------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
*Torch Glitch Causes Panic at Games
*Gulf War Study: No Illness Links
*Clinton welcomes Vajpayee to White House
*Clinton Lauds India for Restraint
*Yearning to Be Great, India Loses Its Way
*Gore Meets With India Leader and Prods Senate on Test Ban
*Clinton praises Indian nuclear restraint at talks with Vajpayee
*Pakistani Losing War of Images
*Clinton, Vajpayee Meet
*U.S. Says Ready to Use Force Against Iraq
*Clinton and Aide Answer Questions
*It Did Happen Here
*Clinton Denies Scientist's Race Influenced Case
*Wen Ho Lee Case: Still More Questions
*President Calls for Review of Lee Case
*Presidential Buck-Passing
*Mayor Undergoes Cancer Treatment
*Side Effects in Therapy Are Fewer With Pellets
*Flawed Missile Defense
*Physicist William Nierenberg Dies
*Activist Shirley S. Anderson

MILITARY
*Colombia Peace Talks Nearly Paralyzed-Rebel Chief
*Antidrug Program's End Stirs Up Salt Lake City
*Commissioner to Review Flood of Minor Narcotics Arrests
*Suu Kyi Pledges to Defy Burmese Junta
*Four Russian troops killed in ambush
*U.N. Appeals for Food for N. Koreans
*Bush Visits Navy Town to Reinforce Commitment to Military
*US servicemen 'beat Kosovo civilians'
*U.S. Warship Escorts East Timor Aid
*Navy Acts to Cut Collisions

OTHER
*Olympic Engineering
*Nonprofits Facing Ethical Challenges Over Sales of Land
*OPEC States Want to Be Paid if Pollution Curbs Cut Oil Sales
*Office of Justice Programs
*Ex - CIA Chief Faces Allegations
*U.S. Probe Of Former CIA Chief Expands

ACTIVISTS
*European Fuel Protests Wane, Britain Recovers
*Fuel Supplies Ease in Britain but Protests Spread on Continent

*

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

Torch Glitch Causes Panic at Games

Associated Press
September 16, 2000 Filed at 2:28 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-OLY-Flame-Foulup.html

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Out of a four-hour feast for the senses, it was only a brief moment, but it was a nerve-wracking one: The flaming Olympic cauldron, star of the opening ceremonies, was gliding toward the heavens when it suddenly balked.

``I had a moment of anxiety,'' admitted flame designer Michael Scott-Mitchell, who was sitting in the stands at the time.

The glitch took place at the emotional climax of Friday's ceremony. After hours of song and dance, of color and rhythm and fantasy, the torch entered the stadium to be carried by a succession of former Australian Olympic greats -- all women.

Finally, it reached the mystery torchbearer -- runner Cathy Freeman, an Aborigine and hugely popular member of the Australian team.

Freeman saluted the crowd and then scaled a stairway to the ``pond of tranquility,'' a circular pool built into the stage. She stepped gingerly into the pond, appearing to walk on water, and then touched the torch to a circle of gas blown by underwater jets. Suddenly, she was surrounded by a circle of fire.

The flaming, doughnut-shaped cauldron rose slowly from the water, above Freeman's head. Water cascaded behind her, creating a mesmerizing mixture of the two elements. Freeman seemed to be sinking as the flames shot higher.

And then it happened.

The cauldron paused and then, after 40 seconds or so, was to continue its ascent on rails up an incline. But for about five minutes, it just sat there.

``The cauldron was supposed to stop, switch from one mechanism to another, and then move on,'' Scott-Mitchell said. ``It took longer than it should have. But they resolved the problem and it continued on.''

Freeman, meanwhile, elegant in a sleek white bodysuit, simply remained standing, still brandishing her torch. Australian TV viewers may not have known there was any problem; the commentators didn't mention it, perhaps because they didn't know either.

Luckily, Freeman was wearing an earpiece, and stage managers were giving her updates.

Scott-Mitchell said a piece of stray wood may have been to blame. In any case, the cauldron soon was freed and rose, to strains of Berlioz, high above the stadium.

Francois Carrard, director general of the International Olympic Committee, called the delay ``a very interesting concept of surprise.''

``We understand there was a little technical problem that was very well-resolved,'' he said. ``These things can happen. Everbody agrees this was the most fantastic ceremony.''

Kay DeLuca, a tourist visiting from Boston, said she was dazzled by the lavish and creative show, which drew raves from nearly all who saw it.

``It was fabulous -- like `The Lion King,' only better,'' she said.

As for the glitch, which was barely mentioned in the Australian press, an explanation of sorts came all the way from England -- from spoon-bending psychic Uri Geller.

Geller said he had concentrated his mind to make the cauldron appear to stop. His effort, he said, was part of his vision of global nuclear disarmament.

-------- depleted uranium

Gulf War Study: No Illness Links

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/continuous/AP-Gulf-War-Illness.html

WASHINGTON -- There is insufficient evidence to link the chronic illnesses suffered by some Gulf War veterans to a specific cause, concludes a study by the Institute of Medicine.

The agency studied the toxic nerve agent sarin; a drug used to pretreat against exposure to nerve gas; depleted uranium; and vaccines to prevent anthrax and botulism but was unable to find a strong link between them and the illnesses.

``We'd like to give veterans and their families definitive answers, but the evidence simply is not strong enough,'' Harold C. Sox Jr., chairman of the committee that did the research, said in a statement. Sox heads the department of medicine at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H.

The Defense Department says an estimated 90,000 troops who served in the Gulf War complain of illnesses such as fatigue, skin rashes, headaches and muscle and joint pain.

The Pentagon requested the study by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent agency chartered by Congress to provide scientific advice to the government.

The institute reviewed all available research on the ill veterans and concluded that the studies done so far were insufficient to support any final conclusion.

A study published in May in the British Medical Journal suggested a link between multiple vaccines given to soldiers deployed in the Persian Gulf War and the unexplained illnesses. That report was based on 923 British Gulf War veterans.

The study by the Institute of Medicine noted that British research has provided ``limited evidence of an association'' with multiple vaccinations.

But the new study added that 99 workers at Fort Detrick, Md., who received multiple vaccinations had been studied for 25 years with no clinical symptoms.

Overall, the institute said, the available evidence is insufficient to show whether there is an impact on long-term health from having multiple vaccinations.

Other findings in the study:

--Sarin: Low-level exposure to this nerve gas may have occurred among troops when U.S. soldiers destroyed Iraqi munitions stockpiles.

A survey of 20,000 troops within 50 miles of the stockpiles showed 99 percent reported no serious nerve illnesses, the report noted. It said that while high doses of the chemical are known to be dangerous, there is not enough information available on low doses to reach any conclusion.

--Pyridostigmine bromide is a drug used as a pretreatment for exposure to nerve agents. It was provided to about 250,000 soldiers, but records don't indicate if they all took the pills.

There were some cases of poisoning from taking high doses of the pills, but the committee was unable to find evidence of long-term effects from the amount normally used.

--Depleted uranium, which has less radioactivity than naturally occurring uranium, is used in tank armor and some ammunition.

The committee said there were indications that the levels of uranium involved in the war do not lead to lung cancer or kidney damage. There was not enough evidence to determine if the uranium could be linked to other diseases.

--Anthrax vaccine was given to thousands of service members during the Gulf War because of the fear that Iraq would launch a biological attack. A later decision to give the vaccine to all U.S. military personnel has provoked controversy, with some resisting the vaccinations.

The typical vaccination reactions of redness, swelling and occasional fever were found, but the committee said there have not been enough scientific studies done to determine if there is any long-term adverse effect from the vaccine.

--Botlinum vaccine is under investigation as a way to block the dangerous toxins of the form of food poisoning known as botulism. Again, the committee said there have not been sufficient studies to determine any long-term hazard.

-------- india / pakistan

Clinton welcomes Vajpayee to White House Indian prime minister's health draws concern

CNN
September 16, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/south/09/15/us.vajpayee/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. President Bill Clinton greeted Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the White House South Lawn on Friday, telling the South Asian leader that Indian democracy would "forever inspire America."

"Americans have always had a fascination with India," Clinton said, praising Vajpayee during a welcome ceremony as a leader who has reminded "the world that freedom is not a Western value but a universal one."

http://www.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/south/09/15/us.vajpayee/map.india.new.delhi.gif

Clinton recalled his recent visit to India, and said he hoped Vajpayee's visit was a harbinger of closer relations between the two countries.

"No matter our differences ... if we speak with care and listen with respect we will find common ground and achieve common aims," he said.

Vajpayee said he was pleased to be "a guest of the American people," adding that his visit was "a part of a common dialogue between the world's two largest democracies."

After the ceremony, Clinton and Vajpayee retired to the White House Oval Office for a private meeting, to be followed by an meeting open to aides. Later, Vice President Al Gore is to host a lunch for the visiting leader.

Earlier on Friday, National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley announced that a news conference scheduled for the afternoon had been canceled at the request of the Indian delegation.

Vajpayee "has some health issues," Crowley said, adding that Indian officials "just wanted to shorten the day."

The prime minister reportedly was recently treated for osteoarthritis, which is when the cartilage around the knees wears down. Indian officials have dismissed speculation that he may be suffering from a more serious illness.

Vajpayee downplays nuclear issue

Vajpayee's meeting with Clinton was expected to touch a number of issues, including technology, nuclear arms and relations with Pakistan. On Thursday, the Indian leader said that India's decision to test nuclear weapons in 1998 should not impede the development of closer ties between them.

http://www.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/south/09/15/us.vajpayee/pakistan.islamabad.gif

"Security issues have cast a shadow on our relationship. I believe this is unnecessary," Vajpayee said in a speech before a rare joint session of the U.S. Congress. "We have much in common and no clash of interests."

Asking congressmen to understand that India faced serious security threats, Vajpayee noted that his country had followed the U.S. example of declaring a voluntary moratorium on future nuclear testing.

"We both share a commitment to ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons," said Vajpayee, calling for both countries to focus on strengthening their emerging partnership.

Concerned that India had accelerated the arms race with its underground nuclear explosions in May 1998, the Clinton administration has urged India -- without success -- to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

But on Friday, Clinton hailed India's voluntary decision to refrain from testing nuclear weapons.

CNN White House Correspondent Kelly Wallace and Producer Sarah Ruth, CNN.com Senior Writer KC Wildmoon and Reuters contributed to this report.

---

Clinton Lauds India for Restraint

Yahoo News
Friday September 15 11:31 AM ET updated 9:45 PM ET Sep 16
By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000915/ts/us_india_12.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton (news - web sites) welcomed Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to the White House on Friday and praised his commitment to impose a voluntary moratorium on further nuclear testing.

With Vajpayee standing at his side on an idyllic late summer day, Clinton praised the warming trend in U.S. ties with India after long years of strained relations.

``India and the United States have forged a bond,'' Clinton said. ``Our challenge is to turn our common bond into common achievements.''

He said the two countries have a ``common desire to seek peace through dialogue in South Asia.'' Clinton made no reference to the U.S. opposition to India's decision to carry out nuclear tests two years ago, a move that prompted Pakistan to conducts tests of its own.

Vajpayee also welcomed the improvement in U.S.-India relations, which received a major boost last March when Clinton became the first president to visit the country in more than 20 years.

``This is a time of new hope and new opportunities in Indo-American ties,'' Vajpayee said.

Vajpayee, who has been suffering from a knee ailment, remained seated during Clinton's remarks and spoke only briefly to throng of assembled guests, which included many Indian-Americans.

After the ceremony, Clinton and Vajpayee planned more than an hour of discussions, with most of the time spent one-on-one.

The two leaders canceled plans for an afternoon news conference at the request of the prime minister's staff, the White House said. ``It has been very long trip, an exhausting trip for the prime minister and they felt that the last event of the day, the press conference, was a little bit too much,' presidential spokesman Joe Lockhart said.

During an Oval Office photo session after the ceremonial welcome, Clinton said the two countries ``have worked hard to move our relationship from one of too little contact and too much suspicion to one of genuine efforts to build a long term partnership.''

At another point, he said, ``I think we should look at this as a long term effort. ... I hope it goes well beyond my presidency and our service together.''

For his part, Vajpayee said he was confident that the differences between the two countries will be reduced.

Clinton has called the South Asian region ``perhaps the most dangerous place in the world,'' a reference to the hostile relations India maintains with its nuclear-armed neighbors, Pakistan and China. India has had three wars with Pakistan and one with China.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Thursday that regional security concerns would be discussed at the White House meeting and that it was important that both Pakistan and India maintain their moratorium on nuclear testing.

The two countries caused alarm here when they carried out nuclear tests in May 1998. The administration has been urging both to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and to exercise restraint in other ways.

Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) was flying to Washington from New York for a luncheon meeting at the State Department with Vajpayee that was to take place after Gore addressed a gathering at Howard University.

Vajpayee talked by telephone with Texas Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites) not long after arriving on U.S. soil on Sept. 7. He departs Sunday.

Members of Congress praised Vajpayee's remarks Thursday before a joint session of senators and House members. He said that after long years of strained ties with Washington, ``the dawn of a new century has marked a new beginning in our relations.''

But a number of human rights and religious rights groups used the occasion of Vajpayee's visit to highlight alleged abuses in India.

Human Rights Watch expressed concern about ``widespread caste violence and discrimination, violence against the country's religious minorities and abuses by Indian security forces in Kashmir,'' the Himalayan territory that is shared by India and Pakistan and which is at the core of the Indo-Pakistani dispute.

Amnesty International said Indian troops are partly to blame for occurrences of ``torture, deaths in custody, disappearances and political killings in Kashmir.''

On the Net: State Department background on India: http://www.state.gov/www/regions/sa/index.html

---

Yearning to Be Great, India Loses Its Way

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By PANKAJ MISHRA
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/opinion/16MISH.html

NEW DELHI - In the last two years, the Indian government, dominated by the Hindu nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata, has tried to establish an exalted position in the world for India.

It has conducted nuclear tests, lobbied hard for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and played up the West's high demand for India's skilled information- technology workers. Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian prime minister, who met with President Clinton in Washington and addressed the Congress this week, hopes to achieve, among other things, an American endorsement of India's claim to superpower status.

For all these aspirations to 21st century greatness, however, the Hindu nationalists remain attached to a stern 19th-century idea of nationalism, which dilutes traditional social and cultural diversity and replaces it with one people, one culture and one language.

The intolerant climate can be seen in the growing incidents of violence against minorities, particularly Christian missionaries, the steady takeover of government research institutions by Hindu ideologues and the introduction of Hindu-oriented syllabuses in schools and universities.

In neighboring Pakistan, which was created as a homeland for Muslims in 1947, a similar attempt at building a monolithic national identity, through Islam, has produced disastrous results.

Since Islam has failed to bind the country's many ethnic and linguistic minorities, the job of holding the country together has fallen to the Pakistani army. It has tried to pacify the minorities through brutal, and sometimes counterproductive, methods. For instance, in 1971, the terrorized Bengali Muslim population of East Pakistan seceded to form, with India's assistance, the new nation of Bangladesh.

Despite that loss, the power of the Pakistani army grew and grew. Ruled by a military dictator, Pakistan became the overeager host, in 1979, of the C.I.A.'s proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The arms received from the United States and Saudi Arabia found their way to the black market. Civil war broke out as competing Islamic outfits fought each other with their deadly new weapons. And a flourishing drug trade led to an estimated five million Pakistanis becoming heroin addicts.

In the last 20 years, drug smugglers, Islamic fundamentalists and army intelligence officers have come to dominate Pakistan's political life. Jihad, now exported to the disputed territory of Kashmir and the Central Asian republics, is the semi-official creed of many in the ruling elite. Pakistan is now even further away from being a multi-ethnic democracy.

India looks more stable, but its political culture has changed drastically in the last two decades. The central government, as distrustful of federal autonomy as Pakistan's ruling elite, has used brute force in Punjab, the northeastern states, and now in Kashmir to suppress disaffected minorities.

In the process, India's awkward but worthy experiment with secular democracy has been replaced by a vague, but aggressive, ideology of a unitary Hindu nationalism.

The new upper-caste Hindu middle class, created by India's freshly globalized economy, includes this nationalism's most fervent supporters. It greeted India's nuclear tests in 1998 euphorically.

But this middle class is also apolitical and a bit unsure of itself. Its preoccupations are best reflected in the revamped news media, which now focuses more on fashion designers and beauty queens instead of the dark realities of a poor and violent country.

Popular patriotism brings temporary clarity to the confused self-image of the new middle class and helps veil some of the government's more questionable actions. For instance, in Kashmir, the government's failure to accommodate the aspirations of the mostly Muslim population led to a popular armed uprising against Indian rule.

The Hindu nationalists describe the uprising as an attack on the very idea of India and have diverted an enormous amount of national energy and resources - including some 400,000 soldiers - toward fighting the insurgents and their Pakistani supporters.

Since the invisible majority of India's billion-strong population - its destitute masses - couldn't care less about Kashmir, it is the affluent Hindu middle class that enforces the domestic consensus on the subject. It blames Pakistan for everything, ignoring the harshness of Indian rule and the near-total collapse of civil liberties in Kashmir.

Supporters of Hindu nationalism assume that a country with a strong military can absorb any amount of conflict and anomie within its borders. But the preference for force over dialogue could end up undermining India's fragile democracy and growing economy - just as the excessive reliance on military solutions to political problems has blighted Pakistan.

Pankaj Mishra is the author of "The Romantics," a novel.

---

Gore Meets With India Leader and Prods Senate on Test Ban

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By DAVID E. SANGER and KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/politics/16PREX.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - Mixing election politics and international diplomacy, Vice President Al Gore told Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India today that as president he would make passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty his first foreign policy initiative in Congress, and he urged India to adopt the treaty as well.

Mr. Gore, reviving a promise he made last fall, was clearly suggesting that in rejecting the treaty a year ago, the Republican-led Senate had given India an easy excuse to keep its nuclear testing program alive, and had thus contributed to the dangerous standoff between India and Pakistan.

Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, has said repeatedly that he opposes the treaty, on the ground that it would limit America's nuclear leadership.

Mr. Gore's comments to the visiting Indian prime minister today came at a private meeting between the two men after lunch at the State Department, aides said at a White House briefing.

At other points during the day, President Clinton and a variety of administration officials went out of their way to praise Mr. Vajpayee and signed a raft of agreements, from Export-Import Bank loans to civil aviation pacts. But the administration left in place - and left largely undiscussed - economic sanctions imposed on both India and Pakistan after they conducted nuclear tests two years ago.

And despite talk between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Vajpayee about closer relations - this is the second meeting between the two men in six months - India made no commitments beyond a continuation of its current voluntary moratorium on further nuclear testing.

"I think we have worked hard together to move our relationship from one of too little contact and too much suspicion to one of genuine efforts to build a long-term partnership," Mr. Clinton said in the Oval Office this morning, the prime minister at his side.

But their meeting also had an air of farewell about it, much like Mr. Clinton's session last week with President Jiang Zemin of China. Mr. Clinton made clear that he regarded his effort to strengthen ties to India a major accomplishment of his administration.

"We should look at this as a long- term effort that - I can speak for myself - I hope goes well beyond my presidency," Mr. Clinton said. "I don't think it should be another 20 years before an American president goes to India." Mr. Clinton visited the country earlier this year.

The prime minister described his meetings in Washington as "part of a continuing dialogue between the world's two largest democracies," and he added a "tribute to the Indian-American community, which has been such an effective bridge in strengthening Indo-U.S. ties."

The president and the prime minister talked about everything from trade to the territorial battle over Kashmir, and then the focus quickly shifted to Mr. Gore's lunch at the State Department for Mr. Vajpayee and to the subsequent private meeting between the two.

Under the glittering glass chandeliers in a State Department dining room, Mr. Gore basked in an incumbent's perk: acting as host of a state luncheon and talking peace with a world leader. Mr. Gore said India, the world's largest democracy, and America, the world's oldest democracy, shared a special bond, and made only glancing reference to India's nuclear weapons capability.

"As the world's two leading democracies, we bear a special responsibility to take the lead in meeting the challenges that all democracies face," Mr. Gore said. "We must work together to ensure that democracy's promises are realized by all our people, that all benefit from freedom. Quality education, public health, a clean environment - these are the goals we share and which together we can achieve. Threats that undermine democracy, such as terrorism and the proliferation of dangerous weapons technologies, are concerns we also share and will work together to address."

---

Clinton praises Indian nuclear restraint at talks with Vajpayee

Yahoo News
Saturday, September 16 12:36 AM SGT
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/asia/afp/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/000916/asia/afp/Clinton_praises_Indian_nuclear_restraint_at_talks_with_Vajpayee.html

WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (AFP) - President Bill Clinton praised India for calling a halt to its nuclear testing program Friday, as he welcomed Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to a White House summit.

"We welcome India's commitment to forego nuclear testing until the treaty banning all nuclear testing comes into force," he said, with Vajpayee by his side in a ceremony in the gardens of the White House.

India, which sparked fears of a nuclear arms race in South Asia with its weapons tests in 1998, has refused to join the current Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, claiming it favors established atomic powers.

Clinton signalled that he remained deeply concerned about the prospects for nuclear stability on the subcontinent, and the always-simmering conflict between India and Pakistan.

"We will discuss our common desire to seek peace through dialogue in South Asia ... We will talk about our common interests in slowing the spread of nuclear weapons, and the broader consequences of proliferation in South Asia," he said.

In later remarks in the Oval Office, Clinton proclaimed a new dawn in Indo-US relations after years of estrangement during the Cold War when New Delhi leaned toward the Soviet Union.

"I think we have worked hard together to move our relationship from one of too little contact and too much suspicion to one of genuine efforts to build a long-term partnership," Clinton told reporters.

But even as the two leaders opened talks, new fears arose over the health of the 73-year-old prime minister, who had already been forced to reduce the length of his visit.

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Indian aides had requested the cancellation of a planned joint press conference with the president due to fatigue.

"It's been a very long trip for the prime minister and they felt the last event of the day, the press conference was a little bit too much," he said.

Vajpayee betrayed clear signs of strain in his Oval Office appearance, speaking quietly and slowly, appearing to take time to marshall his thoughts.

No immediate details were available on his condition, but Vajpayee is known to suffer from severe arthritis in his knees and sparked speculation on the state of his health with a fragile public appearance last month.

Clinton, who spoke fondly of his trip to India in March, said that he hoped a new vibrancy in relations between India and Washington would outlast his presidency which ends early next year.

"I don't think it should be another 20 years before an American president goes to India. I think we should have a regular sustained partnership," he said.

Both sides are using this visit to showcase burgeoning cooperation in technology, science and trade, areas on which they can agree despite differences on nuclear proliferation.

"This is part of the continuing dialogue between the world's two largest democracies," said Vajpayee in the White House gardens. "This is a time of new hope and new opportunities in Indo-American ties."

The United States still maintains economic sanctions and investment restrictions imposed after India conducted its 1998 tests -- measures which Indian officials view as a barrier to better relations.

Vajpayee was due to meet Vice President Al Gore for lunch on Friday, and is guest of honor at a White House banquet on Sunday.

----------

Pakistani Losing War of Images

Washington Post
Saturday, September 16, 2000 ; A15
By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A14245-2000Sep15

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 15 -- The images that lingered from President Clinton's visit to India and Pakistan in March were lopsided enough: the grinning U.S. president being showered with petals by Indian village women, then arriving grimly in a camouflaged plane in Pakistan under heavy security.

In recent days, as the leaders of Pakistan and India visited the United States, the contrasts again were sharp: Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was cheered as he addressed a joint session of Congress, while Pakistan's military chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was forced to delay his flight home because of a bomb threat.

Despite Musharraf's efforts to portray his U.S. visit as a success, highlighted last week by a brief handshake and chat with Clinton during the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York, the spotlight clearly belonged to Vajpayee, who was received with warmth and pomp during an official state visit to Washington.

U.S. officials took pains to stress that they will "work with" Pakistan's military government on such contentious issues as Islamic terrorism and the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, rather than endorse India's efforts to isolate its adversary and tar Pakistan as a country that supports terrorism.

"President Clinton is concerned about what is happening in Kashmir, and he is trying his best to resolve the issue," Musharraf told reporters when he landed in Karachi early this morning. "We will maintain relations with the United States, independently of India's relationship with them."

But Musharraf was not granted any formal meetings with U.S. officials during his stay, an indication of Washington's arm's-length attitude toward his government, which seized power in a coup d'etat nearly a year ago. Vajpayee's official welcome, in contrast, highlighted the increasingly warm relationship between the two democracies, which have pledged to increase both business and strategic ties.

Musharraf also failed to garner much sympathy at the United Nations for Pakistan's stance on Kashmir, despite his repeated pleas for international mediation and his offers to meet with Indian leaders and make a "no war" pact with New Delhi.

Moreover, in various speeches and news conferences, he and Vajpayee slung belligerent barbs at each other, creating a strong impression that the military rivalry between these two nuclear states is becoming even more intractable. Vajpayee called Pakistan the major "source of terrorism" in South Asia, while Musharraf charged that Indian democracy is undermined by human rights abuses and the country's caste system.

Pakistan and India both claim Kashmir, a Himalayan border region, and they have fought two wars over it. Pakistan supports a guerrilla insurgency there, composed of some Kashmiri groups that seek political independence and others based in Pakistan that view their mission as an Islamic holy war against India, which is overwhelmingly Hindu.

"It is strange that the authors of a vicious terrorist campaign . . . were offering a dialogue after sabotaging an historic peace initiative," Vajpayee said in a U.N. speech, referring to his 1999 peacemaking visit to Pakistan that was undermined when Pakistan-based guerrillas invaded the Kargil mountains in Kashmir. "Terrorism and dialogue do not go together."

Musharraf has depicted himself as tolerant of domestic dissent and press freedom, and yet during his New York visit he lashed out at critics in the media who have increasingly portrayed his government as inept and unable to deliver on its promises of reform.

"There was very little Pakistan could do to keep itself from being overshadowed" by Vajpayee's visit, wrote columnist Tahir Mirza in The Dawn newspaper today. But he suggested that Musharraf had made things worse by "engaging in a war of words with the Indians over Kashmir" and by "ridiculing the concepts of democracy and secularism" while on a visit to the United States.

In New York, Musharraf also drew an unexpected and humiliating snub from Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who condemned dictatorships and demanded prosecution for Pakistani abuses during the 1971 war with Bangladesh. The Pakistani leader reacted harshly, criticizing Hasina for intervening in Pakistan's affairs and canceling planned talks with her.

"Musharraf went abroad hoping to build international goodwill, but he came back having slighted one of the most important members of the South Asian alliance," said one Pakistani political analyst. "Instead of gaining new friends, he lost one." Then, in a final blow to Musharraf's foreign image, his flight home Thursday on a Pakistan International Airlines jet was marred by a telephoned bomb threat, which forced the plane to return to New York for five hours.

Even before his visit to the United States, Musharraf's claim that he seeks a peaceful resolution to the Kashmir dispute was weakened by the abrupt collapse of a brief cease-fire there. A Kashmiri insurgent group, Hizb ul-Mujaheddin, announced the truce in July, but two weeks later it was withdrawn by the group's Islamabad-based leaders. Indian officials said the halt to the cease-fire proved that Pakistan was not serious about ending the conflict, which has claimed more than 50,000 lives in a decade of fighting. Guerrilla leaders said India had undermined the truce by setting impossible conditions for peace talks, but Musharraf said he hoped New Delhi would not rule out future negotiations.

"The Hizb ul offer was a window of opportunity," Musharraf told reporters in Karachi today. "I hope India will show some statesmanship and take the Kashmir issue toward some practical solution."

-----------

Clinton, Vajpayee Meet

Washington Post
Saturday, September 16, 2000 ; A05
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Compiled from reports by staff writers Juliet Eilperin and Ellen Nakashima and by the Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16629-2000Sep15.html

In a welcome ceremony at the White House, President Clinton praised Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's commitment to a moratorium on nuclear testing, and he expressed hope that the two countries will strengthen their ties.

"It is not only India's democracy, but India's manner of achieving democracy that will forever inspire America," Clinton said, standing next to Vajpayee on the south lawn of the White House. "From very different histories, India and the United States have forged a common bond, arising from our common commitment to freedom and democracy. Our challenge is to turn our common bond into common achievements."

Clinton said the two countries will continue to work together on fighting AIDS, reducing poverty, protecting the environment and expanding the global economy.

The meeting was a sign of warming relations between India and the United States after years of tension, particularly during the Cold War, when India had ties to the Soviet Union and the United States was allied with rival Pakistan. In March, Clinton became the first American president in more than 20 years to visit India.

Clinton made no direct reference to U.S. opposition to India's testing of an underground nuclear device in May 1998, a move that prompted Pakistan to conduct tests of its own. The United States has pressed India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but that effort was undercut by the Senate's rejection of the treaty last year.

-------- iraq

U.S. Says Ready to Use Force Against Iraq

Yahoo News
Thursday September 14 5:29 PM ET updated 8:24 AM ET Sep 16
By Jonathan Wright
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000914/ts/iraq_usa_dc.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States warned Iraq on Thursday it stood ready to use military force if Baghdad threatens its neighbors, after Iraq accused Kuwait of stealing its oil and an Iraqi jet violated Saudi air space.

``We do have a credible force in the region and are prepared to use it in an appropriate way at a time of our choosing,'' Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told a news conference.

She said the U.S. military option came into play ``if there are attacks or provocations against the Kurds in the north, if there are threats against the neighbors and against our forces or a reconstitution of the weapons of mass destruction.''

Albright, speaking on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, was skeptical of the Iraqi allegation against Kuwait and said the United States disapproved of Russian plans to start civilian flights into Baghdad.

``After almost 10 years of dealing with this issue, I genuinely have trouble believing one word out of the mouth of any Iraqi,'' she said. A senior aide said she was referring to Iraqi officials, not to Iraqis in general.

A State Department official said earlier on Thursday that an Iraqi military plane flew briefly over Saudi Arabia last week in an incursion Washington saw as a possible attempt to create a crisis during the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York.

``One question that people have is whether these overflights have not been carefully orchestrated in order to create a confrontational atmosphere during the Millennium Summit and during the General Assembly,'' Albright said.

The New York Times on Thursday said the Sept. 4 incursion over Saudi Arabia was the first in nearly a decade.

A Pentagon spokesman would say only that Iraqi planes entered the southern ``no-fly'' zone that day, and that British and American planes which patrol that area did not respond because they were not flying at the time.

Old Complaint Against Kuwait

But on Thursday, the allied planes bombed a radar site in southern Iraq because of ``a series of provocations'' over the past several days including Iraq firing surface-to-air missiles, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral Craig Quigley said.

Iraq sparked concern in the international community on Thursday when it resurrected an old complaint against Kuwait, saying it would take unspecified measures to stop what it called sabotage and theft of Baghdad's oil.

``Iraq will take suitable measures which will guarantee its and the Arab nations' rights to control its oil wealth and employ it for the interest of the whole Arab nation rather than achieve vicious American policy,'' Iraqi Oil Minister Amir Muhammed Rasheed said, according to the Iraqi News Agency.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheik Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah denied the allegation. ``We haven't stolen anything. If you take from your own land it can't be stealing,'' he told Reuters.

The United States is watching Iraq closely but at the moment there did not appear to be any troop movements that appeared out of the ordinary, Quigley said.

``This is a time of year that we pay particular attention to what is going on inside Iraq,'' he said.

It is typically at the end of Iraq's military training cycle when Baghdad tends to become more aggressive, U.S. defense officials said, noting the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The United States was watching for Iraqi military activity that appeared ``larger, longer lasting ... that might prove to be an indicator of potential hostile action against either a neighboring nation or against his (Saddam's) own people in the north or the south,'' he said.

Russian Flights ``Not A Good Idea''

``So far we have not seen an indication that is out of character of the sort of activity that you would see this time of year in conjunction with their normal training cycle, we'll continue to watch very carefully,'' he added.

Asked about Russian plans to start an air service to Baghdad, Albright said: ``We disagree with those who wish to fly into Iraq and I will make that clear when I see (Russian Foreign Minister Igor) Ivanov in a little while and I don't think it's a good idea.''

Commercial flights would erode the U.N. sanctions, which the United States wants to maintain as long as Iraq does not let U.N. inspectors monitor its weapons programs.

On military action, Quigley said: ``I think that we have a variety of means at our disposal to take action, if we so choose to do so, against any aggressive acts that Saddam would impose, either on a neighbor or on his people.

Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones which were established by Western nations after the 1991 Gulf War to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from potential attacks by Iraqi troops.

U.S. and British jets regularly patrol those areas from bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey.

Iraq has made more than 150 violations of the no-fly zones, mostly in the south, since December 1998 when the United States and Britain bombed Iraq, saying Saddam was obstructing the work of the U.N. weapons inspection agency.

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

-------- new mexico

Clinton and Aide Answer Questions

New York Times
September 16, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/national/16LTEX.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - Following are excerpts from answers by President Clinton and the White House press secretary, Joe Lockhart, to questions today about the case of the former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, as recorded by the Federal News Service, a private transcription agency:

President Clinton

Q. What do you say to Asian-Americans who are concerned that his ethnicity may have played some role in the fact he was detained?

MR. CLINTON No, no. First of all, I don't believe that. I don't think there's any evidence of that. Let's look at the facts here. He has admitted to a very serious national security violation, and the most important thing now is that he keep his commitment to the government to work hard to figure out what happened to those tapes, what was on the tapes, to reconstitute all the information. That's very important.

In America, we have a pretty high standard - and we should - under our Constitution, against pretrial detention. You have to meet a pretty high bar. I had no reason to believe that that bar had not been met.

I think the fact that there was, that in a short time frame there was an argument that he needed to stay in jail without bail, and then all of a sudden there was a plea agreement which was inconsistent with the claims that they made. I thought that raises the question, not just for Chinese-Americans, but for all Americans, about whether we have been as careful as we ought to be about pretrial detention. And that's something that, you know, in a government like ours that is basically forged out of the concern for abuse of executive authority, we sometimes make mistakes, but we normally make mistakes the other way, where we're bending over backwards.

Our staff has talked to the Justice Department about it. I'm sure I'll have a chance to talk to the attorney general. It would have been completely inappropriate for me to intervene, and I don't believe she intervened. This was handled in the appropriate, normal way. But I want you to understand, there was a serious violation here. He has acknowledged that. We have to get to the bottom of what was on all the tapes. But the narrow thing that I want to illustrate here is that when the United States, whenever we hold anybody in prison who can't get bail or who is interned for a long period of time before being charged and convicted and sentenced, we need to hit a very high threshold. That is the specific thing I wanted to focus on, and I think that there ought to be an analysis of whether or not that threshold was crossed, in light of the plea bargain.

Mr. Lockhart

It's certainly our hope, although it is not a hope that we genuinely believe anything will be done about, that others will take some time and do some examination. I think there was a climate of, a very difficult climate that was generated in this town when this story came out, a climate generated by some very explosive and near hysterical investigative reporting, a climate that was fueled by explosive comments from political leaders, including members of Congress. And I hope everybody takes a moment, looks at how they handled this situation and looks to see if in the future they can do better, just as, I think, the executive branch will do.

Q. Joe, do you believe that the media reporting and the explosive atmosphere that you described affected the prosecutor's decisions on which charges to bring and how this case would --

MR. LOCKHART That would be a question you'd have to put to the prosecutors, and they will stand up, I'm certain, and answer their questions. It's certainly my hope that those who wrote the stories will also be willing to stand up and talk about their motivations and whether there's anything they can learn . . .

Q. Is there any thought being given to contacting Mr. Lee and making any kind of formal apology?

A. Well, I think, given the limited and the proper role and hands-off role that was played here by the White House, there's no discussion of that. I think the president's obligation, as he addressed directly yesterday and then again this morning, was when questions are raised, when they are legitimate questions, when people are troubled by things - and he, indeed, is troubled himself by some of these questions - we should look at it. We should look at it and see what it is we can learn from this experience and see what, if anything, needs to be done to improve in the future.

Q. So who should apologize in this case here?

A. I don't know.

---

It Did Happen Here

New York Times
September 16, 2000
ABROAD AT HOME
By ANTHONY LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/opinion/16LEWI.html

BOSTON - In excoriating officials for their treatment of Wen Ho Lee, Federal District Judge James A. Parker said one question remained unanswered: "What was the government's motive?" There is an answer to that question, a chilling one. It is: politics.

In the winter of 1999, Republicans found what they thought was a promising theme. The Clinton administration, they said, is soft on Chinese nuclear espionage. It was an updated version of the charge that Richard Nixon and others had used so devastatingly, that Democrats were soft on Communism.

Dan Quayle charged the administration with "appeasement" of China in "espionage involving our most critical secrets." Republicans in Congress attacked the president's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, for supposed laxity in dealing with Chinese spying. Conservative columnists joined the chorus.

A House committee under Representative Christopher Cox, Republican of California, issued a 900-page report saying that China had been stealing our nuclear weapons secrets. Experts pointed out that the report was long on conjecture and short on evidence. But the committee's Democrats, evidently panicked, joined it without dissent.

The Clinton administration moved quickly to meet the Republican attack. Among other things Bill Richardson, the secretary of energy, appointed a "security czar."

Then a villain was found - someone to blame: Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In March 1999 he was fired. In December the U.S. Attorney's office in Albuquerque, N.M., had a grand jury indict him on 59 counts of mishandling nuclear secrets - with a potential penalty of life in prison.

In the months after that indictment Mr. Lee was painted in the darkest tones. He was said to have compromised the "crown jewels" of U.S. nuclear weapons. Government investigators compared him to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of giving atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and executed in 1953.

Prosecutors gave Judge Parker, as he told Mr. Lee the other day, "information that 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."

At the prosecutors' urging, the judge denied bail. Mr. Lee was held in what Judge Parker called "demeaning, unnecessarily punitive conditions" - in solitary confinement, allowed to exercise only an hour a day with his legs shackled, the lights kept on in his cell 24 hours a day.

In recent months the hyperbolic picture of Mr. Lee and his supposed offenses faded away. Robert Messemer, an F.B.I. agent who testified that in two incidents Mr. Lee had been deceptive, admitted that his account of those two incidents was false. It was "an honest mistake," he said.

The great secrets to which Mr. Lee had access - and of which he had wrongly made computer tapes - turned out to be not so secret. Many had been available in thousands of sources.

But no one in the government backed off. Prosecutors continued to insist that Mr. Lee was a terrible danger to the nation.

It was Judge Parker who pierced the stubborn denial of reality. When he made clear that he had had enough, prosecutors signed a plea agreement that let Mr. Lee go with the 278 days he had served in prison. It amounted, Judge Parker said, to a concession "that it was not necessary to confine you last December or at any time before your trial."

I do not think that Secretary Richardson or Attorney General Janet Reno decided overtly to use the Lee case for political purposes. I think that, feeling the political pressure, they allowed their judgment to be shockingly distorted.

For the Justice Department especially to go on and on with a case so weak is profoundly disturbing. To let the terrible weapon of criminal prosecution be used in a politically convenient way is a hallmark of tyranny.

The lead prosecutor in the case, George Stamboulidis, unregenerate after Mr. Lee's release, suggested that Judge Parker did not understand the national security issues. To the contrary, this country's security rests in good part on having judges with the character and courage, like Judge Parker, to do their duty despite prosecutorial alarms and excursions.

---

Clinton Denies Scientist's Race Influenced Case

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/national/16LAB.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - President Clinton said today that he did not believe Wen Ho Lee was singled out for prosecution because he was Chinese-American, but said he planned to talk to the attorney general about concerns that the Los Alamos nuclear scientist was not treated properly by prosecutors.

Aides said Mr. Clinton would discuss the government's handling of the case with the attorney general, Janet Reno, at the White House next week. Today, in an appearance with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the president said it would have been wrong for him to express his concerns to Ms. Reno while charges were pending.

"It would have been completely inappropriate for me to intervene," Mr. Clinton said.

White House aides also sought to assign some responsibility for the pressures that propelled the prosecution forward to the news media, especially The New York Times, and to members of Congress. [Excerpts, Page A12.]

Dr. Lee, who had been in solitary confinement for nine months while awaiting trial, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to one count of improperly handling classified information. Under a plea deal that represented a collapse of the government's case, prosecutors dropped 58 other counts, and the judge in Albuquerque freed Dr. Lee from the Santa Fe County Jail, harshly criticizing the prosecution for its handling of the case.

Since then, the administration has been fielding questions about Dr. Lee's treatment, including whether he had been unfairly singled out because of his Chinese ancestry. While Ms. Reno defended the Justice Department's conduct, Mr. Clinton said he was "quite troubled" by the department's behavior.

Today, Mr. Clinton sought to soften the sting of his words, but he said he would continue to review the case. And some of his aides strongly criticized media coverage.

Joe Lockhart, the White House press secretary, said, there was "a very difficult climate that was generated in this town when this story came out, a climate generated by some very explosive and near hysterical investigative reporting, a climate that was fueled by explosive comments from political leaders, including members of Congress."

Aides said they had not heard the president express concern about the media's role. But they said Mr. Clinton has expressed concern for weeks, in private, about whether Dr. Lee was treated fairly.

Today, at the urging of aides, Mr. Clinton stressed the seriousness of the charges against Dr. Lee.

"He has admitted to a very serious national security violation," he said. "And the most important thing now is that he keep his commitment to the government to work hard to figure out what happened to those tapes, what was on the tapes, to reconstitute all the information."

Under the plea deal, Dr. Lee agreed to tell prosecutors why he downloaded the nuclear secrets onto computer tapes, exactly what he did with the information and whether anyone else had seen it.

The judge in the case, James A. Parker of Federal District Court in Albuquerque, said on Wednesday that Dr. Lee deserved an apology for harsh treatment that had "embarrassed our entire nation."

Mr. Clinton reiterated his doubts today about whether officials had been sensitive enough to prohibitions against the "abuse of executive authority" when they sought to keep Dr. Lee in jail without bail.

Sitting beside Mr. Vajpayee in the Oval Office, Mr. Clinton offered a primer on jurisprudence.

"In America, we have a pretty high standard, and we should, under our Constitution, against pretrial detention," the president said. "You have to meet a pretty high bar. I had no reason to believe that that bar had not been met. I think the fact that there was, that in a short time frame there was an argument that he needed to stay in jail without bail, and then all of a sudden there was a plea agreement which was inconsistent with the claims that they made. I thought that raises the question, not just for Chinese-Americans, but for all Americans, about whether we have been as careful as we ought to be about pretrial detention."

White House aides said Mr. Clinton was not directing his criticism at any officials in particular, including Ms. Reno and Director Louis J. Freeh of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Asked if the president was trying to signal that he wanted the resignations of Ms. Reno or Mr. Freeh, Jake Siewert, a White House deputy press secretary said: "No. The president said he had some questions about the handling of this. He's not going to prejudge anything. He will wait until his questions are answered."

White House aides said Mr. Clinton has full confidence in Ms. Reno. As for Mr. Freeh, with whom the president has clashed, they said Mr. Clinton's views have not changed since former White House press secretary Mike McCurry said in 1997, "I think the president has great confidence that Louis Freeh is leading that agency as best he can."

In his criticism at today's White House briefing, Mr. Lockhart did not specify news organizations or members of Congress. But Mr. Siewert, who will replace Mr. Lockhart as press secretary next month, later singled out The New York Times.

Mr. Siewert complained about the newspaper's first article in March 1999 that reported federal investigators' suspicions about an unidentified computer scientist at Los Alamos who had traveled to Hong Kong. Mr. Siewert pointed out that F.B.I. agents used the article, which quoted a central intelligence official who compared the investigation to the Rosenberg spy case - to scare Dr. Lee during his interrogation.

"Reading the New York Times coverage of this case is a particularly surreal experience," Mr. Siewert said. "It's as though William Randolph Hearst were lamenting the human toll caused by the Spanish- American War."

In a written statement responding to the White House's complaints, Bill Keller, the managing editor of The Times, said:

"We are looking back at the full run of our coverage to see how it stands up in light of the latest developments and whether there are lessons to be learned. For now, I'll say this much: We didn't launch an investigation or prosecution of Wen Ho Lee. We reported aggressively on an investigation and prosecution launched by the administration. Many of our sources were within the administration. We reported on the suspicions of those who favored prosecuting Mr. Lee, but we also reported on holes in that investigation, on the allegations of racial profiling, on the doubts about the potential danger of the downloaded material, and on the political motivations of the players."

Asked whether they believed news coverage affected prosecutorial decisions, Mr. Lockhart referred questions to the Justice Department. "That would be a question you would have to put to the prosecutors," he said.

"We didn't pursue this case based on the hype," responded Myron Marlin, a spokesman for the Justice Department. "We pursued it because Dr. Lee created his own personal library of our nation's nuclear secrets."

---

Wen Ho Lee Case: Still More Questions

New York Times
September 16, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/opinion/L16WEN.html

To the Editor:

Re "Nuclear Scientist Set Free After Plea in Secrets Case; Judge Attacks U.S. Conduct" (front page, Sept. 14):

The Wen Ho Lee case raises some troubling questions: Is there really such a thing as a scientific secret? Application of the methodology of science to investigate the nature of physical reality by one party or another must sooner or later give the same answer, whether in Washington, Moscow or Timbuktu.

How much scientific and technical information is classified to hide it from the American public in order to cover up failures, boondoggles or to give us a false sense of superiority and security? Would not more openness result in greater real security? We are entitled to know the answers. After all, we pay for the work.

RALPH SIMON Vienna, Va., Sept. 14, 2000
The writer is a retired scientist.

---------

President Calls for Review of Lee Case

Washington Post
Saturday , September 16, 2000 ; A04
By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15014-2000Sep15.html

President Clinton called yesterday for an "analysis" to determine whether the government was justified in holding nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee without bail for nine months.

"Whenever we hold anybody in prison . . . for a long period of time before being charged and convicted and sentenced, we need to hit a very high threshold," he said. "I think there ought to be an analysis of whether or not that threshold was crossed."

Clinton elaborated on his view of the case a day after rebuking his own departments of Justice and Energy for their handling of Lee, who was accused of copying and removing classified information from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Lee was freed Wednesday on a plea bargain in which he admitted guilt on just one count of what had been a 59-count indictment. The government's case all but collapsed after an FBI agent recanted part of his testimony and experts from Los Alamos disputed the importance of the information that Lee copied onto computer tapes.

Lawyers for the 60-year-old Taiwanese American scientist say he will press ahead with a civil lawsuit alleging that officials at Justice, Energy and the FBI violated his privacy rights by identifying him as an espionage suspect in press leaks last year. He was never charged with espionage.

A Senate Judiciary subcommittee already is planning a Sept. 25 hearing on the Lee case. The panel, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), began its probe a year ago.

At that time, its focus was on why the FBI and the Justice Department had not been more aggressive in pursuing Chinese espionage and why, in particular, Justice officials had denied the FBI permission to put a wiretap on Lee. Now, the committee is expected to question whether Lee's treatment was too harsh. Clinton said he doubted that Lee's ethnicity played any role in the prosecution. "Let's look at the facts here," the president said, noting that Lee "has admitted to a very serious national security violation."

Despite what he has called his long-standing concerns about Lee's detention, Clinton said it would not have been appropriate for him to intervene. "This was handled in the appropriate, normal way," he said.

Briefing reporters later, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said that he did not know what form the review requested by the president would take but that it would focus on the "narrow question" of the threshold for holding someone without bail.

He repeated Clinton's assertion that the White House properly took a "limited" and "hands-off" role, adding that if Clinton had intervened, the press would have had "a field day" reporting it as "politically motivated."

Lockhart also said the media and Congress deserve a share of blame for creating "a climate generated by some very explosive and near-hysterical investigative reporting, a climate that was fueled by explosive comments from political leaders, including members of Congress."

--------

Presidential Buck-Passing

Washington Post
Saturday, September 16, 2000 ; A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16556-2000Sep15.html

WITH HIS public hand-wringing about his administration's treatment of Wen Ho Lee, President Clinton asks us to see him as one more commentator troubled by the case, rather than as the head of the government that brought it. He is right to be troubled. The facts on the record so far portray Mr. Lee either as a relatively minor offender who was dramatically overprosecuted or as a serious miscreant who has been granted an excessively lenient deal. Mr. Clinton may not know, any more than we do, whether either of these images is correct. But he is in a better position to find out precisely how his administration erred. Rather than pretending that the Justice Department that brought this case is some kind of fourth branch of government, he should take responsibility--either by defending the prosecution, as FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno have done, or by ordering an inquiry into whatever wrongs he thinks were committed.

Given that the Wen Ho Lee case remains in progress--he has yet to explain what he did with the nuclear secrets he downloaded--the president's conflicting comments in the past two days seem inappropriate. Nor is their meaning clear, save that he is steadily veering from responsibility. On Thursday, he said that he "always had reservations about the claims that were being made denying [Mr. Lee] bail" and had taken "those claims on good faith by the people in the government that were making them." Yesterday, he called his "always" into question when he said he had "no reason to believe" that the high bar required to deny someone bail "had not been met" until the unraveling of the case. If indeed he had reservations from the beginning, why did he not act on them? The president ordinarily should not intervene in a criminal case. But this was not just a criminal case. It was a case involving national security in which his national security adviser, director of intelligence and other close advisers were involved, presumably weighing issues such as the magnitude of the national security threat Mr. Lee posed.

Mr. Clinton also said in response to a question Thursday that he would "look at" whether clemency was appropriate in Mr. Lee's case. But in yesterday's further back-pedal he described Mr. Lee's crime as "a very serious national security violation" about which "the American people shouldn't be confused." Why then would he consider clemency?

Mr. Lee's case presents numerous questions. There are allegations of racial profiling, of prosecutorial misjudgments, of undue congressional pressure. There is concern that China's true source of clandestine information remains at large. Yesterday Mr. Clinton called for an "analysis" of what his spokesman called the "narrow question" of whether Mr. Lee should have been released on bail. Mr. Clinton should go further. More useful than his shifting observations on the case would be an order to the Justice Department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility to examine the entire handling of the case.

-------- us nuc politics

Mayor Undergoes Cancer Treatment

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/nyregion/16MAYO.html

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani had radioactive seeds implanted in his prostate gland early yesterday at Mount Sinai Medical Center, then appeared six hours later at a news conference with the relief and good humor of a patient who had gone through a cancer treatment that was not as bad as he had feared.

"You go through any form of a surgical procedure, you get a little tense and you get a little nervous," Mr. Giuliani said at an afternoon news conference attended by his doctors, his senior advisers and Judith Nathan, his close friend. "And once it's over, you say to yourself, `Gee, that was easier than I thought it would be.' "

The mayor entered the hospital at 6:30 a.m. for the hourlong procedure, which began at 6:55 a.m. and was performed by his urologist, Stanley M. Kirschenbaum, and his radiation oncologist, Richard A. Stock. While Dr. Kirschenbaum monitored with ultrasound, Dr. Stock implanted 90 radioactive palladium metal pellets, each the size of a grain of rice, in the mayor's prostate. Mr. Giuliani was given a local anesthetic, numbing him from the waist down, as well as a mild sedative.

Both doctors said the procedure went well and that Mr. Giuliani's prognosis was excellent. The mayor, they said, listened to a favorite compact disc that filled the operating room with the voices of the tenors Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras.

Mr. Giuliani was taken to the hospital's recovery room by 8:30 a.m. He remained there until shortly before 2 p.m., when he walked easily into the news conference, took a seat at a table between his two doctors and immediately began a patter of jokes and light-hearted remarks. "The time that I spent this morning between 8 and 9 was not nearly as painful as most of my morning meetings," he said. "And there was less fighting between all the doctors in the operating room and my deputy mayors, commissioners, assistants and the mayor. So this was actually a much quieter and more peaceful morning than I usually have."

He also gestured to the hospital identification band on his wrist and said: "This is in case I start wandering around tonight. If I'm caught wandering in Carl Schurz Park, they know where to return me."

After the news conference, the mayor left the hospital to spend the night at Gracie Mansion.

The mayor appeared more relaxed and open about his cancer treatment than he has in months. He said for the first time that sometimes he experienced up to eight hot flashes a day because of his hormone therapy, a preliminary cancer treatment to reduce his levels of testosterone that began in May. "Some days I'll have serious ones, and some days they'll just be - you get a little sweaty," Mr. Giuliani said. "And they're bearable. I mean, it's not an unbearable situation. They're just annoying."

He also said that the continuing hormone therapy had at times made him unusually fatigued. "Maybe every six or seven days, I would get a day in which I was extraordinarily tired," Mr. Giuliani said. "The other days I was normal or maybe even more energetic than normal."

The seeds are the second phase of what the mayor described as his three-phase cancer treatment, with hormone therapy as the first and external radiation as the third. The goal of the second and third phases is to eradicate the cancer.

Mr. Giuliani's doctors said that after two months, Mr. Giuliani would begin receiving doses of radiation from a radiation beam aimed at his prostate for 15 minutes a day, Monday through Friday, for five weeks. The mayor's hormone therapy, which consists of an injection and pill taken once a month, will continue for three or four more months. Last month, Mr. Giuliani said that the hormone therapy had reduced the levels of prostate-specific antigen in his blood to small amounts.

Mr. Giuliani said he expected to return to work on Monday or Tuesday and that he had no specific plans for the weekend but would "play it by ear." His staff said the mayor would be resting Saturday and Sunday at Gracie Mansion. Mr. Giuliani's estranged wife, Donna Hanover, and the couple's two children, who are living at Gracie Mansion, will spend the weekend in Atlanta at the wedding of one of Mr. Giuliani's cousins.

"I'm doing everything possible under the circumstances to help him," Ms. Hanover said at a news conference at the Plaza Hotel yesterday after receiving an award for her support of breast cancer research. "I'm also keeping life as normal as possible for our children." She added, "We are grateful for all the prayers that are being said for Rudy's recovery."

Mr. Giuliani said that he had spoken by phone to his children, Andrew, 14, and Caroline, 11, after the procedure. "I explained to them that I'm doing very well," he said. "I described this to them as something like going to a procedure in a doctor's office, because I was pretty sure I was going to get out today."

Mr. Giuliani's doctors said the seeds in the mayor's prostate would give off radiation over the next two months, and as a precaution they have told him that he should stay at least three feet away from pregnant women. They also have told the mayor that he should not get close to children 2 years old or younger.

"You wouldn't take a baby, plop it down on your lap and watch TV for an hour," Dr. Stock said in an interview. "If you had a baby for a second, really it wouldn't make much of a difference. But we're just very cautious in general for all patients."

Such restrictions would have posed considerable complications in campaigning had Mr. Giuliani remained as the Republican candidate in the Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yesterday, the mayor said again that he had almost no regrets in abandoning the race on May 19, when he cited his prostate cancer as the reason for withdrawing. "I couldn't have run it the way I would have wanted to," Mr. Giuliani said. "I'm incapable of running a campaign and being distracted." He added that "on those days when I have to take a nap for half a day, or I feel extra tired," he would either have taken the nap and felt guilty or have tried to campaign "and probably not done a good job."

But Mr. Giuliani said he did feel a twinge of regret while watching Wednesday's debate between Mrs. Clinton and Representative Rick A. Lazio, the man who took his place. "I was thinking, `Well, gee, if I were doing the debate, I would do it this way, I would do it that way,' " Mr. Giuliani said. But he declined to say more. "I'm not going to tell you what I have done differently," he said cheerfully. "It's all in your head, really."

Mr. Giuliani's decision about his treatment has taken nearly five months. When Mr. Giuliani announced on April 27 that he had an early form of prostate cancer, he said that he and his doctors would make a decision about treatment within two weeks. But by the time he withdrew from the Senate race on May 19, Mr. Giuliani said that he had been tortured by indecision and needed more time. As recently as Aug. 31, Mr. Giuliani said he still had not made a final decision.

Yesterday, Mr. Giuliani said he "made the decision to do it this way 100 percent about two or three weeks ago." Although most men his age, 56, opt for surgical removal of the prostate, Mr. Giuliani said that his choice "made the most sense for me."

Although surgery has a high cure rate, it can also cause impotence and incontinence. Many doctors say that radiation seeds may affect sexual function less, but their long-term cure rates are not as well known.

"It's a very complex issue, and the mayor really took his time, and did a lot of research and probably knows more than we do at this point about prostate cancer," Dr. Stock said yesterday. "My feeling is that radiation tends to offer some improvement in potency preservation."

Mr. Giuliani extensively thanked his City Hall staff by name for their support. He also turned to look at Ms. Nathan, who was standing nearby. "I want to thank Judith for being here," Mr. Giuliani said. "Thank you."

Then the mayor continued the news conference after his press secretary, Sunny Mindel, cut it off.

"Any questions? On other subjects?" Mr. Giuliani said, and then launched unprovoked into an analysis of the Clinton-Lazio debate. "Frankly, there's not a thing that I could have done better in that debate," he said. "In fact, I'm not sure I would have done it as well."

---

Side Effects in Therapy Are Fewer With Pellets

New York Times
By SANDEEP JAUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/nyregion/16SEED.html

Like other prostate cancer patients deciding on treatment, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani had to weigh both medical and personal factors. In choosing to have radioactive pellets implanted in his prostate yesterday morning, he selected an effective treatment with far fewer side effects than surgery.

But the procedure, called brachytherapy and carried out with hollow needles inserted into the prostate, offers less assurance of a cure than the removal of the prostate.

"People choose brachytherapy because it is less disruptive to day-to- day activities than either surgery or external beam radiation," said Dr. E. Darracott Vaughan Jr., chairman of urology at New York Weill Cornell Center in Manhattan. "You walk in, get it done, and then you go home."

Patients often can return to work within a couple of days, as Mr. Giuliani says he plans to do.

In addition, no surgical incision is required, and the risk of sexual dysfunction is probably lower than that for surgery, which can injure critical nerves in the pelvis. Experts say the procedure involves almost no risk of urinary incontinence, a problem that occurs in approximately 60 percent of patients who have surgery.

"If a small degree of incontinence is devastating for a patient, you're not doing them any favor by curing their cancer but destroying their quality of life," said Dr. Mendel Shemtov, an assistant professor of urology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

In addition, prostate removal usually requires a patient to spend several days in the hospital and to restrict activities like heavy lifting for several weeks. External beam radiation, another option, usually requires patients to receive treatment almost every day for six to eight weeks, and their doctors usually insist that they stay close to home.

While prostate removal appears to be more successful in eliminating the cancer, the pellet procedure can still be considered highly effective, according to Dr. Vaughan, at least based on data. A recent study of 219 patients who received the pellets showed that 70 percent had no evidence of cancer after 10 years. The results of that study, conducted at the Northwest Prostate Institute in Seattle, were published in July in the journal Cancer. According to Dr. Vaughan, the rates for similar patients 10 years after surgery are 85 to 90 percent.

For the pellet procedure, which is done under local anesthesia, about 50 to 100 radioactive pellets are implanted into the prostate. The pellets, each about the size of a small rice grain, are passed through hollow needles inserted through the skin between the scrotum and rectum and guided into place with the help of X- rays and ultrasound. The exact location of the pellets is decided through imaging studies, using CAT scans and M.R.I., and computer calculations.

While the mayor was told that he should not come into close contact with pregnant women or small children because of the radiation, Dr. Datta Nori, chief of radiation oncology at Weill Cornell, said that there was virtually no risk to other people because the radiation from the pellets extended only about half an inch.

The amount of radiation delivered depends on the particular radioactive isotope. Isotopes of iodine, palladium and gold are commonly used. Mr. Giuliani received palladium pellets. Palladium's half-life - the time it takes for half its radiation to be emitted - is 17 days, while iodine's is 60 days, meaning that palladium delivers its radiation much faster.

After the pellets stop being radioactive, Mr. Giuliani will receive radiation treatment from an external source, which improves long-term survival rates, his doctors said.

According to Dr. Nori, a beam of radiation from a machine is directed at the prostate to treat any cancer in the surrounding tissue. Many patients get external radiation treatments after brachytherapy. If radiation treatment fails, surgery is still an option.

Mr. Giuliani will continue to take Lupron, a drug that inhibits the production of sex hormones that stimulate prostate growth, including testosterone. The drug and its counterparts are often used as a first-line treatment. Prostate cancer can, however, become resistant to hormonal modulation after a few years.

Experts say that brachytherapy is effective only for patients with less aggressive cancer that has not spread outside the prostate. But they warned about drawing any conclusions about the mayor's disease based upon the treatment he had selected.

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

Flawed Missile Defense

New York Times
September 16, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/opinion/L16MIS.html

To the Editor:

William Safire (column, Sept. 11) writes as if the technical capabilities of the proposed national missile defense system were well established through rigorous testing, and that President Clinton was simply appeasing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia when he decided to defer deployment of the system.

However, the interceptor's performance in flight tests has been dismal. There is no basis for confidence that the system would be capable of protecting the United States from even a single nuclear missile launched by any nation. Under the circumstances, it makes no sense to damage our relations with Russia, China and our allies by rushing ahead with such an immature system.

PETER TENENBAUM San Francisco, Sept. 12, 2000

----------

Physicist William Nierenberg Dies

Washington Post
Saturday, September 16, 2000 ; B06
Los Angeles Times
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17629-2000Sep16.html

William A. Nierenberg, 81, a theoretical physicist who was known for his work in magnetic resonance and low-energy nuclear physics and who served as director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1965 to 1986, died of cancer Sept. 10 at his home in San Diego.

He shepherded Scripps's Deep Sea Drilling Project and helped establish the North Pacific Experiment to study the interaction between the upper waters of the North Pacific and the atmosphere, contributing to a greater understanding of how the world's climate is driven.

Under Dr. Nierenberg, scientists at Scripps, based in La Jolla, Calif., explored some of the deepest parts of the world's seas, discovered unusual life forms at deep-sea hot springs and warned of the growing dangers of the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

For many years, he was a physics professor at the University of California at Berkeley and was affiliated with the university's Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

His national and international service began with his work on the Manhattan Project that helped produce the atomic bomb during World War II. From 1960 to 1962, he was assistant secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He also worked with the Navy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, UNESCO, the National Academy of Sciences and the White House, where he had advised every president since John F. Kennedy.

In the 1970s, he was appointed chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere.

He also served on the National Science Board and was a delegate to Law of the Sea conferences five times.

He spoke so fast--and in several languages--that it always seemed he was running out of time. His penchant for abruptly shifting topics made him seem impatient, which was sometimes true. Mostly, he was eager to try new ideas. Tall and intense, he also was known for the plastic pocket pen protector that went everywhere with him.

Dr. Nierenberg, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, was born in New York and began earning his own way at age 14. He studied at the University of Paris, then graduated in 1939 with a physics degree from what is now the City University of New York. He received his physics doctorate from Columbia University, where he studied under the Nobel Prize-winning physicist I.I. Rabi.

During his World War II Manhattan Project service, his work in magnetic resonance led to his becoming a section leader. He taught at the University of Michigan before joining the Berkeley faculty in 1950.

"He was an excellent scientist, a brilliant experimentalist in physics," said Walter Munk, a professor of oceanography at Scripps who helped recruit Dr. Nierenberg to the institution.

Munk and others credit Dr. Nierenberg, who was Scripps's longest-tenured director, with turning the country's largest and oldest oceanographic facility into an international force in a variety of scientific disciplines.

He is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Edith Myerson of San Diego; two children; and three grandchildren.

---

Activist Shirley S. Anderson

Washington Post
Saturday , September 16, 2000 ; B06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17610-2000Sep16.html

Shirley Smith Anderson, 73, a social and political activist whose specialties included women's issues, died Sept. 14 at Georgetown University Hospital of complications related to lymphoma.

Mrs. Anderson was a former executive director of the National Women's Committee for Civil Rights, the founder of a news syndicate that featured commentary from prominent women on economic and social trends, and a former co-chair of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Mrs. Anderson, a resident of Washington, was born in Detroit and graduated from George Washington University. She did graduate work at the Georgetown School of Languages and Linguistics and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

From 1952 to 1956, she was a State Department cultural officer in Tangier, Morocco; Nairobi; and Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, Zaire.

She later received a master's degree in political science at Boston University, where she specialized in United Nations trusteeship issues in Africa.

From 1959 to 1963, Mrs. Anderson was director of the Women's Africa Committee at the African American Institute in New York. In 1962, she participated in Freedom Rides to Mississippi, where she was arrested and jailed at Parchman Prison for about a month. The following year, she came to Washington as executive director of the National Women's Committee for Civil Rights. In 1964, she joined the Franklin Book Project, which launched publishing enterprises in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

In 1965, she married Edward L. Anderson Jr. After their divorce in 1974, Mrs. Anderson founded Princeton Features, a New Jersey-based operation that for 10 years syndicated feature commentaries from prominent women.

She served on the board of Operation Crossroads Africa from 1968 to 1972. She was co-chair of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers in 1971 and 1972.

In 1983, Mrs. Anderson became executive director of the Buffett Foundation, focusing on population issues and nuclear arms control. She returned to Washington in 1986 as vice president of the Population Institute.

Since 1987, she had been a fundraising consultant to several organizations, including Population Services International, the Capitol Hill Group Ministry and the White House Project, which promoted serious thought about a female president. She created the Anderson Collection of sculpture from Zimbabwe to support her philanthropic fundraising in 1992.

Mrs. Anderson was a member of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Washington.

Survivors include two sons, David Warren Anderson of Seattle and Steven Bradley Anderson of Davis, Calif.; and a brother, Ward Lanier Smith of Phoenix.

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

-------- colombia

Colombia Peace Talks Nearly Paralyzed-Rebel Chief

Yahoo News
Saturday September 16 4:34 PM ET updated 11:00 PM ET Sep 16
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000916/wl/colombia_rebels_dc_1.html

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's top rebel leader warned on Saturday that peace talks with the government were virtually paralyzed over a U.S.-backed anti-drug offensive that guerrillas say will target them.

``No one doubts that the so-called Plan Colombia is for counter-insurgency,'' Manuel Marulanda, the top leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), said in statement posted on the Internet.

The United States has pledged $1.3 billion in mostly military aid to support President Andres Pastrana's broad program known as Plan Colombia to fight drug trafficking, revive the economy and seek peace with leftist rebels.

The bulk of the U.S. funds will go toward training and equipping anti-narcotics battalions charged with retaking vast areas of southern Colombia that are planted with coca crops and controlled by the FARC.

Colombia is by far the world's largest exporter of cocaine and is a growing supplier of heroin to the United States.

The FARC earns an estimated $500 million dollars a year by taxing growers of coca leaf, the raw material used in making cocaine, and by charging ``protection'' money to traffickers.

Marulanda blamed the U.S. aid for the current problems in the peace process with the government.

``The Americans have always been behind the obstacles in the attempts to seek peace in Colombia,'' Marulanda said in the statement.

``The efforts we have made are being lost because once again the Colombian elite has thrown itself in the arms of the American power,'' he said.

Peace Talks At Sensitive Stage

The 17,000-strong FARC, Latin America's oldest and most powerful insurgency, opened peace talks with the government in January 1999 in a Switzerland-sized safe haven in southern Colombia, but the negotiations have yet to yield any concrete results.

Government officials agree that the peace talks have hit a sensitive stage but claim the problem lies in the FARC's use of their safe haven as a virtual rebel state.

The latest controversy was sparked last week by the brief hijacking of a domestic flight by a presumed FARC member who forced the pilot to land in the rebel zone.

The FARC said the hijacker, who was being transferred by prison guards for a hearing, was now in their custody and they would decide whether to hand him over to government authorities.

``Our position is that (the FARC) have to hand over the person who arrived in the safe haven because this is not a zone to commit crimes, it is a zone for negotiations,'' Pastrana said.

The government's top peace negotiator, Camilo Gomez , was due to meet with FARC leaders on Monday to discuss the handover of the prisoner.

The latest hurdles in the peace process come as the FARC and government prepare to reveal their proposals for a cease-fire although analysts say the two sides are so far apart on the issue that there is little hope for an end to hostilities any time soon.

Colombia's three-decade-old conflict has cost 35,000 lives in the last 10 years alone.

-------- drug war

Antidrug Program's End Stirs Up Salt Lake City

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/national/16DARE.html

SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 14 - For all the decisions Ross C. Anderson has made in his first year as mayor of Salt Lake City, none has caused a bigger furor than this one: Over the summer, he terminated the city's involvement with the antidrug program in public schools known as DARE, saying that it was ineffective and a poor substitute for programs that he contends do more to discourage drug use by young people.

Reaction was swift. While many residents applauded the decision, Mr. Anderson was criticized by parents, teachers, Republicans, even fellow Democrats, including the chairman of the state party, Meg Holbrook, and the Democratic candidate for governor, Bill Orton.

"I know this is a net political loss for me," Mr. Anderson said in an interview this week about his decision to eliminate DARE - Drug Abuse Resistance Education - after it had been in Salt Lake City for 10 years. "But DARE is a complete fraud on the American people, and has actually done a lot of harm by preventing the implementation of more effective programs."

Founded 17 years ago in Los Angeles as a tool to discourage children from using illegal drugs, tobacco products and alcohol, DARE classes are now part of the curriculums in 10,000 school districts in the United States and at schools in 54 other countries, the organization said. Glenn Levant, DARE's president and founding director, says a growing number of districts are using the program, despite a handful that drop it each year.

But in making Salt Lake one of the largest cities to cut off financial support for the program, Mr. Anderson has joined a small but vocal group of elected officials who argue that many of the current strategies in the nation's war on drugs have done little to reduce the supply or demand for illegal drugs.

These officials include several governors - Gary E. Johnson of New Mexico, a Republican; Benjamin J. Cayetano of Hawaii, a Democrat; and Jesse Ventura of Minnesota, of the Reform Party - as well as mayors, state lawmakers and federal judges who have argued for and helped change a variety of laws to recognize drug use as a health issue, rather than a criminal justice issue.

As a result, more states are expanding methadone maintenance programs and making it easier for people with drug addictions and AIDS to obtain sterile needles. In addition, voters in seven states and the District of Columbia have approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes, even though the federal government had threatened to prosecute doctors who prescribe it.

Mayor Anderson and Governor Johnson, among others, have called for decriminalizing the use of marijuana. As a measure of the support for that sentiment, voters in Alaska and California's Mendocino County will consider November ballot initiatives that would do just that. If the initiatives are passed, the two governments will become the first in which the use of marijuana cannot be prosecuted, although it remains unclear if federal drug laws would take precedence.

In any case, the two initiatives are the first of their kind since 1986, when Oregon voters defeated a similar measure by a narrow vote.

"Since Jan. 1, we have had more victories for drug-prevention reform than the past 20 years," said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center Drug Policy Foundation, a New York organization dedicated to creating new drug policies.

Utah is an unlikely place for a change in drug policy. It is so conservative that Gov. Michael O. Leavitt, a Republican, was booed at his state party convention three months ago for supporting a measure that would have denied people the right to carry their guns into churches and schools. In addition, state lawmakers this year defeated a bill that would have allowed public schools to teach sex education.

For his decision to end the drug program, in which police officers visit classrooms an hour a week for 17 weeks at a cost to the city of $289,000 a year, Mr. Anderson said he had been branded by his critics as "soft on crime." This, he said, was despite the fact that he had encouraged the superintendent of Salt Lake public schools, Darlene Robles, to select an alternative program for the city's 25,000 students.

Mr. Anderson said he based his decision on studies that showed that children who had been exposed to DARE were no less likely to use drugs later in life than children who had not. Investigating the effectiveness of the program and other school antidrug initiatives, Mr. Anderson said he had found that "to my amazing dismay, all the peer-reviewed research shows that DARE is a complete waste of money and, even worse, fritters away the opportunity to implement a good drug-prevention program in schools."

In defending the program, Mr. Levant said Mr. Anderson had ignored the short-term benefits of the program, primarily that it discouraged drug use by elementary school children. He also argued that in those school districts where the program was also taught in middle and high schools, the antidrug message was reinforced.

"Just to say memories of elementary school children fade and that's why the program has no long-term benefits is unfair," Mr. Levant said.

Kathy Stewart, a police detective in Lehi, Utah, and president of the Utah DARE Officers Association, conceded that long-term benefits might be difficult to prove. But she said the interaction between police officers and children in a school setting fulfilled an important component of community policing, allowing officers to build trust with many more children than they would in chance meetings on the street.

Ms. Robles, the superintendent, said she had taken a neutral position on Mr. Anderson's order but, in compliance with his decision, had put together a committee of parents and community leaders that was reviewing options for antidrug programs.

Mr. Anderson predicted that once city residents embraced an alternative program that might be more effective, criticism would fade.

"I'm not interested in killing a program that works," he said. "But just look at the research. My responsibility is to make sure our kids have the best drug-prevention program there is. I think that once people in Salt Lake City understand what it is I'm doing, most of them will support me."

---

Commissioner to Review Flood of Minor Narcotics Arrests

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik is conducting an intensive review of the Police Department's antidrug efforts, focusing on how tens of millions of dollars in overtime are being spent and on the high percentage of minor arrests being made by narcotics detectives, according to several senior law enforcement officials.

The officials, who are familiar with Mr. Kerik's review, have said he is concerned that misdemeanor narcotics arrests outnumber felony arrests by three to one, an indication that a large number of people charged with drug crimes serve little or no time in jail.

Mr. Kerik, who served in the department as a narcotics detective for four years, is also reviewing the process by which investigators in the Narcotics Division are promoted to the rank of detective from the rank of police officer, the officials said. Mr. Kerik is concerned that under current department policy, those who fail to perform and produce are promoted alongside those who do.

"He used to be an undercover cop going out to make these kinds of arrests," said one senior law enforcement official who has had discussions with Mr. Kerik about his review. "Certainly he is aware that the situation is different now." The official noted that narcotics enforcement efforts in recent years had driven many dealers off the streets and inside buildings, but added, "It's hard for him to believe it's so different that the productivity is so low when it comes to meaningful arrests."

The official said that Mr. Kerik, who was the commissioner of correction overseeing the city's jails before he was named New York City's 40th police commissioner in August, saw the flood of misdemeanor narcotics arrests when he ran the Department of Correction.

Mr. Kerik has emphasized that he believes a focus on quality-of-life offenses has helped win record declines in crime, but the officials familiar with his thinking have said he is concerned that some detectives are failing to produce higher-quality cases, like arresting drug dealers.

"His question is, are some people making easy, quick, low-level collars when they could be making felonies," said another senior law enforcement official familiar with the new commissioner's thinking. "So, with a healthy level of skepticism, he is reviewing all of this."

The number of misdemeanor narcotics arrests has been increasing for more than five years, and many police commanders say that pressure within the department to push up arrest numbers has led to a flood of minor drug charges. In fact, since 1993, according to the recently released Mayor's Management Report, narcotics misdemeanors have climbed 295 percent, while narcotics felonies over the same period have decreased 1.1 percent. In fiscal 2000, felony arrests for narcotics dropped 10 percent.

The changes over the last year, too, have been substantial. During the first six months of this year, Mr. Kerik's predecessor, Howard Safir, poured more than $40 million of police overtime into a special antinarcotics program called Operation Condor, an effort to turn around the city's rising murder rate, which in 1999 and the beginning of this year was inching up.

For the first three months of this year, Operation Condor put additional undercover narcotics buy-and- bust teams out on the streets in targeted neighborhoods. Starting in May, the overtime funds were spent on additional uniformed patrols and quality-of-life enforcement.

The result was a significant increase in misdemeanor drug arrests, which include charges ranging from marijuana possession and sale to the possession of the crack residue that is often found in a crack pipe. In the first six months of this year, the police made 60,950 such arrests and 19,787 felony narcotics arrests, according to statistics from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. During that period in 1999, the police drug arrests included 39,260 misdemeanors drug and 21,604 felonies.

Mr. Kerik earlier this week praised Operation Condor but said he was reviewing the program. "I'm looking at it," he said in a meeting with reporters on Monday. "It's been a good program. It's produced good results. How much more do we want to do? Do we want to look at the way it operates? Yes. Am I going to do anything with it now? Not now."

Narcotics commanders have said that Mr. Kerik has ordered the department's Quality Assurance Division to request a series of documents from each borough's Narcotics Division in order to assess the quality of the work being done.

One of his concerns is that some detectives were found to be making just a few undercover drug buys a month that led to felony arrests, but were collecting overtime because of other, low-level arrests.

Commenting on Commissioner Kerik's review, Assistant Chief Michael Tiffany, who heads Bronx Narcotics, said: "I think it's wonderful. If you have limited resources, we should be focused on the people who are not only involved in the narcotics trade, but also the attendant violence."

Several senior officials also pointed to Mr. Kerik's selection last week of George F. Brown to head the department's Organized Crime Control Bureau, which oversees narcotics, saying the choice was based on Mr. Brown's reputation as an aggressive manager.

Mr. Kerik is also seeking to develop management tools to measure the productivity of the department's narcotics efforts, matching overtime and felony-versus-misdemeanor arrest tallies for different parts of the city, according to one senior police official.

The new commissioner hopes to make some changes to the department's Compstat process, which tracks some measures of activity, like reported crime, arrests, summonses and overtime. But Compstat, unlike his TEAMS management program at the Correction Department, does not provide him with the wide variety of information he feels would better enable him to make the adjustments he needs, the official said.

-------- myanmar

Suu Kyi Pledges to Defy Burmese Junta

Washington Post
Saturday, September 16, 2000 ; A14
WORLD IN BRIEF Compiled by Virginia Hamill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16605-2000Sep15.html

RANGOON, Burma--Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi emerged from two weeks of virtual house arrest and promised to keep challenging Burma's military government.

The government had barred her from conducting political activities outside the capital, and the offices of her National League for Democracy party were closed and searched. Still, Suu Kyi promised to pursue democracy for her country.

"Stop us if you dare," she told the country's military rulers, speaking at a news conference shortly after the party headquarters reopened. "I shall be traveling outside Rangoon within the next 10 days for party organizational work."

She did not say where she planned to go, but said it was "high time" the ruling junta stopped restricting political rights.

The military government announced Thursday that it was lifting restrictions against Suu Kyi and eight other party leaders who had been confined to their homes since Sept. 1. (Associated Press)

-------- russia

Four Russian troops killed in ambush

USA Today
09/16/00- Updated 05:55 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwssat03.htm

NAZRAN, Russia (AP) - Four Russian soldiers were killed when rebel fighters ambushed a military unit in central Chechnya in the second attack on a convoy in two days, an official said Saturday.

The convoy was fired upon Friday while moving through the Vedeno Gorge, a region that has seen heavy rebel activity since the start of the war, according to an official with the pro-Russian civilian government in Chechnya.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not have further casualty figures. The attack was one of 12 carried out by the rebels in the last 24 hours across Chechnya, the official said.

Six soldiers were killed Thursday when rebels ambushed a convoy.

Russian special forces were sent to the area of Friday's ambush and nearby villages were blocked off as troops searched for the attackers.

Rebel ambushes and checkpoint attacks have sapped the morale of Russian troops, though both sides have refrained from major offensives in recent weeks.

On Saturday, Russian helicopters rocketed the mountains of southern Chechnya. Russian forces also defused several remote control mines that rebels had planted along a main highway running west from the Chechen capital Grozny to the neighboring region of Ingushetia.

Russian officials are planning to return Chechnya's civilian government headquarters to Grozny from the nearby city of Gudermes. Rebels were trying to block the move, the civilian government official said Saturday.

Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the civilian government, sharply criticized the Russian military for its harsh action in Chechnya, including mass detentions as part of ''mopping-up'' operations.

''I spoke openly against the Chechen illegal armed formations because they terrorized the people, but the same people continue to suffer from the forces for whose protection they hoped so much,'' Kadyrov said in Gudermes, according to the Interfax news agency.

''Further employment of mass mopping-up operations can lead to serious negative consequences,'' Kadyrov was quoted as saying.

Russian forces returned to Chechnya last September after rebel raids on a neighboring region and four bomb blasts across Russia killed some 300 people. Russia blamed the blasts on Chechen rebels, though no one has been convicted of involvement.

On Saturday, residents of the city of Volgodonsk marked the one-year anniversary of the apartment bombing there that killed 17 people. That explosion was the last of the four and Russian troops entered Chechnya shortly after.

About 2,000 people attended a mourning gathering in the city. Konstantin Galkin, the city's chief psychiatrist, estimated that 10 to 15% of the city are still traumatized by the bombing.

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

U.N. Appeals for Food for N. Koreans

Washington Post
Saturday, September 16, 2000 ; A14
WORLD IN BRIEF Compiled by Virginia Hamill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16605-2000Sep15.html

ROME--The United Nations launched a worldwide appeal for $100 million to buy food for what it said were the 7.9 million hungry people in North Korea who are most at risk over the next four months.

The Rome-based World Food Program (WFP), the leading aid organization operating in the Stalinist state, said it needed 194,876 tons of food for the most vulnerable North Koreans--children, pregnant women and the elderly.

"Winters are particularly harsh in North Korea. Unless we get additional funding immediately, millions of people will face severe food shortages," WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini said in a statement. (Reuters)

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

Bush Visits Navy Town to Reinforce Commitment to Military

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By FRANK BRUNI
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/politics/16REPU.html

ALBUQUERQUE, Sept. 15 - Negotiators for Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore neared agreement today on formats for the three presidential debates, although "some sticking points" remain, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush said.

"There was substantial progress made toward an agreement that allows for more variety in the formats," the spokeswoman, Karen P. Hughes, said. "There are still some areas that have not been agreed to."

The Associated Press, citing unnamed sources close to the negotiations, reported tonight that the candidates had tentatively settled on three formats: one traditional two-lectern debate, one town hall meeting and one "talk show" forum.

The two campaigns met in Washington today and were to resume negotiations on Saturday. The talks began a day after Mr. Bush, ending weeks of resistance, accepted a schedule proposed by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. The proposal, agreed to earlier by Mr. Gore, calls for debates on Oct. 3 in Boston, Oct. 11 in Winston- Salem, N.C., and Oct. 17 in St. Louis.

At an appearance earlier today in San Diego, Mr. Bush said that he wanted to strengthen the armed forces, take better care of veterans and devote more resources to a full accounting of those who were missing in action.

The last item was the focus of a short speech here to mark Remembrance Day, which honors people who never came home from armed conflicts as well as those who were prisoners of war.

"Today we remember with special gratitude those who were held against their will by our enemies and those whose fate is still unknown," Mr. Bush said in Balboa Park, near downtown San Diego.

While Mr. Bush's remarks were guaranteed to resonate in a region where many military people live, they also reflected his campaign's belief that the issues of military readiness and stewardship of the armed forces would benefit Mr. Bush nationwide, especially among men.

He said that under President Clinton, the armed forces were suffering from an ambiguous sense of mission, inadequate resources and low morale.

Mr. Bush's strategy for trying to compete against Mr. Gore in California - and for trying to capture swing voters in crucial states - pivots on talking about traditionally Democratic issues in ways that cast him as a progressive, sensitive Republican.

And Mr. Bush did that today, visiting an elementary school where a majority of students did not speak English as a first language.

He told educators at Central Elementary School that there was an important federal role in education: to funnel money to state and local districts and hold those districts accountable for their use of the money.

----

US servicemen 'beat Kosovo civilians'
US peacekeepers were ill-prepared for duties, say officials

Saturday, 16 September, 2000,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_927000/927323.stm

Nine US servicemen have been disciplined for mistreating civilians in Kosovo, according to reports on the American television network ABC.

The men are said to have indecently assaulted women, punched and threatened civilians, and fired at a Red Cross vehicle.

The nine servicemen, from the 82nd Airborne Division, have been reduced in rank and suffered financial penalties, according to ABC, which says it has obtained an official report on the incidents.

A US army sergeant from the same division has already been jailed for life for raping and murdering 11-year-old Merita Shabiu in Kosovo.

The incidents involving the nine men are said to include one case where two Kosovo Albanian brothers were taken to an abandoned warehouse and punched in the stomach.

One then had a gun held to his head and was asked whether he wanted to die.

Classified information

All the incidents allegedly involving the nine men are believed to have taken place in the eastern town of Vitina in January.

ABC says the Pentagon is preparing to publish the report on Monday after removing classified information.

The men were serving with the international peacekeeping force sent to Kosovo after the withdrawal of Serbian forces.

According to the ABC report, the nine servicemen include four officers. They are said to based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

'Dehumanising'

There has been no comment from the Pentagon.

However, officials in Washington have told the Associated Press news agency that the report raises questions over the level of training which the men had received for a peacekeeping mission.

The sergeant who was jailed for rape and murder used part of the classified report during his trial to try to demonstrate that US peacekeepers were operating in a "dehumanising" atmosphere.

Sergeant Frank Ronghi was given a life sentence for the attack, with no possibility of parole.

----------

U.S. Warship Escorts East Timor Aid

Washington Post
Saturday, September 16, 2000 ; A14
WORLD IN BRIEF Compiled by Virginia Hamill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16605-2000Sep15.html

ASIA

DILI, East Timor--Thousands of U.S. Marines delivered food and shelter materials to devastated East Timor yesterday, escorted by a warship that stood ready in case of attacks by militia groups.

About 2,000 Marines and a similar number of sailors arrived in East Timorese waters Thursday aboard three ships. They were escorted by the guided missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill.

The U.S. Navy has delivered humanitarian aid to East Timor several times in the year since residents here voted overwhelmingly against remaining part of Indonesia. But this was the first time it was accompanied by a warship, which a Marine spokesman said was needed to protect against possible militia attacks. "If fired upon, we are allowed to fire back in kind," Lt. David Nevers said in Washington.

Planning for the visit began several months ago, but it coincides with a sharp escalation in violence on the divided island of Timor, which is governed by Indonesia in the west and a temporary U.N. administration in the east.

Anti-independence militias based in western Timor have clashed with U.N. peacekeepers in East Timor. Three U.N. aid workers and several paramilitary troops have been killed recently. (Associated Press)

---

Navy Acts to Cut Collisions

Washington Post
Saturday, September 16, 2000 ; A05
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Compiled from reports by staff writers Juliet Eilperin and Ellen Nakashima and by the Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16629-2000Sep15.html

Reacting to a spate of accidents at sea, the Navy's top admiral has ordered a "safety standdown" that requires all 300 warships in the fleet to take one full day to review safety and navigation procedures.

The Navy has had six major ship collisions--with other vessels or with the seabed--in the past year, the most recent on Tuesday, when the USS La Moure County, a Newport-class ship used to transport and land tanks, struck a reef off Chile while conducting a tank-landing operation.

-------- OTHER

Olympic Engineering

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By BRUCE STERLING
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/opinion/16STER.html

AUSTIN Tex. - Olympic athletes have been role models since the days of the ancient Greeks, representing the best that is physically achievable. Comely, brave young men, the champions of their city-states, would hurl their javelins down a playing field, instead of at one another. The winners were crowned with laurel and carried on the shoulders of an adoring populace, and all was as it should be.

But there's a wrinkle in the scheme now, and it gets bigger every time the Olympic Games roll around. We used to pluck athletes out of the fields of Arcadia, just as dewy and fresh as natural apples, but this is an era when our apples may be genetically modified.

We're achieving levels of performance far beyond those of the ancient Greeks and rather beyond the merely human. Growth hormone and blood- doping scandals have broken out repeatedly, but this is just the thin edge of the biomedical wedge.

If you want a human body to work to unhuman levels, you have to understand it fully. You have to measure and record everything, from the protein level to the gross mechanics of bones and tendons. Then, once you fully grasp the science of sports medicine, you can re-engineer that body, not with mere crude narcotics, but with the body's own software and hardware. Every four years is a further measure of this progress.

Not that we'll want to line people's bones with titanium so that they clank like Robocop or look like the pop- culture symbols of the posthuman, from Star Trek Borgs to the X-Men. There's no market pull for monsters. But men and women everywhere have always wanted to look and act just like athletes. Or like supermodels. Or best of all, like a combo athlete/supermodel, like, say, Gabrielle Reece. The path to athletic beauty is the one we will follow forward to the more than human.

The masters of the Olympics are anxiously policing the easy stuff. They properly see growth hormone as the international sports equivalent of cheating on arms accords. But the body is subtle, the range of performance is very wide, and there are many clever workarounds. Knowledge is power. If knowledge of the body explodes, then banning drugs is a mere finger in the dike.

Suppose you need bigger biceps. You have your arms scanned after every workout with a nuclear magnetic resonator, examining every working strand of muscle by computer. In this case, the athlete has done nothing illegal. But while his rival in Kenya trains the traditional way, building strength with push-ups, our cyber-paragon can tailor a program to his exact needs for more-than-peak performance - while obeying the letter of the Olympic law.

The two competitors look and weigh the same, they both test drug-free, but the champ knows himself on a cellular level, while others still work by pre- industrial intuition. We like to think that Rocky will win this one by sheer guts and heart. That's sports mythology at its best.

The trend toward the future of the body manifests itself best now in non- Olympic sports - poorly policed, wondrous spectacles where we're cutting to the chase because the refs are all in on the action.

TV wrestling, for example, features big, steam-snorting guys who emphasize their sci-fi departure from the human norm with pancake makeup, klieg lights and tattoos. Modern female bodybuilders look like no women have ever looked in human history. Even genuinely tough, scary, ferocious women - say, the mothers and sisters of invading hordes - would keen in alarm at the sight of these women.

Yet we moderns don't find their strength offputting, because this is the exact direction in which we ourselves long to go. Compare any contemporary model to the zaftig beach babes of the 1940's. The modern ones are very lean and strong, with backs ridged with muscle and legs fit to kick holes in sheetrock.

This is the catwalk to the posthuman future. Olympic athletes are just fighting our battles first, mocking it up in a cleansing social ritual. If they try to slow down, an eager society will just take a route around them. They may remain honest to their oldest traditions - but if they do, they risk becoming sentimental antiques.

Bruce Sterling is author of "Distraction" and the forthcoming "Zeitgeist."

-------- environment

Nonprofits Facing Ethical Challenges Over Sales of Land

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/science/16LAND.html

Spurred by a booming real estate market, some philanthropies, universities and other nonprofit groups have in recent years made land deals that critics say harm the environment and contradict the institutions' missions.

The deals have generally involved woodlands or other undeveloped parcels that were either donated or part of an institution's original endowment. The sellers range from foundations with billions of dollars in assets to Boy Scout councils that want to sell campgrounds to raise money.

Many deals have led to controversy in communities trying to fight sprawl and preserve open space. But trustees of the institutions say their bylaws require them to earn the biggest return on any investment, be it land or stocks.

"Do you make a financial sacrifice for local environmental reasons and then make it less easy to make grants for worthy causes, including important environmental causes elsewhere?" asked Murray Gell- Mann, a physicist and Nobel Prize winner on the board of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. "It's a very tricky question."

Last year, the MacArthur Foundation - the Chicago dispenser of "genius" grants and a longtime supporter of "smart growth" in Florida - sold 15,000 wooded acres in that state to a developer for $220 million.

In 1995, Rockefeller University, a leader in environmental research, sold a 213-acre estate abutting a preserve and reservoir in suburbs north of New York City for $7.9 million to the developer Donald J. Trump, who plans to move 130,000 tons of earth to turn the property into a country club.

In 1997, the S. H. Cowell Foundation, a San Francisco philanthopy with a focus on social programs and parks, proposed building 5,200 homes and an office park on Cowell Ranch, 4,400 acres of pasture and orchards it owns amid the traffic-choked sprawl east of San Francisco Bay.

Affected communities and conservation groups generally credit the MacArthur and Cowell foundations, among others, with doing much to serve communities. But some ethicists say that because such institutions generally receive tax breaks, they should be more accountable.

"People are not thinking in a wide enough context of values and responsibilities," said Strachan Donnelly, director of the humans and nature program at the Hastings Center, an ethics research center in Garrison, N.Y. He said the scope of the problem was unclear because the environmental issues rarely resonated beyond the specific communities where properties were located.

"Supporting smart growth and spurring growth - I can see how it would be seen as ironic," said Woodward A. Wickham, a vice president of the MacArthur Foundation.

Mr. Wickham insisted that the greater good had been served. He noted that the foundation, which once owned 100,000 acres in Florida, had donated or sold some 30,000 acres to local governments or conservation groups for parks, preserves and water management. Critics say, though, that the preserved lands - mostly swamp - would have been impossible to build on anyway.

The buyer of MacArthur's Florida land, Watermark Communities Inc., quickly sold most of it to builders who plan golf courses, polo clubs, office parks and gated communities. Stirring more criticism, MacArthur, as part of its deal, gained a 17 percent stake in Watermark.

Some local environmental officials say the foundation, while seeking to protect global biodiversity, should not be bulldozing eastern Florida's native vegetation.

The other big land deals are moving ahead, though greatly modified after community pressure.

Mr. Trump's Seven Springs Golf Club, converting the lands bought from Rockefeller University that straddle three Westchester County towns, is close to final approvals. He dropped plans for professional tournaments and luxury homes.

And last week, the Cowell Foundation, facing local officials' threats to reject its project, accepted a deal to sell 90 percent of the Cowell Ranch to a preservation group.

For some, the issue is not only environmental ethics, but also fairness to communities. Michael W. Klemens, a biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society who is also chairman of the planning commission in Rye, another Westchester town, began considering the issue three years ago.

That was when the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute sold a Rye campus, with 41 park-like acres, to a company that has built 38 large houses, commanding prices up to $1.5 million, on the property.

The parcel, most of which Sloan- Kettering never paid taxes on, abutted preserves. "I'm not against profits," Dr. Klemens said. "I'm against seeing significant tracts of open space disappear without a discussion of these issues. All those years they got a free ride at our expense. They owe something back."

Generally, nonprofit groups with large land holdings did not seek to get into the real estate business.

The Cowell Foundation was created in 1956 from the estate of Samuel Henry Cowell, who built a fortune in timber and cement and accumulated 73,000 acres of California lands.

Over the years, the foundation shed 90 percent of the land, sometimes for income and sometimes for other purposes; for example, it sold 2,000 acres to the state that now makes up the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

When John D. MacArthur, who built his fortune in the insurance industry, died in 1978, almost all his assets went to the foundation bearing his and his wife's names. Because he largely invested in real estate, including vast tracts in Florida, the foundation held a portfolio skewed toward land, which is hard to manage and comes with costs. (The MacArthur and Cowell lands were not exempt from taxes; that occurs only when the land is the base of an organization's operations, as was the case with Sloan-Kettering.)

Because the Internal Revenue Service forbids nonprofit groups from being majority owners of a business, pressure grew on the foundation to sell. Since 1985, when real estate constituted 41 percent of its $2.1 billion in assets, or $861 million, the MacArthur Foundation pruned its holdings. By 1998, real estate accounted for just 4 percent of $4.1 billion in assets, or $164 million.

In the process, the foundation became one of Florida's biggest players in the development boom that has eaten into the wetlands and woods along Interstate 95.

Some lands with unusual species or important water supplies were set aside or sold to local governments or agencies; even then, profit was foremost, MacArthur employees said.

In the last couple of years, some board members said, they paid less attention to the deals, assuming that the distasteful task was largely done. "On the whole, we escaped with our consciences intact," one said.

By 1998, though, the land the foundation still owned was the last open space for miles around. Even then, MacArthur officials contend, they did the right thing - selling about 17,000 acres of unbuildable land to Palm Beach County and water-management agencies for $17.5 million. Thus, they said, they had every right to sell the last 15,000 acres of developable lands last year to Watermark.

Watermark has sold a few tracts to Palm Beach County. But the price, county officials said, was much higher than it would have been had the foundation sold the environmentally significant parcels first.

Some land Watermark owns still hangs in the balance. One tract of 4,478 acres straddling Palm Beach and Martin Counties drains into the Loxahatchee River, the only Florida waterway on a federal list of 150 wild and scenic rivers.

The property, Cypress Creek, had been sought by the counties' environmental officials to preserve adequate flow in the Loxahatchee, which has become increasingly saline as development diverts fresh water.

But Watermark - like MacArthur before it - rejected several offers from Palm Beach County in favor of higher bids from developers. Officials from the two counties are still trying to buy some Cypress Creek land, but are pessimistic.

In California, the Cowell Foundation - pressured by local officials - has found a solution for its ranch in Contra Costa County that promises both profit and preservation.

The foundation's president, Mary S. Metz, set off a public furor last year when she sent letters to organizations that had received grants warning that support would shrink if the land could not be developed.

"The foundation is very worried about the negative effect that such a decrease in grant-making capacity would have on current and future grantees and wanted to alert you," Ms. Metz wrote in one letter.

When newspapers published the letters, the appeal backfired. County supervisors threatened to redraw zoning for the land in a way that would have banned construction.

"This was an example of a foundation that we thought had different values behaving very much like a greedy developer," said Donna Gerber, a county supervisor.

Faced with a total building ban, the foundation agreed last week to sell 4,000 acres to the Trust for Public Land and build only on the remaining 400 acres, greatly reducing its profit. "There have been compromises on all sides," Ms. Metz said. "The foundation just wants to get back to its work." It remains to be seen if Cowell cuts any grants.

In the wake of these and other recent deals, a debate simmers among conservationists, ethicists and the foundations themselves, with everybody reluctant to confront the issue of balancing their fiduciary and environmental responsibilities.

At a retreat this year at the Hastings Center, Dr. Klemens, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, said that foundations should consider more than the profits from land sales - just as an art museum does not sell its works without considering their aesthetic significance. Some legal experts at the meeting, though, said the law did not allow appraisals of land beyond its dollar worth.

Some suggested that these deals be treated like the sale of farmland, where tax breaks are given as long as the land is cultivated. When farmland is sold for a new purpose, the seller usually must compensate a county for the taxes avoided while the land was farmed.

Christopher J. Elliman, a trustee of several conservation groups, said that part of the solution lies with those who donate land.

If a donor does not want land to be developed, an easement restricting use should be given to a second group willing to fight in court to prevent its despoliation, Mr. Elliman said.

Otherwise, he added, there would always be pressure to sell. "Until you get a generation of trustees for whom values have changed," he said, "in the end, people will define fiduciary in the most classic legal terms - that you get the most dollars you can."

---

OPEC States Want to Be Paid if Pollution Curbs Cut Oil Sales

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/science/16CLIM.html

At the latest round of international talks aimed at shaping a treaty on global warming, delegates from oil- producing countries insisted that any final accord include a commitment to compensate them if efforts to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases resulted in a drop in the use of oil.

The position of Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at the two weeks of talks, which wound up last night in Lyon, France, was supported by many developing countries and by China. But it prompted strong criticism from other participants at the United Nation-sponsored talks, particularly because the move occurred against a backdrop of widespread protests and transportation disruptions in Europe over spiking oil prices.

"It's pretty ironic that while OPEC is raising oil prices, they're here asking for compensation," Jennifer Morgan, who heads the climate change program of the World Wildlife Fund, said from Lyon in a telephone interview.

The talks were aimed at resolving many differences among countries that have signed the Kyoto Protocol but have not yet ratified it. The 1997 treaty is aimed at cutting emissions from industrialized countries of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases to levels about 5 percent below 1990 levels.

The overwhelming source of carbon dioxide is the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels.

Since the first rounds of talks on a climate treaty - in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 - Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and other OPEC members have repeatedly pressed for compensation for countries that produce or sell oil and coal. Those countries have often used other tactics to stall progress, critics said, including making frequent objections over negotiating procedures that have stalled sessions.

They continued such efforts in Lyon, participants said, despite fuel shortages and protests that disrupted taxicab and bus service for a few days at the peak of the conference. Some representatives of industrialized countries said they were determined to fight language that would provide payments to oil producers.

OPEC members said they, too, were prepared to fight. Muhammad al-Sabban, head of the Saudi delegation and senior economic adviser to the Saudi Oil Ministry, said the movement toward a climate treaty was a clear sign that the world continued to accelerate its shift away from fossil fuels.

"We are assuming that only for another 15 years, maximum, will we have oil as a big share of the energy mix," he said. "We are very concerned about this."

For all its prosperity, he said, Saudi Arabia will still need help in developing new industries and job sources for its growing population.

Mr. Sabban said a large coalition of developing countries was ready to reject the treaty language if industrialized nations rejected the idea of compensating countries whose economies were harmed.

"I'm surprised to see that developed countries expect they can get away with the things they want without giving equal treatment to what we want," he said in a telephone interview.

The dispute over whether oil-rich countries should be compensated if the world weans itself off petroleum was just one of many sharp splits among participants. The group focused on refining language in the proposed treaty before foreign ministers convene in November in The Hague to negotiate final points. Participants and observers from some environmental groups said some progress had been made on streamlining language so that ministers would have fewer points to negotiate.

But strong divisions persist over how to damp the greenhouse effect, with the United States, Russia and other large forested countries pressing recently to receive credit not just for cutting emissions of gases, but also for sopping them up by growing more trees or changing farming methods in ways that pull carbon dioxide from the air.

Europe has opposed that strategy, instead seeking firm commitments to reduce the output of gases from smokestacks and tailpipes. Other points of contention include proposed mechanisms through which wealthy countries could lead poor countries to avoid sharp rises in emissions as their economies grow, and ways to create a fair system to measure cuts and enforce an agreement.

Over all, many negotiators and observers at the conference said in telephone interviews that they felt confident that a meaningful document would emerge by November.

-------- police

Office of Justice Programs
Police Corps Trains New Officers in Florida
First Class Graduates Under Justice Department Program

Yahoo News
Saturday September 16, 2:00 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/000916/fl_police_.html

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Sept. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- With the graduation today of 19 police cadets, Florida joined the ranks of states participating in the Justice Department's Police Corps program. Florida and 25 other states were selected by the Justice Department's Office of Justice Programs (OJP) to recruit and train college graduates to serve four years as community police officers.

``The highly motivated, qualified graduates from the Police Corps program will make a tremendous difference in the lives of the citizens they serve in Florida,'' said Mary Lou Leary, Acting Assistant Attorney General for OJP. ``By successfully completing this rigorous training program, these new police officers are equipped with the necessary skills, knowledge and leadership to become effective officers in this new era of community policing.''

The Police Corps program is a competitive college scholarship program for students who agree to work in a state or local police force for at least four years. The funds cover education expenses, including tuition, fees, books, supplies, transportation, room and board, and miscellaneous expenses.

Today's graduates of the Florida Police Corps program will join four of the state's local law enforcement agencies. Those agencies are the Jacksonville Sheriff's Department, Tampa Police Department, Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department, and the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

The graduation ceremony, which is taking place on the campus of the University of North Florida, caps a rigorous six-month Police Corps training program. This basic police training, funded by the Justice Department, teaches the knowledge, skills and attitudes essential to serve on community patrol. At the conclusion of the training, all participants must satisfy high performance standards for physical, mental and emotional fitness. The police departments in which individual participants will serve provide additional training as appropriate.

Students interested in the Police Corps apply to the ``lead agency'' of the participating state in which they wish to serve. Applications are then evaluated based upon defined selection criteria. States with Police Corps programs are expected to advertise the availability of scholarships to the full range of prospective participants and to make special efforts to encourage applications from among members of all racial, ethnic and gender groups.

For additional information about the Florida Police Corps program, contact Sergeant Alicia Edmonds at 904-713-4896. Information is also available through OJP's web site at: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/opclee. OJP and its component agencies' press releases are available for use without restriction.

-------- spying

Ex - CIA Chief Faces Allegations

Associated Press
September 16, 2000 Filed at 5:41 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Deutch-Investigation.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former CIA director John M. Deutch is under investigation by the Department of Defense for the same type security violations he has admitted to while heading the CIA, according to Pentagon documents.

The breaches allegedly occurred during the mid-1990s while Deutch was a high-ranking official in the Defense Department, before he went to the CIA. They involve classified information accessed from unsecured computers in Deutch's home and, in one case, computer cards containing a 1,000 page journal with classified information Deutch carried in his shirt pocket, according to the documents, obtained by The Associated Press.

Deutch, the papers said, also turned down departmental requests to install security systems in his home. The documents said he continued handling data on unsecured computers even after signing a February 1995 memorandum on ``the need to properly safeguard information.'' The documents noted he was the deputy secretary of defense at the time of the memo.

``We find his conduct in this regard particularly egregious in light of existing (Defense Department) policy directives addressing the safeguarding of classified information,'' an internal Pentagon memo said.

``The evidence we obtained clearly establishes that Dr. Deutch failed to follow even the most basic security precautions.''

Deutch left the CIA in 1996; he now teaches at MIT. A message left for him at his office seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, confirmed Saturday that the probe had been widened. He said the Justice Department has also expanded its probe to include Deutch's activity at the Defense Department.

``Mr. Deutch should be treated as any other commoner and held accountable for what he did,'' Grassley said.

Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin would not comment on the scope of his department's criminal investigation of Deutch.

But a senior Justice official, requesting anonymity, said no decision is imminent on whether to charge Deutch for mishandling secret data on unsecured computers. The inquiry is still in the department's criminal division and no recommendation has been sent to Attorney General Janet Reno.

A veteran criminal division executive, Paul Coffey, was recalled months ago from retirement to conduct a comprehensive new look at the Deutch matter. While Coffey was certain to examine any data gathered by Pentagon officials about Deutch, the statute of limitations in most of the relevant laws would probably prevent him from bringing any charges for activities that occurred more than five years ago.

The Justice Department initially decided not to prosecute Deutch. But, after criticism earlier this year that Deutch was treated more favorably than former Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, Reno decided to review the matter.

Grassley also invoked Lee, accused of downloading nuclear secrets but freed last week.

``Mr. Deutch is being investigated for not just downloading CIA information but also Defense Department information while he was at (the Pentagon),'' Grassley said. ``Yet, I don't see him in solitary confinement with no bail, even though he downloaded information that Wen Ho Lee could never get access to.''

There is no evidence that computer hackers or spies obtained classified information because of Deutch's actions. But the papers said Deutch used his America Online account to download Pentagon data, an ``extremely risky'' practice that could have left his computer susceptible to a computer hacker.

When allegations first arose concerning Deutch's use of computers while at the CIA, the Pentagon said it would try to determine whether similar problems had occurred while Deutch was there.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Tim Taylor, said that as recently as Thursday, officials had said no results of that investigation were available. He had no other comment on the Post report.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield declined to comment.

Deutch served as defense undersecretary for acquisitions and technology from April 1993 to March 1994, when he became deputy defense secretary. He was appointed CIA director in 1995, and left the CIA in December of the following year.

Two days after Deutch retired from the CIA, agency personnel discovered classified information stored on government computers at Deutch's home.

Deutch eventually admitted the security breach, apologized and was stripped of his security clearances, though there is no evidence that computer hackers or spies obtained classified information as a result of Deutch's actions.

--------

U.S. Probe Of Former CIA Chief Expands

Washington Post
Saturday , September 16, 2000 ; A01
By David A. Vise and Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13948-2000Sep15.html

John M. Deutch, who has admitted mishandling classified information while serving as director of the CIA, is now under investigation for similar security violations when he previously held high-level posts in the Defense Department, according to confidential documents and officials familiar with the case.

Deutch allegedly used unsecured computers at home and his America Online account to access classified defense information in the early to mid-1990s, the documents, compiled as part of a Pentagon probe, show. The alleged violations occurred before and after Deutch issued a February 1995 memo reminding Defense Department employees that only "properly reviewed and cleared" information should be placed on computer systems accessible to the public.

"We find his conduct in this regard particularly egregious in light of existing DOD policy directives addressing the safeguarding of classified information," an internal Pentagon memo said. "This situation was exacerbated because Dr. Deutch, while serving as the [deputy secretary of defense], declined departmental requests that he allow security systems to be installed in his residence.

"The evidence we obtained clearly establishes that Dr. Deutch failed to follow even the most basic security precautions," the memo added.

Deutch's attorney, Terrence O'Donnell, did not return a telephone call for comment yesterday.

Deutch served as defense undersecretary for acquisitions and technology from April 1993 to March 1994, when he became deputy defense secretary, a job he held until he was appointed CIA director in 1995. He left the CIA in December of the following year.

Two days after Deutch retired from the CIA, agency computer personnel discovered classified information stored on government computers at Deutch's home. After a series of investigations, Deutch admitted the security breach, apologized for violating CIA policy and was stripped of his security clearances.

Initially, the Justice Department decided not to prosecute Deutch. But earlier this year, Attorney General Janet Reno decided to review the matter after criticism that Deutch had received much more favorable treatment than former Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a member of the Judiciary Committee, confirmed that the probe had been widened and challenged the Justice Department to take a hard look at Deutch's alleged repeat violations.

"This is now a pattern," Grassley said. "Evidently, Mr. Deutch is a congenital downloader of classified information. It will be interesting to see how the Justice Department deals with this case, especially in light of the Wen Ho Lee case."

Paul E. Coffey, the retired prosecutor tapped by Reno earlier this year to review the matter, has been briefed on Deutch's alleged use of computers at home, and has expanded his investigation to include Deutch's years at the Pentagon.

Coffey has told Justice Department officials that he believes charges should be brought against Deutch for improperly handling classified documents on unsecure computers that were linked to the Internet, sources said.

Coffey's recommendation has not made its way from the Criminal Division to Reno, who will make the decision on how to handle the case, sources said.

Generally, cases similar to Deutch's have not led to criminal charges but have been handled through administrative sanctions. Reno recently declined to comment specifically on Deutch's case.

There is no evidence that computer hackers or spies obtained classified information as a result of Deutch's actions. It is not clear from the documents precisely what kinds of information Deutch was working with. But among the computer files were Deutch's daily journal, which included information on the range of military operations for which he was responsible.

Some of the computers Deutch used were given away or sold by the Defense Department as surplus property and ended up in various places, including a scrap metal dealer in Baltimore and a university in Florida.

Senior advisers to Reno have expressed concern about the appearance of a double standard when the Deutch case is compared with Lee's. The former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, accused of 59 felony counts of downloading nuclear secrets to unsecured computers and portable tapes, was released from jail earlier this week after receiving an apology from a federal judge, who said the Justice Department's handling of the case had "embarrassed our entire nation."

Lee pleaded guilty to a single felony count of mishandling classified information and agreed to cooperate with investigators by answering questions about what happened to the tapes.

Deutch developed regular work habits at the Defense Department and the CIA that led him to use a variety of unsecured computers at home while carrying computer memory cards and disks in his shirt pocket, government documents show.

One unanswered question is the whereabouts of some floppy disks he used to store classified military and intelligence data until he determined he needed more memory space and transferred the information to larger personal computer memory cards.

A probe by the CIA inspector general determined that Deutch had four of these cards containing nearly 100,000 pages of information, including the daily journal he kept.

Deutch used numerous government-owned Macintosh computers at his home in Bethesda while serving in the high-level Defense Department posts, and several of those recovered by investigators contained a "significant amount" of military information, according to the documents. "Several witnesses told us that none of the computers . . . were designated to store classified data," an internal Defense Department memo said.

Deutch and his family members used government-owned computers at his home to access his America Online account, according to government documents.

Deutch acknowledged to investigators that before becoming CIA director, he was aware of the principle requiring physical separation of classified and unclassified computers. However, Deutch said he believed that when he deleted a document, the information was no longer recoverable and that his general practice was to copy documents onto floppy disks and delete the initial file.

But computer experts told investigators that each time Deutch updated his journal, his computer automatically created a temporary file that was stored on the hard drive of the computer and would have been available to hackers when he accessed the Internet via America Online.

-------- activists

European Fuel Protests Wane, Britain Recovers

Yahoo News
Saturday September 16 11:29 AM ET updated 12:46 PM ET Sep 16
By Clifford Coonan
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000916/wl/energy_europe_dc_28.html

BERLIN (Reuters) - The wave of fuel price anger sweeping through Europe slowed Saturday but sporadic protests continued in Germany and Sweden.

Swedish demonstrators blocked a ferry terminal and more disruptive action was planned for Monday in Norway.

In Britain, fuel-starved motorists laid siege to petrol pumps as supplies started trickling back to filling stations after a week of paralyzing protests.

Businesses across Europe counted the cost of a week of chaos which caused huge traffic disruption and badly shook several governments.

Britain's Institute of Directors said UK companies could face a $1.41 billion bill, with hotel, manufacturing and transport businesses particularly hard hit by lost output and lay-offs.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) refused to bow to demands for a cut in fuel taxes but a newspaper poll Saturday showed widespread criticism of his handling of the crisis.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has been similarly steadfast and his Social Democratic Party (news - web sites) reiterated its plans to raise energy taxes.

Saturday's protests in Germany focused on Schroeder's home town of Hanover, where some 150 trucks rumbled through the streets in a giant convoy, police reported.

Truckers also staged a symbolic motorway go-slow near Ulm in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

Interior Minister Otto Schily warned Saturday he would have no hesitation in deploying police if the situation should escalate.

The Swedish protests centered on the western port of Helsingborg which runs ferries to the Danish port of Helsingor (Elsinore), north of Copenhagen, and is one of the main links between Sweden and the rest of Europe.

Heidi Bodensjo, a spokeswoman for the blockade, said the protesters were letting through trucks carrying perishable food or medicine, private cars and tourist buses, but were waving other trucks to one side.

Taking Stock

In Ireland, where thousands of lorries clogged major roads around five cities Friday, truckers met to consider their next step. They said they wanted more talks with the government but did not plan to continue their protests.

Dutch truckers were due to meet government officials after big protests in The Hague.

Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm, preparing next week's 2001 budget, said the government representatives would ``not come empty-handed,'' ANP news agency said Friday.

France and Italy have made concessions on fuel prices to stop the protests.

But British Chancellor (Finance Minister) Gordon Brown reiterated his rejection Saturday of any knee-jerk cut in fuel duties in response to the protests and said the public backed him.

However he said the government, which has set up a task force to avoid a repeat of the protests, was listening and would take a decision on fuel duties in the normal budget process.

Brown also repeated his call for more pressure on OPEC (news - web sites) oil exporters to open their taps and bring down the price of world oil, which has soared to over $30 a barrel.

His insistence of public backing for the government was at odds with an ICM poll published in the Daily Mail which found 80 percent support for the aims of protesters who blockaded oil refineries and distribution depots.

The poll, which interviewed 502 people Thursday after most protesters called off their action, found that 52 percent believed the government handled the crisis -- the worst since Blair's 1997 landslide election victory -- ``very badly.''

Most damaging for Blair, who was embarrassed by a leaked memo in July in which he fretted at being out of touch with Britons, 54 percent thought he personally dealt ``very badly'' with the stand-off and 76 percent said it showed he was out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people.

---

Fuel Supplies Ease in Britain but Protests Spread on Continent

New York Times
September 16, 2000
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/16/world/16EURO.html

LONDON, Sept. 15 - Britain and Belgium struggled today to recover from paralyzing fuel blockades while truckers elsewhere in Europe stepped up the pressure for relief from soaring gasoline and diesel prices.

After a weeklong siege that saw 90 percent of Britain's 13,000 filling stations go dry, the country rushed to replenish stocks for emergency services and public transportation, but said it would be at least two weeks before supplies returned to normal for ordinary drivers.

Hundreds of schools shuttered in the first week after summer vacation will remain closed for days more, mail collections on Sunday have been canceled and, in the first rationing in Britain since the years after World War II, supermarkets introduced a policy of one loaf of bread per customer.

In Belgium, where the impact had been milder, the rebound was swifter. Cars, buses and streetcars flowed freely in Brussels, easing commuter frustration after five days in which the city center was closed by trucks parked across thoroughfares.

In the Netherlands, however, the protests grew dramatically, with wildcat blockades bringing highway traffic in many areas to a halt and causing jams reaching up to eight miles. Drivers sounded their horns noisily outside government offices in The Hague, and road traffic was held up for hours outside the tunnel to Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, normally one of Europe's busiest.

Protests were also stepped up in Germany, while truckers and farmers in Ireland, Spain and Poland joined the movement to disrupt travel as a rowdy complaint against the rising price of the highly taxed gasoline and diesel fuel. About 200 trucks, taxis and tractors put a stranglehold on the center of Bremen, Germany.

Creeping convoys slowed traffic on the main ring road around Barcelona, and similar action was being mounted in Mérida in the agricultural west of Spain. Irish truckers applied go-slow tactics on both country roads and the highways in and out of Dublin and four other cities.

In a one-day demonstration in Poland that threatened to continue into next week, columns of trucks tied up downtown areas in Warsaw and other cities by sticking to speeds of less than 20 miles an hour.

"The protests are spontaneous in nature, but there may be as many as 100,000 participating if taxis and farmers join," the truckers' union leader, Wojciech Zylot, told Reuters.

Some stark statistics lay behind the spreading tax revolt on the Continent: Drivers pay more than twice what Americans do for gasoline, and the tax bite, 22.8 percent of the price in the United States, is more than 60 percent in Europe, with Britain topping the field at 76.2 percent. Even begrudging acceptance of those prices came to an end with the recent rise in crude oil prices to $35 a barrel, a 10-year high.

The rebellion is being led largely by farmers and self-employed truckers who say the steep rise in costs is putting them out of business. Though their numbers are relatively small and their organizations have been jerry-built, they have profited from widespread consumer outrage and gained support from the very people they are inconveniencing.

The protesters' effectiveness can be best measured by the success of the far-flung and rapidly expanding demonstrations in Britain that succeeded in bringing the country's economy to a virtual standstill.

Government responses have varied. In France, where the protests first began broke out weeks ago, the government granted tax concessions. Belgium refused to budge on taxes but came up with an $83 million compensation plan that persuaded pickets to go home. Italy averted protests by bowing to demands for new fuel discounts.

In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has so far resisted demands to suspend taxes introduced last year in the name of conserving fuel and protecting the environment. The Irish and Dutch governments have turned down calls for trims in taxes on diesel fuel, while Spain has said it would not raise taxes but would not lower them, either.

Prime Minister Tony Blair took a tough line in Britain, despite overwhelming public support for the protesters, saying he would not change tax rates under intimidation.

The pickets left refinery gates on Thursday out of fear that their own success at disrupting life across the country might cut into their public support. While they obtained no satisfaction from the government in their central demands, the protesters threatened to throw up their blockades again if Mr. Blair did not make tax adjustments in his new budget, which is to be announced in November.


-------

NucNews - Please circulate -- help educate! - http://prop1.org

1. NucNews 00/09/16 - Activist Announcements From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

2. Huge anti-nuke rally on Austro-Czech border From: Steve Wagner <hanforddownwinder@yahoo.com>

3. Help Eliminate Nuke Weapons - Pls Write your Foreign Minister reUN General Assembly From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

4. Tritium concerns From: Steve Wagner <hanforddownwinder@yahoo.com>

5. Top-Secret From: ivan buchbinder <pentaske@memes.com>

6. Local grievances could hurt Gore in Ohio (http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea0 From: "Vina Colley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>

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

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

NucNews 00/09/16 - Activist Announcements

-- ANNOUNCEMENTS --

- TODAY - GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE RALPH NADER TO SPEAK OUT FOR D.C. STATEHOOD WHERE: UDC Auditorium, 4200 Connecticut Avenue NW, Building 46 WHEN: Saturday, September 16, at 7 pm The D.C. Statehood Green Party: www.dcstatehoodgreen.org Nader 2000 Campaign: www.votenader.org Contact: Gail Dixon (202) 529-6525 Martin Thomas, (202) 332-1709

- PLEASE DISTRIBUTE AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE Committee forming to Support Fast For Vieques Tuesday night, September 19 at 6:30 pm, we are asking those who support Andres Thomas Conteras' Fast for Peace in Vieques to make a special effort to join him at Peace Park, across the street from the White House. Our agenda is twofold. First, to engage in a process of prayer, reflection and dialogue so that a shared wisdom can guide the conduct of the Fast, providing Andres with concrete resources to base his discernment on. Second, to discuss the work we can do to support and amplify the Fast and accomplish its goals. This effort requires participation by committed people of conscience who can stand with and act with Andres as he witnesses for Peace in Vieques. Please feel free to contact me at 202-842-1112 - in Peace, Paul Magno

- Schedule for Washington, D.C., Global Peace Walk 2000 This Tuesday past a letter to President Clinton on behalf of the Global Peace Walk 2000 was hand delivered to the President by our helper in DC who spoke to him about the letter and it was well received. We hope he will accept our invitation to meet with the walkers' representatives to accept the compilation of global peace and survival issue messages that the walk is carrying to DC and to the UN. Schedule for DC (and later) events at http://prop1.org/currevnt.htm.

- New Yorkers - NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE: FROM THE LOCAL TO THE GLOBAL Saturday, September 16th 11 AM- 4 PM Graduate Faculty Building, Swayduck Auditorium 65 Fifth Avenue (between 13th and 14th streets) The NY Metro Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the World Policy Institute are have brought together a great line up of speakers, experts in a wide range of fields addressing economic, legal, congressional, media and local organizing aspects of NMD. This event will explain the history, the present and the future of the Star Wars plans, including the plans for militarizing outer space (with the U.S. dominating the heavens in the 21st century like the British dominated the seas in the 19th century). This seminar promises to be informative and exciting.

---------

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: Steve Wagner <hanforddownwinder@yahoo.com>

Huge anti-nuke rally on Austro-Czech border
NUCLEAR PLANT PROTESTS BLOCK ENTIRE AUSTRO-CZECH BORDER

September 16, 2000 (Reuters)

VIENNA, Austria, Austrian environmentalists blocked all border crossings between Austria and the Czech Republic on Friday in protest against Prague's imminent activation of a nuclear power plant.

The blockade of the country's northern frontier was the third in as many weeks and the most comprehensive, with all 12 crossing points blocked in the provinces of Upper and Lower Austria, Austrian state television ORF said.

The Soviet-designed Temelin plant lies around 60 km (35 miles) from the Austrian border. The protesters, who barricaded the frontier with tractors and buses, demand an immediate halt to the plant's activity. The Czech government has dismissed both Austrian and German concerns about the safety of the plant. Nuclear-free Austria has threatened to veto the Czechs' admission to the European Union if they put the controversial plant into operation this year.

The protests are set to fan out to Germany at the weekend, when anti-nuclear activists will stage a big demonstration at the Philippsreut border crossing in Bavaria on Sunday.

The USD 3 billion Temelin plant has been modified and fitted with western control systems supplied by Westinghouse, a unit of British Nuclear Fuel Ltd.

THE NEWS
The News edited by Jasmina Vermezovic
AIM, Belgrade, September 16, 2000 14:30
http://www.aim.ac.yu/

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

Message: 3
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

Help Eliminate Nuke Weapons - Pls Write your Foreign Minister reUN General Assembly

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THIS REQUEST AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE AMONGST PEOPLE THAT MIGHT ACT ON IT

Apologies for cross- postings. If you get this many times, please just delete the excess copies.

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 Everyone,

The First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, which deals with nuclear disarmament, will commence meeting on Oct 3.

Preparatory meetings are already taking place, and its agenda is available on the UN website.

http://www.un.org/News/Press/7days.html
or
http://www.un.org

A number of constructive resolutions are on the agenda concerning nuclear weapons.

These include a resolution sponsored by the New Agenda Coalition (New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Egypt), which follows similar resolutions last year and the year before.

The New Agenda Coalition held a press conference on Sept 13, concerning this. New Agenda coalition members will ask the nuclear weapons states to fulfil their obligations under article VI of the NPT and their committments undertaken at the recent NPT review conference.

There are also a number of other good resolutions, including one calling for a nuclear weapons convention, one calling for a nuclear weapons free southern hemisphere, one calling for a convention to prevent an arms race in outer space, (PAROS) and one calling for nuke weapons to be taken off alert.

We are asking you if possible to Please use this sample letter (Below) to send your own letter to your Foreign Minister and UN mission, urging them to vote for the New Agenda resolution.

This is especially necessary if you are in any of the countries that either voted AGAINST the NAC resolution last year, or that abstained. (BELOW)

Some critical fax numbers of foreign ministers and UN missions are below. By doing this you are helping to work for a nuclear weapons free world.

John Hallam

Countries that voted against the New Agenda resolution last year: Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Hungary, India, Israel, Monaco, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, UK, US.

Countries that abstained: Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bhutan, Bosnia/Herzegovnia, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Micronesia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mauritius, Myanmar, Netherlands, Norway, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Former Yuoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan.

IMPORTANT FOREIGN MINISTERS AND UN MISSION FAX NUMBERS (these numbers all have been tried and definitely work - but they may require patience)

(the '+' represents your country's ISD access code, which in Aust is 0015, in the US is 0011, and in some places is 0 or 00. Find out exactly what it is. If you are faxing your own foreign minister of course, you won't need it, but you will need it if you fax your UN mission.)

US SECY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT - +1-202-647-6047
FOREIGN MINISTER OF RUSSIA +7-095-247-2722, +7-095-293-3323
UN MISSION +1-212-628-0252
FOREIGN MINISTER OF THE UK +44-171-270-2833
UN MISSION +1-212-745-9316
FOREIGN MINISTER OF FRANCE +33-1-417-5203
UN MISSION +1-212-421-6889
FOREIGN MINISTER OF GERMANY +49-228-168-6662,
UN MISSION +1-212-940-0402
FOREIGN MINISTER IF ITALY +39-6-323-6210
UN MISSION +1-212-486-1036
FOREIGN MINISTER OF BELGIUM +32-2-511-6385
FOREIGN MINISTER OF JAPAN +81-3-3581-9675
UN MISSION +1-212-751-1966
FOREIGN MINISTER OF CANADA +1-613-952-3904
UN MISSION +1-212-848-1195
FOREIGN MINISTER OF NORWAY +47-2224-9580
UN MISSION +1-212-688-0554
FOREIGN MINISTER OF DENMARK +45-33-95-6001
UN MISSION +1-212-308-3384

A URL where the fax numbers of every head of state and foreign minister in the world is listed plus lots of information is this: Http://www.abolition2000.org.

Another URL that has the fax numbers of heads of state, foreign ministers and UN missions and also has lots of information is: Http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org

SAMPLE LETTER FOR ALL TO SEND TO FOREIGN MINISTERS OF COUNTRIES THAT VOTED AGAINST OR ABSTAINED ON THE NAC RESOLUTION LAST YEAR

This is a 'sample' letter, designed to help you to write to your foreign minister about the nuclear weapons resolutions that are coming up in the United Nations General Assembly.

The idea is for you to put it as far as possible in your own words, not just to copy. So please do customise and be creative!

IF YOU ARE AN INDIVIDUAL, HANDWRITTEN IS BEST. Do not try to email these people it is a waste of time.

If your country in fact supported the New Agenda resolution and other resolutions last year, please thank them. Foreign Ministers also need to know when they do something right!

TO: THE FOREIGN MINISTER

UNITED NATIONS AMBASSADOR

Dear Foreign Minister and UN Ambassador ,

I am writing to you because I understand that a number of important resolutions concerning nuclear weapons are coming up in the United Nations General Assembly first committee, starting next month.

I am concerned that my country may not be doing enough to rid the world of the one thing that could possibly destroy civilization and perhaps the human race.

I heard on Sept. 14 that New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt and Mexico, all countries very different from each other, had got together and asked the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their obligations to get rid of nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty.

This is a wonderful initiative, and I would like to know why my country is not taking a leading role in this.Yet it seems that we are not even supporting this vital initiative. Why not?

If New Zealand and Ireland can press the US and Russia to get rid of their nuclear weapons, why can't this country?

It seems there are at least seven really good initiatives coming up in the United Nations general assembly. That includes the New Agenda resolution put up by these seven countries, but it also includes a resolution to prohibit the use of nuclear weapons, a resolution for a nuclear weapons convention like the chemical weapons convention, a resolution to take nuclear weapons off 'hairtrigger' alert, as recommended by our own Canberra Commission, so that it will no longer be possible to start a nuclear war in half an hour by accident, a resolution in support of the ABM treaty, a resolution for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Southern Hemisphere, and a resolution to prevent space being used for military purposes.

I can't understand what harm there is in asking for 5,600 nuclear weapons to be taken off alert status, or in asking for more to be done to fulfill the existing obligations - obligations which are legally binding- to eliminate them altogether.

I urge you from the bottom of my heart, Foreign Minister, please support the New Agenda group in the General Assembly and satisfy the wishes of the those who want this country to take a leading role in nuclear disarmament.

(Signed) (Your name)

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

Message: 4
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
From: Steve Wagner <hanforddownwinder@yahoo.com>

Tritium concerns

The Berkeley Daily Planet published this letter to the editor last Spring (4-28-2000) after the Alameda (California) County Board of Education issued an advisory to schools to stop field trips to the Lawrence Hall of Science because it is located right below the Lawrence tritium facility:

WHAT IS THE LAB DOING ABOUT TRITIUM CONCERNS?

I am concerned about recent reports of possible tritium leakage at the Lawrence Hall of Science, including a decision by some local schools to no longer take field trips there.

I looked-up tritium in a dictionary. It said it is "a radioactive isotype of hydrogen having an atomic weight of 3 and a half-life of about 12.5 years: it decays by beta-particle emission and is used in thermonuclear bombs, as a radioactive tracer, etc." Sounds like some nasty stuff! If it's leaking, I'm sure we all want to know about it.

My daughter is a student. She also works with young children at a day care center. Do I need to worry that my child or the children she cares for may get cancr from exposure to tritium if they visit the Lawrence Hall of Science?

Other than public relations efforts designed to make us think tritium is no big deal, what are the Lawrence Laboratory people doing about this?

-- Steve Wagner Oakland

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

Message: 5
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
From: ivan buchbinder <pentaske@memes.com>

Top-Secret

Y'all, Well, Well, on the downhill run of a Presidential race Ol' Dick & the boys get together for a few cocktails. YOU think this effects Nuc issues???? Later

<http://www.denverpost.com/news/election/pol0916.htm>

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

Message: 6
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
From: "Vina Colley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>

Local grievances could hurt Gore in Ohio

Sunday, September 17, 2000
The Columbus Dispatch
Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea0

WASHINGTON -- Al Gore, self-proclaimed friend of the environment and working families, could have trouble in parts of Ohio on both counts.

On the campaign trail, the Democratic presidential nominee often presents himself as an environmentalist.

But some eastern Ohio environmental activists are stewing about Gore's record when it comes to a waste incinerator in East Liverpool.

At almost every stop, Gore also tells average Americans, "I will fight for you.''

But hundred of southern Ohio workers are steaming about the Clinton-Gore administration's job-killing approval of the 1998 privatization of the corporation that runs the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon.

These region-specific issues obviously aren't the entire reason that Republican nominee George W. Bush led Gore 49 percent to 43 percent in a Sept. 3 Dispatch Poll. But even some Democrats acknowledge they present obstacles in a key state.

"Any area where the Clinton administration has not delivered for the community is a problem for Al Gore,'' said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Cleveland.

Gore campaign officials say they don't think the election in Ohio will be won or lost on these issues and defend the record.

"There are certain things you have to address in each state and each community,'' said Kara Gerhardt, Gore's Ohio spokeswoman. "These are particular things of interest coming up again and again, but they have been dealt with by the entire administration, not just in the election season.''

Environmentalists, however, think Gore shrank from a 1992 promise to prevent the Waste Technologies Industries hazardous waste incinerator from operating near an East Liverpool elementary school -- and hasn't done enough to try to shut down the plant after it began running.

The WTI issue "dissipates the energy the vice president should have as a friend of the environment,'' Kucinich said. "WTI is a glaring failure in the environmental policy of an administration that has otherwise been progressive.''

WTI activist Terri Swearingen said Gore needs to return to the area to outline what he would do differently if elected president.

"It's haunted him, and it's not going to go away,'' Swearingen said.

Gore spokeswoman Gerhardt points out that a last-minute decision by President Bush's administration led to WTI's permit being granted. The Clinton administration kept promises to scrutinize plant operations, she said.

Gore just might have an "October surprise'' to spring on voters unhappy about the planned closing of the Piketon plant.

Administration officials are working on a lucrative package of cleanup money and other assistance to try to replace most of the 1,700 jobs that will be lost when the Piketon plant closes in June.

The plan is to announce the help before Nov. 7, although Energy Department officials insisted last week that the package is being worked on with Republicans as well as Democrats. The time frame is dictated by a congressional adjournment planned by mid-October, not presidential politics, say both administration and Gore campaign officials.

Still, southern Ohio is a key swing area of the state, with counties such as Jackson, Pike, Scioto, and Vinton -- all affected by the Piketon plant -- considered up for grabs.

Gore officials say their polls show Gore holding his own in the region and they expect him to do at least as well as Clinton, who won and lost there by a single percentage point in his two elections.

The Piketon closing has the potential to hurt Gore, said Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, whose district includes the plant.

"Is this a problem for the vice president right now? I think it is,'' Strickland said. "That doesn't mean it will be in November.''

Strickland said he is hopeful that the administration will come up with the package of aid he has been advocating. And if the administration doesn't come up with the pre-election goods?

"I think it would make it much more difficult to win'' Ohio, Strickland said. "This is an issue that involves multiple communities and multiple counties and hundreds of workers. In that sense it has long tentacles which extend beyond just the Piketon community.''

Still, Strickland said it would be a reach to think that too many voters will make up their minds on a single issue.

Larry Veach, Pike County Democratic Party chairman and a county commissioner candidate, said he has encountered only a few voters nursing a grudge against Gore over the plant closure.

"Yeah, they're looking at the A-plant thing, but this area is so much better off now than when the Republicans were in there (the White House), it's not funny,'' Veach said.

Republicans aren't sure what they might reap.

Gary Abernathy, spokesman for the Ohio GOP, said the plant closing will devastate the region. Unless the Clinton administration comes up with some aid quickly -- Abernathy stressed that, politics aside, he hopes that happens -- "Gore will be hurt quite a bit.''

Another Republican operative said he is skeptical that parochial issues such as Piketon and WTI will impact the election, even in a tight race. That operative, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed with Strickland that big picture issues are what will determine the outcome.

But the Clinton-Gore administration has shown in the past that it recognizes the importance of confronting -- and trying to dilute -- anger about local issues, said William C. Binning, chairman of the political science department at Youngstown State University.

Binning said that before the 1996 election, Youngstown residents were upset that a promised defense accounting center hadn't materialized over Clinton's first term. Presto! A few weeks before the election, millions of dollars in federal money was bestowed on the Youngstown area airport, Binning said.

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

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

1. Re: NRC: REACTOR SCRAM-NON-SAFETY EVENT?
From: Raymond Shadis <shadis@ime.net>

2. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ACTIVISTS HOLD WASHINGTON DC RALLY
From: magnu96196@aol.com

3. General Environmental Trends (Toxic Release Inventory)
From: magnu96196@aol.com

4. Platts - Saturday, September 16, 2000
From: "Paul Maser" <pmaser@govmail.state.nv.us>

5. Screenings reveal many health problems
From: magnu96196@aol.com

6. Nader: Keep nuke waste at plants
From: magnu96196@aol.com

7. Nader cautions Nevada against nuclear dump
From: magnu96196@aol.com

8. Court hears downwinders' appeal Federal judge dropped thousands from lawsuit
From: magnu96196@aol.com

9. NEW WEBSITE A RESOURCE ON HEALTH ASPECTS OF BERYLLIUM
From: magnu96196@aol.com

10. Report: Pantex safety documents still lacking
From: magnu96196@aol.com

11. Pantex worker blasts DOE report
From: magnu96196@aol.com

12. DOE report scolds Pantex Despite improvements, 'significant work remains'
From: magnu96196@aol.com

13. Report criticizes Pantex
From: magnu96196@aol.com

14. Electron Café by John Glenn: Accurate but misleading
From: magnu96196@aol.com

15. Help Eliminate Nuke Weapons - Write your Foreign Minister
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

16. The Yanomami and the Atomic Energy Commission
From: ishgooda@voyager.net

17. PROGRESS, AT LAST DOE gets moving on cleanup
From: magnu96196@aol.com

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

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: Raymond Shadis <shadis@ime.net>

NRC: REACTOR SCRAM-NON-SAFETY EVENT?

Marcel, Thanks for kind supporting comment. Your spelling reminds me of why the US Navy began color-coding their control systems. If the blow-fuse remark makes sense to you it is I hope reflective of your nuclear and not your automotive expertise. Power brakes and power steering become really problematic when the ignition (and thus, engine) is "turned off" via a short. Even headlights and tail-lights are always fused separately. Please don't demean the profession by defending the boobery contained in the remarks by US NRC. Finally, my medieval ignoramus status may be why last year the president of a nuclear utility asked if I would consider serving on a Nuclear Oversight Committee for a sister utility. I'm sure such offers have been made to you. If a firm offer materializes, do you I should take it? Again, Thanks for your supportive comments,

Ray Shadis Consulting Alchemist Phlogiston Institute Ayatollah U.

At 08:46 AM 9/16/2000 +0200, Marcel Polarski wrote:

You are not an engineer. I am, albeit not a Peugeot one. Still the blow-fuse remark does make sense to me. You are , all of you a bunch of maediaval ignoramuses, a new breed of ayatollah's.

Marcel Polarski

Raymond Shadis a écrit :

Question: How many nuclear workers does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: As many as can be spared from the emergency response crew. Please note: According to the following well-done story by Meggan Clark of the Brattleboro Reformer, - Richard Barkley, NRC Senior Engineer apparently thinks cross-wiring instrumentation and actuator circuits has no ramifications other than the unwarranted monetary expense of an occassional reactor scram. Barkley's analogy of a blown brake-light fuse affecting the ignition of a car because the two are on the same circuit would possibly make sense to a Peugeot engineer. I am not as the article would have it a nuclear "expert" but on our new RATE-THE-NRC & INDUSTRY BONERS PROGRAM , I would have to color this event and NRC response, la-la lilac. Ray Shadis

Blown fuse, lightbulb change caused Yankee shutdown By MEGGAN CLARK Reformer Staff

BRATTLEBORO -- The replacement of a burned-out bulb in the control room led to blown valves in a distant area of the plant and the hot shutdown of Vermont Yankee on Wednesday, according to officials. The malfunction occurred in the condenser, the cooling system responsible for pumping water into the reactor and maintaining a safe temperature. Although the condenser is, as an initial press release from Yankee indicated, on the "non-nuclear side of the plant" it is an essential part of the cooling system that keeps core temperature at a safe level.

Richard Barkley, a senior engineer with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the government is satisfied with Yankee's handling of the event and said public safety was not threatened. But Ray Shadis, a nuclear expert with the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, cited a number of concerns and said the problem was indicative of faulty or outdated wiring at the 28-year-old plant.

"They should not have been able to trigger that valve closing by monkeying with those indicator lights," he said. "Period. Something is very wrong with the wiring." Barkley used the analogy of a blown brake-light fuse affecting the ignition of a car because the two are on the same circuit.

Yankee employees decided to shut down the reactor "within minutes" of discovering rising pressure in the condenser, according to Yankee spokesman Rob Williams. The condenser, which cools steam from the reactor and passes it back into the core as water, is supposed to maintain a vacuum.

"They were in the process of changing an indicator light (bulb) on the main control board (in the control room)," Williams said on Thursday. "There was a short-circuit and that led to the blowing of a fuse, which resulted in the closing of two valves in the plant. Those valves were associated with the system that maintains a vacuum in the condenser."

According to an event report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the water level in the reactor -- which is maintained by flow from the condenser -- had reached about 125 inches above the top of the fuel when the shutdown occurred. Its normal level is 160 inches. Barkley said all emergency cooling systems would have kicked in when the water level reached about 82 inches.

In addition, four lines carrying steam out of the reactor -- or about half -- closed, as a result of the drop in water. The precaution is intended to prevent the escape of radioactive material.

Yankee had been reduced to about 77 percent power when the decision was made to manually drop control rods into the reactor, stopping fission. No emergency systems were activated, according to the NRC.

"The plant responded as expected," Barkley said. "At least the early indications are that they followed the procedure and stabilized the plant quickly. We don't see a big safety risk -- really any safety risk -- posed by this."

However, while the NRC is mainly concerned with safety, Barkley said Yankee should have an economic incentive to "alter the design such that a single light bulb being changed and a single fuse blowout would not cause the plant to shut down."

Shadis expressed concern that the same sort of wiring troubles indicated by Wednesday's event could affect the safety systems of the plant. "There is an issue with all of these plants called cable separation*," he said. "If you have two cables that go to the same piece of equipment in order to be redundant, those cables should not be placed next to each other.

It also means (that) in your circuits, there is no way that an indicator light should be anywhere nearly connected to a circuit that feeds some valve actuator."

He said the number of "isolations," or closures of steam lines

out of the reactor, indicated that the situation was more serious than Yankee described it.

"You were into a serious shutdown situation," he said. "Any one of these things (isolations) stresses the reactor." Yankee last had an unplanned shutdown in October 1998. According to Williams, the average nuclear power plant has an unplanned shutdown rate of just under one per year.

(c) 2000 MediaNews Group, Inc

* This should read, electrical separation---but cable seperation will do.

This should read, scrams. Sudden power changes affect , among other things, fuel cladding integrity, but exercising isolation valves at 77% power is not something that contibutes to the system's longevity either.

NOTE: One thing lacking in the report and in the LER is a sense of time. How quickly various events took place counts for something Eg. How quickly did water levels drop? How quickly did other parameters change? Not that it makes any difference given that this is all within the range of "normal" operations. R.

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

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-15-09.html

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ACTIVISTS HOLD WASHINGTON DC RALLY

WASHINGTON, DC, September 15, 2000 (ENS) - Black children and adult victims of toxic exposure from Texas, Tennessee and other contaminated communities will state "The National Stand for Environmental Justice and Civil Rights" this Saturday in Washington, DC. The event - which includes the display the Environmental Justice Memorial Quilt - will take place during the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) National Prayer Breakfast, a central activity of the CBC´s Annual Legislative Weekend. "The National Stand is designed to inform people who are in town for the CBC Legislative Weekend about the urgent environmental crisis plaguing poor, Black and other communities of color across the country," said Damu Smith, National Stand organizer. "Furthermore, the broader Black community needs to know how the Clinton/Gore Administration and presidential candidate Governor George W. Bush are retreating from civil rights legislation and environmental justice policies designed to protect the health and safety of our children from environmental hazards such as lead poisoning and chemical and radioactive contamination."

A press conference on Saturday will feature testimonials by community activists and victims of toxic exposure. In the poor, African American communities of South Memphis, Tennessee, residents like Doris Bradshaw suffer from chronic, life threatening illnesses that they attribute to toxic contamination from the Defense Depot - the U.S. military´s dumping site for more than 187 types of chemicals. The Reverend R.T. Conley is a resident of a Dallas, Texas neighborhood where children suffer from lead poisoning. Children from contaminated communities throughout the U.S. South will tell their stories about growing up in polluted neighborhoods. Events begin at 9 am in front of the Washington Convention Center. For more information, call 202-265-3263, extension 230.

===

Comments:

The community nearest the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in OR certainly has these problems.

-----------

Message: 3
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com
http://ens.lycos.com/e-wire/Sept00/15Sept0003.html

General Environmental Trends (Toxic Release Inventory)
TRI releases (releases to all media/1988-1998)
Sept 15

WASHINGTON D.C., E-Wire -- The TRI program has been a real success story-nationwide and in Texas. Texas industries are actually doing a better job of reducing emissions than industries in the other 49 states. The TRI continues to be the best gauge of pollution prevention efforts.

The numbers:
All U.S. manufacturing: 45 percent reduction
All Texas manufacturing: 47 percent reduction
U.S. Chemicals & Allied Products (SIC 28): 57 percent reduction
Texas Chemicals & Allied Products (SIC 28): 47 percent reduction Air quality trends

Criteria pollutants (all industries/nationwide) These are the six pollutants for which there are national ambient standards. They are seen by most parties as good indicators of overall air quality. The national trend for the six criteria pollutants can be summed up in one word: down. (Note: the six criteria pollutants are carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide and particulates.)

Emissions of criteria pollutants have declined 31 percent nationwide since 1970. During that same time, the population grew by 31 percent, people are driving twice as far, and the economy has more than doubled.

According to the EPA, during the last 10 years, the concentrations of the six criteria pollutants have also fallen. They're down...

38 percent for carbon monoxide
14 percent for nitrogen dioxide
39 percent for sulfur dioxide
19 percent for ozone
26 percent for particulates
67 percent for lead

Criteria pollutants (chemical industry/nationwide) The chemical industry has made-and continues to make-significant progress in reducing air emissions. For example: according to the EPA, the industry reduced emissions of the six criteria pollutants by 36 percent nationwide between 1988 and 1998.

The industry has cut ozone precursor emissions-a major constituent of smog-by more than 50 percent.

The industry's emissions reduction efforts have dramatically narrowed its contribution to overall emissions of the six criteria pollutants.

Nationwide, the industry is

1.5 percent of total carbon monoxide emissions seven-tenths of 1 percent of total nitrogen dioxide emissions
1.5 percent of total sulfur dioxide emissions
2.4 percent of total volatile organic compound (ozone) emissions
two-tenths of 1 percent of total particulate emissions
4.1 percent of total lead emissions. Toxic Release Inventory Air Data

Toxic Release Inventory (chemical industry/nationwide/air releases) Nationwide, the chemical industry has cut total TRI air emissions by 66 percent since 1988.

Toxic Release Inventory (chemical industry/Texas/air releases) The chemical industry has cut total TRI air emissions in Texas by 58 percent since 1988. National Air Toxics Assessment Data

According to recently released EPA data, Council members led all U.S. manufacturing in reducing the emissions of a key set of 30 substances that are a part of the TRI. Between 1990 and 1997, the EPA data shows that Council members cut emissions of these substances by 64 percent. 'Grandfathered' air emissions

'Grandfathering' and the Clean Air Act Any industrial facility built in the U.S. since 1971 must obtain a permit for certain air emissions-and must meet what are called "new source performance standards."

The law allowed facilities that were operating in 1971 to be "grandfathered"-meaning they were not required to have the same permitting requirements of new facilities. Grandfathered units are not unique to Texas. Every state has them.

It's incorrect to say-as some have-that the grandfathered units in Texas and elsewhere are unregulated. The grandfathered units are required to meet the new technology standards-called MACT (which stands for maximum available control technology)-and state requirements.

In addition, any significant changes in these units after 1971 triggered a requirement to install new pollution-control equipment-and revise their permits.

'Grandfathering' and the chemical industry in Texas Most of the chemical manufacturing process units operating today in Texas have been constructed or modified since 1971-which means they have permits and that they must meet the new source performance requirements.

Many of the chemical industry's grandfathered units still operating are support units-such as boilers and compressor engines. Most of these types of units are fired by clean-burning natural gas-which means they have low air emissions.

The Texas Natural Resources Control Commission estimates that the chemical industry's share of total emissions from the grandfathered facilities is 5 percent. Air quality in Texas

All Texas counties have air quality better than national standards for five of the six criteria pollutants. Only the ozone standard is exceeded-and only in four urban areas. A new, more stringent state implementation plan (SIP)-which has been approved by EPA-should bring these areas into compliance.

Despite the clean air efforts in Texas, however, several of the state's cities have not yet achieved the standard for ozone. State implementation plans-reviewed and approved by the EPA-continue to be the primary tool to drive emissions reductions. Superfund

One of the most important environmental programs we've been involved in during the last 20 years has been Superfund-the federal waste-site cleanup program. Although the cleanup program continues to have problems, there are also some successes to go along with them.

Total NPL sites: 1,478
Cleanup has been completed at 680 sites
Cleanup is under way at another 442 sites
Design is under way at another 76 sites
Remedy has been selected at another 40 sites
Studies are under way at another 182 sites
Remedy selection begun at another 57 sites

Total: 1,477 sites have either been cleaned up-or are on their way to being cleaned up. The Keystone Center award

The Keystone Center-one of the nation's premier non-governmental organizations-recently gave its annual "Leadership in Industry" award to the American Chemistry Council for its Responsible Care(r) initiative.

The award confirms the industry's solid environmental performance record and our leadership on a global basis.

Other Keystone leadership awards this year went to Rep. John Dingell, the ranking member and former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee; Dr. Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences; and George Archibald of the International Crane Foundation.

The award is given each year to individuals and organizations for their leadership, outstanding problem solving skills and efforts to seek consensus-based solutions to some of the most challenging issues facing society.

The Keystone Center is a non-profit public policy, scientific and educational organization and is headquartered in Keystone, Colorado. It seeks to bring together people from business and industry, environmental and citizen organizations, academia and government to address pressing questions, encourage scientific inquiry, enhance understanding and appreciation of the natural world, and to develop consensus on complex and controversial public policy issues. SOURCE: American Chemical Council

=========

Comments:

Notice very little is said on halogen pollutants or fluorides/chlorides. Or that the ozone holes toxic fallout adds to these effects.

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

Message: 4
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: "Paul Maser" <pmaser@govmail.state.nv.us>
Platts - Saturday, September 16, 2000
Nuclear News Flashes

Chernobyl retirement set for December

Washington -- 15 Sep 2000 Ukraine's president confirmed Chernobyl will be shut Dec. 15, and the European Union (EU) pledged to help the country replace the power from Chernobyl. At a press conference in Paris, where President Leonid Kuchma was meeting with his French counterpart Jacques Chirac and EU officials, Kuchma called the Chernobyl closure "a historic event" to which he invited "the world press." Earlier, Chirac had commended Kuchma for the decision and promised the EU would support loans for completing two VVER-1000 units from the Euratom fund and from the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development. The EU and member states are providing a total of 430-million euros for the Chernobyl shutdown operation, making it the single largest provider of financial assistance, a joint statement said. France currently holds the revolving EU presidency.

Washington (Nuclear News Flashes)--15Sep2000 US NRC analysis sees bleak future for USEC A US Nuclear Regulatory Commission analysis suggests that USEC Inc. will lose money on its SWU production for almost every year from now until 2010. According to sources, the analysis suggests that the only way USEC can make money through 2005 is by selling Russian SWU and its own uranium and SWU inventories. The sources said that the NRC analysis, which was based on USEC data, suggests that the most cash flow for the company over the period 2000-2010 would be generated if USEC stopped producing SWU by 2002 and just became a broker/trader. The full NRC analysis has not been made public.

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

Message: 5
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Screenings reveal many health problems

September 16, 2000
By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel Oak Ridge bureau
http://www.knoxnews.com/business/15089.shtml

OAK RIDGE -- More than 60 percent of the K-25 workers who've participated in a medical screening program suffer from hearing loss, according to statistics released this week. The screenings also have uncovered a number of respiratory problems and other illnesses, including some cancers, that may be linked to work at the Oak Ridge plant.

"There's no doubt in anyone's mind that these things we're seeing are related," said Bruce Lawson, a former K-25 worker who's involved in the Worker Health Protection Program run by PACE (Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers) International Union.

About 500 K-25 workers -- mostly former workers -- have undergone medical evaluations so far, and Lawson said the efforts will continue as long as funding is available.

The program, coordinated by PACE in conjunction with medical personnel from Queens College, is funded with a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

"Primarily we're looking for things that are treatable, things where intervention would probably be successful," Lawson said.

The medical exams, including a chest X-ray, breathing tests and other evaluations, are available free to anyone who ever worked at one of the nation's gaseous diffusion plants.

K-25's gaseous diffusion operation, which enriched uranium for reactor fuel and atomic bombs, was shut down in 1985. Two other gaseous diffusion plant are still in operation at Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio.

Of 405 Oak Ridge workers who underwent audiograms, 258 of them -- 63.7 percent -- had hearing loss to some degree, according to statistics released by PACE.

Several workers said the enrichment processes at K-25 were extremely loud and that cotton ear plugs and other protective equipment offered to employees did little to block or lessen the high-pitched noises.

Eddie Gray, a former K-25 worker, said the entire crew he worked with at the Oak Ridge plant now requires hearing aids.

Lawson said chemicals and hazardous materials widely used at the plant probably contributed to many of the respiratory problems.

More than 8 percent of participants in the screening program were diagnosed with asbestos fibrosis; 16 percent had chronic bronchitis; and 6.8 percent had emphysema.

Some of the workers may have more than one of those conditions, Lawson said.

During peak operations, the Oak Ridge plant employed thousands of workers, and many retirees or former plant workers still live in the region.

About 1,700 people now work at the Oak Ridge site, mostly engaged in environmental cleanup activities.

FREE EXAMS

Medical examinations, including a chest X-ray, breathing tests and other evaluations, are available free to anyone who ever worked at one of the nation's gaseous diffusion plants.

To participate, call toll-free 1-888-241-1199 or visit the Web site www.pace-workerhealth.org.

Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.

===========

Comments:

One of the most wide spread exposures at gas diffusion plants is exposure to HF from the processes. It damages the lungs and immune health of many of the workers at this plant, even the secretaries and cafeteria workers were exposed to this gas.

One of the problems is fluorides are hard to treat, as they are so retained in the bone and body. HF and fluorides produce various symptoms, asthma and arthritus, thyroid damage, calcium upsets, foggy thinking, debilitating CFS, and so on.

While HF exposures are very obvious in the workers, this prime cause is usually just lumped in with other chemical effects.

Very similar effects occur in the GWI, have very similar illness profiles and exposure to fluorides and toxic metals, Hg from vaccines and DU.

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

Message: 6
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Nader: Keep nuke waste at plants

September 15, 2000
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2000/sep/15/510771001.html

Presidential hopeful, consumer advocate against Yucca plan By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com> LAS VEGAS SUN

Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader has been opposed to nuclear power and its trail of highly radioactive waste since before Vice President Al Gore was first elected to the House in 1976.

So it was no surprise today when Nader, speaking at a rally at the UNLV Moyer Student Union, called for leaving the nuclear garbage where it is stored at 73 power plants instead of shipping 77,000 tons of it to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of where he was speaking.

Yucca Mountain is a sensitive political issue in Nevada, Nader's state campaign coordinator Linda Henry said before his 11 a.m. speech.

"It's going to be a major issue in Nevada for the November election," Henry said. "It's what everybody asks me: 'What's his stand on Yucca Mountain?' "

As a consumer advocate well known for his stance on auto safety, Nader became active in opposing all things nuclear in the early 1970s.

As founder of the consumer advocate group Citizen Alert in 1971, Nader kept asking the questions: Where does the nuclear waste go? How do you transport the waste? How do you develop security around a nuclear power plant? Why does it cost so much?

There were no answers from the federal government then and there are no answers now, he said. Since the federal government is not allowing scientists independent from the Department of Energy and the nuclear industry to sign off on a Yucca repository, Nader said he's against it.

How to deal with the waste is a question that won't be answered for the next 10 years or so, until technology catches up, Nader said. The easiest solution is to quit producing radioactive wastes and move from nuclear power to solar energy.

His opposition to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain is based on the lack of sufficient scientific studies by the DOE, earthquake hazards (Nevada ranks third behind California and Alaska for quakes) and unacceptable radiation exposures, Nader said.

Temporary storage isn't much of an option, either, he said.

Nader doesn't like dry cask storage, already approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to keep radioactive spent fuel out of the environment at reactor sites.

Instead, he believes the spent nuclear fuel rods should be left in storage at the individual reactor sites.

Nader blames the press, Congress and the Atomic Energy Commission, predecessor to the DOE, for promoting nuclear power.

It wasn't until the Three Mile Island near-meltdown in Pennsylvania that the press and the public woke up, Nader said.

Before Nader spoke, Western Shoshone elder and spiritual leader Corbin Harney expressed his concerns about federal plans for burying nuclear waste at Yucca, a mountain claimed by the tribe as a sacred site.

"We have one water, one air and one Mother Earth," Harney said. "We must take care of it all."

==========

Comments:

Everyone should take advantage of the elections and feeding folks like Nader the nuclear problem issues and get the nuke problems into the spotlight and let them hit the Bush and Gore business as usual types in the press.

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

Message: 7
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Nader cautions Nevada against nuclear dump

16 September 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/000916NNader-Vegas.html

LAS VEGAS - Nevadans' safety will be threatened and the state's tourism industry will suffer if Yucca Mountain becomes the nation's dump for nuclear waste, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader said yesterday.

Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site the federal government is studying as a permanent storage for 77,000 metric tons of mostly spent nuclear fuel rods from commercial power reactors.

A Yucca Mountain dump would be "the greatest single risk in the history of the state," Nader said at a UNLV student rally, adding, "There are 49 states who don't really care all that much as long as they can get rid of it."

Nader said there's no scientific proof that surface water won't seep into the dump or that the site would withstand earthquakes. He also said transporting high-level nuclear waste to Nevada is too risky because of possible radiation leaks in case of an accident.

"The risk of accident here is not theoretical," Nader said. He suggested that power plants across the country keep their nuclear waste until a way is found to neutralize radioactivity.

"It's easy just to send it to Nevada," Nader said, adding that such shipments would be a disaster for the tourism industry and gambling industry - the state's lifeblood.

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Message: 8
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Court hears downwinders' appeal
Federal judge dropped thousands from lawsuit

Karen Dorn Steele - Staff writer
http://www.spokane.net/news-story.asp?date=091500&ID=s852131

SEATTLE _ A federal judge improperly dismissed nearly 4,500 plaintiffs from a major Hanford radiation lawsuit, their lawyers argued Thursday before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

At issue before the panel: Whether U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald of Yakima properly used his "gatekeeper" role to review scientific evidence in the massive toxic tort case, or whether he improperly usurped the role of a jury and disregarded applicable Washington state evidence standards.

McDonald should have allowed a jury to weigh individual claims of radiation damage, said attorney Merrill Davidoff. His Philadelphia law firm has been involved in several high-profile radiation cases, including litigation that followed the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

"The judge contorted the rules," Davidoff told 9th Circuit judges Alfred Goodwin of Pasadena, Calif., and Mary Schroeder and Michael Hawkins, both of Phoenix.

Kevin Van Wart, a Chicago lawyer for the private contractors who ran Hanford during the Cold War, disagreed.

He said McDonald had done a proper job of narrowing the case to people who can prove Hanford radiation doubled their risk of contracting a disease.

"This process requires the judicial system to draw lines. It can't just be anybody claiming compensation," Van Wart said.

McDonald's August 1998 order left only a handful of plaintiffs in the case, estimated by the U.S. Department of Energy to be from 20 to 200. The next phase of those cases is on hold while the appeal of McDonald's order is heard.

In his 760-page legal order, McDonald said he was following U.S. Supreme Court directives for judges to act as "gatekeepers" of scientific evidence.

McDonald also said scientific evidence on radiation injury is too complex for a jury and could lead to "an erroneous conclusion that exposure to Hanford emissions was a cause in fact of an individual's disease."

Most of the remaining plaintiffs are making thyroid cancer claims and must prove they got a radioactive Iodine-131 dose between five and 100 rads from Hanford emissions.

The downwinders' lawyers want the 9th Circuit judges to apply a lesser standard of proof used in Washington state toxic tort cases, in which an individual only needs to prove that radiation was a "substantial factor" in causing an illness.

At Thursday's hearing, the judges closely questioned the lawyers, but didn't indicate how they are leaning on the complex case. They will eventually produce a written decision.

Van Wart defended McDonald's use of scientific experts and evidence.

"This case is almost 10 years old, and the court gave these plaintiffs nearly eight years to prove their case," Van Wart said.

Attorneys for the corporations that ran Hanford during the Cold War have racked up more than $60 million in legal fees to defend the nuclear contractors against the downwinders, according to information obtained by The Spokesman-Review through the Freedom of Information Act.

Judge Hawkins asked one plaintiffs' lawyer, Roy Haber of Eugene, Ore., what was wrong with McDonald's approach.

McDonald "got to the 9th inning without any evidence," Haber said. "He set a threshold dose when the science is unanimous there is no threshold below which radiation can't cause cancer."

Davidoff reminded the judges that the 9th Circuit had already reversed McDonald after he denied a separate claim for medical monitoring for Hanford downwinders.

He asked the panel to reverse McDonald in the Hanford case and "give a more direct mandate to this judge."

oKaren Dorn Steele can be reached at (509) 459-5462 or by e-mail at karend@spokesman.com.

-----------

Message: 9
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

NEW WEBSITE A RESOURCE ON HEALTH ASPECTS OF BERYLLIUM

http://www.brushwellman.com/web/whatsnew.ns4/ce0951fa9881965d8525647500494f3b/429e38bc178b92ad85256866004bff5a?OpenDocument

Chronicles Brush Wellman's 56-Year Effort to Eliminate Chronic Beryllium Disease

CLEVELAND (Jan. 14, 2000) - Brush Wellman Inc. this week launched an informational website at www.befacts.com, to serve as a resource about beryllium, chronic beryllium disease, and the steps Brush Wellman has taken and continues to take to eliminate the disease.

The site presents a timeline of events relating to the understanding of beryllium's occupational health effects over a 56-year time period that included the Cold War years.

"It demonstrates unequivocally - decade by decade - that Brush Wellman has been in the forefront of every major effort to identify and eliminate the hazards of beryllium exposure since those hazards were first identified in the United States in 1943," said Gordon D. Harnett, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Brush Wellman.

Steps the company has taken to tighten workplace practices at its plants to minimize inhalation and skin absorption of beryllium are also included.

Other contents of befacts.com include:

A definition of beryllium, its unique characteristics and its critical uses in society in articles such as air bag sensors, fire extinguisher sprinkler heads, X-ray windows for mammography and pacemakers; A lengthy "point-counterpoint" to a series in The (Toledo) Blade which falsely claims that Brush Wellman knowingly allowed a life-threatening situation to drag on for decades that could have been curtailed years earlier; A Frequently Asked Questions section and a glossary of terms; Biographical profiles on the individuals who comprise the Beryllium Industry Scientific Advisory Committee; A detailed bibliography of sources and research over time pertaining to beryllium's health effects; and The latest findings pertaining to beryllium's effects on worker health as presented to the American Conference of Government Industrial Hygienists in September, 1999.

"Brush Wellman is totally committed to the safety and health of our employees and to the value and quality of our products," said Harnett. "This website is our sincere effort to show the public that we have worked for more than five decades to lead the way to higher workplace standards, aimed at protecting the health of all the men and women in this company while fulfilling our vital role in modern society."

He said the site will be updated frequently and provides visitors with the opportunity to give feedback.

Chronic beryllium disease, or CBD, may occur in the manufacture of metallic beryllium, beryllium oxide ceramic, or alloys containing beryllium. It is an inflammation in the lungs that can result when a person is exposed to respirable beryllium fumes, dusts or powder, and subsequently demonstrates an allergic reaction to beryllium. Not everyone who is exposed to beryllium fumes, dusts or powder will develop CBD; most people do not.

===========

Comments:

One thing to keep in mind is that the Be industry and the nuke weapons one exposes folks to HF, which shuts down the bodies phage clean up system to toxic materials and damaged cells. This type effect could well explain why some are more affected with Be.

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

Message: 10
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Pantex safety documents still lacking

September 16, 2000
Associated Press
http://www.dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/170626_pantex.html

AMARILLO - A government review team says many of the Pantex Plant's safety documents do not meet Energy Department standards or adequately analyze some nuclear weapons hazards.

Nuclear weapons are assembled and disassembled at the Amarillo plant.

The review, conducted by the Department of Energy's Office of Oversight, was completed this month and released to DOE officials this week.

The report does note some improvements in Pantex's safety documentation but faults DOE and Pantex contractor Mason & Hanger Corp. for not revising safety documents sooner.

The report also states that Pantex has not fully analyzed the effects of radioactive leaks, as might occur in a high-explosive detonation accident.

Review team members studied Pantex's hazard analyses and controls to ensure that nuclear weapons operations and plant operations are safe.

"Although the rate of progress has improved in the past two years, significant work remains before the Pantex Plant will have a set of safety analyses that meets current DOE requirements,'' the report said.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ordered a three-month investigation of the plant's safety processes in March. He sent experts to review all safety documentation.

The area manger for the DOE in Amarillo, John Bernier, says that Pantex has strengthened its safety processes but that those improvements didn't come fast enough.

"We recognize that probably the improvements have not come as quickly as we would like them to, and we still have a ways to go yet,'' Bernier said.

The plant was criticized for its safety processes in a February report to Congress. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report said Pantex may have made some improvements in its safety programs but has more improvements to make.

Safety Board Chairman John Conway said Thursday that his agency is reviewing the latest DOE report and is not ready to comment on its findings.

The DOE fined Mason & Hanger $75,000 for a potential nuclear safety violation in June. The DOE said fire-suppression systems in some weapons facilities were inoperable.

The company was also fined last year by the DOE for a small fire that could have caused a high-explosive blast in the weapons assembly cell.

No workers were injured in either of the incidents, and no radioactive materials were released.

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

Message: 11
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 13:19:32 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Pantex worker blasts DOE report

September 16, 2000
By JIM McBRIDE Globe-News Courts Writer
http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/091600/new_pantex.shtml

Frank George is tired of Pantex getting a bad nuclear safety rap.

George, president of Pantex's Metal Trades Council, blasted a government report released this week that criticized the nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant for having inadequate safety documentation.

The review, conducted by the DOE's Office of Oversight, was completed this month and found some improvements in Pantex's safety documentation. But the report faulted DOE and Pantex contractor Mason & Hanger Corp. for taking too long to revise authorization basis safety documents.

George said authorization basis documentation often forces workers to perform cumbersome procedures that distract them from the touchy job of assembling, repairing and dismantling nuclear warheads.

"We put nuclear explosive safety in the hands of the production technicians daily. There's your check-and-balances system for everything," George said. "I would trust the production technicians and their knowledge regardless of whatever system they put in."

The longtime union president, who represents 12 unions and about 1,000 Pantex workers, chafes at the series of readiness assessments, technical safety reviews and hazard analyses that must be completed before a worker can even touch a nuclear warhead.

"This authorization basis business, to me it just justifies a whole lot of DOE management people's positions," George said. "Once we do operate, you've got so many people looking over your shoulder to make sure you don't violate something that it creates an undue pressure on the technicians,"

After all, George said, Pantex churned out thousands of nuclear artillery shells, bombs and warheads during the Cold War.

Now, much of Pantex's work focuses on scrapping weapons. The plant's safety focus also now seeks to establish more stringent Nuclear Regulatory Commission-style regulations that are more pertinent to nuclear reactors than warheads, George said.

George said he understands the Energy Department's concerns about operational liability, but he wonders whether increased safety regulations get in the way of putting out the product.

"The question someone needs to ask: How did we ever make it through the mass-production days of the Cold War when we didn't have authorization basis documentation and have all the engineered systems that we have now?" George said. "How did we ever make it when we were clicking units out of this place as fast as we could make them?"

The DOE also needs to provide more money to Pantex so one Pantex operation does not compete with another for government funding, George said.

"I think the contractor has been unduly slammed on part of the authorization basis implementation," George said. "There's some concerns. Are they bona-fide safety concerns? In my opinion, no. ... For people to say that we're operating a loose cannon out here. That's not true."

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

Message: 12
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

DOE report scolds Pantex Despite improvements, 'significant work remains'

September 15, 2000
By JIM McBRIDE Globe-News Courts Writer
http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/091500/new_doe.shtml

Many of the Pantex Plant's safety documents do not adequately analyze some nuclear weapons hazards or meet Energy Department standards, a government safety review team's report said.

The Globe-News obtained a copy of the report, which was released to DOE officials this week.

The review, conducted by DOE's Office of Oversight, was completed this month and found some improvements in Pantex's safety documentation. But the report faulted DOE and Pantex contractor Mason & Hanger Corp. for taking too long to revise safety documents at the nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant.

Among other findings, the report said Pantex has not fully analyzed the effects of radioactive leaks caused by a potential high-explosive detonation accident.

"In the absence of a comprehensive set of hazard analyses, it is not possible to ensure that all accidents have been analyzed and that all necessary controls have been established, as envisioned by DOE standards," the report said.

According to the report, team members studied Pantex's authorization basis process - hazards analyses and controls designed to ensure nuclear weapons operations and plant operations are safe.

"Although the rate of progress has improved in the past two years, significant work remains before the Pantex Plant will have a set of safety analyses that meets current DOE requirements," the report said.

In March, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ordered a three-month probe of Pantex safety processes and sent experts to review the plant's safety documentation.

John Bernier, deputy area manager for DOE's Amarillo Area Office, said the report indicates Pantex has strengthened its safety processes, but that safety improvements have been slow in coming.

"They clearly articulate that we have made improvements in the authorization basis - the safety basis documentation - from the 1996 review that they had done, and that we are actually making improved safety down on the floor, where we are putting controls in place," Bernier said. "At the same time, we recognize that probably the improvements have not come as quickly as we would like them to, and we still have a ways to go yet."

Bernier said DOE and Mason & Hanger Corp. have made significant changes in the past two years to bolster Pantex safety, and other extensive safety enhancements are being prepared.

"We feel like we are operating in a safe environment, but these continue to provide enhancements as part of the overall operations," Bernier said.

The report echoes concerns that the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board raised this year about Pantex's fire protection system.

The DOE safety team's report said Pantex's safety documentation does not comprehensively analyze some fire scenarios at the plant, but plant officials are aware of the problem.

Safety Board Chairman John Conway said Thursday his agency is reviewing the report and is not yet ready to comment on the DOE's findings.

DOE inspectors said Mason & Hanger should bolster its technical capability and that plant workers still must embrace some of the detailed safety requirements.

The report concludes that Pantex has improved its safety documentation for weapons work, but much work remains to be done.

"In the past two years, improvements in authorization basis activities have been made in the alignment of responsibilities, increased technical capabilities, and development of processes/standards," the report said. "Recently developed authorization basis documents are thorough and exhibit few deficiencies."

Team members found, however, that Pantex has not corrected concerns about safety documentation cited in a 1996 report from DOE's Office of Environment, Safety and Health. The report says requirements for safety documentation have become more stringent in recent years.

Bernier said DOE has moved to meet stricter safety standards similar to those used for nuclear reactors.

"We've gone to what I would say are Nuclear Regulatory Commission-type of requirements, and that has not been what the DOE has practiced in the past. So the bar has been raised," Bernier said.

Bernier said the plant must balance its workload and other priorities with the funding it receives each year.

The report said Pantex has completed some safety documents, including one for storage of nuclear materials, and finished a lightning hazard analysis that focuses on dangers lightning poses to nuclear weapons.

In 1996, the DOE's Office of Environment, Safety and Health cited concerns about Mason & Hanger's safety documentation.

In 1998, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board issued a top-secret recommendation calling on the DOE to simplify and improve safety processes at Pantex.

In a February report to Congress, the defense board noted improvements in some safety programs but harshly criticized Pantex's overall efforts to improve safety.

"The pace of progress on the part of DOE and the Pantex contractor ... has been disappointing. The process has not been simplified; in fact it may have become even more complex," the report said. "Recent delays caused by this process, which continues to be cumbersome and time-consuming, have resulted in the deferment of safety improvements and a prolonged dependence on less reliable or less robust safety controls or processes."

Pantex began safety improvements after the board recommendation was issued, but many still must be fully implemented.

The safety board began overseeing Pantex after a 1991 report by the General Accounting Office, a congressional oversight group, recommended that the safety board staff monitor Pantex operations.

At the time, the GAO cited "persistent safety and health problems" in making its recommendation. The GAO criticized plant officials for completing fewer than half of Pantex's safety analysis reports needed to ensure plant safety.

Then, the DOE and Pantex officials criticized the report and said most of the problems cited by the GAO had been corrected.

In June, the DOE fined Mason & Hanger $75,000 for a potential nuclear safety violation because fire-suppression systems in some weapons facilities were inoperable. Last year, DOE fined the company $82,500 for a small fire that could have caused a high-explosive blast in a weapons assembly cell.

No workers were injured in either of the incidents, and no radioactive materials were released.

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

Message: 13
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Report criticizes Pantex

September 14, 2000
By JIM McBRIDE Globe-News Courts Writer
http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/091400/new_reportcrit.shtml

The Pantex Plant has beefed up its safety analysis procedures, but many of the plant's safety documents still do not adequately analyze some nuclear weapons hazards or meet Energy Department standards, a government safety review team's report said.

The review, conducted by the DOE's Office of Oversight, was completed earlier this month. The Globe-News obtained a copy of the report, which was released to DOE officials this week.

Among other findings, the report said Pantex has not fully analyzed the effects of radioactive leaks caused by a potential high-explosive detonation accident. Pantex is the nation's primary assembly and disassembly plant for nuclear warheads.

"In the absence of a comprehensive set of hazard analyses, it is not possible to ensure that all accidents have been analyzed and that all necessary controls have been established, as envisioned by DOE standards," the report said.

According to the report, team members studied Pantex's authorization basis process - hazards analyses and controls that are designed to ensure nuclear weapons operations and plant operations are safe.

"Although the rate of progress has improved in the past two years, significant work remains before the Pantex Plant will have a set of safety analyses that meets current DOE requirements," the report said.

In March, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ordered a three-month probe of Pantex's safety processes and sent experts to review the plant's safety documentation.

John Bernier, deputy area manager for the DOE's Amarillo Area Office, said the report indicates Pantex has strengthened its safety processes, but that safety improvements have been slow in coming.

"They clearly articulate that we have made improvements in the authorization basis - the safety basis documentation - from the 1996 review that they had done, and that we are actually making improved safety down on the floor, where we are putting controls in place," he said. "At the same time, we recognize that probably the improvements have not come as quickly as we would like them to, and we still have a ways to go yet."

Bernier said DOE and Pantex contractor Mason & Hanger Corp. have made significant changes in the past two years to bolster Pantex safety and that other extensive safety enhancements now are being prepared.

"We feel like we are operating in a safe environment, but these continue to provide enhancements as part of the overall operations," he said.

The report also echoes concerns the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board raised earlier this year about Pantex's fire protection system.

The DOE safety team's report said Pantex's safety documentation now does not comprehensively analyze some fire scenarios at the plant, but that plant officials are aware of the problem.

Safety Board Chairman John Conway said this morning that his agency is reviewing the report and is not yet ready to comment on the DOE's findings.

DOE inspectors said Mason & Hanger should bolster its technical capability and that plant workers still must embrace some of the detailed safety requirements.

The report concludes that Pantex has improved its safety documentation for weapons work, but much work remains to be done.

"In the past two years, improvements in authorization basis activities have been made in the alignment of responsibilities, increased technical capabilities, and development of processes/standards," the report said. "Recently developed authorization basis documents are thorough and exhibit few deficiencies."

Team members found, however, that Pantex has not corrected concerns about safety documentation cited in a 1996 report from DOE's Office of Environment, Safety and Health. The report also notes that requirements for safety documentation have become more stringent in recent years.

Bernier said DOE has moved to meet stricter safety standards similar to those used for nuclear reactors.

"We've gone to what I would say are Nuclear Regulatory Commission-type of requirements, and that has not been what the DOE has practiced in the past. So the bar has been raised," Bernier said.

Bernier noted that the plant must balance its workload and other priorities with the the funding it receives each year.

The report said Pantex has completed some safety documents, including one for storage of nuclear materials, and finished a lightning hazard analysis that focuses on dangers lightning poses to nuclear weapons.

In 1996, the DOE's Office of Environment, Safety and Health cited concerns about Mason & Hanger's safety documentation.

In 1998, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board also issued a top-secret recommendation calling on the DOE to simplify and improve safety processes at Pantex.

In a February report to Congress, the defense board noted improvements in some safety programs, but harshly criticized Pantex's overall efforts to improve safety.

"The pace of progress on the part of DOE and the Pantex contractor . . . has been disappointing. The process has not been simplified; in fact it may have become even more complex," the report said. "Recent delays caused by this process, which continues to be cumbersome and time-consuming, have resulted in the deferment of safety improvements and a prolonged dependence on less reliable or less robust safety controls or processes."

Pantex began a series of safety improvements after the board recommendation was issued, but many still must be fully implemented.

The safety board began overseeing Pantex after a 1991 report by the General Accounting Office, a congressional oversight group, recommended that the safety board staff monitor Pantex operations.

At the time, the GAO cited "persistent safety and health problems" in making its recommendation. The GAO criticized plant officials for completing fewer than half of Pantex's safety analysis reports needed to ensure plant safety.

Then, the DOE and Pantex officials criticized the report and said most of the problems cited by the GAO had been corrected.

In June, the DOE fined Mason & Hanger $75,000 for a potential nuclear safety violation because fire-suppression systems in some weapons facilities were inoperable. Last year, the DOE also fined the company $82,500 fine for a small fire that could have caused a high-explosive blast in a weapons assembly cell.

No workers were injured in either of the incidents, and no radioactive materials were released.

-----------

Message: 14
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Electron Café by John Glenn: Accurate but misleading

http://www.poweronline.com/content/news/article.asp?DocID={7FAF6181-8A23-11D4-8C60-009027DE0829}&Bucket=HomeFeaturedArticles&VNETCOOKIE=NO

9/14/2000
USA Today just ran a series of articles about the hazardous working conditions at facilities that processed raw materials of the United States nuclear weapons programs in the 1940s and 1950s. The articles paint a picture of workers who were exposed to hazards uniquely related to the nuclear program.

Since there is good evidence that air concentrations of uranium dust in these facilities was as high as a few hundred times acceptable limits, viewed in hindsight these workers are seen as victims. USA Today suggests that Congress should provide compensation to these workers who took risks to support the nation´s security.

The article correctly identified the contradiction in a national policy that proposes that compensation be paid to government and national lab workers who received far less exposure to radiation than these commercial workers.

[I questioned in earlier columns whether nuclear workers, on average, should be classed as victims. As victims, they have been paid better than the average American, have had interesting and worthwhile jobs and on average have lived longer and in better health than the average American.]

The article missed the more glaring truth that the mineral extraction industry is hundreds of times more hazardous than is tolerated in the regulated nuclear industry. This is equivalent to worrying about a Chihuahua that nips at your ankles while the 500-pound gorilla in the corner of the room is hardly noticed.

The most glaring deficiency at these work sites was the lack of good measurements of exposure of workers. USA Today quoted Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) personnel who expressed concern and wanted to monitor the levels of uranium inhaled or ingested by workers. At that time, the AEC was both weapons builder and safety regulator.

This conflict of interest was remedied with the creation of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 1975. The companies did not want active monitoring because that might alarm the workers. What was not stressed was that these facilities were following the industry standards that prevailed in the mineral extraction industry at that time.

The companies selected to refine uranium ore for the AEC were chosen because they already were processing the same or similar ores. They were just asked to process more and in some cases process a grade of ore that contained higher than usual concentrations of uranium.

Because there is not good data confirming levels of uranium actually taken into the bodies of the workers, the high concentrations in air discussed in the article may or may not have resulted in the very high radiation doses discussed in the articles. If dust particles are not the right size, they will not make it into the lungs and be deposited there. Good evaluations ideally would have measured concentrations, particle size distributions and bioassay measurements of actual body burdens. I would have appreciated actual numbers so that I could independently estimate exposures. However, I do not think that very many other readers cared about that omission.

The situation is better today in the mineral extraction industry. Monitoring for toxic metals and control of breathing zone concentrations using ventilation or masks is standard. However, a double standard still exists with respect to naturally radioactive ores.

Processors that handle ores with a concentration of uranium or thorium above 0.05% by weight during processing are subject to immensely more controls than a similar operation that just manages to stay below that concentration. I understand that 0.05% was originally chosen because ores below that concentration were not considered to be financially viable for extraction of uranium or thorium. But ores used to extract other minerals such as zeolites, niobium, tantalum and tungsten may have concentrations of uranium or thorium that are quite close to 0.05%.

The contrast in regulatory oversight is most apparent with respect to waste piles generated in mineral extraction. Above 0.05% the processor must be licensed by the NRC or an Agreement State. NRC licensed dirt plies containing as little as 0.001% of uranium and thorium must be treated as waste and/or the site must meet the stringent license termination criteria adopted by NRC.

Although I abhor double standards, this is an area where we either accept a double standard or dramatically relax the safety standards for the entire nuclear industry. The exposure of members of the public to uranium, thorium and others (including radon gas) from the soil in their own backyard exceeds federal standards for public exposure by a factor of 2 to 3 and NRC license termination criteria by a factor of 8 to 12.

Many mineral tailings will have uranium/thorium concentrations several times higher than the average backyard. USA Today did not see through to the less obvious fact that the hazard in mineral extraction is not due to the nuclear programs, but to the toxic earth itself.

To respond to this column or to contact the author, please send an e-mail to editor@poweronline.com.

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

Message: 15
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

Help Eliminate Nuke Weapons - Write your Foreign Minister reUN General Assembly

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THIS REQUEST AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE AMONGST PEOPLE THAT MIGHT ACT ON IT

Apologies for cross- postings. If you get this many times, please just delete the excess copies.

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 Everyone,

The First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, which deals with nuclear disarmament, will commence meeting on Oct 3.

Preparatory meetings are already taking place, and its agenda is available on the UN website.

http://www.un.org/News/Press/7days.html
or
http://www.un.org

A number of constructive resolutions are on the agenda concerning nuclear weapons.

These include a resolution sponsored by the New Agenda Coalition (New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Egypt), which follows similar resolutions last year and the year before.

The New Agenda Coalition held a press conference on Sept 13, concerning this. New Agenda coalition members will ask the nuclear weapons states to fulfil their obligations under article VI of the NPT and their committments undertaken at the recent NPT review conference.

There are also a number of other good resolutions, including one calling for a nuclear weapons convention, one calling for a nuclear weapons free southern hemisphere, one calling for a convention to prevent an arms race in outer space, (PAROS) and one calling for nuke weapons to be taken off alert.

We are asking you if possible to Please use this sample letter (Below) to send your own letter to your Foreign Minister and UN mission, urging them to vote for the New Agenda resolution.

This is especially necessary if you are in any of the countries that either voted AGAINST the NAC resolution last year, or that abstained. (BELOW)

Some critical fax numbers of foreign ministers and UN missions are below. By doing this you are helping to work for a nuclear weapons free world.

John Hallam

Countries that voted against the New Agenda resolution last year: Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Hungary, India, Israel, Monaco, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, UK, US.

Countries that abstained: Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bhutan, Bosnia/Herzegovnia, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Micronesia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mauritius, Myanmar, Netherlands, Norway, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Former Yuoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan.

IMPORTANT FOREIGN MINISTERS AND UN MISSION FAX NUMBERS (these numbers all have been tried and definitely work - but they may require patience)

(the '+' represents your country's ISD access code, which in Aust is 0015, in the US is 0011, and in some places is 0 or 00. Find out exactly what it is. If you are faxing your own foreign minister of course, you won't need it, but you will need it if you fax your UN mission.)

US SECY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT - +1-202-647-6047
FOREIGN MINISTER OF RUSSIA +7-095-247-2722, +7-095-293-3323
UN MISSION +1-212-628-0252
FOREIGN MINISTER OF THE UK +44-171-270-2833 UN MISSION +1-212-745-9316
FOREIGN MINISTER OF FRANCE +33-1-417-5203 UN MISSION +1-212-421-6889
FOREIGN MINISTER OF GERMANY +49-228-168-6662, UN MISSION +1-212-940-0402
FOREIGN MINISTER IF ITALY +39-6-323-6210 UN MISSION +1-212-486-1036
FOREIGN MINISTER OF BELGIUM +32-2-511-6385
FOREIGN MINISTER OF JAPAN +81-3-3581-9675 UN MISSION +1-212-751-1966
FOREIGN MINISTER OF CANADA +1-613-952-3904 UN MISSION +1-212-848-1195
FOREIGN MINISTER OF NORWAY +47-2224-9580 UN MISSION +1-212-688-0554
FOREIGN MINISTER OF DENMARK +45-33-95-6001 UN MISSION +1-212-308-3384

A URL where the fax numbers of every head of state and foreign minister in the world is listed plus lots of information is this: Http://www.abolition2000.org.

Another URL that has the fax numbers of heads of state, foreign ministers and UN missions and also has lots of information is: Http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org

SAMPLE LETTER FOR ALL TO SEND TO FOREIGN MINISTERS OF COUNTRIES THAT VOTED AGAINST OR ABSTAINED ON THE NAC RESOLUTION LAST YEAR

This is a 'sample' letter, designed to help you to write to your foreign minister about the nuclear weapons resolutions that are coming up in the United Nations General Assembly.

The idea is for you to put it as far as possible in your own words, not just to copy. So please do customise and be creative!

IF YOU ARE AN INDIVIDUAL, HANDWRITTEN IS BEST. Do not try to email these people it is a waste of time.

If your country in fact supported the New Agenda resolution and other resolutions last year, please thank them. Foreign Ministers also need to know when they do something right!

TO: THE FOREIGN MINISTER

UNITED NATIONS AMBASSADOR

Dear Foreign Minister and UN Ambassador ,

I am writing to you because I understand that a number of important resolutions concerning nuclear weapons are coming up in the United Nations General Assembly first committee, starting next month.

I am concerned that my country may not be doing enough to rid the world of the one thing that could possibly destroy civilization and perhaps the human race.

I heard on Sept. 14 that New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt and Mexico, all countries very different from each other, had got together and asked the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their obligations to get rid of nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty.

This is a wonderful initiative, and I would like to know why my country is not taking a leading role in this.Yet it seems that we are not even supporting this vital initiative. Why not?

If New Zealand and Ireland can press the US and Russia to get rid of their nuclear weapons, why can't this country?

It seems there are at least seven really good initiatives coming up in the United Nations general assembly. That includes the New Agenda resolution put up by these seven countries, but it also includes a resolution to prohibit the use of nuclear weapons, a resolution for a nuclear weapons convention like the chemical weapons convention, a resolution to take nuclear weapons off 'hairtrigger' alert, as recommended by our own Canberra Commission, so that it will no longer be possible to start a nuclear war in half an hour by accident, a resolution in support of the ABM treaty, a resolution for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Southern Hemisphere, and a resolution to prevent space being used for military purposes.

I can't understand what harm there is in asking for 5,600 nuclear weapons to be taken off alert status, or in asking for more to be done to fulfill the existing obligations - obligations which are legally binding- to eliminate them altogether.

I urge you from the bottom of my heart, Foreign Minister, please support the New Agenda group in the General Assembly and satisfy the wishes of the those who want this country to take a leading role in nuclear disarmament.

(Signed) (Your name)

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

Message: 16
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
From: ishgooda@voyager.net
Subject: The Yanomami and the Atomic Energy Commission

[I am reposting a cleaned up version of Carlos Rebello's forwarded post, since it touches upon some very critical questions involving imperialism, genocide and indigenous peoples.]

To: Louise Lamphere, President, American Anthropological Association (lamphere@unm.edu) Don Brenneis, President -elect, American Anthropological Association (brenneis@cats.ucsc.edu)

From: Terry Turner, Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University (Head of the Special Commission of the American Anthropological Association to Investigate the Situation of the Brazilian Yanomami, 1990-91) Leslie Sponsel, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa (Chair of the AAA Committee for Human Rights 1992-1996)

In re: Scandal about to be caused by publication of book by Patrick Tierney (Darkness in El Dorado. New York. Norton. Publication date: October 1, 2000).

Madam President, Mr. President-elect:

We write to inform you of an impending scandal that will affect the American Anthropological profession as a whole in the eyes of the public, and arouse intense indignation and calls for action among members of the Association. In its scale, ramifications, and sheer criminality and corruption it is unparalleled in the history of Anthropology. The AAA will be called upon by the general media and its own membership to take collective stands on the issues it raises, as well as appropriate redressive actions. All of this will obviously involve you as Presidents of the Association-so the sooner you know about the story that is about to break, the better prepared you can be to deal with it. Both of us have seen galley copies of a book by Patrick Tierney, an investigative journalist, about the actions of anthropologists and associated scientific researchers (notably geneticists and medical experimenters) among the Yanomami of Venezuela over the past thirty-five years. Because of the sensational nature of its revelations, the notoriety of the people it exposes, and the prestige of the organs of the academic establishment it implicates, the book is bound to be widely read both outside and inside the profession. As both an indication and a vector of its public impact, we have learned that The New Yorker magazine is planning to publish an extensive excerpt, timed to coincide with the publication of the book (on or about October 1st).

The focus of the scandal is the long-term project for study of the Yanomami of Venezuela organized by James Neel, the human geneticist, in which Napoleon Chagnon, Timothy Asch, and numerous other anthropologists took part. The French anthropologist Jacques Lizot, who also works with the Yanomami but is not part of Neel-Chagnon project, also figures in a different scandalous capacity.

One of Tierney's more startling revelations is that the whole Yanomami project was an outgrowth and continuation of the Atomic Energy Comissions secret program of experiments on human subjects James Neel, the originator and director of the project, was part of the medical and genetic research team attached to the Atomic Energy Commission since the days of the Manhattan Project. He was a member of the small group of researchers responsible for studying the effects of radiation on human subjects. He personally headed the team that investigated the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs on survivors,. He was put in charge of the study of the effects of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and later was involved in the studies of the effects of the radioactivity from the experimental A and H bomb blasts in the Marshall Islands on the natives (our colleague May Jo Marshall has a lot to say about these studies in the Marshalls and Neel's role in them). The same group also secretly carried out experiments on human subjects in the USA. These included injecting people with radioactive plutonium without their knowledge or permission,in some cases leading to their death or disfigurement ( Neel himself appears not to have given any of these experimental injections). Another member of the same AEC group of human geneticists and medical experimenters, a Venezuelan, Marcel Roche, was a close colleague of Neel's and spent some time at his AEC-funded center for Human Genetics at Ann Arbor. He returned to Venezuela after the war and did a study of the Yanomami that involved administering doses of a radioactive isotope of iodine and analyzing samples of blood for genetic data. Roche and his project were apparently the connection that led Neel to choose the Yanomami for his big study of the genetics of "leadership" and differential rates of reproduction among dominant and sub-dominant males in a genetically "isolated" human population. There is thus a genealogical connection between the the human experiments carried out by the AEC, and Neel's and Chagnon's Yanomami project, which was from the outset funded by the AEC.

Tierney presents convincing evidence that Neel and Chagnon, on their trip to the Yanomami in 1968, greatly exacerbated, and probably started, the epidemic of measles that killed "hundreds, perhaps thousands" (Tierney's language-the exact figure will never be known) of Yanomami. The epidemic appears to have been caused, or at least worsened and more widely spread, by a campaign of vaccination carried out by the research team, which used a virulent vaccine (Edmonson B) that had been counter-indicated by medical experts for use on isolated populations with no prior exposure to measles (exactly the Yanomami situation). Even among populations with prior contact and consequent partial genetic immunity to measles, the vaccine was supposed to be used only with supportive injections of gamma globulin.

It was known to produce effects virtually indistinguishable from the disease of measles itself. Medical experts, when informed that Neel and his group used the vaccine in question on the Yanomami, typically refuse to believe it at first, then say that it is incredible that they could have done it, and are at a loss to explain why they would have chosen such an inappropriate and dangerous vaccine. There is no record that Neel sought any medical advice before applying the vaccine. He never informed the appropriate organs of the Venezuelan government that his group was planning to carry out a vaccination campaign, as he was legally required to do. Neither he nor any other member of the expedition, including Chagnon and the other anthropologists, has ever explained why that vaccine was used, despite the evidence that it actually caused or at a minimum greatly exacerbated the fatal epidemic.

Once the measles epidemic took off, closely following the vaccinations with Edmonson B, the members of the research team refused to provide any medical assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami, on explicit orders from Neel. He insisted to his colleagues that they were only there to observe and record the epidemic, and that they must stick strictly to their roles as scientists, not provide medical help.

All this is bad enough, but the probable truth that emerges, by implication, from Tierney's documentation is more chilling. There was, it turns out, a compelling theoretical motive for Neel to want to observe an epidemic of measles, or comparable "contact" disease, or at least an outbreak virtually indistinguishable from the real thing-precisely the effect that the vaccine he chose was known to cause-and to produce one for this purpose if necessary. This motive emerges from Teirney's documentation of Neel's extreme eugenic theories and his documented statements about what he was hoping to find among the Yanomami, interpreted against the background of his long association with the Atomic Energy Commission's secret experiments on human subjects. Neel believed that "natural" human society (as it existed everywhere before the advent of large-scale a gricultural societies and contemporary states with their vast populations) consisted of small, genetically isolated groups, in which, according to his eugenically slanted genetic theories, dominant genes (specifically, a gene he believed existed for "leadership" or "innate ability") would have a selective advantage, because male carriers of this gene could gain access to a disproportionate share of the available females, thus reproducing their own superior genes more frequently than less "innately able" males. The result, supposedly, would be the continual upgrading of the human genetic stock. Modern mass societies, by contrast, consist of vast genetically entropic "herds" in which, he theorized, recessive genes could not be eliminated by selective competition and superior leadership genes would be swamped by mass genetic mediocrity. The political implication of this fascistic eugenics is clearly that society should be reorganized into small breeding isolates in which genetically superior males could emerge into dominance, eliminating or subordinating the male losers in the competition for leadership and women, and amassing harems of brood females.

A big problem for this program, however, was the tendency, generally recognized by virtually all qualified population geneticists and epidemiologists, for small breeding isolates to lack genetic resistance to diseases incubated in other groups, and their consequent vulnerability to contact epidemics. For Neel, this meant that the emergence of genetically superior males in small breeding isolates would tend to be undercut and neutralized by epidemic diseases to which they would be genetically vulnerable, while the supposedly genetically entropic mass societies of modern democratic states, the antitheses of Neel's ideal alpha-male-dominated groups, would be better adapted for developing genetic immunity to such "contact" diseases. It is known that Neel, virtually alone among contemporary geneticists, rejected the genetic (and historical) evidence for the vulnerability of genetically isolated groups to diseases introduced through contact from other populations. It is possible that he thought that genetically superior members of such groups might prove to have differential levels of immunity and thus higher rates of survival to imported diseases. In such a case, such exogenous epidemics, despite the enormous losses of general population they inflict, might actually be shown to increase the relative proportion of genetically superior individuals to the total population, and thus be consistent with Neel's eugenic program.

However this may have been, Tierney's well-documented account, in its entirety, strongly supports the conclusion that the epidemic was in all probabilty deliberately caused as an experiment designed to produce scientific support for Neel's eugenic theory. This remains only an inference in the present state of our knowledge: there is no "smoking gun" in the form of a written text or recorded speech by Neel. It is nevertheless the only explanation that makes sense of a number of otherwise inexplicable facts, including Neel's known interest in observing an epidemic in a small isolated group for which detailed records of genetic and genealogical relations were available, his otherwise inexplicable selection of a virulent vaccine known to produce effects virtually identical with the disease itself, his behavior once the epidemic had started (insisting on allowing it to run its course unhindered by medical assistance while meticulously documenting its progress and the genealogical relations of those who perished and those who survived) and his own obdurate silence, until his death in February, as to why he carried out the vaccination program in the first place, and above all with the lethally dangerous vaccine.

The same conclusion is reinforced by considering the objectives of the anthropological research carried out by Chagnon under Neel's initial direction and continued support. Chagnon's work has been consistently directed toward portraying Yanomami society as exactly the kind of originary human society envisioned by Neel, with dominant males (the most frequent killers) having the most wives or sexual partners and offspring. If this pristine, eugenically optimal society could be shown to survive a contact epidemic with its structure of dominant male polygynists essentially intact, regardless of quantitatively serious population losses, Neel might plausibly be able to argue that his eugenic social vision was vindicated. If the epidemic was indeed produced as an experiment, either wholly or in part, the genetic studies on the correlation of blood group samples and genealogies carried out by Chagnon and some of his students thus formed integral parts of this massive, and massively fatal, human experiment.

As another reader of Tierney's ms commented, Mr. Tierney's analysis is a case study of the dangers in science of the uncontrolled ego, of lack of respect for life, and of greed and self-indulgence. It is a further extraordinary revelation of malicious and perverted work conducted under the aegis of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Tierney's revelations begin, but do not end, with the 1968 epidemic. There are many more episodes and sub-plots, almost equally awful, to his narrative of the antics of anthropologists among the Yanomami. Enough has been said by this time, however, for you to see that the Association is going to have to make some collective response to this book, both to the facts it documents and the probable conclusions it implies.There will be a storm in the media, and another in the general scholarly community, and no doubt several within anthropology itself. We must be ready. Tierney devotes much of the book to a critique of Napoleon Chagnon's work (and actions). He makes clear Chagnon has faithfully striven, in his ethnographic and theoretical accounts of the Yanomami, to represent them as conforming to Neel's ideas about the Hobbesian savagery of "natural" human societies , and how this constitutes the natural selective context for the rise to social dominance and reproductive advantage of males with the gene for "leadership" or "innate ability" (thus Chagnon's emphasis on Yanomami "fierceness" and propensity for chronic warfare, and the supposed statistical tendency for men who kill more enemies to have more female sexual/reproductive partners). He documents how all these aspects of Chagnon's account of the Yanomami are based on false, non-existent or misinterpreted data. In other words, Chagnon's main claims about Yanomami society, the ones that have been so much heralded by sociobiologists and other partisans of his work, namely that men who kill more reproduce more and have more female partners, and that such men become the dominant leaders of their communities, are simply not true. Thirdly and most troublingly, he reports that Chagnon has not stopped with cooking and re-cooking his data on conflict but has actually attempted to manufacture the phenomenon itself, actually fomenting conflicts between Yanomami communities, not once but repeatedly.

In his film work with Asch, for example, Chagnon induced Yanomami to enact fights and aggressive behavior for Asch's camera, sometimes building whole artificial villages as "sets" for the purpose, which were presented as spontaneous slices of Yanomami life unaffected by the presence of the anthropologists. Some of these unavowedly artificial scenarios, however, actually turned into real conflicts, partly as a result of Chagnon's policy of giving vast amounts of presents to the villages that agreed to put on the docu-drama, which distorted their relations with their neighbors in ways that encouraged outbreaks of raiding. In sum, most of the Yanomami conflicts that Chagnon documents, that are the basis of his interpretation of Yanomami society as a neo-Hobbesian system of endemic warfare, were caused directly or indirectly by himself: a fact he invariably neglects to report. This is not just a matter of bad ethnography or unreflexive theorizing: Yanomami were maimed and killed in these conflicts, and whole communities were disrupted to the point of fission and flight.(Brian Ferguson has also documented some of this story, but Tierney adds much new evidence). As a general point, it is clear that Chagnon's whole Yanomami oeuvre is more radically continuous with Neel's eugenic theories, and his unethical approach to experimentation on human subjects, than appears simply from a reading of Chagnon's works by themselves.

Chagnon is not the only anthropologist mentioned in Tierney's narrative. Some of his students, like Hames and Good, are also dealt with (not so unfavorably). The F French anthropologist, Jaques Lizot, also gets a chapter. He has had nothing to do with Neel or Chagnon (in fact has been a trenchant and cogent critic of their work), but he has an Achilles heel of his own in the form of a harem of Yanomami boys that he keeps, and showers with presents in exchange for sexual favors (he has also been known to resort to young girls when boys were unavailable). On the sexual front, there are also passing references to Chagnon himself demanding that villagers bring him girls for sex.

There is still more, in the form of collusion by Neel and Chagnon with sinister Venezuelan politicians attempting to gain control of Yanomami lands for illegal gold mining concessions, with the anthropologists providing "cover" for the illegal mine developer as a "naturalist" collaborating with the anthropological researchers, in exchange for the politician's guaranteeing continuing access to the Indians for the anthropologists.

This nightmarish story -a real anthropological heart of darkness beyond the imagining of even a Josef Conrad (though not, perhaps, a Josef Mengele)--will be seen (rightly in our view) by the public, as well as most anthropologists, as putting the whole discipline on trial. As another reader of the galleys put it, This book should shake anthropology to its very foundations. It should cause the field to understand how the corrupt and depraved protagonists could have spread their poison for so long while they were accorded great respect throughout the Western World and generations of undergraduates received their lies as the introductory substance of anthropology. This should never be allowed to happen again.

We venture to predict that this reaction is fairly representative of the response that will follow the publication of Tierney's book and the New Yorker excerpt. Coming as they will less than two months before the San Francisco meetings, these publication events virtually guarantee that the Yanomami scandal will be at its height at the Meetings. This should give an optimal opportunity for the Association to mobilize the membership and the institutional structure to deal with it. The writers, both emeritus members of the Committee for Human Rights, have arranged with Barbara Johnston, the present chair of the CfHR, that the open Forum put on by the Committee this year be devoted to the Yanomami case. This seemed the best way to provide a venue for a public airing of the scandal, given that the program is of course already closed. With Johnston's consent, we have invited Patrick Tierney to come to the Meetings and be present at the Forum. He has accepted. He has also agreed to have a copy of the book ms sent to Johnston, for the use of the CfHR. We have also tentatively agreed with Barbara that the CfHR should draft a press release, which the President (either or both of you) could (if you and the Executive Board approve) circulate to the media. There are obviously human rights aspects of this case that make the CfHR appropriate, but the Ethics Committee, the Society for Latin American Anthropology, and the Association for Latina and Latino Anthropology should also be notified and involved, separately or jointly. These obviously do not exhaust the possibilities--- a lot of thought and planning remains to be done. Our point is simply that the time to start is now.

Louis Proyect

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Message: 17
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

PROGRESS, AT LAST DOE gets moving on cleanup

http://www.paducahsun.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200009/17+01P0_editorial.html+20000917+editorial

Drum mountain is finally gone, but federal officials can't avoid the acid-laced question posed by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell: "If there was a presidential election every year, would cleanup of the (Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant) have been completed years ago?" Perhaps a better question is this: If the controversy over the secret handling of highly radioactive materials at the plant had exploded 12 years ago, would the massive pile of rusted drums already be a distant memory?

When the U.S. Department of Energy began planning for the cleanup of the uranium enrichment facility more than 12 years ago, George Bush was in the White House and the word "plutonium" was rarely mentioned in connection with the plant.

Over the next decade DOE spent almost $400 million on the cleanup project without removing a single barrel of waste. This was "front-end work," a DOE official explained. The radioactive and chemical waste had to be monitored, studied and categorized before it could be removed, the official said.

It took DOE 12 years to study the waste, but less than three months to complete the challenging task of safely removing 85,000 crushed drums and preparing them for shipment to a waste disposal site in Utah.

We now know for sure that the federal bureaucracy has a high gear; unfortunately, it needs a scandal - and a presidential election - to shift into action.

The cleanup advanced at a glacial pace, with at least $300 million of the taxpayers' money spent on paper-shuffling and environmental management, until revelations about the use of the site as an unregulated nuclear waste dump during the Cold War began to spill out last year.

Most of the revelations stemmed from investigations that were initiated after current and former plant workers filed a lawsuit against former plant operators alleging that the companies lied about contamination in order to earn bonuses from the federal government.

As Sen. McConnell indicated, the cleanup operation really began picking up steam as the November election came into view.

Obviously, the Clinton administration has political reasons for making sure a "mountain" of contaminated material isn't sitting at a federal nuclear facility while Vice President Al Gore pushes his environmental agenda during the presidential election campaign.

Still, plant workers and the community as a whole are happy to know that drum mountain no longer exists. The waste problem is a health threat to workers and people who live nearby; it also hurts the community's image at a time when local leaders are trying to recruit new industry to offset layoffs at the plant.

News that the cleanup finally is progressing offers hope that the area eventually will be able to put this troubling episode behind it.

Drum mountain, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. The plant grounds are littered with about 59,000 tons of scrap metal, groundwater in the area is contaminated and vacant buildings represent another radioactive contamination problem.

Don Seaborg, the DOE site manager, says the agency is investigating whether another mountain of waste is buried beneath the site of drum mountain.

To make matters worse, the General Accounting Office says DOE has grossly underestimated the cost of a complete cleanup, which could exceed $3 billion.

The energy department has been notably reluctant to fulfill a congressional mandate to build facilities at the Paducah plant and its sister plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, to convert uranium hexafluoride into a safer form for disposal or reuse.

More than 47,000 cylinders containing depleted uranium hexafluoride are stored in Paducah. The conversion facilities could provide up to 200 jobs for employees of the United States Enrichment Corp. who lose their jobs as a result of company cutbacks.

If DOE doesn't begin moving on the conversion facilities soon, the money Congress set aside for the projects may be lost to the general fund. That would be a significant blow to the plant cleanup as well as another loss for workers rocked by layoffs at USEC.

It's too bad we can't hold a presidential election every year, if that's what it takes to get this gigantic mess cleaned up.

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Comments:

Let there be a few more scandals, especially one on the real acid question, HF releases.