------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
*FUSION BREAKTHROUGH STOPS PLASMA EROSION
*China trade bill clears a Senate hurdle
*Finnish MP's favour building more nuclear power
*Baghdad says U.S., British jets bomb southern Iraq
*France Warns Iraq on Weapons Inspections
*Israeli missile defense may be ready
*Russia Loses Its Treason Case Over Nuclear Whistle-Blower
*RUSSIA: KURSK WILL BE RAISED
*Russian court dismisses treason charge
*Ukraine: EU Money Sought For Nuclear Reactors
*Administration split over Lee case
*A backlash to 'bully' America
*A Case of Shame
*President, Reno disagree about handling of Wen Ho Lee case
*Clinton Says He Is `Troubled' by Handling of Scientist's Case

MILITARY
*Mexico To Question Argentine Man
*Iraq, Russia To Resume Flights
*British Army Probes Hostage Affair
*Colombian police sideline U.S. guns aboard helicopters
*Drug Submarine Proves Folly of War on Drugs
*Asia Pakistan Airplane Returns to JFK After Receiving Threats of a Bomb
*1 Killed in Northeastern India Ambush
*India's potential
*New millennium, new agenda
*Congressional speech is omen of improvement
*In Challenge, Iraqi Jet Flew Over Saudi Desert, U.S. Says
*NORTHERN IRELAND: REBEL ACTION
*North Korea's Kim postpones reciprocal visit to the South
*Polish arms workers stage strike in demand of overdue pay
*Putin Hints at 2001 Budget Changes
*NASA: Chandra clinches case for unexpected black hole discovery
*One big America-bashing moment
*Russia O.K.'s War Crimes Court Treaty
*RUSSIA: TREATY SIGNED
*China Slams US on Missile Defense
*Crisis at the U.N.
*US DOD: Contracts
*Litton Indus gets $31 mln Raytheon Army THAAD subcontract
*C-27J Spartan Test Flight Program Gets Third Aircraft
*Lockheed Martin to modernize, update military elec systems
*Interview with Northrop Grumman (NOC) CEO Kent Kresa
*Lockheed Martin Focuses Corporatewide Resources
*BTG on Team Awarded Joint Staff Information Technology Contract
*ATK Awarded $8 Million Contract to Produce Electronic Components
*U.S. Warships Arrive to Protect Aid Mission To East Timor
*US DOD: U.S. forces travel to Croatia for amphibious exercise

OTHER
*$14.5 M PROMOTES MOBILE EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS
*FUEL CELL ADVANCE: HYDROGEN STORAGE EFFICIENCY IMPROVED
*North American Native Nations Mount Utility Scale Wind Projects
*RECYCLING OF CONTAMINATED LAND GAINING ACCEPTANCE
*EPA TARGETS NEW ENGLAND CHILDREN EXPOSED TO TOXICS
*A New Conservation Century
*Mine ban signatories said to use them
*U.S. Underlines Its Determination on Police Reform
*White House to Revisit Chile Files That C.I.A. Wants to Block
*Diplomat, patriot, spy
*New Civil Trial Begins in Peru for Imprisoned New Yorker

ACTIVISTS
*Brits have tired of Blair telling them what's best for them.
*This is Not a Fuel Crisis, it's a Tax Revolt!
*British Fuel Blockade Ending, Though Shortages to Continue
*European Countries Resist Cutting Fuel Taxes
*French Farmer Is Sentenced to Jail for Attack on McDonald's
*Design Chosen for Memorial to Dr. King


-------- NUCLEAR

FUSION BREAKTHROUGH STOPS PLASMA EROSION

September 14, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-14-09.html

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico, A team of government and private researchers has discovered a way to keep fusion plasma from eroding walls inside tokamak fusion machines. The breakthrough could help make nuclear fusion energy into a usable electric power source. The tokamak is a large doughnut shaped magnetic confinement device used to produce fusion. "Tokamak" is an acronym derived from Russian words meaning "toroidal chamber and magnetic coil." The research team from the Department of Energy's (DOE) Sandia National Laboratories, General Atomics and the University of California at San Diego has developed a method of keeping energy producing fusion plasma from breaking down the divertor walls inside a tokamak, which contaminates the plasma and causes erosion deposits inside the machine.

Sandia researcher Bill Wampler places a graphite sample that was exposed to divertor plasma into a chamber to measure erosion (Photo courtesy by Randy Montoya, courtesy Sandia)

"Because today's research fusion machines do not operate for long periods [typically less than 10 minutes a day], erosion has not been a significant problem," said Bill Wampler, a Sandia researcher studying divertor wall erosion. "But when we eventually have a fusion reactor working all the time, erosion will be a big issue." The team showed that divertor erosion can be eliminated by splitting the plasma into sections using deuterium gas. The gas cools the plasma near the divertor surface but does not cool the core plasma in the main chamber. The lower temperature of the detached plasma reduces the energy hitting the divertor walls. "We still have much more work to do, but our preliminary results show detached plasma operation provides an effective way to eliminate erosion in the divertor. We may have resolved a major problem in fusion," Wampler said.

-------- china

China trade bill clears a Senate hurdle

Philadelphia Inquirer
Thursday, September 14, 2000
By Jackie Koszczuk
INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/09/14/national/CHINA14.htm
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/5/business/docs/018850.htm

WASHINGTON - In a crucial vote that virtually assures China the same trade status as the United States' longest and closest allies, the Senate yesterday rejected a list of conditions that could have killed the historic pact for the year.

The vote removed the final obstacle to the agreement Clinton reached with Beijing last year and reaffirmed the strength of the bipartisan coalition that has worked with Clinton on behalf of the deal.

Final Senate approval of the pact, which would put China on par with America's other preferred trading partners for the first time, is expected in the next few days.

By a vote of 65-32, the Senate defeated an amendment by Sens. Robert G. Torricelli (D., N.J.) and Fred Thompson (R., Tenn.) that would have made favorable trade status for China conditional on annual reports of its weapons sales. The stipulation was aimed at curbing China's policy of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and supplying countries such as Pakistan with nuclear-missile technology.

Supporters of the amendment argued that Chinese arms companies, most of which are controlled at least in part by the communist government, should be barred from the U.S. capital market if they peddle nuclear weapons, missiles and other arms. Opponents said that any conditions on the trade deal would be spurned by Beijing and would force another vote in the House, giving labor unions and other opponents of free trade with China a second chance to try to kill the agreement.

Pressure on Democrats by their allies in organized labor and the environmental movement was intense during House consideration of the trade pact in May, and only a heaping dose of Clinton persuasion and pressure from the business community kept enough Democrats on board. Major backers of the pact include U.S. corporations that view China's 1.25 billion people as a vast market for U.S.-made goods.

Those same lobbying forces were at work on senators debating whether to impose some trade conditions out of concern over China's weapons policies. Clinton, his top aides, and company chief executives worked the phones, calling wavering senators to urge them to set aside their worries and let the trade bill go through before Clinton leaves office.

"The most damaging aspect of this vote is the message it sends to China," Torricelli said after the Senate tabled his amendment, effectively killing it. "For all of our stated concern about proliferation, Congress chose to look the other way."

Thompson said, "It is inconceivable to me that we can address these trade-related issues and embrace our new trading partner, China, without also doing something about the fact that they are making this world, and particularly the United States, a more dangerous place to live."

The two senators cited government intelligence reports that show China and two other countries included in their amendment - Russia and North Korea - were developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and, in some instances, selling them abroad.

Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R., Del.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the amendment would have killed the trade pact for this year and would not have the desired effect in the end.

"In a global economy, shutting off China or Russia to U.S. markets will not change their behavior," he said. "They would simply go to Canada or Europe."

Supporters argued that without the trade deal, China could retaliate by refusing to open its markets to U.S. companies after it joins the World Trade Organization, the Geneva-based body that makes trade rules.

The trade deal would grant China the low tariffs and access to American markets enjoyed by most other countries without Beijing's having to submit to annual votes on its trade status, which is currently the case.

Jackie Koszczuk's e-mail address is jkoszczuk@krwashington.com

-------- finland

POLL - Finnish MP's favour building more nuclear power

FINLAND: September 14, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8178

HELSINKI - Support among Finnish parliament members towards building a fifth nuclear power plant in Finland slightly exceeds those against it, a recent survey by weekly magazine Seura showed yesterday.

The magazine said that out of 182 members of parliament it interviewed last week it found that 78 favoured building more nuclear power, while 76 were against it and 28 were unsure. There are 200 members in Finland's one-chamber parliament.

The survey showed that nuclear power was mainly favoured by men, while young females from the green or the leftist parties were against it.

Finnish industry is currently pondering whether or not to file for an application to build a fifth nuclear power reactor to reduce the need to import power.

Parliament is expected to start debating energy policy guidelines next spring at the latest when national legislation related to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change is due to be discussed.

Finland currently has four nuclear power plants, two in Olkiluoto, on the western coast of Finland, and two in Loviisa, on the southeastern coast, with the plans to build another power plan going against the currrent tide in Europe.

-------- iraq

Baghdad says U.S., British jets bomb southern Iraq

ABC News
09/14/2000
http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000914_2142.html

BAGHDAD, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Iraq said American and British planes had struck at targets in the south of the country on Thursday, but reported no casualities. An Iraqi military spokesman, quoted by the official Iraqi News Agency INA, said "enemy formations" had flown over the provinces of Basra, Missan, Dhi Qar, Muthanna and Qadissiya at 1 p.m. (0900 GMT), attacking civilian and service installations. He said Iraqi air defence units had fired on the jets and forced them to return to their bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There was no immediate comment on the report from the United States or Britain. Iraq said on Wednesday that its anti-aircraft defences had hit or shot down more than 10 Western planes patrolling no-fly zones in southern and northern Iraq. The no-fly zones were set up soon after the 1991 Gulf War to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shi"ite Muslims in the south from possible attacks by Iraqi government forces. The planes have bombed targets in the zones frequently since Baghdad stepped up its defiance of the restrictions in December 1998. Iraq says 311 civilians have been killed and 927 wounded in these attacks. The United States warned Iraq on Thursday not to threaten its neighbours after it accused Kuwait of stealing its oil and after an Iraqi aircraft violated Saudi air space a week ago.

----

France Warns Iraq on Weapons Inspections

New York Times
September 14, 2000
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/14NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 13 - France has warned Iraq not to expect any weakening of the Security Council's determination to send United Nations inspectors back into Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction before sanctions can be lifted.

France's foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, who has criticized the sanctions, nonetheless said today that he told Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, on Monday that it would be "a very serious mistake" to think that an erosion of the Council's resolve would lead it to lift the sanctions, which were imposed when Iraqi forces occupied Kuwait in 1990.

"I in fact met with Tariq Aziz the day before yesterday, and I told him the only solution for Iraq was to comply with Resolution 1284 and to cooperate," Mr. Védrine said during a breakfast interview with reporters.

The resolution, which the Security Council adopted last Dec. 17, created a new arms inspection plan for Iraq. The previous inspection system collapsed in December 1998, when American and British warplanes bombed Baghdad to punish President Saddam Hussein for failing to cooperate.

As an incentive for Baghdad, the resolution lifted a ceiling on the amount of oil that it could sell abroad to buy food and other essentials, and also relaxed controls on the import of some other supplies. Otherwise, the economic sanctions were kept in place.

Eleven of the 15 Security Council members voted for the resolution at the time. But France joined Russia, China and Malaysia in abstaining, prompting the Iraqis to infer that support for sanctions was waning. The split emboldened Iraq to reject the Council's resolution. United Nations officials have been concerned that Iraq keeps balking in hopes of forcing a further dilution or even lifting of sanctions. Baghdad has refused to allow arms inspectors back into the country, though the new inspection commission's executive chairman, Hans Blix, says they are ready to begin inspections.

Mr. Aziz recently met several other diplomats at the United Nations besides Mr. Védrine to assess the Security Council's mood. But Ewen Buchanan, Mr. Blix's spokesman, confirmed that "Aziz made no effort to come near Blix."

Mr. Védrine, after meeting with Mr. Aziz, said he foresaw no short- term change in Iraq's refusal to comply. "I regret that," he added.

He told reporters today that France had helped broker the 1999 resolution and had abstained from the vote because the resolution could have been improved. France, which maintains commercial and diplomatic relations with Iraq, continues to abide by the resolution, he said.

The French foreign minister today called the sanctions "primitive," and "a cruel measure" in their impact on ordinary Iraqis, and "completely absurd" economically.

Nonetheless, Mr. Védrine said, "we take the security concerns of Iraq's neighbors very seriously."

Kuwait's foreign minister, Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, urged in a speech to the General Assembly today that pressure be maintained on Iraq, which, he said, continued to reveal "non-peaceful intentions and policies of aggression" toward its neighbors.

"Indeed," he said, "it is regrettable that for 10 years now the government of Iraq has failed to meet its obligations under Security Council resolutions."

-------- israel

Israeli missile defense may be ready

CNN
September 14, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/09/14/israel.arrow.ap/index.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- In a successful test, an Israeli Arrow missile on Thursday intercepted and destroyed a missile launched off the Israeli coast, and the Arrow's developers said the largely U.S.-funded weapons system is ready for use.

Although the Arrow has hit missiles in previous tests, this was the first time it had intercepted a small, high speed missile head-on.

The target missile was launched from an F-15 warplane, which makes it more difficult to track and intercept. The Arrow was launched from the ground.

"The Arrow was fired at the target in a stable, precise manner until it hit and destroyed the target," said Daniel Peretz, head of the Arrow program at Israeli Aircraft Industries.

Peretz said the Arrow is now operational. "If one day, we will need it, the system is functioning," he told Israel radio.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak said the successful test strengthens "the strategic deterrent capability of the state of Israel."

The Arrow project dates to 1988, before Iraq demonstrated the need for it by pounding Israel with 39 Scud missiles during the 1991 Gulf War.

Although the Scuds carried only conventional warheads, they did extensive damage and demonstrated Israel's vulnerability to nuclear missiles if launched from Iraq and Iran, both hostile to the Jewish state.

Both also are believed to be trying to acquire a nuclear weapons capability.

Development of the Arrow is expected to cost more than $2 billion, with more than half the funding coming from the United States.

Critics of the project argue that it is prohibitively expensive and that no anti-missile defense system can stop all of the enemy's missiles.

They say the only effective defense against ballistic nuclear missiles is deterrence, meaning development of a second-strike capability, and they say that money should be spent in that area.

Israel's Defense Ministry said seven out of eight Arrow tests have been successful.

-------- russia

Russia Loses Its Treason Case Over Nuclear Whistle-Blower

New York Times
September 14, 2000
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/14RUSS.html

MOSCOW, Sept. 13 - As onlookers applauded from the gallery, the Supreme Court today rebuffed a final government plea to reopen a treason case against Aleksandr Nikitin, the former navy captain who gave nuclear opponents details of radioactive pollution by Russian submarines.

The decision ended - for good, apparently - the government's five-year prosecution of Mr. Nikitin, a pursuit that had become an international human rights and environmental issue.

It also gave support to President Vladimir V. Putin's claim that he is establishing supremacy of the law in a society that has operated mostly outside the rules since the collapse of the Soviet Union nine years ago.

Mr. Putin has suggested that Russia's environmental movement is a threat to national security and a tool of foreign interests. And it was during his tenure as head of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the K.G.B.'s domestic arm, that the government's campaign against Mr. Nikitin reached a head.

But the Kremlin stood aside earlier this year when the Supreme Court first ruled that the government had no case against Mr. Nikitin, and it seems to have stood aside again now when the court rejected prosecutors requests' to reopen the charges.

Today a jubilant Mr. Nikitin called the decision "a very, very small step toward creating a state ruled by law." One expert and former American diplomat in Russia, Thomas Graham of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, seconded that appraisal.

"The Supreme Court made an encouraging decision," he said in a telephone interview from Washington, "but there are a lot of other worrying signs that this might be the exception as opposed to the pattern in Russia."

Russia's progress toward democratic rule has fallen into doubt lately among some critics, who see a shift toward authoritarianism in the Kremlin's attempts to silence critical news media.

Nor is Mr. Nikitin the only environmental activist under legal attack. Grigory Pasko, a journalist for a naval newspaper in Russia's Pacific Fleet, was also acquitted last year of treason charges brought after he discussed the fleet's environmental and financial policies with Japanese journalists.

Prosecutors are seeking to reopen that case as well, although Mr. Pasko's lawyers argue that military censors had cleared all the information he discussed with the Japanese.

Supporters of both Mr. Pasko and Mr. Nikitin argue that the prosecutions show not only the continuing power of the Federal Security Service and the intelligence apparatus within Russian society, but also the service's refusal to recognize that the nation now operates under a more open political system.

The Federal Security Service arrested Mr. Nikitin in 1996 after he wrote reports for Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group, detailing radioactive pollution in the Arctic seas. He also reported on the Soviet Union's practice of dumping nuclear waste at sea from the 1960's through the 1980's, and on reactor safety systems aboard nuclear subs of the same class as the Kursk, which sank almost a month ago in the Barents Sea, killing 118 crewmen.

Government prosecutors imprisoned Mr. Nikitin for 10 months and charged him with espionage and high treason.

Mr. Nikitin and Bellona insisted that the information was unclassified and, in any case, did not threaten national security, arguments that eventually won over the judge in a trial in St. Petersburg City Court last year.

The Supreme Court affirmed that decision this year, and refused today to let the prosecutors try again.

Today the president of Bellona, Frederic Hauge, said the verdict showed Russians that "if you fight, you can win - and they need to see that in this country."

---

New York Times
September 14, 2000
World Briefing
Patrick E. Tyler
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/14BRIE.html

EUROPE RUSSIA: KURSK WILL BE RAISED Russia is not reconsidering its decision to raise the submarine Kursk from the Barents Sea, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said. He added that he was surprised by remarks by the minister for atomic energy, Yevgeny Adamov, who suggested that it might be safer to leave the Kursk and its twin-reactor power plant on the seabed indefinitely. Mr. Klebanov, who heads the commission looking into the disaster, said the sub would be raised after the dead are recovered this fall. (NYT)

---

Russian court dismisses treason charge

Washington Times
September 14, 2000
By David Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000914221127.htm

Russia's highest court yesterday ended the legal ordeal of environmentalist Aleksandr Nikitin by quashing a final attempt by the country's intelligence service to keep treason charges against the former naval officer alive.

Mr. Nikitin, whose cause has attracted international support, has battled federal prosecutors and the Federal Security Service, the direct successor to the KGB, since the publication in 1996 of his expose of the environmental dangers posed by more than 50 abandoned Russian nuclear subs in a remote shipyard near the border with Norway.

"I'm very happy," Mr. Nikitin, 47, told reporters outside the courtroom of the Presidium of the Russian Supreme Court. "This is a very, very small step toward creating a state ruled by law."

Mr. Nikitin's case and the issue of Russian nuclear controls shot into the headlines last month with the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk and the loss of its 118 crewmen.

Mr. Nikitin, who was in Washington while futile rescue efforts were under way, said the Kursk's onboard nuclear reactors could pose a fresh near-term threat to the Northern Sea, a charge Russia's military has denied.

Yesterday's court action "shows that the Russian courts are one part of the system that's actually functioning pretty well," said Thomas Jandl, director of the U.S. office of Bellona, the Norway-based environmental group that worked with Mr. Nikitin in compiling his 1996 report.

"The Kursk incident certainly helped our case because it showed the inherent problems in the system and that the government could not be trusted," Mr. Jandl said.

President Clinton in August praised Mr. Nikitin's work, and the State Department and lawmakers from both parties have expressed concern over the environmentalist's lengthy prosecution.

"This investigation will send a wrong message to the global business, environmental and human rights groups at a time when your government is seeking Western financial support," two senators and seven congressmen wrote in a July 25 letter of protest to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Federal Security Service, known in Russian as the FSB, charged that Mr. Nikitin, a former submarine officer, leaked secret information to foreigners in working with Bellona to compile the report.

Mr. Nikitin was jailed for more than a year and has been tried 13 separate times.

After a St. Petersburg court acquitted Mr. Nikitin of the treason charges in December, state prosecutors in May took the unusual step of trying to revive the case by arguing that the defendant's own rights had been violated in the investigation.

Prosecutors and the FSB sought a court ruling allowing them to gather more evidence in the case.

But the Presidium Court took just 30 minutes yesterday to affirm the acquittal.

Environmental policy has become contested ground under Mr. Putin, himself a former KGB agent.

A second former naval officer, Grigory Pasko, spent 20 months in jail on treason charges for giving Japanese journalists videotapes showing illegal dumping of nuclear waste by Russia's Pacific Fleet.

Mr. Putin has moved to clip the independence of Russia's leading governmental environmental agency, and the Ministry of Justice this year announced that all nongovernmental organizations, including environmental groups, must register with the government or disband.

Mr. Nikitin is helping organize a national drive to collect signatures for a referendum to re-establish an independent environmental agency and to enforce laws preventing the importation of foreign nuclear waste.

-------- ukraine

Ukraine: EU Money Sought For Nuclear Reactors

Radio Free Europe
14-09-00
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2000/09/F.RU.000914123458.html

Paris, 14 September 2000 (RFE/RL) - Officials from Ukraine and the EU opened a two-day summit in Paris. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk said yesterday that officials will press the EU for speedy payment of funds pledged by the West to build two nuclear reactors in return for closure of the Chornobyl nuclear plant. Only one of the four reactors at Chornobyl is still functioning. President Leonid Kuchma has agreed to a final shutdown in December in return for U.S. assurances of compensation by the West.

In 1995, the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations pledged to provide some $2.3 billion to pay for the complete closure of the Chornobyl plant. Of that, $1.5 billion was earmarked for construction of two replacement reactors at Rivne and Khmelnitsky. But the money has been held up due to reluctance among some European countries to fund what they consider to be Ukraine's unreliable nuclear industry.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico

Administration split over Lee case
Clinton finds Los Alamos prosecution not 'justified';
Reno won't apologize

MSNBC
09/14/00
http://www.msnbc.com/news/458022.asp?cp1=1

Wen Ho Lee greets friends Wednesday evening at a homecoming celebration at his next-door neighbor's house in White Rock, N.M. NBC NEWS AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - In a rare public rebuke of senior officials in his administration, President Bill Clinton said Thursday that the government's treatment of former Los Alamos laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee "can't be justified." Clinton's remarks came hours after Attorney General Janet Reno refused to apologize to Lee for his nine-month-plus detention on charges of breaching national security, and said she was "comfortable" with the way the case was handled.

CLINTON SAID he had long been troubled about the denial of bail for Lee, who was released in a plea bargain Wednesday by a federal judge who said the government's conduct had "embarrassed this entire nation."

"This whole thing was quite troubling to me," Clinton said.

He said it was very difficult to reconcile the government's positions "that one day he's a terrible risk to the national security and the next day they're making a plea agreement for an offense far more modest than what had been alleged."

"I don't think you can justify in retrospect keeping a person in jail without bail when you're prepared to make that kind of agreement," the president said, speaking with reporters outside the White House after a speech. "It just can't be justified."

Clinton also said he would consider granting clemency to Lee before leaving office.

WashPost: Lee to pursue suit against U.S.

The president did not say who bore responsibility for the key decisions in the case, and his spokesman later said the president's comments should not be read as a criticism directed at the Justice Department or federal prosecutors.

"I think we'll look to have more information on this, but I wouldn't see it as a blanket criticism of anyone," press secretary Joe Lockhart said, adding that Reno and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson retain Clinton's support.

The public criticism from the president came only hours after Reno refused to apologize to Lee for his detention.

LEE CALLED UNCOOPERATIVE

Reno, asked about the case at her weekly news briefing, said she wished "with all my heart and soul" that Lee early on had provided investigators with information about seven missing computer tapes that contained nuclear secrets.

"I think Dr. Lee, from the beginning, had the opportunity to answer this and I think now he needs to look to himself," rather than expect an apology from the U.S. government.

Lee was set free Wednesday by U.S. District Judge James Parker in Albuquerque, N.M. In a courtroom tongue lashing, Parker said government officials' handling of the case "embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."

The judge's criticism came as he accepted an agreement that freed Lee, who pleaded guilty to a single count of mishandling nuclear secrets. In exchange, the government dropped 58 other counts of breaching national security.

Reno said federal prosecutors "had tried from the beginning" to learn what Lee did with the tapes, onto which he acknowledged transferring data from a highly secure computer at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab.

'THERE WAS NO EXPLANATION'

"There was no explanation of what the man did with the information that was so sensitive," Reno said.

She said Lee likely would have avoided the jail time had he cooperated in assuring that the tapes had not fallen into unauthorized hands.

Federal prosecutors had long hoped that Lee "could tell us if he had conveyed any information from the tapes" and had suggested that if he was cooperative, "we would reconsider detention. In this instance, we have now what we tried to do then."

Lee has claimed all along that he destroyed the seven tapes.

Moran: The betrayal was at Justice

Lee, 60, a computer scientist at Los Alamos since 1980, was indicted in December on 59 counts of mishandling secrets, and on the government's insistence was refused bail. Prosecutors argued that freeing him might give him the opportunity to dispose of the tapes.

Reno went through a point-by-point defense of the government's handling of the case a day after she and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh released statements in which they emphasized that getting Lee to acknowledge having transferred the nuclear secrets was a top priority.

"I am comfortable with that," Reno said Thursday, referring to the plea bargain.

'TIME ... TO MOVE ON'

September 13, 2000 Scientist Wen Ho Lee is now prepared to get on with his life, NBC's George Lewis reports.

On Wednesday, the White House declined to comment on the judge's criticism. "It is time to close this chapter, find out what happened to the missing tapes and move on," spokesman Jake Siewert said.

In Washington, the Energy Department issued a one-paragraph statement: "Dr. Lee pleaded guilty to a felony admitting that he mishandled sensitive classified information. That speaks for itself."

Supporters and friends of Lee celebrated his freedom Wednesday night in his hometown of Los Alamos, home of the national laboratory where he once worked.

The diminutive, graying scientist was swamped by a crowd of about 150 supporters, who waved flags and signs and sang "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" in the backyard of his neighbors.

"The last nine months were pretty tough for me," Lee told the crowd, "but I survived."

Earlier, in a brief statement to reporters outside the courthouse, Lee thanked supporters and said he intended to go fishing in the days ahead.

In court, he read a statement in which he admitted using an unsecured computer to download onto a tape a document relating to national defense. He said he knew his possession of the tape outside of the top-secret area where he worked was unauthorized.

He then pleaded guilty to a charge of "having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over documents and writings related to national defense."

Judge Parker said he was bound by the plea agreement to sentence Lee to 278 days, one day less than he already has served in solitary confinement. After fining Lee $100, the judge ordered him released.

JUDGE'S UNUSUAL APOLOGY

The judge expressed dismay that the plea agreement prevented disclosure of information that would have shed light on the reasons for the detention. Lee's supporters have said he was singled out as a Chinese-American.

"I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner in which you were held in custody by the executive branch," Parker told Lee.

Lee supporter: Bittersweet victory

Parker, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, said he did not blame the prosecutors. "It is only the top decision-makers in the executive branch of the government, in particular the Department of Justice and the Department of Energy," he said. "They have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."

Prosecutors rejected the judge's criticism at an impromptu news conference outside the courthouse.

Assistant U.S. Attorney George Stamboulidis said Lee was amassing "a personal library" of nuclear defense secrets and asked rhetorically, "Which Americans among us would want us to turn our backs on that?"

U.S. Attorney Norman Bay took issue with allegations by Lee's attorneys that their client was a victim of racial profiling.

'THIS CASE WAS NOT ABOUT RACE'

"This case was not about race," he said. "It was about the actions of a man who mishandled huge amounts of classified data."

Under the plea bargain, prosecutors dropped nearly 40 counts alleging Lee acted "with intent to harm the United States" - charges that could have landed him in prison for life.

Lee, who was not placed on probation, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. He will now submit to questioning under oath, take a polygraph and tell, in detail, why he made the tapes and what he did with them. Three other tapes that Lee allegedly downloaded were previously recovered.

If he lies to investigators, the government could revive the original 59-count indictment against him, Bay said.

The agreement also states that all pending motions in the case are to be withdrawn, including a defense motion seeking government documents in an attempt to show that Lee was the victim of racial profiling.

Some law professors have called for an investigation of the government's handling of the case. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said earlier this week that he will resume a Senate subcommittee investigation that he began and then suspended.

Lee also could face repercussions from the charges. Shortly after his release, he was expected to be served with a lawsuit filed by Notra Trulock, the former head of counterintelligence at the Energy Department.

Trulock, who headed the initial investigation of Lee, will claim in the lawsuit that Lee and others defamed him by accusing him of racial profiling, attorneys familiar with the suit told NBC News.

LEE FREE TO PURSUE LAWSUIT

While his guilty plea ends his criminal case, Lee can still pursue a lawsuit he filed alleging that Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and high-ranking officials at the FBI conspired to violate his privacy through leaks to the media. Defense sources said in advance of Wednesday's hearing that any decision to pursue the case would be up to Lee.

U.S. computers vulnerable, GAO says

The plea agreement came as the case against Lee was entering a critical phase.

The government was due to turn over documents to Judge Parker this week in response to defense allegations that prosecutors had targeted Lee because he is Chinese-American.

That was one concern the government considered in reaching a plea deal. The other: a hearing scheduled within a week to determine which, if any, classified documents could be used in the trial. The government had fought hard to bar introduction of classified documents.

Parker initially ruled in Lee's favor on both issues.

Sources said that Parker pushed both sides to settle the case. He had even required the two sides to participate in an extraordinary mediation hearing two weeks ago to move such a deal forward.

NBC News correspondents Bob Kur, George Lewis, NBC News producer Robert Windrem, MSNBC.com's Mike Brunker and Alanna Stack and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

---

USA A backlash to 'bully' America
Other nations increasingly unite in criticizing US clout, as Washington wields unparalleled power on world stage.

Christian Science Monitor
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2000
Justin Brown (brownj@csps.com) Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - Rarely in history has a country been as powerful as the United States is today. And that may be taking a toll on the rest of the world.

While the US expands its global reach - militarily, economically, and culturally - other countries are increasingly growing wary of US dominance, and seeking more balance in a world they see as unipolar. US rivals like Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba have been trumpeting those concerns for years. But their calls of late have become more focused and unified.

"Just as there should not be only one color in the world, so there should not be only one civilization, one social system, one development model, or one set of values in the world," said Chinese President Jiang Zemin at last week's United Nations summit, where complaints of the US overreaching its bounds created an undercurrent of unrest.

Fears of US dominance have also taken firmer root in more America-friendly countries that are gradually trying to assert themselves, such as Japan, India, and France.

Over the past year, for example, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine has begun to refer to the US as a "hyper-power."

Some developing countries, furthermore, complain that they are too often bullied by the US and European Union, which they accuse of trying to dictate the pace and means of their development. Those laments were heard at last year's meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, and again this week at a World Economic Forum meeting in Melbourne, Australia.

Part of the reason for the growing resentment against the US is its continued military presence around the globe. The US-led interventions - in Yugoslavia more than a year ago and ongoing in Iraq - haven't helped.

But other issues are causing grumbling as well, including the recent US decision to help fund Colombia's drug war against rebels in the south, a topic that drew strong criticism at a meeting of Latin American countries in Brazil last month.

Then there's national missile defense. Both allies and potential rivals are concerned at the prospect of either a US advantage in strategic weaponry or a renewed arms race. President Clinton deferred a decision to deploy the system, but development continues, and the next president will have to address the subject.

The US has also rejected popularly supported international initiatives, including the formation of a permanent international court to try accused war criminals, an agreement to ban nuclear-weapons testing, and a proposal to outlaw landmines.

Patrick Cronin, a national-security expert at the US Institute for Peace in Washington, says it's natural for the rest of the world to rally against a nation when it gets too strong.

"You can get away with unilateralism for only the briefest of times," he says. "You can't have it both ways - pushing for greater globalization but not supporting things like an international court or the United Nations."

The hegemony problem is likely to be a crucial foreign-policy issue for the nation's next chief executive to confront.

"One of the most important things the next president will have to do is strengthen our alliances and explain to other countries why our presence is needed around the world," says John Hulsman, a foreign-policy expert at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.

Mr. Hulsman likens the role of the US to that of a chairman of the board - someone who can call the shots, but who can't get anything done without support.

Yet in recent months other countries have shown that they are willing to take on international issues without US help.

Japan and Russia recently met to try to resolve their ongoing dispute over the Kurile Islands, which were taken by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. Until recently it would have been unthinkable for such a meeting to take place without some form of outside mediation - probably by the US.

In one of the world's most dangerous nuclear flashpoints, Kashmir, an increasingly assertive India is insisting that the US keep out of any negotiation with rival Pakistan (See story).

Even Germany, a strong ally, is beginning to demand more of a say in world affairs.

"A state cannot simply stand back from its strategic potential, from the size of its population and economic power, and ignore its geopolitical situation," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said recently in an appeal to get his country a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Japan and India have also appealed for permanent Security-Council seats.

Still, it is apparent that a strong US role is essential in some parts of the world.

North Korean President Kim Jong Il recently surprised observers by telling South Korean President Kim Dae Jung that US troops were needed on the peninsula, even as tensions decreased - in part to prevent a power vacuum.

Also, analysts say, it is apparent that the US is the only country with the strength and reputation to broker a deal between the Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East.

"The need for American mediation won't go away," says Thomas Smerling, the Washington director of the Israel Policy Forum. "The US is the only country with the trust of both sides."

The URL for this page is: http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/09/14/fp1s1-csm.shtml

---

A Case of Shame

Los Angeles Times
Thursday, September 14, 2000
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20000914/t000086680.html

Wen Ho Lee suffered an ordeal by slander, based almost entirely on a bigoted assumption. Washington has troubling questions to answer.

The government's case against nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee has collapsed utterly and ignominiously, leaving a legacy of deeply troubling questions about federal investigative methods and the Justice Department's callous indifference to a suspect's civil rights.

An agreement between prosecutors and Lee's lawyers has led to 58 of the 59 felony counts against the former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist being dropped. Lee pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of unlawfully downloading national defense information--a far cry from sending nuclear secrets to China or others. Even former CIA head John M. Deutch is being investigated for similar downloading infractions. Instead of facing life in prison upon conviction of any of the 39 most serious charges against him, Lee has been sentenced to the nine months he spent behind bars.

Just days ago the government ominously insisted that national security would be imperiled if Lee were granted bail. That putative threat suddenly evaporated. On Wednesday, Lee was a free man. He left court after hearing Judge James A. Parker's warranted apology for the "unfair manner" in which he had been treated and the judge's no less merited excoriation of the Justice and Energy departments for having "embarrassed this entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."

The case against Lee grew out of revelations of extraordinarily lax security at Los Alamos and the possibility that China had acquired some major U.S. nuclear secrets. But the inquiry took an ugly twist as federal investigators focused their efforts on trying to find evidence to support the conclusion they had already reached, that Lee had to be the guilty party.

Through leaks, Lee was vilified as a master spy responsible for stealing the "crown jewels" of U.S. nuclear weapons designs. It was an ordeal by slander, based not on tangible evidence but almost entirely on a bigoted assumption: If China was spying, surely it must be doing so through ethnic Chinese.

But in the end Lee, a naturalized American citizen born in Taiwan, was never charged with espionage, because while espionage might be inferred it could not be proved or even discovered. The government was unable to sustain a single allegation that Lee had acted "with intent to harm the United States."

Lee did break the law by mishandling classified data. As part of his agreement with the government he will cooperate with federal investigators as they seek to confirm his claim that he destroyed seven missing tapes of computer data.

There's no question that Lee became a prime suspect chiefly because of racist suspicions. And there's no doubt, as the FBI's lead investigator conceded, that during bail hearings the prosecution misled the court about the solidity of its case against Lee. These things must not be forgotten.

The government bungled this case miserably. And its treatment of Lee, who was kept in solitary confinement and usually shackled hand and foot whenever he was let out of his cell, was inexcusable. At one point a government source admitted that Lee could be convicted only if he confessed. The treatment he suffered was aimed at forcing that confession.

When such things happen in China, as they do all the time, Beijing is rightly castigated by the West. It's a greater cause for outrage when they happen in the U.S. justice system, which holds itself to be fair to all.

---

President, Reno disagree about handling of Wen Ho Lee case

Kansas City Star
09/14/00
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
The Associated Press
http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/home.pat,local/3774c279.914,.html

WASHINGTON -- In a rare public disagreement, President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno expressed opposite views Thursday about the Wen Ho Lee case.

Clinton said Lee's long detention "just can't be justified," a few hours after Reno refused to apologize and said the confinement was the former Los Alamos nuclear scientist's own fault.

Lee, 60, went free Wednesday after pleading guilty to one count of mishandling weapons secrets.

Reno told her weekly news conference that Lee could have avoided nine months of detention by agreeing earlier to plead guilty and tell the government what he did with the secrets.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said "the safety of the nation demands that we take this important step" under which Lee was sentenced to the 278 days he had served. The government dropped 58 other counts.

Clinton on Thursday expressed an opinion far closer to that of U.S. District Judge James Parker, who said Lee's detention "embarrassed our entire nation."

Clinton, who met with Justice Department officials at the White House before Lee's indictment last Dec. 10, said he found it difficult in retrospect to reconcile how the government could "keep someone in jail without bail, argue right up to the 11th hour that they're a terrible risk, and then turn around and make that sort of plea agreement.

"It just can't be justified.'...I, too, am quite troubled by it," Clinton said.

Later, White House press secretary Joe Lockhart told reporters that Clinton's comments should not be read "as a blanket criticism of anyone." Lockhart said Reno and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson retain Clinton's support.

On David Letterman's late-night show, Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee, refused to say whether the Justice Department should apologize. He said he did not want to comment on an ongoing legal proceeding, but said "the underlying problem was very serious because nuclear secrets have to be protected absolutely and completely."

Republicans who have spent months calling Reno too timid in investigating leaks from Los Alamos criticized her for being too aggressive with Lee.

Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican, said Reno and Richardson would resign if they "had any honor and any shame." Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who is leading a subcommittee investigation of the case, said it appeared that the Justice Department and the FBI "threw the book at Dr. Lee to make up for their own failings."

Earlier, Reno said she was comfortable with the government's handling of the case.

"I'm not embarrassed" she said. "I think Dr. Lee, from the beginning, had the opportunity to answer this, and I think now he needs to look to himself," rather than expect a government apology.

The government "tried from the beginning" to win Lee's cooperation to help verify his claim that he had destroyed seven of 10 computer tapes he made of nuclear weapons data. "We now have what we sought then," Reno said.

Lee now acknowledges illegally transferring the data from a highly secure computer at the nuclear weapons lab into personal files on an unsecure computer where it was "accessible to intruders, hackers or other governments who could hack into that computer," Reno said.

"With all my heart and soul," Reno said, she wished "Dr. Lee had come forward, said, `This is what I did with the information...(and) I'll...try to give you as much information as possible to permit you to confirm and corroborate it.' "

If he had done so, the government would have reconsidered detention and the charges, Reno said.

The judge said Wednesday that he wished prosecutors had taken up an offer from Lee's attorneys that arrived the day of his indictment to submit to a polygraph test "to confirm that he did not provide the tapes to any third party."

Prosecutor George Stamboulidis said the government did pursue it but concluded that it was "cosmetic, not a real offer."

Defense attorneys would allow only two questions, Stamboulidis said: Did Lee destroy the tapes? Did Lee pass them to others?

"How can you test his credibility with only two questions?" he said. "He always held the key to his jail cell the same way he held the fate of the nation in those tapes."

Stamboulidis disputed the judge's contention that he was misled about the seriousness of the case against Lee.

The data Lee removed came from 1,000 missile tests and was classified as restricted from its very creation, Stamboulidis said. It existed in only two government labs behind fences and armed guards until Lee copied it "into a personal library...in a `have documents, will travel' position."

As part of the plea bargain, the government has received three written sworn statements from Lee with more detail than he provided before, Stamboulidis said. Those are being checked through computer forensics and other witnesses.

Lee also agreed to more questioning, polygraph tests acceptable to the government, and to having the entire indictment reinstated along with new perjury charges if he lies.

"If he is caught in a lie, a whole world of horribles befalls him," Stamboulidis said.

He said a still-sealed rider governing Lee's movements gives the government assurance he will not flee the country.

---

Clinton Says He Is `Troubled' by Handling of Scientist's Case

New York Times
September 14, 2000
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/national/15CND-RENO.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 -- President Clinton said today that he was "quite troubled" by the Government's conduct in the Wen Ho Lee case hours after Attorney General Janet Reno defended the way the criminal case against the former Los Alamos scientist was handled.

Mr. Clinton's remarks, a stinging and highly unusual rebuke of the Justice Department, came a day after Dr. Lee was freed. His release after nine months was part of an agreement under which he pleaded guilty to a single count of what had been a 59-count felony indictment accusing him of illegally putting at risk vital nuclear secrets.

In comments to reporters, Mr. Clinton said he had long questioned whether Federal prosecutors had adequate grounds to keep Mr. Lee in jail pending his trial. "I always had reservations about the claims that were being made denying him bail," Mr. Clinton said.

"So the whole thing was quite troubling to me and I think it's very difficult to reconcile the two positions that one day he's a terrible risk to the national security and the next day they're making a plea agreement for an offense far more modest than what had been alleged," Mr. Clinton said.

"I don't think you can justify in retrospect keeping a person in jail without bail when you're prepared to make that kind of agreement," the president said, speaking with reporters outside the White House after a speech. "It just can't be justified and so I too am quite troubled by it."

Ms. Reno, who spoke with reporters before Mr. Clinton's comments, expressed no regret over the Government's tactics even though the judge in the case, James A. Parker of U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, said the nuclear scientist deserved an apology for the government's abusive and unfair treatmnt of Dr. Lee.

Ms. Reno said, "I think Dr. Lee had the opportunity from the beginning to resolve this matter and he chose not to and I think he must look to himself."

Ms. Reno said she wished "with all my heart and soul" that Mr. Lee had agreed earlier to provide investigators with information, which he must as part of the plea agreement, about seven missing computer tapes onto which he transferred nuclear secrets.

Ms. Reno's defense of Federal prosecutors did little to quell the uproar over a case whose collapse has turned into a debacle of disastrous proportions for Ms. Reno, F.B.I. Director Louis J. Freeh and Bill Richardson, the Energy Secretary who favored Mr. Lee's indictment.

The Government's abandonment of a case officials had once compared to nuclear espionage shattered the calm that had settled over the Justice Department and the F.B.I. in the waning months of the Clinton presidency.

Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh, whose once close relationship has frayed over a series of internal battles, were forced to once again close ranks and defend their actions.

In Moscow today for meetings with Russian law enforcement officials, Mr. Freeh refused to discuss the Lee case when asked about it by reporters.

After the guilty plea, Mr. Freeh said that the nuclear scientist had pleaded guilty to a serious offense. Mr. Freeh said much of the information was highly sensitive, disputing some weapons experts who have criticized the Government for vastly exaggerating the importance of the information that Mr. Lee removed from the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory.

"While some of the information was not classified," Mr. Freeh's statement said, "the government was prepared to prove that much of it was highly classified nuclear weapons information."

Senior officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department had feuded over the Lee case for years, but it was the law enforcement agency's belief that Mr. Lee was a spy for Beijing, prodded by Energy Department officials, who drove the case forward from the start.


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

Mexico To Question Argentine Man

New York Times
September 14, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mexico-Argentine-Arrested.html

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- A man accused of torture during Argentina's military dictatorship will be questioned in Mexico about the deaths of 15 French people, including two nuns, the French Embassy said Wednesday.

Ricardo Miguel Cavallo was arrested last month in Mexico after five former political prisoners identified him as their alleged torturer. He is being held in a Mexico City prison while Spanish officials proceed with an extradition request.

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who is investigating human rights abuses under the former military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina, has accused Cavallo of torture, terrorism, car theft and forgery.

In addition, investigators in France had asked Mexican officials to investigate whether Cavallo had anything to do with the death of 15 French citizens in Argentina between 1976 and 1983.

French Embassy spokesman Vicent Petit said Wednesday that Cavallo will be interrogated in Mexico about the deaths. However, he declined to release any additional information, including when the interrogation would take place.

Cavallo has admitted serving in Argentina's military, but denied the charges against him.

He was serving as director of Mexico's private National Registry of Motor Vehicles, but the company announced his replacement after his detention. The registry has been criticized by many in Mexico for charging too much to register cars.

Garzon is the same judge who issued the warrant that kept former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet under house arrest in London for 16 months. He has brought charges against officials for the deaths of Spaniards in both Argentina and Chile.

At least 9,000 Argentines vanished during the country's seven-year military dictatorship, which ended in 1983. Human rights groups put the figure closer to 30,000.

---

Iraq, Russia To Resume Flights

Washington Post
Thursday, Sept. 14, 2000; 9:23 a.m. EDT
By Waiel Faleh
Associated Press Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000914/aponline092342_000.htm

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq and Russia are in discussions to resume air travel between the two countries, officials at both national airlines said Thursday, but it is uncertain when commercial flights will resume.

The state-run al-Thawra daily on Thursday quoted Pavel Piryatku, who it identified as a regional director of the Russian official airline, Aeroflot, as saying flights will begin next month.

In Moscow, Aeroflot spokeswoman Yulia Maryashkina confirmed that the company was considering resuming flights to Iraq, but would not specify when. Another Aeroflot official, who refused to be identified, said no specific time for the resumption of flights has been set, and that Aeroflot is still engaged in complex negotiations with Iraq on the issue.

The United States, Britain and the U.N. Sanctions Committee maintain that civil flights to and from Iraq constitute an economic resource whose reinstatement is a breach of the sanctions in place since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

Russia and France, Iraq's strongest allies on the U.N. Security Council, say the council never adopted a specific text banning all flights to and from Iraq. Baghdad also argues that there are no U.N. resolutions governing the 1991 Persian Gulf War cease-fire that prevent civilian planes from flying in and out of the country.

Aeroflot issued a statement Thursday, saying that under pre-Gulf War agreements with Iraq, "Aeroflot has the right to carry out regular flights between Moscow and Baghdad." The airline insisted there was no formal U.N. ban on passenger air traffic, but noted the U.S. and British interpretation.

"Despite the situation that has formed around Iraq, Aeroflot at the present time is considering issues of long-term cooperation," said the statement.

Russia's Vnukovskiye Airline has signed papers with Iraqi Airways ahead of plans to make regular flights to Baghdad, according to a report by Russian news agency ITAR-Tass earlier this week.

Iraq's Saddam International Airport was last used for commercial flights hours before the outbreak of the 1991 Gulf War. Since then, only a few planes have landed, mainly carrying humanitarian aid. The airport was officially reopened for business in August.

Before the Gulf War, Iraq deposited its civilian fleet in Jordan, Iran, Tunisia and Mauritania. Baghdad also smuggled its warplanes to Iran, which took possession of the jet fighters when the war broke out.

Iraq has been denied U.N. authorization to return its civilian planes. The only plane now in use is an old Russian transport IL-76 plane that has transported Iraqi pilgrims to Saudi Arabia for the last three years.

U.N. resolutions say the sanctions are to remain in place until Baghdad complies with demands to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction.

-------- britain

British Army Probes Hostage Affair

NewsEdge
September 14, 2000
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY
Associated Press Writer
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=h0913050.800&level3=788&date=20000914

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) via NewsEdge Corporation - Britain plans to launch a military inquiry into how 11 of its soldiers were captured last month by a renegade faction of the Sierra Leonean army called the West Side Boys.

The announcement Tuesday came two days after a daring raid by 150 British paratroopers freed six of the hostages and a Sierra Leonean soldier. The other five hostages had been released more than a week earlier.

Lt. Cmdr. Tony Cramp, spokesman for Britain's 250-strong military contingent in the war-torn west African nation, said the probe ``is not so much to take disciplinary action against the men'' as to figure out better ways to protect the British troops. The group is training Sierra Leone's shattered defense force to fight rebels.

Cramp did not say how long the probe would take or when results would be made public.

Meanwhile, a British soldier speaking on condition of anonymity said Tuesday that a 14-year-old civilian also held captive by the West Side Boys had been killed during Sunday's rescue mission.

One British paratrooper was killed and between 12 and 14 others were wounded in the mission, British military officials said. Twenty-six members of the West Side Boys faction were killed, and at least 18 others, including the faction leader, were captured.

The British hostages had been held since Aug. 25, when they were seized in Sierra Leone's Occra Hills, some 45 miles east of Freetown, the capital.

Circumstances surrounding their capture remain murky. British officials have not said why the soldiers had driven three vehicles with mounted guns into renegade territory, several miles from the nearest highway patrolled by U.N. peacekeepers.

Journalists have not been allowed to talk to the freed hostages.

The West Side Boys are a well-armed but ill-disciplined group that has, at times, fought alongside both the government of President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and the main rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Tuesday in New York that a total of 29 West Side Boys, including two child soldiers, had surrendered and handed in their weapons and ammunition to the U.N. mission in Masiaka, about 45 miles east of the capital, on Monday and Tuesday.

Eckhard said Masiaka was still tense following the weekend rescue operation. Nigerian soldiers in the U.N. force had come under attack elsewhere overnight by small arms fire from suspected regrouped members of the West Side Boys, he said. No casualties were reported.

Sierra Leone's RUF rebels have killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians and systematically mutilated many more since the country's civil war began in 1991.

-------- colombia

Colombian police sideline U.S. guns aboard helicopters

Washington Times
September 14, 2000
By Jerry Seper
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000914221748.htm

Colombian police have suspended the use of four machine guns they obtained from the United States for use aboard Black Hawk helicopters in the drug war, but U.S. officials yesterday said problems will be fixed and the weapons should be back in service shortly.

"These weapons have shifted the balance of power on the battlefield and are critical in protecting the airborne crews and their $15 million U.S.-financed helicopters," said John Mackey, spokesman for Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman, New York Republican, who led efforts to supply the Colombian drug-eradication effort.

Mr. Mackey said the .50-caliber machine guns, which have proven effective in penetrating the dense Colombian jungle, already are operational on 34 Colombian Air Force Black Hawk helicopters and have been used for years "without a problem."

He said the four aboard the Colombian National Police helicopters were not installed by the gun's manufacturer, General Dynamics Corp., as had been the case on the Colombian Air Force craft. He said the firm sent a team to Colombia this week and has said the weapons will be operational shortly.

Mr. Mackey said a preliminary analysis showed the guns were improperly installed, adding that two different machine-gun systems were placed aboard the helicopters - one using AC current and the other using DC current.

"More than 5,000 Colombian police have been killed in the last 10 years and several captured because of a lack of adequate defensive weapons," Mr. Mackey said. "We can't afford not to make sure they have the equipment they need."

Police officials said this week the four guns, purchased by the administration for $2.1 million, threatened to "eat up our budget . . . faster than it could possibly chew up narcoterrorists." They said the triple-barrel weapons were "temperamental" to use, adding that they were so heavy they threatened to "tip the aircraft dangerously forward."

Use of the Gatling guns was proposed by Mr. Gilman, chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, and Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana Republican and chairman of the House Government Reform Committee. Both have accused the administration of supplying Colombia with inadequate and unsafe equipment.

This week's suspension was not the first time the Colombian police had responded to problems with equipment obtained from the United States. In June, the police agency said it would have to suspend its use of Black Hawk helicopters because the State Department could not find new .50- caliber ammunition to replace the unsafe, half-century-old ammo it received last year. That warning came at a time when the police have seen dramatic increases in the eradication of opium fields.

In May, The Washington Times reported that the State Department had sent 17 million rounds of half-century-old ammunition to Colombia to use in machine guns aboard the Black Hawk helicopters despite warnings the rounds were unsafe and could injure those who fired them. The .50-caliber ammunition was manufactured in 1952 for the Korean War, but forwarded to the Colombian police for use in the .50-caliber guns.

The ammunition was approved by the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement despite a written warning by the maker of the Gatling guns, General Dynamics Armament Systems, that .50-caliber ammunition made before 1983 "is suspect and should not be used in the . . . machine gun."

The firm said only .50-caliber ammunition manufactured after 1983 should be used "in order to maintain gun performance and reliability." The ammunition was manufactured by Twin Cities Arsenal and sent to Colombia in boxes still dated Aug. 20, 1952.

The U.S. aid package was aimed at helping Colombia win back some of the more than 30 percent of the country held by the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish acronym FARC. The regions under FARC control, mostly in southern Colombia, supply most of the cocaine and much of the heroin coming to the United States.

-------- drug war

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS, UNBELIEVABLE NEWS
Drug Submarine Proves Folly of War on Drugs

THE LIBERATOR ONLINE
September 15, 2000
Vol. 5, No. 17 Circulation: 46,447 in 91 countries
Published by the Advocates for Self-Government.
by James W. Harris
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=b9ljj0knptp9q

Wednesday, September 6, 2000 should go down in history as the date that everyone finally realized the War on Drugs will never, ever work.

On that date, police in Colombia stumbled onto a half-built submarine - being assembled for drug smugglers.

The sub was found in a warehouse outside the capitol, Bogota - 7,500 feet up in the Andes Mountain. Fully 210 miles from the nearest seaport.

The sub was 100 feet long, extremely strong, and very high-tech. Finished, it would have been capable of crossing entire oceans, submerging fully 100 meters under the surface, and rising anywhere to drop off up to 200 tons of cocaine.

Even the Colombian navy admits it lacks the expertise to build a sub of such quality. A Navy expert described it as "unmistakably of superb naval construction." Clues indicate Russian engineers may have been involved, and Americans as well.

Even veteran Drug Warriors were stunned at the discovery. Smugglers have used passenger ships, planes and tunnels to smuggle drugs... but no one had ever suspected something like this. The warehouse was empty, and no arrests were made.

The tremendous profits of drug smuggling - a result of Drug Prohibition, of course - have created the incentive for such innovations, and provide the funding. And as long as Drug Prohibition continues, there will be huge profits to be made from meeting that demand... and people willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make the extraordinary profits.

(Source: Associated Press, September 8 2000)

The U.S. Drug War Gulag

A study by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) reports that the United State has almost 500,000 of its citizens incarcerated on non-violent drug charges. The study is entitled "Poor Prescription: The Costs of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the United States."

The study estimates that there are 458,131 non-violent drug offenders behind bars in the U.S. For perspective, that is far more than the entire prison population of the European Union *for all crimes combined* (356,626) -- and the EU has 100 million more citizens than the U.S.

While the U.S. has only 5% of the world's population, it has 25% of the total number of prisoners in the entire world - two million of the eight million prisoners worldwide. The Drug War plays a major role in this.

Of the almost $40 billion the U.S. will spend on prisons and jails in the year 2000, $9.4 billion is to imprison those 458,131 nonviolent drug offenders.

There are astounding racial disparities. Black Americans are being imprisoned for drug offenses at a rate 14 times that of white Americans. The numbers are even worse for young drug offenders. Young whites are incarcerated at a rate of 30 per 100,000; young blacks 511 per 100,000. (1996 figures.)

Every year since 1988, the number of drug offenders imprisoned has exceeded the number of violent offenders behind bars.

(Sources: Justice Policy Institute; Drug Policy Foundation)

Conservatives on Drug Legalization

"it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We all agree on movement towards legalization, even though we may differ on just how far."

-- the editors of America's leading conservative magazine (founded by William F. Buckley Jr.), National Review, February 12, 1996.

-------- india/pakistan

Asia Pakistan Airplane Returns to JFK After Receiving Threats of a Bomb

Wall Street Journal
September 14, 2000
Business and Finance -
Associated Press

NEW YORK -- A jet carrying Pakistan's ruler and 120 other people bound for England and Pakistan was forced to return to John F. Kennedy International Airport after a bomb threat.

No injuries were reported. The threat was received by telephone after Pakistan International Airlines Flight 722 left the airport Wednesday night, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Alan Hicks said.

The plane bound for Manchester, England, and then Karachi, Pakistan, turned around and landed without incident.

Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was on the plane, according to Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. Ms. Lodhi, who was with Mr. Musharraf in New York, said the flight was expected to be delayed three to four hours.

A call Wednesday night to a 911 dispatcher in New York warned that three bombs had been placed on the plane and would detonate upon takeoff, Mr. Hicks said. The call was received as the plane was in position to take off, Mr. Hicks added.

The pilot was informed of the threat, but decided it was safe to take off because the plane and luggage had already been swept by bomb-sniffing dogs, Mr. Hicks said. As the plane was flying near Boston, the pilot decided that the aircraft should be re-examined and returned to Kennedy Airport. When it landed in New York, it was moved to a remote area of the airport's tarmac, and all passengers were taken off the plane, Mr. Hicks said.

Authorities said the jet and the luggage would be checked again by dog teams for explosives. The passengers were expected to re-board the plane once that process was completed, Mr. Hicks said.

Mr. Musharraf took over the leadership of Pakistan in October 1999, after the military deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup.

Mr. Musharraf has vowed to cleanse the country's politics of corruption before holding elections -- a decision that has been widely welcomed by people in Pakistan, though it has drawn criticism abroad. Pakistan's Supreme Court has given the military-led government three years to complete the task and return the country to democracy.

---

1 Killed in Northeastern India Ambush

Associated Press
September 14, 2000 Filed at 9:26 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-India-Violence.html

GUAHATI, India (AP) -- Ten policemen and a prisoner they were escorting were killed Wednesday when their convoy was ambushed by suspected armed guerrillas in northeastern India, the Press Trust of India said.

The suspects are thought to be National Socialist Council guerrillas, who have been fighting the federal government demanding a separate homeland in Nagaland, an Indian state on the border with Myanmar, also known as Burma.

The group reached a cease-fire with the Indian government in 1997.

The separatists allege that they are neglected by the federal government and their indigenous culture is under threat.

More than 25,000 people have been killed since the insurgency began in 1948.

In other violence Wednesday, nine people were shot and killed when members of an outlawed communist group attacked a village in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

Six Muslims and three tribals were gunned down at Nagpuri village by heavily armed Maoist Communist Center guerrillas, police said.

The Maoist Communist Center and other left wing groups have been trying to organize the poor and landless laborers to fight against the tyranny of wealthy landlords in Bihar and other parts of north and eastern India.

Wednesday's killings was the first major strike since 34 low-caste villagers were massacred by an upper-caste militia in Miapur village of the state in May.

---

India's potential

Washington Times
September 14, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-house-200091419138.htm

When Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee talks with President Clinton tomorrow, he will not be begging. The United States is India's largest export destination, with $12.79 billion in two-way trade in 1999 alone. And his country doesn't just deal in manufactured products. His countrymen now number 1.5 million in America, with an average mean family income of over $60,000. But the United States is still making working visas difficult for Indians and has sanctions on export privileges due to India's nuclear tests in 1998.

While the United States' concern is well-founded, it must consider that the sanctions have not prevented the growth of exports to the United States. On the contrary, there has been an increase of 27 percent in exports from January to May of 2000, as compared to that period the previous year, an embassy report said. For a country "punished" for its nuclear testing misdeeds, India is thriving.

Much of the brain power behind that technology is now in Silicon Valley - where Indians collectively earned $60 billion last year. This also helps explain the fact that the United States is happy to provide one-third of the 115,000 H1-B two-year working visas to Indians. In return for promising Mr. Vajpayee fewer export restrictions and providing more visas faster, the United States will want something in return as a sign that our trading partner is ruled by a stable government.

India could start by cleaning up its human rights record and seeking to quell religious violence. To add to the string of violence which has included Christian church burnings and killings of Kashmiris living in disputed border areas, Muslim-Hindu violence is now causing unrest in the country.

The United States wants a trade partner it can trust. India has shown it has the potential to provide the products and the people who could make that possible for years to come. If Mr. Vajpayee returns home with the will to ensure those assets through reform of human rights standards there, he has the power to build a positive partnership for the next administration and beyond.

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New millennium, new agenda

Washington Times
James Clad
September 14, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-column-2000914181656.htm

India's Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, comes to Washington this week just as the peak U.S. political season gets into full swing. Over 2 million Indian-Americans, many of America's richest corporations and both presidential candidates are closely interested in the visit, which follows Mr. Clinton's own successful trip to India last April. At that time, Mr. Clinton formalized new commercial and scientific initiatives, confirmed a U.S. diplomatic tilt toward this second-largest country on the planet, and (less successfully) strove to alter thinking in New Delhi about the usefulness of nuclear weapons.

The Vajpayee visit straddles two agendas for future U.S.-India ties. The old familiar agenda remains in thrall to various anxieties. India's nuclear ambitions alarm the non-proliferation specialists in Washington. Chronic India-Pakistan tensions also cause concern. Mr. Clinton has described Kashmir, disputed between India and Pakistan since 1947, as the most dangerous place in the world. The "old" India agenda also focuses on poverty and social issues. Thirty percent of the world's poorest people live in India. Child labor, societal attitudes toward women, coal-generated electricity causing global warming concerns, and fears about the AIDS pandemic also figure prominently in the list of worries.

By contrast, a newer but narrower agenda is already transforming America's connection with this rising Asian power. In recent months, business journalists have gushed over info-tech entrepreneurs in India and the United States. The sheer size of India's domestic market mesmerizes American companies. After fitful liberalization beginning a decade ago, India's expanding economy has posted growth averaging annually about 5 percent. Enormous infrastructure needs, especially electricity shortfalls, beckon technical solutions and finance from outsiders. Major U.S. corporations are expanding business in India these days, including General Electric, Exxon Mobil, Ford, Enron, IBM, AIG, Unocal, Citibank, Chase and CMS, to name but a few. To be sure, India's glacial pace of change can be maddening.

During the 1990s, China by contrast attracted 45 times more foreign investment than India. And Indians still joke that their country is the "Country of the Future - and always will be." But India's once shuttered markets are nonetheless yielding to the demands of global commerce. A crucial element in the new India agenda is the dynamic place of Indian-Americans. They figure, in this election year, both as conscientious voters and generous donors. These 1970s-era arrivals have become our country's richest single immigrant group; they include the entrepreneurs who created hotmail.com and E-Lock Technologies, a firm pioneering secure electronic commercial transactions.

In my meetings with Mr. Vajpayee in recent years, I've always been struck by two of his attributes - simplicity and focus. Indians point out that he has neither family nor a firm - meaning that, in an Asia with legendary nepotism and political/business interests, there's no way to "get to" Mr. Vajpayee. During long years in the political wilderness, Mr. Vajpayee was one of the very few prominent Indian politicians who dared attack India's pro-Soviet leanings during the Cold War. And his parliamentary peers have never forgotten his solo filibuster over 30 years ago, when he shamed India's legislators into passing a motion of condolence for Israeli children killed in a terrorist school bus attack.

Mr. Vajpayee wants to merge the old with the new. In talks this week, he will not dodge anxieties over South Asian tensions and nuclear competition. These are real enough. But India's leader hopes for forward-looking discussions about U.S.-India ties. While Mr. Clinton's April visit to India helped move American policy beyond old habits of thinking about India, much remains to be done.

True, the bitter Kashmir dispute and dual nuclear weapons possession still buttress the mental habit of balancing India against Pakistan. But every measurement of economic prospects, GDP growth, national power projection, and even basic welfare such as women's literacy, favors India. There's a reason why we are tilting to India.

Still, we cannot and should not accept India's pretensions to automatic great power status. Old habits die hard in Delhi, where senior bureaucrats still obstruct neighboring countries' development plans.

Twenty years ago, Mr. Vajpayee won a reputation throughout South Asia as a very cooperative foreign minister. During his visit as India's prime minister, Mr. Clinton and advisers to both presidential candidates should speak to India's leader about recreating the enormous economic area once encompassed by an undivided British India that stretched from the Khyber Pass to Burma.

Enormous potential awaits the Indian subcontinent, in energy, water management, transport and other cross-border linkages. Above all, Mr. Vajpayee's visit this week should help us to rethink basic U.S. relationships in Asia. India's Asia influence has been expanding in the last few years - in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (Asia's only multilateral security forum), and in new relationships with China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Burma and Singapore. Mr. Vajpayee's government remains committed to giving refuge to the Dalai Lama, to blunting Beijing's expanding influence in Central Asia and, with Japan, to forging new info-tech cooperation agreements. There's more than enough to talk about.

James Clad is professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University and in the 1990s was South Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review.

---

Congressional speech is omen of improvement

Washington Times
September 14, 2000
By Ben Barber THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000914221315.htm

When Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee addresses a joint session of Congress today, he will mark the end of five decades of skepticism and hostility between the United States and his country.

The point will be driven home when Venkatchalaoathi Samuldrala of Parma, Ohio, becomes the first Hindu priest to offer the invocation before the House.

Mr. Vajpayee arrived last night for a five-day state visit that celebrates the economic and strategic ties that have been pulling India and the United States together since India abandoned the left-wing policies and anti-imperialist rhetoric that so annoyed U.S. governments during the Cold War.

Indian-American computer billionaires in Silicon Valley as well as a mutual fear of China and Islamic terrorism have helped to nudge the countries closer together.

But even as a new relationship emerges between the world's oldest and its most populous democracies, Mr. Vajpayee will be greeted by protesters complaining that his country has failed to protect India's Christian minority.

In perhaps a dozen incidents, churches have been burned and Hindu mobs have attacked missionaries, priests and nuns since Mr. Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took power in 1998.

Kanti Bajpai, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, linked the attacks to a surge of nationalist pride after the BJP set off five nuclear blasts within weeks of its election.

"There's a feeling that we have the bombs and no one can tell us what to do," he said.

The ideology of the BJP and its militant parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), says Christians and Muslims came to India with hostile intentions to proselytize at the expense of Hinduism.

"Vajpayee needs to stand up and renounce that part of the ideology," said Stephen Cohen, a former State Department official and now a Brookings Institution senior fellow.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal body, called Monday for President Clinton to ask Mr. Vajpayee "to take more effective steps to protect religious freedom and the lives and security of persons of religious minorities in India."

Other problems in U.S.-Indian relations include India's refusal to end its nuclear weapons program and its slow progress in reforming a quasi-socialist economy, which has slowed investment.

While in Washington, Mr. Vajpayee will sign economic agreements for U.S. aid and training for power projects and housing.

India is also seeking, albeit not openly, an end to the congressional ban on military sales imposed after the 1998 nuclear tests.

India says it set off the blasts because it felt threatened by Pakistan's nuclear and missile programs, built with the aid of China, which had defeated India in a 1962 border war. India and Pakistan have fought three wars and continue to exchange border fire in the disputed state of Kashmir.

Two weeks after India displayed nuclear capability in May 1998, Pakistan followed suit with six explosions, leading Mr. Clinton to call the South Asian region the most dangerous place on earth.

However, India was heartened when Mr. Clinton, on a visit to the region in March, appeared to tilt U.S. policy toward India by calling for respect for the Line of Control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. He also called for an end to Pakistani aid to militants and terrorists crossing into India from Pakistan.

India now hopes Congress will increase from 115,000 to 200,000 the number of H1B visas issued each year for temporary immigrants with special work skills. Many of those visas would go to Indians to work on high-tech projects.

Some 300,000 Indian-Americans have become key players in high technology and are responsible for 40 percent of start-up firms in Silicon Valley, according to Stanford University professor Rafiq Dossani.

In addition, Microsoft and other U.S. firms have opened plants in the Indian cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad to utilize the nation's pool of skilled, English-speaking, relatively low-paid workers.

Mr. Vajpayee's visit reciprocates for Mr. Clinton's visit to India and comes as the Indian-American community of more than 1.5 million is becoming affluent and increasingly contributing to political candidates.

The Indian press reported this summer that the Republican platform of George W. Bush appeared to be more favorable to India than the Democratic platform because it spoke of mutual economic prospects.

-------- iraq

In Challenge, Iraqi Jet Flew Over Saudi Desert, U.S. Says

New York Times
September 14, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/14IRAQ.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - An Iraqi fighter jet flew into Saudi Arabian airspace last week in what officials here suspect was an attempt to provoke a confrontation with the United States on the eve of the United Nations summit meeting in New York, State Department and military officials said today.

The jet, passing through a "no flight" zone over southern Iraq, darted over a thinly populated desert in Saudi Arabia on the morning of Sept. 4 and quickly left, the officials said. Nevertheless, the flight heightened what officials here described as a sense that President Saddam Hussein of Iraq is determined to test American resolve.

American and British jets that patrol the southern "no flight" zone, below the 32nd parallel, were not flying that day and were unable to scramble quickly enough to challenge the Iraqi plane before it left, military officials said.

Iraqi jets have entered the southern zone more than 150 times since the United States and Britain launched four nights of air and missile strikes in December 1998.

Iraqi jets have also veered into Iranian airspace, but commanders at the Pentagon said it was the first time an Iraqi had flown over Saudi Arabia in at least a decade, the officials said.

In the days leading up to the incident, the Iraqi Air Force dispersed its aircraft in central Iraq, evidently to protect them from a potential retaliatory attack, the officials said. Those aircraft have since returned to their bases.

"This does lead people to believe he was trying to provoke a confrontation," a senior administration official said, "and was taking steps to protect himself if that happened."

The United States did not respond, fearing that new air strikes could play into President Hussein's strategy of sowing division among the United States and other members of the Security Council. But they warned that American forces remained prepared to counter any threatening military moves.

"We are obviously very careful not to overplay our hand," the senior official said.

Tensions over Iraq are running high. Baghdad has steadfastly refused to cooperate with a new team of weapons inspectors or with other United Nations humanitarian efforts. Iraq has also sharply criticized Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey for allowing the United States and Britain to base aircraft in their countries.

Administration officials have sought to counter Iraq's diplomatic efforts to end the sanctions imposed at the outset of the Persian Gulf war in 1990 by citing Iraqi intransigence and threats as evidence of Mr. Hussein's hostile intentions.

At the United Nations on Tuesday, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright blamed Mr. Hussein for shortages of food and medicine, saying, "He is the one that is victimizing his own people."

Dr. Albright went on to make an oblique reference to the Iraqis "violating the no-fly zone and the airspace of neighboring countries." The officials confirmed today that she was referring to the flight over Saudi Arabia.

Saudi officials in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

In her remarks on Tuesday, Dr. Albright said the administration had ruled out the use of force to press President Hussein to accept new weapons inspectors. But she reiterated the administration's warnings that the United States was prepared to act if Iraq threatened its neighbors, attacked the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq - where there is another "no flight" zone - or rebuilt its weapons of mass destruction.

The United States had placed its forces in the region on a higher state of alert even before the overflight.

The officials who confirmed the flight declined to discuss the incident in detail. They declined to identify the type of Iraqi aircraft and the exact distance it flew inside Saudi Arabia.

The officials said such a flight by a single Iraqi fighter posed little military threat to Saudi Arabia or to American forces stationed at Prince Sultan Air Base, southeast of Riyadh, the capital. In the past, Iraq has flown into the "no flight" zones in an effort to lure American jets into areas with surface-to-air missiles.

"We saw this as an attempt to bait us," another senior administration official said. "We were very careful not to take the bait."

Anthony H. Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the Iraqi flight followed a pattern and appeared to be intended to challenge not only the United States but also Saudi support for the "no flight" zone over the south.

"To probe resolve is something he does again and again and again - and in fairly adventurous ways," he said of President Hussein.

-------- ireland

New York Times
September 14, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/14BRIE.html

NORTHERN IRELAND: REBEL ACTION A mortar fired from a van on a hotel building site damaged a Royal Ulster Constabulary station in Armagh, and two bombs were deactivated before they could go off at a British Army training center near Londonderry. No one was hurt in the incidents, which were attributed to the dissident group the Real I.R.A. Warren Hoge (NYT)

-------- korea

North Korea's Kim postpones reciprocal visit to the South

Washington Times
September 14, 2000
By Ben Barber THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000914221448.htm

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il will not visit South Korea until next year, but defense ministers of the two Koreas will meet this month in Hong Kong, diplomats and press reports said yesterday.

South Korea's newly appointed ambassador to Washington, Sung Chul-yang, confirmed yesterday, in a luncheon meeting with editors and reporters at The Washington Times, that Mr. Kim will visit Seoul next year.

"In principle . . . his coming is promised, but because of busy schedules [of leaders of the North and South] he will visit in the early part of next year."

Kim Jong-il and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung ended 50 years of hostility between the pro-Western South and the communist North when they met in Pyongyang earlier this year.

It was expected that Kim Jong-il would visit Seoul in November to respond to the visit, which produced a surprising thaw in relations between North and South.

Aside from the explanation by Mr. Sung and by press reports from South Korea that both leaders had busy schedules, there was no further explanation why the meeting was put off for another six months or so.

A South Korean government official said yesterday that the South's defense minister, Cho Sung-tae, and his counterpart in the North, Kim Il-chol, are to meet Sept. 26-29 in Hong Kong, where North Korea recently opened a consulate, according to reporters covering the visit to South Korea this week of a senior North Korean official, Kim Yong-nam.

"The reason that the two sides have opted for Hong Kong as the venue for the defense ministers' talks was that it would be awkward for the top military officials to visit each other's side at this time," the official said, according to the Yonhap news agency.

Mr. Sung said the dates and site of a defense ministers meeting remained uncertain.

If they meet, he said, the South will place on the table proposals for confidence-building measures to take the peace initiatives on the Korean Peninsula one step closer toward a real end to the state of war prevailing since 1950.

South Korea is proposing that:

• A military hot line be created to defuse problems.

• Each side inform the other side of upcoming military exercises and troop movements.

• North Koreans observe South Korean military exercises.

Although the meeting between the two Mr. Kims has led to an outburst of hope that the North will end its Cold War hostility, South Korea's president remains alert to the threat posed by the heavily armed and possibly nuclear-armed North Korea, said the ambassador.

"President Kim [Dae-jung] has no illusions about North Korea - it is a totalitarian system," said Mr. Sung.

But just as China, the Soviet Union and Vietnam all dropped or softened their communist, totalitarian regimes in recent years, without military conflict, South Korea hopes the North will gradually change and set up a peace structure that could lead to unification after several years.

Mr. Sung also noted that South Korea hoped to amend the treaty governing the presence of some 35,000 U.S. troops in his country to allow trials in Korea of U.S. servicemen accused of crimes there. Presently, they are tried in U.S. military courts.

He said South Korea's relationship with the United States was its most important one and has been "a model example for any bilateral alliance in the past half century."

He also said that one of the outcomes of the meeting this year between the two leaders soon would take concrete form. Officials from the two sides meet Monday in a ceremony marking the start of reconstruction of a 15-mile gap in a railroad that will link South and North with each other and with Russia.

-------- poland

Polish arms workers stage strike in demand of overdue pay

NewsEdge Corporation
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=h0913071.400&level3=788&date=20000914

WARSAW, Poland (AP) via NewsEdge Corporation - Workers at a heavily indebted Polish weapons factory staged a seven-hour strike Wednesday to press for overdue pay and talks with the government on saving jobs at the plant.

They wrote to Labor Minister Longin Komolowski saying the government violated an August promise to provide some 3 million zlotys (dlrs 680,000) for overdue pay at the Lucznik factory by Sept. 10, strike leader Grzegorz Czyzniakowski said.

The workers asked for talks to renegotiate the agreement and to discuss keeping some 1,100 of the 1,500 jobs at the armsmaker, which is shedding much of its communist-era workforce in order to save the plant.

Zygmunt Osobka, director of the plant in Radom south of Warsaw, called the strike unnecessary. He insisted that the plant will get the promised money and said the government had bought it a lease of life when it recently ordered some dlrs 1.8 million worth of automatic rifles.

Even so, about 500 employees likely will be laid off, Osobka said. Most will be eligible for a government program to train them for new jobs.

Polish workers angry over constantly unpaid salaries and the threat of layoffs have recently staged repeated protests as the country struggles with the legacy of communist industry. They have threatened demonstrations in Warsaw to demand more government orders to save jobs.

-------- russia

Putin Hints at 2001 Budget Changes

NewsEdge
September 14, 2000
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer

http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=h0913145.402&level3=351&date=20000914 MOSCOW (AP) via NewsEdge Corporation - Signaling a possible rift within the government, Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated Wednesday that the 2001 budget could be revised because many lawmakers want to spend more _ a proposal that his prime minister had flatly rejected.

Gennady Seleznyov, the speaker of the State Duma, or lower house of parliament, said that Putin suggested changes could be made before the budget is debated Oct. 6 by lawmakers.

``The president said he had ordered the government to meet with (Duma) factions and committees to explain the budget concept without brushing away their proposals,'' Seleznyov told reporters after meeting with Putin.

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov had ruled out any changes before the budget is taken up, saying the document was realistic. The government has proposed a balanced budget for the first time since Russia emerged from the 1991 Soviet breakup, with revenues and spending both set at about $39 billion.

If Putin were to order the government to revise the budget, it could dent Kasyanov's authority. Russian news media speculate that the prime minister may be dismissed because of his links with prominent businessmen who had considerable clout under former President Boris Yeltsin, but whom Putin has vowed to cut off.

Kasyanov on Tuesday denied that he might resign or be dismissed, saying negative media reports about him had been planted by companies unhappy with some of his policies.

Putin met with leaders of parliamentary factions Wednesday and discussed the budget, leaders said after the meeting.

Lawmakers across the spectrum have criticized the budget as overly cautious. They say the government should raise its estimates for industrial growth, inflation and oil prices. That would increase revenue projections and permit more spending.

The budget forecast assumes that the average price for oil _ Russia's main export _ would be about $21 per barrel. With prices around $32 per barrel, many lawmakers think the government will get more in taxes, and can therefore spend more.

Many deputies have urged raising defense spending from $6.8 billion to $9 billion.

Alexander Zhukov, the head of the Duma's budget committee, said Wednesday that revising budget assumptions would allow an increase in spending by $8.3 billion to $10 billion.

But Zhukov said that most of that additional amount should be earmarked to service Russia's huge foreign debt, not defense or social spending.

-------- space

NASA: Chandra clinches case for unexpected black hole discovery

Individual.com
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=m0913405.1to&level3=788&date=20000914

There's new evidence the universe is home to a type of black hole that's not too large and not too small. As black holes go, it's a middleweight that may represent the missing link between its flyweight relatives and the super- heavyweight variety found at the center of most galaxies.

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, several groups of scientists have zeroed in on a mid-mass black hole located about 600 light years from the center of galaxy M82. "This opens a whole new field of research," said Martin Ward of the University of Leicester, England, a lead author involved with the observations. "No one was sure that such black holes existed, especially outside the centers of galaxies."

The M82 galaxy got its name nearly 220 years ago when it became the 82nd entry in a systematic catalog of nebulae and star clusters complied by French astronomer Charles Messier.

The black hole found in M82 packs the mass of at least 500 suns into a region about the size of the Moon. Such a black hole would require extreme conditions for its creation, such as the collapse of a "hyperstar" or the merger of scores of black holes.

"This black hole might eventually sink to the center of the galaxy where it could grow to become a supermassive black hole," said Dr. Hironori Matsumoto of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, the lead author on one of three Chandra papers scheduled to be published on the mid-mass black hole.

Although previous X-ray data from the German-U.S. Roentgen Satellite, and the Japan-U.S. Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA) satellite, suggested that a mid-mass black hole might exist in M82, the crucial breakthrough came when astronomers compared the new high resolution Chandra images with optical radio and infrared maps of the region. They determined that most of the X-rays were coming from a single, bright source.

Repeated observations of M82 over a period of eight months showed the bright X- ray source gradually peaking before dimming. Another critical discovery was that the intensity of the X-rays was rising and falling every 600 seconds.

"This flickering of the X-ray intensity is similar to the well-studied characteristics of black holes swallowing gas from a nearby star or cloud," said Dr. Philip Kaaret of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, lead author on the paper reporting the 10 minute variations.

"Explanations other than a massive black hole for this object are implausible."

Observations with Japan's Nobeyama Millimeter Observatory by Dr. Satoki Matsushita of Harvard-Smithsonian and colleagues have revealed a large expanding superbubble of gas centered on the mid-mass black hole in M82. The energy of several thousand supernovae would be required to produce such phenomena.

In the past, our Milky Way galaxy could have produced mid-mass black holes during periods of vigorous star formation. Hundreds of these massive black holes may exist unseen in our galaxy, in addition to the dozen or so known stellar black holes and the Supermassive black hole that is safely confined to the galaxy's nucleus.

Scientists from Kyoto University, Ehime University, RIKEN (The Institute of Chemical & Physical Research), and Nobeyama Radio Observatory, all in Japan, were also involved with the Chandra observations.

The observations were made with the High Resolution Camera (HRC) and the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). The HRC was built for NASA by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass. The ACIS instrument was built for NASA by MIT, and Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala, manages the Chandra program, and the Smithsonian's Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass., controls science and flight operations. TRW, Inc., Redondo Beach, Ca., is the prime contractor.

CONTACT: Marshall Space Flight Center Media Relations Department Tel: +1 256 544 0034 Fax: +1 256 544 5852 WWW: http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/news

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

One big America-bashing moment
"Would New York still be New York without the UN? Probably."

Christian Science Monitor
September 14, 2000
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani Julia Gorin
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/09/15/f-p11s2.shtml

NEW YORK - Make that definitely. In fact, it would be a lot more New York. Eighteen acres more, to be exact. That's how much land UN property takes up. It isn't rent control that's driving up the rents here-it's the UN.

That's not all it drives up. The city worked double time last week to diffuse traffic the UN created as its multinational royalty descended on Manhattan for the Millennium World Peace Summit - ambassadors, bureaucrats, and about 160 heads of state, each with his own motorcade. Many of these folks exist essentially to oppress their people, destroy America, and spread dictatorship while throwing parties for themselves under the guise of solving world problems.

The festivities featured attacks on US policy by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, among others. Yet it was an American, John D. Rockefeller, who donated an $8.5 million piece of land (the equivalent of $80 million today) to build the UN headquarters here in 1945. The city added $30 million to clear tenements and slaughterhouses off the site, and the US lent an additional $65 million.

Today the UN's annual administrative budget is $1.2 billion a year, with the US responsible for 25 percent, or $300 million. Add another 30 percent for peacekeeping costs, and the annual US burden is $1 billion.

Still, the UN likes China a whole lot better. And Canada. And anyone else who isn't America. The dignitaries were all ears, laughs, and awe when Cuban dictator Fidel Castro regaled them with a comedy moment before settling into his America-bashing speech.

So if these guys dislike the US so much, why is the UN headquarters still here? Shouldn't it be in Asia, Africa, or Cuba - closer to the people it's trying to help? But no. Its dignitaries like reaping the benefits of being in the world's most prosperous democracy - as they yearn to dissolve it.

One important benefit is the view from the Secretariat building. Scenery is such a priority to the 4,900 public servants who work there that earlier this year, the UN opposed Donald Trump's new project across the street: a high-rise that will obstruct workers' view of the skyline.

While it would be comforting to think UN workers spend more time observing the New York skyline than destabilizing the universe, isn't this an admission that their work is not all that vital? Meanwhile, because they're on international soil, UN buildings aren't up to code for access for the handicapped or environmental and fire safety. The pipes are brittle and leaky, the walls and ceilings insulated with asbestos, and the roofs water-logged - an apt metaphor for the state of the organization's mission.

Today's UN breaks more than it fixes and blunders more than it relieves. Its airy do-gooders either ignore history or make historical and political analogies worthy of grade-schoolers. Actions override words, and if the UN's are any indication, the only thing we can expect to see in the future is a bigger summit with loftier resolutions.

Julia Gorin is a contributing editor to JewishWorldReview.com.

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United Nations
http://www.un.org/

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Russia O.K.'s War Crimes Court Treaty

New York Times
September 14, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Criminal-Court.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Russia signed the treaty creating the world's first permanent war crimes court on Wednesday, leaving the United States and China as the only permanent Security Council members that haven't endorsed it.

The signing ceremony by Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov at U.N. headquarters came as Canada launched an international campaign to get countries to ratify the statute creating the International Criminal Court.

So far, 19 countries have ratified. With Russia's signature Wednesday, 112 countries have signed. At least 60 countries must ratify before the treaty can enter into force.

The United States was one of seven countries voting ``no'' when 120 countries meeting in Rome in June 1998 approved the the tribunal, which would have jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

American officials felt the treaty yielded too much prosecutorial power to the new court, leaving U.S. troops and citizens vulnerable to politically motivated prosecutions. In subsequent negotiations, Washington has tried to negotiate an exemption for Americans to the treaty.

``We cannot accept reopening the treaty or exceptions for any one country,'' said William Pace, head of the Coalition for an International Criminal Court, an umbrella of grass-roots groups lobbying governments to create the tribunal.

He spoke at the launch of the Canadian ratification campaign, which was announced by Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy to a breakfast meeting of foreign ministers, ambassadors and U.N. officials Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

---

New York Times
September 14, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/14BRIE.html

RUSSIA: TREATY SIGNED Russia became the 112th country to sign the treaty setting up an international criminal court to try those accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Nineteen countries have also ratified the treaty, of the 60 ratifications needed for the court to begin functioning. The United States has not signed, and is demanding an exemption for American soldiers and officials. Barbara Crossette (NYT)

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China Slams US on Missile Defense

NewsEdge
September 14, 2000
By SAM F. GHATTAS Associated Press Writer
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=h0913193.301&level3=788&date=20000914

UNITED NATIONS (AP) via NewsEdge Corporation - China urged the United Nations on Wednesday to step in and stop the United States from deploying a missile defense system, saying the ``dangerous'' proposal could be detrimental to world peace.

The comments by Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan were countered by a speech from Belgium's foreign minister, who said the NATO country was not opposed to such a missile system if it contributes to stability.

Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan also criticized American policies on international intervention and human rights.

With the historic U.N. Millennium Summit behind them, nations aired their concerns and hopes in the two-week ministerial debate at the General Assembly which opened Tuesday and continued Wednesday.

Tang, the Chinese foreign minister, attacked the proposed U.S. missile defense system, saying it ``is essentially aimed at seeking unilateral military and strategic supremacy and thus a typical example of the Cold War mentality.''

Such a system ``will only bring serious negative consequences to the security of the whole world,'' he warned, calling on the United Nations to ``take necessary measures to stop this dangerous development.''

China, as well as Russia, has opposed the missile shield plan, which President Clinton earlier this month decided not to authorize, deferring the decision to his successor.

Tang said the 1972 Anti-Balistic Missile Treaty which prevents deployments of such a missile defense is a cornerstone for global strategic stability. He warned that ``any move to undermine the totality and effectiveness of the treaty will have a profound negative impact on world peace and security.''

No country should enhance its security at the expense of other countries, he said. ``To seek 'absolute' unilateral security is not feasible and will lead to greater insecurity.''

Touching on subjects sensitive to the Chinese leadership, Tang on Wednesday warned countries to stay out of each other's internal affairs and said human rights protection should not be used as an excuse for international intervention.

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Crisis at the U.N.

Washington Times
Helle Bering
September 14, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-column-2000914123854.htm

The suffering of the Iraqi people is indisputable, as described for instance by this newspaper's Betsy Pisik in her recent report from inside Iraq. Where Iraq has previously been a closed land to reporters, a few are now being allowed to witness the hardships of the Iraqi population first-hand.

Even Scott Ritter, the former U.S. arms inspection team member, now argues for the lifting of sanctions. Interestingly enough, though, the Iraqi regime remains so intent on controlling contact with outsiders that it will not allow independent experts to report to the United Nations - this according to a statements by Secretary General Kofi Annan to the U.N. Security Council on Monday. Even those who want to help Iraq are finding it a tough case. Well, that hardly comes as a surprise.

The question is whether removing U.N. sanctions would ease that suffering - or simply allow Saddam Hussein a more aggressive pursuit of Iraq's programs of weapons of mass destruction. Richard Butler, former head of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq (UNSCOM), is in no doubt at all, as he told me last week at the American Enterprise Institute. "People who think lifting sanctions will make any dramatic change for the Iraqi population will soon be very disappointed, I think." In Mr. Butler's well-informed view, Saddam wants to be recognized as chief protector of the Arab world against perceived threats from Persians and Jews -that would be Iran and Israel to the rest of us.

Mr. Butler is now a fellow in residence at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and was in town last week to promote his new book, "The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Crisis of Global Security." On this topic he speaks with commanding authority, having been in charge of weapons inspections in Iraq from 1997-99. Being quite a blunt sort of fellow, Mr. Butler's account of dealing with Iraq and the U.N. Security Council (which seems almost as intractable at times) is deeply worrying. Not only does Mr. Butler foresee a strongly armed Iraq emerging, but he also describes a U.N. Security Council that is in crisis.

The main topic of Mr. Butler's talk was the disintegration of the UNSCOM inspections regime. By the middle of 1998, it had become clear that circumstances had changed; Russia had broken the Security Council consensus, and public opinion on sanctions had changed. Whereas sanctions had originally been linked to Iraqi compliance with weapons inspections, this principle had somehow ceased to apply.

At that time, Mr. Butler put together a list of the necessary items Iraq would show it had destroyed and materials it must account for. The countries who had broken ranks with Security Council consensus, Russia, China and France, were not happy about this. In fact, then-Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov had asked Mr. Butler to lower the bar for Iraq, which he refused to do. He had also been asked by Mr. Annan himself, but told him, "It might look easier now, but your United Nations would look very foolish if we declared Iraq disarmed and they then fired a missile at someone 12 months later."

When the Iraqis were presented with the list, Prime Minister Tariq Aziz took the list and told the team to come back in August, six weeks later. When the UNSCOM team did so, nothing had changed, however; the same old deceit and cheating had occurred. As Mr. Butler expressed his disappointment to Mr. Aziz, he simply replied, "Iraq is disarmed. There is no more that we can or need give you . . . You, Mr. Butler, will return to New York and tell the Security Council that 'Iraq is disarmed. This is on your conscience.' " Mr. Butler, of course refused, but thanked the Iraqi for his concern about the state of his conscience.

That was Aug. 3, 1998, and it was the effective end of arms inspections in Iraq, though that fall saw a rather humiliating aftermath, which finally culminated in the Dec. 16 bombing of Iraq by the British and Americans.

Why were the Iraqis able to get away with their brazenness? "Because something terrible had happened in the U.N. Security Council," Mr. Butler said, pointing particularly at Russia, but to some extent also at France and China. "The enforcement of the law here, had itself walked out on the job." Whenever Iraq misbehaved, as many as three members would stand up and defend it. Mr. Butler has some particularly bitter words for the French. In November 1998, yet another attempt was made to bring the Iraqis back into compliance. "The council that night gave me the job of reporting subsequently whether Iraq had kept its promise," Mr. Butler said. Which if course it had not. Pressure was applied by the French U.N. ambassador, and when Mr. Butler declined to change his mind, "He then told Paris that I had been wicked and had inadequately consulted with my staff. That was the French position."

The crisis in the Security Council, so Mr. Butler believes, can only really be solved when Russia realizes that it is not in its interest to continue to oppose the United States. In his book, "The Greatest Threat," he proposes a "solution from within" to re-establish the working relationship between the council's members, and end to the client-itis that has made Russia protect Iraq. This will depend on the United States making it a top priority of U.S. foreign policy. "This should be an important part of the relationship with the United States," he says.

And where is Saddam now? He is still seeking to acquire long-range missile capability, he has recalled his nuclear weapons design team, and his chemical and biological factories are being rebuilt. He clearly has no problem keeping his people at starvation levels if that is what it takes.

Email:bering@washtimes.com.

Helle Bering is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Her column appears on Wednesdays.

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

US DOD: Contracts

Individual.com
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=m0913411.1to&level3=788&date=20000914

AIR FORCE
Emery Worldwide Airlines Teaming Arrangement, Vandalia, Ohio, is being awarded a $421,659,656 (estimated) indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to provide for FY 2001 international airlift services in support of Air Mobility Command. Funds will be obligated as individual delivery orders are issued. There were 29 proposals received. Expected contract completion date is Sept. 30, 2001. Solicitation issue date was May 11, 2000. Negotiation completion date was Aug. 31, 2000. Air Mobility Command, Scott AFB, Ill., is the contracting activity (F11626-00-D-0008).

Federal Express Charter Programs Teaming Arrangement, Memphis, Tenn., is being awarded a $173,759,621 (estimated) indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to provide for FY2001 international airlift services in support of Air Mobility Command. Funds will be obligated as individual delivery orders are issued. There were 29 proposals received. Expected contract completion date is Sept. 30, 2001. Solicitation issue date was May 11, 2000. Negotiation completion date was Aug. 24, 2000. Air Mobility Command, Scott AFB, Ill., is the contracting activity (F11626-00-D-0009).

General Electric Company, Cincinnati, Ohio, is being awarded a $123,174,235 (estimated) requirements contract to provide for various quantities of 258 line items of spare parts for the J85 engine on the T-38 aircraft, the TF34 engine on the A-10 aircraft, and the TF39 engine on the C-5 aircraft. Funds will be obligated as individual delivery orders are issued. Expected contract completion date is September 2003. Solicitation issue date was Feb. 17, 2000. Negotiation completion date was Sept. 1, 2000. San Antonio Air Logistics Center, Kelly AFB, Texas, is the contracting activity (F41608-00-D-0323).

Air Transport International, Little Rock, Ark., is being awarded a $66,040,779 (estimated) indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to provide for FY2001 international airlift services in support of Air Mobility Command. Funds will be obligated as individual delivery orders are issued. There were 29 proposals received. Expected contract completion date is Sept. 30, 2001. Solicitation issue date was May 11, 2000. Negotiation completion date was Aug. 31, 2000. Air Mobility Command, Scott AFB, Ill., is the contracting activity (F11626-00-D-0012).

Lynden Air Cargo, Anchorage, Alaska, is being awarded a $25,857,504 indefinite- delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to provide for FY2001 international airlift services in support of Air Mobility Command. Funds will be obligated as individual delivery orders are issued. There were 29 proposals received. Expected contract completion date is Sept. 30, 2001. Solicitation issue date was May 11, 2000. Negotiation completion date was Aug. 31, 2000. Air Mobility Command, Scott AFB, Ill., is the contracting activity (F11626-00-D-0016).

Miami Air International, Inc., Miami, Fla., is being awarded a $13,298,607 (estimated) indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to provide for FY 2001 international airlift services in support of Air Mobility Command. Funds will be obligated as individual delivery orders are issued. There were 29 proposals received. Expected contract completion date is Sept. 30, 2001. Solicitation issue date was May 11, 2000. Negotiation completion date was Aug. 31, 2000. Air Mobility Command, Scott AFB, Ill., is the contracting activity (F11626-00-D-0011).

Truax Engineering Inc., San Marcos, Calif., is being awarded a $6,554,227 (maximum) indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to provide for engineering services through Sept. 11, 2002, in support of development of a liquid fueled reusable ballistic missile target. Further funds will be obligated as individual delivery orders are issued. The Air Force can issue delivery orders totaling up to the maximum indicated above, though actual requirements may necessitate less than that amount. Expected contract completion date is Sept. 11, 2002. Solicitation issue date was April 14, 2000. Negotiation completion date was Aug. 30, 2000. Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles AFB, Calif., is the contracting activity (F04701-00-D- 0204).

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

Equilon Enterprises, LLC, Houston, Texas, is being awarded a $80,685,000 fixed- price-with-economic-price-adjustment contract for grade JP8 aviation turbine fuel. Two hundred and thirty seven proposals were solicited and thirty four were received. Work is expected to be completed by Oct. 1, 2000, and will be performed in Martinez, Calif. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Energy Support Center, Fort Belvoir, Va., is the contracting activity (SP0600-00-D-0512).

Toshiba America Medical Systems, Duluth, Ga., is being awarded a $50,000,000 indefinite quantity contract for X-ray systems, subsystems and components. Nineteen proposals were solicited and nineteen were received. Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 11, 2001. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (SP0200-96-D-8078).

Siemens Medical System, Iselin, N.J., is being awarded a $50,000,000 indefinite quantity contract for X-ray systems, subsystems and components. Nineteen proposals were solicited and nineteen were received. Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 11, 2001. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (SP0200-96-D-8076).

Eastman Kodak, Rochester, N.Y., is being awarded a $50,000,000 indefinite quantity contract for X-ray systems, subsystems and components. Nineteen proposals were solicited and nineteen were received. Work will be performed in Rochester, N.Y. and Richardson, Texas and is expected to be completed by Sept. 11, 2001. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (SP0200-96-D-8075).

Dynard Corp., West Deer Park, N.Y., is being awarded a $50,000,000 indefinite quantity contract for X-ray systems, subsystems and components. Nineteen proposals were solicited and nineteen were received. Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 11, 2001. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (SP0200-96-D-8073).

Philips Medical, Shelton, Conn., is being awarded a $50,000,000 indefinite quantity contract for X-ray systems, subsystems and components. Nineteen proposals were solicited and nineteen were received. Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 11, 2001. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (SP0200-96-D-8072).

Liebel Flarsheim Co., Cincinnati, Ohio, is being awarded a $50,000,000 indefinite quantity contract for X-ray systems, subsystems and components. Nineteen proposals were solicited and nineteen were received. Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 11, 2001. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (SP0200-96-D-8070).

Fischer Imaging Corp., Denver, Colo., was awarded a $50,000,000 indefinite- quantity contract for X-ray systems, subsystems and components. Nineteen proposals were solicited and nineteen were received. Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 11, 2001, and will be performed in Thornton (Adams County), Colo., and Addison (DuPage County), Ill. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Supply Center, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (SPO200-96-D-8079).

Refinery Holding Company LP, Dallas, Texas, is being awarded a $22,896,180 fixed-price-with-economic-price-adjustment contract for grade JP8 aviation turbine fuel. Two hundred and thirty seven proposals were solicited and thirty four were received. Work is expected to be completed by Oct. 30, 2001, and will be performed in El Paso, Texas. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Energy Support Center, Fort Belvoir, Va., is the contracting activity (SP0600-00-D-0509).

Hermes Consolidated, Inc.*, Denver, Colo., is being awarded a $20,687,628 fixed-price-with-economic-price-adjustment contract for grade JP8 aviation turbine fuel. Two hundred and thirty seven proposals were solicited and thirty four were received. Work is expected to be completed by Oct. 1, 2000, and will be performed in Newcastle, Wyo. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Energy Support Center, Fort Belvoir, Va., is the contracting activity (SP0600-00-D-0510).

Phillips Petroleum Co., Bartlesville, Okla., is being awarded a $13,623,990 fixed-price-with-economic-price-adjustment contract for grade JP8 aviation turbine fuel. Two hundred and thirty seven proposals were solicited and thirty four were received. Work is expected to be completed by Oct. 30, 2001, and will be performed in Borger, Texas and Commerce City, Colo. Funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Energy Support Center, Fort Belvoir, Va., is the contracting activity (SP0600-00-D-0518).

NAVY

Northrop Grumman Corp., El Segundo, Calif., is being awarded a not-to-exceed ceiling-priced $15,116,451 order for 263 aircraft rudders in support of F/A-18C/D aircraft. This announcement combines purchases for the U.S. Navy (98.86%) and the government of Finland (1.14%) under the Foreign Military Sales program. Work will be performed in El Segundo, Calif., and is expected to be completed by September 2004. Contract funds will not expire by the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Inventory Control Point, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (N00383-00-G-001D) (Order 0038).

Concurrent Technologies Corp., Johnstown, Pa., is being awarded a ceiling priced $9,999,237 cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for research and development of advanced virtual reality, visualization, modeling, simulation, sensors and robotics, for applications in ship operation and damage control, fiber-optic and network system design, system optimization, evaluation of new and/or improved operational, logistics and training concepts, ship modification and alteration processes. Work will be performed in Johnstown, Pa., and is expected to be completed by September 2003. Contract funds in the amount of $3,950,342 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (N65540-00-D-0100).

((M2 Communications Ltd disclaims all liability for information provided within M2 PressWIRE. Data supplied by named party/parties. Further information on M2 PressWIRE can be obtained at http://www.presswire.net on the world wide web. Inquiries to info@m2.com)).

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Litton Indus gets $31 mln Raytheon Army THAAD subcontract

BridgeNews
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=b0913048.0rg&level3=788&date=20000914

New York--Sept. 13--Litton Industries signed a $31 million contract for work on the Theater High Altitude Area Defense Engineering Manufacturing and Development program. Litton Data Systems will perform EMD work under subcontract to Raytheon Co.

--Jeff Laguzza, BridgeNews

* The following is the text of today's announcement, with emphasis added by BridgeNews. BridgeStation users will find links to company data at the end:

Litton Receives $31 Million THAAD EMD Award Under Subcontract to Raytheon

ARLINGTON, Va.-- --Sept. 13, 2000--LITTON INDUSTRIES (NYSE:LIT) ANNOUNCED TODAY THAT ITS DATA SYSTEMS DIVISION HAS BEEN AWARDED A $31 MILLION CONTRACT FOR WORK ON THE THEATER HIGH ALTITUDE AREA DEFENSE (THAAD) ENGINEERING MANUFACTURING AND DEVELOPMENT (EMD) PROGRAM. LITTON DATA SYSTEMS WILL PERFORM EMD WORK UNDER SUBCONTRACT TO RAYTHEON COMPANY. THE PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE OF LITTON'S WORK UNDER THE CONTRACT IS THROUGH SEPTEMBER 2008.

"Litton Data Systems is proud to continue to be a member of the THAAD team," said William J. Allison, Data Systems president. "Litton Data Systems designed and developed the THAAD Battle Management Command and Control hardware and software for the Demonstration/Validation system. The Battle Management Command and Control System was an integral part of the successful hit-to-kill intercepts achieved during flight-testing. This $31 million award recognizes Litton's domain expertise in the design and development of air and missile defense command and control systems for the Department of Defense."

The THAAD program is an integrated system consisting of launchers, missiles, battle management command and control, and radar. It is the upper tier of the U.S. Army's two-tier theater missile defense concept.

Litton Data Systems, headquartered in Agoura Hills, Calif., specializes in systems software and hardware engineering for missile and air defense, ship electronics integration, ruggedized computers, and specialized computer displays.

Litton is the nation's largest builder of non-nuclear ships for the U.S. Navy and designs, builds, and overhauls surface ships for government and commercial customers worldwide. The company is a leading information technology contractor to the U.S. government and provides these specialized services to commercial customers and government customers in local/foreign jurisdictions. Litton is a leading provider of defense and commercial electronics technology, components, and materials for customers worldwide. Headquartered in Woodland Hills, Calif., Litton has more than 40,000 employees and $5.6 billion in annual revenue. For more information, visit Litton's Web site at www.litton.com.

--30--kr/la

*CONTACT: Litton Industries, Inc.

Randy Belote, 703/413-1521

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C-27J Spartan Test Flight Program Gets Third Aircraft

NewsEdge
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=p0913144.201&level3=782&date=20000914

MARIETTA, Ga., Sept. 13 /PRNewswire/ via NewsEdge Corporation - The C-27J Spartan flight test program received its third and final aircraft on Sept. 8 when the Lockheed Martin-Alenia team flew Spartan ##4033 for the first time at Alenia's flight test facility in Turin, Italy. The flight lasted 1 1/2 hours and met all objectives.

The third aircraft is a full production model and will be the primary aircraft used for Military Certification testing.

"We were delighted to see the Alenia/LM Aero team working in close harmony to achieve this significant program milestone," said Stan Yackel, C-27J program director for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company (LM Aero). "Of particular note were the avionics and software specialists who performed a feat rarely seen in today's development programs. They were able to move ahead of their plan, skip a preliminary software build, and load the certification build of software that will be flown during this phase leading to Civil Certification."

The flight test program began in September of 1999 with the flight of the first C-27J, which currently serves as the propulsion system test aircraft. The second Spartan, the first full pre-production configuration aircraft, joined the test program in May 2000 and is involved in Civil Certification activities.

The Spartan is expected to achieve Civil Certification by June 2001, and Military Certification is expected by October 2001.

The two aircraft have been flown for a combined total of 125 flights and have logged more than 230 hours in the air.

"As a direct result of our using mature C-130J common systems, the C-27J received clearance for flight in Instrument Meteorological Conditions from civil authorities within two months of first flight," explains Mike Reed, chief systems engineer. "This has been achieved in record time due greatly to the commonality between the C-27J Spartan and the C-130J Hercules."

The Italian government announced its intentions to buy 12 Spartans in November 1999 and delivery of the Italian C-27s will be within two years of contract signing, which is expected later this year. The C-27J is also in competitions in Greece and Switzerland and has garnered increasing interest from other countries including Jordan, Qatar, Portugal, Egypt, and Israel as well as the U.S. Army National Guard.

The C-27J Spartan is being developed by Lockheed Martin-Alenia Tactical Transport Systems headquartered in Marietta, Ga. LMATTS is equally owned by Lockheed Martin Corporation and Alenia Inc., a subsidiary of Finmeccanica S.p.A.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company is a leader in the design, development, systems integration, production and support of advanced military aircraft and related technologies. Its customers include the military services of the United States and allied countries throughout the world. Products include the F-16, F-22, C-130, C-27J, F-117, U-2, X-33 and Joint Strike Fighter, among other renowned aircraft. LM Aero is a unit of Lockheed Martin Corporation. Lockheed Martin is headquartered in Bethesda, Md., and is a global enterprise principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced-technology systems, products and services. The corporation's core businesses are systems integration, space, aeronautics, and technology services.

SOURCE Lockheed Martin Corporation

CONTACT: Jim Saye of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, 770-494-2406, or james.w.saye@lmco.com

Web site: http://www.lmasc.com

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Lockheed Martin to modernize, update military elec systems

BridgeNews
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=b0913032.0rg&level3=788&date=20000914

New York--Sept. 13--Lockheed Martin Corp. revealed a new business initiative to address challenges posed by modernizing military electronic systems. The effort involves the development of new modular systems, based on commercial off-the-shelf components, to replace avionics and electronics on legacy platforms and to equip new platforms.

--Cody Lyon, BridgeNews

* The following is the text of today's announcement, with emphasis added by BridgeNews. BridgeStation users will find links to company data at the end:

Lockheed Martin Focuses Corporatewide Resources To Modernize and Refresh Military Electronic Systems

BETHESDA, MD., SEPT. 13 -- DRAWING ON ITS EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE IN AERONAUTICS, SPACE, ELECTRONICS, SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND INTEGRATION, LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION (NYSE: LMT) TODAY ANNOUNCED A BROAD NEW BUSINESS INITIATIVE TO ADDRESS THE GROWING CHALLENGE POSED BY MODERNIZING MILITARY ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS.

Called Proven Path, the effort involves the development of innovative new modular systems, based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components, to replace avionics and electronics on legacy platforms and to equip new platforms. In addition to overcoming parts obsolescence -- a growing concern as the nation's military services extend the useful life of aircraft and other platforms -- Proven Path employs a "plug-in" design concept that permits more frequent capability upgrades as newer technologies become available.

"Proven Path is directed to the U.S. Defense Department's objectives of enhancing the capabilities of existing platforms while simultaneously reducing total ownership costs," said Vance D. Coffman, Lockheed Martin chairman and chief executive officer. "Our initiative focuses Lockheed Martin's broad capabilities on a compelling customer need and positions the Corporation to compete for, and win, significant systems upgrade opportunities."

Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics and Systems Integration business areas are leading the Proven Path effort.

Russ Frew, vice president of advanced technology, noted that Lockheed Martin already is a leading developer of COTS-based mission critical processors, with systems currently in service on a variety of U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, as well as aboard U.S. Navy submarines and surface combatants. Coupled with advanced, object-oriented software architecture, deployed COTS-based systems typically have yielded cost-savings of 50 percent or more over the legacy equipment they replaced, Frew said.

"Integrating the extensive skills of multiple Lockheed Martin businesses through the Proven Path initiative will enable us to develop and offer advanced modular systems that will meet demanding requirements such as those posed by multi-role avionics systems," Frew said. "Our approach accommodates customers' increasing performance requirements in a way that remains cost effective even as technology life cycles continue to decrease."

Launch of the Proven Path initiative coincides with a study Lockheed Martin has conducted on behalf of the U.S. Air Force Affordable Combat Avionics Office at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, to evaluate technologies and business approaches that will best support fleet requirements. The Systems, Technologies, Architectures and Acquisition Reform (STAAR) study will outline a plan for the service's migration from mil-spec electronics that are rapidly becoming obsolete to solutions based largely on commercially available hardware and software.

While the STAAR study addresses specific Air Force platforms such as the F-16, Proven Path provides a more general framework for the evolving needs of air, land, sea and space forces, said Randy Eads, manager of Proven Path integration. Proven Path emphasizes the use of open system standards and commercial technologies that best meet individual customer needs; platform- specific technology refresh plans to accommodate component obsolescence and system enhancement requirements; and coordinated platform roadmaps and supplier product plans to promote commonality and further cost reductions.

Near-term opportunities for application of the Proven Path approach include advanced fighter and transport aircraft program, Eads said.

"With more than a dozen Lockheed Martin companies already employing Proven Path concepts on individual programs, this initiative presents an excellent opportunity for all of our businesses to pool their knowledge, experience and resources," Coffman said. "This integrated approach will be of immediate benefit to our customers and, over time, to shareholders as well."

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global enterprise principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced technology systems, products and services. The Corporation's core businesses are systems integration, space, aeronautics and technology services. Lockheed Martin had 1999 sales surpassing $25 billion and employs approximately 140,000.

For additional information on Lockheed Martin, visit the company's website at: www.lockheedmartin.com .

CONTACT: Joe Stout of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, 817-763-4086, or joe.w.stout@lmco.com; or Pete Harrigan of Lockheed Martin Systems Integration, 301-897-6171, or pete.harrigan@lmco.com.

SOURCE Lockheed Martin Corporation

/CONTACT: CONTACT: Joe Stout of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company,817-763-4086, or joe.w.stout@lmco.com; or Pete Harrigan of Lockheed MartinSystems Integration, 301-897-6171, or pete.harrigan@lmco.com/

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Interview with Northrop Grumman (NOC) CEO Kent Kresa

Individual.com
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=n0913101.3bc&level3=788&date=20000914

Northrop Grumman (NOC) Chairman and CEO Kent Kresa on the aerospace and defense industry from the Wyndham Bel Age in West Hollywood, California - 09/13/00

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CNBC- POWER LUNCH<BR> NORTHROP GRUMMAN (NOC) CHAIRMAN AND CEO KENT KRESA ON THE AEROSPACE AND DEFENSE INDUSTRY FROM THE WYNDHAM BEL AGE IN WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA<BR> SEPTEMBER 13, 2000

SUMMARY: Kresa comments on the aerospace and defense business. He says there is a focus on building defense and electronics. He also feels information technology and information insurance are areas of importance for the future.

Bill: You know what is great about Ken Kresa, he's been doing this so many years and he still gets excited about his industry. He is a long-time observer of the Southern Californian economy for the last 25 years and of course chairman and CEO of Northrop Grumman. It is good to have you with us today, thank you for joining us. It's great to have you here in Southern California.

It's great to be here.

Bill: I grew up, my father worked for a competitive competitor of yours many years ago, I am aware of the changes that go on in the aerospace and defense business. You still get excited. I could see your eyes lighting up when the B-2 rolled up and you were with our camera crew at Edwards Airforce Base recently.

Absolutely, this is a business with passion. The people in the business love it. They're dedicated to the military to make sure they have the best equipment in the world. We meld the technology with the need and come up with a great system. It is an industry that loves what it is doing.

Bill: Give me your assessment of the Southern California economy as it pertains to aerospace, it was such a major player in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Tell me about it today.

Things have changed. This was a place to build airplanes and fly airplanes. There were a lot of companies building airplanes. We build very few systems now. Now it is mostly defense electronics and information technology and other things, moving to the next century. That part of the business is much reduced.

Bill: Would it change? The prevailing thinking on Wall Street is, if there is a Bush administration that could change the fortunes of the defense industry. Do you think it could?

I think that it will increase the fortunes of the industry no matter who is elected President. I think everybody understands, since the close of the cold war there has been a tremendous decrease in the amount of money put into new equipment and at some point you just have to go back and equip our forces with the best stuff that you can get. Technology is changing and you've got to stay modern.

Bill: What gets you excited now? What are the projects you feel offer Northrop Grumman the greatest opportunities?

We have a couple. One is the whole, unmanned business. The Global Hawk is sort of the beginning of that.

Bill: We saw that before the commercial break.

Right as the B-2 was going by. The whole information technology area is going to be important. The information age is upon us and information assurance is absolutely essential. Once you worry about information assurance, then you worry about information warfare, who will get up to try to skew it up and make it more difficult. We will see changes in warfare and we're moving heavily into information technology because we think this is going to be the next area of conflict that we are going to have to worry about in the military.

Bill: The missile defense system that the President was going to try didn't fare so well, it's on the back burner again. That is something that goes back to the early days of the Reagan administration. What will happen to that?

I think we continue to need to grow that technology. It is a very complex thing to do, to hit a missile with a missile. Particularly doing it in a non-nuclear way, which is how we're speaking of doing it. That technology must mature.

Bill: Critics say, the U.S. government got sold a bill of goods by the industry.

I don't want to comment on that. I think that people clearly know what the program is about and what the technologies are. It is a very tough job and people want that done and I think people are working very hard to accomplish it.

Bill: What is the strategy for your company now? The consolidation that brought Northrop together with Grumman has caused some other giants in the industry. Are we past that now or could we see more of that?

You can never tell. I think we will continue to see lots of mergers and acquisitions in this very area. I am not sure between the major primes, but we are acquiring companies that for one reason or another are available. We are focusing on things that we think are going to be important for the future. Defense electronics and information technology and some of these un-manned vehicle systems which we think will be great.

Bill: What we call gee-whiz technology.

We don't call it gee-whiz.

Bill: We in the lay world do that. You guys can give it the technical name. Thank you for joining us today.

It's nice to be here.

Bill: Kent Kresa, the chairman and CEO of Northrop Grumman joining us from Southern California. Here is what the stock is doing today. Today it's down 31 cents at $80.69 per share. You've had a pretty good ride this year in 2000.

---

Lockheed Martin Focuses Corporatewide Resources To Modernize and Refresh Military Electronic Systems

NewsEdge
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=p0913095.802&level3=788&date=20000914

BETHESDA, Md., Sept. 13 /PRNewswire/ via NewsEdge Corporation - Drawing on its extensive experience in aeronautics, space, electronics, systems engineering and integration, Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE: LMT) today announced a broad new business initiative to address the growing challenge posed by modernizing military electronic systems.

Called Proven Path, the effort involves the development of innovative new modular systems, based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components, to replace avionics and electronics on legacy platforms and to equip new platforms. In addition to overcoming parts obsolescence -- a growing concern as the nation's military services extend the useful life of aircraft and other platforms -- Proven Path employs a "plug-in" design concept that permits more frequent capability upgrades as newer technologies become available.

"Proven Path is directed to the U.S. Defense Department's objectives of enhancing the capabilities of existing platforms while simultaneously reducing total ownership costs," said Vance D. Coffman, Lockheed Martin chairman and chief executive officer. "Our initiative focuses Lockheed Martin's broad capabilities on a compelling customer need and positions the Corporation to compete for, and win, significant systems upgrade opportunities."

Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics and Systems Integration business areas are leading the Proven Path effort.

Russ Frew, vice president of advanced technology, noted that Lockheed Martin already is a leading developer of COTS-based mission critical processors, with systems currently in service on a variety of U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, as well as aboard U.S. Navy submarines and surface combatants. Coupled with advanced, object-oriented software architecture, deployed COTS-based systems typically have yielded cost-savings of 50 percent or more over the legacy equipment they replaced, Frew said.

"Integrating the extensive skills of multiple Lockheed Martin businesses through the Proven Path initiative will enable us to develop and offer advanced modular systems that will meet demanding requirements such as those posed by multi-role avionics systems," Frew said. "Our approach accommodates customers' increasing performance requirements in a way that remains cost effective even as technology life cycles continue to decrease."

Launch of the Proven Path initiative coincides with a study Lockheed Martin has conducted on behalf of the U.S. Air Force Affordable Combat Avionics Office at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, to evaluate technologies and business approaches that will best support fleet requirements. The Systems, Technologies, Architectures and Acquisition Reform (STAAR) study will outline a plan for the service's migration from mil-spec electronics that are rapidly becoming obsolete to solutions based largely on commercially available hardware and software.

While the STAAR study addresses specific Air Force platforms such as the F-16, Proven Path provides a more general framework for the evolving needs of air, land, sea and space forces, said Randy Eads, manager of Proven Path integration. Proven Path emphasizes the use of open system standards and commercial technologies that best meet individual customer needs; platform- specific technology refresh plans to accommodate component obsolescence and system enhancement requirements; and coordinated platform roadmaps and supplier product plans to promote commonality and further cost reductions.

Near-term opportunities for application of the Proven Path approach include advanced fighter and transport aircraft program, Eads said.

"With more than a dozen Lockheed Martin companies already employing Proven Path concepts on individual programs, this initiative presents an excellent opportunity for all of our businesses to pool their knowledge, experience and resources," Coffman said. "This integrated approach will be of immediate benefit to our customers and, over time, to shareholders as well."

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global enterprise principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced technology systems, products and services. The Corporation's core businesses are systems integration, space, aeronautics and technology services. Lockheed Martin had 1999 sales surpassing $25 billion and employs approximately 140,000.

For additional information on Lockheed Martin, visit the company's website at: www.lockheedmartin.com.

CONTACT: Joe Stout of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, 817-763-4086, or joe.w.stout@lmco.com; or Pete Harrigan of Lockheed Martin Systems Integration, 301-897-6171, or pete.harrigan@lmco.com.

SOURCE Lockheed Martin Corporation

CONTACT: CONTACT: Joe Stout of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, 817-763-4086, or joe.w.stout@lmco.com; or Pete Harrigan of Lockheed Martin Systems Integration, 301-897-6171, or pete.harrigan@lmco.com

Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/534163.html or fax, 800-758-5804, ext. 534163

Web site: http://www.lmco.com (LMT)

---

BTG on Team Awarded Joint Staff Information Technology Contract

NewsEdge
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=b0913090.102&level3=788&date=20000914

FAIRFAX, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 13, 2000 via NewsEdge Corporation - BTG, Inc. (Nasdaq: BTGI), an information systems and technical services company, announced that it is a member of the FC Business Systems (FCBS) team that has been awarded a $24 million contract for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon under the Information Technology Omnibus Procurement (ITOP-II) contract.

The Joint Staff contract, which has a term of one year with the potential of four option years, was awarded by the Operations Division of the Joint Staff Information Resources Management Office at the Pentagon. The ITOP-II program is a $10 billion government-wide procurement vehicle under which federal agencies can acquire a full range of information technology services and products from teams of contractors.

BTG will lead the execution team of FCBS, CACI, KEI, Corbett, and NetCentrics. Under the terms of the Joint Staff contract, the team will provide information technology support services that include help desk operations, network operations, system security, hardware installation support, Autodin/Defense Message System technical support, and administration of the Joint Staff training program. BTG provides similar services at the Pentagon for the Department of the Army's Information Management Support Center (IMCEN.)

BTG Senior Vice President Les Rose, General Manager of Applied Engineering Solutions, said the company is very pleased with the opportunity to expand its support to the Pentagon with the Joint Staff program. "Our team looks forward to a partnership with the Joint Staff Information Resources Management Office to put in place innovative solutions for transparent information technology support."

Rose said the Joint Staff win was particularly satisfying because it was highly competitive. He noted that it continues a string of recent awards that include the selection of a BTG-led team for the first phase of the Department of Defense $60 million Integrated Broadcast Service, a $6.5 million addition to a BTG Modeling and Simulation program for the National Security Agency, and the selection of BTG as one of the teams on the General Services Administration's $20 billion Millennia Lite information technology services contract.

BTG is an information systems and technical services firm that provides computer-based solutions for government and commercial clients. In addition to Enterprise Support Services, the company's expert practice areas include Modeling and Simulation, Information and Network Security, Technology in Schools, E-Commerce, Geographic Information Systems, Mobile Computing, Linguist Services, and Remedy(R) and Microsoft(R) Practices. Information about BTG is available on the web at http:\\www.btg.com, by e-mail at info@btg.com, or by calling 703/383-8140.

"SAFE HARBOR" STATEMENT UNDER THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995: The statement contained in this release which are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to different materially from those set forth in or implied by forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include the amount of work actually to be awarded under any contract or subcontract, dependence on continued funding of U.S. government programs, government contract procurement and termination risks, included risks associated with protests, and other risks described in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

For past press releases, visit this company's Corporate News on the net site at http:\\www.businesswire.com/cnn.

CONTACT:
BTG Incorporated
John Graham, 703/383-8147, fax: 703/383-4070
Investor@btg.com
or
Editor Contact
Theda Parish, 703-383-8145, 703-573-8135 (home)
fax: 703/383-4070
tparrish@btg.com
CorpComm@btg.com

---

ATK Awarded $8 Million Contract to Produce Electronic Components for Volcano Munition System

NewsEdge
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=p0913141.900&level3=788&date=20000914

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire/ via NewsEdge Corporation - ATK (Alliant Techsystems) (NYSE: ATK) said it has been awarded a contract valued at $8 million from the U.S. Army Armament, Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC), Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., to produce electronic components for the Army's Volcano anti-tank munition system. The contract also contains an option for next year's production that could increase the total value to as much as $18 million.

Volcano is a multiple-delivery modular system used to rapidly dispense anti-tank munitions from a variety of platforms, including the UH-60 helicopter, the M548A1 tracked cargo carrier, and military trucks. Each system consists of a dispenser control unit, four launch racks, and 160 canisters, each containing six self-destructing munitions.

Larry Paryz, director, barrier systems and demolitions, ATK Integrated Defense Company, said, "We are pleased to continue to support the highly effective Volcano system, which enables U.S. ground forces to defend their positions against armored attacks. Our participation in the Volcano program clearly reflects our mission to provide our nation's war fighters the technology they need to return safely from the battlefield."

Production work on the Volcano contract will be conducted by ATK Precision Fuze Company at its manufacturing facility in Janesville, Wis.

"This contract is terrific news for employees of ATK in Janesville and for the U.S. Army, which will benefit from ATK's consistently top-quality manufacturing," said U.S. Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wisconsin, 1st District). "They could not have entrusted this critical defensive system to a better partner than our own ATK."

ATK has been an industry partner to the U.S. Army and its soldiers for more than 60 years. Sales to the Army accounted for approximately 32 percent of total revenues in the most recent fiscal year, making the service the company's single largest customer. Major ATK Army programs include small-caliber, medium-caliber, and large-caliber ammunition, the Objective Individual Combat Weapon (OICW), the Tank Extended Range Munition (TERM), anti-tank and anti-personnel barrier systems, and mortar and artillery fuzes.

ATK Integrated Defense Company is a leading developer and producer of integrated infantry weapons, smart artillery systems, barrier systems, and secure Global Positioning System electronics subsystems. It is one of five operating companies within ATK's Defense Systems business segment, which reported fiscal year 2000 revenues of $221 million.

ATK is a $1.1 billion aerospace and defense company with leading market positions in munitions, smart weapons and precision capabilities, propulsion, and composite structures. The company, which is headquartered in Hopkins, Minn., employs approximately 6,400 people and has three business segments: Conventional Munitions, Aerospace, and Defense Systems. ATK news and information can be found on the Internet at http://www.atk.com

SOURCE ATK
CONTACT: Media, Rod Bitz, 612-931-5413, E-mail rod_bitz@atk.com , or investors, Mark Mele, 612-931-6367, E-mail mark_mele@atk.com , both of ATK
Web site: http://www.atk.com (ATK)

---

U.S. Warships Arrive to Protect Aid Mission To East Timor

Fox News
Thursday, September 14, 2000

Warships from the U.S. Navy and Marine troops arrived in the waters of East Timor Thursday to suppress any threat from Indonesian militiamen against a U.S. mission of aid to the island, a military spokesman said.

Last week, militias killed three U.N. aid workers in neighboring West Timor and other gangs have killed two U.N. peacekeepers in East Timor in recent clashes.

"We want to provide aid and we don't want anyone getting in our way," said Marine spokesman Lt. Jeff Landis. "Any militia activity that goes on in our presence, we won't tolerate. We will basically get the aid to where it needs to go."

Landis said about 4,000 troops arrived aboard four U.S. ships. The vessels included the guided missile carrier USS Bunker Hill and three amphibious vessels: USS Tarawa, Delouth and Anchorage.

The vessels were carrying tons of building materials and food for the island territory. The ships will leave East Timor on Saturday.

U.S. Navy ships have brought in aid to East Timor several times in the past year.

However, Landis said a recent assessment determined that a warship was now needed to protect the aid and the Marines delivering it from possible militia attack.

"If fired upon we are allowed to fire back in kind, with the same type of weaponry," he said.

The militias are the same gangs who opposed East Timor's independence from Indonesian rule last year. Prior To U.S. Arrival, Violence Erupts in Capital</b>

The streets of central Jakarta erupted in violence earlier on Thursday as a mob of students threw Molotov cocktails and rocks at police to protest former Indonesian President Suharto's failure to appear at the resumption of his graft trial.

The clashes broke out in a capital still jittery after a powerful car bomb and fire killed 15 people at the Jakarta Stock Exchange the day before, an act some police blamed on supporters of the ailing ex-dictator.

Several dozen anti-Suharto demonstrators threw stones at buses carrying about 100 supporters of the old strongman to the courthouse, and an estimated 1,000 students faced off against hundreds of police near Suharto's home before security personnel responded with volleys of tear gas.

Police beat dozens of students with batons as they fled, with some students also hurling rocks at homes in the leafy neighborhood. Hundreds of pro-Suharto supporters chased some students, but there had been no fighting between the two groups.

Earlier, the South Jakarta Court ordered an independent team of doctors to examine Suharto, who has had three strokes, after the ex-general - as in the trial's opening two weeks ago - failed to appear.

Chief judge Lalu Mariyun adjourned the hearing until September 28.

But Suharto's lawyers said there was no chance the self-styled "father of development" who ruled for 32 years - until violent demonstrations forced him to quit in 1998 - would be fit for future hearings. He has been charged with misusing up to $550 million from seven charities he controlled while in power, a fraction of the billions current President Abdurrahman Wahid has said he stole.

Suharto, who has denied any wrongdoing, could face life in jail, although Wahid has said he would pardon him if convicted.

"It will be unfair if he is brought to trial only for show," lawyer Muhammad Assegaf told reporters after the adjournment.

Three members of Suharto's 23-doctor medical team - all of whom were in the courtroom in white hospital coats - testified that the strokes had damaged the former autocrat's brain. He also suffers from hypertension, kidney stones, heart problems and diabetes. Government physicians say Suharto is healthy enough to face trial.

A virtual recluse under a city arrest order, local media say Suharto's wealthy children have isolated their father from the harsh criticism of his rule and skepticism over his ill health, even persuading him not to watch television news bulletins.

- The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report

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US DOD: U.S. forces travel to Croatia for amphibious exercise

Individual.com
September 14, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=m0913406.2to&level3=27822&date=20000914

Croatian military forces and U.S. Sixth Fleet sailors and Marines of the USS Austin and elements of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit will conduct a bilateral landing and maneuver ashore exercise Sept. 25-29, 2000, in Croatia.

Approximately 400 sailors and 200 Marines from the U.S. will join with Croatian counterparts to take part in the exercise, called Croatian Phiblex 2000, which is designed to promote regional stability, improve common understanding of doctrine and training, and practice interoperability between U.S. and Croatian amphibious and maritime forces.

The exercise will be conducted in the vicinity of Split, Croatia, and the islands off the coast of the country. The field training exercise will include an amphibious landing with maneuver ashore, as well as live fire training. In addition to the sailors and equipment of the USS Austin, U.S. Marine participation will include a rifle company, four CH-46 and two UH-1 helicopters from the 26th MEU.

Croatia's participation in the exercise is a visible example of Croatia investing its military efforts toward regional cooperation and stability.

Croatia is a Partnership for Peace member, and actively seeking membership in NATO.

CONTACT: U.S. Sixth Fleet Public Affairs Office Tel: +39 0771 709 830 x 6050/1 WWW: http://www.c6f.navy.mil


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

$14.5 M PROMOTES MOBILE EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS

September 14, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-14-09.html

DIAMOND BAR, California, Alternative fuel transit buses, heavy duty vehicles and electric bicycles are among the categories eligible for funding under a $14.5 million program administered by the Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Review Committee (MSRC). The MSRC is a committee responsible for funding transportation projects that reduce air pollution in Southern California. Each year, the MSRC funds projects in specific categories aimed at reducing pollution from mobile sources such as cars, trucks and buses. Local governments, government agencies, businesses, research institutions and individuals are encouraged to apply. "Pollution from mobile sources has the greatest detrimental effect on the quality of our air," said William Kleindienst, chairman of the MSRC and mayor of Palm Springs. "That's poison coming out of our tailpipes."

The proposals most likely to be funded are those that include measurable emissions reductions, demonstrate cost effectiveness and have verified co-funding. "The MSRC provides financial assistance for projects that provide the greatest reduction in emissions and thereby protect our air," said Kleindienst. This year's eligible categories are:

Alternative Fuel Transit Bus Program ($4.25 million) On- and Off-Road Heavy Duty Vehicle Program ($3.25 million) Transportation Control Measures ($1 million) Voluntary employer-based rideshare incentives Advanced Traveler Management Information Systems to promote commuting options Bicycles for the Employer Market to promote bicycle commuting Electric Bicycle Buydown Program to provide rebates on electric bicycles Land Use Strategy Implementation Projects to decrease motor vehicle use

Proposals are due by October 5. More information is available at: www.msrc-cleanair.org

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FUEL CELL ADVANCE: HYDROGEN STORAGE EFFICIENCY IMPROVED

September 13, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-14-09.html

IRVINE, California, A team of U.S. scientists says it has achieved a record efficiency for hydrogen storage. Commercial use of the storage technique will allow fuel cell vehicles to travel further between refueling intervals than is now possible. The team from IMPCO Technologies Inc. (IMPCO), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) and Thiokol Propulsion tested a high performance prototype hydrogen storage cylinder. The mass performance record was 11.3 percent hydrogen storage by weight, the highest storage efficiency ever demonstrated.

A compressed hydrogen storage device would allow more efficient storage compared with metal hydrides (less than three percent by weight at room temperature) or liquid hydrogen (up to eight percent by weight). On-board direct hydrogen storage is cost effective and safe for automotive use, and allows the elimination of on-board fuel reformers which are large, expensive and create pollution. The ability to store hydrogen could be used to develop high altitude solar electric aircraft and remote power sources, including renewable energy facilities that generate electricity from solar or wind technology. Those applications can produce hydrogen and store the gas in the tank. The project is part of LLNL's effort to develop high cycle life energy storage systems for various applications, including zero emission vehicles and spacecraft systems that combine energy storage and propulsion. Commercial products could be available by next year.

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North American Native Nations Mount Utility Scale Wind Projects

September 14, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-14-01.html

BROWNING, Montana, The Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and to the north the Peigan First Nation of Alberta have each placed their bets on wind power to generate energy for their peoples and for sale.

The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council and SeaWest WindPower, Inc. have signed a development agreement for the 22 megawatt (MW) Blackfeet I Wind Power Project.

This will be the first utility scale wind energy project built on tribal lands in the United States. The 22MW project will deliver affordable, clean, renewable energy by capturing the extremely strong winds that blow across the Blackfeet Reservation from the Rocky Mountain Front onto the Great Plains.

"This wind energy project will allow the Blackfeet Tribe to take advantage of one of our most plentiful natural resources on our Reservation. Gaining electricity from the winds here on the Reservation has been talked about for many years. We are gratified that this idea has finally become a reality," said Earl Old Person, chairman of the nine member Blackfeet Tribal Business Council which governs the Blackfeet Tribe.

"SeaWest is pleased to work with the Blackfeet to develop such a landmark project," said Jan Paulin, SeaWest's president and CEO.

Mountain on the Blackfeet lands. (Photo courtesy Blackfeet Nation)

"The Blackfeet have a tremendous wind and land resource. This project will tap that resource to create highly skilled employment opportunities on the Blackfeet Reservation and a true, commercially viable export industry. It is fitting that through this project the Blackfeet should assume a national leadership position in environmental stewardship," Paulin said.

The Blackfeet I project is scheduled to begin construction in May 2001, with commercial operation scheduled for October 2001. It will provide enough energy to electrify over 6,000 houses.

The Bonneville Power Administration is considering purchasing the power from the project through a long term power purchase agreement.

Power will be made available to the BPA, Glacier Electric Cooperative, other Montana Cooperatives, and Montana Power Company distribution customers.

Siyeh Development Corporation, the Blackfeet Tribe's for profit corporation, will work extensively with local agencies, contractors, and the surrounding community to coordinate the completion of this project with SeaWest.

"This is a great opportunity to showcase our local workforce, and train tribal members for long term technical jobs," said Dennis Fitzpatrick, Siyeh's general manager.

This 100-kW turbine is installed near Blackfeet Community College in Browning, Montana. In addition to providing electricity to the college, the turbine gives students experience using wind energy. (Photo by Martin Wilde courtesy Blackfeet Community College)

The Montana Power Company intends to award the project a $1.5 million production subsidy. The subsidy is funded through the company's Universal System Benefit Funds. In return the project will make available 3MW of capacity at a discounted rate to Montana Power Company distribution customers.

"This project is an excellent example of utilizing system benefit funds to create and stimulate economic development and renewable energy in Montana," said engineer David Ryan of Montana Power Company.

Glacier Electric has been serving the Blackfeet Reservation for over 50 years. General manager Bill Chapman said, "We are optimistic about this very important project, and will do all we can to help make it a success." Power produced by the wind generators will be fed across Glacier Electric's transmission lines.

SeaWest has developed over 85 megawatts of utility scale wind energy projects in the Foote Creek Rim area of Wyoming, in addition to nearly 500 megawatts of projects in California, the United Kingdom and Spain.

In Brocket, Alberta, the Peigan Nation expects to have four one MW Nordex wind turbines installed on its land by October, the first step in constructing a planned $200-million, 101 MW grid-connected wind farm, says project co-ordinator William Big Bull.

Peigan Utilities Inc. has formed a joint venture with Advanced Thermodynamics Corporation, which holds the licence to market Nordex turbines in Canada, and Sault Ste. Marie's Batchawana Band, he says.

The joint venture is named Weather-Dancer Wind Power, alluding to the last day in the Plains Indian Sundance when the weather dance is performed to pray for future good weather.

Peigan traditional dancer displays his talents. (Photo courtesy Napi Friendship Center)

Through Weather-Dancer, a facility to manufacture the turbines' tubular towers, as well as train workers to install and maintain turbines for the Peigan project and the "general market" is planned for the reserve, says Big Bull.

The Nordex N54 machines, which would be the largest to be installed in Canada, each have a rotor of 54 metres (175 feet) in diameter atop a 60 metre (195 foot) tower. The initial market for the power will be the Peigan reserve's own 3,000 residents, supplied through a Peigan administered rural electrification association.

"We've got within the Peigan Nation the capacity to use four MW of generation," says Big Bull. "We're going to be selling to the Alberta Power Pool, but because we have our own distribution, our own REA here, we're using that as the vehicle to develop the wind power project."

Big Bull says he cannot give a specific timeframe for installation of the rest of the 101 MW, explaining that turbines will be added as purchase contracts are signed.

The Peigans are looking to other First Nations communities in Canada and the United States as a potential market for the power and are getting a "very positive response."

They are also talking with the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development about the purchase of green power under the Federal Procurement Strategy for Aboriginal Business, an incentive program that commits the government to buying the products of First Nations businesses.

In addition to these specific niches, says Big Bull, "we're exploring the whole market. We're looking at offset credits. We're looking at industry. We've got a lot of doors to knock on."

-------- environment

RECYCLING OF CONTAMINATED LAND GAINING ACCEPTANCE

September 14, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-14-09.html

EXTON, Pensylvania, Across the U.S., more than 47,600 acres, or 74 square miles of land - an area larger than Washington, D.C. and three times the size of Manhattan - are in the process of being recycled, according to the first annual ECS Land Reuse Report released this week. ECS, an XL Capital company, is an underwriting manager providing integrated environmental risk management solutions to business and industry. The ECS Land Reuse Report provides a snapshot of national and regional trends in the reuse of contaminated land through a media coverage review about these activities.

ECS and the Council of Urban Economic Development performed a media analysis of 347 newspaper and business journal articles published from May 1999 to July 2000 and collected from online sources. Midwestern, Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states are most active in land reuse, with articles found in 36 of the 50 states. The analysis found Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts demonstrating the most progressive approaches to brownfields redevelopment. More than half of the sites reviewed were redeveloped for mixed use developments consisting of various combinations of office, retail, cultural, recreational, residential, public and/or some type of industrial space. "As communities struggle with curbing sprawl and preserving their green space, the good news is that many are making a lot of progress in reusing land or cleaning it up and returning it to productive use," said Bob Hallenbeck, senior vice president of government affairs for ECS. "From the stories reported this year, it's evident that brownfields redevelopment has become a mainstream real estate trend." The full report is available at: http://www.ecsinc.com/landreuse

----

EPA TARGETS NEW ENGLAND CHILDREN EXPOSED TO TOXICS

September 14, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-14-09.html

BOSTON, Massachusetts, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) New England Office has launched a $1 million, initiative aimed at protecting children from environmental health threats in the places where they spend most of their time - in school, at home and outdoors. The plan, announced Monday, includes $500,000 of new investments to combat lead poisoning in New England cities, $200,000 to improve air quality and reduce toxic exposure at 200 schools, and $225,000 in programs to curb skyrocketing asthma rates. EPA also announced the availability of $100,000 in grants to broaden opportunities for environmental education in classrooms around New England and a new "Showcase Schools" initiative in which one school in each of the New England states will be selected to showcase numerous EPA programs available to make schools safer for children.

"At a time of unparalleled prosperity all across the country, it is unacceptable that there are still thousands of children in New England afflicted by lead poisoning, mercury poisoning and bouts with asthma," said Mindy Lubber, regional administrator at EPA's New England Office. Lubber pledged that EPA New England - through a new Children's Health Team comprised of a dozen EPA staff members - will work to reduce environmental risks that are causing elevated rates of asthma, lead poisoning and other diseases suffered by children. "Our society cannot stand still when a dozen kids in Massachusetts are being diagnosed with lead poisoning each and every week and our hospital emergency rooms are being flooded with small children suffering from asthma," said Lubber.

----

A New Conservation Century

Washington Post
Thursday, September 14, 2000 ; A35
By Lady Bird Johnson and Laurance S. Rockefeller
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2175-2000Sep13.html

The 20th century can rightly be called America's conservation century. From President Theodore Roosevelt forward, Americans began to embrace their land rather than just use it. This ethic of conservation has created, protected and preserved tens of millions of acres of open space in America, encompassing everything from national parks to neighborhood soccer fields.

But conservation is not something that concludes just because a century does. We are not done, nor will we ever be. While protecting our natural resources is often a quiet, steady exercise, sometimes moments of great opportunity arise. We are at such a moment now.

The U.S. Senate has before it legislation that would do more to protect America's heritage than anything in a generation. The Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA) is in the true spirit of the early conservationists: It plans for the future while solving the immediate; it provides for recreation as well as preservation; it ensures significant state and local input and control; and it has bipartisan support. The House has passed the bill and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has approved it. With the administration supporting the legislation, all that is needed is Senate action in the remaining days of this Congress.

CARA's origins stretch back to 1958, when President Eisenhower created the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission to conduct a three-year inquiry into America's growing outdoor needs. Its findings suggested a new approach: Not only should the federal government step up its lagging land acquisition program to round out our national park system, but it should also embark on a new venture to provide matching funds that state and local governments could use to meet a broader set of outdoor needs.

In 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law a bill creating the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which not only affirmed these commitments but set American conservation on a course it still follows.

The foresight embedded in LWCF--an emphasis on federal/state/local partnerships, long-term planning, permanent acquisitions and urban recreation--was strengthened later in the 1960s by tapping money from offshore oil and gas leases to fund LWCF projects. The wisdom of doing so was strikingly simple: Utilize the exploitation of one public natural resource in order to protect and conserve another.

Congress had made a promise and found a way to keep it. And for years, the LWCF worked wonders. More than 37,000 projects have been sparked by the initiative, helping states and localities acquire some 2.3 million acres of parkland and adding 3.4 million acres of new federal lands to our national bounty. The LWCF has funded open space in literally every county in America, and is responsible for everything from helping preserve Civil War battlefields to purchasing land for Rocky Mountain National Park to building the baseball field down the street from your house.

After 15 years of generally faithful adherence to LWCF's unique bargain, presidential administrations and Congress began to redirect large chunks of fund revenues from their intended purposes to other budget items. Since 1980 more than $11 billion has been diverted from LWCF projects, creating a staggering backlog of federal, state and local land protection needs.

We urgently need to restore the promise. That's what CARA will do. CARA represents the first good opportunity in 20 years to set our conservation path back on track. It not only fully funds the LWCF but also addresses critical needs in wildlife management, urban parks, coastal protection and historic preservation.

Most important, it establishes a dependable source of funding for these programs. The prescience of those who created the fund was that conservation especially could not be a haphazard thing; population growth, the inexorable march of development and simple wear-and-tear on resources require a permanent commitment. CARA returns us to that premise, providing approximately $3 billion a year and a firm precedent for future funding.

CARA returns us to another important ideal: bipartisanship. Republican Don Young of Alaska and Democrat George Miller of California did a masterful job of steering CARA through the House, winning a 315 to 102 vote. In the Senate, Republican Frank Murkowski of Alaska and Democrat Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico brought the bill out of committee with support from senators of both parties. In these gridlocked times, CARA's bipartisan treatment is a reminder that policy can sometimes overcome politics. We hope the full Senate will heed that reminder and act on CARA now.

We have worked as partners on conservation issues in that bipartisan spirit for almost four decades. Our hope has always been that American leaders could look forward so that their children--all children--could have something to look forward to. By reviving the Land and Water Conservation Fund before it goes home this year, Congress can provide just that.

Lady Bird Johnson, the widow of President Lyndon B. Johnson, was instrumental in bringing about the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. Laurance S. Rockefeller is a conservationist and philanthropist.

-------- land mines

Mine ban signatories said to use them

Washington Times
September 14, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-2000914213725.htm

GENEVA - A number of countries that signed an international treaty against land mines are continuing to use them, according to the New York-based group Human Rights Watch.

Angola, Sudan, Burundi, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Rwanda were named as violators in the report, issued Tuesday during a five-day conference here assessing progress toward ending the use of land mines.

"The Angolan government admitted the use of mines against UNITA [National Union for the Total Independence of Angola] rebels, and UNITA resorted to the same," Steven Goose of Human Rights Watch said. "In Sudan and Burundi, despite their denials, we have convincing proof of use," he added.

"The convention is hollow if signatories use mines with no reaction from the international community," said Jody Williams of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

-------- police

U.S. Underlines Its Determination on Police Reform
LAPD: Key Justice Department official says a binding agreement and monitoring are mandatory.

Los Angeles Times
Thursday, September 14, 2000
By TINA DAUNT, Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/reports/rampart/lat_rampart000914.htm

In his strongest public statement to date on the urgency of reforming the Los Angeles Police Department, the acting head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division told the City Council Wednesday that the U.S. government insists on a binding, legal agreement to make sure "meaningful, permanent" police reforms finally occur.

"We are asking the City Council to fulfill its responsibility to commit unequivocally to implement these real, long-lasting reforms in a federal court order that will not change with the political winds," Bill Lann Lee told city lawmakers. "We are insisting that the consent decree hold city officials directly accountable to the public for their progress in making these reforms through regular assessments and reports by an independent monitor."

Lee also told council members that his department wants them to speedily approve a package of improvements designed to remedy what the Department of Justice sees as a "pattern or practice" of civil rights violations by LAPD officers.

"Police reform has been an unfinished item on the Los Angeles agenda for almost a decade now," Lee said. "This time, police reform must remain at the top of the city's agenda for as long as it takes to get this job done. A consent decree with an independent monitor will make that happen."

Although nine of the 15 council members have said they are open to a binding legal agreement with the federal government, four have expressed strong opposition and two remain undecided.

The differing opinions have sparked concern that the lawmakers ultimately will approve a settlement, but not by the 10-vote total required to override the mayoral veto expected by many in City Hall.

Behind the scenes, Mayor Richard Riordan and Police Chief Bernard C. Parks have been urging council members to fight the decree and to seek a less restrictive memorandum of understanding, which would work like a contract, but without the involvement of a federal judge.

Council members opposed to the decree have characterized the proposed agreement as a "federal takeover" of the LAPD.

Aware of such concerns, Lee told city officials that the proposed consent decree had been formulated with an unusual amount of input from local authorities.

"This investigation, frankly, was quite unusual, because we combined our traditional investigation with an attempt to collaborate [with city officials] in constructing reforms with the LAPD," Lee said.

Lee told the council that the proposed agreement--hammered out after extensive sessions with the city's four-member negotiating team--accomplishes a "number of critical objectives."

For example, he said, the decree would bolster the civilian oversight provisions in the Los Angeles City Charter--without attempting to alter the document--by strengthening the Police Commission and the inspector general.

It would also give assurance of regular, frequent and open public scrutiny of the LAPD's progress in implementing the reforms, Lee said, through frequent assessments and public reports by an independent monitor.

"Clearly there are very significant areas of agreement between the Justice Department and the city negotiating team," Lee said. "We are confident that full implementation of the changes required by the proposed agreement will eliminate the constitutional violations that we have found in our investigation."

Lee said other provisions in the agreement include:

* Making the LAPD's internal disciplinary system more "transparent" and providing mechanisms for holding the police chief more accountable for decisions he makes on disciplinary matters;

* Tightening management and control of the LAPD units monitoring gangs;

* Establishing strict guidelines for the use of confidential informants;

* Directing "an unprecedented degree of community outreach, open meetings and public information;"

* And implementing a computerized system to track problem officers.

"The agreement first mandates development of the computerized tracking database, also called an 'early warning system,' " Lee said. "This system was first proposed in the 1991 Christopher Commission Report in the wake of the Rodney King incident. If the database had been in place, it might well have prevented, detected or limited the scope of the Rampart scandal."

Official Lists Points in Dispute

Lee said there were four major areas of disagreement that still must be worked out between the Justice Department and the city. These are whether the city should enter into a consent decree, whether the reforms should be overseen by an outside monitor, whether the LAPD should be required to collect data on the extent of "racial profiling" by officers and whether the department should revise its guidelines on dealing with mentally ill suspects.

The city lawmakers are set to meet in a special session on Monday to further study the issues.

After a half-hour presentation to the council, Lee--who was rushing to catch a plane to Washington--had time to respond to only two questions from council members.

Nick Pacheco, who opposes a consent decree, asked why the Justice Department is needed to make the reforms.

"The Department of Justice is in no better condition to tell the City of Los Angeles how to run the department in comparison to our own leadership and our police chief, considering neither party was able to uncover [former Rampart officer-turned-informant] Rafael Perez and his cohorts," Pacheco said.

Lee said this "is not a new problem. It didn't need to be discovered. The issues that we're talking about have been in the public domain and the public controversy for at least 10 years. This is not an agreement that contains new concepts.

"What this negotiating team, the department and the city have done is take the best ideas available to Los Angeles and put them together in a consent decree to make sure they will happen."

Laura Chick, who supports the decree, asked why the reforms need to be implemented so quickly. The justice department reportedly has given the city until the end of the month to approve the agreement.

Lee responded: "Time is of the essence. Our charge is constitutional violations. Your charge is reform. I think we have a happy convergence."

After the meeting, a number of council members said Lee's presentation solidified in their minds that the city must either accept the legally binding agreement or face a lengthy and costly court battle.

"The most significant element of his presentation is the fact that the DOJ is ready to go to court if the city does not agree to this," said Councilman Alex Padilla, who, along with Councilman John Ferraro, is undecided on the consent decree. "That's a huge consideration in whatever the council and the city decide to do next week."

-------- spying

White House to Revisit Chile Files That C.I.A. Wants to Block

New York Times
September 24, 2000
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/14CHIL.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - The White House ordered a new look today at several hundred files that the Central Intelligence Agency intends to withhold when it releases American documents about the 1973 military coup in Chile.

Responding to concerns that the spy agency is overly protective of its secrets, Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser, postponed the governmentwide release of documents and asked aides to review the C.I.A. papers and seek the "fullest possible disclosure."

The move appeared to signal a victory for Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and other advocates of a broad disclosure of the American role in the overthrow of the Socialist government of President Salvador Allende and in the ensuing 17- year dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

And it could be read as a rebuke to George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director, who last month overruled his own declassification experts and announced that he would withhold certain files on Chile on the ground that they would compromise intelligence techniques still in use.

Joe Lockhart, the White House spokesman, said the re-examination of the C.I.A. papers would take "no more than a few weeks." In two previous releases of about 7,500 documents, there has been no explicit evidence of a C.I.A. role in destabilizing the Allende government, archivists say.

The declassification effort was ordered last year by President Clinton to shed light on rights abuses, terrorism and other acts of political violence in Chile from 1968 to1990.

A Senate committee reported in 1975 on C.I.A. efforts to prevent Mr. Allende from taking office. But the official record remains somewhat murky on whether American intelligence operatives had a direct role in the 1973 coup, and on what the American government knew about the murders of thousands of Chileans - and some Americans - under General Pinochet.

Last month, Mr. Tenet told members of Congress that some of the documents in question must be withheld because they presented "a pattern of activity that had the effect of revealing intelligence methods that have been employed worldwide."

Mr. Tenet insisted that he was not trying to shield his agency or the United States from embarrassment.

---

Diplomat, patriot, spy

Washington Times
September 14, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-2000914213344.htm

The late Israeli Ambassador Eliahu Ben-Elissar symbolized his country as few Israeli statesmen have.

"[He] devoted his life to the state of Israel. In the most authentic sense of the word, he was a patriot," said Israeli Ambassador David Ivry in a memorial service this week.

"His story touched our hearts, because it paralleled the history of Israel," Mr. Ivry added.

"He was a symbol of the energy and idealism that brought the state forward. He represented the classic Zionist belief that a passion for our people, our country would lead to a meaningful and fulfilling life."

Mr. Ben-Elissar, who died Aug. 12, was born in Poland in 1932. Most of his family perished in the Holocaust. He arrived alone in Israel at the age of 10 and spoke no Hebrew.

He later joined the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, and was reportedly a spy. When Likud leader Menachem Begin became prime minister in 1977, he appointed Mr. Ben-Elissar chief of staff.

Mr. Ben-Elissar served as a member of parliament from 1981 to 1996 and twice chaired the foreign affairs and defense committee.

He was ambassador to the United States from 1996 to 1998 and was later appointed ambassador to France. He was dismissed from that position in a staff shake-up a week before his fatal heart attack.

At the memorial service, Mr. Ivry said, "This ceremony is the culmination of a long and challenging journey, started as a young boy in a Europe ravaged by war. His beginnings were humble indeed.

"Eliahu Ben-Elissar arrived in Israel as a refugee who did not speak the language. He had to cope with the challenges of absorption, with no family support. Yet, he rose above it all to become one of our foremost diplomats, representing Israel at its most important diplomatic missions.

"He was a man of strong principles, respected by all for his deep convictions."

Mr. Ivry said he left "a deep and lasting impression on the state of Israel [and] will be sorely missed by all those whose lives he touched."

-------- terrorism

New Civil Trial Begins in Peru for Imprisoned New Yorker

New York Times
September 14, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/14PERU.html

LIMA, Peru, Sept. 13 - A New York woman accused of terrorism denied today during questioning by a judge that she had ever collaborated with leftist rebels or participated in violent acts, her lawyer said.

Lori Berenson, 30, told a civilian judge investigating the charges against her that she was neither a member nor a collaborator of the pro-Cuban Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, known by its initials M.R.T.A., her lawyer, José Luis Sandoval, said.

The appearance before the judge, who is conducting the investigation to determine if there are sufficient grounds to charge Ms. Berenson in a civilian court, was behind closed doors.

"She has denied all ties of a collaborative nature with the M.R.T.A. She has answered all the questions, from my viewpoint, satisfactorily," Mr. Sandoval said.

In January 1996, hooded military judges sentenced Ms. Berenson to life in prison without parole after declaring her guilty of treason for helping the Túpac Amaru rebels plan an attack on Congress. Authorities say they foiled the alleged plan.

Peru's highest military court overturned the sentence on Aug. 28, saying there was new evidence that she was not a leader of the Túpac Amaru band. Under Peru's terrorism legislation, rebel leaders face charges of treason in secret military courts.

The decision cleared the way for a new trial in an open civilian court on a lesser charge of terrorism.

Ms. Berenson's case has been a sore point in United States relations with Peru. Washington had repeatedly pressed for a new trial, saying the secret nature of the military trial violated her rights. Washington also criticized as too harsh the living conditions she has been held under in Peruvian prisons.

Mr. Sandoval described Ms. Berenson as "a social anthropologist" who may have had a "distorted, mistaken vision" of what the M.R.T.A. was, but said any contact she had with the rebels did not make her a collaborator.

Ms. Berenson dropped out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after three semesters before moving to Central America in 1990. She arrived in Peru in 1994.

Before her 1996 conviction, Ms. Berenson was presented to the news media and shouted out her support for Peru's poor, saying: "There are no criminal terrorists in the M.R.T.A. It is a revolutionary movement."

Many Peruvians considered this to be an admission of guilt.

A new public opinion poll published today found that 52 percent of Peruvians oppose Ms. Berenson receiving a new trial in a civilian court. The survey indicated 24 percent approved the decision.

The poll showed that 33 percent viewed her as an active militant, while 20 percent saw her as a rebel leader and another 20 percent regarded her as a rebel sympathizer.

The poll had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.


-------- activists

Brits have tired of Blair telling them what's best for them.

CBS News
LONDON, Sept. 14, 2000
By Kimberly Dozier
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0%2C1597%2C233392-412%2C00.shtml

Blockades Bloody Blair Anger Over High Fuel Prices Forces The British PM To Think Again CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier's 'Letter From London'

(CBS) A bloody nose for Tony Blair this week: He started out telling protestors furious over skyrocketing fuel costs that they just had to live with high government fuel taxes.

The taxes, combined with OPEC's rise in oil prices over the past year, mean Brits pay almost five bucks a gallon for gasoline.

Well, Brits have tired of Blair telling them what's best for them - a far cry from when they voted him in, because they thought he was a politician who cared, a politician who would actually listen.

This time, they made him listen. When Blair told the protestors to go home, and promised the public everything would be back to normal in 24 hours, the protestors stayed put, and the public voiced their support, even though the demonstrations ran most gas stations dry, and stranded many people at home.

A contrite Blair, 24 hours later, was forced to appeal to the protestors, asking them to put themselves in his shoes - how could he cave in, even though they have a real grievance? Wouldn't that invite round-the-clock demonstrator chaos?

Shortly thereafter, most of the demonstrators went home, believing that finally, they'd forced Blair to step into their shoes.

Now they're watching to see if he transforms this humble pie into government policy, i.e., lowering those fuel taxes in the next budget. If not, they plan to teach him another lesson, at the ballot box next year.

---

This is Not a Fuel Crisis, it's a Tax Revolt!
This is a revolt against the dictatorship of the kleptocrat

FreeRepublic.com "A Conservative News Forum"
9/14/00
Foreign Affairs Editorial Opinion (Published)
Daily Telegraph
Daniel Johnson
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a39c157187f39.htm

News: Britain comes to a standstill

THIS is not a fuel crisis. It is a tax revolt. This is the nation of the stiff upper lip. We put up with war and rationing, disasters and poverty, bad public services and worse traffic jams. We even put up with high taxes. In Burke's peerless words: "To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men." Up with penal taxation, though, we will not put.

For most of the population, fuel is a necessity, not a luxury. And the penny has dropped that it is more heavily taxed here than anywhere else.

Over the past few days, the British have withdrawn their consent to petrol duty. That is the real meaning of the almost universal sympathy for the lorry drivers' and farmers' protest. The tax revolt's popularity has much to do with its spontaneity: it has nothing to do with trade unions. Indeed, the TUC has predictably lined up behind the Labour Government: a good reason for many people to support the tax revolt.

Having been one of the most popular peacetime prime ministers in history, Tony Blair could soon find himself one of the most unpopular.

Just as governments impose stealth taxes, so do we revolt by stealth. When direct taxes soared under Labour governments, legal avoidance and illegal evasion mushroomed. Millions of Britons resort to illegally imported alcohol and tobacco. Smuggling is part of the British way of life.

Open tax revolts, though, are another matter. They are usually terminal for governments. Most recently, the Thatcher government was mortally wounded by resistance to the poll tax. Back in 1381, Richard II put down the Peasants' Revolt, but the poll tax was scrapped and he was ultimately deposed. Ship money and other arbitrary imposts provoked the Civil War, which led Charles I to the block. The Boston Tea Party, another tax revolt, inaugurated the American Revolution.

When a tax revolt is supported by the great majority, it takes on a different, almost festive quality. After news reached Versailles that the sans culottes had stormed the Bastille, Louis XVI told the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt: "C'est une grande révolte." The Duke famously replied: "Non, Sire, c'est une grande révolution. "The French have celebrated Bastille Day ever since. Many Britons were secretly exhilarated yesterday.

Who is to blame? Gordon Brown's Iron Chancellor complex has finally rebounded against him. He is to blame for the proliferation of stealth taxes, including the legalised pilfering of pension funds. Mr Brown loves to tax windfalls, but he rarely regurgitates them. His fiscally retentive stance has inhibited the Prime Minister from acting to defuse the rising tide of revolt. Having washed his hands of the crisis until yesterday, the Chancellor appeared on television looking like Scrooge and talking like Marie Antoinette.

Nor has the Prime Minister been well served by his Transport Secretary, the preposterous John Prescott, who was still celebrating in Hull on Monday while the country was grinding to a halt. He may well be made the scapegoat, but all the relevant departments of state have been passing the buck.

Moreover, the supine Parliamentary Labour Party has failed to warn its leader. When Bill Clinton proposed to tax petrol to pay for his healthcare reform, the Democrats in Congress stopped him in his tracks. Not a squeak about petrol from Mr Blair's guys and dolls. His colleagues may have let him down, but the Prime Minister has let the country down.

Mr Blair has made things worse for himself by adopting an inflexible stance, without identifying an unpopular enemy and without preparing his ground. When Margaret Thatcher took on the miners in the 1980s, they were led by the detestable Arthur Scargill, while fuel had been stockpiled for years in preparation for a long strike. Mr Blair was caught unawares. For that, to coin one of his favourite school prefect phrases, "there can be no excuse whatsoever".

Perhaps his most serious mistake was knowingly to mislead the country. When the Prime Minister gave his Downing Street press conference on Tuesday evening, he stated: "We hope within the next 24 hours to have the situation on the way back to normal, though it will take longer than that to be fully back to normal."

He must have known then that this was wildly optimistic. Yesterday it became apparent that fuel shortages will last for weeks. Mr Blair's claim that he could turn round the crisis in 24 hours looked not only foolish, but also mendacious. And as the day wore on, with only emergency services being resupplied and the prospect of severe shortages of food, cash and other necessities looming, anger at the deception grew.

Mr Blair's complacency has compounded the tax revolt. He has ignored the plight of the ordinary motorist; he has refused to acknowledge the justice of the popular grievance; above all, he has demonstrated incompetence and impotence.

Everybody over 40 can remember the horrors of the strikebound 1970s: the three-day week, the IMF crisis, the winter of discontent, the candles and the unburied dead. We have not forgotten the sterling crises and the exchange controls that kept us prisoner. We know what it is like to have inflation and public expenditure out of control. And we recall the confiscatory levels of taxation that destroyed incentives. The rebellion against it all took a democratic form: the election of Mrs Thatcher.

In the past few days, we have had a strong whiff of the 1970s. It is a novel experience for the young. The cost to the economy, which will run into billions by next week, is in reality incalculable, and has been exacerbated by the Government's gamble. It takes no account of the inconvenience caused to almost everybody. The cancelled holidays and sports fixtures, the lost revenues and absent employees, the children sent home from school: Messrs Blair and Brown will both be blamed for it all - and rightly so.

Let us hope that this is not only a tax revolt, but also the beginning of a tax revolution: a revulsion against the dictatorship of the kleptocrat. Gladstone claimed to have been swept out of office on a torrent of beer and gin. Next year, Mr Blair may well be swept out of Downing Street on a torrent of petrol and diesel.

FreeRepublic , LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794

---

British Fuel Blockade Ending, Though Shortages to Continue

New York Times
September 14, 2000
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/15CND-BRITAI.html

LONDON, Sept. 14 -- A blockade of British refineries and storage areas began to break up today and convoys of oil trucks moved past company gates unimpeded for the first time in a week. But Prime Minister Tony Blair warned there was still "some way to go" before drivers would see gasoline back in their neighborhood pumps.

The signal that the hastily organized but remarkably effective countrywide protest of high fuel prices was coming to an end was a 5 a.m. statement from the movement's instigator, a Welsh farmer named Brynle Williams, that he was shutting down a vigil at the Shell refinery in Stanlow, Cheshire, in northwest England where the protest began seven days ago. He urged others to follow suit.

Hours after the Stanlow pickets were taken down, protesters did likewise at Grangemouth in Scotland, Cardiff in Wales, Jarrow in northest England, Plymouth in southwest England, Avonmouth near Bristol and Trafford Park in Manchester. Pockets of resistance emerged at other sites, but at noon Mr. Blair reported that 12 main depots were operating freely.

Mr. Williams, who has become a practiced performer on British television this week, said that he felt the siege should be lifted while its supporters still occupied the "high moral ground." A BBC poll broadcast Wednesday said 80 percent of Britons supported the blockades despite the inconvenience.

At a news conference, his third in as many days, Mr. Blair acknowledged the widespread opposition to his tough stance against the demonstrators and the depth of sentiment about high fuel costs. Striking a less defiant note than in recent days, he said, "Whatever the strength of feeling on the price of petrol, I do hope that over time people will carefully reflect on recent events. However much people may dislike paying petrol duty, there's no way that any government of this country could or should yield to this form of protest."

He said the proper times to take up the matter of fuel taxes were during the budget review in November and the presentation of the budget itself in March, and he suggested that he and his ministers would be meeting with some of the protest leaders before then.

Mr. Williams said he looked for a cut in taxes within the next 60 days in exchange for lifting the siege. He said he decided to call a halt "after deep discussions and concerns among ourselves about the distress to the British public." Mr. Blair said last night that the blockades were putting "lives at risk" by jeopardizing police and hospital activities, and he put the National Health Service on national disaster footing.

The demonstrators have been picketing refineries and storage depots in protest of duties that make Britain's gas the highest taxed and most expensive in Europe. Depending upon e-mails and mobile telephones for coordination, the nationwide movement was mounted by a relatively small number of truck owners, farmers and self-employed workers who attested that rising fuel prices -- gasoline costs about $4.37 a gallon -- are putting them out of business.

With almost all of Britain's 12,500 filling stations drained, returning supplies to normal is a "massive logistical operation," according to the Petrol Retailers' Association. Less than 10 percent of normal supplies were on the move Wednesday despite government pressure on the oil companies and assurances of police protection for drivers.

With emergency services getting the priority, it would take until Saturday to start getting fuel back in pumps and at least two weeks before the situation was back to normal.

Two of Britain's major suppliers, Esso and TotalFinaElf, announced today they were raising their prices on gas and diesel fuel despite the crippling countrywide protests, provoking instant condemnation from Mr. Blair and motorists' organizations. "We recognize this may seem untimely in the light of the current disruptions," Esso acknowledged in a statement.

In answer to a question on the matter, Mr. Blair said irritably that he "really couldn't understand" the decision. "The world oil price as far as I'm aware has actually gone down in the last few days." He said the subject would be discussed at a meeting with oil company heads at 10 Downing Street later in the day.

The Automobile Association said drivers would be "unimpressed" by the rise and should respond by being "more selective about where they patronize."

Shell and BP said they would hold to present prices and absorb losses from recent days.

Vincent Burke, a spokesman for the London Chamber of Commerce, said the protests were costing Britain $350 million each day, roughly one-tenth of the national daily economic output. "By the time this is all over, it'll be over 1 billion pounds ($1.4 billion)," he said. "We have seen three or four days of quite severe disruption and we expect one more. It's something that's affecting every sector of the economy."

Shortly after Mr. Blair spoke, the Ministry of Defense announced that 80 army, navy and Royal Air Force tanker trucks it had deployed across the country Wednesday would now begin refueling needy police stations, hospitals and other essential services facilities from military stocks.

Britain's roads were all but deserted during the morning rush hour, railways reported 50 percent rises in passenger numbers and stores said they were selling record numbers of bicycles and lightweight aluminum scooters. Halfords, a motoring accessories chain, reported a threefold rise in gas tank tops and cans designed to prevent theft, but a spokeswoman added that there had also been a run on hoses used to siphon gas.

One victim of the fuel shortage was Prince Charles, who canceled public appearances touring farms in southwest England rather than accept an offer of gasoline from police. "He didn't think he was an emergency service," a spokeswoman said.

---

European Countries Resist Cutting Fuel Taxes

New York Times
September 4, 2000
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/14EURO.html

FRANKFURT, Sept. 13 - Truckers and farmers around continental Europe continued their protests today, but political leaders dug in their heels against cuts in the gasoline tax.

In the eastern German city of Schwerin, about 400 truckers and farmers heckled Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as he visited the city, and they drowned out much of his speech with whistles and horns.

In Belgium, truck drivers blocked fuel deliveries to express their anger at the rising prices and tied up streets in Brussels and the port city of Antwerp.

Oil and gasoline prices have soared, and in Germany gasoline is fetching about $4 a gallon. That has fomented public ire at fuel taxes, which make up as much as three- quarters of the cost.

But mindful of the huge contribution to government coffers, political leaders have ruled out a cut in fuel taxes and have proposed narrower and often temporary reductions on other taxes.

"Drop this dangerous game, because it could threaten the growth and employment prospects we currently have," Chancellor Schröder warned protesting truckers in Schwerin today.

And he told ARD television, "We have to make the use of our resources, especially energy, more costly. The money we get will go immediately to cut pension insurance costs. This policy has been a success, and we can't change it."

Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium refused demands for a fuel tax rebate for the trucking industry, offering instead reductions in taxes on truckers' insurance and a postponement on paying next year's road taxes.

Belgian truckers seized the inner ring road in Brussels, but outside the view of television cameras, the mood was surprisingly tranquil, with some protesters even sipping beer at an outdoor cafe near the Transportation Ministry.

Alain Gerlache, a spokesman for the Belgian government, said officials simply were not willing to offer a permanent reduction in gasoline taxes.

"The truckers are asking for a structural reduction in the price of fuel," Mr. Gerlache said today. "We don't agree to that. European Union rules don't allow it."

By contrast, France agreed last week to cut its fuel tax by 15 percent, a move that largely calmed protests that had gathered force there.

Though gasoline taxes are sky- high across most of Europe, they have become a particularly sore topic among Germans because Mr. Schröder's government has pushed through two gasoline tax increases in the last year, with another one to take effect in January.

Germany's center-right opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union, has begun an advertising and petitioning campaign aimed at blaming Mr. Schröder's Social Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Green Party, for the gasoline taxes.

The German federation of truckers announced plans to hold a four- hour slowdown on Sept. 26. As envisioned, the truckers will creep along at 40 miles an hour on the autobahns and well below the speed limits on smaller roads as well.

Among other protests today, truckers blocked many of the roads in and around the Belgian port of Antwerp, and they succeeded in blocking many if not most of the gasoline trucks.

Total Fina Elf S.A., Belgium's leading gasoline supplier, said it was able to deliver only about 20 percent of the gasoline its customers needed. "If it lasts for a couple more days, the damage could be catastrophic," a company spokesman told Reuters today.

For the most part, highway traffic and gasoline supplies were normal in most countries and did not come close to the paralysis this week in Britain.

Italy, where strikes are common, remained tranquil and free of gasoline shortages as trucking leaders and government officials negotiated over competing proposals for relief.

The eruption of widespread anger about high gasoline prices poses a problems for many European political leaders.

Most of the governments are now controlled by left-of-center parties, most of which support high fuel taxes as a method of reducing gasoline consumption and reducing the production of "greenhouse" gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

Gasoline taxes also represent an important and simple way for governments to raise revenue. And under rules restricting budget deficits for countries that have adopted the euro as a common currency, most governments would have to offset any reductions in gasoline taxes by increasing other taxes or by cutting spending.

---

French Farmer Is Sentenced to Jail for Attack on McDonald's

Washington Times
September 14, 2000
By SUZANNE DALEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/world/14FRAN.html

PARIS, Sept. 13 - The farmer who became something of a national hero last year for leading an attack on a McDonald's restaurant was convicted of criminal vandalism today and sentenced to three months in prison.

Judge François Mallet, who delivered the verdict and the sentence in the nonjury trial, said he hoped the jail term would make the farmer, José Bové, "finally listen to reason."

The sentence was harsher than the token one-month prison sentence, with another nine months suspended, that the prosecutor asked for at the end of Mr. Bové's raucous trial in July.

Mr. Bové, a sheep farmer who has proved media savvy since his action made him a celebrity, looked somber as he left the courthouse. He vowed to continue his fight against globalization and what he views as bad food.

"It's not the risk of going to prison that is going to stop us from protesting," Mr. Bové said on the steps of the courthouse. "The important thing is for the movement to continue to grow whatever the price is that we may have to pay here today."

From the beginning it was clear that Mr. Bové's attack on the American fast-food giant had tapped into a deep well of public discontent and a feeling of powerlessness on subjects ranging from genetically modified foods to the power of the American economy.

His particular protest was prompted by the United States' decision to levy high tariffs on Roquefort cheese, pâté de foie gras and other luxury imported food in retaliation for the European Union's decision to ban American hormone-treated beef. But it came to represent much more.

During his trial in the small southwestern town of Millau, thousands of supporters showed up. For two days the atmosphere of a French Woodstock prevailed as teenagers with green hair gathered along with middle-aged men with ponytails and retirees wearing T-shirts that said, "The world is not merchandise and I'm not either."

But today only a few dozen supporters were on hand in Millau, where the local industry is the production of Roquefort cheese. Few people in France expected Mr. Bové, who organized the attack, to be handed a jail term. In this country protesting is a national pastime and activists are rarely given prison sentences. None of Mr. Bové's nine co- defendants were sent to prison. Three were given two-month suspended sentences, five were fined about $300 and one was acquitted.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Bové, 47, said he was surprised by the verdict. "I think this is a very severe judgment," he said. "The magistrate didn't understand the movement or the motivation behind what we did."

He said an appeal had already been filed and that the trial would effectively take place again in about one year before the Court of Appeals. In the meantime, Mr. Bové, who now has a busy speaking schedule, a far more prominent job with his union and dinner invitations from high-level government officials, said he would keep up with his activities as usual.

Before the attack on the McDonald's, Mr. Bové was a local activist and union official living in a small stone farm tucked in the craggy hills of the Larzac region. His activism involved local issues, like opposing use of nearby land for an army base.

Nowadays, Mr. Bové, who has an amiable grin under his handlebar mustache, trots the globe. He said he would be in Bangalore, India, at the end of the month to take part in a protest against genetically modified grain. "The combat will continue," he said.

---

Design Chosen for Memorial to Dr. King

New York Times
September 14, 2000
By IRVIN MOLOTSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/14/national/14KING.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - A monument with a "stone of hope" that represents the nonviolent civil rights movement was selected tonight as the memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that will be built on the Washington Mall.

"It will convey the meaning of Martin's life," said Coretta Scott King, Dr. King's widow.

The winning design was submitted by the ROMA Design Group, an architecture firm in San Francisco.

A likeness of Dr. King will be cut into a rock facing the nearby Jefferson Memorial.

Boris Dramov, president of the design firm, said the position of Dr. King's statue would represent the unkept promises that were due to blacks and members of other minorities.

"It is not intended to be a eulogy," Mr. Dramov said. "It is about life and positive social change."

The memorial will be built next to the Tidal Basin between the Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. In keeping with its surroundings, it will be edged with flowering cherry trees.

Bonnie Fisher, a landscape architect with the design firm, said the cherry trees were appropriate because, each spring, "they happen to bloom at the moment of Martin Luther King's death."

The selection of company was made by Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, which was established in 1906 and later counted Dr. King among its members. Congress granted authority to the fraternity to select the winning design and to raise money for the memorial.

Asked how much the monument would cost, Adrian L. Wallace, the president of the fraternity, said, "We don't have a definitive figure."

Among those participating in the announcement today were the clothing designer, Tommy Hilfiger, whose company pledged a contribution of at least $5 million for the construction.

The selection of the designer is an early step in the process that will lead to the building of the first monument to an African-American on the Mall.

Approvals are still needed from three federal commissions and the National Park Service.

The design will include a wall, streams of water, and a path with niches to commemorate others who contributed to the civil rights movement. Among them will be memorials to the four girls killed in 1963 in the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Ala., and to Medgar Evers, the murdered Mississippi civil rights leader.

Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, and the place where his memorial will be built is not far from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where he made his famous "I have a dream" speech in 1963.

There were two other developments today regarding monuments on the Mall.

A proposed monument to former President Ronald Reagan received its first approval when the House Committee of Resources sent it to the full House of Representatives on a voice vote.

Some Democrats complained about the haste with which the monument was approved; it was acted on without any hearings.

Harvey B. Gant, chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, wrote to the House committee to express the commission's concern over the manner in which the monument is progressing.

A law, which the current measure could pre-empt, Mr. Gant said, calls for waiting for 25 years after the death of a person before a memorial is approved in the capital.

"This 25-year period provides for enough time to pass following an individual's death for policymakers to gain an appropriate perspective on such individual's impact on the nation," Mr. Gant said.

There are two tributes to Mr. Reagan in Washington. National Airport has been renamed in his honor and the new world trade building near the White House bears his name.

The other development was a recommendation by the staff of the planning commission that it approve the location and building plans of the World War II Memorial at its proposed site on the Mall.

That site is just west of 17th Street, with the memorial essentially replacing the Rainbow Pool.

The Commission of Fine Arts approved the design of the war memorial on July 30, and the planning commission usually follows the lead of the arts commissions on matters of aesthetics.

The planning commission is scheduled to vote on the memorial next Thursday.

-------

NucNews - Please circulate -- help educate! - http://prop1.org

1. New NRC Report On Nuclear Waste Shipments Fails To Address Public Concerns
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

2. PLOWSHARES ARTICLE FROM COLORADO
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

3. Please Sign & Spread Petition To Have President Carter Tell The Truth About 3 Mile Island
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

4. NMD and UN General Assembly items Sept 14
From: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <nonukes@foesyd.org.au>

5. Time Bombs
From: ivan buchbinder <pentaske@memes.com>

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

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

New NRC Report On Nuclear Waste Shipments Fails To Address Public Concerns

I don't have the exact URL but you can find this from:
http://www.citizen.org
http://www.citizen.org/cmep &
http://www.necnp.org

Call both your Senators & your Representative at: 202-224-3121 to express your views. They need to know that someone gives a DAMN about this proposed mass human/environmental experimentation. Please dissemenate as widely as possible.

-Bill Smirnow

For Immediate Release:
September 14, 2000

Statement of Lisa Gue New NRC Report On Nuclear Waste Shipments Fails to Address Public Concerns

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must withdraw its report, "Re-examination of Spent Fuel Shipments Risk Estimates" (NUREG/CR-6672), or reissue it as a draft for public comment, said Public Citizen at an NRC workshop today in Rockville, MD. This report was finalized without prior public input and does not adequately address the public's legitimate safety concerns about the transportation of nuclear waste.

The draft summary, "A Summary Paper for Public Meeting," could be used to rationalize the large-scale transport of high-level radioactive waste from commercial nuclear reactors and DOE weapons facilities to a proposed storage site in Yucca Mountain, Nev.

The draft summary glosses over the public's safety concerns. The NRC must acknowledge that transporting high-level nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain, Nev. is inherently dangerous because of the risk of accidents along transportation routes. Understating this danger might result in less careful treatment of nuclear waste shipments, which in turn could actually increase the risk.

Yucca Mountain is the only site currently under consideration to serve as a permanent geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste. The DOE is studying the mountain to determine whether it is suitable for permanent storage for 77,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste. If the Yucca Mountain site is approved, radioactive waste could be shipped through 43 states during a period of at least 24 years. This transportation scheme is scheduled to begin as early as 2010.

Meanwhile, a proposal by Private Fuel Storage(PFS) , a consortium of private utilities, would initiate high-level waste shipments to an interim storage facility in Utah beginning in 2003.

The NRC report does not accurately characterize risk probability or consequences for shipments of high-level waste to Yucca Mountain or the PFS facility, because it does not consider specific transport routes, but only generic samples of potential routes and route conditions.

The NRC report concludes that the risk involved in transporting high-level nuclear waste is lower than estimated in previous reports. The NRC claims this as an indication that radioactive waste shipments are becoming safer. However, it is unclear whether this represents an actual reduction in risk or whether the changing numbers simply reflect the different methodologies used in previous studies. Furthermore, risk estimates based on past shipping records could be subject to a high level of uncertainty due to extrapolating the experience of a small number of previous shipments to a future scenario where shipments to Yucca Mountain would be routine and frequent.

Today's meeting also considered a paper detailing Sandia National Laboratories recommendations for a "Spent Nuclear Fuel Transportation Package Performance Study." This study would update the 1987 report known as the Modal Study. It is unacceptable that Sandia's scoping paper fails to recommend full-scale physical testing of nuclear waste transportation casks. Public Citizen continues to insist on comprehensive physical testing of the casks used for proposed transportation schemes as the only way to confirm the validity of computer models.

The public cannot have confidence in a package performance study that does not consider specific transportation routes and conditions in its analysis of probabilities and consequences. The NRC must acknowledge the prescriptive role that this study would play in licensing nuclear waste transportation and must demand tests that reflect the precise scope and conditions of the proposals under consideration.

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

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

PLOWSHARES ARTICLE FROM COLORADO

Colorado Springs Independent
Public Eye
by Malcolm Howard
SEPTEMBER 14, 2000: ......

Satellite bashing

On the home front, a group of Roman Catholic activists took action against what they see as the United States' militant posture -- toward outer space and against Iraq.

As thousands of people swarmed to Peterson Air Force base to check out the aerial maneuvers of the Thunderbird pilots last weekend, the activists walked onto the base and began hammering on an F-18A Hornet fighter plane and pouring human blood on a ground communications station used with the Air Force's Milstar satellite.

Carol Gilbert, Jackie Hudson, Anne Montgomery, Ardeth Platte and Liz Walters have been charged with felony criminal mischief and obstructing government operations. Representing three orders within the Catholic Church, the women face possible prison sentences from two to eight years for the more serious felony counts.

The action was part of a campaign of civil disobedience called Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares, inspired by the Biblical passage (Micah 4:3) that extols the hammering of "swords into plowshares." One of the women arrested last week, 73-year-old Anne Montgomery, was part of the original Plowshares action at a General Electric plant in 1980.

This time, Montgomery and the other activists are protesting the continued bombing of Iraq by U.S. jets and the American military's plan to "dominate and control space" for the purpose of fighting wars.

But Colonel Robin Chandler, a spokesperson for the 21st Space Wing, claimed the activists were detained before making contact with the Milstar/Ground 3 apparatus (though local space-peace activist Bill Sulzman claims the women were able to pour blood on the unit).

As for the protesters' charge of celestial imperialism, Chandler said it didn't ruin the base's otherwise successful air show. "It was a shame they chose that opportunity to stage those protests, but those things happen," she said.

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

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

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

Sign Petition To Have President Carter Tell The Truth About 3 Mile Island

http://www.petitiononline.com/tmi/petition.html

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

Message: 4
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000
From: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <nonukes@foesyd.org.au>

NMD and UN General Assembly items Sept 14

John Hallam Friends of the Earth Sydney, 17 Lord Street, Newtown, NSW, Australia, 2042 Fax (61)(2)9517-3902 ph (61)(2)9517-3903 nonukes@foesyd.org.au http://homepages.tig.com.au/~foesyd

Dear All,

The switch is truly to the UN now, with all of the media items here relating to events at the UN, either the GA or the CD.

Possibly the most important is number 2, in which the foreign ministers of the New Agenda Coalition (Sweden, NZ, Ireland, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt) call on the weapons states to get on with fulfilling their obligations under the NPT and the NPT Revcon this year.

However, the items relating to China's clash with the US at the Conference on Disarmament (3,4,5.) are also critical in showing that NMD and the ABM treaty remain the largest obstacles to progress on the weapons states Article VI obligations.

And if those Article VI obligations remain forever unfulfilled, the future of the whole planet is at stake.

Look for plenty of pressure to be put on the weapons states in the coming UNGA session.

And please, do write to your governments if they are amongst those who voted 'NO' or 'ABSTAIN' on the last NAC resolution last year, to ask them to support it this time round.

John Hallam

CONTAINS:

1) UN Press rls 14 Sept 2000 DISARMAMENT COMMITTEE HOLDS ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING

2) Thurs, Sept14 (AFP) Nuclear States urged to honour pledges made at NPT review

3) Thurs Sept14 (AP) China Blasts U.S. Missile Proposal

4) Thurs Sep14 China, U.S. Clash on Missile Shield at Arms Talks

5) 14 Sept 2000 Press Release DC/2724 IN CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT, CHINA, UNITED STATES ADDRESS ISSUES OF US NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM, ABM TREATY

---

1) UN Press rls 14 Sept 2000 DISARMAMENT COMMITTEE HOLDS ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING
Press Release GA/DIS/3167
DISARMAMENT COMMITTEE HOLDS ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING

The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), in an organizational meeting this afternoon, elected two vice-chairmen and adopted its programme of work for the current session. The Chairman, Mya Than (Myanmar), was elected by acclamation on 5 September.

At this afternoonÕs meeting, Alberto Guani (Uruguay) and Petra Schneebauer (Austria), were elected vice-chairmen, also by acclamation. The election of the remaining members of the bureau (one vice-chairman and a rapporteur) will be announced at a later date.

The Committee then approved the following programme of work (document A/C.1/55/CRP.1): general debate on all disarmament and international security agenda items, 2 to 13 October; thematic discussion on item subjects as well as introduction and consideration of all draft resolutions, 13 to 23 October. Action will be taken on all draft resolutions from 25 October to 3 November.

The Chairman said that in order to fully utilize the time and conference services available to the Committee, he would convene meetings of the Committee promptly at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. He stressed the utmost importance of punctuality in the interest of ensuring an effective and orderly organization of the work of the Committee and achieving economy for the Organization.

He informed the Committee of a request by the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgeting) for the views of First Committee members on the proposed medium-term plan (2002-2005) concerning disarmament.

The Chairman also announced that the first meeting of intercessional consultations on small arms would be held on 6 October in the afternoon, following the meeting of the First Committee.

The First Committee will meet again at 10 a.m. on Monday, 2 October, to begin its general exchange of views.

--

2) Thurs, Sept14
(AFP) Nuclear States urged to honour pledges made at NPT review

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 13 (AFP) - Seven countries known as the New Agenda Coalition (NAC) called Wednesday on the five nuclear powers to act quickly on a pledge they made in May to eliminate their arsenals.

The foreign ministers of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden also expressed "concern at on-going challenges to the non-proliferation regime".

In a joint communique, they called for universal adherence to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and urged the three countries that have not signed it -- Israel, India and Pakistan -- to so.

The NAC was credited with wresting a "unequivocal undertaking" from the five declared nuclear-weapon states "to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals" during the five-yearly NTP review conference.

The conference, held here, was the first in 15 years that reached a consensus. It ended on May 20 with a historic agreement that breathed new life into the 30-year-old treaty and raised hopes for nuclear disarmament.

The NAC foreign ministers were in New York for the two-week general debate of the UN General Assembly, which began with last week's Millennium Summit.

The undertaking by the five nuclear powers "demonstrates a new determination to achieve a world free of nuclear weapon," they said.

They recalled that this had been achieved "against a background of limited progress in negotiations" on non-proliferation and disarmament.

The NAC ministers called for the early resumption of negotiations between the United States and Russia on arms reduction.

They said they "looked forward to early action by the five nuclear weapon states on the series of undertakings made by them at the NPT review conference."

And they called on the parties to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) -- Russia and the United States -- "to preserve its integrity and validity."

Russia has said that proposals by the United States to build a missile shield against nuclear rocket attack would undermine the treaty.

China told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday that the proposals -- which have been put on hold by US President Bill Clinton until his successor takes office -- would "have a profound negative effect on world peace and security."

The NAC called on "all states to refrain from decisions that could impact negatively on nuclear disarmament, lead to a new arms race or be inconsistent with the commitment to the total abolition of nuclear weapons."

They said they regretted that an agreement at the NPT review conference to immediately establish a body to deal with nuclear disarmament within the Geneva Conference on Disarmament had not yet been acted upon.

They ended by saying that "international peace and stability can best be maintained and enhanced with the involvement of the international community as a whole" and said they submit a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly.

-----

3) Thurs Sept 14 (AP)
China Blasts U.S. Missile Proposal
By GEIR MOULSON, Associated Press Writer

GENEVA (AP) - China urged disarmament negotiators Thursday to consider the ``grave consequences'' of U.S. plans for a national missile defense system, dismissing President Clinton's deferral of a decision to deploy it.

China and Russia have been leading voices denouncing the idea of a limited U.S. shield against missile attack from countries like Iraq and North Korea. They maintain that it would undermine arms-control and disarmament treaties already in effect, in particular the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

Clinton earlier this month decided not to authorize the National Missile Defense, leaving the decision to his successor.

But the deferral ``does not mean at all that the NMD plan has been given up,'' Chinese Ambassador Hu Xiaodi told delegates at the 66-nation Conference on Disarmament here. He cited ``the grave consequences of the development and deployment.''

``The U.S. president has instructed the continued development and testing of NMD,'' he said. ``The international community should be clear about this fact.''

U.S. diplomats rejected the Chinese comments, suggesting that China and others are using objections to the NMD as a smoke screen to create ``utter paralysis'' blocking disarmament negotiations.

The United States has been pressing for years for negotiations on a treaty banning the production of ``fissile materials'' - plutonium and highly enriched uranium - needed to make nuclear weapons. Washington maintains that negotiations on outer space are a nonstarter and are blocking work on the fissile material ban. Western diplomats have suggested that China, with a much smaller nuclear arsenal than Russia or the United States, wants to avoid a ban on fissile materials.

In any event, Washington maintains, the NMD would be land-based and would have no impact on armaments in space.

``I'm puzzled at the intensity of the concerns that have been expressed,'' U.S. Ambassador Robert T. Grey said Thursday.

He rejected Chinese suggestions the United States was trying to control the world and added a pointed dig: ``The era of empires is over, as is the era of one-party states.''

Grey stressed that Washington believes proposed amendments to the ABM treaty would update rather than destroy it.

``If the ABM regime were to fail, the responsibility for that and for all the results that might ensue would rest with those who were insisting the regime had to remain static and could not be adapted to meet current realities,'' he said.

The conference, the world's main multilateral disarmament forum, ends its annual session next week.

The conference has been deadlocked on starting any new negotiations since it wrote the treaty to ban nuclear test explosions in 1996. This year's session has been dominated by rancorous exchanges over the NMD project.

In Beijing on Thursday, Chinese and U.S. arms negotiators held the first of two days of talks as part of a renewed dialogue aimed at curbing China's suspected transfer of missile technology to Pakistan and other countries. Those talks resumed in July after a 19-month interruption.

------

4)
China, U.S. Clash on Missile Shield at Arms Talks
By Stephanie Nebehay
Thurs Sep14

GENEVA (Reuters) - China and the United States clashed Thursday at the main U.N. arms forum after Beijing's envoy suggested that a U.S. national missile defense shield could lead to the ``blackmail of nuclear war.''

The speech by Hu Xiaodi, China's ambassador to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament, drew an angry retort from Robert Grey, U.S. envoy to the 66-member state forum in Geneva.

Hu said that President Clinton's recent decision to defer to his successor whether to forge ahead with the national missile defense shield (NMD) meant that the plan aimed at seeking ``unilateral superiority'' still posed a global threat.

He repeated Beijing's call for launching negotiations at the U.N. talks to prevent an arms race in outer space.

``To seek missile defense capability protecting the whole territory is tantamount to seeking unilateral absolute security so as to gain absolute freedom in using or threatening to use force in international relations,'' Hu declared. ``As a result, the blackmail of nuclear war will likely loom again and the international situation become turbulent and unstable.

``...I would like to point out that the recent announcement by the U.S. President not to deploy NMD for the time being does not mean at all that the NMD plan has been given up.

``Rather, it is only a deferral of a decision to deploy NMD when its technology is not ripe yet and it is facing strong opposition from the international community. The U.S. President has instructed the continued development and testing of NMD.'' China's envoy said it was urgent to negotiate a treaty to prevent the weaponization of outer space and to safeguard the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty from being ``scrapped or weakened.''

Russia and China bitterly oppose the plan on the grounds that a U.S. anti-missile defense system could rapidly evolve to threaten their nuclear missile arsenals.

U.S. officials say it would be designed to protect against missile attacks from rogue states -- North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

U.S. Ambassador Rejects Allegations

Grey, whose delegation is alone in opposing formal global negotiations to prevent an arms race in space, said: ``We reject the allegations that actions or plans of the United States attest to a desire for hegemony or any intent to carry out nuclear blackmail or any supposed quest for absolute freedom to use force, or threaten to use force, in international relations.

``There is no arms race in outer space, nor any prospect of an arms race in outer space for as far down the road as anyone can see.''

Gray reiterated that the U.S. plan did not involve placing any weapon in space but was essentially a terrestrial system that would use land-based interceptors, launchers and radars. ''Satellites of whatever description are not weapons.''

He said the system would defend the U.S. people against a ''small-scale ballistic attack from certain countries of concern'' and was not meant to defend against missiles of Russia or China.

The 1972 ABM treaty was agreed between the United States and former Soviet Union ``in a very different era'' and did not foresee ``the new threats that are emerging now,'' Gray said.

``The treaty has been amended before and can be amended again. The amendments which the United States is proposing will bring the treaty up-to-date. They will also enable it to continue fulfilling its essential purpose -- making sure that the strategic nuclear deterrent forces of the United States and of the Russian Federation are not threatened by missile defense capabilities of the other country.''

--

5) 14 Sept 2000
DC/2724 IN CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT, CHINA, UNITED STATES ADDRESS ISSUES OF US NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM, ABM TREATY 20000914

GENEVA, 14 September -- The Conference on Disarmament this morning heard statements from China and the United States on the proposed US National Missile Defense System and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty .

The representative of China warned that there would be grave consequences if a United States National Missile Defense System was developed and deployed. It would undermine the global strategic balance and stability and threaten international peace and security. It was an absolutely urgent task for the international community to take effective measures to halt such a negative development. It was obvious that once the ABM Treaty was discarded and the door for the National Missile Defense System was opened, advanced weapon systems would be brought into outer space, leading to its weaponization. Referring to the stalemate in the work of the Conference on the programme of work, the representative said that what China was asking for was that when a fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) was negotiated, the negotiations on a treaty preventing the weaponization of -- and an arms race in -- outer space should start as well.

In response, the representative of the United Sates said the statement made by China had to be addressed promptly. The amendments to the ABM Treaty that the United States was proposing would bring the Treaty up to date and would enable it to continue fulfilling its essential purpose. The United States agreed that it was appropriate for the Conference on Disarmament to keep the agenda item on prevention of an arms race in outer space under review. But it also pointed out that there was no arms race in outer space. Plans of the United States for a possible National Missile Defense System did not involve placing any weapon in outer space. Many successive Conference Presidents had reached the conclusion that an FMCT treaty was ripe for negotiation in the Conference, whereas nuclear disarmament and outer space were not. It was the unwise and unrealistic insistence on immediate negotiations on a new outer space treaty that kept the Conference from establishing an appropriate subordinate body to discuss nuclear disarmament.

Also today, the representative of Italy made a farewell speech. He said an FMCT treaty was the priority of Italy. Its negotiating mandate was clear. Italy did not set preconditions on it, and did not expect such conditions to be set by others. Italy was also ready to start work on other issues as soon as there was consensus on them and a negotiating mandate was reached.

Following the plenary, the Conference held an informal plenary to discuss its draft annual report to the General Assembly.

The next and final plenary of the Conference on Disarmament's 2000 session will be held at 10 a.m. on Thursday 21 September.

Statements

GIUSEPPE BALBONI ACQUA (Italy) said he was taking the floor today to say farewell because he was leaving tomorrow. He would not have imagined three years ago that he would miss the Palais des Nations and the Council Chamber. He would miss the "exclusive club" atmosphere of the Conference which was a genuine school of diplomacy.

When he first arrived in Geneva in 1997, the Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini had addressed the Conference, defending its role as the sole multilateral forum for negotiating disarmament issues. Two years later, the Italian Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Patrizia Toia, had stressed that the universibility of the nuclear disarmament process had traditionally been pursued by Italy with the goal to eliminate such weapons. The Italian position, expressed clearly in recent years by senior representatives of the Government, did not need to be analyzed again because it was specific and well known. A fissile material cut-off treaty was ItalyÕs priority. Its negotiating mandate was clear. Italy did not set preconditions on it, and did not expect such conditions to be set by others. Italy was also ready to start work on other issues as soon as there was consensus on them and a negotiating mandate was reached. Italy knew that realism would prevail when there was a political will to resolve the problems.

HU XIAODI (China) said he would like to speak on the negative impacts of the National Missile Defense System and the relationship between it and the prevention of an arms race in outer space. In recent years, there had been a negative development in the form of tremendous efforts to develop and deploy the National Missile Defense System, with a view to seeking unilateral military and strategic superiority. Subsequently, the ABM Treaty was in danger of collapsing. The international community was seriously concerned about that negative development as it would result in a series of grave consequences.

On 18 July 2000, the Presidents of the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation had issued a joint statement in which they warned that to undermine the ABM Treaty would trigger off another round of the arms race and subsequently reverse the positive trend that had emerged in world politics after the end of the cold war. The two leaders had also stressed that the plan to establish a US National Missile Defense System, prohibited by the ABM Treaty, was a cause of profound concern. Implementation of the plan would have the gravest consequences for the security not only of China, Russia and other States, but also for that of the United States itself and for global strategic stability.

There would be grave consequences if a National Missile Defense System was developed and deployed. It would seriously obstruct arms control and disarmament processes and might lead to a new arms race. And it would disrupt international efforts at non-proliferation. It was an absolutely urgent task for the international community to take effective measures to halt such a negative development.

It was true that there were international treaties concluded in the past on the prevention of the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in outer space. However, China believed that it was of absolute necessity now to negotiate new international legal instruments to prevent the weaponization of and an arms race in outer space. That position enjoyed extensive support from the international community. It had been claimed that the National Missile Defense System was not an outer space weapon and would not lead to an arms race in outer space. But, whether they were so-called "limited" or "more advanced", those systems undoubtedly included space weapon systems. It was obvious that once the ABM Treaty was discarded and the door for the National Missile Defense System was opened, advanced weapon systems would be brought into outer space, leading to its weaponization.

It had been charged that negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty were blocked because they were held "hostage" to negotiations on prevention of an arms race in outer space, and that they must be decoupled. But China had never said no to the negotiations on an FMCT treaty. What it was asking for was that when the FMCT treaty was negotiated, the negotiations on a treaty preventing the weaponization of and an arms race in outer space should start as well. The Conference on Disarmament items were inter-related, and therefore the issues of outer space and an FMCT treaty could not but be closely linked. The recent announcement by the United States President not to deploy the National Missile Defense System for the time being did not mean that the plan had been given up; it was only a deferral of the decision to deploy it because its technology was not ripe yet and because it faced strong opposition from the international community. The United States President had instructed the continued development and testing of the system. It was therefore an urgent task for the Conference on Disarmament and the international community to negotiate legal instruments preventing the weaponization of and an arms race in outer space and to safeguard the ABM Treaty from being scrapped or weakened.

ROBERT GREY (United States) said the statement just made by China had to be addressed promptly. The ABM Treaty was concluded in 1972 between the United States and the USSR in a very different era and under political and military circumstances that were now a matter of history. The Treaty had been amended before and could be amended again. The amendments that the United States was proposing would bring the Treaty up to date and would enable it to continue fulfilling its essential purpose: making sure that the strategic nuclear deterrent forces of the United States and of the Russian Federation were not threatened by the missile defence capabilities of the other country. As a political and diplomatic reality from 1972, the ABM Treaty did not contemplate the new threats that were emerging now and that threatened the safety of the people of the United States. If the ABM Treaty were to fail now, the responsibility would rest with those who insisted that it remain static and could not be adapted to meet current realities.

Ambassador Grey said that when he addressed the Conference on 31 August, he had stated that the limited National Missile Defense System which the United States Government was considering would defend the people of the United States against a small-scale ballistic missile attack from certain countries of concern. That system was not designed to defend again the ballistic missiles of Russia or China. He was puzzled by the intensity of the concerns expressed. The United States rejected allegations that its plans attested to its desire for hegemony. These assertions had no basis in reality.

The United States agreed that it was appropriate for the Conference on Disarmament to keep the agenda item on prevention of an arms race in outer space under review. But it had also pointed out that there was no arms race in outer space, nor any prospect for that. Plans of the United States for a possible System of National Missile Defense did not involve placing any weapons in outer space.

The plain and simple fact was that all members of the Conference had committed themselves to supporting negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty. Many successive Conference Presidents had reached the conclusion that a fissile material cut-off treaty was ripe for negotiation in the Conference, whereas nuclear disarmament and outer space were not. It was members of the Conference who attached very great importance to the establishment of a subordinate body on nuclear disarmament to discuss the subject in a structured and systematic way. But it was the unwise and unrealistic insistence on immediate negotiations on a new outer space treaty that kept the Conference from establishing an appropriate subordinate body to discuss nuclear disarmament. That unwise and unrealistic insistence on immediate negotiations on a new outer space treaty also prevented the Conference from conducting organized and sustained discussions on outer-space issues. The delegations employing those tactics might actually be intending to produce a paralysis for the sake of blocking negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty.

Ambassador Grey said he understood that this was a stark and rather unpleasant analysis. But the analysis was neither more stark nor more unpleasant than the excruciating and extended paralysis that still affected the Conference.

-----------

Message: 5
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000
From: ivan buchbinder <pentaske@memes.com>

Time Bombs

Y'all, Here are some of the Nuc accidents we KNOW about.... with the Russian's.
Then there's the rest of the "Pack" of Nuc sub accidents.... time bombs.

Later http://www.bellona.no/imaker?id=17570&sub=1

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

DOEWatch List ----A Magnum-Opus Project
Subscribe online: http://www.onelist.com
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1. New NRC Report On Nuclear Waste Shipments Fails To Address Public Concerns
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

2. Time is Running Out to Protect Our National Parks
From: takeaction@nationalparksafety.org

3. Sign Petition To Have President Carter Tell The Truth About 3 Mile Island
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

4. Continues to denounce DOE
From: magnu96196@aol.com

5. K-25 water testing hit with criticism Some samples lost in transit
From: magnu96196@aol.com

6. K-25 waste dump set for cleanup
From: magnu96196@aol.com

7. 1st step taken to tap DOE for aid
From: magnu96196@aol.com

8. NRC: No action against USEC
From: magnu96196@aol.com

9. Sick worker bill still has life
From: magnu96196@aol.com

10. Energy Dept. to release list of nuclear sites
From: magnu96196@aol.com

11. Dispute blocks aid for uranium workers Pay for illnesses at Paducah plant
From: magnu96196@aol.com

12. Old nuclear dump in Oak Ridge to be moved
From: magnu96196@aol.com

13. DOE clears water suspected of being contaminated for drinking
From: magnu96196@aol.com

14. Thank you fellow earthicans for helping to save the Ichetucknee River!
From: "earthIcan " <kctoons@mediaone.net>

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

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

New NRC Report On Nuclear Waste Shipments Fails To Address Public Concerns

http://www.citizen.org
http://www.citizen.org/cmep &
http://www.necnp.org

Call both your Senators & your Representative at: 202-224-3121 to express your views. They need to know that someone gives a DAMN about this proposed mass human/environmental experimentation. Please dissemenate as widely as possible.

-Bill Smirnow

For Immediate Release:

September 14, 2000

Statement of Lisa Gue New NRC Report On Nuclear Waste Shipments Fails to Address Public Concerns

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must withdraw its report, "Re-examination of Spent Fuel Shipments Risk Estimates" (NUREG/CR-6672), or reissue it as a draft for public comment, said Public Citizen at an NRC workshop today in Rockville, MD. This report was finalized without prior public input and does not adequately address the public's legitimate safety concerns about the transportation of nuclear waste.

The draft summary, "A Summary Paper for Public Meeting," could be used to rationalize the large-scale transport of high-level radioactive waste from commercial nuclear reactors and DOE weapons facilities to a proposed storage site in Yucca Mountain, Nev.

The draft summary glosses over the public's safety concerns. The NRC must acknowledge that transporting high-level nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain, Nev. is inherently dangerous because of the risk of accidents along transportation routes. Understating this danger might result in less careful treatment of nuclear waste shipments, which in turn could actually increase the risk.

Yucca Mountain is the only site currently under consideration to serve as a permanent geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste. The DOE is studying the mountain to determine whether it is suitable for permanent storage for 77,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste. If the Yucca Mountain site is approved, radioactive waste could be shipped through 43 states during a period of at least 24 years. This transportation scheme is scheduled to begin as early as 2010.

Meanwhile, a proposal by Private Fuel Storage(PFS) , a consortium of private utilities, would initiate high-level waste shipments to an interim storage facility in Utah beginning in 2003.

The NRC report does not accurately characterize risk probability or consequences for shipments of high-level waste to Yucca Mountain or the PFS facility, because it does not consider specific transport routes, but only generic samples of potential routes and route conditions.

The NRC report concludes that the risk involved in transporting high-level nuclear waste is lower than estimated in previous reports. The NRC claims this as an indication that radioactive waste shipments are becoming safer. However, it is unclear whether this represents an actual reduction in risk or whether the changing numbers simply reflect the different methodologies used in previous studies. Furthermore, risk estimates based on past shipping records could be subject to a high level of uncertainty due to extrapolating the experience of a small number of previous shipments to a future scenario where shipments to Yucca Mountain would be routine and frequent.

Today's meeting also considered a paper detailing Sandia National Laboratories recommendations for a "Spent Nuclear Fuel Transportation Package Performance Study." This study would update the 1987 report known as the Modal Study. It is unacceptable that Sandia's scoping paper fails to recommend full-scale physical testing of nuclear waste transportation casks. Public Citizen continues to insist on comprehensive physical testing of the casks used for proposed transportation schemes as the only way to confirm the validity of computer models.

The public cannot have confidence in a package performance study that does not consider specific transportation routes and conditions in its analysis of probabilities and consequences. The NRC must acknowledge the prescriptive role that this study would play in licensing nuclear waste transportation and must demand tests that reflect the precise scope and conditions of the proposals under consideration.

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

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: takeaction@nationalparksafety.org

Time is Running Out to Protect Our National Parks

Send Your Free E-mail to Washington at www.nationalparksafety.org. Today, your help is urgently needed to protect America's legacy to its children-our national parks and monuments. Recent forest fires are a symptom of a larger problem: lack of funding, lack of trained personnel, and lack of resources to protect our parks and monuments. Congress has three weeks left to make the right choice, to vote for legislation that will help ensure your safety and the future of our national parks and monuments. You can help. Join with the men and women of the U.S. Park Police and U.S. National Park Service Law Enforcement Rangers in fighting to protect our parks. Visit www.nationalparksafety.org and send a free e-mail to your lawmakers. E-mail this alert to your friends and colleagues. Together, we can help ensure www.nationalparksafety.org.

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

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

Please Sign Petition To Have President Carter Tell The Truth About 3 Mile Island

http://www.petitiononline.com/tmi/petition.html

-----------

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Continues to denounce DOE

September 14, 2000
http://oakridger.com/

To The Oak Ridger:

Things are happening with the investigations of gas diffusion plants and illnesses connected with them. This is nothing new, as ORNL did investigations on K-25 in the mid-'80s, by collecting samples of cow's milk, produce, and well water in communities around K-25.

The K-25 plant upgrades of the early '80s changed the process to positive pressure operation. The '80s test results shut down the plant due to high amounts of HF emissions and fluorides pollution endangering the health of the region.

Oak Ridge managers did not publicly report those extreme liabilities, as they might have closed the other plants due to the costs or Congress's reactions.

Investigations are being performed around the Paducah gas diffusion plant communities and ills like calcinosis, immune problems, high levels of toxic metals retention, and other ills [many of which are fluoride toxic symptoms] are being reported. A DOE report on K-25 similar to one on the Paducah plant is due Sept. 27 that should reveal the high levels of HF losses from ORGDP.

The Scarboro community study picked up things like bone breaks and asthma that are links to fluorides toxic effects, but these ills are not confined to just Scarboro, as the HF emissions have a large footprint.

The recent Y-12 million-dollar fine is evidence of the poor work on the salt shop HF system and shows just how serious HF system release risks are taken now.

The old Y-12 HF system leaked severely and those risks could overcome and kill a large part of the Y-12 work force. Due to that danger, all the HF has been removed from Y-12 for a few years because of the Y-12 historically poor management that won Y-12 a large part of its million-dollar fine, the largest on record for any DOE contractor.

Paducah has ordered many replacement valves for UF-6 cylinders and K-25 has been replacing the old leaky valves. K-25 managers told half-truths in saying holes in UF-6 cylinders were sealed.

These holes, which grow in size, do cake up with uranium compounds that keep the uranium contained, but these holes are porous and admit moist air and expel tons of HF into the air from each cylinder.

K-25's dismantlement also releases a lot of HF into the air from trapped UF-6 deposits in instrument lines, plugged barriers, flanges, valves, and millions of square feet of surface wetting.

In the mid-'80s, ORNL folks were called into K-25 looking for Dr. Anderson's Sr-90 problems in the drinking water and at the same time they were looking for what was causing high rates of thyroid disorders in area plant workers and the region.

The answer to the latter was discovered with the very high losses of HF from the plants operation. Today, the region's endocrinologists notice that folks that have lived in this area for more than 10 years have abnormal thyroid glands.

The Oak Ridge region is a thyroid disease hot spot, and coincidentally thyroid and parathyroid damages are HF and fluorides symptoms.

In Oak Ridge, DOE economic conversion appears to be keeping the big secret on the HF losses that damaged the region's health, which keeps the DOE liabilities in check and makes for profits for the hospitals and doctors of Oak Ridge.

ORNL managers counted on these economic incentives to drive keeping that secret. Oak Ridge is financing its economic conversion on the backs of many sick workers and residents.

Al Brooks recently ran down to Nashville trying to plug up the leaks with a brochure because the Tennessean newspaper keeps exposing Oak Ridge ills.

Susan Kaplan is writing partial admissions that DOE caused health problems and trying to slow down the rate of admission of community health effects and HF dominance. She even has a damaged thyroid.

Yet, both are complaining of finger pointing at the managers and Ph.D.s that failed to protect the area's health. While at the same time this new brochure appears admitting fluorine releases from K-25, but not admitting the high amounts. In an absolute insult to sick folks, this brochure tries to paint all the community and worker ills as a myth.

Oak Ridge still tarnishes its Shangri-La image and remains a very unhealthy place for a number of reasons, typical ones being: failure to report and cover-up of HF health effects, the area looking like agent orange hit the pine trees, plant management incompetence and retaliations against whistleblowers, lack of professional ethics in DOE managers and contractors, self-appointed public experts that won't address the obvious and distract the public's interest, half-truths and redacted classified information sold to the sick workers and communities, profiteering and liability dodging based economic redevelopment loaded onto the backs of sick folks, poorly advised worker health groups, and many basically criminal acts hiding behind the excuse of national security.

I hope someday DOE places all the truths on the table and correctly informs the public of the disaster here. Till the time that DOE comes clean, the cleansing will continue.

Jim Phelps 1600 Buttercup Circle Knoxville 37921

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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 22:45:39 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

K-25 water testing hit with criticism Some samples lost in transit

September 14, 2000
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://oakridger.com/

Tests of the water quality at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site are still being considered a "snapshot in time," and some concerned former workers are doubting the credibility of the results.

The Department of Energy announced Wednesday to the people who work at K-25, also known as the East Tennessee Technology Park, that the water at the former gaseous diffusion plant is safe to drink.

Tests on the water were conducted after employees voiced concerns that cross-connecting lines for sanitary, fire and cooling waters and steam and storm drains are a possible way employees could be exposed to hazardous materials at the site.

Mike Russell, who worked at K-25 before going on medical leave earlier this year, was one of those employees who voiced concern about the cross-connecting lines during a DOE public meeting on July 31. He was originally involved in the meetings to form a plan to test the water quality at the site, but stopped participating because he didn't agree with the plan being developed.

And, despite whether the tested water is safe or not, Russell said Wednesday afternoon the tests don't address the problems he brought to DOE's attention.

"It does not account for the fact that the lines were interconnected," Russell said. "It could have been and most likely Å (was) cross-contaminated."

Both Russell and Sherrie Farver, a former officer worker at the K-25 site, say they heard a K-25 "key manager" say that some of the trailers at the site had been connected to firefighting-water lines for their source of drinking water, and that employees did in fact drink the water meant for firefighting. The statement was apparently made at an Aug. 14 meeting they attended at the Federal Building.

"I'm still very concerned about the interconnecting lines," added Farver, who says she suffers from numbness in her extremities, shortness of breath, muscle and joint pain and chronic fatigue because of work-related exposures.

Farver said the recent tests only provide a "snapshot in time" of K-25's water quality.

"I have no faith in a sampling protocol developed and implemented in-house," Farver said.

The Oak Ridger placed calls to several other current and former K-25 workers in an attempt to obtain comments, but messages had not been returned as of 11 this morning.

DOE's water sampling at the K-25 Site consisted of samples being taken by OMI, the contractor for the water plant and distribution system at K-25.

Representatives from the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union and the Environmental Protection Agency were among those witnessing the sampling process.

Once the samples were taken, OMI and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation officials sealed the vials with specially marked tape for shipment to a state-certified laboratory for analysis. An Environmental Science Corp. official took possession of samples to be tested for volatile organic compounds, synthetic organic compounds including polychlorinated biphenyls, and inorganic compounds.

In addition, representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency conducted their own sampling of the water at half of the 25 selected areas at the K-25 site.

Susan Kaplan, a member of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee's Citizen Advisory Panel, was one of those officials who witnessed the water testing. She said she was surprised DOE announced the results Wednesday considering the complete details on the water test won't be available until early next week.

"However, based on the results I have seen, the water quality looks good so far," Kaplan said. "Keep in mind that these data provide a snapshot of quality today and do not reflect quality in the past."

Kaplan added she and Norman Mulvenon, chairman of the LOC's Citizen Advisory Panel, have insisted on getting the data directly from the laboratory.

The Oak Ridger contacted DOE this morning regarding some of the allegations being made about the water testing.

Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for the federal agency, said he could not comment on the statement made by the K-25 manager regarding firefighting-water lines being connected to trailers because he didn't attend the Aug. 14 meeting.

Another allegation that has surfaced regarding the water testing is that some of the samples were lost. Wyatt said that was correct.

"Back in mid-August, a small set of samples were lost in transit between Environmental Science Corp. and a subcontractor hired by ESC to perform analysis of synthetic organic compounds in the samples," Wyatt said.

"ESC transported the set of samples from ETTP to their lab in Middle Tennessee. Subsequently, ESC shipped a portion of the samples to an ESC subcontractor lab. Both ESC and the subcontractor lab are state-certified laboratories. The set of samples sent to the subcontractor were then lost in shipping. UPS was the shipper.

"Attempts were made to locate the shipment. However, within a few days, the samples could not be used to determine the presence of synthetic organic compounds. The missing samples eventually turned up, but by then were out of date and could not be used. For this reason, the samples were retaken at ETTP, all under the direct observation of the state of Tennessee, the LOC and the union. The samples have been analyzed and results will be included in the report to be issued next week."

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

Message: 6
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

K-25 waste dump set for cleanup

September 14, 2000
http://oakridger.com/

A major waste burial ground is the target of a planned cleanup project at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site.

Bechtel Jacobs Co. LLC recently awarded the IT Corp. an $11.1 million subcontract to clean up the 1070-A Burial Ground, a press release from Bechtel Jacobs Co. stated.

The burial ground covers one acre and contains 62 pits and 26 trenches that were used to dispose of a variety of waste containing low levels of radioactivity -- mostly uranium -- and toxic chemicals from the 1950s until 1976.

Most of the waste came from the uranium enrichment process that was then in operation, though there are also contaminated construction debris, laboratory waste and other miscellaneous waste, the release states.

Almost 20,000 cubic yards of waste and contaminated soil -- enough to cover a football field to a height of almost 11 feet -- will require disposal.

The IT Corp. will be responsible for the planning and engineering design in addition to the excavation, characterization of the waste, disposal and finally revegetation of the burial ground site. The burial ground cleanup should be completed by summer of 2002.

Most of the waste is expected to be disposed of at a new, permitted disposal facility being developed on the Oak Ridge Reservation in East Bear Creek Valley, though some may require offsite disposal.

IT operates out of a 400-person office in Knoxville, with corporate headquarters in Monroeville, Pa.

Bechtel Jacobs Co. is the Department of Energy's management and integration contractor for environmental management work in Oak Ridge, and at DOE sites in Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio.

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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

1st step taken to tap DOE for aid

September 14, 2000
by Amy L. Lee Oak Ridger staff
http://oakridger.com/

The newly created Committee for Enhancement of DOE-related Remuneration took its first step Tuesday toward hiring a professional law or legislative firm to help the city of Oak Ridge obtain more money from the federal government.

According to Committee Chai-rman Leonard Abbatiello, the committee unanimously adopted a document he and committee member Pat Rush drafted that is intended to appeal to legal and legislative firms to submit proposals to the city.

"We presented a draft that contains the direction the committee's going to go. We passed that off to city staff who are going to flesh out the wording, and we expect to have that back within one month," Abbatiello said in a phone interview Wednesday morning.

Oak Ridge City Council at a meeting in August formed the committee to pursue a way of getting more federal and/or state funding for the city.

Council agreed to pay up to $25,000 for the services of a firm to pursue more money.

The large tracts of land owned by DOE are exempt from paying local property taxes, and city officials say DOE's presence hinders the city's ability to attract new industry, thus harming the city's economy.

The document states that current "DOE in-lieu-of tax payments comprise less that 1.7 percent of the $ 56.3 million cost of operating the city and its school system, while the federal facilities use 35,000 acres that have been removed from normal residential, commercial and industrial development along with their tax-based support of all municipal needs."

The firm's task will be to review all current federal and state laws, codes or other applicable legislative documents to determine if there is an existing basis for increased funding, and/or the transfer of appropriate federal assets to the city. Following the analysis, the firm will recommend how an action plan should be implemented. This analysis also will include an evaluation of potential fees for storage of mixed and low-level radioactive waste.

Committee member David Bradshaw said, "I don't see this ever ending up in a courtroom. My approach is to find a firm that will help us use existing public policy and procedures, congressional direction and U.S. law to the fullest extent possible to assist the city.

"And that may include making modifications to existing laws and policies."

Bradshaw went on to say the goal is to find a firm of national standing, preferably with strong ties in Washington, D.C.

"This is a lobbying effort -- or a literature review effort -- rather than a litigation effort," he said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Bradshaw noted that the Los Alamos, N.M., school system receives a direct appropriation of $6 million annually, and another $8 million goes to the New Mexico Enrichment Fund. A piece of federal legislation allows such appropriations, Bradshaw said.

"We need to access that ourselves, and I have a firm in mind that I think would do that," Bradshaw said.

Rush described the meeting as a low-key, good, slow-moving start, but "it opened communication to avoid miscommunication.

"On the first read-through of the document, it sounded pretty good, but I think everyone felt they wanted to study it more. And (those present) felt city staff members could put it into better language," she said in a phone interview Tuesday after the meeting.

"We will be looking for a law firm. And we will be looking at ways to stimulate law firms who specialize (in matters of federal government) to respond.

"It is very definitely not personal (toward DOE)," Rush said.

David Myers of DOE attended the meeting, but The Oak Ridger was unable to reach him for comment Wednesday morning.

----------

Message: 8
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

NRC: No action against USEC

September 14, 2000
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
http://www.paducahsun.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200009/14+01Mp_news.html+20000914+news

Although a new, proprietary Nuclear Regulatory Commission study describes USEC's long-term financial outlook as grim, the commission says it will take no action against the firm. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, confirmed that the report says the company is not expected to be profitable after 2005, which seriously jeopardizes the future of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Amid a glutted market with falling prices, USEC plans to shut down Paducah's sister plant near Portsmouth, Ohio, next summer and keep the Paducah plant open as its sole uranium enrichment facility.

"If it becomes obvious that for whatever reason, USEC or some other producer cannot enrich uranium profitably as a private entity, then I think we have to revisit the question of the government's taking back that responsibility," Whitfield said.

He said more hearings on the issue are a virtual certainty next year.

If the government intervenes, it must decide whether to "bail out USEC or develop new technology and see who else might want to deploy it," said Richard Miller, policy analyst for the plants' atomic workers' union.

Miller said he expects the Clinton administration to announce by next week that it take a direct role in deploying gas centrifuge as the eventual replacement for outdated, expensive gaseous diffusion used at Paducah and Portsmouth. Without a replacement technology in the near future, USEC's status is dire, as reflected by the NRC report, he said.

"The White House and the Department of Energy take this situation very, very seriously," Miller said. "We have made our views plainly and unequivocally known to the administration that any such deployment would have to be at Paducah and Portsmouth."

Miller, who said he was briefed on the NRC report but had not seen it, said one key fear by administration and congressional leaders is that USEC won't be able to meet legal requirements to provide enriched uranium to countries that get rid of nuclear weapons. As a result, those nations could switch to fueling nuclear power plants with plutonium, which also is used to make nuclear weapons, he said.

Because the report was based largely on sensitive financial information provided by USEC, it should not be publicly released, the NRC said. The agency reviewed the findings with congressional delegations earlier this week.

Whitfield, Miller and other sources gave these highlights of the report:

--USEC will be profitable through 2005 only by selling off much of its huge inventory of natural uranium in the form of uranium hexafluoride, or UF6. DOE gave USEC the stockpile as part of privatization. USEC won't be profitable enriching uranium after 2003 because of drastically lower prices under new contracts.

--USEC could be profitable after 2003 by closing both plants and becoming a broker for huge quantities of uranium taken from dismantled Russian warheads, assuming USEC can lower the price it pays for the Russian material. Price renegotiations are "running into serious trouble with the Russians," Miller said.

--Another way USEC could regain long-term profitability is to develop a cheaper alternative for gaseous diffusion. USEC is considering gas centrifuge as a replacement, but doesn't plan to have centrifuge on line until 2009.

"It's uncertain whether or not USEC would undertake the investment that centrifuge would require unless there is some government involvement," Whitfield said.

--The Paducah plant is up for recertification by NRC at the end of 2003. But USEC may be in such financial trouble then that it can't convince the commission it will be able to run the plant safely and reliably for another five years until 2008.

--A restriction that no owner can have more than 10 percent of USEC stock expires next July. As long as USEC's market price is below its break-up value, it is a target for takeover and liquidation.

The NRC investigated USEC's financial situation after the company's financial rating was downgraded to so-called "junk bond" status last spring. Although the commission regulates health and safety issues, USEC's certification with NRC requires it to maintain a reliable, economical national supply of uranium.

On Monday, NRC Chairman Richard Meserve wrote Rep. Tom Bliley, R-Va., chairman of the House Commerce Committee, saying the supply issue is mainly related to foreigners' possibly gaining control of and undermining USEC. Although that is an important concern, "it is not clear" that the issue should be addressed by NRC in recertification, he said.

Even if the concern were more broadly construed to mean preserving domestic supply, the NRC is "severely limited" in its actions, Meserve wrote, and denying certification "would shut down a domestic supply altogether."

A financial analysis included with the study is narrow and only touches on new technology, the letter said. Although the analysis could be expanded, "we do not believe that any more NRC study of the USEC situation is justified," especially considering NRC's limited options, Meserve said.

USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle declined comment on the report, saying USEC senior managers had neither seen it nor been briefed on its contents. She referred response to remarks made last week by USEC President and Chief Executive Officer William "Nick" Timbers at the International Nuclear Materials Policy Forum.

In the speech, Timbers said "the doom and gloom scenarios about USEC's prospects are greatly exaggerated." Although USEC has had plenty of problems, it is resolving them as only a private-sector firm can do and remains "the global market leader with substantial cash flows and modest debt," he said.

Timbers said USEC has reached an agreement with Russia for market-based pricing, effective in 2002 for the remaining 13 years of the contract; secured a 10-year power contract to provide cheaper electricity for the Paducah plant; and pursued enrichment options including centrifuge and Silex laser technology.

"We expect to make a decision in the next 12 to 18 months on which technology to develop," he said.

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

Message: 9
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Sick worker bill still has life

By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
http://www.paducahsun.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200009/14+01Mw_news.html+20000914+news

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, says there is still a ray of hope this year for his proposed legislation to help people sickened by working at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and similar facilities nationwide. "I'm probably a little bit more optimistic now than I was last night," Whitfield said Wednesday. "I had discussions with the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader and they've indicated to me they will keep an open mind on the issue."

Whitfield has struggled to keep the medical and financial compensation bill alive after it passed the Senate as part of a big military spending bill. Key committee chairmen in the House have raised objections about the cost, saying Congress is taking on too many proposals for increases in entitlement spending.

Although a House subcommittee has scheduled a Sept. 21 hearing on the issue, that may be too late because the election-shortened congressional session is expected to end Oct. 6.

"It's very late in the session to be doing this," Whitfield said. "One chance we have is through the Defense Authorization Bill. A second chance is toward the end of the session because there will be one or two omnibus bills that include a variety of issues. I think we might have an opportunity there as well, but I don't want to be interpreted as being overly optimistic."

The Senate-passed program would give lifetime medical benefits and a minimum of $200,000 apiece to nuclear weapons plant workers who got sick from exposure to radiation, silica or beryllium. The Clinton administration wants to offer $100,000 for each sick worker.

Although there are concerns that his bill is a new entitlement, Whitfield said, the spending would eventually end, while other unrelated entitlements "go on forever." Other concerns are a lack of precise cost estimates and eligibility language that is too broad, he said.

"They also say it is major legislation without hearings and they feel like that's not the way to go," Whitfield said. "They've asked if we could get back with specifics on how to address some of the issues."

Richard Miller, policy analyst for the international atomic workers' union, blamed Republican House leadership for trying to kill the bill. He said support in the Senate, including heavy backing from Kentucky Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, was bipartisan, but Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, in particular, has staunchly opposed the House version of the legislation.

Smith, who chairs a committee that will hold next week's hearing, has expressed worry that the cost of the package could top $3 billion. Miller pointed out that Smith is from the state of Gov. George Bush, the Republican presidential nominee.

"We have a situation where Bush, when he came through Kentucky earlier, expressed strong support for the package," Miller said. "Now we find that leadership in the House and his own party are killing it. It would be a tragedy, after all the work that went into this, to see it hit the wall."

Miller said it is especially troublesome that the bill is floundering as Dick Cheney, Bush's vice presidential running mate, is expected to visit Paducah.

"If this passes, Paducah would get the lion's share of the legislation," Miller said.

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

Message: 10
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Energy Dept. to release list of nuclear sites

By Peter Eisler,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/poison/021.htm

WASHINGTON â€" The Department of Energy, reversing decades of government secrecy, will release the names of hundreds of private companies that processed radioactive and toxic material for the U.S. nuclear weapons program in the 1940s and '50s.

A public database is being developed amid demands from Capitol Hill for a full accounting of the work done by commercial facilities that had classified contracts or sub-contracts with the weapons program. USA TODAY detailed many of the contracting operations last week in a three-day series examining their often severe health and environmental consequences.

DOE officials expect to put out an initial list next week of all private and government-owned facilities ever involved in nuclear weapons production, though information on the scope and dates of work at each site probably won't be added for a few weeks. While the federal plants and labs that did weapons work have long been known, the government has never identified more than a few dozen commercial properties where contractors processed weapons material.

"We are reconstructing the history of these (private) sites," says Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. "In the near future, we expect to have a more thorough, comprehensive list and a plan for addressing health and environmental concerns. "

USA TODAY found that roughly 300 private companies were secretly hired in the 1940s and '50s to do nuclear weapons work, handling thousands of tons of uranium, thorium, polonium, beryllium and other radioactive and toxic substances. The newspaper's investigation named 150 of the contracting sites and revealed that workers at many of them were exposed to extreme levels of radiation and chemical hazards, usually without their knowledge. The series also showed that many of the facilities pumped large volumes of hazardous waste into surrounding communities unaware of the weapons work being done by local businesses.

A growing number of lawmakers have since called on DOE to release information on the contracting operations, most of which concluded in the '50s as the government got its own weapons-making facilities built to take over the work.

"Investigations regarding past operations and practices at these facilities would help determine the level of contamination of the site and human exposure," Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, wrote in a letter pressing DOE to release information on the "forgotten sites."

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

Message: 11
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 23:26:38 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Dispute blocks aid for uranium workers Pay for illnesses at Paducah plant divides Congress

By JAMES R. CARROLL The Courier-Journal
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0009/14/000914uranium.html

WASHINGTON -- Despite overwhelming Senate support, a proposal to compensate employees of the Paducah uranium plant and other Department of Energy facilities for job-related illnesses is facing extinction.

The House, which has not approved its own compensation bill, is negotiating with the Senate over whether to accept the upper chamber's proposal. But coloring the talks is a dispute in the House over whether the plan is too costly and has been given a proper review.

Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has urged conferees on the defense authorization bill, which includes the compensation program, to take the package out of the final legislation. He insisted that his panel had the right to closely examine the compensation plan. Other key lawmakers on other panels also oppose the plan.

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-1st District, one of the key backers of the compensation measure, met yesterday with House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who told the Kentuckian they would keep an open mind. Armey previously had expressed opposition to the compensation plan.

"I'm cautiously optimistic," Whitfield said after the meeting. "The door has not been closed yet."

Meanwhile, in a private meeting on Tuesday with a bipartisan group of House leaders, President Clinton reportedly reiterated his support for the compensation plan. But his administration has sent confusing signals to Capitol Hill over whether it wants to limit the scope of the compensation measure, a move that could endanger Senate support for whatever program survives the conference committee.

Supporters of the compensation package, both Republicans and Democrats, have been scrambling to save it as Congress works on a tight schedule over the next few weeks before adjourning for the year.

"If the leadership wants it, they can make it happen," said Richard Miller, policy analyst for the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union, which represents many Energy Department workers. "If they choose not to act, it will die."

IN BRIEF, the compensation plan would give workers suffering from illnesses caused by exposure to radiation, beryllium and silica a choice of either a one-time, tax-free payment of $200,000 and health benefits, or an alternative set of benefits, including money for lost wages, that could be worth more than the lump sum.

In the Senate, the plan produced an unusual alliance among lawmakers as politically diverse as Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Failure to pass the plan now would "deny justice to these people the government has harmed." -- Richard Miller, union policy analyst

Before inclusion in the defense authorization bill, the plan also was modified by Senate backers to address concerns by the beryllium and silica industries over exposure to lawsuits. Under the bill, workers who accept compensation are barred from suing companies.

The package was approved in July as part of the defense authorization bill, passing the Senate on a 97-3 vote.

In contrast to support for compensation to Energy Department workers in the Senate, the House has been slower to show interest.

In May, the House approved a resolution stating its intent to deal this year with the compensation issue. But no hearings had been held on the subject before that vote or since then.

The first House subcommittee hearing on compensating workers had been scheduled for today, but was rescheduled for next week because of last-minute conflicts with a funeral for the late Rep. Herbert Bateman, R-Va., and a joint session of Congress.

THE PANEL holding next Thursday's hearing is the House Judiciary Committee's immigration and claims subcommittee. Its chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, as well as Hyde, have expressed concern that the House hasn't closely examined the compensation plan.

Citing a Congressional Budget Office estimate that the program would cost $3.8 billion, Hyde said in an Aug. 31 letter to conferees on the defense authorization bill that the House needed to "thoroughly examine the issue."

He questioned the relevance of the compensation plan in the context of the defense bill, and said "the majority" of the plan's elements came under the jurisdiction of his committee.

"Our committee understands the importance of responding to this situation as quickly as possible," Hyde wrote, but added that he wanted "legislation that is structured responsibly and truly responsive to the needs of those affected."

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of one of the House National Security Committee's subcommittees, also has opposed inclusion of the compensation measure in the defense authorization bill. According to Capitol Hill sources familiar with discussions on the issue, many members of Hunter's committee are concerned that the compensation program would take money from vital defense projects, a concern that supporters of the plan say is unfounded.

The last-minute opposition in the House has angered the union that represents many of the affected workers.

THE HOUSE members "have sat on their hands and now are using it for an excuse for inaction," said Miller, of the energy workers' union. "It's irresponsible governance. They do not have a legitimate claim at this late date to say there have been no hearings when they've turned down every opportunity to hold hearings. Bills (on worker compensation) have been referred to the judiciary committee since last November."

Failure to pass the compensation plan now would "deny justice to these people the government has harmed," Miller said.

Conferees were sent a letter in late July by 104 House Republicans and Democrats urging that the compensation package be kept intact in the authorization bill.

"While we cannot give (workers) a Purple Heart for their wounds," the lawmakers wrote, "the nation owes these dedicated men and women a debt of thanks for their efforts and sacrifices in helping to win the Cold War. Establishing this compensation program is the least we can do."

Clouding the controversy is the possibility that there might not be any defense authorization bill this year. An authorization measure essentially is a blueprint for spending, but does not actually include money. That is in the appropriation bills. Authorization bills are supposed to be -- but are not required to be -- passed before the appropriation bills are approved.

BUT THE defense appropriation bill moved more quickly through the system and already has been passed for this year, making the need for an authorization measure questionable in some lawmakers' minds.

The authorization panel for defense, the House National Security Committee, can be expected to fight any effort at dropping the authorization bill for fear of making its work appear irrelevant.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House's Office of Management and Budget has been further stirring the waters, according to some lawmakers.

The office has been considering support for lump sum payments or benefits to workers, but not both, according to Reps. Paul Kanjorski and Ron Klink, two Pennsylvania Democrats who were instrumental in creating the compensation plan.

Many workers, the Pennsylvanians argued in a letter to Clinton on Monday, "are in desperate need of both a lump-sum payment and health benefits."

The administration also is questioning the need for a judicial review of claims by workers denied by the Department of Labor.

"The right of appeal is a basic check and balance on our system of government and must not be denied to these deserving Americans," Kanjorski and Klink said.

ACCORDING to sources, administration officials also have talked about excluding silica industry victims and workers at some nuclear test sites. To do that would cross several key senators, including Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who pushed for inclusion of those workers.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson met last week with Office of Management and Budget officials about the compensation plan.

"We hope to have details worked out in the near future," said an Energy Department official who asked not to be identified, adding that the secretary "is committed to getting strong compensation for nuclear workers before Congress leaves this October."

-----------

Message: 12
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Old nuclear dump in Oak Ridge to be moved

September 14, 2000
By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel Oak Ridge bureau
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/14975.shtml

OAK RIDGE -- The U.S. Department of Energy will spend millions of dollars to excavate an old nuclear dump near the K-25 plant and relocate the waste to a new disposal facility several miles away. IT Corp. was awarded an $11.1 million contract this week to head the cleanup effort on the government's Oak Ridge reservation.

Mark Musolf, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's environmental manager in Oak Ridge, said the project is needed because the old waste pits are contaminating the groundwater.

The burial yard -- known officially as 1070-A -- was used from the 1950s until 1976, receiving wastes from the uranium-enrichment processes and other activities at K-25. The one-acre site contains 62 pits and 26 trenches.

"Almost 20,000 cubic yards of waste and contaminated soil will require disposal -- enough to cover a football field to a height of almost 11 feet," Bechtel Jacobs said in a press statement.

IT will be responsible for excavation and characterization of waste, as well as transportation and disposal at a new landfill to be constructed next year on DOE's Oak Ridge reservation. Some of the wastes may require disposal elsewhere, according to information released by Bechtel Jacobs.

The work is to be completed by mid-2002.

David Mayfield, nuclear cleanup program manager for IT, said the company will employ a field staff of about 14 on the Oak Ridge project.

There are historic records on wastes buried in the pits and trenches. Mayfield said IT doesn't expect any major surprises, although additional sampling will be done to verify the contaminants there.

Musolf said uranium compounds are among the radioactive materials present there, as well as technetium-99 and small amounts of plutonium and thorium. The waste pits also contain beryllium, nitric acid and a variety of other chemicals, he said.

Mayfield said preliminary work is under way, with field operations scheduled to begin next summer. The new landfill in East Bear Creek Valley is expected to begin receiving waste in late 2001.

Frank Munger may be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.

----------

Message: 13
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

DOE clears water suspected of being contaminated for drinking

9/14/00
Associated Press
http://www.tennessean.com/sii/00/09/14/oakwater14.shtml

OAK RIDGE No problems have been found with drinking water suspected of causing illnesses among workers at a former uranium enrichment plant, the Department of Energy said yesterday.

The DOE sent a note to employees at the former K-25 site, now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park, saying a full report on a battery of water quality tests should be ready next week.

In the interim, the agency said, "The results have found the ETTP drinking water is safe to drink."

Some worker activists, however, remained suspicious.

"There has been some cover-up going on with this," said Sherry Farver, secretary of the Coalition for a Healthy Environment.

DOE-Oak Ridge Manager Leah Dever ordered water sampling in August after a team of government-paid doctors concluded in a study of 53 sick workers that some of their illnesses were linked to contaminants at K-25.

Coincidentally, former K-25 workers raised new allegations that some drinking water piping at the site was cross-connected with fire water systems and processed water supplies.

One of the study's doctors suggested that could have contributed to a baffling list of worker ailments, from tremors to asthma.

So some 600 water samples were taken by DOE contractors and the Environmental Protection Agency under the watch of union representatives and a citizens oversight committee.

DOE-Oak Ridge spokesman Steven Wyatt said the samples, tested at outside labs, show no contamination. Results from the EPA sampling are pending.

Farver said DOE is failing to report that five samples showed coliform in the water and one cooler filled with samples was lost.

"Stuff like that always happens when you get into this," Farver said. "Something will get broken, or it will get lost, or results will get lost."

Officials said the coliform reading suggested the sample itself was contaminated and had to be redone. A commercial carrier was blamed for losing the cooler.

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

Message: 14
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000
From: "earthIcan " <kctoons@mediaone.net>

Thank you fellow earthicans for helping to save the Ichetucknee River!

Thank You for sending this e-mail along to all our green friends, and for taking time to actually go to the three websites, and reading up on what we are doing to make The Battle of the Ichetucknee the line in the sand ...for together we can draw this issue into the discussion and debate of this Presidential election. It want take but just of few days of Bush, Gore, Browne and Nader having earthicans at their campaign stops, and we will have them all on record on where they stand on the question of the Cement Plant or The Ichetucknee and The Kids! We need to just get about 25 people out in each city, and we can draw this into the National Spotlight..

Thank you for helping to save our little river, and for becoming an earthican, the one green party that we can all be united together in!!! Its our earth, now ,damnit , lets get out there and take it back. One little river at a time.

Slainte, Y'all! Casey, Pam, Sam, and Pete www.earthican.com www.riverdrops.co www.musicoftherivers.org

Hello to everyone on this earthDay e-group!

Some of you think that EarthDay is not till next year... Well, the bigest EarthDay of this new Mileneum is November 7th, when we Americans elect the next leader of the the United States of America. Who ever gets that chair, will be in a position to protect all the Rivers and Forest of the USA and the World. We have to act now to make the environment the BIGGEST issue of this Fall Presidential Campaign.

I have chosen you, this e-group , to help me mobilize the earthicans of America, and get the environment on the center stage of this election.

I have attached the press releas that is on ENN today, and if you take a moment to read it, you should find all the motivation you need to get up and go to work with me.

I need your help, to publicize and to network to your list, to save the Ichetucknee and to make the environment the main issue in this election.

It boils down to this.

1. The DEP denied the permit to build and operate a Cement Plant to this Huge mining Corporation.

2. Florida Governor Jeb Bush permitted them anyway.

3. We need to get people in front of Bush, Gore, and Nader, everywhere they go, with signs saying " STOP THE CEMENT PLANT" AND " SAVE THE Ichetucknee", and chanting "ICHETUCKNEE...ICHETUCKNEE" AND " ICHE-BUSH...ICHE-BUSH....ICHE-BUSH...ICHE-BUSH ". if WE CAN GET PEOPLE OUT AT ALL THEIR CAMPAIGN STOPS FOR ABOUT TEN DAYS, OR EVEN LESS, AND HAVE AT LEAST 25 PEOPLE THERE WITH SIGNS AND CHANTING, THE PRESS WILL COVER THIS, AND THE CANDIDATES WILL HAVE TO MAKE A STAND ONE WAY OR THE OTHER , ABOUT WHAT THEY WILL DO ABOUT THE Ichetucknee river...AND THE NATION AND THE world WILL SEE WHAT THE BUSH family IS DOING HERE IN FLORIDA WITH OUR LOVELY LITTLE RIVER! the PRESS RELEASE IS BELOW.

Visit the websites,(www.musicoftherivers.org , ww.earthican.com ,and www.riverdrops.com ) and get your Earthday groups activated and involved in this Battle of the Ichetucknee River!

Today, we save the Ichetucknee.. and tomorrow, we save all the Rivers! Thanks , my friend, for helping to save our Ichetucknee. Casey 3718 Hedrick Street. Jacksonville Florida 32205 www.earthican.com

----

Celtic Cavalry to the Rescue of Ichetucknee

From Music of the Rivers
Wednesday, September 6, 2000

JACKSONVILLE - Celtic World Unites to Save Ichetucknee River!!! Music of the Rivers announces that a gathering of Celtic musicians from around the world will take place in Jacksonville, Florida, from November 16-19, 2000, on the river, at Metropolitan Park Pavilion.

What began as a family project, inspired by a concert at Ft. White, has grown into possibly the largest gathering of Celtic bards in history. Forty-seven bands from eleven countries will converge at Metro Park, to join the fight to save the Ichetucknee River.

The Ichetucknee, a spring-fed river that winds through pristine, undeveloped Florida backwoods, delights over 200,000 children and grandparents yearly. It's cold, pure waters are threatened by a $130 million cement plant, with a 280-foot smokestack for a tire and toxic waste-burning kiln, that will emit about 97 pounds of mercury annually, along with multiple tons of evaporated heavy metals and dioxin poisons. Also threatened are two endangered species- the Silt Snail (Cinncinatia mica), and the Red-eyed Blind Crayfish (Procambarus erythrops).

The cement plant was, effectively, dead, after the Florida DEP DENIED its permit. The developer, Suwannee / Anderson, appealed to Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who signed a deal that, now, allows the developer to begin construction and operation of the cement plant.

Through the Internet, a plea went out to Celtic bards for a benefit concert, to raise money to fight the Governor and the cement plant, and world awareness of the coming death of the Ichetucknee River. And The Celtic Calvary rides to the rescue! From France, Russia, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and from all across the USA, come 47 of the biggest and best Celtic bands to play, on one stage, for 4 days, to save the Ichetucknee River. Featured Celtic Music covers Techno, Traditional, Folk, Rock, Punk, Tex-Mex, Country, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Fusion, Pop, Surf, Ska, Tribal. Bands include The Cowboy Junkies, Seven Nations, Bad Haggis, the Young Dubliners, The Popes, Green Man, Celtic Soul, and more. For details, visit http://www.musicoftherivers.org .

On September 25, reserve tickets at the MOTR website, early-bird priced at $85 for the four-day pass. Initially tickets will be sold for four days only -- you won't want to miss a moment of this event.

Kids have started a Million Kids "E-March," to send one million emails to Governor Bush, demanding denial of the cement plant permit. Kids will "Adopt-A-Drop" of the Ichetucknee River and send emails at http://www.RiverDrops.com .

The spirit behind this event has resulted in the formation of a group called "Earthicans." By combining three words Â- earth + I + can - individuals are empowered, to recognize that each person can make an impact, by starting with simply taking the "earthican pledge." The pledge has three parts - peace, however you define it; education; and action. Visit the website at http://www.earthican.com for details.

"Ask not, what can your earth do for you, rather, ask, what you can do for your Earth..."

FOR PRESS CONTACT: mailto:jeriwallace@email.msn.com FOR SPONSORSHIP CONTACT: mailto:kctoons@mediaone.net Music of the Rivers: http://www.musicoftherivers.org Riverdrops: http://www.riverdrops.com Earthicans: http://www.earthican.com

For more information, contact: Casey Leydon earthican Music of the Rivers 9043844709 kctoons@mediaone.net Web site: http://www.musicoftherivers.org


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

NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS

1 Nuke waste prompts legislative action
2 NRC: No action against USEC - By Joe Walker
3 Column: Science can design a foolproof cask; question is where to
4 Faulty Monitoring Device Halts Calvert Cliffs Reactor
5 the DOE cannot justify Yucca Mountain
6 British Nuclear Fuels posts hefty losses
7 BNFL PROFITS HIT BY SCANDAL
8 You can tell it's an election year
9 New NRC Report On Nuclear Waste Shipments Fails to Address Public
10 Reactor not needed for isotopes
11 Nevada tribe wants to stop Army burning of munitions in
12 Radioactive debris won't be buried in Wiscasset
13 DEIS FOR US ECOLOGY INC. COMMERCIAL LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE

----------

NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES

1 Nuke waste prompts legislative action
September 13, 2000
LAS VEGAS SUN

CARSON CITY (AP) - An increased amount of low-level nuclear waste is being shipped to the Nevada Test Site for storage, and that worries some state legislators.

The concerns were voiced as the lawmakers' Interim Finance Committee meeting authorized the state Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety to accept $340,000 in federal funds to help counties develop response plans in case of an emergency involving the shipments.

DMV Director Richard Kirkland told IFC members Tuesday that he recently learned that the waste is being stored in line with federal regulations, but there's more waste than he realized.

Patrick Cameron of the state Emergency Management Division said the amount of waste increases each year and could hit 1.3 million cubic feet by 2003. But he said it may decrease to 794,0000 in 2004.

Some of the waste is stored at the Test Site and later shipped to New Mexico for permanent burial.

"We need a complete report so it doesn't get out of hand," said state Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, adding that the low-level waste was stored in metal boxes and dumped in trenches 14 to 20 feet deep at the Test Site.

Rawson added the waste going to the Test Site shouldn't be confused with high-level radioactive waste that would go to Yucca Mountain if it's approved as a burial site.

--------

2 NRC: No action against USEC
By Joe Walker
The Paducah Sun
Thursday, September 14, 2000

Although a new, proprietary Nuclear Regulatory Commission study describes USEC's long-term financial outlook as grim, the commission says it will take no action against the firm.

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, confirmed that the report says the company is not expected to be profitable after 2005, which seriously jeopardizes the future of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Amid a glutted market with falling prices, USEC plans to shut down Paducah's sister plant near Portsmouth, Ohio, next summer and keep the Paducah plant open as its sole uranium enrichment facility.

"If it becomes obvious that for whatever reason, USEC or some other producer cannot enrich uranium profitably as a private entity, then I think we have to revisit the question of the government's taking back that responsibility," Whitfield said.

He said more hearings on the issue are a virtual certainty next year.

If the government intervenes, it must decide whether to "bail out USEC or develop new technology and see who else might want to deploy it," said Richard Miller, policy analyst for the plants' atomic workers' union.

Miller said he expects the Clinton administration to announce by next week that it take a direct role in deploying gas centrifuge as the eventual replacement for outdated, expensive gaseous diffusion used at Paducah and Portsmouth. Without a replacement technology in the near future, USEC's status is dire, as reflected by the NRC report, he said.

"The White House and the Department of Energy take this situation very, very seriously," Miller said. "We have made our views plainly and unequivocally known to the administration that any such deployment would have to be at Paducah and Portsmouth."

Miller, who said he was briefed on the NRC report but had not seen it, said one key fear by administration and congressional leaders is that USEC won't be able to meet legal requirements to provide enriched uranium to countries that get rid of nuclear weapons. As a result, those nations could switch to fueling nuclear power plants with plutonium, which also is used to make nuclear weapons, he said.

Because the report was based largely on sensitive financial information provided by USEC, it should not be publicly released, the NRC said. The agency reviewed the findings with congressional delegations earlier this week.

Whitfield, Miller and other sources gave these highlights of the report:

--USEC will be profitable through 2005 only by selling off much of its huge inventory of natural uranium in the form of uranium hexafluoride, or UF6. DOE gave USEC the stockpile as part of privatization. USEC won't be profitable enriching uranium after 2003 because of drastically lower prices under new contracts.

--USEC could be profitable after 2003 by closing both plants and becoming a broker for huge quantities of uranium taken from dismantled Russian warheads, assuming USEC can lower the price it pays for the Russian material. Price renegotiations are "running into serious trouble with the Russians," Miller said.

--Another way USEC could regain long-term profitability is to develop a cheaper alternative for gaseous diffusion. USEC is considering gas centrifuge as a replacement, but doesn't plan to have centrifuge on line until 2009.

"It's uncertain whether or not USEC would undertake the investment that centrifuge would require unless there is some government involvement, " Whitfield said.

--The Paducah plant is up for recertification by NRC at the end of 2003. But USEC may be in such financial trouble then that it can't convince the commission it will be able to run the plant safely and reliably for another five years until 2008.

--A restriction that no owner can have more than 10 percent of USEC stock expires next July. As long as USEC's market price is below its break-up value, it is a target for takeover and liquidation.

The NRC investigated USEC's financial situation after the company's financial rating was downgraded to so-called "junk bond" status last spring. Although the commission regulates health and safety issues, USEC's certification with NRC requires it to maintain a reliable, economical national supply of uranium.

On Monday, NRC Chairman Richard Meserve wrote Rep. Tom Bliley, R- Va., chairman of the House Commerce Committee, saying the supply issue is mainly related to foreigners' possibly gaining control of and undermining USEC. Although that is an important concern, "it is not clear" that the issue should be addressed by NRC in recertification, he said.

Even if the concern were more broadly construed to mean preserving domestic supply, the NRC is "severely limited" in its actions, Meserve wrote, and denying certification "would shut down a domestic supply altogether."

A financial analysis included with the study is narrow and only touches on new technology, the letter said. Although the analysis could be expanded, "we do not believe that any more NRC study of the USEC situation is justified," especially considering NRC's limited options, Meserve said.

USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle declined comment on the report, saying USEC senior managers had neither seen it nor been briefed on its contents. She referred response to remarks made last week by USEC President and Chief Executive Officer William "Nick" Timbers at the International Nuclear Materials Policy Forum.

In the speech, Timbers said "the doom and gloom scenarios about USEC's prospects are greatly exaggerated." Although USEC has had plenty of problems, it is resolving them as only a private-sector firm can do and remains "the global market leader with substantial cash flows and modest debt," he said.

Timbers said USEC has reached an agreement with Russia for market- based pricing, effective in 2002 for the remaining 13 years of the contract; secured a 10-year power contract to provide cheaper electricity for the Paducah plant; and pursued enrichment options including centrifuge and Silex laser technology.

"We expect to make a decision in the next 12 to 18 months on which technology to develop," he said.

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3 Column: Science can design a foolproof cask; question is where to put it
Thursday, September 14, 2000
BY BOB THOMAS

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
Winston Churchill

"Will the 'real' Mr. Thomas step forward?" That challenge was issued by a Mr. Lou deBottari in his Aug. 27 letter to our editor concerning my past columns. How can I refuse?

Since I'm on record as saying computer programs aren't reliable enough to accurately forecast the structural integrity of aircraft in terms of absolute maximum life, Mr. deBottari twists that around and claims that in past columns I've blessed the Department of Energy's computer simulations as being infallible on the structural and environmental integrity of containers to be used for high level nuclear waste.

There's quite a difference between a delicate aircraft structure which is designed to be as light as possible while carrying as heavy a load as possible as fast as possible, and the deterioration over 100,000 years of super high strength, heavy, over-designed metals encasing nuclear waste, which are stored in underground tunnels and can be inspected, and if necessary refurbished with overlays. Yes, one hell of a difference ... like apples and oranges!

Yes, I do trust the scientific community to solve our nuclear waste problems. Who else do we have, anti-nuke knee tremblers who at best have a smattering of junk science behind their fanatical obsession with keeping a nuclear waste repository out of Nevada?

Now, let's look at the facts. In my last column on Yucca Mountain, I made it absolutely clear that I am opposed to nuke waste being stored here in Nevada or in any other state. I am the one who is convinced that all nuclear waste which cannot be reprocessed should be encased in the best containers science can create, and then dumped in the Pacific Ocean at the 35,000 foot depth level.

Surrounded by millions of cubic miles of sea water and with controlled leakage, there is no possibility whatsoever of contamination with a dilution factor of that magnitude. Check Bikini Atoll and you'll see no lingering radiation effects from the dirtiest, biggest H-bomb nuke explosion in history. And that was only 54 years ago!

I also made it clear that we should adopt a breeder reactor, or another similar program, and reprocess our nuke waste for reuse. It's being done in France and has been for years. I don't see anti-nuke forces in France. France and England need nuclear power and their people know it.

I further stated that I believe the scientific community, if left alone by politicians and bureaucrats, would also conclude that nuke waste should be buried at sea. But our independent scientists including geologists, environmentalists, physicists and engineers have never been called upon to come up with their own storage solution by consensus. Scientists employed by DOE and the nuke industry all conform to political agendas. Don't confuse them with the scientific community. As of now we have little genuine science on either side of the nuke storage issue.

Getting back to computer simulations. In aircraft design, we didn't always have them. There were no digital computers available for use in designing the Douglas DC-3s, 4s, 6s or 7s. Nor were there computers available in the design of Lockheed's Constellation, nor with Boeing's Stratocruisers.

Back in those days you wouldn't have really wanted to know what we did, but now that it's history, I'll tell you. We static tested, exercise tested and pressure tested all aircraft structures on failure. Then we'd gusset (brace) the failure points. That ended up being the final structure design. With a few exceptions, it worked quite well.

In my Concorde columns, I didn't intend giving you folks the idea the computer lift simulation programs weren't valuable because they are indispensable. It would be impossible to get today's aircraft to the production stage without computer simulations. It's just that no program can take into account all of the variables affecting all flights, which means that empirical data, when available, must be integrated with simulations to continually upgrade computer forecasts.

Computer simulations of environmental effects on containers for long term storage of high level nuclear waste are a piece of cake in comparison to aircraft structures. Yes, I've stated that I think science can design a fool- and accident-proof container for high level nuclear waste if given the unencumbered chance to do so. Give our scientific community a specific objective as we did at Los Alamos, without political interference, and it will come through for us. But we Nevadans might not like the answers, and therein lies the rub.

Bob Thomas is a Carson City businessman, local curmudgeon and former member of the Carson City School Board and Nevada State Assembly.

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4 Faulty Monitoring Device Halts Calvert Cliffs Reactor
By Raymond McCaffrey
The Washington Post
Thursday, September 14, 2000; Page M04

One of the two reactors at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant automatically shut down Sunday evening when a faulty electronic monitoring device incorrectly indicated there was a problem at the facility, officials said this week.

The incident, which occurred about 9:30 p.m., involved a "failed logic module" that caused "the spurious closure of both main steam isolation valves," the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

"It sent a wrong message that we were having a problem," said Angela Walters, a spokeswoman for Constellation Energy Group, the owner and operator of the plant near Lusby.

Calvert Cliffs uses nuclear energy to generate "steam that spins the turbines that produce electricity," said David Beaulieu, the NRC's senior resident inspector at the plant. Beaulieu said the faulty protective circuitry is designed to isolate the main steam line and stop the flow of steam if the line ruptures.

Though the line did not rupture Sunday, the sensor indicated that it had, which set off a series of actions that shut down the reactor, Beaulieu said.

"You had a false signal, so the reactor ended up tripping because the main steam system was isolated," he said.

Shutting down the steam system results in the escape of "a lot of steam, and it makes a lot of noise," Beaulieu said--so much that some people who live near the plant were alarmed enough to report it.

Beaulieu said the steam contains very small amounts of radioactivity that are "well within regulatory limits."

"There would definitely be no threat to public health and safety, " he said.

Earlier this year, the NRC approved 20-year extensions of the operating licenses for the two nuclear reactors at Calvert Cliffs. In its latest performance assessment, the NRC said the plant continues to operate in a safe manner.

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5 the DOE cannot justify Yucca Mountain

For Immediate Release:
Sept. 11, 2000

DOE CANNOT JUSTIFY YUCCA MOUNTAIN NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENTS

STATEMENT OF LISA GUE, POLICY ANALYST, PUBLIC CITIZEN'S CRITICAL MASS ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM

As the National Academy of Sciences Board on Radioactive Waste Management meets today to consider the past experience, current issues and future prospects of radioactive waste transportation, Public Citizen raises strong objections to the proposed transportation schemes, which needlessly endanger the public and the environment.

Radioactive waste must be kept isolated from people and the environment. Transporting the waste is inherently dangerous because it elevates the risk of release. It also disperses this risk along transportation routes where hospitals, police and rescue personnel may not be equipped to respond effectively to a radiological emergency.

The current proposal to transport 70,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste from weapons facilities and commercial nuclear reactors to a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., would initiate a transportation program of unprecedented scale. A recent analysis prepared by Clark County Comprehensive Planning Division in Nevada found that the deadly shipments would have to travel through 734 counties with a total population of 138 million people.

It is unacceptable that the Department of Energy (DOE) is now preparing to finalize the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Yucca Mountain repository proposal without specifying either the preferred mode of transport (i.e. train or truck) or the precise routes that would be used. Not only does this pre-empt informed participation in the EIS process by affected members of the public, it also excludes consideration of the specific risks to land, water and urban environments that could be contaminated by a radiation leak during transportation.

The DOE, like promoters of the Titanic, want Congress and the public to believe that these concerns are irrelevant because the waste would be shipped in indestructible casks. However, these casks have been tested only through computer simulations. We must insist on additional full-scale physical testing to confirm the validity of the computer models. Furthermore, the parameters of the test requirements should be reviewed and updated to reflect realistic accident conditions.

In addition to accident scenarios, we also have grave concerns about the consequences of routine radiation exposure from Yucca Mountain waste shipments, which would emit 10 millirems per hour from a distance of two meters. Workers and residents along transportation routes would be disproportionately exposed to low-level radiation as a result of the shipments.

Transporting high-level radioactive waste to a Yucca Mountain repository does not solve the nation's nuclear waste problem. In fact, this industry-driven proposal implicitly encourages the continued generation of nuclear waste while transferring the risk to the state of Nevada and communities along transportation routes. We call upon the Board on Radioactive Waste Management to uphold the precautionary principle and the public's right to protection from the unquantifiable risks associated with transporting high-level radioactive waste.

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6 British Nuclear Fuels posts hefty losses
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 14,
Reuters
By Matthew Jones

LONDON (Reuters) - State-owned British Nuclear Fuels reported a pre- tax loss of 337 million pounds for the year ending March 31 against a pre-tax profit of 218 million pounds for the same period last year.

Chairman Hugh Collum told Reuters it had been a "difficult" year but the group was making a fresh start.

Over the period covered by the results BNFL was at the centre of an international scandal when it was discovered some of its workers had falsified data on nuclear fuel shipments to overseas customers.

Contracts by the company's major customers in Japan and Germany were cancelled and an investigation by Britain's nuclear watchdog concluded the company's showcase Sellafield nuclear facility suffered from "systematic management failure".

In the aftermath, the chief executive and half the board resigned and the British government was forced to shelve plans to part privatise the group by 2002 at the earliest.

The troubled nuclear giant made exceptional charges of 411 million pounds before tax comprising compensation to customers arising from the fake fuel data scandal, a provision for foreseeable losses on long-term contracts and a charge relating to the early closure of one of its nuclear power stations.

Turnover rose by 32 percent to 2.064 billion pounds from 1.565 billion but pre-tax profit from operations before exceptional items fell 54 percent to 74 million pounds from 161 million.

Total undisclosed nuclear liabilities jumped 26 percent to 34.2 billion pounds from 27.1 billion (up 10 percent to 15.8 billion pounds from 14.5 billion on a discounted level).

Collum said a review of liabilities began in 1998 and the latest figures reflect the company's decision this year to close its eight ageing Magnox nuclear power stations the decommissioning of which will not be completed for 150 years.

RECLAIMING LOST BUSINESS

Chief Executive Norman Askew said he was hopeful of reclaiming lost business following the government's decision to accept the return of the Japanese tainted fuel and BNFL's move to pay compensation for the incident.

"We will visit Japan in the autumn to get some new business," he said.

Although a Japanese ban on BNFL's Mox (mixed oxide fuel - a combination of uranium and plutonium) has been lifted, the ban remains in place in Germany, another key customer.

Askew said BNFL's Mox Demonstration Facility (MDF) which produced the fuel at the centre of the controversy would not be used to produce commercial fuel when it restarts operations.

"We will not use MDF, which was a pilot plant to do the job the Sellafield Mox Plant (SMP) was designed to do," he said.

However, the 300 million pound SMP has lain idle since it was finished in 1997 awaiting government go-ahead.

Commercial clearance has been refused so far because of concerns the plant will not be profitable. Askew said not having Mox contracts will make the case to start up the SMP harder to argue.

U.S. "OPPORTUNITIES"

Askew said the U.S. nuclear decommissioning and waste clean sectors still offered opportunities for BNFL even though its multi-billion dollar contract to clean up the Hanford nuclear weapons site was terminated in May after U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson criticised a price revision.

"We are rebuilding relationships in the U.S. All the people who were around when the contract ran into problems have left. BNFL's plans for Hanford remain the preferred technical solution", he said.

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7 BNFL PROFITS HIT BY SCANDAL
By Matthew Jones
UK: Financial Times
September 14 2000

British Nuclear Fuels, the UK atomic energy group, on Thursday sought to draw a line under a year of commercially damaging incidents by taking £411m ($579m) of exceptional charges in its annual accounts.

The state-owned group made a pre-tax loss for the year of £337m against a pre-tax profit last time of £218m, despite a significant rise in turnover to £2.06bn from £1.57bn. It also cancelled its dividend payment to the British government, which last year amounted to £65m.

BNFL's poor performance threatens to derail government plans to privatise up to 49 per cent of the company. Ministers have already delayed the proposal by two years after BNFL missed most of the performance and safety targets that it must meet as a condition of the sale.

The charges related to the cost of a data falsification scandal at the group's mixed-oxide (Mox) demonstration facility at Sellafield, the early closure of its Hinkley nuclear power station and provisions for losses on some long term decommissioning projects.

A further £45m charge was made against the year's profits following a review of the long-term costs of decommissioning BNFL's nuclear plants and storing radioactive waste.

Hugh Collum, BNFL chairman, said the poor results sent a strong signal for the need for change within the group. Each part of the company had been set short-term targets and a longer-term strategy review was underway.

The group's troubles first became apparent last September when Britain's nuclear safety regulator launched an investigation into the falsification of quality checks on Mox fuel shipped to Kansai Electric Power Company in Japan.

The incident led the Japanese authorities to put a moratorium on nuclear fuel orders from BNFL and sparked concerns among other major customers in Germany and North America.

Since then the group has been forced to withdraw from a multi-billion pound nuclear clean-up project in the US and has come under mounting international pressure to scrap reprocessing of nuclear waste at Sellafield.

It has also discovered a £7bn shortfall in the amount of money needed for long term decommissioning of nuclear plants on BNFL sites.

As part of the group's move to more transparent accounting, BNFL said the cost of the Mox data falsification scandal was £113m. This included £40m of compensation to be paid to Kansai Electric Power Company in Japan, estimated costs of shipping the fuel back to England and the cost of dealing with it on its return.

The early closure of Hinkley nuclear power station due to concerns over the integrity of structures supporting its boilers was put at £151m, while the provision for losses on long-term clean-up and decommissioning contracts, principally in the US, was £139m.

Norman Askew, chief executive, said the outlook for the company remained challenging and that negotiations to secure new contracts in Japan were the top priority. If talks fail, BNFL will be unable to open a new Mox production plant at Sellafield which has already been built at a cost of £450m.

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8 You can tell it's an election year
September 13, 2000

YOU can tell it's an election year when politicians start turning up the heat on "waste" in government. Usually, they are the culprits.

Now Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a powerful force in the Senate when it comes to funding for energy projects, has harshly condemned the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility project.

Scientists hope the NIF will enable the United States to test weapons using simulated thermonuclear explosions and aid in other laser research. The laser concept has already proved itself in smaller models.

Building the NIF is now estimated to cost close to $4 billion-- nearly double its original $2.1 billion price tag. Lab director Bruce Tarter has said that while the physics of the project is sound, since something of this scale had never been built, there were problems in engineering and building the facility.

We can't have it both ways. Like an aging, classic auto we expect to start at a moment's notice, nuclear weapons age and deteriorate. If we don't want nuclear testing to verify they will work, we have to have a sound model to mimic it. That's what the NIF will do.

Naturally, the Energy Department, which operates the lab, has to keep quiet. It's already in enough trouble over security problems at various labs and is getting heat over rising gas prices. And, it can't afford to offend Congress, which controls the purse strings.

Reid and other senators have mandated that the National Academy of Sciences review NIF (once again) to make sure the laser program really will work. That's OK; though we wonder about how much more "pork" this is and which senator's pets will benefit.

What troubles us is that rather than push the NIF to its completion, Congress wants to cut its funding, from about $200 million this year to $75 million, only further dragging out the timetable for completion.

This doesn't get the project done, and with inflation and the tight economy, only increases the project's costs further as it's stretched out over a longer construction time frame.

CHEERS: Eileen Vergino, deputy director for the Livermore lab's Global Security Research, suffered a slight concussion and deep scrapes and cuts, after her bicycle broke and she took a tumble. She landed on the front of her head, the blow hard enough to crack her hardshell bicycle helmet.

A properly fitting helmet, required by state law for people under 18, saved the day, and has turned Vergino into a helmet crusader, for people of all ages.

Decades ago no one thought twice about riding a bicycle sans helmet -- there weren't helmets. But in a more populated, crowded and frenetic age, going helmetless just isn't a smart thing to do. Whether on motorcycles, bicycles or the now popular scooters, helmets make sense.

JEERS: You can tell it's an election year II: Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, who authored a book about property rights, is being attacked by environmental activists, who say he allowed a pesticide lobbyist to pen legislation stifling pesticide regulation. Pombo says he consulted with several groups during the crafting of the legislation.

It's much ado about nothing, but any group that says it is "for" the environment seems to get more mileage out of a sympathetic media. And that spin can do damage.

"The fact is that lobbyists are frequently in the room when bills are drafted," said Norman Ornstein, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

With the national government more and more seen by the public as the solution to all ills, Congress is pressed to make more and more laws. Complicated bills get written with lobbyists, including those of the environmental bent, coming in with their "suggestions."

Remember the old saw about laws and sausage--you don't want to see how they're made.

The environmentalist attacks on Pombo are sleazy. If we're really concerned about lobbyists writing laws, how about limiting each congressperson to authoring one law each session? How about not looking to government to compel others to get what one interest wants?

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9 New NRC Report On Nuclear Waste Shipments Fails to Address Public Concerns

For Immediate Release:
September 14, 2000

STATEMENT OF LISA GUE NEW NRC REPORT ON NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENTS FAILS TO ADDRESS PUBLIC CONCERNS

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must withdraw its report, " Re-examination of Spent Fuel Shipments Risk Estimates" (NUREG/ CR-6672), or reissue it as a draft for public comment, said Public Citizen at an NRC workshop today in Rockville, MD. This report was finalized without prior public input and does not adequately address the public's legitimate safety concerns about the transportation of nuclear waste.

The draft summary, "A Summary Paper for Public Meeting," could be used to rationalize the large-scale transport of high-level radioactive waste from commercial nuclear reactors and DOE weapons facilities to a proposed storage site in Yucca Mountain, Nev.

The draft summary glosses over the public's safety concerns. The NRC must acknowledge that transporting high-level nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain, Nev. is inherently dangerous because of the risk of accidents along transportation routes. Understating this danger might result in less careful treatment of nuclear waste shipments, which in turn could actually increase the risk.

Yucca Mountain is the only site currently under consideration to serve as a permanent geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste. The DOE is studying the mountain to determine whether it is suitable for permanent storage for 77,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste. If the Yucca Mountain site is approved, radioactive waste could be shipped through 43 states during a period of at least 24 years. This transportation scheme is scheduled to begin as early as 2010.

Meanwhile, a proposal by Private Fuel Storage(PFS) , a consortium of private utilities, would initiate high-level waste shipments to an interim storage facility in Utah beginning in 2003.

The NRC report does not accurately characterize risk probability or consequences for shipments of high-level waste to Yucca Mountain or the PFS facility, because it does not consider specific transport routes, but only generic samples of potential routes and route conditions.

The NRC report concludes that the risk involved in transporting high- level nuclear waste is lower than estimated in previous reports. The NRC claims this as an indication that radioactive waste shipments are becoming safer. However, it is unclear whether this represents an actual reduction in risk or whether the changing numbers simply reflect the different methodologies used in previous studies. Furthermore, risk estimates based on past shipping records could be subject to a high level of uncertainty due to extrapolating the experience of a small number of previous shipments to a future scenario where shipments to Yucca Mountain would be routine and frequent.

Today's meeting also considered a paper detailing Sandia National Laboratories recommendations for a "Spent Nuclear Fuel Transportation Package Performance Study." This study would update the 1987 report known as the Modal Study. It is unacceptable that Sandia' s scoping paper fails to recommend full-scale physical testing of nuclear waste transportation casks. Public Citizen continues to insist on comprehensive physical testing of the casks used for proposed transportation schemes as the only way to confirm the validity of computer models.

The public cannot have confidence in a package performance study that does not consider specific transportation routes and conditions in its analysis of probabilities and consequences. The NRC must acknowledge the prescriptive role that this study would play in licensing nuclear waste transportation and must demand tests that reflect the precise scope and conditions of the proposals under consideration.

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10 Reactor not needed for isotopes
Oregon Live
Wednesday, September 13, 2000

I was appalled by your editorial in favor of restarting Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility nuclear reactor ("Using atoms to cure cancer, " Aug. 29).

I am a cancer survivor and I care about cancer treatment, but we do not need FFTF to make medical isotopes. These isotopes can be produced in an accelerator, a machine that fires subatomic particles down a tunnel and smashes them into a target. Accelerators create very small amounts of short-lived nuclear waste.

FFTF would produce 16 tons of spent fuel, which is high-level radioactive waste, dangerous to human and other life for hundreds of thousands of years. We have nowhere to put it, no safe way to dispose of it, no sure way to contain it for the time in which it will be dangerous.

The Department of Energy is taking public comments on FFTF until Sept. 18. Comments may be e-mailed to Nuclear.Infrastructure-PEIS@hq.doe.gov. A final decision on restart is expected in December.

LYNN PORTER Hanford Watch
Southeast Portland

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11 Nevada tribe wants to stop Army burning of munitions in California
September 14, 2000
LAS VEGAS SUN

NIXON, Nev. (AP) - Tribal leaders in Nevada are urging health officials in California to make the U.S. Army stop burning munitions 50 miles northwest of Reno.

Residents of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation testified at a hearing in Nixon Wednesday against the 30-year-old practice of burning or detonating obsolete bombs and bullets at the Sierra Army Depot.

The Army is in the process of seeking a new permit to continue the operations at the depot at Herlong, Calif., upwind from Pyramid Lake.

Tribal members say toxic particles are carrying to their homes and causing higher cancer rates.

"The poisons are in our air, water and earth," Debbie Barlese said.

"I'm a grandmother and I want it stopped to protect my children's health, my grandchildren's health and the health of generations unborn."

Federal health officials agreed earlier this week to conduct a health hazard evaluation in the wake of the recent allegations that the burning of munitions is causing higher cancer rates in northern Nevada and California.

Over the last decade, about 28,000 tons of munitions have been detonated or burned in the open air every year. In 1995 alone, 53 million pounds of military explosives and 200 rocket motors were detonated or burned.

The ordnance contains toxic and carcinogenic chemicals including lead, mercury, arsenic, antimony, beryllium, cadmium, nickel, and dioxins. The Army burns when the wind is blowing in an easterly direction, towards the Pyramid Lake reservation and Reno's north valleys.

Critics, including a 1,000-member activist group in Lassen County, environmental and military watchdog groups and the Pyramid Lake tribe, say the depots disposal activities have had a significant impact on human health, plants, animals, soil, streams, ground water and air and water quality.

On Wednesday, tribal officials said the reservation has elevated cancer rates, calves dying of unknown respiratory ailments, a declining white pelican population, cows with tumors, fish smaller than normal and a greater than expected percentage of school children with learning disabilities.

"Who is to say the chemicals when they come down don't go into the lake and poison it," said Norman Clark, a Tlingit Indian from Alaska who lives in Nixon. "The toxins go somewhere. They come back to haunt you."

The Army has justified the open burning and detonation practice based on computer models that show smoke plumes from the blasts and the burnings don't cause pollution. If the Army is granted a permit, California officials will require actual monitoring of air, soil and water.

Several speakers Wednesday said monitoring should be done immediately to gauge the damage of more than 30 years of smoke plumes. They also said the fish and animals should be tested for toxins.

"The technology is available," said Don Walls, who works with the tribes water resources department. "Stop what's going on at the depot. Know what's in the plume before you write the permit."

Dan Mosley, the tribes environmental specialist, said the fish, birds, cattle, deer and antelope should be tested for toxins.

"We see more and more cancer here and more long-term chronic effects here," he said. "Its got to stop. Send the depot somewhere else. Get it out of our back yard."

Alan Mandell, a tribal member, said the Army is not following federal regulations that require agencies to do a cultural assessment of effects on Indian tribes. He said the burns threaten residents health and destroy cultural and traditional activities such as fishing and basket making.

"These resources are the cultural bridge between the past and future which ensures the cultural continuity of my people today," he said. "Once these bridges are destroyed, cultural continuity ends and annihilation begins."

The Army has said the depot uses open pits because it is the cheapest way to dispose of unwanted munitions. The depot blows up or burns more ordnance than any other military facility in the nation.

Several speakers said the Army should be forced to use safer technology, such as enclosed blast chambers used at Hawthorne and other military bases.

Rick Mapes of the California Department of Toxic Substances said his agency is getting information on alternative technologies for weapons destruction. He said the agency would continue to gather testimony and information about the depots practices.

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12 Radioactive debris won't be buried in Wiscasset
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD
BY EDWARD D. MURPHY
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2000

Maine Yankee will ship the material to Utah instead of using the site of the former nuclear plant.

MAINE YANKEE ANNOUNCED WEDNESDAY THAT IT WILL SHIP CONTAMINATED DEMOLITION MATERIAL TO UTAH, DROPPING A CONTROVERSIAL PLAN TO BURY THE RUBBLE ON THE SITE OF THE FORMER NUCLEAR POWER PLANT.

"THIS IS GOOD AND THE COMPANY DESERVES SOME KIND OF CREDIT FOR TAKING THIS INITIATIVE," SAID RAY SHADIS, A LONGTIME CRITIC OF THE PLANT AND SPOKESMAN FOR THE ANTI-NUCLEAR GROUP FRIENDS OF THE COAST. "WE CAN'T HELP BUT BE PLEASED."

ERIC T. HOWES, A SPOKESMAN FOR MAINE YANKEE, SAID THE DECISION WAS PROMPTED BY THE REALIZATION THAT THE PLAN TO BURY TONS OF CONCRETE AND OTHER MATERIAL IN WISCASSET FACED "SIGNIFICANT HURDLES."

MAINE YANKEE WOULD HAVE NEEDED A PERMIT FROM THE MAINE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION TO KEEP THE MATERIAL ON THE SITE. IT HAD BECOME CLEAR THAT GETTING THAT APPROVAL WAS FAR FROM CERTAIN, HOWES SAID. SO MAINE YANKEE DECIDED TO SEND THE MATERIAL TO ENVIROCARE, A COMPANY THAT DISPOSES OF LOW-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE IN UTAH.

"NOT ONLY FROM A COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE BUT ALSO FROM A TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE, THE PREFERRED CHOICE WAS TO REMOVE THE MATERIAL," HOWES SAID, NOTING THAT IT MAY HAVE BEEN DIFFICULT TO SATISFY CONCERNS OVER PROTECTING GROUND WATER.

HOWES SAID THAT ABOUT 1 MILLION CUBIC FEET OF DEMOLITION MATERIAL WILL BE GENERATED BY THE DESTRUCTION OF BUILDINGS AT THE PLANT, ABOUT 60 PERCENT OF IT CONTAMINATED BY RADIOACTIVITY. SOME BUILDINGS HAVE ALREADY BEEN DEMOLISHED, HE SAID, BUT MOST OF THE WORK WILL BE DONE IN 2002 AND 2003, WITH DECOMMISSIONING EXPECTED TO BE COMPLETED IN 2004.

ORIGINALLY, MAINE YANKEE WANTED TO BURY THE WASTE IN THE FOUNDATION HOLES CREATED BY THE DEMOLITION. NOW THE PLAN IS TO SEND THE MATERIAL TO UTAH BY RAIL, REMOVE THE FOUNDATION MATERIAL TO ABOUT 3 FEET BELOW THE SURFACE AND THEN COVER THE REMAINING FOUNDATION WITH SOIL.

HOWE SAID THE COST IS UNCERTAIN AND WILL DEPEND ON A NUMBER OF FACTORS, INCLUDING THE PRICE FOR DISPOSAL OF THE CONTAMINATED MATERIAL AND WHETHER THERE'S ANY MARKET FOR THE UNCONTAMINATED DEBRIS. BUT, HE SAID, MAINE YANKEE BELIEVES DECOMMISSIONING WILL STILL FALL WITHIN ITS $541 MILLION BUDGET.

MAINE YANKEE WILL NEGOTIATE A ONE-TIME FEE WITH ENVIROCARE FOR DISPOSAL OF THE MATERIAL, HE SAID.

TINA JONES, WHO LIVES WITHIN SIGHT OF MAINE YANKEE ON READY POINT ROAD IN WISCASSET, SAID THE DECISION TO REMOVE THE DEBRIS GIVES HER A SENSE OF RELIEF.

"I'M VERY GLAD," SAID JONES, WHO HAS TWO CHILDREN. "I FEEL BAD FOR WHEREVER IT'S GOING, BUT I DIDN'T LIKE IT WHEN (MAINE YANKEE) WAS RUNNING AND WE REALLY LIKE OUR HOME AND DON'T WANT TO MOVE."

JONES SAID THE FAMILY GETS ITS WATER FROM A WELL, WHICH IS TESTED REGULARLY TO MAKE SURE THERE IS NO CONTAMINATION. SHE SAID SHE REMAINS NERVOUS ABOUT THE DEMOLITION PROCESS, BUT FEELS BETTER KNOWING THE DEBRIS WILL NOT BE BURIED A HALF-MILE FROM HER HOME.

BUT BENJAMIN RINES JR., WISCASSET'S FIRST SELECTMAN, SAID HE THINKS THE DECISION TO SHIP THE WASTE OUT OF STATE "DOESN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL."

RINES SAID MOST RESIDENTS AREN'T THAT CONCERNED ABOUT THE PRESENCE OF LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE, BUT IF REMOVAL "WORKS FOR (MAINE YANKEE), FINE."

SHADIS SAID THE DECISION TO REMOVE THE DEBRIS ELIMINATES ONE OF THE LAST CONTROVERSIES SURROUNDING THE PLANT, WHICH WAS BUILT IN 1972 AND SHUT DOWN PERMANENTLY IN 1997, 10 YEARS BEFORE IT WAS SCHEDULED TO CLOSE.

"WE'VE BEEN INSISTENT; WE'VE BEEN UNWAVERING IN OPPOSITION TO BURYING ANY RADIOACTIVE DEBRIS ON-SITE," HE SAID.

HE SAID FRIENDS OF THE COAST WILL CONTINUE TO PUSH FOR A HEALTH STUDY OF RESIDENTS TO SEE IF THERE ARE ANY LONG-TERM PROBLEMS FROM THE OPERATION OF THE REACTOR. THE GROUP ALSO WANTS TO MOVE AHEAD WITH A STUDY OF PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE AROUND THE SITE.

KRIS CHRISTINE OF ALNA, ANOTHER LONGTIME MAINE YANKEE OPPONENT WHO LIVES ABOUT 10 MILES AWAY, WAS ALSO HAPPY WITH WEDNESDAY'S ANNOUNCEMENT.

"THIS IS CERTAINLY GOOD NEWS FOR ANYONE WHO'S CONCERNED ABOUT THE POTENTIAL FOR GROUND-WATER CONTAMINATION," CHRISTINE SAID. "CLEARLY, PEOPLE IN THE AREA WILL HAVE LESS TO WORRY ABOUT."

CHRISTINE SAID SOME RECENT STUDIES HAVE FOUND THAT RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION TRAVELS FARTHER IN GROUND WATER THAN SCIENTISTS THOUGHT IT WOULD, SO THE ISSUE OF BURYING THE CONTAMINATED MATERIALS HAD SHAPED UP AS A BIG ONE.

"I'M ACTUALLY QUITE SURPRISED" BY MAINE YANKEE'S DECISION, SHE SAID. "THEY FOUGHT VERY HARD ON THE STATE AND FEDERAL LEVEL TO BURY THE WASTE."

MAINE YANKEE ALSO SAID WEDNESDAY THAT IT HAS PUT TOGETHER A PANEL TO HELP IT DECIDE HOW TO REDEVELOP THE 600-ACRE PLANT SITE. THE MEMBERS INCLUDE STATE SEN. MARGE KILKELLY, D-WISCASSET, AND DEVELOPERS JOE WISHCAMPER AND JOE BOULOS.

HOWES SAID MAINE YANKEE HOPES THAT THE PANEL CAN MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS ABOUT OPTIONS BY SPRING.

RINES, HOWEVER, SAID THE PRESENCE OF HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE ON THE SITE MAKES REDEVELOPMENT ISSUES MOOT IN THE SHORT RUN. SPENT FUEL RODS ARE TO BE SEALED IN CASKS UNTIL FEDERAL OFFICIALS MAKE DECISIONS ON WHERE TO PERMANENTLY STORE SUCH WASTE.

"AS LONG AS THE HIGH-LEVEL WASTE IS STORED THERE, IT REALLY DOESN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE," RINES SAID.

SHADIS SAID HIS GROUP HOPES THAT THE SITE WILL REMAIN LARGELY UNDEVELOPED FOR A WHILE AFTER THE FUEL RODS ARE REMOVED "TO GIVE THE LAND TIME TO HEAL" AND PRESERVE OPTIONS FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS.

HOWES SAID THE NEXT MAJOR STEP IN THE DECOMMISSIONING WILL COME NEXT SPRING, WHEN THE REACTOR WILL BE SENT BY BARGE TO A DISPOSAL SITE IN BARNWELL, S.C.

STAFF WRITER EDWARD D. MURPHY CAN BE CONTACTED AT 791-6465 OR AT:

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13 DEIS FOR US ECOLOGY INC. COMMERCIAL LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL FACILITY

Public Involvement Opportunities

The U.S. Department of Energy, Washington State Department of Ecology, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offer this monthly calendar to help you keep track of scheduled meetings, public comment opportunities and events. You will need Adobe Reader to view it. Click here to download the latest free version.

Comment Period: September 25 - November 8, 2000

The Washington State Departments of Health (WDOH) and Ecology (WDOE) are issuing a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) to examine the commercial low-level radioactive waste facility operated by U.S. Ecology, Inc., at the Hanford Site. The DEIS will address state actions related to review and approval of the U.S. Ecology Site Closure Plan, renewal of the U.S. Ecology Site Operating License, and establishing a maximum limit for the disposal of naturally occurring and accelerator produced radioactive materials (NARM).

A 45-day comment period and two public hearings will be held to provide an opportunity for the public to comment on the DEIS. The COMMENT PERIOD WILL BEGIN SEPTEMBER 25, 2000 AND RUN THROUGH NOVEMBER 8, 2000. Public hearings on the DEIS will be held at the following times, dates, and locations: BELLEVUE: 7:00 pm, OCTOBER 23, 2000 Conference Rooms 1A, B, and C Department of Ecology Northwest KENNEWICK 7:00 pm, OCTOBER 24, 2000 Conference Room 4 Department of Ecology Nuclear Waste Program 1315 W 4th (506 KB)

SINGLE-SHELL TANK RETRIEVAL PROPOSAL (MODIFICATION TO THE TRI- PARTY AGREEMENT) Comment Period: October 2 - November 17, 2000

The U.S. Department of Energy, Washington State Department of Ecology, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will initiate a 45-day public comment period on a revision to Hanford's Tri-Party Agreement milestone for single-shell tank waste retrieval activities, known as milestone M-45-00A. THE PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD BEGINS ON OCTOBER 2, 2000. The negotiated change establishes near term milestones, target dates, and associated Tri-Party Agreement language governing single-shell tank waste retrieval activities prior to September 30, 2006, i.e., work necessary to achieve compliance with federal and state hazardous waste requirements.

CHANGE PACKAGE INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING PROPOSAL

Modification of scope includes but is not limited to completion of two full scale "Limits of Technology" retrieval demonstrations. The first demonstration applies to salt cake waste, the second retrieval focuses on sludge/hard heel, and retrieval of sufficient SST waste containing an estimated 800 curies of radioactive contaminants, by September 2006.

INTENT OF THE CHANGES

The near term strategy for single-shell tank waste retrieval activities has shifted from focusing on maximizing the number of tanks entered for retrieval (regardless of waste volume or content) to a focus on scheduling the retrieval of wastes from those single-shell tanks with a high volume of contaminants of concern. These contaminants are defined as mobile, long-lived radionuclides that have a potential of reaching the groundwater and Columbia River. This strategy also focuses on the performance of key retrieval technology demonstrations in a variety of waste forms and tank farm locations to establish a technical basis for future work. The work scope will also focus on the performance of risk assessment and incorporating vadose zone characterization data on a tank-by-tank basis, and on updating tank farm closure/ post closure work plans.

For more information on this public comment period call the Hanford Cleanup toll-free line at 1-800-321-2008, or contact: (509) 373- State Department of Ecology (509) 736-5705

PROPOSED MODIFICATIONS TO THE DANGEROUS WASTE PORTION OF THE HANFORD FACILITY RCRA PERMIT Comment Period Ended December 6, 1999

A facility-wide Dangerous Waste RCRA Permit (Permit) was issued in August 1994 for the Hanford Site by the Washington State Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Annual modifications to the Permit are made in accordance with the Washington State Dangerous Waste Regulations, WAC 173-303-830.

Proposed modifications to the Hanford Permit for 1999 include:

Issuing unit-specific conditions for operating the Waste Receiving and Processing Unit (WRAP) to process previously packaged ÿdangerous waste and mixed (dangerous and radioactive) wastes. Issuing unit-specific conditions for operating the Central Waste Complex (CWC) to store and treat dangerous, mixed, and radioactive waste. Issuing unit-specific conditions for closing the 616 Non-radioactive Dangerous Waste Storage Facility. Issuing unit-specific conditions for closing the 300 Area Waste Acid Treatment and Storage (WATS) unit. Transferring administrative responsibility for RCRA Corrective Action from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the Washington State Department of Ecology.

The public comment period ended on December 6, 1999. A public hearing was held on November 9, 1999. Several hundred comments were received and Ecology is in the process of preparing a Response to Comment

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NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS

1 Rocketdyne's Cleanup
2 Sick worker bill still has life -
3 Dispute blocks aid for uranium workers
4 DOE clears water suspected of being contaminated for drinking -
5 K-25 water testing hit with criticism
6 1st step taken to tap DOE for aid
7 K-25 waste dump set for cleanup
8 Women in science sought after by DOE
9 Your Views; CONTINUES TO DENOUNCE DOE
10 Supercomputer Sheds More Light on Fusion
11 Senate Kills Thompson Nuclear Proliferation Measure
12 Nuke Scientist Wen Ho Lee Is Free
13 In scathing rebuke of U.S., judge says court was `led astray'
14 JUDGE LAMBASTS U.S. AFTER SCIENTIST SET FREE
15 Key Dates in Lee Case
16 Wen Ho Lee due back in court for snagged plea deal
17 Not much of a case to begin with
18 Principles for security at labs
19 FBI PUSHED TO CONCLUDE HARD-DRIVE PROBE
20 Russia's Highest Court Clears Nikitin of Treason
21 RUSSIAN BASE PAYS UES DEBT
22 The war is over
23 DOE to reveal list of private nuclear work sites Processed
24 Old nuclear dump in Oak Ridge to be moved

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NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES

1 Rocketdyne's Cleanup
Ventura County News
Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, September 13, 2000

*Re "Rocketdyne's Safety Record," Ventura County Letters, Aug. 30.

Letter writer Barbara Johnson defends Beverly Kelley against criticism of her editorial column (Ventura County Perspective, Aug. 6). Yet Johnson's defense fails for the same reason that Kelley's column fails. Both are using a selective mixture of facts that distort the truth regarding the environmental and safety record at Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory.

Johnson questions Rocketdyne's exemplary safety record by leaving the impression that Rocketdyne is in violation of standards that do not apply. The standards that Rocketdyne uses in its cleanup are those imposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency with jurisdiction over the cleanup. The Environmental Protection Agency uses standards that are slightly lower than the NRC's, and these are the standards that Johnson and Kelley claims Rocketdyne is in "violation" of.

It sounds sinister. It sounds like Rocketdyne and that nasty NRC should use those lower standards. Except for the fact that there is no health advantage to the EPA standards, and the difference appears to be due more to governmental bureaucracy than any real scientific data.

In fact, the General Accounting Office, the independent overseer of fiscal responsibility for the government, recently issued a report that blasts the difference in the standards and any implied benefits. In its report, the GAO noted that the differences amounted to little more than 3% of what the average American is exposed to in a given year from normal background sources. It also explained that the difference in cleanup levels was about three hundredths of 1% of what is known to cause cancer.

The GAO questioned if cleaning to these arbitrary lower standards was worth the additional taxpayer cost and recommended that the agencies quit trying to contradict each other and work together for common standards.

THOMAS R. TARN Rocketdyne employee Simi Valley

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2 Sick worker bill still has life -
By Joe Walker
The Paducah Sun
Thursday, September 14, 2000

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, says there is still a ray of hope this year for his proposed legislation to help people sickened by working at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and similar facilities nationwide.

"I'm probably a little bit more optimistic now than I was last night, " Whitfield said Wednesday. "I had discussions with the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader and they've indicated to me they will keep an open mind on the issue."

Whitfield has struggled to keep the medical and financial compensation bill alive after it passed the Senate as part of a big military spending bill. Key committee chairmen in the House have raised objections about the cost, saying Congress is taking on too many proposals for increases in entitlement spending.

Although a House subcommittee has scheduled a Sept. 21 hearing on the issue, that may be too late because the election-shortened congressional session is expected to end Oct. 6.

"It's very late in the session to be doing this," Whitfield said. "One chance we have is through the Defense Authorization Bill. A second chance is toward the end of the session because there will be one or two omnibus bills that include a variety of issues. I think we might have an opportunity there as well, but I don't want to be interpreted as being overly optimistic."

The Senate-passed program would give lifetime medical benefits and a minimum of $200,000 apiece to nuclear weapons plant workers who got sick from exposure to radiation, silica or beryllium. The Clinton administration wants to offer $100,000 for each sick worker.

Although there are concerns that his bill is a new entitlement, Whitfield said, the spending would eventually end, while other unrelated entitlements "go on forever." Other concerns are a lack of precise cost estimates and eligibility language that is too broad, he said.

"They also say it is major legislation without hearings and they feel like that's not the way to go," Whitfield said. "They've asked if we could get back with specifics on how to address some of the issues."

Richard Miller, policy analyst for the international atomic workers' union, blamed Republican House leadership for trying to kill the bill. He said support in the Senate, including heavy backing from Kentucky Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, was bipartisan, but Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, in particular, has staunchly opposed the House version of the legislation.

Smith, who chairs a committee that will hold next week's hearing, has expressed worry that the cost of the package could top $3 billion. Miller pointed out that Smith is from the state of Gov. George Bush, the Republican presidential nominee.

"We have a situation where Bush, when he came through Kentucky earlier, expressed strong support for the package," Miller said. "Now we find that leadership in the House and his own party are killing it. It would be a tragedy, after all the work that went into this, to see it hit the wall."

Miller said it is especially troublesome that the bill is floundering as Dick Cheney, Bush's vice presidential running mate, is expected to visit Paducah.

"If this passes, Paducah would get the lion's share of the legislation, " Miller said.

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3 Dispute blocks aid for uranium workers
Courier-Journal Local News
THURSDAY, SEPT. 14, 2000
By JAMES R. CARROLL The Courier-Journal

PAY FOR ILLNESSES AT PADUCAH PLANT DIVIDES CONGRESS

WASHINGTON--Despite overwhelming Senate support, a proposal to compensate employees of the Paducah uranium plant and other Department of Energy facilities for job-related illnesses is facing extinction.

The House, which has not approved its own compensation bill, is negotiating with the Senate over whether to accept the upper chamber's proposal. But coloring the talks is a dispute in the House over whether the plan is too costly and has been given a proper review.

Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has urged conferees on the defense authorization bill, which includes the compensation program, to take the package out of the final legislation. He insisted that his panel had the right to closely examine the compensation plan. Other key lawmakers on other panels also oppose the plan.

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-1st District, one of the key backers of the compensation measure, met yesterday with House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who told the Kentuckian they would keep an open mind. Armey previously had expressed opposition to the compensation plan.

"I'm cautiously optimistic," Whitfield said after the meeting. "The door has not been closed yet."

Meanwhile, in a private meeting on Tuesday with a bipartisan group of House leaders, President Clinton reportedly reiterated his support for the compensation plan. But his administration has sent confusing signals to Capitol Hill over whether it wants to limit the scope of the compensation measure, a move that could endanger Senate support for whatever program survives the conference committee.

Supporters of the compensation package, both Republicans and Democrats, have been scrambling to save it as Congress works on a tight schedule over the next few weeks before adjourning for the year.

"If the leadership wants it, they can make it happen," said Richard Miller, policy analyst for the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union, which represents many Energy Department workers. "If they choose not to act, it will die."

IN BRIEF, the compensation plan would give workers suffering from illnesses caused by exposure to radiation, beryllium and silica a choice of either a one-time, tax-free payment of $200,000 and health benefits, or an alternative set of benefits, including money for lost wages, that could be worth more than the lump sum.

In the Senate, the plan produced an unusual alliance among lawmakers as politically diverse as Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Before inclusion in the defense authorization bill, the plan also was modified by Senate backers to address concerns by the beryllium and silica industries over exposure to lawsuits. Under the bill, workers who accept compensation are barred from suing companies.

The package was approved in July as part of the defense authorization bill, passing the Senate on a 97-3 vote.

In contrast to support for compensation to Energy Department workers in the Senate, the House has been slower to show interest.

In May, the House approved a resolution stating its intent to deal this year with the compensation issue. But no hearings had been held on the subject before that vote or since then.

The first House subcommittee hearing on compensating workers had been scheduled for today, but was rescheduled for next week because of last-minute conflicts with a funeral for the late Rep. Herbert Bateman, R-Va., and a joint session of Congress.

THE PANEL holding next Thursday's hearing is the House Judiciary Committee's immigration and claims subcommittee. Its chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, as well as Hyde, have expressed concern that the House hasn't closely examined the compensation plan.

Citing a Congressional Budget Office estimate that the program would cost $3.8 billion, Hyde said in an Aug. 31 letter to conferees on the defense authorization bill that the House needed to "thoroughly examine the issue."

He questioned the relevance of the compensation plan in the context of the defense bill, and said "the majority" of the plan's elements came under the jurisdiction of his committee.

"Our committee understands the importance of responding to this situation as quickly as possible," Hyde wrote, but added that he wanted "legislation that is structured responsibly and truly responsive to the needs of those affected."

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of one of the House National Security Committee's subcommittees, also has opposed inclusion of the compensation measure in the defense authorization bill. According to Capitol Hill sources familiar with discussions on the issue, many members of Hunter's committee are concerned that the compensation program would take money from vital defense projects, a concern that supporters of the plan say is unfounded.

The last-minute opposition in the House has angered the union that represents many of the affected workers.

THE HOUSE members "have sat on their hands and now are using it for an excuse for inaction," said Miller, of the energy workers' union. "It's irresponsible governance. They do not have a legitimate claim at this late date to say there have been no hearings when they've turned down every opportunity to hold hearings. Bills (on worker compensation) have been referred to the judiciary committee since last November."

Failure to pass the compensation plan now would "deny justice to these people the government has harmed," Miller said.

Conferees were sent a letter in late July by 104 House Republicans and Democrats urging that the compensation package be kept intact in the authorization bill.

"While we cannot give (workers) a Purple Heart for their wounds," the lawmakers wrote, "the nation owes these dedicated men and women a debt of thanks for their efforts and sacrifices in helping to win the Cold War. Establishing this compensation program is the least we can do."

Clouding the controversy is the possibility that there might not be any defense authorization bill this year. An authorization measure essentially is a blueprint for spending, but does not actually include money. That is in the appropriation bills. Authorization bills are supposed to be--but are not required to be--passed before the appropriation bills are approved.

BUT THE defense appropriation bill moved more quickly through the system and already has been passed for this year, making the need for an authorization measure questionable in some lawmakers' minds.

The authorization panel for defense, the House National Security Committee, can be expected to fight any effort at dropping the authorization bill for fear of making its work appear irrelevant.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House's Office of Management and Budget has been further stirring the waters, according to some lawmakers.

The office has been considering support for lump sum payments or benefits to workers, but not both, according to Reps. Paul Kanjorski and Ron Klink, two Pennsylvania Democrats who were instrumental in creating the compensation plan.

Many workers, the Pennsylvanians argued in a letter to Clinton on Monday, "are in desperate need of both a lump-sum payment and health benefits."

The administration also is questioning the need for a judicial review of claims by workers denied by the Department of Labor.

"The right of appeal is a basic check and balance on our system of government and must not be denied to these deserving Americans," Kanjorski and Klink said.

ACCORDING to sources, administration officials also have talked about excluding silica industry victims and workers at some nuclear test sites. To do that would cross several key senators, including Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who pushed for inclusion of those workers.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson met last week with Office of Management and Budget officials about the compensation plan.

"We hope to have details worked out in the near future," said an Energy Department official who asked not to be identified, adding that the secretary "is committed to getting strong compensation for nuclear workers before Congress leaves this October."

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4 DOE clears water suspected of being contaminated for drinking
The Tennessean
Thursday, 9/14/00
Associated Press

OAK RIDGE No problems have been found with drinking water suspected of causing illnesses among workers at a former uranium enrichment plant, the Department of Energy said yesterday.

The DOE sent a note to employees at the former K-25 site, now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park, saying a full report on a battery of water quality tests should be ready next week.

In the interim, the agency said, "The results have found the ETTP drinking water is safe to drink."

Some worker activists, however, remained suspicious.

"There has been some cover-up going on with this," said Sherry Farver, secretary of the Coalition for a Healthy Environment.

DOE-Oak Ridge Manager Leah Dever ordered water sampling in August after a team of government-paid doctors concluded in a study of 53 sick workers that some of their illnesses were linked to contaminants at K-25.

Coincidentally, former K-25 workers raised new allegations that some drinking water piping at the site was cross-connected with fire water systems and processed water supplies.

One of the study's doctors suggested that could have contributed to a baffling list of worker ailments, from tremors to asthma.

So some 600 water samples were taken by DOE contractors and the Environmental Protection Agency under the watch of union representatives and a citizens oversight committee.

DOE-Oak Ridge spokesman Steven Wyatt said the samples, tested at outside labs, show no contamination. Results from the EPA sampling are pending.

Farver said DOE is failing to report that five samples showed coliform in the water and one cooler filled with samples was lost.

"Stuff like that always happens when you get into this," Farver said. "Something will get broken, or it will get lost, or results will get lost."

Officials said the coliform reading suggested the sample itself was contaminated and had to be redone. A commercial carrier was blamed for losing the cooler.

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5 K-25 water testing hit with criticism
Oak Ridger Online
Thursday, September 14, 2000
Oak Ridger staff

SOME SAMPLES LOST IN TRANSIT

Tests of the water quality at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site are still being considered a "snapshot in time," and some concerned former workers are doubting the credibility of the results.

The Department of Energy announced Wednesday to the people who work at K-25, also known as the East Tennessee Technology Park, that the water at the former gaseous diffusion plant is safe to drink.

Tests on the water were conducted after employees voiced concerns that cross-connecting lines for sanitary, fire and cooling waters and steam and storm drains are a possible way employees could be exposed to hazardous materials at the site.

Mike Russell, who worked at K-25 before going on medical leave earlier this year, was one of those employees who voiced concern about the cross-connecting lines during a DOE public meeting on July 31. He was originally involved in the meetings to form a plan to test the water quality at the site, but stopped participating because he didn't agree with the plan being developed.

And, despite whether the tested water is safe or not, Russell said Wednesday afternoon the tests don't address the problems he brought to DOE's attention.

"It does not account for the fact that the lines were interconnected, " Russell said. "It could have been and most likely Š (was) cross- contaminated."

Both Russell and Sherrie Farver, a former officer worker at the K- 25 site, say they heard a K-25 "key manager" say that some of the trailers at the site had been connected to firefighting-water lines for their source of drinking water, and that employees did in fact drink the water meant for firefighting. The statement was apparently made at an Aug. 14 meeting they attended at the Federal Building.

"I'm still very concerned about the interconnecting lines," added Farver, who says she suffers from numbness in her extremities, shortness of breath, muscle and joint pain and chronic fatigue because of work- related exposures.

Farver said the recent tests only provide a "snapshot in time" of K-25's water quality.

"I have no faith in a sampling protocol developed and implemented in-house," Farver said.

The Oak Ridger placed calls to several other current and former K- 25 workers in an attempt to obtain comments, but messages had not been returned as of 11 this morning.

DOE's water sampling at the K-25 Site consisted of samples being taken by OMI, the contractor for the water plant and distribution system at K-25.

Representatives from the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union and the Environmental Protection Agency were among those witnessing the sampling process.

Once the samples were taken, OMI and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation officials sealed the vials with specially marked tape for shipment to a state-certified laboratory for analysis. An Environmental Science Corp. official took possession of samples to be tested for volatile organic compounds, synthetic organic compounds including polychlorinated biphenyls, and inorganic compounds.

In addition, representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency conducted their own sampling of the water at half of the 25 selected areas at the K-25 site.

Susan Kaplan, a member of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee's Citizen Advisory Panel, was one of those officials who witnessed the water testing. She said she was surprised DOE announced the results Wednesday considering the complete details on the water test won't be available until early next week.

"However, based on the results I have seen, the water quality looks good so far," Kaplan said. "Keep in mind that these data provide a snapshot of quality today and do not reflect quality in the past."

Kaplan added she and Norman Mulvenon, chairman of the LOC's Citizen Advisory Panel, have insisted on getting the data directly from the laboratory.

The Oak Ridger contacted DOE this morning regarding some of the allegations being made about the water testing.

Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for the federal agency, said he could not comment on the statement made by the K-25 manager regarding firefighting- water lines being connected to trailers because he didn't attend the Aug. 14 meeting.

Another allegation that has surfaced regarding the water testing is that some of the samples were lost. Wyatt said that was correct.

"Back in mid-August, a small set of samples were lost in transit between Environmental Science Corp. and a subcontractor hired by ESC to perform analysis of synthetic organic compounds in the samples, " Wyatt said.

"ESC transported the set of samples from ETTP to their lab in Middle Tennessee. Subsequently, ESC shipped a portion of the samples to an ESC subcontractor lab. Both ESC and the subcontractor lab are state-certified laboratories. The set of samples sent to the subcontractor were then lost in shipping. UPS was the shipper.

"Attempts were made to locate the shipment. However, within a few days, the samples could not be used to determine the presence of synthetic organic compounds. The missing samples eventually turned up, but by then were out of date and could not be used. For this reason, the samples were retaken at ETTP, all under the direct observation of the state of Tennessee, the LOC and the union. The samples have been analyzed and results will be included in the report to be issued next week."

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6 1st step taken to tap DOE for aid
Oak Ridger Online
Thursday, September 14, 2000
Oak Ridger staff

The newly created Committee for Enhancement of DOE-related Remuneration took its first step Tuesday toward hiring a professional law or legislative firm to help the city of Oak Ridge obtain more money from the federal government.

According to Committee Chai-rman Leonard Abbatiello, the committee unanimously adopted a document he and committee member Pat Rush drafted that is intended to appeal to legal and legislative firms to submit proposals to the city.

"We presented a draft that contains the direction the committee's going to go. We passed that off to city staff who are going to flesh out the wording, and we expect to have that back within one month, " Abbatiello said in a phone interview Wednesday morning.

Oak Ridge City Council at a meeting in August formed the committee to pursue a way of getting more federal and/or state funding for the city.

Council agreed to pay up to $25,000 for the services of a firm to pursue more money.

The large tracts of land owned by DOE are exempt from paying local property taxes, and city officials say DOE's presence hinders the city's ability to attract new industry, thus harming the city's economy.

The document states that current "DOE in-lieu-of tax payments comprise less that 1.7 percent of the $ 56.3 million cost of operating the city and its school system, while the federal facilities use 35,000 acres that have been removed from normal residential, commercial and industrial development along with their tax-based support of all municipal needs."

The firm's task will be to review all current federal and state laws, codes or other applicable legislative documents to determine if there is an existing basis for increased funding, and/or the transfer of appropriate federal assets to the city. Following the analysis, the firm will recommend how an action plan should be implemented. This analysis also will include an evaluation of potential fees for storage of mixed and low-level radioactive waste.

Committee member David Bradshaw said, "I don't see this ever ending up in a courtroom. My approach is to find a firm that will help us use existing public policy and procedures, congressional direction and U.S. law to the fullest extent possible to assist the city.

"And that may include making modifications to existing laws and policies."

Bradshaw went on to say the goal is to find a firm of national standing, preferably with strong ties in Washington, D.C.

"This is a lobbying effort--or a literature review effort--rather than a litigation effort," he said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Bradshaw noted that the Los Alamos, N.M., school system receives a direct appropriation of $6 million annually, and another $8 million goes to the New Mexico Enrichment Fund. A piece of federal legislation allows such appropriations, Bradshaw said.

"We need to access that ourselves, and I have a firm in mind that I think would do that," Bradshaw said.

Rush described the meeting as a low-key, good, slow-moving start, but "it opened communication to avoid miscommunication.

"On the first read-through of the document, it sounded pretty good, but I think everyone felt they wanted to study it more. And (those present) felt city staff members could put it into better language, " she said in a phone interview Tuesday after the meeting.

"We will be looking for a law firm. And we will be looking at ways to stimulate law firms who specialize (in matters of federal government) to respond.

"It is very definitely not personal (toward DOE)," Rush said.

David Myers of DOE attended the meeting, but The Oak Ridger was unable to reach him for comment Wednesday morning.

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7 K-25 waste dump set for cleanup
Oak Ridger Online
Thursday, September 14, 2000

A major waste burial ground is the target of a planned cleanup project at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site.

Bechtel Jacobs Co. LLC recently awarded the IT Corp. an $11.1 million subcontract to clean up the 1070-A Burial Ground, a press release from Bechtel Jacobs Co. stated.

The burial ground covers one acre and contains 62 pits and 26 trenches that were used to dispose of a variety of waste containing low levels of radioactivity--mostly uranium--and toxic chemicals from the 1950s until 1976.

Most of the waste came from the uranium enrichment process that was then in operation, though there are also contaminated construction debris, laboratory waste and other miscellaneous waste, the release states.

Almost 20,000 cubic yards of waste and contaminated soil--enough to cover a football field to a height of almost 11 feet--will require disposal.

The IT Corp. will be responsible for the planning and engineering design in addition to the excavation, characterization of the waste, disposal and finally revegetation of the burial ground site. The burial ground cleanup should be completed by summer of 2002.

Most of the waste is expected to be disposed of at a new, permitted disposal facility being developed on the Oak Ridge Reservation in East Bear Creek Valley, though some may require offsite disposal.

IT operates out of a 400-person office in Knoxville, with corporate headquarters in Monroeville, Pa.

Bechtel Jacobs Co. is the Department of Energy's management and integration contractor for environmental management work in Oak Ridge, and at DOE sites in Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio.

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8 Women in science sought after by DOE
Oak Ridger Online
Thursday, September 14, 2000

Steps are being taken within the Department of Energy to attract, retain and develop highly qualified female candidates for science and technology positions.

"America's unprecedented prosperity is fueled by science, engineering and technology enterprises but only nine percent of current jobs requiring engineering skills and 10 percent of jobs requiring physics background are filled with women," said Energy Secretary Bill Richardson in a press release.

"The Department of Energy, as a leading scientific and technical employer, has an opportunity and an obligation to do better and help build the workforce our future demands."

Of the 120,000 contractor and federal workers DOE employs throughout the country, its workforce in technical areas includes 15 percent women and 17 percent minorities. Richardson's education, recruitment and promotion initiatives will be implemented at DOE's headquarters and throughout its laboratories and field offices. Those include:

*Collaborating with the National Science Foundation to use the Energy Department's national lab facilities for hands-on science education and working to modify the teaching culture to bring real applications of science to life.

*Partnering with the Office of Personnel Management and the Congress to obtain the authority needed to cut bureaucracy and better compete for highly qualified technical personnel at DOE.

* Undertaking aggressive outreach and recruitment while filling key technical positions, including 50 DOE research and development managers.

* Establishing formal training of scientists and managers to serve as volunteer mentors.

* Creating a report card system for lab directors, contractors and departmental managers to monitor progress made in eliminating barriers to equal opportunity across the entire DOE complex.

Since becoming secretary of energy in August 1998, Richardson has named six female career field managers and appointed the first woman director of a major multi-program national laboratory in the history of DOE, Lura Powell, director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

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9 Your Views; CONTINUES TO DENOUNCE DOE
Oak Ridger Online
Thursday, September 14, 2000

To The Oak Ridger:

Things are happening with the investigations of gas diffusion plants and illnesses connected with them. This is nothing new, as ORNL did investigations on K-25 in the mid-'80s, by collecting samples of cow's milk, produce, and well water in communities around K-25.

The K-25 plant upgrades of the early '80s changed the process to positive pressure operation. The '80s test results shut down the plant due to high amounts of HF emissions and fluorides pollution endangering the health of the region.

Oak Ridge managers did not publicly report those extreme liabilities, as they might have closed the other plants due to the costs or Congress's reactions.

Investigations are being performed around the Paducah gas diffusion plant communities and ills like calcinosis, immune problems, high levels of toxic metals retention, and other ills [many of which are fluoride toxic symptoms] are being reported. A DOE report on K-25 similar to one on the Paducah plant is due Sept. 27 that should reveal the high levels of HF losses from ORGDP.

The Scarboro community study picked up things like bone breaks and asthma that are links to fluorides toxic effects, but these ills are not confined to just Scarboro, as the HF emissions have a large footprint.

The recent Y-12 million-dollar fine is evidence of the poor work on the salt shop HF system and shows just how serious HF system release risks are taken now.

The old Y-12 HF system leaked severely and those risks could overcome and kill a large part of the Y-12 work force. Due to that danger, all the HF has been removed from Y-12 for a few years because of the Y-12 historically poor management that won Y-12 a large part of its million-dollar fine, the largest on record for any DOE contractor.

Paducah has ordered many replacement valves for UF-6 cylinders and K-25 has been replacing the old leaky valves. K-25 managers told half-truths in saying holes in UF-6 cylinders were sealed.

These holes, which grow in size, do cake up with uranium compounds that keep the uranium contained, but these holes are porous and admit moist air and expel tons of HF into the air from each cylinder.

K-25's dismantlement also releases a lot of HF into the air from trapped UF-6 deposits in instrument lines, plugged barriers, flanges, valves, and millions of square feet of surface wetting.

In the mid-'80s, ORNL folks were called into K-25 looking for Dr. Anderson's Sr-90 problems in the drinking water and at the same time they were looking for what was causing high rates of thyroid disorders in area plant workers and the region.

The answer to the latter was discovered with the very high losses of HF from the plants operation. Today, the region's endocrinologists notice that folks that have lived in this area for more than 10 years have abnormal thyroid glands.

The Oak Ridge region is a thyroid disease hot spot, and coincidentally thyroid and parathyroid damages are HF and fluorides symptoms.

In Oak Ridge, DOE economic conversion appears to be keeping the big secret on the HF losses that damaged the region's health, which keeps the DOE liabilities in check and makes for profits for the hospitals and doctors of Oak Ridge.

ORNL managers counted on these economic incentives to drive keeping that secret. Oak Ridge is financing its economic conversion on the backs of many sick workers and residents.

Al Brooks recently ran down to Nashville trying to plug up the leaks with a brochure because the Tennessean newspaper keeps exposing Oak Ridge ills.

Susan Kaplan is writing partial admissions that DOE caused health problems and trying to slow down the rate of admission of community health effects and HF dominance. She even has a damaged thyroid.

Yet, both are complaining of finger pointing at the managers and Ph.D.s that failed to protect the area's health. While at the same time this new brochure appears admitting fluorine releases from K- 25, but not admitting the high amounts. In an absolute insult to sick folks, this brochure tries to paint all the community and worker ills as a myth.

Oak Ridge still tarnishes its Shangri-La image and remains a very unhealthy place for a number of reasons, typical ones being: failure to report and cover-up of HF health effects, the area looking like agent orange hit the pine trees, plant management incompetence and retaliations against whistleblowers, lack of professional ethics in DOE managers and contractors, self-appointed public experts that won't address the obvious and distract the public's interest, half- truths and redacted classified information sold to the sick workers and communities, profiteering and liability dodging based economic redevelopment loaded onto the backs of sick folks, poorly advised worker health groups, and many basically criminal acts hiding behind the excuse of national security.

I hope someday DOE places all the truths on the table and correctly informs the public of the disaster here. Till the time that DOE comes clean, the cleansing will continue.

Jim Phelps 1600 Buttercup Circle Knoxville 37921

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10 Supercomputer Sheds More Light on Fusion
September 13, 2000

OAK RIDGE, TN, - Some of the secrets to achieving fusion energy may be unlocked by calculations developed by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and run on the lab's supercomputer. Nuclear fusion has been called "the Holy Grail of the energy field" because of the virtually inexhaustible supply of fuel, the promise of minimal adverse environmental impact, and its inherent safety.

Nuclear fusion occurs inside stars, and is the main way in which stars convert matter energy into light. Much work is currently going on to try to make nuclear fusion happen on Earth in a controlled way. Scientists believe that a great deal of energy will be released in this way with very little pollution. In this way, it is seen as a great alternative to energy generated by fossil fuels.

ORNL says the work of its scientists, Fred Jaeger and Lee Berry of ORNL's Fusion Energy Division, is significant because it enables scientists to better understand radio waves in the plasma that would be at the heart of a fusion power plant.

"Our research is allowing us to study the high-power radio waves we use in fusion research experiments," Jaeger said. "This newly gained knowledge should help us get a clearer picture of the physics of the heating system and control for a fusion machine."

One of the techniques used to transform the fuel into the plasma state needed for fusion is to use intense electromagnetic waves, much as a microwave oven heats food. But because instruments cannot be placed inside plasma, which is more than 500 million degrees Fahrenheit, experimental measurements on the waves used for heating must be indirect.

"It's essential to have a good theoretical understanding of the wave behavior and to be able to calculate it accurately," Jaeger said. "But computing these waves is difficult because the particles are so hot they move at almost the speed of light. This motion makes it difficult to calculate how the plasma particles will respond to the wave and how much electric current they will produce."

Until now, researchers wanting to calculate the effects of radio waves in plasma have been forced to either ignore the variation of the plasma in all but one direction or consider just waves having long wavelengths and low frequencies. However, with the technique developed at ORNL, they can compute plasma waves across an entire plasma cross- section. It does not require any restriction on wavelength or frequency.

"With this approach, the limit on attainable resolution comes not from the theory, but from the size and speed of the available computer required to solve the enormous sets of equations," Jaeger said.

Working with Ed D'Azevedo of ORNL's Computer Science and Mathematics Division, Jaeger and Berry have developed a computer program to solve the equations that take advantage of the massively parallel structure of modern supercomputers.

They obtained the first high-definition picture in two dimensions of a donut-shaped fusion device called a tokamak for a process called "mode conversion." In this process, researchers inject radio waves from outside the device. At a certain location, the waves suddenly change character to a different type of wave having very fine scale structure and are absorbed by the plasma.

The solutions were obtained running on ORNL's 1 trillion operation- per-second (teraflop) IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer, which with Berry and Jaeger's program achieved speeds of 650 billion operations per second.

"These calculations are considered to be a breakthrough for wave studies in fusion machines," said Don Batchelor, section head of the theory group in the Fusion Energy Division.

The new computer program provides high-resolution pictures that clearly detail the formation of the short wavelength structures and how the various waves propagate, reflect and are absorbed in the plasma. Researchers expect the new technique to be useful to much more complex plasma shapes than the tokamak type used in this experiment.

In the quest for fusion, scientists have attained a number of important milestones. They have achieved temperatures as high as 520 million degrees, more than 20 times the temperature at the center of the sun. And more than 16 million watts of fusion power have been produced in the laboratory. Their next tasks are to demonstrate sustained reactions that produce substantial amounts of energy and to build and demonstrate a fusion power plant. The ORNL work will contribute to the application of waves for sustaining and controlling fusion plasmas.

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11 Senate Kills Thompson Nuclear Proliferation Measure
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 2:14 AM SGT
By Mark H. Anderson
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Senate Wednesday, voting 65 to 32, easily defeated an effort to tie Chinese nuclear proliferation issues to legislation normalizing U.S. trade with China, removing the only major hurdle to final passage of the trade bill.

The effort was led by Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn. His amendment has hovered in the background as a possible threat to the China trade bill for months as Senate leaders labored over how to pass the legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said final passage of the trade bill could come by the end of this week or early next week. As long as the bill isn't altered by another amendment - an unlikely development - the trade bill will then go President Bill Clinton for his expected signature.

The Thompson amendment was handily defeated and didn't live up to its perceived threat. Almost all Senate Democrats opposed the amendment while more than half of the Senate Republicans also voted against it.

"Its logic is flawed; it would hurt America more than it would China, " said Senate Banking Chairman Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who also sits on the Senate Finance Committee.

Despite all the maneuvering over Thompson's initiative, the Tennessee senator admitted that passage of his amendment faced long odds because of opposition from the business sector, the White House and key Republicans. "That's a powerful combination," Thomson said.

The Thompson amendment, cosponsored by Sen. Bob Torricelli, D-N.J., sought to boost U.S. monitoring of nuclear materials and equipment sales by China, Russia and North Korea. The bill called for sanctions against Chinese companies determined to be involved in weapon sales that pose a security threat against the U.S.

One of those sanctions would have given the U.S. the power to block such companies from raising funds in U.S. capital markets on the New York Stock Exchange and through other avenues. The bill would have also required the government to inform investors about Chinese companies that are involved in the weapons business and require the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate disclosure of these activities by companies operating in U.S. markets.

This provision has drawn extra fire from those who oppose linking nuclear proliferation to the trade issue.

"This is a particularly troubling aspect of this amendment because our capital markets have played such an enormously important role in fueling America's record-breaking economic expansion," Senate Finance Chairman William Roth, R-Del., said in Senate debate, citing Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan as opposed to the Thompson amendment in part because of this provision.

The trade bill would grant China permanent normal trade relations with the U.S. and is linked to China's bid to join the World Trade Organization. The House approved the legislation earlier this year on a 237 to 197 vote.

Senate proponents are opposing all efforts to alter the House-passed bill. Any changes would send the bill back to the House for another vote, and lawmakers and business interests are concerned the approaching elections would make it more difficult to pass the controversial issue again.

Dow Jones news delayed 20 minutes. Copyright 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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12 Nuke Scientist Wen Ho Lee Is Free
Las Vegas Sun
September 13, 2000
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)--Nine months after he was branded a threat to national security and put in solitary confinement, Wen Ho Lee was set free Wednesday with an apology from a judge who said the government's actions "embarrassed our entire nation."

Supporters cheered as a smiling Lee left the courthouse alongside his family and attorneys. He thanked his supporters and said, "I'm very happy to go home with my wife and children today."

With a chuckle, he added: "The next few days, I'm going fishing."

Lee, 60, pleaded guilty to a single count of mishandling nuclear secrets as the government all but abandoned its crumbling case against the former Los Alamos scientist.

Under the terms of the plea bargain, he was sentenced to 278 days -- essentially the time served since his arrest last December.

Lee had been charged with 59 counts of breaching national security and faced life in prison if convicted. Fifty-eight of those counts were dropped.

"I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner in which you were held in custody by the executive branch," U.S. District Judge James Parker said.

Parker said the Departments of Justice and Energy "have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."

Lee, a Taiwanese-born naturalized U.S. citizen, read a statement in court in which he admitted using an unsecure computer to download a national-defense document onto a tape. He said he knew his possession of the tape outside of the top-secret area where he worked was unauthorized.

Lee agreed to cooperate with the government and tell them everything he knows about seven missing tapes.

The government said that the fate of the tapes was paramount and that Lee's willingness to explain what happened to them was the turning point in 2-month-old plea discussions. Lee has said the tapes were destroyed.

Federal prosecutor George Stamboulidis said Lee did not deserve a government apology. He called the downloaded information "a personal library" of nuclear defense secrets.

"Which Americans among us would want us to turn our backs on that?" he asked.

The judge said he was only sorry the plea agreement prevented disclosure of information that would have shed light on the reasons for Lee's detention. Lee's supporters have said he was unfairly singled out as a Chinese-American.

The judge, who was appointed by President Reagan, said he did not blame the prosecutors: "It is only the top decision-makers in the executive branch of the government, in particular the Department of Justice and the Department of Energy."

The White House declined to comment on the judge's criticism. "It is time to close this chapter, find out what happened to the missing tapes and move on," spokesman Jake Siewert said.

Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin said in Washington: "We respectfully disagree with the judge. We have an obligation to the American public to protect the national security. Before we had the assurance from Dr. Lee that he would tell us what he knows, we could not afford to do anything but detain him."

Prosecutors also said that there are powerful incentives for Lee to cooperate.

"If at any time we believe he is not being truthful, we can seek to void the agreement and prosecute the case to the full extent of the law," Attorney General Janet Reno said.

Defense attorney Mark Holscher said he was confident Lee's cooperation would satisfy the government and lay those issues to rest.

The investigation began as an offshoot of a Chinese espionage case, with government attorneys making dire accusations that Lee had stolen the "crown jewels" of U.S. nuclear weaponry science with the intent of handing them over to a foreign power. At the time, the government claimed the information could alter the global balance of power.

The case began disintegrating last month at a renewed bail hearing, with one embarrassing turn after another for the government.

Defense experts disputed the claim that the data contained vital defense secrets. The government was forced to acknowledge that the material was classified "restricted" rather than secret. And a defense expert testified that "99 percent" of the material was already available to the public.

Also, an FBI agent whose word was key in denying Lee bail acknowledged giving incorrect testimony that made the scientist appear deceptive.

The two sides worked out a plea bargain last week, but Lee's release was delayed twice while attorneys wrangled over details.

The settlement does not affect a civil lawsuit filed by Lee and his wife, Sylvia, alleging his privacy was violated by the government, attorney Brian Sun said. The suit is on hold in Washington, D.C., federal court, awaiting a decision by the Lees whether to proceed.

On Wednesday, Lee beamed as he entered the courtroom and gave his son, Chung, the OK sign. Lee's wife, Sylvia, also smiled as she arrived.

Cecelia Chang, an organizer of the Wen Ho Lee Defense Fund, sobbed with joy as she left the courtroom.

The judge "just basically told us that the executive branch is to blame. He had the courage to say that and to apologize to Dr. Lee. That is the apology we have waited for from the government," Chang said. "I would love to see the country follow his example."

A group of Lee's Los Alamos neighbors came to court in "Free Wen Ho Lee Now" T-shirts. The backs of the shirts read: "Los Alamos Scientist -- Is He Guilty Before Proven Innocent?"

"We are elated that Dr. Lee is having his name cleared of the false allegations that he ever intended to injure the country for which he spent 20 years designing codes to protect," defense attorney Mark Holscher said. "We fully intend to cooperate completely with the government and provide them whatever information they need."

Stamboulidis, the prosecutor, said that if Lee had been tried on the one count to which he pleaded, he could have spent eight years in prison without disclosing the handling of the tapes.

Some law professors have called for an investigation of the government's conduct.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he will resume a Senate subcommittee investigation that he began and then suspended.

"All I can say is I've thought from the beginning that that was a botched investigation," said Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

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13 In scathing rebuke of U.S., judge says court was `led astray'
Mercury Center
Thursday, September 14, 2000,
San Jose Mercury News

Extraordinary apology to Lee

PLEA DEAL: Nuclear scientist pleads guilty to single count of mishandling classified information. By Dan Stober Mercury News

ALBUQUERQUE--Saying the Clinton administration's actions had ``embarrassed our entire nation,'' a federal judge Wednesday accepted a plea bargain for Wen Ho Lee and then sent the subject of the most sensational espionage case in years home with an extraordinary apology for the nine months he had spent in jail.

``I believe you were terribly wronged by being held in custody pretrial in the Santa Fe County Detention Center under demeaning, unnecessarily punitive conditions,'' U.S. District Court Judge James Parker told the 60-year-old Lee as he stood before the bench for sentencing. ``I am truly sorry that I was led by our executive branch of government to order your detention last December.''

Concluding his remarks, Parker said, ``I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner you were held in custody by the executive branch.''

With that, Lee then walked out of the courtroom and headed home to White Rock, a suburb of Los Alamos where he has lived for more than 20 years. In the bright sunlight of the courthouse steps, the quiet, gray-haired software engineer told a throng of journalists that he was looking forward to being with his wife and two grown children at home.

``The next few days, I'm going fishing,'' he said with a smile.

When he returned home hours after his release, a crowd of about 200 greeted him as news helicopters hovered overhead. The crowd cheered and clapped and broke into rounds of ``For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.''

Under the terms of Lee's 11-page plea agreement, the government accepts Lee's contention that, as he has always said, he passed no nuclear secrets to anyone and had no intent to harm his country.

In essence, the government has conceded that Lee is not a spy. Lee pleaded guilty to one felony count of mishandling classified information, pledged to cooperate with the FBI, was sentenced to the 278 days he had already served and was assessed $100 in court fees.

He also must answer questions under oath for 10 days during a three- week period beginning Sept. 26 and identify and provide access to any safe-deposit boxes, computers and computer accounts he may have. In addition, he may be given a polygraph test.

For the next year, he must answer additional questions from the government. If he lies, he can be prosecuted for perjury or obstruction of justice, as well as the original charges.

Outside the federal courthouse, Assistant U.S. Attorney George Stamboulidis claimed victory, because Lee would finally explain what he did with the seven missing computer tapes containing the nuclear weapon design codes that Lee downloaded from a Los Alamos National Laboratory computer.

In a secret, sworn declaration handed to Stamboulidis during Wednesday's hearing, Lee swore that the tapes had been destroyed, and that no information from them had been passed to anyone.

But the drama of the day belonged to Parker, and it had its effect on all those in the courtroom.

``I've never seen anything like it,'' said John Cline, one of Lee's attorneys. ``It was like a movie. I was shaking when I walked out.''

In a lengthy, emotional soliloquy, the judge expressed sadness that the government had so ``vigorously'' pursued its efforts to deny Lee bail. Parker said he had been misled, that the government's claims didn't always make sense or that they were wrong. He hinted that government evidence he had seen, but had not yet been given to the defense, supported Lee's innocence.

He questioned the motives of U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson in the way they pursued the case. He implied there were political motives.

``It is only the top decision-makers in the executive branch, especially the Department of Justice and the Department of Energy and locally, during December, who have caused embarrassment by the way this case began and was handled. They did not embarrass me alone. They have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it.''

The Justice Department disputed Parker's criticisms of Lee's incarceration.

``We have an obligation to the American public to protect the national security,'' said spokesman Myron Marlin. ``Before we had the assurance from Dr. Lee that he would tell us what he knows, we could not afford to do anything but detain him.''

Added Stamboulidis, ``The purpose was to limit his communication.''

The effect of Parker's comments were the more striking because of the courteous, patient way in which the Reagan appointee conducts his courtroom. He fashioned his talk in the form of a civics lesson, explaining the structures and functions of the three branches of government. He noted that as a naturalized citizen who had had to study the Constitution, Lee probably already understood what he was about to explain.

``The executive branch has enormous power, the abuse of which can be devastating to our citizens,'' he said at one point.

As Parker described himself as saddened by the case, there were tears around the courtroom. Some of Lee's supporters later said it was as if Parker were speaking their words. Even engineers--not known for displays of emotion--were crying.

``I was totally overcome,'' said Bill Sullivan, an engineer at Sandia National Laboratory, which, like Los Alamos, is involved in nuclear weapons design. ``It was like the Lone Ranger riding into town. I couldn't stop crying.''

During the judge's talk, Lee stood between his much taller lawyers. He wore the same gray suit he had worn for his other court appearances. Earlier, in halting English, the Taiwan-born naturalized U.S. citizen had simply said ``yes'' over and over as Parker asked if he understood the details of his plea bargain.

Lee first came before Parker on Dec. 27, after Lee had been indicted by a federal grand jury on 59 counts of improperly transferring weapons- design codes to an unclassified computer network and onto data backup tapes. Lee had been publicly identified in March as the lead suspect in the possible loss of nuclear weapons secrets to China. The espionage investigation had not established that Lee was a spy, but had led indirectly to the discovery of his unauthorized downloading.

His case had become a media event and an issue in partisan battles between congressional Republicans and Clinton administration officials over allegations that China had obtained data about the United States' most advanced nuclear warhead.

At the December bail hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Gorence and FBI agent Robert Messemer argued strenuously that Lee should not be granted bail. Any communication from Lee to the outside would could be a code for a foreign agent to pick up the missing tapes, they argued.

When Parker went to great lengths to attempt to fashion a stringent house-arrest scenario for Lee, John Kelly, then the U.S. attorney, ``vigorously insisted'' that Lee remain in jail ``under extreme conditions, '' Parker said Wednesday. Not long after, Kelly resigned to run for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Kelly's argument ``was so extreme it convinced me that releasing you, even under the most stringent of conditions, would be a danger to the safety of this nation,'' Parker told Lee.

In recent months, as the defense began receiving documents from the FBI, it became apparent that Messemer had not testified accurately during the bail hearings about Lee's activities. In court Wednesday, Parker said, ``Dr. Lee, I tell you with great sadness that I feel I was led astray last December'' by the Justice Department, the FBI and Kelly.

Lee was held under tight security rules, known as special administrative measures. Federal law requires that those measures be approved by the attorney general. Although Lee's conditions improved as time went on, in the beginning he was kept in his cell 23 hours a day, and allowed out to exercise while in chains. He was allowed visits only from his family, and then only with an FBI agent present.

During the past nine months, Parker has complained on several occasions that his requests for more lenient conditions were not enacted.

When Parker ruled last month that Lee should be freed on bail, the government continued to argue that Lee's release ``presented an unacceptable extreme danger,'' Parker noted.

``I find it most perplexing,'' he told Lee, that the ``executive branch today has suddenly agreed to your release without any significant conditions or restrictions whatsoever on your activities.''

He noted that the plea agreement came shortly before the government was to turn over a large amount of information that might cast his relationships with Chinese scientists in a more innocuous light - - as well as documents that might demonstrate whether Lee was singled out for investigation because he is Chinese-American.

``What I believe remains unanswered is the question: What was the government's motive in insisting on your being jailed pretrial under extraordinarily onerous conditions of confinement until today, when the executive branch agrees that you may be set free essentially unrestricted? This makes no sense to me.''

Parker did not answer his own questions, but he was clearly implying that politics wereinvolved, as Lee's supporters have been saying all along. The judge said repeatedly that the ``executive branch'' is headed by the president and vice president.

The White House declined to comment on the judge's criticism. ``It is time to close this chapter, find out what happened to the missing tapes and move on,'' White House press officer Jake Siewert said.

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14 JUDGE LAMBASTS U.S. AFTER SCIENTIST SET FREE
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2000
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Wen Ho Lee went home Wednesday but his freedom came at a cost.

The former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist - whose nine- month journey through the judicial system stirred a debate of national security concerns and civil rights issues - was released from jail when a federal judge approved a plea bargain that will leave a felony conviction on Lee's record.

Lee walked out of the courtroom in Albuquerque with a smile on his face at 12:36 p.m. and immediately entered a conference room with his defense team.

At 1:20 p.m., he finally emerged from the courthouse a free man and gave a brief statement.

''I am very happy to go home with my wife and my children today,'' Lee said. ''I want to say 'thank you' to all the people who supported me.''

Lee paused and then said, ''in the next few days, I'm going fishing.''

U.S. District Chief Judge James Parker approved the plea agreement, which allows Lee to plead guilty to one felony count of mishandling classified information.

Parker sentenced Lee to 278 days. Lee has already served 279 days in the Santa Fe County Detention Center. Parker then went on to eviscerate government officials for their conduct in the case.

After sentencing Lee, Parker said the government's sudden about-face in the case raised vital questions about the motivation and conduct of executive department officials in prosecuting Lee.

''I tell you with great sadness that I feel I was led astray last December by the executive branch of government, its Department of Justice, its Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Attorney's Office,'' Parker told Lee, referring to a December bail hearing.

''I sincerely apologize, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner you were held in custody by the executive branch,'' he said.

Lee pleaded guilty to one count, Count No. 57, of the 59-count indictment he faced. The felony count carried a possible sentence of 10 years in prison.

As part of the agreement, Lee was required to give the following statement under oath.

''On a date certain in 1994, I used an unsecure computer in T Division to download a document or writing relating to the national defense (File 14) onto Tape L. I knew at the time that my possession of Tape L outside the X Division perimeter was unauthorized and that, under Los Alamos National Laboratory directives, I was not permitted to have Tape L outside the X Division perimeter. I retained Tape L and did not deliver it to an officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive Tape L.''

Lee has been in jail in solitary confinement since Dec. 10. He also had to pay a $100 fine.

The obligations for Lee under the plea agreement are:

Lee agrees to answer questions from government officials for 10 days, six hours a day, beginning Sept. 26.

For a period of 12 months, Lee must make himself available for ÿfurther questioning.

Lee is not allowed to leave the country without permission from Judge Edward Leavy of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. This ÿrequirement is for 12 months.

Because a felony charge is involved, Lee is stripped of his civil rights, meaning he cannot vote in elections, cannot run for public office and is barred from possessing a firearm.

Parker asked in court whether Lee could be tried by another agency. Federal prosecutors said that is a possibility.

''Anything is possible, your honor, but the agreement is the agreement, '' lead prosecutor George Stamboulidis said.

As Lee stood in front of Parker, the judge asked him whether he understood the point-by-point elements of the plea agreement.

Parker asked Stamboulidis why, if one week ago Lee was a serious threat to the national security, prosecutors are now willing to set him free.

Stamboulidis replied: ''If this case proceeded to trial, and the defendant was convicted on all counts and spent many years in prison, we may have never learned (the whereabouts) of seven missing tapes. This guilty plea puts us in the optimal position to find out.''

Lee's trip to freedom Wednesday was not easy. Leavy, of the Appeals Court, flew in Tuesday night to resolve some issues and revive the plea agreement. Both sides worked into the early morning hours.

--> Lee had been incarcerated in the Santa Fe County Detention Center since his arrest Dec. 10. He had been held in solitary confinement, with visits by his family restricted to one hour per week.

Lee was accused of downloading information that constituted the ''crown jewels'' - as one witness put it - of the U.S. nuclear arsenal from a computer in the X Division at Los Alamos. Prosecutors claimed that in the wrong hands the information Lee took from the lab could tip the global strategic balance.

The case against Lee began to falter in August when FBI agent Robert Messemer, whose testimony during the bail hearing was a fulcrum in keeping Lee in jail until trial, said he had repeatedly made mistakes in his testimony.

Additionally, Parker in August ruled that Lee was entitled to use classified information as part of his defense under the Classified Information Procedures Act.

--> Lee's attorneys had argued throughout the case that Lee had been the subject of racial profiling. His inability to get out of jail on bail as a Nov. 6 trial date approached had enraged civil rights groups throughout the country.

Lee had been fired from his job at the top-secret X Division after investigators discovered unusual computer activity at his workstation.

He was originally part of an investigation into the possible disclosure of sensitive nuclear weapons technology to China in the 1980s. Lee denied providing secrets to anyone.

Bradenton Herald

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15 Key Dates in Lee Case
Albuquerque Journal
September 10, 2000
The Associated Press

MARCH 8, 1999: The Energy Department fires computer scientist Wen Ho Lee from Los Alamos National Laboratory, about a three-year espionage investigation about alleged disclosure of sensitive nuclear missile technology to China in the 1980s. Lee denies providing secrets to anyone.

APRIL 10, 1999: FBI agents search Lee's home, hauling away boxes of evidence in their investigation into whether nuclear weapons secrets were leaked to China.

AUG. 1, 1999: Lee, in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," said it was common practice for scientists to transfer secret information from classified to unclassified computers. He said he is innocent.

DEC. 10, 1999: After hearing evidence for several months, a grand jury in Albuquerque, issues a 59-count indictment accusing Lee of removing nuclear secrets from a secured Los Alamos computer. Lee is arrested.

DEC. 13, 1999: U.S. Magistrate Don Svet rules that releasing Lee on bail would pose a "clear and present danger to the national security of the United States."

DEC. 20, 1999: Lee sues the FBI and the Justice and Energy departments, alleging they violated his privacy and wrongly portrayed him as a Chinese spy.

DEC. 29, 1999: U.S. Judge James Parker denies bail for Lee, citing seven missing computer tapes filled with the nation's nuclear secrets and possible "enormous harm" to the country if the fired scientist is freed.

FEB. 15: Nov. 6 trial date set for Lee.

FEB. 29: Federal appeals court denies Lee's request for bail, saying that if the missing tapes fell into the wrong hands, it would "change the strategic global balance." Lee's lawyers say the tapes were destroyed.

APRIL: The government restores security clearance for Lee so he can assist in his defense. He is allowed to travel to secure work areas at the lab in the custody of federal marshals, who keep him in leg restraints.

JULY 21: Defense renews bail request.

AUG. 17: FBI agent Robert Messier admits during bail hearing that he gave false testimony in December when Lee was ordered to be held without bail.

AUG. 24: Parker agrees to release Lee on $1 million bail.

SEPT. 1: Appeals court halts Lee's release. Parker writes, "what the government described in December 1999 as the 'crown jewels' of the United States nuclear weapons program no longer is so clearly deserving of that label."

SEPT. 10: Lee to plead guilty to just one of the 59 counts against him in an agreement that would set him free.

SEPT. 11: Hearing on Lee's plea deal delayed two days.

SEPT. 13: Lee pleads guity to one charge and is set free.

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16 Wen Ho Lee due back in court for snagged plea deal
Media Central

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (REUTERS) - Fired nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee is due back in court Wednesday to hear if a plea bargain dropping most of the government's nuclear secrets case against him still stands after last-minute disagreements.

Lee, who has spent nine months in pretrial solitary confinement, had been expected to walk out of court a free man Monday after federal prosecutors agreed to let him plead guilty to a lesser felony and drop charges he acted to harm U.S. national security.

But a late disagreement that both sides have declined to disclose in public forced U.S. District Judge James Parker to cancel a Monday hearing where he had been expected to approve the deal.

The new hearing will start at 9 a.m. local time (11 a.m. EDT) Wednesday amid uncertainty about whether the plea bargain has snagged on a major obstacle or just knotty details.

``It's hard to tell. It's disconcerting, because you think that when you schedule a plea hearing it means both sides have reached an agreement,'' said Laurie Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

The plea deal would bring an abrupt end to what was originally touted as a major case of Chinese nuclear espionage and which has mobilized Asian-Americans angered by the perception that Lee was singled out by race because of his ethnic Chinese background.

Lee was fired last year by Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked in the top-secret X Division designing the nation's nuclear arsenal, amid government allegations China was spying on the lab's weapons designs.

Lee was never charged with espionage but was arrested last December on 59 counts of illegally copying design secrets, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Under the plea deal's terms, the government would drop 58 counts of mishandling secrets and acting to harm the United States in return for Lee's pleading guilty to one minor felony charge of downloading classified weapons design data to a non-secure computer.

Lee also agreed to cooperate for up to six months with an ongoing FBI probe into the fate of seven missing computer tapes of nuclear weapons design data. Lee has said he destroyed the tapes, but prosecutors argue there is no proof of that and that the tapes could still be on the loose.

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17 Not much of a case to begin with
September 13, 2000

THE "case" against Wen Ho Lee of the Los Alamos Laboratory is disgraceful. The man was held for nine months over a "case" that never even rose to the level of contempt. And by and large, the media have been culpable as well.

One need know very little about nuclear weapons to realize that the likelihood of Lee's having given away the "crown jewels" of our nuclear secrets was extremely remote, starting with the fact that the W-88 technology is more than 20 years old. Science just doesn't work like that. I suppose this is another indication of how short the American media are in trained science writers.

Nor was it difficult to discern from the beginning that the case, qua case, was quite rank. Wen Ho Lee was busted and smeared all over the front pages for something that we knew almost immediately was not that unusual, and we knew that the same thing had been done by the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who was not accused of treason.

If the people at Los Alamos did not previously think the national security apparatus was being manned by dimwitted gumshoes (as per the case of the missing computer hard drives that were eventually discovered lurking behind the copier) they are now entitled to think that it's being manned by racist liars.

It is not the culture of the laboratory that's under question here. It's the culture of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which flatly lied about Lee to a federal judge, as well as providing a series of wildly unlikely scenarios.

Why veteran reporters of Washington intelligence agencies were not more suspicious of this story from the beginning is also a puzzle. I suppose we're programmed to go after spy stories the way we go after "a good murder," but the thing was clearly leaked before it had been fully investigated.

>From the beginning, we had very knowledgeable sources saying the thing was a crock. We all know there's a problem with the spy agencies trying to find enough to do since the end of the Cold War, but the media should examine their own consciences over all those "Chinese spy" headlines (the man is a U.S. citizen from Taiwan, for pity's sake).

To my knowledge, only Newsweek has treated this story with appropriate skepticism. Anyone who buys the lame government line about how they didn't want to prosecute the case because "nuclear secrets" would come out in open court needs his head examined.

Believe me, a classified document does not a nuclear secret make. I suspect that people in the security system would have a great deal more respect for it if every requisition for paper clips weren't "classified."

If this case is as bad as it looks, and I don't see how it could look much worse, it's not the "culture" of the labs that's the problem. We're going to continue to have the problem because this country has to rely on foreign-born scientists.

It is well-known that perhaps the only happy fallout of the Tiananmen Square tragedy is that we got half a generation of Chinese physicists who were studying over here out of it. Go to any school of physics in this country and look at the composition of the students.

I have no idea why so many are foreign-born, but I have heard it suggested that American kids just don't want to work that hard. I suspect that's racist, too, and it has more to do with poor science education and a failure to encourage the very bright kids who would be drawn to the field.

If by some remote chance Lee is actually guilty of something important, the FBI has destroyed its own case and made its work on future cases that much more difficult.

THIS country has been through 50 years of suspicion, paranoia and government lying at various levels over various things, with the result that we've poisoned our own civic culture, alienated much of the citizenry and spawned a movement of nuts in the militias who consider the government the enemy. It's enough to make you miss Jimmy Carter, who at least never lied to us.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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18 Principles for security at labs
September 13, 2000

AS the Department of Energy official responsible for independently assessing the effectiveness of security throughout the department, I feel compelled to share some personal insights on security at DOE.

As a 16-year career veteran involved in evaluating the effectiveness of security and safety programs, I have served under six energy secretaries during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations.

The department has been under fire this past year regarding security, particularly at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. We all realize that there are problems that need to be fixed. However, by reading the newspapers, one is led to believe these problems were created by the current Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson.

Any objective analysis demonstrates that this is not the case. In fact, security has improved dramatically during Richardson's watch. Until Richardson took charge, security across DOE had been on a 10- year downhill slide.

In the mid-1980s, DOE security was pretty bad. Several sites failed security tests designed to assess their ability to protect critical DOE assets. As a result, the House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, led by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., drove DOE to pay more attention to security.

With congressional support, many needed improvements were made. More than a billion dollars went into upgrading security hardware and protective forces.

However, after the upgrades were in place, attention waned--both in Congress and within DOE--and in the early 1990s security again began to degrade.

About the time Richardson became secretary, the Wen Ho Lee case hit the headlines. Richardson took action; however, he also took a lot of the blame for security legacies he inherited. And every security problem since has received a great deal of media and congressional attention, although similar problems of the past had generally remained in the shadows.

In the past year, DOE has self-identified and reported a number of less serious problems as well as the belated reporting of the missing hard disks. These problems were identified because DOE facilities were prompted to conduct self-assessments and to make sure their security systems were in order.

Now there is a lot of finger pointing and searching for people to blame. Congress blames the laboratories, the laboratories blame DOE, DOE blames funding reductions, and so on.

While understandable, the finger pointing will do little good. In a few specific cases, such as the missing disk drives, individuals who performed improperly should be held accountable. However, the larger problems associated with security over the past 10 years are not solely the result of the actions of the laboratories, the field elements, the program offices or senior DOE managers.

Rather, they are the result of the inattention and inaction over time on the part of many DOE managers, most of whom have now moved on.

Similarly, Congress, although active in the mid-1980s, seemed to lose interest in the early and mid-1990s. Only recently has the Congress renewed its interest in DOE security.

Rather than dwelling on the past, there needs to be a cooperative and concerted effort to fix the problems in such a way that the "fixes" will remain.

This can be done by adhering to a few key principles:

Security, like safety, cannot be inspected into a culture. Senior management must remain actively involved to ensure that every individual, from the laboratory director to the janitor, understands that he or she is responsible and accountable for security.

There must be clear lines of responsibility and clear direction to each individual. Good performance should be rewarded. Poor performance must be dealt with promptly.

Policies must be unambiguous. Current policies frequently are open to too much individual interpretation. Often, under budget pressures, sites tend to do only enough to satisfy a minimal interpretation of the policy, rather than confronting the real security condition.

Feedback mechanisms must be effective and timely, and the problems identified must be corrected. Through effective self-assessment programs, sites and DOE program offices must identify and fix their own problems on a frequent and continuing basis.

In the past few months, the laboratories, under Richardson's leadership, have initiated efforts to develop an integrated security management system based on such common sense principles.

THE administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, Gen. John Gordon, has embraced the concept. A similar approach has had considerable success in improving safety management across DOE.

An integrated security management system is a rational approach to developing a long-term solution that will help fix the problems and sustain the improvements made over the past two years, even after the current security problems fade from the headlines.

Glenn Podonsky is director of the Department of Energy's Office of Independent Oversight and Performance Assurance, which performs independent oversight of DOE facilities and reports the results to the secretary of energy and other senior DOE managers.

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19 FBI PUSHED TO CONCLUDE HARD-DRIVE PROBE
Albuquerque Tribune Online: News
By H. Josef Hebert THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON--As the government prepares to settle its case against former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee, investigators are hitting a wall on another security breach that caused an uproar at the New Mexico nuclear weapons lab earlier this year.

After nearly 3 1/2 months and scores of interviews and polygraph tests on at least 40 weapons scientists, FBI agents have been unable to pin down responsibility for the disappearance -- and later mysterious reappearance--of two computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets.

The hard drives were used by a nuclear incident response team, known as NEST, at Los Alamos and contained technical information about a variety of U.S.--and other countries' -- nuclear warheads.

The two drives are believed to have vanished from a highly secure vault in April, but the disappearance did not become known to senior Los Alamos or Energy Department officials until the end of May. They were recovered under mysterious circumstances behind a copying machine near the vault on July 16, and investigators believe they were not taken off site.

Both Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and some members of Congress have expressed concern in communications with the Justice Department about the pace of the investigation and urged that the matter soon be wrapped up, according to government sources.

The plea-bargain agreement expected this week on the Wen Ho Lee case--ending a five-year investigation of Lee--could put additional pressure on Attorney General Janet Reno to wrap up the case of the missing hard drives, to ease tensions at the research lab.

Sen. Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican, complained recently that the drawn-out investigation is causing "a huge morale problem among the very best scientists" at the lab, with some of the scientists likely to leave if the matter is not resolved soon.

In remarks Thursday on the Senate floor, Domenici said it already has been determined that the incident involving the hard drives did not involve espionage and that likely the devices never left the secure "X Division" of the lab where nuclear weapons design work is conducted.

"There is no spying. So why don't we get on with it?" asked Domenici. He said the investigation "ought to end . . . soon."

Richardson, who has been concerned about a brain drain at the national labs because of the security crackdown, is said to have shared similar views and frustrations with Reno in recent weeks about the pace of the investigation.

The investigation originally focused on 28 people, mostly members of the NEST team, who had free access to the vault. Because the devices, each slightly larger than a deck of cards, were classified "secret" instead of "top secret," they did not have to be signed out when taken.

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20 Russia's Highest Court Clears Nikitin of Treason
Environment News Service:

MOSCOW, RUSSIA, September 13, 2000 (ENS) - A former Russian Navy officer who reported on the risk of nuclear contamination from the submarines of Russia's Northern Fleet was completely cleared of treason charges today.

Aleksandr Nikitin was charged with high treason and disclosure of state secrets by the Russian Security Police, FSB, for co-authoring a report for the Norwegian environmental group Bellona about radioactive hazards in the Russian submarines based on the Kola Peninsula and at Severodvinsk.

Aleksandr Nikitin smiles outside the courthouse is Moscow after his acquittal. (Photos by Thomas Nilsen courtesy Bellona Foundation)

Nikitin maintained that all the information he provided was from publicly available documents. Bellona has claimed that "this information is of environmental importance and thus can not be a subject to secrecy under prevailing Russian legislation," while the prosecution has claimed that the information is of "no environmental relevance."

The court's decision today marks the first time in the history of the Russian Security Police, the successor of the KGB, that a person charged with high treason has been fully acquitted.

Nikitin was greatly relieved by the verdict. "Now I can focus on environmental work. The five year ordeal is finally over." he said.

First charged in 1996, Nikitin was fully acquitted in December 1999. The acquittal verdict was upheld by the Russian Supreme Court in April 2000.

But in May, the Prosecutor General's Office appealed the acquittal to the Presidium of the Supreme Court.

Inside the Moscow courtroom each side made its final statement today.

In a few words today the Supreme Court Presidium dismissed the appeal leaving the prosecutor no further legal avenues to pursue a case against Nikitin.

"The Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation rejects the appeal of the Prosecutor General in the case against Aleksandr Nikitin," announced Presidium chairman V. Lebedev. The decision is final and cannot be appealed.

The decision comes shortly after the environmental importance of the information in the Bellona report was confirmed by the sinking of a submarine from Russia's Northern Fleet, the Kursk. The submarine, its crew and its two nuclear reactors sank August 14 in the Barents Sea. Worried neighboring countries are monitoring closely for increases in radiation levels.

The court's ruling can be seen as a victory for the independence of the Russian judiciary. In a reversal of the position of the Russian judiciary in the past, Russian Courts are now guided by the law, and not by the needs of the security agencies or by the resident at the Kremlin, said Jon Gauslaa, Bellona's legal adviser, who was present in the courtroom today.

"What we were witnesses to, was not an ordinary court hearing. It was the final tug of war in an almost five year long struggle against the feared Russian secret police and its henchmen at the prosecutor's office," Gauslaa said.

"The fact that the acquittal verdict was upheld by the highest court authority in Russia increases its value greatly," Nikitin's lawyer Yuri Schmidt said. "The judges in Russia have been supported by this verdict. They will act more independently now."

"The victory is final. The clean-up work in the Russian Northern Fleet, which has been severely hampered by this process should now move on at a much faster pace," said Frederic Hauge, president of the Bellona Foundation. "This task seems almost easy, in comparison to fighting down the successor to the KGB."

According to the Bellona report at the core of the Nikitin case, in the period from 1950 to 1970, Russia's Northern Fleet grew from the smallest to the largest and most important of the four Soviet fleets. Six new naval bases some with nuclear submarine facilities were built on the Kola Peninsula from Zapadnaya Litsa in the west to Gremikha in the east. At the same time, five large naval yards were built on the Kola Peninsula and in Severodvinsk for the construction and maintenance of nuclear submarines.

Emerging from the courtroom, Nikitin is mobbed by reporters.

During the Cold War more than 240 nuclear submarines were put to operation within the Soviet Union. Today the Northern Fleet operates 67 nuclear submarines.

"Accidents within the reactors on board these submarines, or on some of the nuclear waste storage facilities located in the same fjord, may lead to radioactive contamination reaching the populations of both the Kola Peninsula and Northern Norway. Civilian Russian authorities are still [1995] not allowed entrance to these military bases to inspect the nuclear safety," stated the Bellona report.

Nikitin was particularly responsible for writing Chapter 8 of the report which addresses nuclear submarine accidents. He detailed incidents where nuclear submarines have sunk or where a partial or complete meltdown of the reactor has occurred with the subsequent release of radioactive material.

"The real challenge of today is to ensure secure demolishing and storage of all the submarines that have been and will be taken out of operation. The balance of these are today rusting in at the Naval bases along the Kola coast and in Severodvinsk," Bellona says in its report.

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21 RUSSIAN BASE PAYS UES DEBT
By Andrew Jack
UK Financial Times
September 14 2000

A Russian military commander on Wednesday agreed to start paying debts to the electricity utility UES after it cut off supplies to an operations centre for the country's strategic nuclear forces outside Moscow.

The conflict was the latest in aseries of high-profile clashes between UES and state as well as private sector electricity consumers, in an intensifying campaign to deal with a central issue in Russian economic liberalisation: to eliminate the non-payment of bills and replace barter deals with cash.

UES said it had cut off non-essential electricity supplies to the Ivanovo nuclear base and a nearby paratroop division after military leaders had repeatedly refused to pay accumulated debts totalling more than Rbs19m ($680,000) over the last 18 months. The army in return sent in troops to seize control of the local transformer stations.

However, UES said that it had since received assurances that the debts would be paid, while the government pledged this week a further Rbs6bn to help meet an estimated Rbs18bn bill for energy and electricity from the ministry of defence for 2000. It had previously allocated Rbs10bn.

The action follows a number of recent threats by UES to cut supplies to state organisations that refused to pay their bills, including a cosmonaut centre near Moscow and the railway ministry.

UES, along with Gazprom, the gas monopoly, and a number of other large Russian companies have been caught in a complex and inefficient system of barter and offsets of debts and taxes with each other and with government departments over the last few years.

The government has encouraged the shift to cash payments, while stressing that strategic services should not suffer. Mikhail Kasyanov, the prime minister, added to the confusion earlier this week when he said that UES's decision to cut off electricity to the military bases was illegal.

Andrei Trapeznikov, spokesman, defended the company's action, saying: "We are not switching people off, but giving electricity to those who pay. It's the application of obvious market principles."

He said UES had increased the proportion of bills paid in cash to beyond 70 per cent. "In the past UES was a generator of non-payments. Now it is a generator of real money."

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22 The war is over
SUPREME COURT 2000
Thomas Nilsen/Bellona
Jon Gauslaa, Bellona's legal adviser, 2000-09-13 18:08

The Presidium of the Russian Supreme Court dismissed the attempt to reverse the acquittal of Aleksandr Nikitin. The decision is final and can not be appealed.

(Moscow): On September 13, 2000 11.15 AM, the Presidium of the Russian Supreme Court finally terminated the Nikitin-case. Thus, the reform of the Russian judiciary seems to have passed the point of no return.

The five year long legal foot-dragging is finally over!

On September 13, 2000 the Nikitin case finally became history. It was not many who witnessed the occasion, but I am sure that the few who were present in room 319 at the Supreme Court building at Ilyanka7/ 3 in Moscow will remember it for the rest of their lives.

What we were witnesses to, was not an ordinary court hearing. It was the final tug of war in an almost five year long struggle against the feared Russian secret police and its henchmen at the prosecutor's office. It was a struggle that very few thought we were going to win, and when it happened it was almost an anticlimax. After having listened to the speeches of the defense and the prosecution, the members of the Presidium left for considerations at the back room. Some thirty minutes later they returned, and its chairman, Mr. V. Lebedev announced the verdict:

"The Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation rejects the appeal of the Prosecutor General in the case against Aleksandr Nikitin."

That was it, nothing more, nothing less, only a few words that said it all.

It is almost 33 years since the then chairman of the Soviet Supreme Court Mr. A. F. Gorkhin declared that the Soviet Courts and the State Security agencies were brought together by the identity of their tasks. Mr. Lebedev's words show that these days are finally gone. They confirm that Russian Courts are guided by the law, and not by the needs of the security agencies or by the resident at the Kremlin. They confirm that the reforms of the Russian judiciary have passed the point of no return. As long as the Court acts independently and in accordance with the Constitution, there will be no way back to Russia's totalitarian past.

There is obviously still many rivers to cross before everything is acceptable within the Russian judiciary, and there seems to be a particularly strong need for reforms within the procuracy. However, Russia can today take its seat among the countries ruled by law with pride.

So tonight, I will drink, not only for Nikitin, the members of his defense team and everybody who has supported us throughout the last five years, but also for the Russian Courts, who have stood up against whatever pressure that have occurred. It may have taken them too long time to determine the case, but that does not make the victory less sweet...

Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway Reuse and reprint recommended

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23 DOE to reveal list of private nuclear work sites Processed weapons material in '40s, '50s
By Peter Eisler
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON--The Department of Energy, reversing decades of government secrecy, will release the names of hundreds of private companies that processed radioactive and toxic material for the U.S. nuclear weapons program in the 1940s and '50s.

A public database is being developed amid demands from Capitol Hill for a full accounting of the work done by commercial facilities that had classified contracts or sub-contracts with the weapons program. USA TODAY detailed many of the contracting operations last week in a three-day series examining their often severe health and environmental consequences.

DOE officials expect to put out an initial list next week of all private and government-owned facilities ever involved in nuclear weapons production, though information on the scope and dates of work at each site probably won't be added for a few weeks. Though the federal plants and labs that did weapons work have long been known, the government has never identified more than a few dozen commercial properties where contractors processed weapons material.

''We are reconstructing the history of these (private) sites,'' says Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. ''In the near future, we expect to have a more thorough, comprehensive list and a plan for addressing health and environmental concerns.''

USA TODAY found that roughly 300 private companies were hired secretly in the 1940s and '50s to do nuclear weapons work, handling thousands of tons of uranium, thorium, polonium, beryllium and other radioactive and toxic substances. The newspaper's investigation named 150 of the contracting sites and revealed that workers at many of them were exposed to extreme levels of radiation and chemical hazards, usually without their knowledge. The series also showed that many of the facilities pumped large volumes of hazardous waste into surrounding communities unaware of the weapons work being done by local businesses.

A growing number of lawmakers have since called on DOE to release information on the contracting operations, most of which concluded in the '50s as the government got its own weapons-making facilities built to take over the work.

''Investigations regarding past operations and practices at these facilities would help determine the level of contamination of the site and human exposure,'' Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, wrote in a letter pressing DOE to release information on the ''forgotten sites.''

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24 Old nuclear dump in Oak Ridge to be moved
Knoxville News-Sentinel

OAK RIDGE--The U.S. Department of Energy will spend millions of dollars to excavate an old nuclear dump near the K-25 plant and relocate the waste to a new disposal facility several miles away.

IT Corp. was awarded an $11.1 million contract this week to head the cleanup effort on the government's Oak Ridge reservation.

Mark Musolf, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's environmental manager in Oak Ridge, said the project is needed because the old waste pits are contaminating the groundwater.

The burial yard--known officially as 1070-A--was used from the 1950s until 1976, receiving wastes from the uranium-enrichment processes and other activities at K-25. The one-acre site contains 62 pits and 26 trenches.

"Almost 20,000 cubic yards of waste and contaminated soil will require disposal--enough to cover a football field to a height of almost 11 feet," Bechtel Jacobs said in a press statement.

IT will be responsible for excavation and characterization of waste, as well as transportation and disposal at a new landfill to be constructed next year on DOE's Oak Ridge reservation. Some of the wastes may require disposal elsewhere, according to information released by Bechtel Jacobs.

The work is to be completed by mid-2002.

David Mayfield, nuclear cleanup program manager for IT, said the company will employ a field staff of about 14 on the Oak Ridge project.

There are historic records on wastes buried in the pits and trenches. Mayfield said IT doesn't expect any major surprises, although additional sampling will be done to verify the contaminants there.

Musolf said uranium compounds are among the radioactive materials present there, as well as technetium-99 and small amounts of plutonium and thorium. The waste pits also contain beryllium, nitric acid and a variety of other chemicals, he said.

Mayfield said preliminary work is under way, with field operations scheduled to begin next summer. The new landfill in East Bear Creek Valley is expected to begin receiving waste in late 2001.

Frank Munger may be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.