niaz Naik, a former senior Pakistani diplomat, said there is too large a gap in perceptions on the nuclear issue between the two countries to make any headway in one sitting.
As things stand, it's unlikely that the two leaders will even come within a few feet of each other.
Says Mr. Mattoo: "Indian diplomats are very skillful at avoidance - making sure that if a meeting is not to take place then Musharraf and Vajpayee will not even be walking through the corridors of the U.N. at the same time."
• Ben Barber contributed to this article in Washington.
-------- iraq
Iraqi missile plant discovered
Jerusalem Post
Sunday, August 27 2000 12:51 26 Av 5760
By Douglas Davis
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/08/27/News/News.11389.html
LONDON (August 27) -Germany's BND foreign intelligence service has located a secret Iraqi missile plant in an inaccessible area some 40 kilometers southwest of Baghdad, according to a report in the Hamburg daily Bild on Friday.
The facility, which bears the name "Al Mamoun," is far from main roads and is said to consist of several buildings, some underground, where about 250 engineers are currently working on Iraq's clandestine missile program.
According to Bild, the intelligence service "has now provided proof of what Western intelligence services have long suspected" - that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is still developing nonconventional weapons.
The paper reports that the plant, whose target coordinates for satellite reconnaissance are given as 33 degrees, 1 min, 10 secs north/44 degrees, 13 mins, 10 secs east, is currently producing a solid-fuel short-range missile of the Ababil-100 type.
While the missile has a range of just 150 kilometers, the significance of the discovery, according to the German intelligence service, demonstrates that "the Iraqi will and personnel for developing missiles still exist."
The paper said the intelligence service is convinced that Iraqi technicians are currently working on missiles with a range of 3,000 kilometers and with chemical and biological capability.
This means they could strike at targets not only in Israel but also in central Europe, noted the paper, which quoted intelligence officials as saying there was "a very real danger that, rather sooner than later, Germany will also fall within range of these weapons."
The paper added that recent attempts by Baghdad to import missile parts, including navigation instruments, from the former Soviet Union and North Korea, have failed.
---
Cheney Suggests Little Change in U.S. Policy on Iraq
Yahoo News
Sunday August 27 3:15 PM ET updated 5:08 AM ET Aug 28
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000827/pl/iraq_usa_dc_1.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney said on Sunday that military strikes would be the ``ultimate sanction'' if the Iraqi government tries to develop weapons of mass destruction.
But he declined to propose military strikes if Iraq merely refused to let U.N. arms inspectors back into the country.
``We have to watch carefully to see to it that he (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) doesn't get involved in trying to recreate this capability. And, of course, the ultimate sanction always is the possibility of having to use military force,'' he told the NBC program ``Meet the Press.''
``Whether or not there ought to be a military strike, I think, would depend on circumstances, and at this point I don't have enough information to say there should be,'' added Cheney, who served as U.S. secretary of defense during the 1991 Gulf War.
``In the meantime, I think we want to maintain our current posture vis-a-vis Iraq. We want to see to it that we keep the coalition in force, we maintain the sanctions that are currently on ... and hopefully there will be a change in the government in Iraq before too long,'' he said.
The United Nations is preparing a new arms inspection team for duty in Iraq, but a U.N. weapons spokesman said on Tuesday it was uncertain when it would be sent to Baghdad.
Iraq said on Wednesday it would not accept the new United Nations arms inspection team, which was established under a Security Council resolution last December.
It would replace UNSCOM, which left Iraq in 1998 after constant conflict with the Iraqi government over where it could go and who could take part in the inspections.
UNSCOM dated from the aftermath of the Gulf War and has a mandate to find and destroy Iraq's weapons programs.
The Clinton administration also has declined to endorse military action to try to force Iraq to accept inspections, a tactic that has failed with Baghdad in the past. But it, too, has threatened to attack if it finds evidence that Iraq is trying to make nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
``If Iraq wants to take this opportunity, then it can. If not, they will be stuck in the same situation they are in now,'' a State Department official said last week.
The official, who asked not to be named, said the main effect of Iraqi compliance with the new inspection system would be to give it access to dual-use goods -- goods that have both civilian and military applications.
``One of the ways for us to be able to issue a license for dual-use goods is to have inspectors go in and inspect their facilities. ... It's not our problem. It's up to them to take the opportunity but they shouldn't complain about the sanctions while not allowing inspectors in,'' he added.
Bush foreign policy advisers, however, have said that a Bush administration would give more support to opponents of Saddam, in the hope that they would overthrow him.
---
U.N. Readies Iraq Team
New York Times
August 27, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/082700this-week-review.html
President Saddam Hussein calls them spies, and doesn't want them back in Iraq. But the United Nations has more than 40 new arms inspectors trained and ready to go. To meet some Iraqi objections, the team is drawn from 20 countries, some of them -- like China, France, India, Russia and Sudan -- considered friendly to Iraq. Only 11 arms experts have been drawn from the United States and Britain. Hans Blix, the leader of the new inspection commission, says he is prepared to wait out the Iraqis, who can't hope to have a decade of sanctions lifted until they cooperate.
Barbara Crossette
-------- russia
Russian pride went down with the Kursk Sub was symbol of might
Spokane Spokesman Review
August 27, 2000
Barry Renfrew
Associated Press
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=082700&ID=s843849&cat=
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200008/27+kursk082700_news.html+20000827
MOSCOW _ With an honor guard in crisp blue uniforms standing at attention on the deck and its flags snapping in the breeze, the nuclear submarine Kursk glided quietly out to sea in late July, a symbol of Russian power and pride.
It was the last time anyone on land would see the nuclear-powered warship that the Russian navy boasted was unsinkable. The Kursk was named after the region in southern Russia where Soviet troops in 1943 turned the tide against Nazi Germany's army in the biggest tank battle in history. The Kursk -- a 500-foot-long underwater missile base with an elite crew -- was intended to turn the tide at sea if there was ever another world war.
President Vladimir Putin had big plans for the navy and the Kursk. The exercises that the Kursk sailed to join on Aug. 10 were hailed as a prelude for a major step in putting Moscow back on the world stage: the return of a Russian fleet to the Mediterranean in 2001 for the first time in a decade.
Then on Aug. 14 the navy announced that the Kursk had experienced a malfunction. The situation was not critical -- the submarine was in radio contact, air and power lines had been hooked up and arrangements were being made to bring the crew up, the navy said.
Evidence suggests the crewmen were already dead and almost every utterance by navy brass about saving the Kursk would turn out to be a lie.
Norwegian monitors reported detecting an explosion in the vicinity of the Kursk on Aug. 12, followed within minutes by a much larger blast that registered at 3.5 on seismic monitors, equivalent to a small earthquake.
The submarine was carrying a new type of torpedo with a liquid fuel system that some officers complained was unstable. The first blast must have convulsed the Kursk, knocking out control systems and pitching it into a sharp dive.
Crewmen would have been knocked sprawling as the submarine plunged out of control. Officers in the command center would have been shouting for reports, trying to determine what had happened although the whole crew already knew they were in serious trouble.
The second explosion was probably torpedoes and anti-submarine missiles detonating -- some officers estimate more than 10 tons.
The Kursk was built of immensely strong steel and ripped backward, breaking through the thinner walls of the crew compartments.
Anybody still alive was almost certainly stunned, probably deafened and unconscious as tons of water surged in, quickly filling the submarine.
Kursk crew honored
•The Hero of Russia order was awarded posthumously Saturday to Capt. Gennady Lyachin, the 117 other sailors were honored with the Order of Courage. The crew, with Lyachin saluting at far right, is shown leaving the Severomorsk naval base July 30 on the fatal voyage.
•Russia has begun a criminal investigation into allegations that the Kursk sank after a collision with a British or American sub. Memo: Norway, which monitored the explosion and played a key role in the rescue effort, reported no evidence of a collision.
---
Kursk Submariners' Deaths Probably Sudden and Swift,
Salt Lake Tribune
Sunday, August 27, 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.sltrib.com/08272000/nation_w/16772.htm
MOSCOW -- With an honor guard in crisp blue uniforms standing at attention on the deck, the nuclear submarine Kursk glided silently out to sea.
It was the last time anyone on land would see the nuclear-powered warship that the Russian navy boasted was unsinkable. As it headed into the Barents Sea for maneuvers, the Kursk's crew expected to be home in a few days.
The submarine was a 500-foot-long underwater missile base. Its sides bristled with 24 silos, each housing a cruise missile. But with the Cold War long over, the Kursk's nuclear warheads were locked up ashore.
On Aug. 14, a Monday, the navy announced that the Kursk had experienced a malfunction. The situation was not critical -- the submarine was in radio contact and arrangements were being made to bring the crew up, the navy said.
Mounting evidence suggests the crewmen were already dead and almost every utterance by top officials about saving the Kursk would turn out to be untrue.
The Kursk was rising to the surface, possibly preparing to fire a torpedo on Aug. 12 when disaster struck.
Norwegian monitors later reported detecting an explosion in the vicinity of the Kursk, followed within minutes by a much larger blast that registered at 3.5 on seismic monitors, equivalent to a small earthquake. All the signs suggest a problem in the torpedo compartment at the front of the Kursk.
The submarine was carrying a new type of torpedo with a liquid-fuel system that some officers complained was unstable, according to some reports. Or the young, inexperienced conscript sailors may have fumbled one of the torpedoes, the weapon jamming in a torpedo tube.
The first blast must have convulsed the Kursk, knocking out control systems and pitching it into a sharp dive toward the bottom 354 feet below the waves.
Crewmen would have been knocked sprawling as the submarine plunged out of control. Maybe there was time to hit the alarm system, but the whole crew already knew they were in serious trouble.
The first blast probably killed and injured some of the sailors.
Plunging down at mounting speed and with the decks slanting sharply forward, sailors would have been fighting to stay on their feet or in their seats as the Kursk plunged into the depths. They never regained control.
A second, catastrophic explosion ripped through the Kursk, probably as it slammed into the bottom. This blast was probably torpedoes and anti-submarine missiles detonating.
The hull was twisted like a wet towel being squeezed dry.
The Kursk was built of immensely strong steel to withstand the enormous pressures of diving hundreds of feet. The hull would have contained and intensified the explosion.
Most of the crew were within yards of the blast. Navy officers say that many were probably vaporized by the detonation.
Anybody still alive after the second explosion was almost certainly stunned, probably deafened and unconscious. Kursk's nuclear reactors appear to have shut down, plunging the submarine into darkness.
The explosions ripped at least one large hole in the hull. Tons of water surged in, quickly filling the submarine. Anyone who survived the explosions almost certainly drowned, the navy says.
---
Russian Navy Adrift in Ocean of Problems
Submarine disaster points up a financial crisis that stems from funding cuts.
Los Angeles Times
Sunday, August 27, 2000
By ROBYN DIXON, Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates/lat_navy000827.htm
MOSCOW--In May, a group of officers from Russia's Northern Fleet participated in an exercise that they hoped never would be needed: a submarine rescue operation.
An old, decommissioned submarine was sunk on an even keel, and Russia's rescue submersibles went to work. Four attempts to dock with the submarine failed, but the official report on the exercise said that it had been a success.
The rescue operation for the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk this month was more demanding. The submarine was resting on the seabed at an angle, and the weather was bad. Like the exercise, the real rescue failed.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Russians are searching for answers on why the accident happened and why the rescue failed. Was negligence, poor maintenance or funding cuts the cause of the catastrophe? Did 118 crew members die because Russia's rescue equipment and training were inadequate, despite the navy's insistence that its expertise was equal to that of the West?
The navy's poverty has implications far beyond Russia's borders: Starved of funds for a decade, it has dozens of nuclear reactors in its back pocket, each one a potential mini-Chernobyl.
With no evidence as to what caused the Kursk accident, it's too early to say whether the financial crisis in the navy since the collapse of the Soviet Union was a factor. But President Vladimir V. Putin and Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev are convinced that it was, as are officers with the Northern Fleet.
The Kursk debacle has focused Putin's attention on the economic wreckage of the navy and what kind of fleet it can afford to maintain. At a time when even officers' families are going hungry, Putin's goal of reviving Russia's naval might seems distant, at best.
After the disaster, Putin promised extra money for the military and announced a 20% pay increase for the armed forces and the creation of sea rescue centers. He said Russia's submarine fleet might be cut from about 30 vessels to just 10 but that the crew of each would be properly supplied.
The navy's financial problems are dire.
The Baltic Fleet owed so much money to the Kaliningrad bread factory that the plant refused to supply any more bread last summer.
In one of the Northern Fleet's great indignities, one of its submarines was stripped of its missiles in 1995 and used to transport potatoes from the Kola Peninsula to Siberia.
Theft is common. On Jan. 13, four desperate sailors in Kamchatka, in eastern Russia, stole the radioactive fuel on their submarine to sell for some quick cash. They were caught and jailed.
Russian naval officers are paid $150 a month, and sailors receive $50 to $90--far less than the average Russian's monthly earnings of $350. Many of the navy's top people have left.
Size of Fleet Has Dropped in Decade
The navy's fleet has shrunk from its bloated numbers in the Soviet days. One thousand vessels were scrapped in the last decade because the navy's funding for maintenance and repairs was 10% of what it needed, according to a navy report published in December.
"There has been growing concern as to whether the navy's present decline has become irreversible," noted an analysis on the Russian navy in Jane's Sentinel, a security assessment journal. "Crews are increasingly losing their basic skills. Sea duty for submarines has been cut by a quarter since 1997, and for ships, by fully a third."
Russia's 11 Oscar-II class submarines have to rely on help from cities nationwide.
"The Kursk got its name because the city of Kursk was taking care of the submarine, supplying it with food, televisions, videos," said Igor Kudrik, an expert on the Russian navy from the Norwegian environmental group Bellona. "We are talking about the submarine, which is one of the most important vessels in the Russian navy. And a nonstate initiative is supporting it. It shows the state is unable to run the fleet."
To navy families, the shrinking of that branch of the military has only underscored how little clout the admirals had in the struggle for funding. Many naval vessels cannot put out to sea because they need repairs, and crews are often paid late.
"Our navy is very poor today," said Nadezhda Tylik, who lost her son Sergei, 24, on the Kursk. "The Russian navy has been destroyed by numerous reorganizations, all of which resulted in the shrinking of the force. The best people had to quit. The people who knew how to use the submarines and vessels, and who could teach their crews to find a way out of extreme situations, all left. I am amazed that submarines are still capable of leaving their ports at all."
Nikolai Konyashkin, 43, senior sublieutenant at the Kursk's base in Vidyayevo, near Murmansk, said an officer's life has become a "fight for survival. There's no gas in our town. There are no hot-water supplies, and we get paid $150 a month for handling nuclear weapons."
Vladimir Chaikin, also a senior sublieutenant at the Vidyayevo base, said officers' families sometimes go hungry.
"There have been times when I came home after a tour of duty and saw that my family didn't have anything to eat," he said. "My wife and I have to sit down every month and write down on a piece of paper how we're going to spend each kopeck. And we're officers. We're supposed to be the elite of the military."
He complained that the navy's limited funds were often misspent, despite numerous reorganizations to trim the fat.
"There are still all sorts of freeloaders in the navy. You find these headquarters, command groups and all sorts of bureaucratic structures that devour a lot of money but produce zero result," he said. "As for combat officers who actually do the job, our opportunities are severely restricted."
Crews Often Assembled from Several Vessels
Russian submarine crews, while in port, are understaffed by about 20%, and when they take to sea, crew members are reassigned from other vessels to fill the gaps. Among the Kursk victims, at least 12 officers were from another vessel, the Voronezh.
"It's the wrong thing to keep throwing people from one submarine to another and then back. But there's simply no other choice," Chaikin said. "Obviously, the practice creates tensions in the crew because a submarine crew should be a close-knit collective of people who think and act in exactly the same way."
Bellona's Kudrik argues that one possible cause of the disaster was the use of a new, cheaper type of torpedo using liquid fuel.
According to an article in the official military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda on Aug. 17, the navy had opposed the new torpedoes because they were difficult to store and dangerous to handle.
Analysts say the navy's poverty compromised the rescue operation.
The first time a Russian submersible managed to approach the submarine hatch, it was ordered to pull away because it had old batteries that were about to expire after a couple of hours' work.
One revelation during the Kursk rescue was the fact that Russia had no deep-sea divers capable of helping. In the 1980s, Soviet divers were trained in France to reach depths of more than 300 feet, in order to work on the exploration of energy reserves in the Barents Sea.
One of the divers, Konstantin Argelade, said that high-tech diving equipment was bought overseas in the 1980s but that, in the early 1990s, it was dismantled and dispersed, and the divers lost the regular experience they needed to maintain their skills.
After the Kursk catastrophe, the navy faces a new problem: a collapse in morale not only among ordinary seamen but also among officers.
"I don't want to serve in a submarine anymore," Chaikin said. "But I'm not given the opportunity to get a transfer to the shore. It's becoming impossible for me to continue in the service because the conditions are so disgraceful. And I can't quit because I have a family to feed."
For Russia's top naval commanders, Putin had seemed to offer salvation. At last, here was a president who grasped the need to reassert Russia's naval might in order for the nation to reclaim its place as a real global power.
In January, navy commander Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov said Russia would retain and repair four nuclear-powered Kirov-class battle cruisers, including the Admiral Ushakov, which had been out of action for a decade. A public charity campaign was initiated to raise money for its repair.
In late July, Kuroyedov announced "World Ocean," a plan to rebuild the Russian navy over 15 to 20 years and provide a counterbalance to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's naval power.
He also said the navy would return to its old Soviet playground in the Mediterranean--temporarily, at least. The plan was for a flotilla of vessels, including the navy's sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, the Kirov-class battle cruiser Peter the Great, and the navy's newest destroyer, the Admiral Chabanenko, to steam triumphantly into the Mediterranean late this year in a brash display of Russia's naval might.
'Blue-Water' Strategy Meant to Send Signal
Analysts said the aim was to send NATO a signal of Russia's intention to maintain a "blue-water" offensive naval strategy, which involves patrolling farther from one's own shores in an attempt to keep perceived or potential enemies as far away as possible.
The report on Russia's navy in Jane's Sentinel noted "a pattern of increasing Russian naval activity that has seen attack submarines operate in the Cold War stamping grounds of the Mediterranean and Eastern Pacific, carrying out simulated attacks on U.S. naval forces."
"According to senior U.S. intelligence analysts, the Russian navy is operating in a manner very similar to that of the Soviet fleet during the Cold War. Crucially, however, Russian naval strength has seriously declined, with only 20 first-class attack submarines in operating condition."
Just after NATO began its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia last year, the Northern Fleet readied the Kursk to go to the Mediterranean.
According to one Russian naval officer who served on the Kursk at the time, the vessel was in the Mediterranean from August to October. His name cannot be used because of the risk of serious repercussions against him.
The Kursk disaster has cast doubt on the navy's recent attempts to revive Russia as global naval power.
"It's obvious that our presence in the Mediterranean Sea will never ever be what it was before. Certainly we can make a voyage, but it's only to show everyone that we are capable of doing it," said Vladimir Urban, a naval specialist at the AVN military news agency.
Putin's comments after the Kursk tragedy have cast doubt not only on the plans for the Mediterranean exercise but on whether a "blue-water" strategy is right for Russia, given the state of its economy.
Russia's Defense Ministry budget for 2000 is $4.5 billion, compared to about $268 billion for the United States.
In an interview Thursday on the RTR state television network, Putin said the only way that Russia's navy can get out of its humiliating position is for the military to shrink.
"Our armed forces should match our needs on one hand and the possibilities of the state on the other," he said, adding that the military must be "compact, modern and well paid."
"We have been talking about military reform for how long? At least eight years and perhaps a whole 10 years, but there has been little change in this area," he said.
But for the families who lost loved ones on the Kursk, it's more important to reform the Soviet mentality of the admirals.
Vice Adm. Yuri Kvyatkovsky, quoted in the Vlast journal two days after the Kursk sank, said the reason that crew members hadn't evacuated the sub was because they understood the need to preserve state secrets from foreign spies.
"The main thing to take care of is the preservation of state secrets. There are lots of different devices and communications systems on the submarine which can be considered state secrets," he said. "It's crucial not to lose the submarine."
Later, when the entire crew was lost and officials were in desperate damage-control mode, Defense Minister Sergeyev took full responsibility--while insisting that the military made no fundamental errors in the failed rescue effort.
"The old mentality is pretty much alive," said Tylik, the grieving mother. "Our government finds it easier to keep its mouth shut, to hush up the problems rather than to do something about them." --- Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times' Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.
---
A Submarine Disaster And a Country's Pride
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, August 27, 2000
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/08/27/ED40476.DTL
IMAGINE LOSING a sleek nuclear sub near the Farallon Islands. Then the Navy bungles the rescue while President Clinton dallies on a palm-tree vacation. Finally, when American sub experts are stymied, a team of Canadian divers pry open a hatch cover and find all hands dead.
Such a tale would touch off a burst of grief and anger -- and it has. In Russia, the loss of the Kursk, the country's most modern missile sub, and its crew of 118 is both a disastrous undersea accident and a humiliating national ordeal.
As never before, Russia resembles a stumbling, second-class power. Its leaders look ineffectual and arrogant, from the military to the Kremlin. A customary streak of authoritarianism is peeled back to show an angry society.
The sinking tests the thin fabric of an emerging Russia. A rusting economy, corruption, Chechnya, and now this -- the loss of a powerful symbol of national might and technology. The disaster turns especially bitter when the decrepit navy can't rescue its sailors.
The episode puts President Vladimir Putin on the spot. When the Kursk went down, he stayed in touch with navy authorities but remained on holiday. Nearly 10 days after the sinking, he finally flew to visit grieving families at the Arctic-edge sub base. He was roundly booed when he arrived.
A tough-minded politician might want to keep his distance from a no-win situation like the Kursk. But Putin, who flew in a MiG cockpit and handed out knives to Russian troops in Chechnya, normally projects a forceful role in Russia's chaotic politics. His hesitance could undercut his wide popularity prior to the sub disaster.
Cold War instincts die hard, especially for front-line warriors. The Russian navy spurned help from the West. Finally, long after it could do any good, the admirals allowed a Norwegian crew to try what no Russian could: open an escape hatch for a look inside.
Now the outsiders are invited to raise the vessel, loaded with missiles, munitions and two nuclear reactors. The humbling message is that Russian navy can't do the job itself, and the entire country took note.
Just as startling is the hostile questioning of authority. News media have raked the government's handling of the disaster. Lies and half-truths about oxygen lifelines and hull taps from trapped crewmen were exposed. The navy appeared more worried about protecting its reputation than its sailors, critics said. It's a far cry from the loyal treatment afforded the military in Soviet days.
The Kursk sinking has exposed the rough edges of Russia's transitional society. Public confidence, essential in moving the country forward, must be restored. Yet, so far, its leaders have done little to lift an air of despair.
---
Aftershocks of Sub Disaster
New York Times
August 27, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/082700this-week-review.html
The mea culpas began almost as soon as Norwegian divers pried open the hatch of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk, which went down in 350 feet of water during exercises in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12, killing all 118 people on board. The commanders of the navy offered to resign, as did the defense minister, Igor D. Sergeyev, but Russia's commander in chief, Vladimir V. Putin, declined to accept the resignations.
Russian officials said they suspected that the Kursk was sunk after striking a submerged object of "large tonnage," like a foreign submarine, and they were busy scouring the seabed for evidence. But the main task facing Mr. Putin is quieting the political storm over the navy's ill-equipped and inept rescue operation.
Patrick E. Tyler
---
Prosecutors open Kursk probe
USA Today
08/27/00- Updated 08:56 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#towe
MOSCOW - Russian prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into allegations that a nuclear submarine that crashed to the sea floor had collided with a vessel that later escaped, the Interfax news agency reported Saturday. Military prosecutors believe that vessel, which has not been found, violated safety rules and was directly responsible for the sinking of the Kursk, Interfax said, citing unidentified sources. All 118 sailors aboard were killed. Russian experts have not determined what caused two explosions aboard the Kursk, which sank Aug. 12 during exercises in the Barents Sea. Military officials claim the most likely scenario was that the Kursk collided with another vessel, most likely a foreign submarine. The cause of the disaster probably will not be known until experts study the shattered submarine more closely, if it can be raised. Russia is negotiating with Norwegian and Dutch companies to raise the Kursk.
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The First Steps From Authoritarian to Civil Society
Los Angeles Times
Sunday, August 27, 2000
By JACOB HEILBRUNN
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20000827/t000080330.html
WASHINGTON--It's hard to see how Russian President Vladimir V. Putin could have handled the Kursk submarine crisis any worse. Each move he made seemed to come out of the old Soviet playbook: Lie, cover up, then, when all else fails, blame the West.
But after a week of remaining on vacation, tooling around on his water scooter and refusing vital foreign assistance that might have helped avert the death of all 118 sailors aboard the submarine, Putin may have started to turn a corner. A torrent of criticism and outrage by Russian citizens and the media put him on the defensive and forced him to confront the crisis. In an age when citizens around the world want elected officials to feel their pain, he's learning you can't mirror the actions of an aloof czar or isolated dictator and that public relations increasingly matter almost as much as effective action. Late last week, Putin made his first attempts to reach out by holding a town meeting with relatives of the sailors who perished and calling for a national day of mourning.
The truth is that, however tragic, the submarine crisis may be a blessing in disguise for Russia. It has dramatically accelerated the country's evolution from a backward, authoritarian country into a civil society, where individual citizens' voices cannot be ignored. As globalization, the Internet and mass media take hold in Russia, the secretive structures that supported the Czars and then the Soviet empire are being undermined.
The big question has been where Putin stands. Elena Bonner, widow of Andre I. Sakharov, the human-rights advocate and Noble Peace Prize winner, has declared that Putin's presidency is "a new stage in the establishment of a modernized Stalinism." But many Western leaders, including President Bill Clinton and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder have hailed Putin as a democrat who can establish order in a chaotic country.
Who has it right? The submarine crisis may show which road Putin intends to travel down. While he has indeed suggested rolling back Russia's Westernization, it's all remained at the noise level. If Putin is bold enough and has enough power, he might reverse course and seize on the submarine crisis to push through real reforms.
Putin's dilemma over Westernization is not new. Ever since Peter the Great created St. Petersburg and, as he put it, "flung open the window to the West," Russia has agonized over whether or not to emulate the West. Slavophiles have argued that the Russian soul needs to be safeguarded against alien influences, while Westernizers have sought to modernize the country. But the Slavophiles have usually had the upper hand: The 18th-century writer Marquis de Custine noted, "In Russia, everything is turned into mystery," and, two centuries later, Winston Churchill famously explained that Russia was "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
But it was the 1986 meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, the precursor to the current submarine disaster, that put an end to the Soviet government's ability to lie to itself and its people. That nuclear accident became a textbook example of how not to deal with a crisis in an era when television and other technologies made it impossible to shield Russians from what was actually taking place. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev used the meltdown to try out his policy of "glasnost," or openness, and to turn to the West for help. But Chernobyl took the Soviet Union along with it.
The Kursk fiasco could prove as consequential. For one thing, it was the first event of this type to be covered essentially round the clock on Russian television. This intensive media coverage of a disaster--bread and butter for American cable television--is something quite new in Russia, and it fueled anger against the authorities. The military still doesn't seem to have a clue: "Why should a housewife know what is happening with the Kursk in the Barents Sea?" complained one Russian military official.
Given these obsolete attitudes, Putin himself may not be in the strongest position to carry out reforms--even if he wanted to. For Putin declared last year that Russia should never become a "second edition of, say, the United States or Great Britain . . . . For Russians, a strong state is not an anomaly, which should be got rid of. Quite the contrary, they see it as a guarantor of order and the initiator and the main driving force of any change."
Whether Putin has the imagination and power to overcome such attitudes is highly questionable. One of his first acts as president was to step up the war in Chechnya--which, indeed, went over well with most Russians. He also attacked the business oligarchs, a necessary move, but his first target was a troubling one--the Media-Most broadcasting empire. This was condemned as an assault on freedom of speech and freedom of the press, just as these are struggling to be established in the formerly controlled society.
More recently, Putin reflexively defended the military establishment, making the empty declaration, "I will stand by the army. Together, we will revive the army, the navy and the country." Andrea Rutherford, an investment banker and influential analyst, says, "Ironically, Putin, despite his massive electoral win and apparent control of the Duma, is turning out to be a weak president. Because people believe that he has been unable to take control of the Kremlin, he has lost influence everywhere. The Duma, for example--which we expected to be absolutely compliant under the control of Unity--has already blocked or postponed key elements of Putin's tax-reform program. Perhaps even more worrying, there are indications that the bureaucracy has also lost confidence and is responding in its usual manner--by simply failing to execute instructions."
If Putin is the strong leader he claims to be, he'll seize on the submarine tragedy to shake up the country. After a bungled start, he could turn the tables by retiring the gerontocrats in the military and shrinking their ranks. Considering the chaotic state the country's economic system and military are in, reform is long overdue.
But to consolidate power, Putin would have to perform an end run around the bureaucracy, whose incompetence has once again been exposed by the submarine disaster. Trying to cut Russia off from open debate is futile in an era when information can't be controlled by the state and leaders have to be responsive to public perceptions. As his overtures to the relatives of the dead sailors suggest, Putin may have begun to grasp that lesson.
Jacob Heilbrunn Has Written for Foreign Affairs and Is a Columnist for Suddeutsche Zeitung, a Leading German Newspaper
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Military Probing Whether Russian Vessel Hit Sub
Washington Post
Sunday, August 27, 2000; Page A28
By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-08/27/167l-082700-idx.html
MOSCOW, Aug. 26-A criminal probe into the sinking of the submarine Kursk is focusing on the possibility that a Russian vessel collided with it and caused it to plunge to the bottom of the Barents Sea, press reports said today.
The Main Military Prosecutor's Office is investigating possible violations of an article in Russia's criminal code that punishes "the breach of security of railway, air or water transport . . . resulting in the death of two or more people through negligence." According to the Interfax news agency, the probe is focusing on persons "who supposedly were in control of an unidentified maritime object that collided with the Russian submarine."
Speculation that the Kursk was damaged in a collision with a Russian ship or submarine emerged briefly after the nuclear-powered attack vessel sank on Aug. 12. Since then, Russian naval officials and commercial shippers have dismissed the possibility. Instead, naval officials insisted that the culprit was either a British or U.S. submarine monitoring naval exercises in which the Kursk was participating off far northwestern Russia. London and Washington have said their submarines were nowhere near the Kursk. Reports of the new criminal probe, attributed to foreign law enforcement agencies, made no mention of foreign vessels.
The Kommersant Daily newspaper said that the use of the Russian criminal code precludes a foreign culprit. One other possibility--that the probe may center on the Kursk crew itself--created a stir. It is "spit on those who died and their relatives," lawyer Anatoly Kucherana said.
Investigators are also looking into the possibility that the Kursk hit a World War II-era mine, or that two Muslim civilian technicians on board sabotaged the vessel in protest of the war in Chechnya. On Friday, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev affirmed his belief that the Kursk struck a foreign sub.
It is rare that investigations into man-made Russian disasters reach a conclusion. However, few catastrophes have echoed across the nation like the sinking of the Kursk, in which all 118 crewmen died.
---
Death by Putin
Washington Times
EDITORIAL • August 25, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-house-2000825185734.htm
While Russian President Vladimir Putin vacationed in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, sailors trapped in a 14,000 ton sea tomb tried desperately to force open an escape hatch. As the Kremlin continued spinning lies about the accident, these sailors watched their comrades struggle for breath in the oxygen depleted submarine and steadily pass away. The SOS signals detected by sonar grew increasingly faint, but Russian bureaucrats continued refusing outside help for the rescue effort. Finally there was no sound at all in the depths of the Barents Sea.
It is no wonder that Mr. Putin's paranoid, prideful and callous bungling of the Kursk rescue has angered the Russians. Suddenly, the popular Russian president has fallen out of favor, but in many respects he wasn't deserving of it in the first place.
The Russians appear to have gotten exactly what they voted for. In the ongoing war with Chechnya, Mr. Putin has demonstrated a chilling disregard for human suffering and loss of life. Russians were outraged when this insensitivity was directed at their brethren at the bottom of the sea, but they shouldn't be overly surprised. This lack of humanitarian feeling is easily transferable.
And the Russians also knew that Mr. Putin was rather partial to cracking down on the media's freedoms before he was voted president. Mr. Putin had ordered the capture of Radio Free Europe reporter Andrei Babitsky before the March presidential election, in a transparent attempt to silence the only Russian reporter critical of the onslaught on the Chechens. So the Kremlin's lies concerning what caused the accident, when it occurred, how many people were onboard and whether there was radio communication with Moscow shouldn't shock the Russians or the rest of the world.
This tendency to manipulate the truth, in combination with Mr. Putin's often stated distrust of the outside world and zeal to recapture Russian glory, all conspired to add to the disaster. Mr. Putin clearly felt it was preferable to sacrifice those lives than to acknowledge his country's inability to launch a serious rescue attempt. It now appears Mr. Putin badly miscalculated.
The Kursk incident has glaringly highlighted Russia's technological and military inadequacies. A Norwegian team successfully opened the sub's escape hatch in just 36 hours, a feat the Russians were unable to complete in more than a week.
The Norwegians' quick work has surely fanned the grief of the victim's relatives: If only the team had been brought in sooner. Those relatives are questioning why the Kremlin allowed their loved ones to die one of the grimmest deaths imaginable - and all at a time of peace. Bleak as it may seem, the Kursk disaster came to its logical conclusion, given Mr. Putin's shortcomings. Alas, the Russians have hardly seen the last of them.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Satellite imagery of Israel's nuclear complex
August 27, 2000
In mid-August, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) posted on its web site high-resolution satellite imagery of Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor. According to the FAS, the imagery, which was taken by the privately owned Ikonos satellite, suggests that the country has a smaller arsenal of nuclear weapons than previously thought.
By counting cooling towers at Dimona and comparing recently declassified U.S. spy satellite photos form the 1960s and 1970s to the Ikonos photos, analysts at FAS conclude that the reactor could have produced about 20 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium a year. This would be enough plutonium for about 200 nuclear weapons. Previously, analysts had speculated that Israel had as many as 400 weapons.
The release of the images follows the recent publication in Israel of Avner Cohen's book Israel and the Bomb. Israel, which is the only nuclear weapons state that refuses to acknowledge its nuclear arsenal, had initially sought to block publication of the book.
"The Bomb that Never Is" by Avner Cohen, May/June 2000 Bulletin
"Beyond the Pale," a review of Israel and the Bomb by Mike Moore, January/February 1999 Bulletin
"And Then There Was One" by Avner Cohen, September/October 1998 Bulletin
For more on the Ikonos satellite, see:
"Private Eye, Public View" by Michael Flynn, March/April 2000 Bulletin
----
-------- new mexico
Los Alamos's Nuclear Family Splinters
Washington Post
Sunday, August 27, 2000 ; A1
By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26268-2000Aug25.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. – The Los Alamos National Laboratory, birthplace of the atomic bomb and one of the country's preeminent centers for research on nuclear physics and supercomputing, is suffering from low morale, losing scientists to the private sector and having difficulty recruiting top-flight replacements.
In what surely must be the worst year in its storied history, the lab has been hammered by back-to-back FBI investigations into security lapses, intense congressional scrutiny, punitive budget cuts, an exodus of government computer experts to high-paying software companies, and an act of God – a wildfire that shut down the lab for 12 days and forced the evacuation of surrounding towns.
If the lab remains under siege and cannot lift the spirits of its staff, administrators here and in Washington say, the United States may squander an asset that is as vital to national security as any military unit, weapon or secret.
"When you read all the things being written about this laboratory," said former director Siegfried S. Hecker, "anybody who has a choice has to think twice about coming to Los Alamos. I'm not sure we can recover quickly enough. A lot of damage has been done."
To be sure, extraordinary research is still going on at Los Alamos. The lab is building a 300,000-square-foot facility for the world's most powerful computer, capable of performing 30 trillion operations per second. Los Alamos, which designed 85 percent of the nation's nuclear weapons and is responsible for certifying that the aging stockpile of warheads is still safe and reliable, will use the big machine to run three-dimensional simulations of nuclear explosions.
But 14 top computer scientists, nearly half of the permanent staff at the Advanced Computing Laboratory, have quit this year. Most were lured away by higher salaries and stock options at dot-com firms in nearby Santa Fe. Replacing them has not been easy. When Los Alamos recruiters made their annual visit last fall to Stanford University, no one showed up to hear their pitch.
"People don't want to take lie detector tests, they don't want to come to a place that has already been beaten down. And Los Alamos has been beaten down," said Patrick S. McCormick, who heads a team working on computer visualizations of nuclear blasts and who fears his entire team could leave by the end of the year.
"Why am I still here? Good question," he said, acknowledging that he too has begun interviewing for private-sector jobs.
This month, Los Alamos director John C. Browne issued an open letter to the lab's staff commiserating that "we are going through a difficult time now, perhaps as difficult as any the lab has ever faced." Browne offered a "letter of encouragement and support to the laboratory" from its new overseer, Air Force Gen. John A. Gordon, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, set up by Congress to tighten security after last year's political furor over alleged Chinese nuclear espionage.
But anger; at Browne, at the FBI, at Washington in general; is simmering among the rank and file and has boiled over onto the lab's electronic bulletin board, the equivalent of a call-in radio show for Los Alamos's tech-savvy staff of 7,000, including 1,800 holders of doctoral degrees.
"It should be clear by now that the lab is in a major crisis with morale at a very low point," William S. Varnum, a physicist in the top-secret X Division, said in an open message in July. "Many people are considering leaving. Individual staff members are being harassed and threatened by management, the Energy Department, University of California, the FBI and Congress. Management is making no visible effort to support the employees. In government and business activities throughout the world, when this happens, the people at the top offer their resignations as a means of helping to resolve these crises. I think it is time for laboratory upper management to consider doing the same."
Karen Pao, a computer specialist, responded electronically: "If all top managers at the lab were to resign today, would security improve? Would Congress suddenly love us? Would FBI stop harassing us? Would people stop leaving?"
Other indicators of turmoil at Los Alamos, according to figures provided by senior administrators:
The number of postdoctoral fellows, a bellwether of the lab's health, has dropped 10 percent this year.
The rate of "first choice" candidates rejecting job offers at Los Alamos has jumped from 20 percent in 1996 to 44 percent so far this year.
After a steady increase in the hiring of Asian American scientists over the past eight years, Asian Americans all but stopped applying for jobs at the lab following the firing and arrest last year of scientist Wen Ho Lee on charges of mishandling classified information.
Almost all of the senior weapons scientists with nuclear testing experience, an elite group of about two dozen people, are eligible to retire. Many are expected to depart Jan. 1, as soon as new retirement incentives offered by the University of California, which manages Los Alamos for the Energy Department, take effect.
It is hard to overstate the contribution to America's nuclear weapons program of Los Alamos, an isolated town 20 miles northwest of Santa Fe that sits atop the Pajarito Plateau on a series of finger mesas divided by dramatic, thousand-foot canyons.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the University of California at Berkeley physicist who ran the Manhattan Project, vacationed as a boy in this rugged desert terrain and picked Los Alamos as the place to build the atomic bomb with supersecrecy in mind. There was only one road off the high mesa during World War II, when babies born in "the town that never was" received certificates listing their birthplace as "P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe."
Today, the vast stands of ponderosa pine that ring the town are blackened, scorched by a forest fire that swept down from the hills in May. The inferno destroyed 400 homes and forced the evacuation of both Los Alamos (population 11,000) and its bedroom community of White Rock (population 7,000).
The lab itself, which occupies 2,200 buildings and sprawls across 43 square miles, was largely untouched by the fire. But just as it reopened, management was informed of the disappearance of two computer hard drives loaded with data on how to disarm U.S. and foreign nuclear weapons. Sixty FBI agents arrived to open the second major security investigation at Los Alamos in a very short time.
The first began three years ago as a probe into China's alleged theft of the designs of American nuclear warheads. Today, senior U.S. officials are increasingly doubtful that the designs were stolen from Los Alamos, if they were stolen at all. But in the course of the investigation, the FBI discovered that Lee, a Taiwanese American weapons scientist who had worked at Los Alamos for nearly 20 years, had improperly copied or "downloaded" a vast amount of nuclear data from the lab's classified computers to his unsecure office desktop and to portable tapes, some of which are missing.
Lee has not been charged with espionage because there is no evidence that he passed the information to anyone. But he was fired in March of last year, arrested in December, and held in solitary confinement at a Santa Fe jail for the past eight months. Last week, a federal judge reversed himself and approved Lee's release on $1 million bail pending trial in November, a development that his supporters hope is an indication the government's case is unraveling.
Lee certainly has sympathizers at Los Alamos. Some of his former colleagues believe that he was singled out for investigation because of his ethnicity, and that the case became part of a congressional "witch hunt" for Chinese spies. But many Los Alamos scientists also consider his unauthorized downloading a significant violation of security rules, are puzzled by his motives, and wonder what happened to the missing tapes.
"This is a place peopled by patriots," said Stephen M. Younger, the lab's associate director for nuclear weapons. "To have the lab pilloried in the press and in Congress is a tremendous blow to these people, who do take security very seriously. I don't know anyone who takes security more seriously than the people who design the stockpile, because they know better than anyone else what these weapons can do."
They also know that the worst case of nuclear espionage in U.S. history; involving two Los Alamos scientists, Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall; a lab machinist named David Greenglass; and two couriers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; occurred here when security was at its zenith.
Since the end of the Cold War, all of the big national labs; Lawrence Livermore in California and Sandia in New Mexico, as well as Los Alamos; have been encouraged to look for commercial applications of their research and to gradually reduce their dependence on government funding. They have opened up to visitors from private companies and foreign countries.
In the wake of the Lee case, Congress and the Energy Department clamped down, imposing regular polygraphs for many scientists, a moratorium on visitors from sensitive countries, and a one-third reduction in the lab's $75 million discretionary research budget and its $35.4 million travel account, cuts that Browne, the lab director, calls "punitive." The department also is threatening to sever its contract with the University of California, which has run Los Alamos and other national labs for half a century. In terms of staff morale, however, the case of the missing hard drives may be even worse than the Lee investigation. The FBI has grilled all 26 members of the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, or NEST, a group of scientists who have volunteered to respond to an accident or terrorist threat involving nuclear weapons.
Both hard drives turned up behind a photocopier inside the lab's secure X Division on June 16, a little more than two weeks after they were reported missing. But a grand jury investigation has only just begun as the FBI proceeds on the assumption that one or more NEST team members misplaced the drives and then, afraid of being punished for the security lapse, engaged in a cover-up and put them behind the copier.
If that's what happened, some Los Alamos scientists say they know why. "I don't think we should be surprised with the way this hard drive issue has played out," said Anthony E. Burris, who manages Los Alamos's nuclear intelligence unit. "The only example we've got is up in solitary confinement in a jail in Santa Fe in shackles."
One of those targeted by the FBI has told colleagues that his legal bills are running $6,000 a week; lab scientists and employees have responded by opening a legal defense fund for him and others who have been called before a grand jury.
While many of Lee's former colleagues remain troubled by his behavior, there is virtual unanimity in X Division that the case of the missing hard drives is different: A minor security infraction turned into a criminal case, just to appease Congress.
"There's a scandal – how this was treated as a political football," said Merri M. Wood, an X Division veteran. "That's the scandal. There's no evidence a crime was committed. Quite frankly, it's a witch hunt."
Wood and numerous others at Los Alamos argue that Washington's security crackdown is hurting Los Alamos's ability to do first-rate science and may, in the end, make the nation less secure. She cites the lab's so-called two-hour rule, which allowed scientists working on classified projects in the X Division to leave their computers running for up to two hours when they were not in their offices.
After the hard drives went missing, the Energy Department immediately revoked the rule. Because it takes X Division scientists as long as 20 minutes to shut down computers running complex programs, and because they must leave their offices to confer with colleagues about top-secret issues they are not allowed to discuss over the telephone, Wood said, the suspension of the two-hour rule effectively halted their work.
"I wouldn't say there isn't anything dumber they could do, but this was right up there," she said.
Jon C. Weisheit, X Division's director, worries that Los Alamos may lose so many of its best scientists that it will be unable to ensure that America's nuclear weapons are reliable without underground nuclear testing, which Congress suspended eight years ago. "It's my worst nightmare, simply because it is possible," Weisheit said.
Houston T. Hawkins, director of Los Alamos's nonproliferation and international security division, asks rhetorically: Which two agencies must work seamlessly together in the event of a terrorist incident involving nuclear weapons?
His answer is the FBI and Los Alamos's NEST team, now bitterly aligned against each other.
"You create these very high walls and make people take polygraphs, but what's missing in this equation?" Hawkins said. "It ultimately comes down to a question of trust, regardless of the height of the walls, because the people who create this information take it home with them in their heads."
---
Dark Cloud Hangs Over Los Alamos Besieged Atomic Lab Is Losing Staff, Spirit
Washington Post
Sunday, August 27, 2000; Page A01
By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-08/27/154l-082700-idx.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M.-The Los Alamos National Laboratory, birthplace of the atomic bomb and one of the country's preeminent centers for research on nuclear physics and supercomputing, is suffering from low morale, losing scientists to the private sector and having difficulty recruiting top-flight replacements.
In what surely must be the worst year in its storied history, the lab has been hammered by back-to-back FBI investigations into security lapses, intense congressional scrutiny, punitive budget cuts, an exodus of government computer experts to high-paying software companies, and an act of God--a wildfire that shut down the lab for 12 days and forced the evacuation of surrounding towns.
If the lab remains under siege and cannot lift the spirits of its staff, administrators here and in Washington say, the United States may squander an asset that is as vital to national security as any military unit, weapon or secret.
"When you read all the things being written about this laboratory," said former director Siegfried S. Hecker, "anybody who has a choice has to think twice about coming to Los Alamos. I'm not sure we can recover quickly enough. A lot of damage has been done."
To be sure, extraordinary research is still going on at Los Alamos. The lab is building a 300,000-square-foot facility for the world's most powerful computer, capable of performing 30 trillion operations per second. Los Alamos, which designed 85 percent of the nation's nuclear weapons and is responsible for certifying that the aging stockpile of warheads is still safe and reliable, will use the big machine to run three-dimensional simulations of nuclear explosions.
But 14 top computer scientists, nearly half of the permanent staff at the Advanced Computing Laboratory, have quit this year. Most were lured away by higher salaries and stock options at dot-com firms in nearby Santa Fe. Replacing them has not been easy. When Los Alamos recruiters made their annual visit last fall to Stanford University, no one showed up to hear their pitch.
"People don't want to take lie detector tests, they don't want to come to a place that has already been beaten down. And Los Alamos has been beaten down," said Patrick S. McCormick, who heads a team working on computer visualizations of nuclear blasts and who fears his entire team could leave by the end of the year.
"Why am I still here? Good question," he said, acknowledging that he too has begun interviewing for private-sector jobs.
This month, Los Alamos director John C. Browne issued an open letter to the lab's staff commiserating that "we are going through a difficult time now, perhaps as difficult as any the lab has ever faced." Browne offered a "letter of encouragement and support to the laboratory" from its new overseer, Air Force Gen. John A. Gordon, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, set up by Congress to tighten security after last year's political furor over alleged Chinese nuclear espionage.
But anger--at Browne, at the FBI, at Washington in general--is simmering among the rank and file and has boiled over onto the lab's electronic bulletin board, the equivalent of a call-in radio show for Los Alamos's tech-savvy staff of 7,000, including 1,800 holders of doctoral degrees.
"It should be clear by now that the lab is in a major crisis with morale at a very low point," William S. Varnum, a physicist in the top-secret X Division, said in an open message in July. "Many people are considering leaving. Individual staff members are being harassed and threatened by management, the Energy Department, University of California, the FBI and Congress. Management is making no visible effort to support the employees. In government and business activities throughout the world, when this happens, the people at the top offer their resignations as a means of helping to resolve these crises. I think it is time for laboratory upper management to consider doing the same."
Karen Pao, a computer specialist, responded electronically: "If all top managers at the lab were to resign today, would security improve? Would Congress suddenly love us? Would FBI stop harassing us? Would people stop leaving?"
Other indicators of turmoil at Los Alamos, according to figures provided by senior administrators:
* The number of postdoctoral fellows, a bellwether of the lab's health, has dropped 10 percent this year.
* The rate of "first choice" candidates rejecting job offers at Los Alamos has jumped from 20 percent in 1996 to 44 percent so far this year.
* After a steady increase in the hiring of Asian American scientists over the past eight years, Asian Americans all but stopped applying for jobs at the lab following the firing and arrest last year of scientist Wen Ho Lee on charges of mishandling classified information.
* Almost all of the senior weapons scientists with nuclear testing experience, an elite group of about two dozen people, are eligible to retire. Many are expected to depart Jan. 1, as soon as new retirement incentives offered by the University of California, which manages Los Alamos for the Energy Department, take effect.
It is hard to overstate the contribution to America's nuclear weapons program of Los Alamos, an isolated town 20 miles northwest of Santa Fe that sits atop the Pajarito Plateau on a series of finger mesas divided by dramatic, thousand-foot canyons.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the University of California at Berkeley physicist who ran the Manhattan Project, vacationed as a boy in this rugged desert terrain and picked Los Alamos as the place to build the atomic bomb with supersecrecy in mind. There was only one road off the high mesa during World War II, when babies born in "the town that never was" received certificates listing their birthplace as "P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe."
Today, the vast stands of ponderosa pine that ring the town are blackened, scorched by a forest fire that swept down from the hills in May. The inferno destroyed 400 homes and forced the evacuation of both Los Alamos (population 11,000) and its bedroom community of White Rock (population 7,000).
The lab itself, which occupies 2,200 buildings and sprawls across 43 square miles, was largely untouched by the fire. But just as it reopened, management was informed of the disappearance of two computer hard drives loaded with data on how to disarm U.S. and foreign nuclear weapons. Sixty FBI agents arrived to open the second major security investigation at Los Alamos in a very short time.
The first began three years ago as a probe into China's alleged theft of the designs of American nuclear warheads. Today, senior U.S. officials are increasingly doubtful that the designs were stolen from Los Alamos, if they were stolen at all. But in the course of the investigation, the FBI discovered that Lee, a Taiwanese American weapons scientist who had worked at Los Alamos for nearly 20 years, had improperly copied or "downloaded" a vast amount of nuclear data from the lab's classified computers to his unsecure office desktop and to portable tapes, some of which are missing.
Lee has not been charged with espionage because there is no evidence that he passed the information to anyone. But he was fired in March of last year, arrested in December, and held in solitary confinement at a Santa Fe jail for the past eight months. Last week, a federal judge reversed himself and approved Lee's release on $1 million bail pending trial in November, a development that his supporters hope is an indication the government's case is unraveling.
Lee certainly has sympathizers at Los Alamos. Some of his former colleagues believe that he was singled out for investigation because of his ethnicity, and that the case became part of a congressional "witch hunt" for Chinese spies. But many Los Alamos scientists also consider his unauthorized downloading a significant violation of security rules, are puzzled by his motives, and wonder what happened to the missing tapes.
"This is a place peopled by patriots," said Stephen M. Younger, the lab's associate director for nuclear weapons. "To have the lab pilloried in the press and in Congress is a tremendous blow to these people, who do take security very seriously. I don't know anyone who takes security more seriously than the people who design the stockpile, because they know better than anyone else what these weapons can do."
They also know that the worst case of nuclear espionage in U.S. history--involving two Los Alamos scientists, Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall; a lab machinist named David Greenglass; and two couriers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg--occurred here when security was at its zenith.
Since the end of the Cold War, all of the big national labs--Lawrence Livermore in California and Sandia in New Mexico, as well as Los Alamos--have been encouraged to look for commercial applications of their research and to gradually reduce their dependence on government funding. They have opened up to visitors from private companies and foreign countries.
In the wake of the Lee case, Congress and the Energy Department clamped down, imposing regular polygraphs for many scientists, a moratorium on visitors from sensitive countries, and a one-third reduction in the lab's $75 million discretionary research budget and its $35.4 million travel account, cuts that Browne, the lab director, calls "punitive." The department also is threatening to sever its contract with the University of California, which has run Los Alamos and other national labs for half a century.
In terms of staff morale, however, the case of the missing hard drives may be even worse than the Lee investigation. The FBI has grilled all 26 members of the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, or NEST, a group of scientists who have volunteered to respond to an accident or terrorist threat involving nuclear weapons.
Both hard drives turned up behind a photocopier inside the lab's secure X Division on June 16, a little more than two weeks after they were reported missing. But a grand jury investigation has only just begun as the FBI proceeds on the assumption that one or more NEST team members misplaced the drives and then, afraid of being punished for the security lapse, engaged in a cover-up and put them behind the copier.
If that's what happened, some Los Alamos scientists say they know why. "I don't think we should be surprised with the way this hard drive issue has played out," said Anthony E. Burris, who manages Los Alamos's nuclear intelligence unit. "The only example we've got is up in solitary confinement in a jail in Santa Fe in shackles."
One of those targeted by the FBI has told colleagues that his legal bills are running $6,000 a week; lab scientists and employees have responded by opening a legal defense fund for him and others who have been called before a grand jury.
While many of Lee's former colleagues remain troubled by his behavior, there is virtual unanimity in X Division that the case of the missing hard drives is different: A minor security infraction turned into a criminal case, just to appease Congress.
"There's a scandal--how this was treated as a political football," said Merri M. Wood, an X Division veteran. "That's the scandal. There's no evidence a crime was committed. Quite frankly, it's a witch hunt."
Wood and numerous others at Los Alamos argue that Washington's security crackdown is hurting Los Alamos's ability to do first-rate science and may, in the end, make the nation less secure. She cites the lab's so-called two-hour rule, which allowed scientists working on classified projects in the X Division to leave their computers running for up to two hours when they were not in their offices.
After the hard drives went missing, the Energy Department immediately revoked the rule. Because it takes X Division scientists as long as 20 minutes to shut down computers running complex programs, and because they must leave their offices to confer with colleagues about top-secret issues they are not allowed to discuss over the telephone, Wood said, the suspension of the two-hour rule effectively halted their work.
"I wouldn't say there isn't anything dumber they could do, but this was right up there," she said.
Jon C. Weisheit, X Division's director, worries that Los Alamos may lose so many of its best scientists that it will be unable to ensure that America's nuclear weapons are reliable without underground nuclear testing, which Congress suspended eight years ago. "It's my worst nightmare, simply because it is possible," Weisheit said.
Houston T. Hawkins, director of Los Alamos's nonproliferation and international security division, asks rhetorically: Which two agencies must work seamlessly together in the event of a terrorist incident involving nuclear weapons?
His answer is the FBI and Los Alamos's NEST team, now bitterly aligned against each other.
"You create these very high walls and make people take polygraphs, but what's missing in this equation?" Hawkins said. "It ultimately comes down to a question of trust, regardless of the height of the walls, because the people who create this information take it home with them in their heads."
---
Accused Weapons Scientist Is Freed on Bail
New York Times
August 27, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/082700this-week-review.html
In December, a federal judge was told that Wen Ho Lee posed such a threat to national security that if he leaked the nuclear weapons secrets he had allegedly taken from the Los Alamos National Laboratory it could tilt the global balance of power. Dr. Lee was held in solitary confinement without bail pending trial.
But now the balance of power has shifted in the courtroom. The judge reversed his decision after hearing new evidence, ruling that Dr. Lee could be freed to a form of home detention. The order was a sign that, after admissions by prosecutors that misleading testimony had been presented earlier, the government's case was suffering serious weaknesses.
James Sterngold
-------- washington
Declassified photos depict Hanford life
Pictures taken from 1943 to 1967 document work and play at the atomic works in Eastern Washington
The Oregonian
Sunday, August 27, 2000
By Linda Ashton of The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/00/08/nw_11hanf27.frame
RICHLAND, Wash. -- Everything used to be secret at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Thousands of people worked side-by-side at the Manhattan Project site, never talking about what they were doing and, often, not knowing themselves.
Loose lips, after all, sank ships.
In 1943, scientists in the United States and Nazi Germany were racing to build an atomic bomb.
In the isolated desert of Eastern Washington, miles from the population centers of Seattle and Portland, the federal government and its contractors built the first large-scale reactor to make plutonium.
Most of the 50,000 workers on the site were not told what they were making until after the first atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.
But government photographers were taking pictures of the work, and now some of those pictures have been released to the public.
"They wanted a living story of Hanford," says Dave Briggs, manager of the national security analysis team for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "At the end of the war effort, it was supposed to be torn down and gone -- then the Cold War came along."
Some 90,000 negatives -- glimpses into an archive of the remarkable and the mundane -- detailed the once-classified life at Hanford from 1943 to 1967. It's a relatively small sampling of the 2 million photographs taken at Hanford since day one.
Some photos are available now for public viewing on the Hanford Web site. A photo disk of the images should be available by Oct. 1.
"They were classified because of the time period they were taken. Almost everything was classified just by definition," Briggs says.
Organizing the collection
Briggs and Rick Stutheit, a classification officer for the U.S. Department of Energy, are among the dozen modern-day film detectives reviewing boxes and boxes of negatives, stored in aging manila envelopes, and compiling the photographic library.
The project is part of the Energy Department's openness policy, and it also reduces costs of storing the material. Classified storage is very expensive.
"We, the people, paid for this effort. We, the people, ought to see what we got for the money," Briggs says.
The Hanford atomic works sprang out of the sagebrush in just a few months. The prospect of feeding, housing and entertaining 50,000 people in a place where there had been little more than a string of small farm towns and orchards was daunting.
The photographs reflect it all, from construction of the Plutonium Uranium Extraction plant for removing plutonium from irradiated uranium fuel to shots of people fishing, cooking and dancing.
There are pictures of band leader Kay Kyser, children learning to swim, Election Night 1944.
Some 50,000 negatives have been reviewed so far, and only about a dozen have remained classified -- those dealing with weapons information and unit costs, Stutheit says. Some photographs that might be culturally sensitive for Native Americans also are being held for tribal review.
Witness to history
Lee Edgar, 86, was among those bearing photographic witness to history at Hanford from 1947 to 1967. He shot traffic accidents, crime scenes, U.S. presidents and new buildings. He was sent to peer into tubes and crawl around in tanks used for making plutonium and storing the deadly wastes from the process.
Once, he recalls, he was lowered about 16 feet into a tank, with his arms raised above his head, to take pictures for signs of rust.
"When I went to come out, I couldn't come out," he says.
His lean frame had swelled -- not unlike a diver in need of decompression -- down in the tank, and he had to be yanked out with a harness and a crane.
"The camera went out first, of course," he says.
For Angela Townsend, a Pasco native and a national lab employee, scanning the photos has been an education.
"I was born in 1970. I didn't know what all of this was," she says. "Actually, this is better than our history classes we had in school."
-------- MILITARY (by country)
-------- britain
11 British Soldiers in Sierra Leone Are Seized in Area Held by Renegades
New York Times
August 26, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/leone-soldiers-ap.html
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, Aug. 26 -- Eleven British soldiers sent here as part of a force seeking to bring some order to war-ravaged Sierra Leone have been seized by one of the country's many rival factions, the British Ministry of Defense said today.
Britain sent 1,000 soldiers here after some 500 United Nations peacekeepers were taken hostage in May, when a peace accord for this West African nation collapsed and its civil war re-erupted. While the troops came ostensibly to evacuate foreigners and secure the airport, their presence has done much to quell the strife here.
When the British forces withdrew in mid-June they left behind soldiers to train Sierra Leone Army recruits. Britain has also donated arms and equipment and sent military advisers.
The commander of the British forces, Brig. Gordon Hughes, said contact was lost with the 11 soldiers on Friday around the towns of Masiaka and Forudugu, about 45 miles east of the capital, Freetown.
A radio message received from the group today indicated that they were being held against their will, a Ministry of Defense spokesman said later in London. "We believe they are all well," the spokesman said.
The British troops were stationed at Benguema, about 25 miles east of Freetown, where British instructors are training Sierra Leone Army recruits.
They were accompanied by a government soldier, who was acting as their guide and who is also believed to have been captured.
The troops disappeared in an area occupied by a small and ruthless renegade faction of fighters known as the West Side Boys, said a spokesman for the British force, Capt. John Price.
Until June, the West Side Boys were part of a fragile pro-government alliance fighting rebels of the Revolutionary United Front. But the faction fell out with the authorities after reportedly attacking other pro-government fighters and carrying out a spree of carjackings, robberies and rapes.
Since Sierra Leone's civil war began in 1991, the rebels have systematically killed and maimed tens of thousands of people in an attempt to gain control of the government and the country's lucrative diamond-mining regions.
They have abandoned three peace treaties, the latest signed July last year.
The United Nations hostages were eventually released and a successful and unusually bold rescue operation was mounted to free some 233 other United Nations troops surrounded in rebel territory.
Since then, a ragtag alliance of pro-government forces, backed by Britain, has slowly pushed the rebels away from the capital.
---
Airmen trapped in glacier for 60 years
USA Today
08/27/00- Updated 07:22 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#hostages
REYKJAVIK, Iceland - Britain's Royal Air Force paid tribute Sunday to four World War II airmen whose bodies were trapped inside an Icelandic glacier for nearly 60 years. The remains were retrieved last week during a three-day expedition to the wreckage of their plane, which crashed in May 1941. Among the most poignant offerings was a bouquet of six red roses sent from New Zealand by the pilot's childhood sweetheart, 83-year-old Nan Poole. The airmen's plane crashed in thick fog shortly after takeoff. The site was located two days later, but the spot was quickly lost in a blanket of snow and ice.
-------- china
China Puts 700,000 Troops on Alert in Sudan
NewsMax.com
Sunday, Aug. 27, 2000
NewsMax.com
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/8/26/204458
In a stunning revelation, London's Sunday Telegraph is reporting in today's editions that China has as many as 700,000 troops in the Sudan and is preparing to enter that country's civil war.
According to the British paper, for the past three years China has been bringing Chinese nationals into the Sudan by cargo jets and boats.
Ostensibly, the Chinese were to serve as guards at oil fields and facilities controlled by the China National Petroleum Corporation.
The introduction of Chinese troops comes in the wake of the military success of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) headed by Col. Johnny Garang.
Garang's forces, largely Christian, have been battling Sudan's Islamic regime which controls the country's oil region in the Upper Nile.
SPLA troops are reported to be just 10 miles from these oil fields.
The Islamic regime has made an emergency request that China crush the SPLA forces and end the country 17-year-old civil war.
Oil production began in Sudan just last year, and since then arms have been flowing in from Libya, Qatar and China.
The Telegraph cites an internal document from the Sudanese military indicating that "as many as 700,000 Chinese security personnel were available for action."
Baroness Caroline Cox, the leading human rights activist for Christians in Sudan, criticized Western governments for their complacency and complicity.
She said: "If with foreign help the NIF regime crushes all opposition we will have entrenched in the heart of Africa a militant Islamist regime aimed at spreading terrorism throughout the continent. It's unbelievably serious for the future of democracy in Africa and could happen in the next few weeks."
British companies, and Canada's Talisman Energy, have joined the Chinese to help develop its oil production facilities and pipelines.
Human rights activists have criticized Western governments for backing the militant Islamic regime in Khartoum, one that has killed civilians to clear areas for oil production.
Christian groups have also publicized the regime's use of slavery.
China's involvement in the ongoing civil war may prove to be the most unusual twist, and may represent the largest movement of one army into another country that went completely undetected by other nations.
A Western aid worker in southern Sudan told the Telegraph, "Everyone knows what is going on. We've all seen the Chinese being brought in and can only pray about what's going to happen next."
The use of Chinese "workers" as a military force may raise serious concerns about the growing number of Chinese illegals detected in Central America and the Caribbean.
Chinese influence in Panama which controls the Panama Canal has already raised serious warning froms military experts, including Adm. Thomas Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
---
China Seizes Books with Dalai Lama
Yahoo News
Monday August 28
Photo By Steve James
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000828/wl/china_book_dc_1.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - China seized thousands of books containing a photo of the Dalai Lama clutching President Clinton's hand, a U.S. publisher said on Monday, as the State Department dubbed Beijing's action ``disturbing.''
The publisher said the Chinese have also impounded copies of two other new books from Callaway Editions -- one an illustrated tome on Tibetan Buddhist art and another by a fashion photographer, which contained some mild nudity.
``Three books censored for three different reasons -- politics, religion and sex!'' the publisher's founder, Nicholas Callaway, told Reuters.
There was no immediate comment from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, but a spokesman told the New York Times Beijing maintained the right to ban production of printed material deemed politically sensitive. Beijing considers the exiled Dalai Lama a symbol of opposition to its control of Tibet.
Asked about the Chinese action, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said: ``If the report is true, then it is most disturbing. Seizure of books in order to impose religious or political control violates international human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has signed.''
He indicated Washington had not intervened directly with Chinese authorities over the issue. However, the company that sent the work to China for the American publisher said it had appealed to China's Commerce Ministry to release the books.
The action by customs officers at a southern Chinese bindery, where the books were being prepared for shipment, effectively blocked publication of ``The Clinton Years,'' a $40 book of pictures by former White House photographer Robert McNeely.
McNeely said in a telephone interview he hoped sufficient pressure would be brought to bear on the Chinese government that the problem would be kicked up to a higher level, senior Chinese officials will ``see how ridiculous this is'' and release the book.
``I find it just inconceivable that they'll stand by this decision,'' he said. ``But at this point they're still standing by it. The idea that this affects a book about the president of the United States will hopefully lift us past these petty bureaucrats.''
Also unlikely to appear in time for Callaway's fall catalog are ``Celestial Gallery,'' a two-foot tall book of Buddhist art which will retail for $125 per copy and ``Max,'' a $75 collection of work by fashion photographer Max Vadukul, which Callaway said included some ``very tame nude pictures.
``The irony is that while we are being censored, we are also planning a book by an American photographer which will celebrate the culture and landscape of China.''
``Further irony is that that book is being printed in Providence, Rhode Island,'' said Callaway.
He said 8,000 copies of the McNeely book, which contains photographs taken during McNeely's tenure from 1992-98 as official White House photographer, had been bound and shipped to the United States at the beginning of August.
But about three weeks ago, Chinese customs officials seized 16,000 copies that had been printed in Hong Kong and sent to nearby Shenzhen for binding.
The McNeely book contains a black-and-white photo of Clinton -- in Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites)'s office, not the Oval Office -- clasping hands with the Dalai Lama.
Callaway said he was in touch with Palace Press International, which acts as a broker between U.S. publishers and printers in Asia. Printers in Hong Kong and southern China have a reputation for high-quality work at low cost.
``We have had no news, but are monitoring the situation and hope to bring it to the attention of political, cultural and religious figures,'' said Callaway.
In San Francisco, Palace Press Director Gordon Goff said the company had never had any such problems in the past and even printed a complete book in China about the Dalai Lama, along with other books containing some artful nudes.
``We are flabbergasted, but in the long-term we believe the Chinese will come around. We like the Chinese and think this is ridiculous.''
Goff said his company had contacted the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing but had received no reply. He said he believed the seizure was part of a temporary crackdown by customs officials at the border between Hong Kong and China.
In the meantime, ``there are lots of alternatives,'' but printing books in Singapore or Thailand and air-shipping deliveries on short notice costs more, said Goff.
Efforts by Clinton to improve ties with Beijing have been hampered by U.S. concerns over human and civil rights. Washington this year moved toward a more open trading pact with China and military ties resumed after being frozen after last year's NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.
But many Americans, including vocal members of Congress, resent China's restrictions on religion, its crackdown on political dissidents and continued tight grip on Tibet.
---
Chinese POWs kept in asylum for 35 years
USA Today
08/27/00- Updated 07:22 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#hostages
HONG KONG - Two Chinese prisoners of war have been found in an Indian mental asylum where they spent the past 35 years, a newspaper reported Sunday. Shih Liang and Yang Chen have been held at the Central Institute of Psychiatry in the east Indian state of Bihar since 1965 after being arrested on charges of espionage. India's Home Affairs Ministry said that it has no knowledge of the two prisoners, while the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said it will investigate the matter before responding. Yang, who is in his early 60s, used a walking stick to get around and did not respond to questions. Shih seemed to be in good health, and brightened up when offered a cigarette.
-------- colombia
Top Colombian Rebel Dies in 'Accident'
Yahoo News
Monday August 28
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000828/wl/colombia_guerrillas_dc_1.html
BOGOTA (Reuters) - A senior Marxist rebel commander, believed responsible for a recent wave of attacks across central Colombia, has been killed in an accident, fellow insurgents said on Monday.
A communique issued by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) said commander Adan Izquierdo, head of one of the guerrilla force's seven main fighting divisions, died in an ''unfortunate accident'' but gave no further details.
The RCN television network, citing anonymous military intelligence sources, said Izquierdo had accidentally shot himself while cleaning his rifle.
Izquierdo was commander of the FARC's so-called Central Joint Command based in central Tolima province. The division had carried out a series of attacks on isolated police posts in central Colombia since June.
The FARC is Latin America's largest surviving 1960s rebel army with an estimated 17,000 combatants and control of up to 40 percent of the country.
-------- drug war
Reputed Head of Drug Ring Taken to U.S. After Arrest
New York Times
August 27, 2000
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/082700colombia-us-drugs.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 -- Wrapping up a huge international anti-drug operation, the United States has brought the reputed leader of an international cocaine smuggling ring to Florida to face federal charges, the United States Customs Service announced today.
Along with additional arrests by South American and European authorities, the apprehension of Iván de la Vega effectively brought to a close one of the broadest international anti-drug operations ever mounted, one that involved authorities from 12 nations, officials said today in Washington.
A freighter, one of several said to have been used in the global trafficking scheme, is also being confiscated, the officials said.
"This case demonstrates what can be achieved when nations of the world work together against a common enemy," Customs Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in the statement.
The smuggling operation was based in Colombia and Venezuela, and Venezuelan officials arrested Mr. de la Vega, a Colombian citizen accused of leading the drug organization, on Aug. 16, as part of a series of raids that used about 200 anti-drug officers with an array of helicopters, airplanes and boats, the authorities said. A United States Navy ship stopped the Maltese-flagged ship, the Suerte I, off the coast of Grenada on Aug. 17 after Venezuelan authorities had intercepted smaller boatloads of cocaine headed to the Suerte I with cocaine on board. No cocaine was found in a search of the larger vessel.
Also arrested and sent to Florida for prosecution was Luis Antonio Navia, a Cuban national with United States residence status who was a fugitive wanted on prior federal drug charges.
Meanwhile, in Europe, authorities in Greece made eight arrests in connection with shipping firms that they said were linked to the operation. There were also two related arrests in Italy and another in France.
The American officials said that arrests and seizures effectively wrapped up a two-year, multinational crackdown that resulted in the seizure of nearly 25 tons of cocaine. That much cocaine would have a street value in Europe of roughly $1 billion if sold in individual doses, they said. The drug ring is thought to have transported as much as 68 tons of cocaine to Europe and the United States during the past three years.
---
Home-Grown Drug Business Booms in Vancouver
New York Times
August 27, 2000
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/082700canada-drugs.html
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- As Canada's health department looks this fall for a reliable supplier of almost one million marijuana cigarettes for clinical trials, some Canadians say they need to look no farther than "British Colombia," where relaxed attitudes about smoking marijuana have helped turn the province into a major North American producer for some of the drug's strongest strains.
While Mexicans can grow bales of the stuff on plantations, cold weather Canadians have genetically tweaked their indoor plants to reach potencies of 10 times the levels of the Woodstock-era grass, putting it on a par with prized Jamaican weed.
Now marijuana is estimated to be a $1 billion-a-year export here, right behind lumber and tourism as the leading business in British Columbia. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police estimate that there are about 9,000 "grow operations" in the Vancouver area. Across the bay from here, in the city of Nanaimo, the Mounties estimate that there are 1,000 residential grow operations, about one every two blocks.
"In my neighborhood, it's one house in 10," said Chris, a 40-year-old grower. "I walk around late at night, after work, and I can smell it, from the fans."
Increasingly, marijuana turns up in the oddest places. In May, a newspaper here reported that a man had been caught growing plants in a garage of a house he rented from the attorney general of the province.
On Aug. 12, two Canadian men wearing military uniforms were arrested in Blaine, Wash., after crossing the border in two Canadian military trucks. (The United States Customs Service says one truck was loaded with five duffel bags, containing a total of 240 pounds of marijuana.)
The concentration of marijuana growing stems from many factors. Judges, mirroring local public opinion, tend to give lenient punishments. An arrest for growing 500 plants, the average size of a bust here, often yields an $800 fine -- compared with a short prison sentence in California or a life sentence in Texas.
"I paid my partner's fine, $500, with money from the business -- it's a business," said Buck, an engaging 30-year-old in a polo shirt. He said he talked his way out of any charges when a policeman his age discovered his grow operation this year.
A study by the local newspaper, The Vancouver Sun, found that of 112 people convicted here of growing marijuana in the late 1990's, one quarter served no jail time and paid no fines, and that 58 percent paid fines of less than $1,800. Fewer than one in seven served any jail time.
With prices for "B.C. Bud" double on the American side of the border, marijuana is indeed lucrative in a province with some of North America's highest tax rates, stagnant economic growth, and high unemployment among young people.
Vancouver also offers the technical support a serious grower needs. With cultivators here approaching their indoor marijuana farming with the solemnity of Japanese bonsai gardeners, the number of stores specializing in hydroponic gardening equipment mushroomed in Vancouver during the 1990's, from 3 to 30. Growing plants without soil, in a mix of rock pellets and nutrient-rich water, requires an array of electric gadgets -- from 1,000-watt lamps to cooling systems to special systems that neutralize telltale odors before ventilation.
At one store, Jon's Plant Factory, the offerings do not seem geared to growing hydroponic tomatoes. In the electronic section, there is a $1,400 sophisticated pager, sort of an electronic plant sitter that can alert the long-distance gardener of system failures -- water pumps, air fans, fertilizer drips -- or even if an intruder has opened a window or a door.
Referring to complex growing systems, Chris, an experienced electrician and plumber, said during a store tour, "Some people will sell their feeding schedules for $6,000."
Cheaper technical support comes from Marc Emery, Canada's leading cannabis capitalist. Mr. Emery offers 350 varieties of marijuana seeds through his Web site and publishes Cannabis Culture, a magazine of gardening tips. This year, he started two Internet media productions, Pot Radio and Pot-TV Internetwork, a 24-hour online broadcast of marijuana news.
For marijuana broadcasters like Mr. Emery, the news from Canada this summer has been encouraging.
In separate rulings in late July, Ontario Court of Appeal judges ruled against employee drug testing and invalidated Canada's law against marijuana possession. In the latter case, Judge Marc Rosenberg suspended his ruling for a year to give Parliament time to rewrite the law. His ruling, however, immediately granted Terry Parker, a 44-year-old Toronto man, the right to smoke marijuana to control his epilepsy.
With Parliament scheduled to return in September, Canada's two national newspapers, The Globe and Mail and The National Post, have editorialized in favor of decriminalizing marijuana for medical uses. Anne McLellan, Canada's justice minister and a member of Parliament for the governing Liberal Party, has said such decriminalization "is a legitimate question."
On that subject, Canadians, as usual, are cautiously looking at the United States.
"Outright legalization would cause serious trouble with the United States," The Globe and Mail editorialized after the Ontario decision. Calling for decriminalization, a path favored by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the newspaper concluded, "Therefore, Canada should follow its historical nature and take a middle path."
In a survey here in May for The Vancouver Sun, 56 percent of the people agreed that provincial courts should "ignore the Americans and hand out sentences we think are appropriate." A virtually identical percentage said that possession of marijuana should not be a criminal offense. With 61 seriously ill people authorized by Health Canada to smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes, the government plans to start clinical trials of marijuana next year.
When smugglers are cornered at the border, the smart ones sprint north. Even so, the border is lightly patrolled and few people are caught, compared with the intensely watched United States border with Mexico. In the federal fiscal year ending last September, United States Customs Service agents seized 50 times as much marijuana coming in from Mexico, 988,310 pounds, as they seized coming in from Canada, 19,753 pounds.
Some Americans hope that if Canada decriminalizes marijuana possession it would show the United States a different path, similar to Canada's strict gun control laws and its system of universal, government-administered health care.
This year, the Vancouver police have raided growing operations at twice the rate of last year. But they are careful to publicize their raids as efforts to break up vicious Asian gangs, to protect children from fires in houses with faulty wiring, or to break up smuggling rings where hockey bags stuffed with marijuana are traded for guns and hard drugs from the United States.
"We have houses burning down, we have explosions, we have organized crime in our neighborhoods," Sgt. Chuck Doucette, the Mountie spokesman here, said in an interview. Noting that anonymous tips about grow houses have flooded his office this year, he added, "We cannot keep up with the calls."
Still decriminalization for casual use seems to be a reality here in Vancouver.
Last May, hundreds of people gathered for a marijuana "smoke-in" on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery, five blocks from the premier's office. The police ignored the event. In contrast, on the same day the police arrested 312 people for lighting up at a legalization rally in lower Manhattan.
-------- iran
Assassin in chief
Washington Times
August 25, 2000
Arnold Beichman
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-column-2000825181233.htm
New York City will have a rather interesting visitor next week. He is Mohsen Rezaii, former commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who on Oct. 21, 1991, said: "The day will come when, like Salman Rushdie, the Jews will not find a place to live anywhere in the world."
Mr. Rezaii is part of an Iranian delegation, headed by Sayad Mohammed Khatami, the country's puppet president, to a conference of the Interparliamentary Union to be held at the United Nations Aug. 30 through Sept. 1. The Clinton-Albright State Department has been selling Mr. Khatami as a "moderate" since his election on May 23, 1997. The real power in Iran is, of course, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In 1981 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, revolutionary founder of the Iranian theocracy, appointed Mr. Rezaii to his command post after he had organized the Guards Corps intelligence section. He was the Corps commander in chief for 16 years and is credited with a number of terrorist coups, including the following:
• The 1983 suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 243 Marines. Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger blamed the terrorist attack on "Iranians with sponsorship and knowledge and authority of the Syrian government." In a boastful and no doubt proud moment, Mr. Rezaii told an Iranian newspaper, Ressalat, (July 20, 1987): "Both the TNT and the ideology which in one blast sent to hell 400(sic) officers, NCOs, and soldiers at the Marine headquarters have been provided by Iran."
• The hostage taking in Lebanon is believed to have been entirely the work of Mr. Rezaii's Corps. A Kuwaiti newspaper, Al Qabas, wrote January 30, 1988: "Diplomatic sources in Beirut say that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commander in Chief Mohsen Rezaii constantly travels to Beirut. He has become the ultimate authority in anything related to the Western hostages. These sources add that all 17 hostages in Lebanon are under the complete control of Rezaii and Hezbollah."
• During the Iran-Iraq war, Mr. Rezaii's Guards dispatched children to the war fronts to act as human minesweepers. The children were forced to run on suspected mine fields. How many children were killed or maimed is not known but Iranian dissidents in this country say the tactics resulted in the death of thousands of children and students.
• As commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Mr. Rezaii called for the organization of an international Islamic army so as to prevent "the interference by superpowers in disputes among Muslim countries." To that end he formed the Qods (Jerusalem) Forces in 1989, whose main task was the planning and execution of terrorist attacks in Arab and Islamic countries.
• The National Council of Resistance, based on the Iran-Iraq border, charges that Mr. Rezaii is responsible for the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners.
With this kind of record, the question to be raised with the White House and the State Department is whether Mr. Rezaii should be allowed into this country even with a diplomatic passport and visa. This isn't quite your ordinary terrorist, as can be judged from Mr. Rezaii's declaration Oct. 21, 1991, in an Iranian newspaper, Kayhan:
"The Muslims' fury and hatred will burn the heart of Washington someday and America will be responsible for its repercussions." Secretary of State Madeleine Albright might call Mr. Rezaii's words overheated rhetoric but this man shoots to kill.
The parliamentary conference is going to be followed by the U.N. Millennium Assembly which opens Sept. 5. Mr. Clinton, like many other heads of state, is expected to attend the session. Should the president of the United States be in the same United Nations chamber with Mr. Rezaii, Iran's assassin in chief, who boasts that he is responsible for the death of 243 U.S. Marines?
Perhaps even the ever-optimistic Mr. Clinton might want to alter his sunny view of Iran. To send someone like Mr. Rezaii with his bloody terrorist record to New York, United Nations or no United Nations, is spitting right in the eye of the Great Satan.
Arnold Beichman, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a Washington Times columnist.
-------- ireland
In Northern Ireland, it is Protestant vs. Protestant
Washington Times
August 25, 2000
By Patrick Rucker
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200082522434.htm
BELFAST - Guns are blazing again in the Shankill Road, but the fighting is no longer between Protestants and Catholics.
Two Protestant militias are feuding over pride, territory and a burgeoning drug trade, with much of the violence inspired by a convicted terrorist who was released from prison under the Good Friday peace accord.
In the third murder this week, two masked men identified with the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) broke into the home of 21-year-old Samuel Rocket on Wednesday night and gunned him down in front of his girlfriend and child.
Police thwarted what may have been a reprisal attack yesterday when they arrested six armed men near Shankill Road - a main street through the Protestant part of Belfast that this week is being patrolled by British troops for the first time in two years.
Major political and religious leaders are calling for mediation to end the fighting, described by Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson as "squalid, murderous, gang warfare."
But militia leaders on both sides are skeptical. John White, whose Ulster Democratic Party has links to the UFF, said the latest killings are "something we are going to see more of."
Billy Hutchinson, a politician close to the rival Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), was quoted yesterday saying, "There are those on both sides hellbent on continuing it until they feel they have drawn enough blood."
Much of the blame is being placed on UFF leader Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, a terror kingpin said by police sources to have seized control of the drug trade around Shankill Road after being released from prison in September under the Good Friday accord designed to end 25 years of sectarian warfare.
Tensions between the UFF and the UVF already had led to five deaths this year before the UVF murdered two men on Monday. The coffin of one of those men, Bobby Mahood, was carried through the Shankill area yesterday, followed by hundreds of Protestants.
The killings outside a betting shop followed weekend clashes in which 10 persons were hurt and a number of houses torched.
On Tuesday, Mr. Mandelson accused Adair of being involved in the "commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism" and had him arrested.
British troops, called into the area for the first time since the Good Friday pact brokered by U.S. mediator George Mitchell, have helped limit the unrest but were unable to prevent the latest killing Wednesday evening.
During their decades-long struggle against the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Protestant militias learned to control their own communities through a combination of extortion, assassination and racketeering. In the early 1990s, Adair led the UFF's most brutal murder gang, which was responsible for more than 70 killings. Adair distinguished himself with ruthlessness and daring, openly scouting Catholic neighborhoods for possible targets.
"He went into the lion's mouth to extract the teeth," said a source in the Royal Ulster Constabulary who has followed Adair's career. "Everything he told his people to do, Adair had once done himself."
Adair escaped numerous IRA assassination attempts and criminal prosecutions until he finally was sentenced to 16 years for directing terrorism in 1995.
"He is a cult figure with disciples," said the RUC source. "He has the power of life or death. If he told his henchmen to kill someone while he watched, they would do it. That is the kind of control he has."
Since Adair's release, his UFF gang has imposed its predominance in the Shankill Road area. UFF wall murals have mushroomed, and in several high-profile "shows of force," masked UFF gunmen brandished weapons or stopped traffic at makeshift roadblocks - all to the chagrin of the UVF.
Most worrying for security forces, Adair has built an alliance with the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) - whose past leader, Billy "King Rat" Wright, was shot dead in the Maze prison in 1998. Adair is trying to fill Wright's shoes, security sources fear, and create a new league of disaffected pro-British Loyalists to join his drug and terror franchise.
Mr. Mandelson said he hopes Adair's arrest will allow the warring factions to make peace, an unlikely outcome in the short term since both sides are still calling for vengeance.
-------- myanmar
Suu Kyi Stands Firm in Myanmar Roadside Protest
Yahoo News
Sunday August 27
By Aung Hla Tun
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000827/wl/myanmar_leadall_dc_12.html
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-08/27/209l-082700-idx.html
YANGON (Reuters) - Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi began a fifth cramped and uncomfortable day in her car south of Yangon on Monday in a roadside test of wills with Myanmar's military rulers.
The 55-year-old Nobel laureate and more than a dozen members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) were halted by police on Thursday as they headed south of the capital in two vehicles.
It was the first time Suu Kyi had tried to leave Yangon since another roadside stand-off in 1998 that ended after 13 days when deteriorating health and dehydration forced her to return home in an ambulance.
Myanmar's government says Suu Kyi is being prevented from traveling further for her own protection, due to threats of violence by ``armed separatist terrorist groups.'' It has asked her to go home but says she is free to remain in Dala.
``Until safety conditions improve, Daw Suu Kyi is visiting Dala township, a small but charming and scenic town about 10 minutes' boat ride from Yangon jetty,'' the government said in a statement at the weekend.
Journalists who tried to go to the scene of the stand-off were turned back by security authorities at the jetty.
The government insisted Suu Kyi was being provided with ample food and water, contrary to reports from some NLD members who said she was running short of supplies.
To support its assertion that Suu Kyi was being properly looked after, the government released five photographs of Suu Kyi's ``visit to Dala.''
One showed several men laden with plastic carrier bags walking along a path toward the parked cars, with the caption: ''Suu Kyi's travel companions coming back from shopping at nearby food stores in time for high-tea.''
Myanmar Hits Back At Critics
Another picture showed the group's two vehicles -- a saloon car and a pickup truck -- parked beside a dirt track. The caption pointed out houses in the background, noting that ''bathroom services are available there for free.''
Other photographs showed men washing at an outdoor water pump and bathing in a river. The government said the pictures showed NLD members taking ``an afternoon dip.''
Suu Kyi was not visible in any of the photographs.
World anger at the treatment of Suu Kyi has mounted, with the United States and European Union demanding that she be allowed to travel freely in her own country.
The government said critics had misunderstood the situation.
``Apparently there is some misunderstanding of the current situation in Myanmar, so we would like to clarify some basic points to those who are criticizing us irresponsibly,'' it said.
``Like any government in the world, the government of Myanmar has a fundamental obligation and responsibility to protect its citizens from acts of violence from terrorist organizations and unlawful armed groups.''
Diplomats in Yangon said they had not heard reports of armed insurgent groups active in the area of the stand-off.
The NLD won elections in May 1990 by a landslide but has never been allowed to govern.
Suu Kyi was under house arrest for six years until 1995 and her movements remain severely restricted.
(With additional reporting by Andrew Marshall in Bangkok)
-------- u.s.
Cheney Says Clinton Drives Military Into Decline
Yahoo News
Sunday August 27 2:01 PM ET updated 5:08 AM ET Aug 28
By Jonathan Wright
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000827/pl/campaign_military_dc_1.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, adding fuel to the campaign dispute over U.S. military readiness, said on Sunday that the Clinton administration had driven the armed forces into decline.
``They've cut too far. They've cut too deep. They've also added commitments. A big part of the difficulty ... is the force is spread too thin,'' he told the NBC program ``Meet the Press.''
``What the Clinton-Gore administration has done is to shortchange the military, continue to impose significant burdens on them and not make the kinds of investments that need to be made. ... It does need to be fixed,'' he added.
Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush (news - web sites), the governor of Texas, made the state of the U.S. military a campaign issue at the Republican convention earlier this month when he said that two of the 10 U.S. army divisions were not ready for duty.
The Pentagon said the divisions briefly had not been ready last November but the problem had been fixed. Democrats have jumped on the case of the two divisions to suggest that Bush was stretching the truth and politicizing the military.
Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, told ``Meet the Press'' that both Bush and Cheney were ``flat wrong about the question of readiness.''
Retired Gen. George Joulwan, former supreme commander of NATO, told ``Fox News Sunday'' that the U.S. military has ''structural problems'' and needed to be reorganized.
But asked if Bush was wrong when he said that the military had been ``hollowed out'' during the seven years that President Clinton has been in office, Joulwan said: ``Yes.''
Cheney agreed that the U.S. military, with 1.4 million people in uniform and the most sophisticated weaponry available in the world, was better than any other country's.
But he added: ``The problem is it's in decline, and this administration has done very little to reverse that decline. They have, in fact, significantly expanded our commitments, even as they cut the size of the force.''
He said that 40 percent of the U.S. Army's helicopters are not combat-ready and that the average number of hours flown by aviation battalion commanders has fallen to 1,000 hours, half of what it was 10 years ago.
In the Air Force, about 65 percent of combat units are combat ready, down from 85 percent when Clinton took office in 1993, he added.
Recruiting Problems
``We've got recruiting problems. We've got retention problems. We're not able to keep pilots, for example,'' Cheney told another program, CBS's ``Face the Nation.''
Democrats have retorted that the cuts in the U.S. military began under Bush's father, President George Bush, in whose administration Cheney served as U.S. secretary of defense.
Cheney said President Bush was right to make limited cuts because of the end of the Cold War, but Clinton and Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites), the Democratic presidential candidate, had extended the cuts too far.
``We called for a 25 percent reduction in force structure. ... But they've gone far beyond that. They've taken the Army from 18 divisions down to 10. They've taken wings in the Air Force from 24 wings to 13 wings,'' he added.
But Kerry said: ``We have the best trained, most extraordinary military in the history of humankind.''
The military's problems with retaining personnel were a result of the strong economy, which makes the private sector more attractive, the Democratic senator added.
Rep. John Kasich (news - web sites), an Ohio Democrat who briefly ran for president, criticized what he said was a massive increase in the number of foreign deployments under Clinton, saying these amounted to 116, against 42 in the previous 11 years.
``Clinton has ... turned the United States military into the policemen of the world,'' he said.
``I'd like to see us target the use of American forces to where it is in our national interest and where there is an achievable objective. ... I think that's the biggest change that we need,'' he added.
---
Cheney: Gore Drops Ball on Military
New York Times
August 27, 2000 Filed at 3:09 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/p/AP-Cheney.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In recruiting, retention, morale and combat readiness, the U.S. military has serious problems that Vice President Al Gore either doesn't understand or has ``chosen not to tell the truth about,'' Republican vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney said Sunday.
He admitted, however, that major cutbacks in the military began on his watch as the first post-Cold War defense secretary. And, in response to an irate letter from a Democratic senator, Cheney refused to back down from a campaign statement depicting the Army veteran Gore as being ''`AWOL' on Veterans' Issues.''
Cheney said he had not seen the statement and, until he does, cannot say whether it was appropriate to use the acronym that means ``absent without leave,'' a heinous military offense, to describe the Democratic presidential candidate. But, he said told ``Meet the Press'' host Tim Russert: ``I have not used that word. I don't think it's appropriate of you to attribute it to me.''
Cheney discussed military readiness on three Sunday talk shows.
``There is an enormous amount of evidence out there ... that the question in terms of readiness and morale, the problems with recruiting, problems with retention, that the military is in trouble today,'' he said on NBC.
On ABC's ``This Week,'' Cheney said: ``There are serious problems out there in respect to the overall quality of the force. There's no question that we've got a great military today, but it's headed in the wrong direction.''
Based on his discussions with military people, he said, ``either Al Gore doesn't know what's going on in the U.S. military, or he's chosen not to tell the truth about it.''
In response, Gore campaign spokesman Douglas Hattaway said the Republicans have lost all