------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
*US, EU Clear Boeing Buy of Hughes Units
*Germany to Restart International Nuclear Shipments
*A year later, Japan remembers worst nuke accident
*Perry Leaves Job As Korea Adviser
*U.S., North Korea Resume Talks
*Russia To Get Help With Submarine
*PSR Condemns Rejection of Nuclear Workers Compensation
*Workers Comp a Political Issue
*Lawmakers Bar Payments for Workers on Weapons
*New York Times Concedes Lapses In Reporting of Scientist's Case
*Excerpts From Testimony at Congressional Hearing on Wen Ho Lee Case
*Reno and Freeh Still Call Acts of Scientist a Serious Crime
*Wen Ho Lee, no martyr
*Gore and Foreign Policy: Key Role, Mixed Record
*NADER CHARGES GORE WITH BREAKING INCINERATOR PROMISE
*Republicans Attack Russian Policy
*U.S. Is Criticized Over Maintaining Nuclear Weapons; Report Cites Risk
*House Passes Stopgap Measure To Keep Government Running
*Senators praise Albright's work

MILITARY
*US Plans $1.3B Arms Sale to Taiwan
*The Arms Threat
*Return of a Vanished Virus
*Colombia Air Force Denies Using U.S. Bomb in 1998 Civilian Deaths
*MANHATTAN: COLOMBIAN EXTRADITED
*MEXICO: DRUG ARREST
*Nations Reach Deal on Iraq Compensation Funds
*IRAQ: CRUMBLING EMBARGO
*After Pact on Rebuilt Railway, Two Koreas Plan More Talks
*EAST TIMOR: U.N. SKIRMISH
*Joint Chiefs Chairman to Warn of Defense Dilemma
*Albright frustrated by allies
*U.N. aide fears West Africa blowup
*Military in Struggle for Resources but Ready to Fight, Officials Say
*Commanders Ask Congress for Increase in Spending
*Shelton warns military is underprepared to fight two wars
*Pentagon kills proposal to let Navy buy foreign-built ships
*Defense memo ordered staff to rebut Schwarzkopf
*Albright: Revoking Indyk's clearance necessary

OTHER
*A Plague of Asian Eels Highlights The Damage From Foreign Species
*House approves stopgap spending bill
*Biologists are battling a deadly disease on Santa Catalina Island
*Aventis Is Suspending Seed Sales Of Genetically Engineered Corn
*Feed me the Taco Bell shells
*Protesters Paralyze Prague
*Finance Summit Starts With Protests, Calls to Fight Poverty, Globalization
*Companies Act to Keep Bioengineered Corn Out of Food
*Contaminated Corn
*Reno, Freeh Criticized on Lee Case
*Justice Dept. Takes Issue With Judge's Rebuke
*Prosecutors in Russia Charge U.S. Businessman With Espionage
*Peru's Spy Chief in Exile
*Prosecutors send spy case to court
*FBI e-mail surveillance plan gets review
*Chile to press U.S. on CIA informant
*Libyan Double Agent Testifies in Lockerbie Bomb Trial
*MANHATTAN: BAIL DENIED IN BOMB CASE

ACTIVISTS
*Anti-Capitalist Protests Diminish in Prague
*Protests Distract Global Finance Meeting
*IMF meeting closes one day early
*TURKEY: ARMENIA PROTEST
*Madonna, Travis, R.E.M. Repeat The 'Mantra' Edited
*A critic of biological warfare training



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

-------- business

US, EU Clear Boeing Buy of Hughes Units

By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-transport-hu.html

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic on Wednesday gave Boeing Co. (BA.N) the green light to buy the satellite and components businesses of Hughes Electronics Corp. (GMH.N) for $3.75 billion.

The deal, announced in January, nets Boeing the world's leading geostationary satellite maker and a key component for its ambitious plans to expand into space, but prompted minor restrictions to preserve competition in the industry.

A consent decree announced by the Federal Trade Commission prohibits Boeing's space unit from viewing sensitive data obtained when launching competitors' satellites, among other provisions. The decree still requires approval in court.

``This consent agreement will ensure that competition in the highly specialized markets for satellites and launch vehicles will be maintained,'' Richard Parker, director of the FTC Bureau of Competition, said in a statement.

Boeing President Harry Stonecipher said he was happy the antitrust reviews were finished and that the Seattle aerospace giant could easily live with the conditions.

``We've always had to protect our customers' data in the past and if we weren't required to do it, we would have done it, anyway,'' Stonecipher told Reuters by telephone.

With its Delta rockets and Sea Launch ocean-based platform, Boeing launches satellites built by Hughes and its rivals, including Loral Space Communications Ltd. (LOR.N), Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT.N), Alcatel Space Industries (CGEP.PA) and Astrium, owned by DaimlerChrysler Aerospace (DCXGn.DE), Aerospatiale Matra (AERO.PA) and BAE Systems Plc (BA.L).

Lockheed, which also competes with Boeing in the launch vehicle market, had objected to the deal, but declined to comment on the regulators' decision.

``Because Lockheed Martin is a customer and a partner with Boeing, I hope they are satisfied with the consent decree,'' Stonecipher said.

In Brussels, the European Commission said it was satisfied with the pledges to preserve competition Boeing and Hughes had made during a four-month probe.

``The investigation dismissed earlier doubts that the operation could significantly strengthen Hughes's position in commercial geostationary communication satellites as well as the concern that the parties might induce Hughes's satellite customers to procure launch services from Boeing,'' the Commission said in a statement.

Hughes, a subsidiary of General Motors Corp. (GM.N), holds a commanding share of around 35 to 40 percent of the market for commercial geostationary satellites, the Commission said.

``It appears that (Hughes satellite unit) will probably not be significantly strengthened as a result of the transaction,'' the Commission concluded.

Boeing executives have pledged to double the revenues from its space and communications unit in five years, up from $6.8 billion in 1998.

As in its core commercial jet business, which produced two-thirds of its $58 billion in sales last year, and its $12.2 billion military aircraft and missile unit, Boeing expects major growth in services in its space unit.

The Hughes purchase will boost Boeing's space revenues by about 30 percent, but satellite makers as a whole are only growing at about 3 percent a year, after some spectacular failures by satellite telephone providers slashed demand for new orbiters.

Instead Boeing sees big growth opportunities in satellite based air traffic management and in-flight Internet service and has bought several small businesses to tap the expected torrent of new economy revenues.

``Growth in satellites is not why we acquired Hughes at all. We acquired it for its intellectual capital, for its people and their bright ideas,'' Stonecipher said. ``We think a lot of our future can really emanate from space.''

-------- germany

Germany to Restart International Nuclear Shipments

September 27, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-27-01.html

BERLIN, Germany, Germany is to permit international shipments of spent nuclear fuel for the first time in more than two years, the country's radiation protection authority Bundesamt fur Strahlenschutz (BfS) has announced.

Environmental groups immediately promised massive protests. One demonstration has already taken place on Saturday at the Gorleben interim storage facility in Lower Saxony.

Under the BfS permit, eight spent fuel shipments are to be allowed this year, traveling from the power stations Stade, Biblis and Philippsburg to the La Hague reprocessing plant in France.

This is significantly fewer shipments than the nuclear industry's requested. It had sought permission for 54 shipments to the end of 2001.

According to the BfS, the limited permission was given after assurances were received that radiation limit values would be respected through the entire transport cycle.

April 1994, Ahauser station. The red railcars are specialized nuclear transport Castor containers carrying spent fuel. (Photo courtesy No Castor Campaign)

Operators will be subject to new transport documentation rules, plus stricter requirements to report any radioactive contamination discovered.

The radiation agency also limited the permits because of "missing insurance proofs for the year 2001, which are a permission prerequisite." A further restriction was the availability of transportation containers to carry the spent fuel to the atomic power plants.

The German Environment Ministry stressed that a further condition was that all plutonium deriving from reprocessing should be recycled to prevent any plutonium surplus arising. This was an element of the nuclear power phaseout agreement reached in June.

All rail movements of spent nuclear fuel were banned by Germany in 1998 after discovery of widespread surface contamination.

France and Switzerland initially took similar action, but have both since allowed transports to restart.

The German government permitted domestic fuel transports to restart earlier this year.

Poster advertising Saturday's anti-nuclear demonstration at Gorleben (Photo courtesy BI)

On Saturday, a group of about 2,000 anti-nuclear demonstrators formed a large human X in a field near the temporary nuclear waste storage facility to symbolize their resistance to nuclear power generation and the inevitable radioactive waste it generates.

A prominent speaker at the demonstration was Jakob von Uexkuell, founder of the alternative Nobel prize.

Organized by the anti-nuclear group Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz (BI) Lüchow-Dannenberg, the demonstrators came from across Germany and included representatives of large nature protection federations and doctors from International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

BI said the Germany's ruling Red-Green coalition of the Social Democrats and Greens helps the nuclear power plant operators to "hush up" the problems posed by nuclear waste.

-------- japan

A year later, Japan remembers worst nuke accident

JAPAN: September 27, 2000
Story by Jason Szep
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8346

TOKYO - A year ago this week, three workers at a uranium processing plant inadvertently triggered Japan's worst-ever nuclear accident, leaving a legacy of debate over whether the country depends too heavily on nuclear power.

And a senior industry official said yesterday the task of rebuilding consumer confidence had a way to go.

"Rebuilding the damage to confidence in Japan's nuclear energy safety caused by the accident is still under way," Shojiro Matsuura, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC), told reporters yesterday.

The accident at Tokaimura - the world's worst since Chernobyl in 1986 - killed two workers, seriously injured a third and exposed at least 439 people in the area to radiation.

A year later, debate still flares over who is to blame and whether the industry is doing enough to become safe, while the rural town of Tokaimura has been shaken by reports of lingering illnesses, its busy farming industry seen as tainted.

The nuclear programme has been modestly scaled back with Japan's big electric power companies revising down the number of planned new nuclear reactors to 13 over the next 11 years, against a previous target of 16 to 20.

The government strengthened the hand of dozens of committees on nuclear safety since the accident, giving more power to the Nuclear Safety Commission and revising legislation to move faster in times of nuclear crises, Matsuura said.

Tokaimura - the town where Japan's nuclear industry began in 1957 - has elected an anti-nuclear activist to the local assembly, and a country that depends on nuclear power for a third of its electricity is asking a year later if it's all now safe.

FEW OPTIONS

With the recent surge in oil prices feeding talk of a possible global energy crisis, resource-poor Japan has few options except nuclear energy to power its hungry industries.

Matsuura described nuclear power as "indispensable" given Japan's lack of natural resources, few viable new energy sources and the price volatility and environmental issues associated with fossil fuels such as oil.

"If solar energy, or wind power or hydro power can give sufficient energy that the Japanese people need, then we do not need nuclear energy, but obviously we cannot hope for that."

After the accident, Tokyo strengthened the independence of the NSC, a body that advises the prime minister. It is now armed with 20 committees with 200 members giving advice ranging from reactor safety to waste and moving radioactive material.

Still, environmentalists and global industry watchdogs question whether Japan remains at risk of another accident.

Gaia Hoerner, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, doubts the government has gone far enough to remove the risk of another Tokaimura-style incident.

RISKS

"The risks of accidents like Tokaimura happening have not been reduced," said Hoerner. "The government has concentrated on improving disaster countermeasures. There are a number of factors which pose great threats."

On the morning of September 30, 1999, three workers at the reprocessing plant 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo set off an uncontrolled atomic reaction that took 20 hours to bring under control after they used buckets to pour nearly eight times the proper amount of a uranium solution.

Hoerner said that since the accident the government have focused on new measures to act faster after crises rather than on the factors which could spark accidents such as old reactors, natural disasters and failure to enforce safety procedures.

Concern outside Japan is equally strong.

"The Japanese government has made only cosmetic changes to its nuclear regulatory system," Edwin Lyman, scientific director at the Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute, an industry watchdog, told Reuters.

Tokaimura residents handed the government a petition last week with 22,500 signatures seeking more compensation and support beyond the 12.66 billion yen ($118 million) that plant operator JCO agreed to pay to settle around 7,000 cases from the accident.

-------- korea

Perry Leaves Job As Korea Adviser

International Herald Tribune
Reuters
Wednesday, September 27, 2000
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/WED/IN/perry.2.html

WASHINGTON - Former Defense Secretary William Perry, architect of a new approach on North Korea, is giving up his duties as coordinator of policy toward that nation, the State Department has announced.

Mr. Perry will be succeeded by Wendy Sherman, who will retain her position as a counselor in the State Department, Richard Boucher, the department spokesman, said Monday.

In a policy review commissioned by President Bill Clinton and released in October 1999, Mr. Perry recommended that the United States and its Asian allies try to co-exist with the leaders of North Korea rather than undermine them or promote internal reform.

Mr. Perry spent 10 months preparing the review and made one trip to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in the highest-level visit ever by a U.S. official. A State Department official said Mr. Perry's departure reflected the fact that he felt he had completed his task when he completed the review last year.

The Clinton administration has adopted Mr. Perry's approach toward North Korea, with which it now has several tracks of talks, although the two nations still lack formal diplomatic relations. The talks cover North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs and the future of the Korean Peninsula.

---

U.S., North Korea Resume Talks

Associated Press
September 27, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-North-Korea.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- The United States and North Korea opened a new round of talks Wednesday aimed at ending a stalemate over the communist state's development and export of missiles.

The talks, which are expected to last a few days, also will deal with U.S. allegations that North Korea sponsors terrorism and with the terms of an accord that froze North Korea's nuclear weapons program in exchange for two civilian reactors and supplies of energy, State Department officials said.

The U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Charles Kartman, said after nearly nine hours of talks Wednesday evening that he and Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan, who heads the North Korean delegation, would return to the U.S. mission to the United Nations on Thursday morning for another session.

He said there was a ``good atmosphere'' in the discussions and that during a working lunch at a nearby restaurant, the two sides talked about the Olympics.

``We congratulated each other on the performance of our teams,'' he said.

North Korea is believed to be capable of targeting virtually all of Japan as well as other Asian countries with its missiles. A potential long-range missile threat has been cited by the Clinton administration as one reason for considering a U.S. missile defense program -- a decision President Bill Clinton has deferred to his successor.

The talks come amid slowly improving U.S.-North Korean relations following attempts at reconciliation between North and South Korea. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and the North's reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, held a summit meeting in June and there are plans for another one.

The previous round of missile talks ended in July with North Korea insisting its program was a sovereign exercise in self-defense, but also with indications from cash-strapped Pyongyang that it might curb the program in exchange for payments of about $1 billion a year.

The United States maintains that North Korea shouldn't be compensated for stopping a program it shouldn't be developing in the first place.

In a related development Wednesday, the U.S.-led U.N. Command has given South Korea the right to negotiate with North Korea to reconnect a cross-border rail line, officials said.

The command controls all activities within the southern half of the 2 1/2-mile-wide Demilitarized Zone, which has separated the capitalist South from the communist North since the 1950-53 Korean War. It remains the most heavily fortified border in the world.

Last week, South Korea broke ground for reconnecting a rail line across the DMZ as part of agreements reached during the first summit between the two Koreas in June.

That project will entail the removal of up to 100,000 mines planted in the area of the rail corridor -- and coordination between the two Korean armies operating in the potentially volatile DMZ.

-------- russia

Russia To Get Help With Submarine

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 27, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Submarine.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia will hire a Norwegian company to help retrieve the remains of 118 sailors from the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk, a top government official said Wednesday.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who is overseeing the salvage mission, told lawmakers that a contract would be initialed Saturday with a Norwegian company. He did not name the company.

Klebanov said the retrieval work would begin before Oct. 10, and could be finished next month. But he cautioned that the operation would be complex ``because sections one through five (of the submarine) are just heaps of metal,'' the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

While Klebanov wouldn't name the company that will help Russia do the work, he said it was not Norway's Stolt Offshore. A deal with Stolt had been expected, but reportedly fell through over the amount of the fee.

According to the newspaper Kommersant, Stolt Offshore wanted $12 million but Russia offered $9 million.

Russian divers don't have the equipment or the training to conduct the operation alone.

The Kursk was shattered by an explosion and sank in the Barents Sea during exercises Aug. 12. The cause of the accident has not been determined.

The Russian ship Mstislav Keldysh arrived at the scene of the disaster on Tuesday, carrying Mir deep water capsules to examine the submarine. The capsules have been used previously to inspect the Titanic.

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

PSR Condemns Rejection of Nuclear Workers Compensation

US Newswire
27 Sep 10:28
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0927-107.html

Physicians Condemn Republican House Leadership Rejection of Nuclear Workers Compensation To: National Desk Contact: Martin Butcher of Physicians for Social Responsibility, 202-898-0150 ext. 220

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) condemns the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives for rejecting a package to aid workers made ill during their employment in the nuclear weapons complex. The plan, which was part of the Fiscal Year 2001 Defense Authorization Bill, would have provided compensation and medical care for workers with illnesses from exposure to radiation, beryllium and silica.

The package was included in the Senate version of the Defense Authorization Bill, but not by the House of Representatives. Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and others in the House Republican leadership have refused to allow the plan to go forward despite active lobbying by Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate, as well as the Department of Energy, unions and non-governmental organizations including PSR. House leaders opposed the inclusion of mandatory funding in the bill calling for yet more study of the worker's situation instead of compensation.

"The block on compensation for these workers is a complete disgrace," said Martin Butcher, PSR's Director of Security Programs. "They have been irradiated and poisoned in the course of producing nuclear weapons, and the nation now owes them at least the minimum of healthcare and financial support proposed in this plan. Speaker Hastert should be ashamed of himself."

PSR has long campaigned for DOE to remedy the situation of nuclear weapons workers, publishing an in-depth report on the Department's neglect in 1992. Only in April 2000 did the DOE admit its responsibility for the illnesses of the workers who built the 70,000 nuclear weapons the US has deployed. Balking at paying compensation estimated in total at as little as $1.7 billion to $3 billion over ten years, the House has allowed precisely nothing for this program from a defense budget totaling over $310 billion in FY2001, of which $35 billion will go to nuclear forces. The House Republican leadership has even turned a deaf ear to members of its own party in blocking the compensation deal. Representatives Lamar Smith (R-TX), Ed Whitfield (R-KY), and Senators Jim Bunning (R-KY), Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Fred Thompson (R-TN) have all worked hard in support of compensation.

"Congress must act to right past wrongs, Butcher said. But it must also be ready for this sorry tale of poisoned workers to continue as long as nuclear weapons are produced. All the evidence is that there is no safe way to build the bomb. Only an end to nuclear weapons will end the health and environmental disaster that is the DOE nuclear weapons complex."

---

Workers Comp a Political Issue

Associated Press
September 27, 2000 Filed at 6:14 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sick-Workers-Politics.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- If people who were sickened by working at nuclear weapons plants during the Cold War receive government compensation, it might have as much to with politics as compassion.

Lawmakers say House-Senate negotiations on a compensation plan -- an idea that has significant bipartisan support in Congress -- gained momentum Wednesday.

They broke down on Monday, but resumed the next day after Republicans such as Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson made stinging remarks accusing House GOP leaders of failing to negotiate in good faith. Republican House members said the issue could hurt them at the polls and possibly swing House control to the Democrats.

``There is a lot of pressure being put on the House and rightly so,'' said Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., who represents workers at the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation.

John Feehery, spokesman for speaker House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., acknowledged that the response from some GOP lawmakers prompted Republican leaders to go back to the bargaining table.

``It has given us a reason to change our mind and work toward getting a satisfactory conclusion,'' he said.

``Sometimes when constituents make their case in an election year, their voices are a little bit louder.''

Last spring, the Energy Department reversed 50 years of federal policy by declaring that workers injured or killed by radiation at weapons plants should be compensated. The agency proposed minimum lump sum payments of $100,000.

The Senate later approved a measure calling for workers exposed to radiation and toxic chemicals to receive $200,000 in compensation from the federal government, plus health benefits, but House GOP leaders balked, expressing concern about an entitlement program whose costs were uncertain because it's not known how many workers would qualify.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the compensation proposal would cost $1.7 billion to cover approximately 4,000 workers over 10 years.

Among the places that are home to large groups of workers who might qualify for compensation are the key presidential election states of California, Ohio and Washington.

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., who faces a tough re-election opponent in Democrat Brian Roy, has been pushing GOP House leaders to reach a compromise and redoubled his efforts after talks broke off.

``I'm sure they (GOP leaders) understand the politics of it, and that's why it's so puzzling,'' said Whitfield, whose district is home to the Paducah uranium enrichment plant. ``The reality is if you don't pass important legislation, your opponent can always talk about it.''

Wamp's Democratic opponent, Will Callaway, issued a news release shortly after talks broke down criticizing Wamp for not convincing GOP House leaders to back the compensation package.

House Minority Whip David Bonior, D-Mich., said failure to approve a compensation plan says something about the ``compassionate conservatism'' Republicans have been touting.

``It's an excellent test of that, and we'll see how compassionate they are,'' Bonior said.

---

Lawmakers Bar Payments for Workers on Weapons

New York Times
September 27, 2000
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/politics/27WORK.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 - House and Senate negotiators have dropped a provision in the military authorization bill that would have provided compensation for nuclear weapons workers made sick or killed by expousure to radiation or toxic chemicals, making the bill's enactment this year very uncertain.

The Clinton Administration had been pushing for a plan, which was approved by the Senate, that would set up a program similar to workers compensation and would provide reimbursement of lost wages or $200,000, whichever is greater, plus medical expenses. But the administration did not say where the money would come from. The House Judiciary Committee favored a plan that offered $100,000 plus health care costs.

John P. Feehery, a spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said that the House's last position had been to provide $250 million to start the compensation process but that the Senate wanted more. "They were pushing for an entitlement program, and who knows what final cost would have been, the multiple billions, probably," Mr. Feehery said.

Dr. David Michaels, the assistant secretary for environment and health of the Energy Department, said that such estimates were "outrageous exaggerations."

The Congressional Budget Office projects a cost of just under $1 billion in the first five years, and cases are emerging at a rate of 50 to 100 a year, Dr. Michaels said.

He said the payments would have to be made under an entitlement program, just as workers compensation payments are made. "You can't start paying in one year and stop the next year because you run out of money," he said. The administraiton is still trying to get a compensation provision into the bill.

Representative Ted Strickland, Democrat of Ohio, whose district includes a uranium processing plant, said, "it is almost incomprehensible that people could be so hard-hearted and heartless."

The administration said early this year, for the first time, that nuclear weapons manufacturing had caused illness and premature death in some of the 600,000 people employed for it.

-------- new mexico

New York Times Concedes Lapses In Reporting of Scientist's Case

Wall Street Journal
September 27, 2000
By MATTHEW ROSE
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB970013122857146869.htm

NEW YORK -- In an unusual 1,600-word editors' note, the New York Times conceded certain lapses in its reporting of the case of former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee.

The note came as two Senate committees jointly held a hearing in Washington where they criticized federal officials for not being aggressive in their investigation of Mr. Lee and also raised questions about how he was treated while in prison.

The note by the Times, titled "The Times and Wen Ho Lee," and placed on page 2 above the newspaper's regular corrections column, broadly defended the coverage but said, "we also found some things we wish we had done differently in the course of the coverage to give Dr. Lee the full benefit of the doubt."

In particular, the paper said it could have explored earlier evidence of weaknesses in the case against Mr. Lee and should have toned down some alarmist language. The editors also said in the note that the paper could have run other stories to provide more balance, such as a "full-scale profile of Dr. Lee, which might have humanized him …"; a closer look at Notra Trulock, an intelligence official at the Energy Department who was a leading figure on Capitol Hill driving the case against Mr. Lee; and an examination of the political context of the Chinese-weapons debate.

"In those instances where we fell short of our standards in our coverage of this story, the blame lies principally with those who directed the coverage, for not raising questions that occurred to us only later," the paper concluded, going on to exonerate its reporters, "who remained persistent and fair-minded."

Through a spokeswoman, New York Times Executive Editor Joseph Lelyveld declined to comment further. Of the two reporters on the initial story, Jeff Gerth declined to comment and James Risen couldn't be reached. Articles by Mr. Gerth and other reporters on a related issue -- corporate sale of American technology to China -- won the Times a Pulitzer Prize in 1999.

On March 6, 1999, the Times reported that government investigators believed China had accelerated its nuclear-weapons program through the use of stolen U.S. intelligence, and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was focusing on an unnamed Chinese-American scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. While the Times editors' note points out that concerns over China's accelerated nuclear weapons program had already been reported by The Wall Street Journal, the March 6 article was the first of a number of extensive articles that the newspaper carried on the subject, in addition to pieces on its editorial pages. Many other newspapers, as well as other media, also weighed in following the original Times story.

Mr. Lee, who was later identified as the scientist in question, was fired. Investigators never tied Mr. Lee to the theft that they thought helped China, and that probe eventually included numerous other possible subjects. But in scrutinizing Mr. Lee, the FBI discovered that he had committed a separate offense, and nine months later he was charged with 59 counts of mishandling sensitive data for downloading onto computer tapes and an unsecure computer system what prosecutors called the "crown jewels" of U.S. nuclear weapons design. After being held in solitary confinement, Mr. Lee was released earlier this month, pleading guilty to one count of unlawful possession of defense information. The judge in the case reprimanded the Departments of Justice and Energy for exaggerating the security threat.

The New York Times' coverage had been criticized by supporters of Mr. Lee, civil rights and Asian-American groups, as well as certain media watchers for sparking what they called a political witch hunt against the scientist. After Mr. Lee was released, the White House singled out media coverage, in particular from the New York Times, for stimulating the Justice Department's aggressive prosecution.

The Times said in its note that it didn't pay enough attention to the possibility that the intelligence leak didn't come from Mr. Lee or that he might have played a minor role. The March 6 article mentioned that the Justice Department didn't think it had enough evidence against Mr. Lee to authorize a wire tap on his phone, but Tuesday the Times said that fact should have "been more prominent in the article and in our thinking."

Brian Sun, one of Mr. Lee's lawyers, declined to comment on the New York Times' note. Henry Tang, chairman of the Committee of 100, a civic group of prominent Chinese-Americans, said the New York Times was "honorable" in indicating shortcomings in its coverage, but expressed disappointment that it took the paper so long to publish the note. The Committee has supported Mr. Lee through requests that he receive fair legal treatment and raising concerns over alleged racial bias in prosecuting the case.

Meanwhile, in Washington, at the joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and the Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Richard Bryan (D., Nev.) said the investigation "is almost a textbook example of how not to conduct an espionage case, a 'Keystone Kops' investigation. The thing that does trouble us all -- and I don't agree with characterizations that Mr. Lee is an innocent victim -- is the manner in which he was confined," Sen. Bryan said. "What were the physical circumstances of his confinement? Am I correct that other individuals who have been charged with espionage have not been subjected to that level of personal degradation, acknowledging that you don't want this individual to have access to outside contacts to pass along information?"

FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno both said that neither the FBI nor the Justice Department required that Mr. Lee be shackled and handcuffed as part of his confinement at the Santa Fe County detention facility. Ms. Reno suggested that he wasn't treated any differently from other inmates in "administrative segregation" at the facility and in fact was treated better in many ways, including having a facility built at government expense where he could look at classified documents and meet with his lawyers.

Mr. Freeh also said "the Department of Justice and the FBI stand by each and every one of the 59 counts in the indictment." He said Mr. Lee did endanger the U.S., primarily because he downloaded nuclear secrets in such a way where Internet hackers or someone with Mr. Lee's identification codes could have had access to 400,000 pages of classified information.

Mark Holscher, criminal attorney for Mr. Lee, said "Not withstanding the egregious pretrial conditions that were imposed upon him, [Mr. Lee] still believes that our system of justice will prevail ..."

-- Gary Fields in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Matthew Rose at matthew.rose@wsj.com

---

Excerpts From Testimony at Congressional Hearing on Wen Ho Lee Case

New York Times
September 27, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/national/27ITEX.html

Following are excerpts from the testimony of Attorney General Janet Reno and Louis J. Freeh, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, yesterday at a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the case of Wen Ho Lee, as recorded by The New York Times:

Ms. Reno

Director Freeh and I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to tell you what we did in the case of Dr. Wen Ho Lee and why we did it.

At the outset, I must caution that we're limited in what we can discuss here. The government has secured a commitment from Dr. Lee to cooperate and to submit to a comprehensive debriefing in the next few weeks and further inquiries for some months after that. We do not, and I am sure you do not, want to do or say anything here that would interfere with the debriefing. Some issues may also require that we go into closed session. . . .

As attorney general and as director of the F.B.I., Director Freeh and I share together an awesome responsibility to protect the national security of this nation, but at the same time to protect the Constitution and the rights of all Americans. These cases are difficult without full access to the facts, and given some of the rumors and speculations that have been reported in the press, I can understand that questions arise. But I hope that by the end of our session today you will agree that our actions made sense, were reasonable and were correct.

Dr. Lee is no hero. He is not an absent-minded professor. He is a felon. He committed a very serious, calculated crime, and he pled guilty to it. He abused the trust of the American people by putting at risk some of our core national security secrets. He had one of the highest security clearance levels possible, granting him access to the most sensitive of nuclear weapons information. He had worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 20 years. He had access to the Los Alamos computer system that was designed precisely to be secure against unauthorized intrusions.

What was on that secure system? Nuclear weapon design and testing data that is in effect the library of blueprints of most of the United States nuclear weapons designs, designs that are the fruit of the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars. Dr. Lee systematically, deliberately moved nuclear weapons data that was not even related to the work he was doing. He moved it from the system where it was safe and secure to a vulnerable computer in the Los Alamos system that any hacker or foreign government could penetrate. Dr. Lee did so by betraying the trust that had been placed in him to protect those secrets.

The process of transferring this data took Dr. Lee a long time, nearly 40 hours over a 70-day period. As has been pointed out, it involved the equivalent of 400,000 pages. Stacked up, that's a 13-story building. He left this information that is so vital to our national security on that unsecure computer, not for hours or days or even months. He left it there for years. He knew that it was classified. He knew that what he was doing was wrong. He moved files in such a way as to defeat security measures he knew were in place. He went further. He copied the information from the unsecure computer onto 10 portable tapes. Three were recovered by the F.B.I., seven are missing. What's more, he made copies of the portable tapes and those copies are also missing. When Dr. Lee found out he was being investigated, he took steps to cover up his actions. After his access was revoked to the part of the lab where the secure computer resided, he tried over and over again to get in, including at 3:30 a.m. on one Christmas Eve.

Despite what you read in the papers, until he entered the plea agreement Dr. Lee never had said he would admit his wrongdoing, plead guilty to a felony and tell us what he did with the tape. The plea agreement entered into by the government with Dr. Lee is our best chance to find out what happened to the computer tapes containing some of the nation's most important nuclear designs and testing information.

Mr. Freeh

As an expert from Los Alamos testified in this case, the material downloaded and copied represented the complete nuclear weapons design capability of Los Alamos at that time - 50 years of nuclear weapons development at the expense of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Quoting from Dr. Younger: These codes and their associated databases and the input file combined with someone that knew how to use them could, in my opinion, in the wrong hands, change the global strategic balance. They enable the possessor to design the only objects that could result in the military defeat of America's conventional forces. The only threat, for example, to our carrier battle groups. They represent the gravest possible security risk to the United States.

Before he created the tapes, only two sites in the world held this complete design portfolio: Division X at Los Alamos and another national laboratory.

Now, many have asked if his conduct was so bad, why did the government negotiate a plea agreement and agree to release him. Fair question. Understandable.

But it has a very simple answer: Department of Justice and the F.B.I. concluded that this guilty plea, coupled with his agreement to submit to questioning under oath and to a polygraph, was our best opportunity to protect the national security by finding out what happened to the seven missing tapes. And we found out, on the way to the courthouse, the additional copies of tapes which he has now admitted to having made.

This was always the object of this investigation and prosecution: Why did he make them? Where are they? What happened to them? And who had access to them?

From the moment we learned last year that our nation's nuclear secrets were on missing portable tapes, we have had this central goal: to find out what happened to them. This was the goal of the entire national security leadership of our government, not just the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice.

Before any charges were brought against Dr. Lee, this matter was analyzed by the highest levels of our government. Working together we carefully considered the substantial risks to our national security of proceeding with the public prosecution counterbalanced against the risks of forgoing the prosecution.

In the end there was a consensus that a criminal prosecution of Dr. Lee presented the best opportunity for discovering where the tapes were, why he made them and who, if anyone else, had access to them.

The decision to prosecute Dr. Lee was made only after repeated attempts to gain his cooperation before indictment. . . .

I would now like to address the disturbing allegations that the government engaged in selective prosecution or racial profiling in its investigation and prosecution of Dr. Lee.

There is simply no truth to these allegations. Dr. Lee was not investigated nor indicted nor incarcerated because he is an American of Asian decent.

As the attorney general and the director of the F.B.I., we are honored to head organizations that pride themselves with fair and impartial law enforcement. We would never tolerate racial profiling or selective prosecution.

---

Reno and Freeh Still Call Acts of Scientist a Serious Crime

New York Times
September 27, 2000
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/national/27INQU.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 - Attorney General Janet Reno and Director Louis J. Freeh of the F.B.I. defended their handling of the Wen Ho Lee case today, asserting in a Senate hearing that Dr. Lee had committed a serious crime when he removed what they called a portable library of atomic secrets from the weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M.

The two officials said they remained convinced that had Dr. Lee's case gone to trial federal prosecutors would have prevailed on each of the 59 counts of the indictment against him. But they agreed to a plea bargain, they said, based on several factors, principally that the government was the victim of "graymail," which they described as a defense strategy that would have forced prosecutors to reveal "extremely sensitive" nuclear secrets if they brought Dr. Lee to trial.

They said that Dr. Lee disclosed shortly before the plea bargain that he had not only downloaded the information onto computer tapes, but had also made copies of the tapes, a disclosure Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh said they regarded as "frightening" because it meant "that at least 7 and as many as 14 or more tapes containing vast amounts of our nation's nuclear secrets remain unaccounted for." [Excerpts, Page A17.]

Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh admitted that the government had made mistakes in its investigation, but neither expressed regret or doubts about the case, which ended two weeks ago when Dr. Lee pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of mishandling classified nuclear weapons data. He was freed after nine months behind bars.

"Dr. Lee is no hero," Ms. Reno said. "He is not an absent-minded professor. He is a felon. He committed a very serious calculated crime, and he pled guilty to it."

In an unusual joint statement that was written at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh presented what was, in effect, their most complete and detailed rebuttal to date in response to complaints from the federal district judge in the case, James A. Parker, and President Clinton about whether the government had treated Dr. Lee unfairly.

After the hearing, Dr. Lee's lawyers issued a statement on his behalf, saying: "Notwithstanding the egregious pretrial conditions that were imposed on him, he still believes that our system of justice will prevail and he remains fully committed to honoring his obligations under the plea agreement with the government."

At the joint session of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, no senators disputed the importance of the information that Dr. Lee downloaded nor did any question the seriousness of the crime to which he pleaded guilty.

But the debate over the information that Dr. Lee was accused of placing at risk continued today outside the hearing room when a former top government nuclear weapons designer who testified in Dr. Lee's defense only last month said that his remarks had been misinterpreted.

In a detention hearing for Dr. Lee, the designer, John L. Richter, said that 99 percent of the data that Dr. Lee downloaded was unclassified.

But today, in response to a reporter's questions, Mr. Richter, one of several scientific experts who testified that the downloaded material was widely known, said in an interview that he meant his comments to apply only to the software and physics that underlie the computer codes that Dr. Lee downloaded.

Mr. Richter said his comments did not apply to other data that Dr. Lee removed, including information about the dimensions of weapons and about the physical properties of bomb materials.

Still, lawmakers in both parties sharply criticized Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh for what they characterized as mismanagement of the case and missed opportunities in the inquiry and for their insistence on keeping Dr. Lee in solitary confinement - and sometimes shackled - in the months before the plea bargain.

"This is a case in which there is very little, if any, good news to tell and plenty of blame to go around," said Senator Richard H. Bryan, Democrat of Nevada. "The F.B.I., the Energy Department, the Justice Department all share the responsibility for the poor handling of this matter from the beginning, dating back to the early 1980's."

The complaints followed criticism from Judge Parker, who presided over the Lee case and called it a national embarrassment and from President Clinton, who said last week that he was troubled by the government's insistence on pretrial detention.

Some Republicans expressed skepticism about Mr. Clinton's comments. Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama and chairman of the Intelligence Committee said: "The president's statements criticizing the conduct of the prosecution, as if it was conducted by an entity beyond his control, was bizarre to say the least. The president knew exactly what was going on."

There was little opportunity for senators to question Ms. Reno or Mr. Freeh at length in the hearing, the first time that either official had agreed to respond to lawmakers' criticisms in depth about the case - which has drawn together Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh, whose relationship has long been frayed.

The hearing was abruptly halted when Democrats invoked a Senate rule that limits committee hearings to two hours when the Senate is in session. The action was unrelated to the Lee case. Some Democrats asked for the action to protest what some have said was the Republicans' failure to approve judicial nominees, Congressional aides said.

Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh disputed the conclusions of some senior nuclear weapons experts who have accused the government of exaggerating the case against Dr. Lee. The scientists have said that the information that Dr. Lee copied onto computer tapes was known throughout the rarified circles of nuclear weapons research.

"Dr. Lee created his own secret portable, personal electronic library of this nation's nuclear secrets," Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh said in their joint statement. "At the very least in doing so, he placed these secrets at extraordinary risk."

The two officials said that the material that Dr. Lee downloaded onto 10 computer tapes contained the "electronic blueprints of the exact dimensions and geometry of this nation's nuclear weapons."

The data, they said, represented the "complete nuclear weapons design capability of Los Alamos at the time - approximately 50 years of nuclear weapons development, at the expense of hundreds of billions of dollars."

Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh sought to portray Dr. Lee as a scientist who, for still unexplained reasons, downloaded through computer systems a vast amount of data that was unrelated to his work. When he fell under suspicion, they said, he tried to conceal what he had done by deleting files from the laboratory's computers.

The statement by Mr. Lee's lawyers did not respond to the specifics of the Reno-Freeh statement, and people familiar with the thinking of Dr. Lee's defense team said the lawyers needed time to assess the testimony. They also said he never intended to endanger national security.

Mr. Freeh, who read parts of the statement, said that when Dr. Lee realized he was the subject of a criminal investigation, he took several steps that heightened suspicion.

Dr. Lee removed classification markings from documents, the statement said, and repeatedly tried to enter secure areas of the laboratory after his security clearance was revoked to engage in what the officials said was an effort to conceal his misuse of Los Alamos computers.

"In order to achieve his ends, Dr. Lee had to override default mechanisms that were designed to prevent any accidental or inadvertent movement of those files," the statement said. "His downloading process consumed nearly 40 hours over 70 different days."

Mr. Richter's comments came after pullback came after T. J. Glauthier, the deputy Energy secretary, said at the hearing that the scientist's assertion in court that 99 percent of the data the former Los Alamos scientist had downloaded was unclassified was wrong.

"That statement is not correct when applied to the totality of these files," Mr. Glauthier said of the characterization of the data.

While physics and mathematical aspects of Dr. Lee's downloaded data do appear in the open literature, he added, "the way they are assembled along with classified physical databases and specific weapons configurations, which are also on the tapes, is highly classified," Mr. Glauthier said.

The tapes, he conceded, "are not a complete recipe for designing and building a nuclear bomb." But the data "represent the design know- how and physics information developed by our nuclear labs over a period of 50 years and over 1,000 nuclear tests."

Mr. Richter said in an interview today that he generally agreed with Mr. Glauthier's criticism.

When he testified, Dr. Richter said, he meant to apply the 99-percent figure only to the software and physics that underlie the complex computer codes that Dr. Lee downloaded.

"That's the software," he said of his testimony, adding that figure was "probably an understatement" in terms of its security banality.

But beyond that, he said, lay two other areas where Dr. Lee had apparently downloaded secrets: the physical properties of bomb materials at high temperatures and pressures, and the engineering specifications and dimensions of the nuclear arms themselves.

Dr. Richter said he had "no way of knowing the proportion" of secret to unclassified data in Dr. Lee's downloads since "I did not have access" to the downloaded data.

Still, he maintained the government was exaggerating the significance of the downloading.

"I don't know how it happened," he said, but somehow all the federal and prosecution experts "got together and decided this is the worst thing that had ever happened."

---

Wen Ho Lee, no martyr

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • September 27, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-house-2000927193652.htm

Since federal prosecutors negotiated a one-felony-count plea bargain two weeks ago with Wen Ho Lee, the former nuclear-weapons computer scientist who was charged in December with 59 felony counts, recriminations have been flowing fast and furiously. Congressional hearings have begun. On Tuesday, the editors of the New York Times, whose investigative reports since March 1999 have been criticized for causing a political frenzy amounting to a witch hunt, published an extraordinarily critical analysis of its own reporting.

However, before Lee is given official martyr status as the supposed victim of "ethnic profiling," it is worth recalling what he has admitted to doing. In 1993, 1994 and 1997, Lee unilaterally erased classified markings on documents, which were then shifted from secure computers to open, accessible computers, where the information was then copied onto 10 portable computer tapes, seven of which are still missing. Altogether, he copied nearly 400 computer files, the equivalent of 400,000 pages of data, including the mathematical approximation of the designs of nuclear weapons, their exact dimensions, information about testing problems, actual and simulated testing results and computer programs required to design and test weapons. His colleagues have insisted that there was no legitimate reason for Lee to copy those files, to say nothing of stealing them. When prosecutors pressed for pre-trial confinement in harsh, solitary conditions, Paul Robinson, the president of Sandia National Laboratory, which develops nuclear weapons, asserted that the information Lee downloaded and transferred to tapes could "truly change the world strategic balance."

Lee has maintained that he destroyed the missing tapes. As part of the plea bargain, he will undergo extensive debriefing and polygraph exams to convince national security officials that he is telling the truth. But that begs a couple of questions: Why would he spend 70 hours, many late at night and on weekends, copying the secrets only to destroy the tapes? And why, after losing his security clearance, did he repeatedly attempt to enter a classified area?

Damage assessment in such cases has always been a major priority. The debriefings may prove to be more valuable to the nation's security than a lengthy prison sentence unaccompanied by full disclosure if Lee were found guilty by a jury - a prospect the presiding judge did not discount.

Lee's evolving martyr status becomes even more questionable considering the fact that a government report issued in November 1998 revealed that between October 1997 and June 1998 there were more than 300 foreign attacks on the Energy Department's unclassified computer system, where Lee had downloaded the secrets of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Whether those secrets were stolen by foreign hackers is anybody's guess. But Lee would certainly bear responsibility.

Regarding the assertions that Lee was the victim of "ethnic profiling," which the FBI vigorously denies, it is worth noting that China has a long history of using Chinese-Americans, including emigres from Taiwan such as Lee, as spies. Larry Wu-Tai Chin, an analyst-linguist for the CIA and the U.S. Army, for example, spent 30 years spying for China before being caught in 1985. Lee himself admitted that he had failed to report a contact with a Chinese official, as he was required to do. Indeed, as it turned out, even though Lee was not indicted for espionage, his status as a suspect proved to be well-deserved by virtue of the felonious actions that he ultimately admitted to taking. Wen Ho Lee was not one of the good guys - not by a long shot.

-------- us nuc politics

Gore and Foreign Policy: Key Role, Mixed Record

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 27, 2000 ; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A24027-2000Sep26&language=printer

The chandelier lights were still burning brightly in the dining room of Vice President Gore's official residence as 10 p.m. approached on May 3, 1999, the 41st day of the NATO bombing campaign against Serb forces in Kosovo.

The occasion wasn't one of the ceremonial rituals of the vice presidency. Scattered in front of Gore on the table were coffee cups and water glasses, and beyond them sat the burly former Russian prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, who was trying to mediate an end to the war, and his aides.

"We are sensitive to Serb dreams, but also to innocent people and the demands of justice," Gore said after Chernomyrdin described Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic's desire to have his own soldiers defend Serb historical sites in Kosovo. NATO required complete Serb withdrawal, Gore insisted.

Gore--flanked on his side of the table by his foreign policy aide, Leon Fuerth, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger--drew some lines on a piece of paper. "We're at a fork in the road," he said, according to notes from the meeting. "This first way lies bombing, continued and accelerated." But if Milosevic took "the second fork," Gore said, he might keep Kosovo as part of Yugoslavia and benefit from an international effort to meld the region into the European economy.

The scene was unusual--a vice president engaging in tough, detailed negotiations that ultimately contributed to ending the war in Kosovo by enlisting the Russians to pressure Milosevic. It underscored Gore's belief in the value of active U.S. engagement in the world's trouble spots and of the role he has played within the Clinton administration as an interventionist willing to use force to defend American values and interests in places such as Haiti, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo.

For the past seven and a half years, Gore has been intimately involved in the formulation and execution of foreign policy at a level that's normally the preserve of the president and his top advisers. He has acted as the administration's negotiator on an eclectic range of issues, playing a part in talks on ending the war in Kosovo, on the removal of nuclear arms from Ukraine, on the forging of international environmental protocols, on the introduction of economic reforms in Egypt and on the cultivation of U.S.-South Africa and U.S.-Russia ties. And he has acted as an influential adviser to President Clinton, summing up Cabinet debates and injecting the last word before Clinton makes a decision.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, his rival for the presidency, has tried to turn Gore's foreign policy responsibilities into campaign liabilities, charging that he has been part of an administration whose approach to world issues has lacked focus and an overall strategy. Pointing to the ailing Russian economy and the tarnished image of the United States among Russians, Bush and other Republican critics--most recently a group of Republican House members in a report last week--dismiss the U.S. policy toward Russia as a failure. Pointing to the open-ended U.S. troop commitment in Kosovo and Bosnia, they charge that Clinton and Gore have overextended U.S. forces. And pointing to Haiti, they charge that Clinton--and Gore--have been too quick to use American soldiers to intervene in internal problems abroad.

"This administration has acted in an ad hoc and reactive fashion," says Robert Zoellick, one of Bush's foreign policy advisers.

Even some Gore supporters lament the instances when the vice president's desire to curry favor with domestic constituencies--labor unions, Jewish Americans and Cuban Americans--overshadowed other considerations on policy toward China, Israel and Cuba.

Foreign policy expertise was part of the package Gore brought to the Democratic ticket in 1992. A Vietnam War veteran, an arms control specialist and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gore compensated for the fact that Clinton, as the governor of a small state, had virtually no experience in international affairs.

Shortly after Clinton picked him for the number two spot, Gore urged Clinton to make President George Bush's failure to intervene in Bosnia a campaign issue. "Gore was very strongly urging that we take a forward-leaning posture on Bosnia," says Berger, Clinton's national security adviser and, at that time, a campaign aide. "He had the feeling that the United States was abdicating its leadership by not taking a more active role."

Once in office, Gore made sure he wasn't shut out of the foreign policy process by insisting that Fuerth, his top foreign policy adviser and alter ego, get a seat at the bureaucratic table, becoming the only administration official to take part in the meetings of principals--Cabinet-level officials--as well as in the meetings of their deputies, who often drew up policy options. Gore's weekly luncheons with Clinton provided another chance for the vice president to sway policy.

Once Clinton was elected, however, Bosnia received little attention from the new administration. The Pentagon, including Gen. Colin L. Powell, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposed American involvement in the Balkans; and Clinton, after stumbling over the issue of gays in the military, did not want to challenge the generals. Moreover, then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher was unable to persuade the European allies to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia and to back allied air strikes.

As it turned out, the first foreign crisis that led to U.S. intervention was the one in Haiti, where deteriorating conditions led to concerns that there would be an exodus of refugees. Clinton vowed that he would bring change to the island--and send any boat people back. But in September 1994, the United Nations authorized the use of force to topple the Haitian military dictatorship and restore the elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

U.S. forces planned to invade just after midnight on the morning of Monday, Sept. 19. The Saturday before the deadline, Powell, former president Jimmy Carter and former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) arrived in Haiti to try to persuade the military to give up power without bloodshed. During White House deliberations, Gore argued for a time limit because, without one, the Haitian military leader "will play us like a violin," Talbott recalls.

At the Oval Office the following day, Christopher and then-national security adviser Anthony Lake urged the president to postpone the invasion to give the delegation more time, and Clinton was wavering. Then-Defense Secretary William J. Perry and Gore favored sending the troops.

"This was the first time he [the president] really had to make a major decision as to whether you put U.S. men and women in harm's way," recalls Leon Panetta, White House chief of staff at the time. At that time, Panetta says, "almost inevitably . . . Clinton would turn to Gore as to what he thought made sense."

Clinton called the mediators and gave them another half-hour. Faced with imminent invasion, the Haitian junta leaders stepped down without a fight.

Today, Haiti remains beset by political and economic troubles. The manipulative Aristide has fallen out of U.S. favor, and Bush's top foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, calls U.S. policy there an example of a failed intervention. "I'm quite sure that the people who wanted to go into Haiti really believed they were reestablishing democracy with Aristide," she says. "Nine billion dollars and how many years later, can you make that point?"

Fuerth offered a defense of the policy in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations last week. "We saved many thousands of lives," he said. "And we've given democracy a chance in Haiti, which is all you can do."

Confronting Bosnia Crisis

With the worsening fighting between the Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, Bosnia finally appeared on the White House radar in the fall of 1994. Richard C. Holbrooke, then-assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs, recalls a frustrated Gore saying that he feared a "chain reaction" would spread violence throughout the Balkans and arguing for the strict enforcement of economic sanctions.

But the turning point for direct U.S. involvement in Bosnia did not come until the following summer, with the mass killings by Serb forces of more than 7,000 civilians in the captured city of Srebrenica. The horror was symbolized by a photograph of a young woman who had tied her floral shawl and belt together and hung herself from a tree.

When Clinton gathered his foreign policy team on July 18, Gore spoke at length, arguing against any policy that would "acquiesce to genocide and allow the rape of another city and more refugees."

"My 21-year-old daughter asked about that picture," Gore said. "What am I supposed to tell her? Why is this happening and we're not doing anything?"

Usually, says Fuerth, Gore "would try not to box the president in before the president made a decision." This was the closest he came to confrontation, and the conversation helped prod Clinton to action. Over the subsequent weeks, the United States led diplomatic efforts that resulted in NATO bombing Serb areas to bring Milosevic to the bargaining table. Eventually peace talks, brokered by Holbrooke, were held in Dayton, Ohio.

Again, Gore took a tough line toward the Serb leader. Holbrooke wanted to ease or suspend the sanctions as a reward for Belgrade's agreement to negotiate. But Fuerth and Gore said no. That December, Clinton dispatched 20,000 U.S. troops to Bosnia to guarantee the peace agreement.

"Leon [Fuerth] held fast, saying that Serbia would not get one inch on sanctions until an agreement was signed," says Ivo Daalder, who was National Security Council director for European affairs at the time. Gore and Fuerth prevailed.

Throughout this time, Gore also served as co-chairman of four binational commissions, pairing him with not only Chernomyrdin, but also Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, South African President Thabo Mbeki, then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and Kravchuk's successor, Leonid Kuchma. Whether Gore brought prestige and impetus to issues through the commissions or created a new layer of bureaucracy remains a matter of debate.

"These commissions drove the State Department nuts because they kept taking away parts of State's mandates," said a former senior official at the State Department. Others complained that there was pressure to manufacture "achievements" that the commissions could boast about while more intractable problems got short shrift.

In working with the Russians, Fuerth has argued that the administration made the best of what it knew to be a bad situation. Privatization "would have to take place ready or not, because privatization was the one sure way to break away from the past," while corruption would take years to cure, he said. As for dealing with then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his prime minister, Chernomyrdin, Fuerth asked: "If not with him, then with whom?"

Clinton administration officials say Gore helped build a relationship with the Russian leadership that helped maintain relations even in the face of Russian opposition to the war in Kosovo and the expansion of NATO.

"All the years of cultivating Cherno paid off" in Kosovo, says one former senior administration official. "Gore was seen by Chernomyrdin as his friend, and when the chits were called, they came in for our benefit."

Some commission activities were tangible. During a December 1993 session in Moscow, Gore was drawn into negotiations over the removal of 2,100 nuclear weapons from Ukraine, dispatching a U.S. delegation to Kiev that persuaded Ukraine to send its nuclear weapons to Russia in return for Russia's agreement not to challenge Ukraine's borders. The United States signed as a guarantor.

"The key to success was getting the Russians to attend that meeting," says Perry, who went to Kiev. "That was done by the vice president, who went to Chernomyrdin."

At the funeral of the Hungarian prime minister in December 1993, Gore pulled the Ukrainian leader aside to insist that he stick to the deal. Later, when the agreement seemed to be coming apart because of mistrust between Ukraine and Russia, Gore phoned Kravchuk to remind him that the United States, as a co-signatory, expected him to fulfill the accord. Finally, in 1996, the last Ukrainian nuclear weapon was shipped back to Russia.

"There were more than a dozen cases where the Ukrainians didn't deliver the warheads or Russians didn't deliver the fuel rods," says former assistant secretary of defense Graham Allison, a Gore adviser. "When it would get stuck, Gore would be there with a meeting or phone call."

Gore's famous attention to detail was of no help in his most conspicuous blunder in foreign policy, his 1997 trip to Beijing. All too aware of the campaign finance scandal stemming from the 1996 election campaign and of one of the most sensational allegations to come out of it--that Gore and Clinton had received campaign contributions from Chinese citizens--members of the vice president's advance team attempted to avoid any situations that would result in embarrassing photographs. They particularly wanted to avoid having Gore photographed with his counterpart, China's then-Premier Li Peng, who had signed the martial law order that preceded the bloody 1989 crackdown on demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.

But just after a ceremonial signing of a Chinese contract with two American companies, "boom, the doors open and from behind a partition were Chinese servants with champagne glasses," recalls Dennis Alpert of the Gore advance team. The resulting picture--and Gore's awkward attempts to explain it--seemed to highlight his unfamiliarity with diplomacy as well as with China.

Back in the United States, domestic politics continued to clash with policy. For fear of angering labor unions whose support he needed, Gore remained conspicuously silent about his support for the free-trade pact that would allow China to join the World Trade Organization.

This clash has not been limited to China policy. Eager to appeal to Cuban American voters in Miami, the vice president earlier this year stumbled over his stance on whether the administration should give asylum to the 6-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, who had been rescued at sea off the coast of Florida. And it remains doubtful that Gore, after giving virtually unequivocal support to Israel since his first run for president in 1988, would be accepted as a mediator by the Palestinians the way Clinton has been.

'Forward Engagement'

In a speech in April that provided the closest thing to a road map to what the foreign policy of a Gore administration would look like, Gore spoke about the need for "a new security agenda for the global age based on forward engagement."

Bruce Jentleson, a Gore adviser and director of Duke University's public policy school, said that this agenda is based on the idea "that the end of the Cold War didn't mean threats were going away. . . . At the same time, he has a real sense for the new agenda: environment, trade, and HIV/AIDS as a public health and security issue for democracies."

Gore has already highlighted that agenda, most notably in his last-minute decision in December 1997 to become involved in pushing for a treaty on global warming, in Kyoto, Japan. But critics say his real impact on new-agenda issues has been minimal. The Kyoto pact still has not been submitted to a vote in the Senate. And while Gore has stressed the importance of combating AIDS in Africa, the administration's assistance to poor nations amounts to a fraction of what is needed.

Fuerth says that if Gore is elected, such issues will receive more attention. He asks: Can a world with 1.5 billion people living on less than $1 a day be stable and democratic? When framed that way, Fuerth says, moral and security issues merge. "At that point," he says, "it becomes an interest of the United States rather than a charitable impulse."

---------

NADER CHARGES GORE WITH BREAKING INCINERATOR PROMISE

September 27, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-27-09.html

EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader called on Vice President Al Gore today to honor a promise he made eight years ago by shutting down the Von Roll Waste Technologies Industries incinerator. Gore is running for president on the Democratic ticket. The hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool burns 60,000 tons of hazardous waste every year, making it one of the largest incinerators of its type in the world. The incinerator's permits expired in 1995. The Von Roll incinerator has failed test burns and was criticized in a 1994 report requested by Gore. "Mr. Gore, after seven years of double talk and delays, the time has come to shut down this incinerator," said Nader. "Workers should be given two years full severance pay by their negligent employer, WTI."

The incinerator is located in an area with a history of environmental contamination, on a flood plain, and less than 400 yards away from an elementary school, in violation of state and federal environmental regulations. Among the toxins that the incinerator releases into the air are dioxins, furans, and metals such as chromium, mercury, lead and arsenic. "Any incinerator that emits almost a pound of mercury into the air every day can't be good for our children's ability to learn," Nader said. Campaigning for vice president in 1992, Gore called the incinerator, then under construction, "unbelievable," adding, "the Clinton-Gore administration is going to give you an environmental presidency to deal with these problems. We'll be on your side for a change."

----

Republicans Attack Russian Policy

New York Times
September 27, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Madeleine Albright came under attack Wednesday from House Republicans regarding Russia policy.

The Clinton administration has failed ``to truly stand up to the massive corruption in the Yeltsin government,'' said Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman, R-N.Y., chairman of the International Relations Committee.

``Will anybody now call the Putin government to account for the sake of democracy?'' he asked Albright, setting the tone for a two-hour hearing, possibly Albright's last as Secretary of State.

The criticisms were wide-ranging.

--Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., accused the administration of secretly supporting the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement in Afghanistan, a charge Albright flatly denied.

--Rep. John Cooksey, R-Calif., said the administration had not pressured Russia to close what he called an espionage facility at Lourdes in Cuba.

--And Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, said the administration ``has not identified with the problems of the Russian people and more closely identified with the new Russian oligarchy.'' As the economy declines and the health of Russian children grows worse, ``relations with Russia are worse in many different ways than they were a decade ago,'' he said.

Albright countered that ``democracy is hard'' and ``it has been especially difficult in Russia, whose people have no living memory of political and economic freedom to guide them.''

``The Clinton-Gore administration has not seen Russia through rose-colored glasses,'' she said. ``We have been very realistic. And we have dealt with something that has never been dealt with before: how you deal with a former adversary that had an empire and help to manage the devolution of that empire.''

Democrats rallied to Albright's defense, with one suggesting the allegations were politically motivated.

``Some people have a need to make politics out of Russia's problems,'' said Rep. Sam Gejdenson, D-Conn., adding that the Clinton administration had made the United States safer with arms control agreements that have reduced Russia's nuclear arsenal.

Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said the administration had pursued ``the only rational way'' of dealing with Russia.

``It is beyond our prerogative and power to determine Russia's future,'' Albright said, telling the Republicans, ``We can work together on a bipartisan basis to explore every avenue for cooperation with Russia'' on arms control and security.

Alluding to the political season, Albright, a longtime Democrat, said that when she became secretary of state in 1997, ``I had my political instincts removed.''

But now, she said, ``maybe I have to see the surgeon again.''

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

U.S. Is Criticized Over Maintaining Nuclear Weapons; Report Cites Risk

Wall Street Journal
September 27, 2000
By JOHN J. FIALKA Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
http://address.mail.yahoo.com/yab/us/1631518149/

WASHINGTON -- Leaky roofs, fire hazards and other symptoms of deferred maintenance at U.S. weapons plants have delayed reliability tests and repairs of major nuclear weapons, according to the Energy Department's inspector general. Maintenance problems have also set back the schedule for disassembling some of the nation's older warheads, the IG's office said.

A report released Tuesday blames the problem on budget-cutting. It estimates the agency will need an additional $5 billion to $8 billion over 10 years to cope with the backlogs in its "Stockpile Stewardship" program, designed to keep the U.S. nuclear-weapons force effective without testing warheads.

In a written response to the inspector general's findings, Madelyn R. Creedon, deputy administrator for defense programs at the Energy Department, said the agency agrees. She said that while the problems have not harmed the reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons, "we face a number of challenges if we are to meet future requirements."

The report said the reliability of several weapons systems is "at risk because component surveillance testing has been delayed." According to the report, needed modifications for warheads in two of the nation's premier long-range missile systems -- the land-based MX and submarine-based Trident I -- have been delayed for years because of budgeting and maintenance problems at two weapons facilities: Pantex, near Amarillo, Texas, and Y-12, at Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Deferred-maintenance problems at these two plants and a third weapons complex in Kansas City, Mo., increased by 25% between 1998 and 1999, according to the report. Roof leaks at Pantex delayed a program to dismantle old weapons. Upgrades to promote fire and radiation safety and to improve the plant's lighting were cited as causing lengthy delays in a planned overhaul of the MX missile warhead.

At Oak Ridge, the inspector general found that the DOE had incomplete data on the extent of its maintenance problems in 87 buildings. The agency had "no one individual" assigned to coordinating nuclear-weapons support activities with maintenance problems, the report said.

There are more than 6,000 parts in a nuclear weapon. When the U.S. stopped the explosive tests of nuclear weapons in 1992, the DOE adopted a program of more intensive surveillance and testing of parts, which age at different rates. While some can be replaced, others require remanufacturing because original parts are no longer made.

The budget problems at the facilities, the report said, are caused in part by delays in weapons talks with the Russians and a mismatch between military requirements and budget plans. Since 1997, according to the report, the DOE has been providing money to support 3,500 weapons. Meanwhile, Pentagon requirements call for a stockpile of 6,000 weapons.

The budgeting was further complicated, the report added, by several "unfunded" requirements to address safety and health concerns imposed by the DOE that have caused plant managers to stretch existing funds.

Write to John J. Fialka at john.fialka@wsj.com

---

House Passes Stopgap Measure To Keep Government Running

Wall Street Journal
September 27, 2000
By DAVID ROGERS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB970012086491289748.htm

WASHINGTON -- The House approved a stopgap funding bill to buy time for budget talks and keep the government operating for the first week of the new fiscal year that begins Sunday.

The 415-2 vote came as House and Senate negotiators neared agreement on an estimated $23.6 billion energy and water budget that has ballooned by $1.9 billion since first passed by the House in June. In final bargaining, the administration salvaged much of its request for the National Ignition Facility, a powerful fusion laser under construction at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Elsewhere, lawmakers went far beyond the president, adding close to 35 new water projects in a $4.5 billion Army Corps of Engineers budget, about $375 million over current funding.

The projects are popular this election year, and reflect a growing trend: Republicans outspending the president not only on the military but on domestic programs. As talks continue Wednesday, the natural-resources budget is expected to top $18 billion and exceed the president's budget request by several hundred million dollars. A third draft measure, providing more than $55 billion for transportation programs, has shown less change, but even here the final numbers are expected to exceed Mr.Clinton's request.

Meanwhile, the two sides have closed the gap on the Treasury budget, and the GOP is prepared to add back an estimated $323 million cut from the administration's request, including $215 million for the Internal Revenue Service. The addition comes on top of earlier concessions in July and should bring the total IRS budget up to approximately $8.8 billion, or 7%, above this year's.

To date, only two of the 13 annual appropriations bills have been enacted into law, and the stopgap bill approved Tuesday is just the first in a series of interim funding measures, as lawmakers work through this backlog. Embarrassed by the lack of progress, the GOP leadership wants to begin sending bills to the president this week, but problems keep popping up.

The White House again threatened to veto the energy and water bill over a Senate provision restricting the ability of the government to pursue a plan to restore a more-natural ebb and flow of water levels in the Missouri River. Meanwhile, divisions exist among Republicans and within the White House about how best to pursue legislation dedicating billions of dollars to buy up and protect environmentally valuable lands threatened by development. With little fanfare, Congress and the administration seem poised to embrace a new national drunk-driving standard of 0.08% blood-alcohol content. Fearing a backlash from the beer and restaurant industries, negotiators are reluctant to announce a compromise. But the final transportation bill is expected to uphold the new standard, to be enforced by sanctions threatening states with the loss of as much as 8% of their federal highway aid if they fail to come into compliance during a period of four to six years.

Write to David Rogers at david.rogers@wsj.com

---

Senators praise Albright's work
She makes pitch for more overseas spending during last appearance before committee

Spokane Spokesman Review
September 27, 2000
Associated Press
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=092700&ID=s857714&cat=

WASHINGTON -- It was, Sen. Jesse Helms observed, the first time a secretary of state had executed a curtsy.

"It's been our pleasure," the North Carolina Republican said as Madeleine Albright ended her 18th and probably final appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

She bowed, curtsied and was clearly moved by the praise heaped on her by Helms, senior Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., and other members of the committee in what was billed as a final review of President Clinton's foreign policy.

"May I ask, Sen. Biden: Is it in order if all of us give her a hand?" Helms asked with a straight face.

"I think it's in order," Biden replied.

The cavernous Dirksen Building hearing room echoed with applause.

"You have been great partners," she told the senators who oversaw and often clashed with the administration on foreign policy.

Helms noted that he and the secretary of state had "agreed to disagree agreeably."

The chairman, for instance, led the charge in blocking ratification of a treaty to ban nuclear weapons tests, an unrealized keystone of the Clinton arms control program.

And even as Clinton pursued agreement with Russia to clear the way for a U.S. anti-missile defense, Helms warned the president in March that such an initiative would be "DOA -- dead on arrival" at his committee. Clinton eventually left the decision on whether to deploy a system to his successor.

Albright made a pitch for restoration of a $2 billion cut in Clinton's request for funds on overseas spending. "Our diplomacy and our diplomats are our first line of defense," she said with the platitude that only a penny of every government dollar is used for foreign aid.

She asked Helms for his help in unlocking a string of Clinton's ambassadorial nominations that have been held up for months.

And in a rough exchange with Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., she was accused of failing to provide notice that the security clearance of Martin Indyk, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, had been suspended.

"It would be better to alert the committee," Grams said.

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

-------- arms sales

US Plans $1.3B Arms Sale to Taiwan

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Taiwan-Arms.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon said Thursday it plans a series of arms sales to Taiwan valued at $1.3 billion, including 200 supersonic air-to-air missiles and advanced military communications systems.

China, which regards Taiwan as part of the motherland, strongly opposes U.S. arms sales to the island. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States is committed to providing Taiwan with defensive arms.

Like most nations, the United States has diplomatic relations with China and has promised Beijing that it will not have formal ties with Taiwan, which split with the mainland amid the communist revolution in 1949.

The Pentagon said it plans to sell to Taiwan 200 AIM-120C medium range air-to-air missiles to enhance the defensive capabilities of Taiwan's F-16 fighters. Although Taiwan has previously requested to buy this type of missile, this is the first time the Pentagon has approved it. That portion of the deal is valued at $150 million.

Congress has the authority to block any Pentagon arms sale, although such action is rare.

In written statements announcing each part of Thursday's arms sale, the Pentagon said the additional weaponry in Taiwan would ``not affect the basic military balance in the region.'' China argues that U.S. arms sales amount to interference in internal Chinese affairs and could embolden Taiwan to seek independence.

The Pentagon said it also would sell Taiwan a military communications system, known as the Improved Mobile Subscriber Equipment system, for $513 million. It will provide secure voice and data communications service to all levels of Taiwan's field military forces.

A separate package, valued at $405 million, includes 146 of the U.S.-made 155mm self-propelled howitzers, 79 M2 machine guns, 160 night vision goggles and other equipment.

Taiwan also would get 71 Harpoon anti-ship missiles and related equipment valued at $240 million.

In June, the Pentagon announced arms sales to Taiwan valued at $356 million.

-------- biological weapons

The Arms Threat

Wednesday, September 27, 2000 ; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A24400-2000Sep26&language=printer

In his Sept. 12 news story, "Soviet-Era Work on Bioweapons Still Worrisome," Michael Dobbs outlined the challenges of responding to the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. His article highlights the need for a two-track approach.

The first track must target the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and their means of production and delivery. These efforts are succeeding. In 1991, then-Sen. Sam Nunn and I introduced legislation that led to the creation of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. The program has assisted in the dismantling of more than 600 ballistic missiles, more than 450 missile launchers, 62 long-range bombers, 12 strategic missile submarines and 194 nuclear test tunnels. Perhaps most important, 5,014 warheads that were on delivery vehicles have been deactivated.

The second track is to redirect efforts of scientists who created the weapons and materials of mass destruction. This has proven more difficult because of the extreme limitations of the Russian economy. Distant locations, questionable infrastructure, an unreliable legal system and dismal investment prospects have frustrated attempts to cultivate viable commercial opportunities at many former Soviet weapons facilities.

The safety and security of the American people depend on our efforts to eliminate the weapons and redirect the efforts of the scientists that threatened our country during the Cold War.

It will never be easy, but we must rededicate ourselves to confronting the threat that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction poses to our country by pursuing both tracks simultaneously.

RICHARD G. LUGAR
U.S. Senator (R-Ind.)
Washington

---------

Return of a Vanished Virus

By H.R. Shepherd and Peter J. Hotez
Wednesday, September 27, 2000 ; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A24424-2000Sep26&language=printer

We just completed a century that saw more than 65 million people die in two world wars. This toll pales, however, compared with the carnage caused by the smallpox virus. Best estimates indicate that 300 million to 500 million people died from smallpox in the 20th century--several times the number of deaths from all wars combined.

Humankind's greatest single accomplishment of the last century arguably was the eradication of smallpox. Thanks to the smallpox vaccine and a global immunization campaign, the World Health Organization certified the world smallpox-free in 1980. So vanished a virus that caused disfiguring pustular rash, internal hemorrhage and excruciating death.

Now, smallpox is back.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of its military secrets have been divulged. One disturbing revelation is that a Soviet biological warfare program produced millions of infectious doses of smallpox virus that still exist today. Intelligence officials and world health experts are convinced that, through black markets, the virus is in the hands of terrorist and rebel groups and possibly even lone individuals. It would be a simple exercise for any of these to mount a devastating terrorist attack with smallpox.

If it is important to prevent an attack with nuclear weapons, it is just as crucial to prevent an attack with bioweapons such as smallpox virus. Militaries, including ours, spend billions of dollars to develop and maintain "stealth" technologies, such as aircraft invisible to radar, capable of striking with little or no warning. Smallpox may be the ultimate stealth weapon. Tens of millions of smallpox virus particles will easily fit into a hand-held container. Using store-bought materials assembled into a primitive aerosol device, a terrorist could spray the virus in a public building. The microbe would be invisible and odorless, and could be unleashed without being noticed.

The consequences of an attack are starkly illustrated in a new book by bioterrorism expert Michael T. Osterholm titled "Living Terrors." Without an explosion or any sound, a terrorist attack using smallpox would go unnoticed by either security personnel or its victims. Only eight to 16 days later when victims show up in hospital emergency rooms would the magnitude of the attack become apparent. By then, it would be too late. Highly contagious, the smallpox virus from a single assault could strike hundreds of thousands of people. More than 30 percent would die. Survivors would suffer a permanent and disfiguring rash on the face.

Beyond the dreadful human consequences of a smallpox bioterrorism attack are momentous social, political and economic consequences. Hospitals are unprepared to deal with such an onslaught. The ranks of front line health care workers would be decimated by the contagion. Confidence in public institutions and elected officials would erode. We would fear going outside our homes, never knowing when and where the next invisible, lethal attack would happen. The work force and productivity would dwindle.

The United States is dangerously underprepared to combat a bioterrorist attack using smallpox. Few individuals have been vaccinated against smallpox since 1972, when eradication allowed immunization to be discontinued. And protective immunity is thought to have worn off for all but 10 to 20 percent of those who were vaccinated. Thus, approximately 90 percent of the U.S. population is susceptible to smallpox. Our stores of available vaccine are meager and inadequate to handle an outbreak.

The government has taken the first steps to prepare for and prevent such an attack. The Centers for Disease Control received funds in 1999 to develop coordinated federal, state and local plans, educate health care and public health professionals about handling such an attack, and develop and strengthen surveillance systems for early detection of outbreaks. Last week, the government ordered 40 million doses of smallpox vaccine for a stockpile. These initial steps are positive, but much more needs to be done. The smallpox vaccine stockpile should have at least 100 million doses. The estimated cost for this expansion of the stockpile is less than $100 million--cheap compared with the costs of nuclear preparedness. Serious consideration should be given to accelerating vaccine research and development for other potential bioterrorism agents.

The United States--indeed, the world--is vulnerable to a catastrophic bioterrorist attack. Production of economical and effective vaccines to prevent the calamity is feasible and would be an easily attainable countermeasure.

H. R. Shepherd is chairman of the Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Institute, a nonprofit education and research institute based in New Canaan, Conn. Peter J. Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., is an institute adviser and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Tropical Diseases at the George Washington University Medical Center.

-------- colombia

Colombia Air Force Denies Using U.S. Bomb in 1998 Civilian Deaths

Wall Street Journal
September 27, 2000
Associated Press
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB970008330188044151.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Fueling charges of a military cover-up in the 1998 bombing deaths of 16 villagers, a Federal Bureau of Investigation analysis has found that fragments from the site matched a type of bomb that Washington has provided to the Colombian air force.

The finding, contained in a ballistics report seen by The Associated Press, would appear to cast doubt on claims by the Colombian air force that the deadly explosion in Santo Domingo was caused by a truck bomb set by leftist guerrillas.

Responding to the FBI analysis, a Colombian air force commander claimed Monday that rebels planted the bomb fragments at the scene in an attempt to frame the military.

The controversy puts the Colombian military's already tarnished reputation into further question at a time when Washington is vastly increasing military aid to this South American country.

Villagers and their lawyers, citing eyewitness accounts, claim the air force dropped a bomb on the hamlet of Santo Domingo, near the country's eastern border with Venezuela, killing 16 villagers, including six children.

Troops at the time were battling guerrillas in nearby fields, and the air force itself acknowledges helicopters fired rockets and machine guns as close as six-tenths of a mile to Santo Domingo, a strip of about two dozen wooden houses and a gas station straddling a paved country road.

The FBI report, given to Colombian investigators in May, says fragments found at the scene of the Dec. 13, 1998 blast are "consistent with" a 20-pound AN-M41 bomb designed in the United States. The bomb is meant to be dropped from at least 400 feet.

An FBI spokesman, Paul Bresson, verified Tuesday that the report seen by the AP was produced by the FBI and confirmed its contents.

Colombia's military has received that type of bomb from the U.S. government, which is dramatically increasingly support for Colombia's military as part of a $1.3 billion anti-drug aid package.

Three members of a Colombian helicopter crew face possible homicide charges in the case in a military court.

But in an interview Monday, acting Air Force Commander Gen. Jairo Garcia said rebels set off the explosion with a truck bomb and later planted the bomb fragments at the scene.

"It was a tail piece they had for some time and placed it there, a very old and rusted tail section," Gen. Garcia said.

While not disputing that the FBI had correctly identified the bomb parts, Gen. Garcia said the Air Force has not used the AN-M41 bomb for at least five years.

Gen. Garcia also dismissed a report by Colombia's Medical Forensic Institute concluding that shrapnel found in bodies could not have come from a car bomb. He said medical examiners were unqualified to make that judgment.

The U.S. Embassy has confirmed that the Washington donated or sold to Colombia all seven of the aircraft used during the fighting near Santo Domingo, including two Black Hawk helicopters.

A U.S. lawmaker opposed to military aid to Colombia was suspicious.

"We don't know yet whether or not this was a tragic accident. But it does appear that there has been an attempt to cover up what happened by the Colombian military," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D.,Vt.) said Monday.

Citing the FBI report, Sen. Leahy has demanded explanations from the State Department, and suggested that human rights restrictions placed on U.S. military aid to Colombia have been violated.

---

New York Times
September 27, 2000
Metro Briefings
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/nyregion/27MBRF.html

MANHATTAN: COLOMBIAN EXTRADITED A man has been extradited from Colombia and accused of the murder of Donald E. Pagani Sr., a retired New York City police detective. The United State's attorney's office said yesterday that the man, Nelson Baez, is believed to be a member of the Restrepo Organization, a Colombian gang that robbed many criminal and legitimate businesses, including drug dealers and jewelers. The killing of Mr. Pagani occurred during an August 1999 armed robbery of a meat company in the Bronx. (NYT)

-------- drug war

New York Times
September 27, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/world/27BRIE.html

THE AMERICAS

MEXICO: DRUG ARREST A former director of the federal highway police, Enrique Harari Garduño, is under arrest in a continuing investigation of officials linked to the Juárez drug cartel, the police said. Mr. Harari Garduño is accused of receiving more than $1 million and using military vehicles to transport drugs, said Wilfrido Robledo, the drug enforcement agency chief. Tim Weiner

-------- iraq

Nations Reach Deal on Iraq Compensation Funds

New York Times
September 27, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/continuous/28CND-SANC.html

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 27 - In a concession to nations seeking to soften rigid restrictions on Iraq, the Clinton administration agreed today to reduce the money set aside to compensate victims of Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. In return, Russia and France will allow a disputed reparations claim of $15.9 billion to be paid to the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation.

The consensus agreement, to go into effect in December, is expected to be announced on Thursday at a meeting of the Iraq compensation commission in Geneva. The deal allows Washington to avoid a showdown vote in the commission that would further widen divisions among the five permanent members of the Security Council, with the United States and Britain on one side and France, Russia and possibly China on the other.

The Iraqi compensation commission has the same membership as the 15-nation Security Council, where the United States has lost broad support for its overall Iraq policy and is now seeing it being whittled away on several fronts.

Some United Nations officials and diplomats in Geneva, where the commission is based, say that the United States had the votes to win the battle on the Kuwait claim, as American diplomats were predicting they would. Both sides decided, however, to go for a political compromise.

"We were willing to go to a vote if we had to," said Ambassador James B. Cunningham, the deputy chief representative of the United States here and the envoy who handles the Iraq issue in the Security Council. "But this is one of the remaining processes that works well that was set up under the sanctions and compensation regime. Going to a vote after a long period of taking decisions by consensus would in a way open up the process to a spirit of contention that hasn't existed up until now."

Decisions in the commission have been made by experts in international law, Mr. Cunningham said in an interview, adding that the panel "should just get on doing its work without dragging in the political differences that we know we have."

Since the oil-sales program went into effect in 1996, 30 percent of the money Iraq earns from its supervised exports has been earmarked for reparations, and more than $8 billion has been paid in claims. Under today's agreement, the money set aside will be reduced to 25 percent in December, when a new phase of the "oil for food" program begins. The level will be reviewed again in six months.

Until 1995, Iraq rejected the oil-sales plan and the only money available for reparations was in Iraqi funds frozen abroad, most of them inaccessible.

Because of high oil prices and the removal last year of all restrictions on how much oil Iraq can sell, there is now much more money available to the fund. Coincidentally at the same time, the compensation commission, having disposed of many smaller claims, is now dealing with the largest ones, among them those from oil companies.

Russia and France had objected to the payment of large claims to Kuwait while Iraqi civilians were still suffering the effects of sanctions. Under the agreement today, money saved from the reduction in the compensation commission's share will be funneled into specific relief or rehabilitation projects still to be decided, an American diplomat said.

The deal was struck just as more nations prepared to send flights to Baghdad in contravention of a longstanding air embargo on Iraq. Today, Royal Jordanian became the first Arab country in more than a decade to send a passenger airliner to Baghdad's newly reopened airport. Iceland has approved a flight, and France and Russia plan to send more planes after initial flights over the last two weeks. India is also thinking of joining the movement to force open the skies over Iraq.

For most of these flights, including the one from Jordan, governments have followed the rules and notified the Security Council, saying that the intention is to deliver relief goods, which are permitted to enter Iraq with council approval. But the notification process has been reduced to something of a fiction in recent days in the face of multiple flights carrying avowedly anti-sanctions delegations.

Many diplomats here seem to accept that the air embargo - always honored though frequently disputed because of differing readings of the legalistic language governing it - is now at an end.

"We're very concerned about this and we've been very vocal about it," Mr. Cunningham said today. "We think this is a very unfortunate development and it's not in keeping with the resolution, and we'll have to go back and try to reestablish some degree of coherence in how we go about implementing the resolution."

The Clinton administration, with only four months remaining before it is replaced by a new administration, is now fighting to salvage its Iraqi policy here with Richard C. Holbrooke, the chief American representative, absent from the fray. Other council members say that Mr. Holbrooke may not want to associate himself with a policy that was inflexible and may be doomed in the face of worldwide criticism because of its effects on ordinary Iraqis.

Mr. Holbrooke has said repeatedly that he has other crucial jobs to do, first among them is to win agreement for a reduction in American dues to the United Nations. In Washington, administration officials, including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, argue that the Iraqi leadership, not sanctions, is largely to blame for Iraqi suffering.

The ban on air travel, one of a host of restrictions imposed on Iraq, was a major irritant for Iraqi officials, who had to travel in and out of the country overland through Jordan. United Nations officials and diplomats also had to make the daylong desert trek from Amman to Baghdad and back. Rare exceptions were made by the Security Council for United Nations arms inspectors, who could fly in from Bahrain, and for Secretary General Kofi Annan, when he flew to Baghdad on a plane belonging to the president of France in February 1998.

France and Russia now say they never accepted that there was a passenger air embargo, and that only cargo flights were prohibited. But the de facto ban was never flouted until this month.

---

New York Times
September 27, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/world/27BRIE.html

IRAQ: CRUMBLING EMBARGO Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright expressed concern to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about recent French and Russian flights to Iraq, which have severely weakened the longstanding ban on air traffic to Baghdad. France, which allowed an antisanctions group to fly from Paris last week, has approved a second flight. Jordan may become the first Arab nation to violate the ban, officials said in Amman. Barbara Crossette (NYT)

-------- korea

After Pact on Rebuilt Railway, Two Koreas Plan More Talks

New York Times
September 27, 2000
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/world/27KORE.html

CHEJU, South Korea, Sept. 26 - North and South Korea agreed today to a limited reopening of the demilitarized zone that separates the countries to repair a railway link that has been severed for more than 50 years.

The agreement, announced at the first talks between the two sides' defense ministers since the Korean War, is the highest level confirmation of the reconciliation between the two countries since a summit meeting in June in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.

Seeming to overcome the initial reticence of the North to include anything other than rail reconstruction on the agenda for these talks, the defense ministers, Gen. Kim Il Chol for the North and Cho Seong Tae for the South, agreed to "working level" military talks. Those talks are to start next month, followed in November by a second round of ministerial meetings in Pyongyang.

Lt. Gen. Kim Hee Sang, a spokesman for the South Korean defense forces, said the two sides had agreed to discuss in the future meetings the creation of a hot line that would link the two military commands. South Korea had also pushed for mutual notification of major troop movements and for observations of each other's military exercises.

At another meeting held simultaneously in Seoul, finance ministers from both countries reached an accord on legal protections for South Korean companies that invest in the economically devastated North. Additionally, South Korea said it would provide the North with 600,000 tons of food aid, in loans, in the next year. The aid, worth $97 million, is the latest of several grants of economic assistance from the South since the two countries' presidents met in June.

Reopening the long-severed railway has emerged as one of the reconciliation's few potential short-term economic payoffs for the South. Seoul has already committed $444.8 million to repair the track and build a 12- mile-long highway across the four- mile-wide DMZ. Cooperation from the North Korean military is indispensable, though, because the four- mile-wide area has up to one million land mines.

"Getting these links open would be a big boost to the process of reconciliation," one diplomat said. "It would prove there is a real willingness to work on common problems, and furthermore it would give South Korea its first land link with the rest of Asia."

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

New York Times
September 27, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/world/27BRIE.html

EAST TIMOR: U.N. SKIRMISH United Nations peacekeeping forces shot and killed a pro-Jakarta militia member in a clash in East Timor, which voted to become independent from Indonesia last year. Meanwhile the militia groups, accused of killing three United Nations aid workers, demanded the return of more than 1,000 weapons surrendered over the weekend. Calvin Sims (NYT)

CYPRUS: U.N. AIDE HOPEFUL Talks about the future of Cyprus "are beginning to break new ground," a United Nations official, Álvaro de Soto, said in New York. After two weeks of separate talks with the Greek Cypriot leader, Glafcos Clerides, and his Turkish counterpart, Rauf Denktash, Mr. de Soto said that the decades-old dispute seemed to be moving toward a settlement. Talks resume in November. Barbara Crossette (NYT)

---

Joint Chiefs Chairman to Warn of Defense Dilemma

By Roberto Suro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 27, 2000 ; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A23875-2000Sep26&language=printer

The Pentagon's top brass will testify on Capitol Hill today that the next president should either adopt a less ambitious view of the U.S. military's role in the world or endorse huge increases in defense spending, according to officials familiar with the testimony.

Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argues in prepared testimony already circulating in Congress and the White House that front-line fighting units are no longer declining in readiness, thanks to recent budget increases. But Shelton warns that vastly higher spending will be necessary over the next several years to maintain current capabilities.

The testimony by Shelton and the chiefs of the four uniformed services appears to contain some good news, and some bad news, for each of the leading presidential nominees. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican, will find ammunition for his argument that building up the military should be a top priority for the next administration. Vice President Gore, the Democrat, will get support for his claims that Bush is exaggerating the Pentagon's problems.

Both candidates, however, may suffer sticker-shock when they start to add up the cost of the military's wish list. Although Shelton does not give a bottom-line figure in his prepared testimony, he cites needs that easily could add $50 billion or more a year to annual Pentagon spending of about $286 billion, according to officials familiar with his testimony.

Boosting the Pentagon budget by that much would require both candidates to rethink domestic programs--such as a Medicare prescription drug benefit--that have been the most contested battleground in the campaign.

Shelton and the service chiefs will argue that the strategy behind current defense structures and spending plans was developed in 1997 and is outdated. The worst-case scenario in current plans is fighting both North Korea and Iraq more or less at the same time, or what the military calls two overlapping "major theater wars." In recent years, the military has tried to remain ready for a pair of such conflicts, even as it conducts major peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and dozens of other small-scale missions around the world.

All of the extra work is wearing out equipment and personnel faster than expected, requiring increased spending just to hold military readiness at current levels, the Pentagon says. As a result, budget increases that have boosted Pentagon spending by about $25 billion over the past two years have barely stemmed declining readiness in the fighting forces, according to Shelton's testimony.

The next president will have to decide whether to keep the two-war strategy, which would require added spending, and whether to continue the fast pace of other missions, which would require still more forces, weaponry and money for operations and maintenance, Shelton's planned testimony says.

The military will offer the new administration its own view on the proper match of strategy and military forces next spring, when it completes the Quadrennial Defense Review, an extensive analysis of capabilities and missions that is delivered at the start of each presidential term.

Shelton's testimony is expected to suggest that military leaders still favor the two-war strategy as a matter of prudence, and that the Pentagon views some peacekeeping duties and small interventions as an important way to assert U.S. national interests and prevent crises, such as the Serbian campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo last year, from becoming full-blown regional conflicts.

The hearing today, called by the Senate Armed Services Committee, initially appeared to be an effort by congressional Republicans to have the military buttress Bush's claims that the Clinton administration had allowed the armed services to decay. Public opinion surveys show that Bush is scoring well with this approach among voters who rank military strength as a high priority. In the meantime, Bush has offered only a few specific proposals on the military, and his campaign has said a complete defense plan will be developed only after the election, if Bush wins.

In the chiefs' testimony, Bush will find the cost of his campaign promises escalating. The Republican advocates new pay raises and health benefits for the military, as well as a much larger national missile defense system than the one proposed by the Clinton administration. Shelton will argue that in each of these areas Congress and the administration will have to provide additional funds rather than expect the military to find the money from other programs for them.

While Bush has argued that the military is overextended, Gore backs a policy of "forward engagement" that would continue the frequent use of the armed forces as a key foreign policy tool. Shelton's testimony will buttress Bush's claim that multiple missions overseas are sapping military readiness, highlighting the need for substantial increases in spending to pay for military activism.

---------

Albright frustrated by allies

Washington Times
September 27, 2000
By David Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200092721536.htm

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright expressed growing frustration yesterday as an increasing number of allies mounted challenges to U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

Following the lead of France and Russia, the government of Jordan today plans to dispatch a plane carrying government officials, lawmakers and doctors to Baghdad in what Jordanian officials are calling a "solidarity flight" to assess the humanitarian situation in Iraq a decade after the economic sanctions were imposed.

Critics of the U.N. embargo say it deprives the Iraqi people of desperately needed medical help, food and other basic items.

France plans its second flight in seven days to the Iraqi capital on Friday, and India, Iceland and Syria have also said they are ready to challenge a strict interpretation of the U.N. ban favored by the United States and Britain.

"We are concerned that people can't seem to get the facts straight on Iraq," Mrs. Albright told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday.

"I know there is a great deal of compassion for the Iraqi people," she said. "We have compassion for them. It is [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein who does not have compassion for his own people."

Mrs. Albright conceded that administering the Iraq embargo is "complicated," and several allies have argued that the flights do not violate U.N. rules so long as the panel overseeing the sanctions is notified in advance.

"We have to make our point that these flights need approval, and we will continue to press on this," Mrs. Albright said. The U.S. government has complained directly to France, Russia and Jordan, she said.

Mrs. Albright's remarks came during a hearing that otherwise had the feel of a valedictory address in a committee room where she has testified 18 times.

The secretary, who has enjoyed an effusively cordial relationship with committee Chairman Jesse A. Helms, even as she has clashed fiercely with the North Carolina Republican over policy, faced only gentle questioning and was given a round of applause by the senators at the hearing's conclusion.

When the nation's first-ever female secretary of state rose to acknowledge the ovation, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, observed: "Surely no secretary of state has ever curtseyed to this committee before."

With just months to go in her tenure, the secretary touched on a number of issues, including:

• Russia. Prodded by Mr. Helms over President Vladimir Putin's record on human rights, respect for democracy and the war in Chechnya, she credited the administration's engagement policy with Russia with reducing the danger from the nuclear arsenal inherited from the Soviet Union.

She said the administration believed Mr. Putin's March 26 election victory was legitimate and reflected a popular desire for order, but added: "We have to watch carefully that it's 'order' with a small 'o' and not 'Order' with a capital 'O'."

• The State Department's budget. Mrs. Albright again appealed to lawmakers to approve President Clinton's full $22 billion request for foreign operations, saying congressional proposals to cut $2 billion would harm U.S. efforts on peacekeeping, debt relief, promoting trade and funding international financial institutions.

"You can't cut this much out of our budget," Mrs. Albright argued. "Our diplomacy and our diplomats are the first line of defense, and I think we underfund them at our own jeopardy."

• Yugoslavia. Just hours before Yugoslav officials announced a presidential runoff vote would be needed next month, Mrs. Albright voiced the strongest American criticism to date of President Slobodan Milosevic's conduct in Sunday's voting.

"Despite threats from Milosevic's thugs, the opposition waged a courageous campaign for change, and now they have won a sweeping endorsement at all levels from the Serb people," she said. "The authorities in Belgrade used every trick in the book to rig the election and distort the results, but they have fooled no one."

Despite her comments on Iraq, Mrs. Albright said the United States was not prepared to impose penalties and foreign aid restrictions available under U.S. law to countries like Russia that have approved flights to Baghdad.

"We give assistance to Russia because it's in our national interest," she said.

---

U.N. aide fears West Africa blowup

Washington Times
September 27, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-2000927214643.htm

MONROVIA, Liberia - A top U.N. human rights official voiced concern yesterday over the tensions engulfing three neigboring West African countries - Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Assistant High Commissioner Soren Jessen-Petersen of the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights (UNHCR) warned of "an explosion with devastating consequences" within the Mano River Union, a customs and economic grouping of the three countries.

His visit was part of a tour that has also taken him to Sierra Leone and Guinea.

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

Military in Struggle for Resources but Ready to Fight, Officials Say

New York Times
September 27, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/27/national/27MILI.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 - The nation's senior commanders will warn Congress on Wednesday that the armed services are struggling with aging equipment, shortages in spare parts and shortfalls in training that will require billions of dollars in new spending, officials said today.

Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the commanders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, will argue that the nation's front-line combat forces remain ready to fight.

But they will also warn that the readiness of some support units has fallen, despite two years of budget increases approved by President Clinton and Congress, officials familiar with the planned testimony said today.

Beyond the state of today's military, the chiefs will also focus on tomorrow's forces. They plan to argue that the Pentagon's procurement budget - the money for new weapo