------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
*Russia and India seal old-style bond
*India and Russia Agree to Create Strategic Alliance
*Saddam threatens Israel Palestinian killings have enraged Iraqis
*Britain's opposition gave backing for a national missile defense network
*Study Examines Vieques Radiation
*Yeltsin Book Gives New Account
*Taiwan's Prime Minister Resigns, Upsetting Shaky Government
*Resignation Perils Taiwan Coalition
*Taiwan's prime minister quits after four months
*New Taiwan premier named
*Chernobyl Plants Mutate Quickly
*Officials Disagree on How Lab Scientist Became Spy Suspect
*FBI Singled Out Lee For Probe, Trulock Says
*Energy secretary linked to leak
*Clinton Debates Bush's Arguments
*PSR Promotes Nuclear De-alerting At Danville Debate
*Matheson Touches A Nerve, Democratic candidate's ads tap into government-bashing
MILITARY
*INDIA: SEEKING RUSSIAN WEAPONS
*India, Russia move to strengthen ties
*India, Russia embrace strategic partnership
*Emergency U'Wa Day of Action Friday
*Officer and Wife Accused of Laundering Cash
*Supreme Court Considers Use of Drug Checkpoints
*Saying No to Drugs
*Bolivia Warns of Force to End Roadblocks
*IRAN: KHATAMI CHOICE REJECTED
*IRAQ: 'OIL FOR FOOD' PROCEEDS
*Putin's role in foreign policy expands with Serb crisis
*U.S. calls for new way to allocate peace cost
*Our Role in the World
*United Nations peacekeeping helicopter crashed
*Media hits endorsements for Bush by ex-military officers
OTHER
*TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING
*NASA finds largest-ever ozone hole
*Tanker Spills Oil in Indonesian Waters
*State officials purchased 110 acres next to Cape Henlopen State Park
*Small biotech players told they'll need help from the big pharmaceuticals
*Hunt for Bodies Will Test Allegations Against Perez
*Four LAPD officers go on trial
*Ties taint Carnivore review
*We made right choice
*Hold on nominees
ACTIVISTS
*UPDATE ON JAIL SITUATION IN PRAHA
*getting ready for the 10./13 protest in washington
*Striking Serbian Coal Miners Maintain Solidarity
*'Cop Killer' author says protesters strengthen his message
*Students pelt U.S. Embassy in Damascus
*SPAIN: TRUCKERS BLOCK BORDER TO FRANCE
*Inmates who participated in a peaceful protest
-------- NUCLEAR (by country)
Russia and India seal old-style bond
Australian Financial Review
Wednesday, October 4, 2000
By Nick Hordern
http://www.afr.com.au/world/20001004/A30237-2000Oct3.html
India and Russia yesterday sealed their new post-Cold War relationship, as Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Vladimir Putin signed a Declaration of Strategic Partnership in Delhi.
The Putin/Vajpayee summit comes after Mr Bill Clinton's visit to India in March - the first by an American president in two decades - and last month's reciprocal visit by Mr Vajpayee to the US.
But if the Delhi/Washington exchange cast that bilateral relationship forward in terms of joint opportunities in the IT and energy sectors, Mr Putin and Mr Vajpayee's declaration seems to hark back to the Cold War staples of defence, nuclear power, aviation and agriculture.
Before leaving for Delhi, Mr Putin played down the military aspect of the declaration. "Strategic does not mean military nor does it suggest the creation of any military alliance," he said.
But his visit, the first by a Russian leader in eight years, will reportedly see finalisation of the sale by Moscow to Delhi of an aircraft carrier and MiG-29K planes to arm it, SU-30 strike aircraft and S-300 anti-missile missiles for the air force, and 300 T-90 tanks. The two will also co-operate on the design of a nuclear-powered submarine and the upgrade of India's Soviet era MiG-21 fighters.
Delhi's spending spree is in reaction to last year's revelation of its military weakness, when the Army took heavy casualties in a mini-war to evict Pakistani intruders from the Kargil sector of the ceasefire line dividing the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Kargil was a reminder not just of the likelihood of conflict with Pakistan but also of the range of forms it could take: from insurrection (like in Kashmir) through conventional war to nuclear war itself.
As India's new Army chief, General Sundararajan Padmanabhan, put it on taking office last Saturday: "Kargil has very distinctly highlighted the fact that in an escalatory matrix there is space for conventional conflict between low-intensity conflict and an all-out nuclear war."
Washington sanctioned Delhi for its tests, and the two capitals had to agree to disagree on India's new nuclear status to clear the way for Mr Clinton's visit. In contrast, Mr Putin will virtually endorse it by visiting India's Los Alamos, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre near Bombay. Russia is also selling India nuclear power reactors.
Besides arms sales, another strategic issue for Mr Putin and Mr Vajpayee is Central Asia. Under Mr Putin, Moscow is reasserting its authority over former Soviet republics, some of them petroleum-rich and all more or less threatened by muslim fundamentalists backed by Afghanistan's Taliban regime, itself backed by Pakistan.
As Islamabad also backs insurgents in Kashmir, Delhi argues India and Russia face a common foe in Pakistani-sponsored Islamic fundamentalism. It has taken exception to suggestions Mr Putin might visit Pakistan to persuade Islamabad to restrain the Taliban from supporting militant fundamentalists in Central Asia.
---
India and Russia Agree to Create Strategic Alliance
Washington Post
Wednesday, October 4, 2000 ; Page A25
By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3957-2000Oct3?language=printer
NEW DELHI, Oct. 3 -- The governments of Russia and India agreed to form a strategic partnership today to strengthen ties between the two former Cold War allies and to confront what they said are threats to regional stability from terrorism and Islamic extremism.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee stressed that they are not seeking to revive their Cold War alliance.
But with Putin's visit to New Delhi this week, they are aiming to balance the close relationship that India has built with the United States in recent months. In a joint declaration, the Indian and Russian leaders agreed "to build a multipolar global structure," meaning one in which the United States does not dominate the world alone.
"Our negotiations confirmed the coincidence of long-term national and geopolitical interests between India and Russia," Putin told reporters. Vajpayee, seated next to him, said India wants to see Russia become a "strong and confident state" that will contribute to building a "multipolar world order."
Putin's visit has already produced a long list of bilateral agreements and negotiations on an arms deal in which Russia is expected to sell India a large number of tanks and fighter planes, as well as give it a used 40,000-ton aircraft carrier.
The most urgent and sensitive focus of discussions has been the radical Islamic government in Afghanistan. Indian and Russian officials say Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement is fomenting terrorism and Islamic separatist insurgencies in Indian-ruled Kashmir and in the Russian region of Chechnya.
"Our opinion coincides with the opinion of our Indian partners" on a threat from Afghanistan, Putin said. "We believe a transfer of the center of international terrorism to this region has taken place, and we intend to coordinate the efforts of all agencies . . . to combat international terror."
Putin and Vajpayee agreed to form a "joint working group" on Afghanistan, and other officials hinted that it might expand to include the five Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Russia regards its influence in those states as essential to its national security and has accused the Taliban of training rebels who recently have launched attacks in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The Taliban has recently strengthened its control near its borders with those countries with military victories over the opposition forces of Ahmed Shah Massoud, and Russian officials have described that advance as a threat to the region.
The Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, rejected Russia's accusations today, telling reporters that "it is wrong to blame Afghanistan for the internal problems of the Central Asian states," news agencies reported from Kabul, the capital.
The new Russian-Indian partnership has already been tested by Russia's overture last week to Pakistan, India's regional nuclear rival and a close ally of the Taliban. Putin sent an envoy to Islamabad, reportedly in an effort to persuade Pakistani officials to use their influence to rein in Afghan-sponsored terrorism. The move worried and annoyed Indian officials, who would rather see Russia isolate Pakistan than engage it. The military government there openly supports Islamic separatists fighting Indian security forces in Kashmir, a mountainous border region claimed by both India and Pakistan.
"We have been assured there will be no relations with Pakistan that are to the detriment of India," Brajesh Mishra, Vajpayee's national security adviser, said after the meeting between Putin and Vajpayee. "If Russia wants to engage Pakistan on Afghanistan, fine. It's their sovereign decision."
India's new relationship with Russia balances its rapprochement with the United States, which was highlighted when President Clinton toured India for five days in March and Vajpayee was welcomed to Washington for a lavish state visit last month.
Washington and New Delhi have agreed to greatly expand business and technology ties and to put behind them the frosty relations of the Cold War, when India and the Soviet Union were close allies that often backed each other against the United States on international issues.
But Washington imposed economic sanctions on India after it tested nuclear weapons in 1998, and India has resisted U.S. pressure to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Russia, on the other hand, sells India large amounts of arms and technology to develop nuclear power, and Putin is scheduled to visit India's major atomic research facility this week.
Russia and India say their new friendship is no Cold War throwback, but a practical plan for the future, based on "new global realities" and on such common interests as trade and regional stability.
"Neither of the two sides wants a return to the old days," Putin told India Today magazine this week. "Our cooperation with India is not directed against any third countries. It is in our interests to have a strong, developed, independent India that would be a major player on the world scene. We see this as one of the balancing factors in the world."
---
Saddam threatens Israel Palestinian killings have enraged Iraqis
BBC News
Wednesday, 4 October, 2000, 13:35 GMT 14:35 UK
By Middle East correspondent Frank Gardner
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_956000/956084.stm
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has said his country could destroy Israel if it was given access to land next to the Jewish state.
On Wednesday, Iraq's state controlled newspapers carried the president's threat, which he made following the recent bloody clashes between Israelis and Palestinians.
Iraqis are calling the threat one of the strongest statements by Saddam Hussein in years.
An idle boast or a serious threat to Israel? With Iraq's unpredictable leader, it is hard to tell.
The government controlled press quoted the president as saying Iraq could put an end to Zionism in a very short time if only it was given a piece of land next to Israel.
That is highly unlikely to happen, but Iraq did physically attack Israel during the Gulf War nine years ago by firing 39 Scud missiles at the Jewish state.
Iraqis say the clashes over the last few days between Israeli forces and Palestinians have enraged their president.
Angry outburst
On Tuesday he was seen on television banging his fist on the table in anger, criticising Arabs for not doing enough in response to Israeli killings in the Palestinian territories.
He said the great people of Iraq were ready to destroy Zionism right now and he called on Arabs to brandish their swords and make the sacrifices needed.
Iraq has also been calling for a holy war to liberate Jerusalem from Israeli control. President Saddam Hussein has said Iraq did not need to wait for sanctions to be lifted before striking Israel.
The United States says it closely monitors Iraq for any signs of military activity, but United Nations inspectors looking for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction have not been in the country for nearly two years now.
-------- britain
Washington Post
Wednesday, October 4, 2000 ; Page A26
WORLD In Brief Compiled by John Burgess
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5888-2000Oct3.html
Britain's opposition Conservatives gave their backing to plans in the United States for a national missile defense network.
-------- puerto rico
Study Examines Vieques Radiation
Associated Press
10/04/00
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Puerto-Rico-Navy-Bombing.html
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/001004/19/puerto-rico-navy-bombing
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Radiation levels on most of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques are below normal, a government study concluded, contradicting claims by critics of Navy bombing activities there.
``Vieques is a paradise with low levels of radiation,'' said Luis Reyes, regional director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, at a news conference Wednesday.
Spots of higher radiation were found along the bombing range, in an area where a jet accidentally fired 263 shells tipped with depleted uranium in February 1999, the NRC reported. The Navy found only 116 of the rounds.
But there was no evidence that radioactive particles had blown or been carried by water to civilian areas, about 10 miles from the range, Reyes said.
``Outside the shooting range there was no radiation apart from natural radiation,'' Reyes said, adding that ``background'' radiation was also very low.
Angry anti-Navy activists interrupted the news conference and contested the findings. They claim the military exercises have caused health problems among the island's 9,400 residents, including a high cancer rate.
``If the Navy doesn't go, people are going to continue dying,'' said one activist, Sarah Peisch.
Experts took 114 samples of water, soil and plants for analysis. Only five samples -- soil taken from holes where shells were recovered -- showed high uranium levels, scientists said.
Residents could only be contaminated by picking up a depleted uranium shell and rubbing it against the skin, Reyes said. In June, he told reporters that prolonged contact would cause a sunburn-like injury.
Navy opponents have cited the uranium accident in their battle to force the military out of Vieques. Firing the depleted uranium on Vieques violated federal regulation, Reyes said, but the commission did not fine the Navy because it promised to improve the way it tracks ammunition.
The Navy owns two-thirds of the 20-by-four mile island, including a bombing range on the eastern tip.
President Clinton has pledged the Navy will abandon the island by May 2003 if residents vote in a referendum to expel it. That vote is expected before mid-2002.
-------- russia
Yeltsin Book Gives New Account
Associated Press
10/02/00 Filed at 2:42 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Yeltsin.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Late last year, Boris Yeltsin abruptly scrapped the recording of his annual New Year television address to the nation, telling puzzled aides that he did not like the text and would do it again later.
What Yeltsin did not say was that he planned a very different speech -- one announcing his resignation.
The account of the last days of December 1999, leading to Yeltsin's dramatic resignation, is in the ex-president's new book ``The Presidential Marathon'' -- an emotional, personal story of his final years in office.
In excerpts published Wednesday in Russia's Argumenty i Fakty weekly, Yeltsin wrote that he always liked to act quickly on his decisions -- all except the one to resign and hand over his powers at a symbolic moment, the turn of the millennium.
``Today everything is different,'' he wrote. ``Today I am carrying the burden of a decision alone. Almost alone.''
Yeltsin said he decided to resign in mid-December, but only told one other person at the time, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who he hoped would be his successor.
Yeltsin described the torment of keeping his plan to himself, the worry that someone would guess, the yearning to discuss it with somebody.
``But I can't. If the information leaks -- the whole effect will be lost,'' Yeltsin wrote. ``All the moral, human, political meaning of this gesture will be lost. The energy of this decision will be lost.''
Yeltsin said his decision to step down was not prompted by his ill health or pressure from aides or family -- but that it was time for a new president to take over in Russia.
His decision to depart came shortly after a new, pro-Putin party did surprisingly well in parliamentary elections, suggesting the prime minister could win the presidency, especially if elections were brought forward from mid-2000.
Yeltsin wrote that he had decided not to step down if word of his resignation plans leaked, destroying the bombshell effect of the announcement. He said he disclosed his plan to his daughter and image adviser, Tatyana, only a few days before the public announcement, and to his wife Naina just hours before the rest of the nation was to find out.
``I stood in the hallway, not knowing what to do. I slowly buttoned up my coat,'' Yeltsin wrote.
'``Naina, I have made a decision. I am resigning. There will be my television address. Watch TV,''' Yeltsin said he told his wife.
His wife and daughter reacted first with disbelief and shocked silence, but that quickly turned to joy, Yeltsin wrote.
Yeltsin told of arriving in the Kremlin on Dec. 31, receiving the usual piles of paperwork from aides -- and then, after the aides left, pulling out of his pocket a crumpled sheet of paper with his own plan for the day.
He described a silence, punctuated only by the ticking of a clock in his Kremlin office, after he had read his resignation speech -- and the sudden burst of applause and cheering from aides and a television crew. He then signed his resignation letter and transferred control over Russia's nuclear forces to Putin.
``From now on, somebody else is responsible for the nuclear button. Maybe it will be easier to beat insomnia now?,'' Yeltsin wrote.
-------- taiwan
Taiwan's Prime Minister Resigns, Upsetting Shaky Government
New York Times
10/04/00
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/04/world/04TAIW.html
HONG KONG, Wednesday, Oct. 4 - In a move that rattled Taiwan's already shaky government, Prime Minister Tang Fei resigned on Tuesday, citing poor health. Mr. Tang, who was in the post for less than five months, announced his decision after meeting President Chen Shui-bian.
"In the last three or four weeks, every time I met the president, I told him my health was failing," said Mr. Tang, 68, who had surgery in the spring. "This time, the president accepted my resignation request."
President Chen quickly selected Mr. Tang's deputy, Chang Chun- hsiung, to succeed him. Mr. Chang, 62, is a longtime member of Mr. Chen's Democratic Progressive Party.
His appointment today may increase tension between Mr. Chen and the Nationalist Party, whom he swept out of power in March.
Mr. Chen had chosen Mr. Tang, a former fighter pilot and member of the Nationalists, to act as a bridge to the former governing party.
But the Nationalists, who still control the Legislature, have stymied Mr. Chen at every turn. And Mr. Tang made enemies among senior officials of Mr. Chen's party.
Most recently, he clashed with Mr. Chen's party over whether to complete construction of $5.4 billion nuclear power plant, a project that is one-third complete. Mr. Tang favored continuing work. The party wants to halt it. With a decision due this month, his relations with the party had reached a breaking point.
"This symbolizes that Chen Shui- bian cannot hold together a coalition government," said the secretary general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, Andrew Yang. "He will now be under tremendous pressure."
The resignation could also upset the delicate balance between Taiwan and China. Mr. Tang's appointment was widely regarded as a soothing gesture toward China because of his ties to the Nationalists. Mr. Tang, who was born in mainland China, had been defense minister under Mr. Chen's predecessor, Lee Teng-hui.
Mr. Chen, on the other hand, was born in Taiwan, and his party had long favored independence, though he has said he would not declare it as president.
"One reason China decided to wait and see was that Chen was going to form a coalition government," Mr. Yang said. "Now Chen's party is going to control the entire cabinet, which is not good from Beijing's point of view."
Mr. Chen's efforts to forge a consensus have been tortured from the start. The president won with 39 percent of the vote.
As shrewd as it was, Mr. Chen's appointment of Mr. Tang was criticized by both his supporters and members of the Nationalist Party. Mr. Tang was reluctant to take the job because of his fragile health.
The prime minister's efforts to form a government were also overshadowed by events that, while beyond his control, were frequently blamed on him. The most serious was a flash flood in central Taiwan last summer that killed four construction workers. While the workers clung desperately to one another, the military and the police bickered over who should respond.
The debate over the nuclear plant brought the discontent with Mr. Tang into the open. Mr. Tang and the Nationalists contend that the project is crucial to Taiwan's economic health. But on Saturday, the Economics Ministry recommended not continuing the work. And early today, the economics minister, Lin Hsin-i, also said he would resign, Reuters reported from Taipei.
---
Resignation Perils Taiwan Coalition
Washington Post
Wednesday, October 4, 2000 ; Page A26
By John Pomfret Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3857-2000Oct3?language=printer
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Oct. 3 -- Prime Minister Tang Fei, a respected politician and former fighter pilot, resigned tonight after a protracted battle with President Chen Shui-bian over the construction of a nuclear power plant, dealing a blow to the first opposition-led government in Taiwan's history.
Tang's departure just four months after taking office seemed likely to provoke a crisis in Chen's fledgling government, which is beset by indecision, little improvement in relations with China and a 40 percent tumble in the Taipei stock market.
It also apparently sounded the death knell for a $5.4 billion project to build Taiwan's fourth nuclear power plant, which is one-third complete and being constructed in part with technology from General Electric Co. After wavering, Chen's office issued a statement on Monday expressing desire to halt the project.
Tang, a strong advocate of the plant, said he was resigning because of his health; the silver-haired leader, 68, had a lung tumor removed in May.
Tang was a senior member of the Nationalist Party, which had held the presidency of Taiwan since 1949 until being defeated at the polls in March 18 by Chen's Democratic Progressive Party. Chen asked Tang to lead his government to give a sense of continuity to people worried about the change to the first opposition governmentin their history.
[Early Wednesday, Chen named Deputy Prime Minister Chang Chun-hsiung, a member of Chen's party, to replace Tang, the Associated Press reported.]
---
Taiwan's prime minister quits after four months
Washington Times
October 4, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-2000104205452.htm
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Prime Minister Tang Fei resigned yesterday after four months in office, creating the biggest crisis for the shaky new minority government.
Vice Prime Minister Chang Chun-hsiung, a veteran politician of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, was named to succeed him.
Mr. Tang, 68, who underwent surgery in April to remove a tumor, said poor health forced him to step down, but many believed that his disagreement with President Chen Shui-bian over a nuclear-power plant was a major reason for his departure.
Mr. Tang favors finishing the $5.4 billion nuclear plant -Taiwan's fourth - which is one-third complete, while Mr. Chen wants it scrapped.
The president, who took office in May, surprised many when he picked the popular defense minister - a member of the defeated Nationalist Party - to be his prime minister.
---
New Taiwan premier named
USA Today
10/04/00- Updated 07:30 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#peace
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian moved swiftly to replace his resigning premier Wednesday, picking a long-time member of his party to take over as the island's No. 3 ranking leader. Chen picked Vice Premier Chang Chun-hsiung to replace Tang Fei. Tang quit Tuesday night, saying his declining health prevented him from keeping the job. Shortly after accepting the premiership four months ago, Tang underwent surgery to remove a benign tumor from between his lungs.
-------- ukraine
Chernobyl Plants Mutate Quickly
Associated Press
10/04/00
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Chernobyl-Mutations.html
Lingering radiation from the Chernobyl accident makes wheat plants in the area around the Ukrainian power complex mutate much faster than expected, researchers say.
Their study hints that radiation, including the sun's ultraviolet rays penetrating Earth's depleted ozone layer, may push crops and other plants toward unpredictable and faster-than-expected evolutionary changes, some scientists said. Crops' hardiness, food quality, resistance to pests and other characteristics could change.
``It's kind of a warning signal that we've got to worry a little bit about plants' genetic stability as the world continues to be filled with things that aren't good for DNA,'' said John Hays, a molecular biologist who studies plant mutation at Oregon State University.
However, the wheat researchers saw no alarming, immediate danger to the evolution of plants around Chernobyl. In fact, the researchers said the wheat plants were normal in all outward respects.
``We haven't noticed these plants turning into monsters,'' said geneticist Olga Kovalchuk, who led the study. She is at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland.
The research, published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, was carried out by a team in the Ukraine, Britain and Switzerland.
The group grew a test plot of wheat for one season within two miles of the Chernobyl power plant, where the terrain was bombarded with radiation during the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.
The Ukrainian government blames the accident for at least 4,000 deaths among cleanup personnel and an elevated risk of disease among an estimated 3.4 million Ukrainians.
Though the radiation at the study's nearest test site is now considered low, it is still much higher than normal radiation in the atmosphere. People are still not allowed to live or farm there.
The researchers planted a second, comparison wheat plot 19 miles from Chernobyl in closely matched -- but less irradiated -- soil. The seeds for both plots were germinated in Switzerland, and their DNA was analyzed.
Overall, the wheat grown near Chernobyl mutated at more than six times the rate of the comparison group. The plot nearest Chernobyl underwent genetic changes hundreds of times more often than expected.
Mutations are copying mistakes that happen when reproduction passes hereditary instructions on to the next generation. Some mutations are beneficial, some harmful.
Kovalchuk cautioned that her team studied only less-critical and less-stable segments of DNA known as microsatellites. But she predicted that key genes responsible for creating proteins would also mutate more quickly than expected.
Hays said the findings suggest that wheat and other plants may be more susceptible than previously thought to genetic harm from a range of pollutants, in addition to radiation.
Marlis Frankenberg-Schwager, who studies the effect of radiation on yeast at Germany's University of Gottingen, said it is too soon to say if the higher mutation rate holds for critical genes in wheat. She added, ``This mutation rate is still so low that you need not worry about it probably.''
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Officials Disagree on How Lab Scientist Became Spy Suspect
New York Times
October 04, 2000
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/04/politics/04INQU.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 - Former government officials disagreed at a Senate hearing today over whether Wen Ho Lee became the subject of an espionage investigation because of his ethnicity, while scientists debated the significance of the nuclear information he downloaded from the computer system at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Robert Vrooman, the former chief of counterintelligence at Los Alamos, said that Dr. Lee, a naturalized citizen who was born in Taiwan, became a suspect because of his ethnicity.
"It is my opinion that the investigators had a subtle bias that the perpetrator had to be ethnic Chinese," Mr. Vrooman told the Senate panel.
But Notra Trulock, the former chief of intelligence at the Energy Department, denied that Dr. Lee was singled out because of his race, and said he stopped senior Energy Department officials from compiling a database on the ethnicity of American citizens with access to classified nuclear weapons information.
After an inquiry set off by fears that spies for China had stolen American weapons secrets, Dr. Lee was dismissed from his job at Los Alamos in March 1999 for what officials described as security violations. He was never charged with espionage, and officials later acknowledged that their inquiry had prematurely focused on Dr. Lee.
But in December 1999, Dr. Lee was arrested and indicted on 59 counts related to evidence that he had mishandled classified material after investigators found that he had downloaded vast amounts of nuclear data from the Los Alamos computer system and then copied it onto computer tapes, some of which are missing. After negotiations with the government, he pleaded guilty to a single count. Prosecutors said they agreed to the plea bargain in order to find out what happened to the tapes.
At Tuesday's hearing, John Richter, a former scientist at Los Alamos, said the files Dr. Lee downloaded contained details of several sophisticated nuclear weapons. Dr. Richter said the data on the tapes fell into different categories of classification. He added that the data would not pose a major threat to the United States if it was obtained by other nations, because the building of sophisticated weapons would require nuclear material that most other countries did not have.
"Regarding the data Wen Ho Lee downloaded on the unclassified computer, there are three categories of information: one, computer codes; two, material properties information; and three, problem setups, which include the W-88," Dr. Richter said, referring to most advanced American warhead. "The first are only slightly classified, because they describe physics that date back as far as the 17th century. The source codes I mentioned, they're very slightly classified; the materials properties information, and then the problem setups. The second, the materials properties information, is classified because it contains properties of high atomic number elements like plutonium, etc. The third, the problem setups - the input decks, as you call them, are truly classified because they contain numerical descriptions of some of our nuclear weapons, including the W-88."
Stephen M. Younger, associate laboratory director for nuclear weapons at Los Alamos, said past assertions that much of the information was available in open literature were "misleading."
"I can say," Dr. Younger added, "based on my review of the contents of the tapes made by Dr. Lee, that he did systematically collect a set of nuclear weapons design tools that would enable the possessor to perform sophisticated calculations of nuclear explosives. Further, Dr. Lee's tapes contained the actual designs of a number of nuclear explosives, including some weapons currently in the U.S. arsenal."
---
FBI Singled Out Lee For Probe, Trulock Says
Washington Post
Wednesday, October 4, 2000 ; Page A02
By Walter Pincus and Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3033-2000Oct3?language=printer
The Department of Energy intelligence chief who spearheaded a 1995 probe into suspected Chinese espionage at Los Alamos National Laboratory yesterday blamed the FBI for targeting physicist Wen Ho Lee as the government's prime suspect and denied that racial profiling played a role in the case.
"It was the FBI that focused solely on Dr. Lee," Notra Trulock III told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee in his first public defense since Lee pleaded guilty last month to a single felony count of downloading nuclear weapons secrets and was released from jail.
"Our final report listed 12 investigative leads for the FBI, not just from Los Alamos but also from [Lawrence] Livermore [National Laboratory]; not just Asian Americans, but also Caucasians from both laboratories," Trulock said. "DOE believed that the FBI would pursue all 12 leads with equal vigor and diligence."
At the hearing, Trulock also injected himself into a growing controversy over who first identified Lee by name as the suspect in the espionage investigation.
Lee and his wife, Sylvia, have filed a civil suit against the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Department of Energy, alleging that Lee's privacy was violated by government leaks to the press.
Responding to a question from subcommittee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Trulock said he believed that Energy Secretary Bill Richardson was responsible for leaking Lee's name to the media in March 1999 as Richardson ordered Lee's dismissal for violating lab security regulations.
Asked how he knew Richardson was the source, Trulock responded, "One of the reporters involved in the publication of the stories in question told me directly that Secretary Richardson had provided to him the name of Wen Ho Lee." Trulock said the reporter who named Richardson as his source was James Risen of the New York Times.
Risen, who co-authored the paper's story about alleged Chinese espionage at Los Alamos, said yesterday that he had "no comment" about Trulock's statement. He did say that his newspaper got Lee's name "the same way The Washington Post and the network news got it" and that the name "was on the wires [meaning the Associated Press] before we got it."
Energy Department spokesman Stu Nagurka, asked about Trulock's allegation, said that Richardson "categorically denies this outrageous accusation." Trulock resigned from the Energy Department last year to take a job in the private sector.
Yesterday's hearing is the latest of several aimed at clearing up some of the controversies that have swirled in the wake of Lee's guilty plea and his agreement to undergo FBI interrogation under oath to explain his actions.
A panel of nuclear weapons experts agreed that two of the three categories of nuclear codes were classified and shouldn't have been downloaded by Lee. But they disagreed on how important the downloaded tapes he made would be in helping any country produce its own nuclear weapons.
There was also disagreement between Trulock and Robert S. Vrooman, the former counterintelligence chief at Los Alamos, as to whether Lee had been the victim of racial profiling.
The government last month accepted a plea from Lee and agreed to drop the 58 other counts it had originally brought against Lee after he promised to fully cooperate with government prosecutors and provide a detailed description of why he downloaded the classified nuclear material and what he did with the tapes he made. Lee was held in solitary confinement at the behest of government prosecutors, spurring an apology from a federal judge in Albuquerque and triggering controversy about the way in which he was incarcerated and prosecuted.
At yesterday's hearing, a nuclear scientist who played a critical role in attacking the government case admitted that he "erred" in testimony during a critical bail hearing for Lee in August when he gave the impression that 99 percent of the material Lee downloaded was unclassified.
John L. Richter, who retired from Los Alamos several years ago but remains a lab consultant, told the senators that he considered only one of the three different computer categories that Lee downloaded to portable tapes to be 99 percent unclassified. The other two categories he said were classified and "should not be" made available to other nations.
Richter said he agreed with Los Alamos deputy director Stephen Younger, who also testified, that information in the downloaded aterials relating to plutonium and uranium are not found in open literature.
Richter maintained, however, that more than just the downloaded tapes would have been needed to make sophisticated nuclear warheads such as the U.S. maintains. It requires, "a four-foot shelf of drawings, specifications, material processes and so forth . . . and that's not on the tapes."
Throughout the hearing, Trulock clashed with Vrooman, who quoted from a Department of Energy document on the espionage case drafted by Trulock stating that "Wen Ho Lee appears to have the opportunity, means and motivation" to leak W-88 warhead secrets to China.
"Based on my experience and observations, I concluded that racial profiling of Asian Americans as a result of the investigation indeed took place," Vrooman said.
Trulock denied the charge, describing the document he produced on the case as "a records check as is performed in routine security reviews on a daily basis in Washington." He also charged that Vrooman was the person who first focused on Lee as a potential target.
---
Energy secretary linked to leak
Washington Times
October 4, 2000
By Bill Gertz and Jerry Seper
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000104224950.htm
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson disclosed the identity of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee by revealing he was the key spy suspect to a newspaper reporter, a former Energy Department intelligence official told lawmakers yesterday.
"One of the reporters involved in the publication of the stories in question told me directly that Secretary Richardson had provided to him the name of Wen Ho Lee," Notra Trulock, the former official, told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.
The New York Times' disclosure blew the cover on a secret three-year FBI investigation into how China had obtained secrets on every deployed nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal, according to an FBI official close to the case.
The probe also was undermined earlier by the Justice Department's refusal to allow the FBI to initiate a wiretap on Lee's telephones and computers, despite suspicions that he was a spy, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Some FBI officials believe Lee's identity was disclosed deliberately to undermine the probe and head off political fallout. A similar case occurred in 1989 involving State Department official Felix Bloch, who was suspected of spying but never was charged.
Under questioning by subcommittee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, Mr. Trulock identified the reporter to whom Mr. Richardson revealed Lee's name as New York Times investigative reporter James Risen.
Mr. Trulock was the first to investigate Chinese nuclear spying at weapons laboratories. The FBI recently raided his town house and confiscated a computer, charging that Mr. Trulock improperly disclosed intelligence information.
Stu Nagurka, an Energy Department spokesman, denied the contention by Mr. Trulock.
"Secretary Richardson categorically denies this outrageous accusation," he said.
Mr. Nagurka said he did not know whether Mr. Richardson discussed the spy case with Mr. Risen, but said, "We do not discuss what other reporters are working on."
The New York Times reported March 6, 1999, in a front-page story that a "Los Alamos computer scientist who is Chinese-American" was the prime suspect in a case of Chinese nuclear espionage. The story was written by Mr. Risen and Jeff Gerth, who later won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Chinese spying.
The newspaper subsequently has backed away from its reporting on the Lee spy case, saying some aspects of its coverage were "flawed."
"We never comment on speculation about the identities of confidential sources," said Times' spokeswoman Kathy Park.
Two days after the Times story, Mr. Richardson ordered Los Alamos to fire Lee for security violations.
National security officials said the case was the first U.S. spy case that did not involve espionage charges, only the lesser charges of mishandling classified data.
FBI agents had focused on Lee because of his telephone conversation with another Chinese nuclear-spying suspect in 1982 and because of Lee's contacts with Chinese nuclear weapons officials.
Lee, 60, pleaded guilty last month to one of 59 counts charged in a December 1998 indictment in a plea agreement with the Justice Department. He admitted to illegally transferring data on the design, manufacture and use of nuclear weapons from classified computers at Los Alamos to an unsecured computer. At least seven and as many as 14 tapes copied by Lee are still missing.
Mr. Trulock was asked by Mr. Specter what knowledge he had of Mr. Richardson's firing of Lee after he testified that the disclosure "came out of the office of the secretary of the Department of Energy." After consulting with his lawyer, the former Energy Department intelligence and counterintelligence chief said he was told by Mr. Risen about Mr. Richardson's action.
He said it was not a coincidence the Energy Department only "became energized" about fixing its security problems after the FBI "provided information to the Cox committee on Dr. Lee and other espionage cases."
"We're going to pursue that," said Mr. Specter, who is investigating the Lee case. "Respecting confidentiality of sources, that's something which is of the utmost importance."
Earlier, an Energy Department scientist told the subcommittee that nuclear weapons data illegally downloaded by Lee contained secret design information on a number of nuclear explosives, including some weapons currently in the U.S. arsenal.
Stephen Younger testified that if the tapes found their way to unauthorized persons, they could provide design codes for U.S. nuclear weapons, enable enemies of the United States to advance their own weapons systems and provide the ability to identify and exploit weaknesses in the U.S. nuclear defense system.
"Nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapons ever created by humankind," he said. "They are the only devices that can threaten the conventional military superiority of the United States. In the wrong hands, the information downloaded by Dr. Lee could enable a proliferant nation to design relatively crude but nevertheless effective nuclear weapons without nuclear testing.
"Those weapons would certainly not be as sophisticated as the weapons contained in the U.S. arsenal, but they would be credible enough to influence other nations, including our own," he said. "A nation that already had nuclear weapons could use the codes to help maintain their weapons or to improve them."
Last week, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh told the Senate Judiciary and select intelligence committees that the still-missing tapes were the impetus behind the plea agreement.
"The government made this agreement for one overarching reason: to find out what happened to the missing tapes," said Mr. Freeh, adding that Lee created "his own secret, portable, personal trove of this nation's nuclear weapons secrets."
He said each of the 59 counts outlined in the December 1999 indictment "could be proven today," but the government opted for the agreement to avoid "revealing nuclear secrets" in open court.
The plea bargain was reached after Lee agreed to cooperate in the case, including submitting to a polygraph examination. He was released Sept. 13 after 279 days of confinement at a New Mexico jail. He was scheduled to undergo debriefings by the FBI last week, which were postponed because of the Senate hearings.
Mr. Younger testified that based on his knowledge of foreign nuclear weapons programs, no other country has the technology base necessary to perform measurements made in U.S. nuclear tests, measurements he said were used in the calibration and validation of the computer codes downloaded by Lee.
Asked by Mr. Specter whether there was clear and convincing evidence that the data downloaded by Lee amounted to the theft of the "crown jewels," Mr. Younger responded:
"If the design of the most sophisticated nuclear weapons on the planet are not the crown jewels of nuclear security, I don't know what is."
-------- us nuc politics
Clinton Debates Bush's Arguments
Associated Press
October 04, 2000 Filed at 7:17 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Clinton.html
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- Dissecting the presidential debate, President Clinton on Wednesday challenged Republican George W. Bush's arguments about the economy, health care and taxes. ``There's that minor matter of the record'' that supports the Democrats' side, he said.
The president, for the second day in a row, assailed drug companies and complained that GOP ads about Vice President Al Gore's prescription drug plan were ``a bunch of bull.''
Firing back at Bush and his allies, Clinton said, ``The evidence doesn't get in the way of them. They're sticking with their story.''
On a day of campaign fund raising stretching from Florida to Washington, Clinton said he didn't want to explore all the charges raised in Tuesday night's face off between presidential candidates Bush and Gore. But then he proceeded to speak about many of the debate issues -- reciting arguments that Gore, himself, had made a night earlier.
While trying to set the record straight, Clinton flubbed up himself. He urged voters to support Democratic candidates on Nov. 2; Election Day is Nov. 7.
Clinton cheered Gore as the winner of the first debate. ``Didn't the vice president do a great job last night in that debate,'' the president said. ``I was so proud of him.''
On the second day of Florida fund raising, the president began the day with a breakfast in Miami for his wife, Hillary, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat from New York. He also squeezed in some golf even though the grounds at the Biltmore Hotel were soggy from torrential rains that flooded Miami Tuesday.
He said the weather was worse than anything he'd seen in 17 years of visits to Miami. ``We're going to do whatever we can to help. It was bad. I mean really bad.''
Later, Clinton announced he would sign a disaster declaration for South Florida.
``During the past 24 hours the citizens of South Florida experienced record rainfall and flooding,'' he said. ``Having been here during much of that time and experiencing first hand nature's impact, I am prepared to sign the disaster declaration request forwarded today by Gov. (Jeb) Bush.''
The action will make federal money available in Miami-Dade County and the surrounding counties of Monroe, Broward and Collier.
Clinton stopped in Jacksonville to raise money for Rep. Corrine Brown, a four-term congressman facing a challenge from retired Navy officer Jennifer Carroll, who aspires to become the first black Republican woman in Congress. The president spoke at a $500-a-person reception and mingled with a smaller group of guests who donated $10,000.
Later, Clinton was attending a $500-a-person fund-raiser for John Kelly, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico and Clinton's college pal who is running for Congress.
Kelly was the former top prosecutor against Wen Ho Lee, the one-time Los Alamos nuclear scientist who spent nine months in solitary confinement before being freed last month after pleading guilt to a single felony. Clinton has said he was ``quite troubled'' by the handling of the case.
On the economy, Clinton said his administration ``cleaned up the mess'' left by Republican control of the White House over 12 years as the national debt quadrupled.
Clinton railed against drug companies and complained that Republican ads assert that a Medicare prescription drug benefit proposed by Gore would force seniors into a government-run HMO. Bush leveled the same charge in the debate. ``Folks, it's a bunch of bull,'' the president said. ``The only good thing about it is, it's hard to follow so maybe nobody will pay too much attention to it.
Taking aim at Bush's tax proposals, Clinton said, ``They want a tax cut that's almost three times as big as ours ... and a partial privatization of Social Security which would cost another trillion dollars to fund and that's before they keep any of their spending promises. So that puts them back into spending Social Security money or into a deficit. That's why the vice president says, `You know, I'd like to give you one that big but I can't, responsibly.'''
A Bush spokesman, Ari Fleischer, responded: ``He just can't resist being Al Gore's campaign manager. While Al Gore exaggerates, Bill Clinton distorts.''
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
PSR Promotes Nuclear De-alerting At Danville Debate
US Newswire
4 Oct 13:30
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/1004-122.html
Physicians Group Promotes Nuclear De-alerting At Danville Debate; Challenge Issued to Candidates to Support Action to Reduce Nuclear Dangers To: National Desk Contact: Martin Butcher for Physicians for Social Responsibility, 202-898-0150, x220
WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize for its citizen-diplomacy work for disarmament, today issued a challenge to Vice-Presidential candidates Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney. PSR called on both to use their debate on Oct. 5 to show their support for genuine global security through the de-alerting of the 5,000 Russian and American nuclear missiles currently on hair trigger alert.
PSR, in conjunction with the Back From the Brink campaign for de-alerting, has placed a full-page advertisement in the Danville Advocate-Messenger for the day of the debate. The ad asks both candidates:
Are you ready to confront the real nuclear missile threat?
"Few people realize that both the U.S. and Russia maintain thousands of nuclear weapons instantly ready to fire," said Martin Butcher, PSR's Director of Security Programs. "The U.S. and Russia are no longer enemies; why do both nations keep up this capability to wipe each other out? The next administration must act to ensure American, and global, security by defusing this deadly missile threat."
PSR will be present in Danville for the debate. Copies of the newspaper ad will be distributed, together with associated briefing materials and questions for the candidates. PSR and its 20,000 physician members have built up their expertise on nuclear weapons and nuclear war over 40 years. In a landmark New England Journal of Medicine article in 1998, PSR physicians examined the dangers of accidental nuclear war, concluding there could be no meaningful public health response to such a tragedy and recommending de-alerting as the only sensible prescription for true security for America.
Today, both campaigns are confronted with the dreadful reality that accidental nuclear war is more likely than ever. As the Russian military infrastructure decays and confidence in their ability to maintain missiles or early warning radar safely decreases, the need to de-alert nuclear forces increases daily.
"This will be the central national security question for the next administration. It is vital to know where the candidates for the nations top offices stand," said Robert K. Musil, Ph.D., Executive Director and CEO of PSR. "Today we asking the men who would be a heartbeat from the Presidency, what will you do to make America safe?"
---
Matheson Touches A Nerve, Democratic candidate's ads tap into government-bashing
Salt Lake Tribune
Wednesday, October 4, 2000
BY DAN HARRIE THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.sltrib.com/10042000/utah/29987.htm
Federal government-bashing is nothing new in Utah politics, where conservative Republicans sometimes view Washington as the source of all evil.
But now the tough talk is coming from a Democrat: congressional candidate Jim Matheson.
In new television ads, the 40-year-old says above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s contributed to the death of his father, former Gov. Scott Matheson, and taught the son an abiding suspicion of government.
"My dad was a downwinder," the younger Matheson says in the commercial. "He might be alive today if the federal government hadn't lied and exposed southern Utah to years of nuclear testing. I've learned you shouldn't always trust Washington."
Political scientist Michael Lyons says the ad seems to tap into Utahns' feeling that "the state has been pushed around too much by the federal government."
The attitude stems from a long string of federal actions from the above-ground nuclear testing in Nevada to the MX missile deployment once proposed by the Carter administration to President Clinton's surprise designation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument just four years ago, said Lyons, a political science professor at Utah State University.
"So Jim Matheson wants to share the image of his father," that he is a politician "willing to stand up for Utah against Washington."
While it might be considered strident government-bashing in other states, Lyons adds, "being anti-government is being centrist in Utah."
In fact, Matheson's ad is far milder than one aired four years ago by Republican Rep. Chris Cannon in the 3rd Congressional District. In that commercial, a denim-clad Cannon leading a horse recalled the so-called Utah War of the 1850s, when federal troops were dispatched to put down a perceived "Mormon rebellion."
"I feel like I'm back in the 1850s again with the federal government encamped all around us," said Cannon. In a Salt Lake Tribune interview at the time, the feisty conservative said, "I would have to say that I am anti-government -- that's true."
Matheson says he isn't anti-Washington. "But I don't always trust Washington, that's the distinction . . . . I don't always trust what comes out of Washington because they lied to the citizens of Utah."
Scott Matheson died in 1990 of bone-marrow cancer, one of the cancers identified in law as eligible for redress under downwinders' legislation.
Matheson says that his father's cancer was caused by radioactive fallout "seems pretty clear to me. I've always felt that's what happened." And he said the situation "more than anything in my life has affected the way I view Washington."
The Democrat's ad goes on to say his skepticism applies to current Washington claims about the size of the budget surplus and all the programs that can be funded with it.
Republican candidate Derek Smith includes himself as among those with a "healthy skepticism" of government, said spokeswoman Laurie Maddox.
"But it's very ironic for [Matheson] to be making that case," Maddox said, adding that the Democratic attempt to regain control of Congress will lead to "bigger federal government and more control over our lives."
-------- MILITARY (by country)
-------- arms sales
New York Times
10/04/00
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/04/world/04BRIE.html
ASIA
INDIA: SEEKING RUSSIAN WEAPONS India is negotiating with Russian officials to buy Russian tanks and fighter aircraft during President Vladimir V. Putin's four-day visit to India, the national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra, said. Mr. Putin reiterated Russia's support for India's membership in the United Nations Security Council. He and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee agreed to coordinate their efforts to combat terrorism they say is emanating from Afghanistan. Celia W. Dugger (NYT)
---
India, Russia move to strengthen ties
USA Today
10/04/00- Updated 07:30 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#peace
NEW DELHI, India - Reaching out to bolster ties with an old ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a pact with India on Tuesday and hailed the nation as Moscow's key strategic partner in terms that evoked their Soviet-era friendship. The far-reaching document signals Moscow's attempt to reinvigorate relations with India, which slackened after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
---
India, Russia embrace strategic partnership
Washington Times
October 4, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-2000104205452.htm
NEW DELHI - Moscow is close to sealing a number of major arms deals with India, a senior Russian source said in New Delhi during a visit by President Vladimir Putin.
Russia and India forged a strategic partnership yesterday in a bid to rekindle the warmth of their Cold War-era friendship, but stressed that they were not seeking to create a new military-political alliance.
Sales and license agreements for Russian T-90 S tanks and Su-30 MKI fighter jets were close to being signed and a deal to sell India multiple-rocket launchers was also being considered, a Russian source told reporters accompanying Mr. Putin.
-------- colombia
Emergency U'Wa Day of Action Friday
From: "Beka Economopoulos" <beka@ran.org>
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 11:45:19 -0400
please forward
Friends:
The Colombian government has just moved in over 70 convoys, all the drilling equipment, and thousands of military troups onto U'Wa land. U'Wa are flanked on one side by a fully stocked drill site that should be ready to break ground in 2 weeks, and on the other by land mines, barbed wire, and thousands of troops. We need to be as loud as possible to urge Gore to do everything in his power to save these livs and this land. This is the guy who just sent millions of dollars in aide to Colombia, he wields some major influence.
Philly area: noon on Friday in front of the Gore office at 117 N. 8th st, 6th fl. His office number is 215-717-1490, it would be great to get some calls in to urge him to do whatever he can to prevent this tragedy.
Even if you're looking at 3 people and some cardboard on a stick, let's make something happen in as many places as we can. For information on Gore office locations or on the campaign, call Patrick at Rainforest Action Network at 800-989-RAIN (7246) or email organize@ran.org.
THOUSANDS OF COLOMBIAN SOLDIERS ESCORT OXY'S FINAL DRILLING EQUIPMENT TOWARDS GIBRALTAR 1 DRILL SITE!
U'WA CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTIONS!
TAKE ACTION NOW AND PREPARE FOR: OCTOBER 6TH EMERGENCY DAY OF SOLIDARITY
AL GORE MUST SPEAK OUT FOR THE U'WA NOW!
To connect your local organizing with the international network contact Patrick at: 415-398-4404/1-800-989-RAIN organize@ran.org
In this post :
1. News from Censast Agua Viva, Colombian support group for the U'wa
2. Emergency Response! CONTACT AL GORE! ORGANIZE!
3. Round-up of U'wa support Actions from around the World!
#1
FROM : Censat Agua Viva [censat@colnodo.apc.org] Colombian human rights and environmental organization October 1
I write with sad news that the drilling machinery has arrived to U'wa territory. Lines of thousands of military personnel protected the equipment from Saravena to Cedeno. The roadway was blocked by the military thus impeding the mobilization of the people in the region. More than 80 trucks transported the machinery protected by the military. The Colombian government put out a huge amount of economic resources and military personnel to give security to Occidental, meanwhile trampling the U'wa's rights to their own land, recognized by the Royal Land Deeds law of the 1600's, which constitutionally gives the U'wa both soil and sub-soil rights.
In a press conference yesterday (the 30th of September), Italian Green Party Senator, Stephano Boco, stated that the Green Party of Europe is prepared to bring the U'wa's case to the tribunals of Haya. Senator Boco also said that Italian representatives are ready to have a permanent presence in U'wa territory. U'wa leader, Berito Cobaria, stated that the U'wa would not give up their rights and would maintain their fight. Cobaria asked for the solidarity from Colombian people and the international community.
Now more than ever we need to gather our forces and promote actions that will help the U'wa!
#2 KEEP UP THE PRESSURE ON AL GORE!
Over the last year Occidental Petroleum has been announcing the dates when they will start drilling on U'wa territory: October 1999, Feb 2000, May, July, September.
The biggest testimony to the power of the U'wa resistance and the international solidarity movement is the fact that Oxy's timeline has continually been pushed back. Incredible international pressure has stopped the drilling to date and now its time to get the project canceled once and for all!
Reports we received from the drillsite on the morning of Oct 2 confirm that Oxy's convoy of trucks has arrived but are not yet unloaded into the Gibraltar 1 drillsite. The trucks are lining the road within a few hundred yards of the site but over 40 U'wa representatives remain peacefully occupying the area.
Over the past 6 months in the United States activists have been confronting Al Gore and demanding that he use his personal and political connections to stop the drilling on U'wa land. Nearly 50 of his campaign appearances have been disrupted and their have been demonstrations at dozens of his campaign offices including symbolic dumpings of blood and oil, lock-downs, and mass occupations. Now with the last of Oxy's machinery at the site we have only 2-3 weeks to stop this project before drilling begins.
OCTOBER 6TH DAY OF SOLIDARITY!
LET'S SHUT DOWN GORE 2000 CAMPAIGN CENTERS ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY WITH CONCERTED ACTS OF MASS NON-VIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE!
JOIN THE U'WA IN PUTTING YOUR BODY ON THE LINE!
Start mobilizing today! Call Gore's office! Write a Letter to the newspaper today! Organize a pre-emptive vigil, demonstration or non-violent direct action today! Whether your group organizes civil disobedience, guerrilla theater, leafleting or a lively rally it doesn't matter. What does matter is that all of us stand together to let Al Gore know that he needs to take action for the U'wa!
Many people are involved in efforts to open up the presidential debates to candidates from the non-corporate parties. If you are involved in this important work make sure to highlight the U'wa as one of the many voices being silenced. The silence of both Al Gore and George Bush about the devastating effects of Big Oil (the real high cost of gasoline) is a death sentence for the U'wa lands and culture and all traditional peoples. We must bring the U'wa struggle for survival into the attention of the public at every chance we get.
The U'wa were threatened with eviction from their occupation around the proposed drillsite several weeks ago but have held their ground. The Department of Energy and Mines backed off from the eviction after the U'wa came forward with colonial lands claims from the 1660's that showed the King of Spain had granted them land rights including sub-surface rights to Oxy's Gibraltar 1 well-site. These colonial land claims have been honored in Colombia's highest courts many times over the past 50 years, the last ruling being in 1972.
According to U'wa leader Jose Cobaria, the reason the U'wa were not evicted was thanks to the new land claims and international pressure. However the cycle of violence that the U'wa feared and warned about is escalating in the region. Helicopters having been flying overhead continually and in the past few days there have been skirmishes between the military and guerrilla factions. With the massive increase in troops violence will inevitably increase. Additionally, international press that has come to the region have been denied access to the militarized area.
This past weekend through the 28th, an Italian Senator traveled through U'wa territory as an international observer. The Senator also had meetings with Colombian ministers, and in a press conference this weekend vowed to help stop Italy and the European Union backing of Plan Colombia.
Although machinery is moving towards the well-site area, Berito Kuwaru'wa, U'wa International Spokesperson, said the struggle will continue!! They need our support now more than ever!
TAKE ACTION!
1. CONTACT AL GORE : Please take the time to call, write and fax Al Gore
Gore2000 601 Mainstream Dr. Nashville, TN 37228 Phone: 615-340-2000 Fax: 202-456-2685
2. VISIT YOUR NEAREST GORE 2000/DNC OFFICE Organize a lobbying visit, demonstration or direct action at a Gore 2000 or DNC office! Join the U'wa in putting your body on the line!
http://www.algore2000.com under "Take Action" click on your state and then "[state] HQ" and you will find a list of all your local offices. More offices are opening nationwide each day!
Find your nearest DNC office at: http://www.democrats.org/action/
3. SPREAD THE WORD! Write a Letter to the editor or op-ed for your local paper. Tell other activists about the situation and to keep informed by sending a blank email to: uwa-updates-subscribe@topica.com
4. DIRECT SUPPORT! RAISE MONEY FOR THE U'WA! The U'wa desperately need money to continue their resistance on the ground. If you can help by raising money in your community contact Amazon Watch at: 310-455-0617 or Send a check to: Amazon Watch 115 South Topanga Topanga Canyon, CA 90290 Earmarked: U'wa Defense
5. JOIN THE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY FAST Starting in the coming days activists around the world will begin a solidarity fast to draw attention to the U'wa's desire for peace and an end to the proposed illegal oil drilling on their land. If you would like to be a part of the solidarity fast please join the planning listserve by sending a blank email to uwa-fast-subscribe@topica.com.
6. BECOME A LOCAL ORGANIZING HUB! START A REGIONAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE PHONE TREE. CONTACT organize@ran.org with all your local info!
For more information and downloadable materials check out www.ran.org - www.amazonwatch.org - or - www.moles.org
--
#3 OVER 25 ACTIONS FOR THE U'WA TARGET AL GORE IN THE LAST 2 WEEKS! Please send us reports from your actions as well as media clips!
Below is a small sampling: KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!
*Ann Arbor, Michigan-40 people demonstrate in front of Gore's office.
Sep. 26
Boulder, Colorado 150 people descended on the local Gore headquarters to rally in support of the U'wa. On the pretext of delivering a computer, activists tipped over a barrel of biodegradable fake blood, covering the steps to Gore's headquarters, and then staged a mass die-in. Two people were arrested.
Columbia, Missouri Students at U. Missouri disrupted an on campus speech by Karenna Gore. Gore said she would meet with activists after the speech if they would stop, but the students demanded that any meeting take place in front of the media. Gore declined the offer, and the demonstrators continued their efforts to make the voice of the U'wa heard.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Over a dozen people marched in front of the Gore offices with signs and flyers. Organizers have been calling the local Gore offices every day since then to demand that Gore take action to support the U'wa.
New York, New York Several dozen people gathered at Gore's headquarters for guerrilla theater and a lively picket. Activists from the Wetlands Activism Center delivered a mock eviction notice to Gore despite harassment and unfair treatment at the hands of the police and an unrelated Republican protest.
Des Moines, Iowa 75 people participated in a candlelight vigil accompanied by peaceful but loud chanting outside Al Gore's hotel. The hotel tried to drown out the protesters with loud music but the demonstrators continued until the 11 PM noise ordinance. A small group remained with candles outside the hotel until dawn!
Manchester, NH Actions on two consecutive days. Activists protest outside Gore's office covered in oil. The next day they were joined by over 100 people from various groups to demand that Gore take action for the U'wa.
Eugene, OR Activists disrupt a presentation by one of Gore's senior Environmental Advisors demanding that she clarify Gore's position on the U'wa.
Chicago, IL 10 people demonstrated at a Gore fundraising event with signs and flyers.
London,England Reclaim the Streets organized pickets and guerrilla theater outside both Fidelity Investments (a heavy investor in Ox) and the Colombian embassy.
Melbourne, Australia (rumored action waiting for confirmation).
-------- drug war
Officer and Wife Accused of Laundering Cash
New York Times
10/04/00
By ALAN FEUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/04/nyregion/04COP.html
A New York City police officer and his wife were arrested yesterday and charged with helping to launder more than $1 million in cash for Colombian drug lords, the authorities said.
The officer, Homero Zapata, and his wife, Liliana Lopez-Zapata, picked up duffel bags stuffed with cash, mostly in $20 bills, from drug dealers in the city, according to a complaint released in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. The couple then drove the money, in shipments of $100,000 to $300,000, to Miami, where they handed it over to representatives of a Colombian drug ring, according to the complaint.
Although the drug ring was not named, Victoria Ovis, the associate special agent in charge of the New York office of the United States Customs Service, said that it was a "large organization" and that Mr. Zapata, 36, and his wife, 31, who are both from Colombia, probably earned 2 percent to 4 percent of whatever cash they delivered.
Ms. Ovis said the scheme had most likely been arranged by Ms. Lopez- Zapata. She said there was no evidence that Mr. Zapata had met the drug dealers while working as a police officer.
Mr. Zapata, an eight-year veteran of the police force, has been suspended from his job at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx.
Mr. Zapata was charged in the complaint with making at least six trips from New York to Miami from June 1997 to June 1999, always when he was off duty and often over a weekend. Each time, the court papers said, he rented a car - frequently at La Guardia Airport - and flew back to New York, sometimes just in time to go on duty.
The scheme came to light in September 1997 when investigators of the New York Police Department received a tip and were on hand to watch the Zapatas pick up $100,000 in cash from a drug trafficker, identified in court papers as Fernando Henao. Over the next several months, the court papers said, the investigators observed the couple making numerous other pickups and deliveries.
In June 1999, the couple was stopped for speeding on Interstate 95 by the police in South Carolina. Officers searched their car and discovered a duffel bag filled with about $200,000 in cash. Mr. Zapata appeared nervous, the complaint said, trembling and stuttering as he spoke. Under questioning, Mr. Zapata said that the money was his own and that he was driving south to visit his mother-in-law, according to the complaint.
But the couple was not arrested until yesterday morning because, Ms. Ovis said, there was "a lot more information to be gathered." She said the Customs Service began working with the New York City police earlier this year after Mr. Zapata's name turned up in its own investigation of laundered drug money.
Mr. Zapata and Ms. Lopez-Zapata were detained yesterday in lieu of bail. They face a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted.
---
Supreme Court Considers Use of Drug Checkpoints
New York Times
October 02, 2000
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/04/national/04SCOT.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 - It has been 10 years since the Supreme Court upheld the use of drunken- driving checkpoints on city streets, and nearly twice that long since the court ruled that the airport police could use drug-detecting dogs to sniff passengers' luggage. So it was perhaps inevitable that the justices would be confronted with the question they considered today: Can the police, by adding a trained dog, turn a sobriety checkpoint into a constitutionally permissible way of checking motorists for drugs?
If the question was obvious enough, the answer was not. The court upheld sobriety checkpoints in 1990 as public health and safety measures, a method of getting dangerous drivers off the road that was sufficiently distinct from ordinary law enforcement as to not require the suspicion of individual wrongdoing that the Fourth Amendment usually imposes on a search or seizure.
But that rationale was not available for this case, an appeal by the City of Indianapolis of a federal appeals court's ruling that its drug roadblocks, which it used quite successfully for four months in 1998, amounted to a "dragnet search for criminals" that violated the Fourth Amendment. Indianapolis was not looking for impaired drivers who were using drugs; it was looking for drivers who were using their cars to transport drugs through the city's streets.
While the justices today appeared sympathetic to the city's goals, they worried aloud about the consequences of validating the checkpoints. How, for example, could the court avoid issuing a decision that in upholding the automobile checkpoints would logically also validate pedestrian checkpoints, a prospect the justices clearly found troubling?
"If we sustain the search here, we'd be required to do the same thing if, in a given neighborhood, drug distribution is done on foot," Justice David H. Souter said to A. Scott Chinn, the Indianapolis corporation counsel. What was the difference between stopping pedestrians and stopping cars? the justice wanted to know.
People in cars already have a lower "expectation of privacy," Mr. Chinn replied, and a checkpoint for pedestrians would be regarded as so much more intrusive as to make it a different case.
But pedestrians actually have less privacy, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg objected. "On a street, there you are," she said. "Everyone can see you. The rationale you're offering would apply just as much. If there is a distinction based on the expectation of privacy, I don't see it."
Eventually, a way of limiting checkpoints to automobiles did present itself, and several justices seized on it with almost palpable relief. The Clinton administration had entered the case on behalf of Indianapolis, and an assistant solicitor general, Patricia A. Millett, told the court that the automobile drug checkpoints could be viewed simply as adjuncts to the check for licenses and registrations that the city already conducted at the roadblocks.
"The entire scope of the seizure" was justified by the license and registration checks, Ms. Millett said, noting that driving a car was a highly regulated activity and that motorists expected to be stopped occasionally.
After Ms. Millett concluded, the tide of the argument, which had been running against the city, appeared to turn, as justices who had expressed strong doubts about the city's position now turned their skepticism on the lawyer for the other side. Kenneth J. Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Indiana affiliate, had brought the class- action lawsuit against Indianapolis on behalf of the city's drivers.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who earlier had characterized the implications of the city's argument as "scary," now asked Mr. Falk, "So long as they have the authority to stop the car, what difference does it make if they have another purpose?"
And Justice Souter asked why, "if we assume the license check is in fact a genuine, bona fide purpose, does the dog taint the search?"
Mr. Falk said that beyond the fact that "a dog cannot check licenses," the real objection was that the addition of a drug-detecting dog converted a regulatory program of checking a driver's paperwork into a tool of criminal investigation without probable cause.
"If we break down the barrier here and allow a seizure without cause, we will have seizures of persons on the streets," Mr. Falk said. The court could not ignore the "programmatic purpose" of the drug checkpoints, he insisted.
The question of discerning the real purpose behind a particular law enforcement technique is a difficult one under the court's precedents. In a 1996 decision, Whren v. United States, the court held that as long as the police activity was objectively reasonable - stopping a car with a broken taillight, for example - it was irrelevant whether that action was a pretext for another goal, like a search for drugs.
In his opinion striking down the Indianapolis checkpoints, Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said that while the motives of an individual officer were irrelevant, that was not the end of the inquiry; "the purpose behind the program is critical to its legality," Judge Posner said. In this case, he said, it was clear that the purpose was not to check licenses but to "catch drug offenders" and that the Fourth Amendment's requirements therefore applied.
During the argument today, Justice John Paul Stevens started to make the same distinction between inquiring into the individual police officer's purpose and the purpose behind a program as a whole. But time ran out before Mr. Falk could fully take advantage of Justice Stevens's helping hand.
The case, City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, No. 99-1030, is being followed closely by cities and law enforcement organizations. A brief from the National League of Cities indicated that other cities would adopt the Indianapolis program if it were upheld.
---
Saying No to Drugs
New York Times
October 04, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/04/opinion/L04DRU.html
To the Editor:
Richard Rothstein (Lessons column, Sept. 27) underestimates the value of direct antidrug messages, including antidrug advertising. Research has shown that delivering consistent antidrug messages to children can significantly influence the decisions they make about whether to use illegal drugs.
If we wish our children to learn that illegal drugs are dangerous and should not be used, we must be clear. It is impossible to suggest that there is a safe way to use drugs without making it seem as if drug use is something we are willing to accept.
Mr. Rothstein suggests that mixed messages can save lives, but as the country's experience with alcohol and tobacco - two legal, socially acceptable drugs - shows, they also expose more young lives to the risks we would have them avoid, creating more lives in need of saving.
TOM HEDRICK
Vice Chairman, Partnership for a Drug-Free America
New York, Sept. 28, 2000
---
Bolivia Warns of Force to End Roadblocks
Washington Post
Wednesday, October 4, 2000 ; Page A26
WORLD In Brief Compiled by John Burgess
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5888-2000Oct3.html
THE AMERICAS
LA PAZ, Bolivia--Tension mounted in Bolivia as the government repeated threats to deploy troops if coca growers, peasants and teachers do not abandon roadblocks set up 16 days ago that have paralyzed big cities.
A government-imposed noon deadline came and went as ministers huddled with peasants in La Paz. "We're talking, we're working on solutions, but if we stop talking and stop seeking solutions, then we'll clear the roadblocks," Government Minister Guillermo Fortun said, according to radio news reports.
Ten protesters died last week in clashes with security forces over their demands for higher teachers' pay, abolition of a water tax and their opposition to the eradication of coca, the raw material used in the production of cocaine.
"As long as the government is unwilling to discuss the coca issue we won't have an agreement," said Congressman Evo Morales, head of the coca growers union.
Andean Indians use the bitter leaf for religious and medicinal purposes, including easing the pangs of hunger and thirst and coping with altitude sickness. Some coca production is legal, but Bolivia, one of the Western Hemisphere's poorest nations, has significantly reduced coca production in the past five years in exchange for U.S. aid.
The situation has become increasingly tense as the blockade of all roads leading into La Paz, the capital, and the agricultural hubs of Santa Cruz and Cochabamba has caused food prices to skyrocket. The Bolivian air force said it has flown 2 million pounds of food to La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, San Borja and Cobija to restock supermarket shelves. (Reuters)
-------- iran
New York Times
October 04, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/04/world/04BRIE.html
IRAN: KHATAMI CHOICE REJECTED Parliament refused to approve the nomination of a close supporter of President Mohammad Khatami to the job of post and telecommunications minister, despite a personal plea from the president. Although the president has a large majority in the Parliament, legislators turned down Nasrollah Jahangard because of his "inexperience" and "lack of familiarity" with the issues of the ministry. (Agence France-Presse)
KUWAIT: BORDER ALERT Kuwait put the police on alert along its border with Iraq to confront what it said was the massing of Iraqi intelligence agents. The acting defense minister and interior minister, Sheik Mohammad Khaled al-Sabah, inspected operations on the frontier, where hundreds of stateless Arabs have been gathering on the Iraqi side. Kuwait fears that those Arabs could sweep across the border on orders from Baghdad. Tension between Kuwait and Iraq has been mounting since August, when Baghdad marked the 10th anniversary of its invasion of Kuwait, which led to the Persian Gulf war. (Reuters)
-------- iraq
New York Times
October 04, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/04/world/04BRIE.html
MIDDLE EAST
IRAQ: 'OIL FOR FOOD' PROCEEDS Iraq has sold almost $35 billion in oil in the last four years under the United Nations "oil for food" program, organization officials said. In addition to medicines and foods, Iraq has bought oil tankers, irrigation systems and oil field equipment. But the United States continues to block some Iraqi contracts, including $1.89 billion for civilian goods amounting to 14.5 percent of all current orders. Barbara Crossette (NYT)
-------- russia
Putin's role in foreign policy expands with Serb crisis
Washington Times
October 4, 2000
By David Sands
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000104214936.htm
Russia yesterday emerged as the potential power broker in the standoff between Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the West, another sign of a surprisingly aggressive foreign policy pursued by President Vladimir Putin.
Opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica, who claims to have won the Sept. 24 presidential election outright, yesterday said he would consider an invitation by Mr. Putin to come to Moscow as early as tomorrow to discuss the next steps in the contested election.
"President Putin's proposal is very much in my interests," Mr. Kostunica told the Moscow daily Kommersant. "All that remains to be done is to work out certain details and the format of the meeting in Moscow."
Russian officials in Moscow said the timing of the meeting will depend on the schedule of Mr. Putin, who yesterday cut short a planned three-day visit to India to return home to deal with the Yugoslav crisis.
The embattled Mr. Milosevic has not agreed to the Moscow meeting, although Yugoslavia's ambassador to Russia, who happens to be Mr. Milosevic's older brother, said that such a visit had not been ruled out.
In the face of mass work stoppages and demonstrations by Mr. Kostunica's supporters yesterday, Mr. Milosevic is insisting that he and his rival must compete in a runoff ballot Sunday.
Western governments have denounced the government's vote-counting as a fraud, but Russia, a traditional ally of Yugoslavia, has been more cautious.
Russia's importance to the process was underscored by calls from European and U.S. officials seeking Mr. Putin's backing for the international pressure campaign to force Mr. Milosevic to go.
Despite daunting social and economic problems at home, Mr. Putin has found time to carve out an extensive foreign policy record in the five months since taking office, visiting capitals in Europe and Asia, touting a negotiating breakthrough on the Korean peninsula, issuing a new foreign policy doctrine and cultivating allies to challenge a "unipolar" world dominated by the United States.
Mr. Putin's mediation offer in Yugoslavia came in the midst of his visit to India. The trip, the first by a Russian leader in eight years, produced a new "strategic partnership" to fight international terrorism and increase trade, defense and security ties.
With the West desperate to see Mr. Milosevic gone but lacking influence inside Yugoslavia, many in Moscow believed a Russian-brokered deal to put Mr. Kostunica in power would only enhance the country's standing.
"If the peace mission succeeds, Russia will be riding high. The West will have to go along with compromises which might be agreed by the two sides and Moscow would again be viewed by its Slav allies as the wiser older brother," the Interfax news agency said in a commentary yesterday.
Since his inauguration in May formally succeeding the ailing Boris Yeltsin, Mr. Putin has made high-profile trips to Tokyo, Beijing, Pyongyang and New Delhi.
In trips to Spain and Germany in June, he unsettled U.S. policy-makers with a vague alternative to an American national missile defense proposal. At his first Group of Eight summit in Okinawa, Japan, Mr. Putin stole much of the limelight with details of another vague offer, this time from North Korea, to give up its missile program in exchange for help in launching its satellites.
The diplomatic moves are all the more surprising because Mr. Putin would appear to hold a relatively weak hand.
The Russian economy, while improving, remains backward and in need of massive infrastructure development. A draining rebellion in Chechnya drags on. The Russian nuclear arsenal is aging and unreliable, and the Russian military is downsizing amid a debate over what its role should be.
Mr. Putin himself is engaged in a fierce domestic power struggle with the country's regional governors and its powerful business "oligarchs."
"Contemporary Russia is simply too weak to sustain regional domination while nostalgically reclaiming superpower status," Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser under President Carter, recently wrote.
But the Yugoslav impasse presents a fresh chance for Mr. Putin's government to establish itself as a player on the world stage, earning gratitude in the West even if its efforts fail.
"We welcome any constructive contribution Russia makes to secure a peaceful transition of power in Yugoslavia," a British Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday.
-------- u.n.
U.S. calls for new way to allocate peace cost
Washington Times
October 4, 2000
By Betsy Pisik
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000104215057.htm
NEW YORK - U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke yesterday urged U.N. member states to revamp the method for dividing up peacekeeping expenses as the United Nations began its first attempt to examine its budget policy for overseas troop deployments since 1973.
Calling it "the most important task for the rest of the year," Mr. Holbrooke told the General Assembly Budget Committee to "fundamentally revamp and institutionalize the way we finance peacekeeping."
There is widespread agreement among member states that the current system - put in place for a peacekeeping mission in the Sinai nearly 30 years ago - is overdue for a change.
"The scale has changed very little since [1973]" said French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte.
"It has taken account only very partially, imperfectly and belatedly of the changes affecting the member states' prosperity and hence their capacity to pay," he said.
Under the current system, the 188 U.N. members are supposed to pay roughly the same percentage of the peacekeeping budget as they do the operating budget.
The poorest nations receive discounts of up to 90 percent of that figure, while the richer nations, including the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, are supposed to pay a premium that makes up the difference.
But those discounts have not been assessed in more than two decades, and the fortunes of nations have ebbed and flowed dramatically since then.
For example, oil-rich states in the Middle East, which were poor back in 1973, still receive discounts.
This year, 30 nations are paying 98 percent of the peacekeeping tab, Mr. Holbrooke said, with the remaining 159 contributing "token amounts."
He promised yesterday that no nation with low per-capita income would be forced to pay more for peacekeeping.
Currently, the United States is assessed roughly 31 percent of the peacekeeping budget but has been paying only 25 percent since a 1994 U.S. law capped the payments.
With costly new or expanded missions in Sierra Leone, the Ethiopian-Eritrean border and southern Lebanon, the peacekeeping budget is expected to top $2.5 billion this year.
The Clinton administration has until the end of the year to win a permanent 25 percent ceiling in the U.N. scale of assessments, or it will be barred by Congress from paying $582 million in arrears to the peacekeeping department.
The United Nations claims the United States owes a total of $1.7 billion.
In New York, delegations are reluctant to make concessions to the United States, the only U.N. member that has attached conditions to its U.N. payments.
Apart from peacekeeping, the United States is seeking to reduce its regular budget obligation to 22 percent from the current 25 percent.
U.S. diplomats around the world have been lobbying foreign governments to consider imposing a ceiling on the maximum payment from any country to the United Nations.
But rich and poor nations alike disagree, saying that U.N. funding should be apportioned by a nation's capacity to pay.
South African envoy Theodore Albrecht, speaking on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement, agreed in principle to re-examine the peacekeeping scale but insisted that developing nations continue to receive a discount.
Another 18 nations, including many in Latin America and Central Europe, have volunteered to pay more.
---
Our Role in the World
New York Times
October 04, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/04/opinion/L04FOR.html
To the Editor:
To solve the world's ever-present humanitarian crises, Anthony Lewis proposes again that the United States adopt an aggressive, interventionist foreign policy (Op-Ed, Sept. 30). But he greatly overestimates the capacity of the American people to sustain such nonstrategic entanglements. As we have seen before, our commitment and sense of responsibility dissipate quickly when we're confronted with the inevitable outcomes of combat.
Instead, the United States should strengthen the United Nations to be the world's policeman, so that confronting evil could be a shared, global responsibility and not one resting on the shoulders of our young people alone.
BRAD TAYLOR
Keyser, W.Va., Oct. 1, 2000
---
Washington Post
Wednesday, October 4, 2000 ; Page A26
WORLD In Brief Compiled by John Burgess
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5888-2000Oct3.html
A United Nations peacekeeping helicopter crashed in East Timor, killing two Portuguese soldiers.
-------- u.s.
Media hits endorsements for Bush by ex-military officers
Washington Times
October 4, 2000
By Rowan Scarborough
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000104224734.htm
George W. Bush has won the endorsements of a host of former top military commanders, moves that upset the same national media that applauded when ex-senior officers supported Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign.
The list of pro-Bush top brass includes two appointed by President Clinton to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one he named as his top commander in the war-jittery Persian Gulf.
The national press has responded critically, raising the issue of a politicized military. All 27 endorsers now are in private life. In 1992, Mr. Clinton, in an apparent political first, organized the public endorsements of 21 retired admirals and generals, including Adm. William Crowe, who had served as Joint Chiefs chairman in the administration of Mr. Clinton's opponent, President Bush.
Dan Rather, anchor of the "CBS Evening News," was especially critical of Texas Gov. George W. Bush's campaign. In a Sept. 25 broadcast, he linked the Bush endorsements to what he saw as a growing politicization of the active duty military.
An on-air reporter then says: "There's no law against it, but the sight of so many admirals and generals throwing their prestige behind the candidate causes concern among other retired officers."
CBS News, however, took a different approach when retired Adm. Crowe and 20 other former admirals and generals announced support for Bill Clinton in 1992. A review of CBS broadcast transcripts during that campaign reveals no segment questioning the propriety of ex-officers reinforcing a presidential candidate.
CBS used Adm. Crowe on at least two broadcasts to rebut criticism of Mr. Clinton avoiding military service during the Vietnam War.
In 1994, Mr. Clinton appointed Adm. Crowe to the Foreign Service's most prestigious post - U.S. ambassador to Britain.
"Every time someone questioned Clinton's military record, the networks would go find a veteran to vouch for Clinton's capabilities to be commander in chief," said Tim Graham, who accused the media of liberal bias in his book, "Pattern of Deception," on the 1992 campaign. "Now, CBS has suggested some sort of an authoritarian junta surrounding George W. Bush. I think this kind of reporting implies retired military officers don't have the right to be citizens."
Mr. Graham said such coverage follows a pattern.
"When the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Clinton [in 1996], it was a big deal on the networks," he said. "When the FOP endorsed Bush [this year], zero."
Pique over a relatively few ex-officers officially backing Bush has also emerged in articles in The Washington Post and New York Times.
A Times story quoted an unnamed Gore aide as saying: "This is the kind of thing you see in the Third World - all these generals lining up behind the politicians."
The Post ran an op-ed column by Richard Kronh, former chief Air Force historian, who slammed the Bush endorsements.
"When senior retired military people endorse a presidential candidate . . . it marks a major step toward politicizing the American military," he wrote.
In October 1992, an editorial in The Post took a different approach toward Mr. Clinton's ex-military supporters. The editorial reprinted the names of the most prominent. It called the list "pretty impressive" and "intended to counter changes by the Bush campaign that Mr. Clinton was not fit to be commander in chief."
The George W. Bush campaign views the hubbub as another example of a "double standard" the news media employs when covering Mr. Bush and Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore.
"We have two opponents," said a Bush campaign worker, who asked not to be named. "Al Gore and the news media."
The campaign has released the names of 27 retired admirals and generals who joined a coalition of veterans supporting the governor's presidential candidacy. The list includes seven former Joint Chiefs of Staff members, two of whom - Marine Corps Gen. Charles Krulak and Navy Adm. Jay Johnson -were appointed by President Clinton.
The lineup also contains two women, retired Marine Lt. Gen. Carol Mutter and Air Force Brig. Gen. Sue Turner. Another backer, Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, served as Mr. Clinton's Central Command chief, overseeing Persian Gulf security.
Those who back Mr. Bush are rebutting the criticism.
Gen. Mutter, the Marine Corps' first female three-star general, said she decided to support Mr. Bush "because I believe he's got the background and experience and the right value system to lead our country in the future."
She said she was "not necessarily happy with some of the things that did happen in the current administration. . . . I was most concerned about the moral leadership or lack thereof that has been demonstrated."
Gen. Mutter, who retired in January 1999, said senior personnel should keep political leanings private while on active duty to avoid influencing subordinates.
"But once you leave active duty you have very little influence over active-duty people," Gen. Mutter said. "I have to give up some of my rights while in uniform. I should no longer have to give those up now."
Gen. Krulak, now an executive with a Wilmington, Del.-based banking-services corporation, penned a letter to the editor in The Post.
"To suggest that, having officially taken off our uniforms for the last time, we somehow are not entitled to the same right to enjoy full and active participation in the selection of our elected officials as other citizens of this great land is an insult to our service," Gen. Krulak wrote.
-------- OTHER
TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING
DayTips.com
October 04, 2000
http://www.daytips.com
Hollywood is planning to make a movie about a crippled Russian submarine in danger of exploding. Sound familiar? Harrison Ford says he wants to play the captain of a Soviet submarine whose nuclear reactor is about to melt down. However, the movie -- to be called "K-19" -- is not yet a done deal. Producers are caught in a shrinking window of opportunity as they try to meet Ford's salary demands -- said to be in excess of $20 million -- and finish filming before a possible actors strike next summer. According to Variety, the texture could be much like that of "Das Boot," the claustrophobic film in which common sailors do extraordinary things.
-------- environment
NASA finds largest-ever ozone hole
CNN
October 4, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/10/04/ozone.hole/index.html
GREENBELT, Maryland (CNN) -- Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said they have located the largest ozone hole ever recorded, an area approximately three times the size of the United States.
In a report released Wednesday, NASA said satellites observed an 11.5 million square-mile hole --actually a severe thinning of Earth's protective ozone layer-- last month over Antarctica.
Scientists blamed a combination of the usual suspects -- chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-eating chemicals -- and an upper-level wind called the polar vortex, which swirls around Antarctica. This year, the vortex's swirl is bigger than usual, "and so the fact that it's a little bit bigger creates a bigger ozone hole," said NASA's Paul Newman.
NASA said atmospheric levels of CFCs have leveled off in the wake of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which aims to phase out production of ozone-destroying chemicals. But the chemicals can stay in the atmosphere for decades, so it will be a long time before a chemical crackdown on earth will translate to changes in the stratosphere.
The depletion of the ozone layer allows more of the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays to reach Earth. Researchers say that leads to higher rates of skin cancer. They are also worried about the ocean around Antarctica because plankton, the base of the food chain there, may be vulnerable to higher levels of ultraviolet radiation.
Scientists also are trying to determine whether there is a relationship between the formation of ozone holes and global warming, the theory that certain kinds of pollution create an atmospheric blanket that warms the Earth.
---
Tanker Spills Oil in Indonesian Waters
Washington Post
Wednesday, October 4, 2000 ; Page A26
WORLD In Brief Compiled by John Burgess
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5888-2000Oct3.html
ASIA
SINGAPORE--A Panama-registered tanker ran aground between Indonesia and Singapore yesterday, spilling about 2 million gallons of crude oil into the sea, officials said. The leakage appeared to have stopped by late afternoon, said Sam Norton, commercial director of the Singapore-based company Tanker Pacific, the ship's manager.
No injuries were reported among the 32 people aboard the Natuna Sea, which ran aground in Indonesian waters five miles southeast of Singapore.
An oil patch about one mile long and a half-mile wide was drifting toward Indonesia's Riau Islands, about 12 miles south of Singapore, said Felicia Wu, spokeswoman for the Singapore Maritime and Port Authority.
A private salvage company placed an oil boom--a floating device used to contain spills--around the vessel and sent two cleanup craft to the scene, Norton said. Singapore cleanup craft were on standby to help.
The spill, although substantial, was smaller than other high-profile mishaps such as a 1997 tanker collision that spilled about 7 million gallons of oil off Singapore. The Exxon Valdez tanker incident in Alaska dumped 11 million gallons in 1989.
There was no immediate word on what caused the vessel to run aground.
---
USA Today
10/04/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Delaware
Rehoboth Beach - State officials purchased 110 acres next to Cape Henlopen State Park to buffer the popular wildlife and recreation area from nearby developments. The $4.1 million purchase includes forest and wetlands. Officials say it is one of the last undeveloped and unprotected parcels along the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal.
New Jersey
Newark - Federal environmental officials have decided on cleanup plans for three former industrial sites in Edison, Manville and Sayreville. Contaminated soil will be hauled away at a cost of nearly $59 million, the Environmental Protection Agency said. At least eight homes and several abandoned commercial buildings will be demolished.
-------- genetics
Deeper pockets
Small biotech players told they'll need help from the big pharmaceuticals
Montreal Gazette
Wednesday 4 October 2000
SHEILA McGOVERN The Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/pages/001004/4629488.html
A bright idea is no match for a bulging bankbook.
Small biotechnology companies attending an industry conference in Montreal yesterday were told there is little chance they will be able to get their discoveries to market without the help of one of the big drug companies.
About 800 delegates attending the Crossroads conference held annually by the Biotechnology Research Centre heard from a number of different speakers who all returned to a common theme: The big drug companies are becoming bigger through mergers, competition is stiff, speed is of the essence and, as a result, the cost of developing drugs and getting them to market is rising.
Strategic alliances are not new to the biotechnology industry. Many smaller companies have joined forces with the big players. They surrender part of their profits in return for financial help during development and expertise in marketing. One of the most famous early examples was BioChem Pharma, which joined forces with Glaxo Wellcome to develop its blockbuster anti-Aids drug, 3TC.
However, conference delegates were told the trend to alliances will continue and increase, even though it is now easier for biotechs to raise money on stock exchanges.
It takes about 10 years and $800 million to get a drug from a molecule to a government-approved drug, said Paul L'Archeveque, chief executive officer of PharmaVision-Quebec, and the company must still add the cost of marketing the drug.
The pressure to produce drugs more quickly is bound to intensify, he said. Until recently, the industry was predicting it would map the human genome by 2003, but in fact, the map was completed last summer. This will lead to a rush of revolutionary new drugs that attempt to alter a malfunctioning gene.
Direct Marketing
"The complexity and costs are getting too high for this revolution to be undertaken alone," he said.
Tom McKillop, chief executive officer of AstraZeneca, said the cost of marketing drugs is also bound to rise. Right now, the U.S. is the only country that allows companies to market drugs directly to consumers through television commercials and magazine ads. However, the Internet is making information available to all consumers, he said, and governments are now rethinking their policies.
Marketing directly to consumers is very effective, he said, but it is also very expensive.
Fierce competition amongthe big companies is also necessitating greater speed and marketing, he said. At one time, a company could introduce a drug and not expect other companies to introduce a similar drug for five years, he said. "Now, if you're lucky, you've got five months."
Claude Vezeau, vice-president (investment) at BioCapital, said small biotechs won't be the only ones looking for strategic alliances; so will the big pharmaceutical companies.
The large companies are under pressure to maintain double-digit growth, he said, and replace the millions of dollars worth of drugs that are about to have their patents expire, leaving them open to generic competition. They won't be able to produce that degree of growth internally, he said.
-------- police
Hunt for Bodies Will Test Allegations Against Perez
Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, October 4, 2000
By SCOTT GLOVER and MATT LAIT, Times Staff Writers
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/reports/rampart/lat_bodies001004.htm
Federal investigators are preparing to search a garbage-strewn hillside near downtown Tijuana for the graves of three people who an informant claims were buried there by former Los Angeles Police Department officers Rafael Perez and David Mack, law enforcement sources confirmed Tuesday.
The search, expected to occur within days, is part of an ongoing federal investigation aimed at corroborating the allegations of 23-year-old Sonia Flores, Perez's former lover. Investigators have so far been unable to confirm or disprove her allegations.
Perez, now in jail, is providing authorities with information on alleged police corruption in return for a lesser sentence for stealing cocaine; Mack is serving a prison sentence for bank robbery.
"We don't know if she's credible or not," one law enforcement source said of Perez's ex-lover.
Flores said she has been cooperating secretly with authorities since late last year, but the full scope of her allegations against Mack and Perez--two of the LAPD's most notorious former officers--have not been previously disclosed.
In an interview with The Times on Monday, Flores said she watched as Mack and Perez killed a young man and an older woman during a botched drug deal in an apartment near downtown Los Angeles.
She said those two bodies and that of another person allegedly killed by Mack were driven across the border and buried in the middle of the night in what is essentially a garbage dump in the hills overlooking Tijuana. Flores alleges that she traveled to Tijuana with Perez and Mack when they disposed of the third body.
Despite what some sources said were "doubts" about Flores' allegations, authorities have taken several concrete steps based on her information. The FBI has conducted forensic tests on the Bellevue Avenue apartment where Flores alleges the killings of a young cocaine dealer and his mother occurred. Investigators also obtained a search warrant and seized a 1986 black BMW belonging to another LAPD officer, which Flores says was used to dispose of the bodies. And late last week the young woman provided investigators with a hand-drawn map to the alleged Tijuana grave sites. Federal authorities confirm that they are making arrangements to have the area excavated.
One source familiar with the investigation said some of Flores' claims have been corroborated.
"She said she had sex with Perez. Well, she had sex with Perez. She said that one officer had a black BMW and that was true too. We're taking it one step at a time," the source said.
Flores said the U.S. attorney has offered her an immunity agreement that would protect her from prosecution for any crimes in which she implicates herself. Federal authorities declined comment on that claim.
Winston Kevin McKesson, Perez's lawyer, called Flores' allegations "a desperate plea for attention."
"At this point, I have not seen any facts that would lead me to believe that my client has not been totally forthright and honest throughout this investigation," McKesson said.
Mack is serving a 14-year sentence in federal prison. His attorney, Donald M. Re, did not return a call seeking comment.
Flores approached The Times this week, in part, she said, because she is tired of investigators' challenging the veracity of her allegations. She said she has been repeatedly threatened that if she is lying, she will be criminally charged.
"What reason do I have to lie. . . . What good can I get out of this?" asked Flores, who contends that she has offered to take a polygraph examination.
Investigators "came to me," she said. "I didn't come to them."
Flores alleges that she had a years-long affair with Perez that began when she was a teenager. Perez has acknowledged having had sex with her, but said it was a one-time occurrence.
During the course of their alleged relationship, Flores alleges, she witnessed a variety of crimes, from drug dealing to murder.
According to Flores, she accompanied Perez and Mack on a drug deal in late 1994 or early 1995 that ended in the alleged double homicide.
Flores said she was with Perez and Mack at a "crash pad" apartment near the Rampart station when the officers, clad in black clothing, donned bulletproof vests. They said they were going to take care of some business, which she took to mean a drug deal. She said she got into a black BMW with the two officers, thinking little of it at the time because she had served as a courier in cocaine transactions for Perez on many occasions while they were dating.
On this night, Flores said, they drove to a nearby apartment on Bellevue to see an alleged drug dealer she knew as "Chino." She said that after they went inside the second story apartment where the man lived with a woman Flores believes was his mother, an argument ensued. She said Perez, speaking in Spanish, began threatening the young man and his mother, saying that if they did not turn over money that the son owed to Perez and Mack, they would be killed.
Seconds later, she said, Perez pushed the man to the floor and shot him in the shoulder. As the man's mother knelt down to console her wounded son, the two officers continued to demand their money, she said.
When no money was offered, Flores alleges, Perez stood over the man and fatally shot him in the head. She said Mack, who was armed with a handgun fitted with a silencer, then shot the sobbing mother in the head.
Flores said she was sitting on a couch just a few feet from where the two were shot and was splattered with blood. Mack, she said, ordered her to go to the kitchen and retrieve a plastic shopping bag, which he used to cover the woman's head, which was bleeding profusely.
Perez and Mack then wrapped the bodies in carpet, securing it with duct tape, and carried them to the BMW and an LAPD patrol car that was outside, Flores said.
The patrol car was driven to the scene after the officers spoke via walkie-talkie "in code" to its driver, who was a friend of Mack and Perez's, Flores said.
The current residents of the apartment confirmed to The Times that investigators recently removed carpet from their home and conducted tests for more than seven hours as they waited outside. Flores said she accompanied investigators to the scene and was able to provide them with a detailed layout of the apartment before they entered it to conduct their search.
After the shooting, Flores said, she was driven back to the crash pad and told to stay there and keep quiet. Perez and Mack made her remove her bloodstained clothing, she said. The next morning, she said, the officers threatened her and her family if she talked to anyone about the killings.
"I was sort of read my rights," Flores said. "I had the right not to talk or I would be killed."
She said Perez called her from jail to reiterate that threat shortly after he agreed to a plea bargain last September, in which he agreed to testify against allegedly corrupt officers in exchange for the lighter sentence for stealing cocaine from LAPD facilities.
Two months after the alleged killings, Flores said, she accompanied Mack and Perez on what she thought was a spur-of-the-moment road trip to Tijuana. Part way there, she claims, she learned that a woman's body was hidden in the back of Perez's Ford Explorer. She said the alleged victim was a girlfriend of Mack's. Flores said they told her that they were going to dump the body in the same place where they had disposed of the other two.
Flores alleges that the officers had "a contact" within the Tijuana police force who helped them dispose of the bodies. She alleges that the pair believed that the Latino bodies wouldn't be noticed south of the border, where the bodies of those killed in Tijuana's drug violence turn up on nearly a daily basis. Flores said that the officers made her wait at a nearby beauty salon while they buried the woman's body. Later that day, she said, Perez showed her the mounds of dirt where the victims were buried.
Flores' allegations further complicate prosecutors' efforts to bring charges against Perez's former colleagues in the Rampart Division. Defense attorneys representing the four officers who are supposed to stand trial on corruption-related charges thisweek only recently learned some of Flores' accusations. Her allegations, the attorneys contend, could further undermine Perez's credibility.
Looking back, Flores said, she is surprised that she was allowed to live to tell her story years later.
"Mack and Perez are smart people," she said. "The only stupid thing they did was having me around when they did this stuff."
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Four LAPD officers go on trial
USA Today
10/04/00- Updated 07:35 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm#tire
LOS ANGELES - As the first trial emerges from a LAPD scandal that has tormented the city for a year, the fate of four officers hinges on the credibility of their accuser. Disgraced former Officer Rafael Perez sparked the case by agreeing to inform on others after getting caught stealing cocaine from an evidence locker. He accused fellow officers of planting evidence, shooting suspects and perjuring themselves. But few charges have been filed against the supposedly crooked officers. Whether there will be more cases and whether they can be won depends on the case that is set to begin Wednesday with jury selection.
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Ties taint Carnivore review
USA Today
10/04/00- Updated 08:58 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/nceditf.htm
So much for the hope that an independent review would settle privacy worries about the FBI's new system for snooping on e-mail.
Two months after grudgingly agreeing to let outside authorities decide whether the Internet eavesdropping program named Carnivore endangers civil liberties, Attorney General Janet Reno last week gave the job to the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI). Among the reasons: its ability to conduct the most independent review.
But the Department of Justice's selection raises serious questions about its definition of "independent."
IITRI accepted limitations on its research required by the Justice Department, including the power to censor its final report.
The high-tech branch of the research institute, which will perform the analysis, receives 80% of its funding from the federal government, mostly the Department of Defense and the Internal Revenue Service, giving it an incentive to provide a review the government - its largest client - will like.
The Department of Justice hasn't told IITRI the name of the government contractor that created Carnivore. Without the information, IITRI researchers, who work for and consult with dozens of high-tech firms, can't guarantee their independence.
Yet those problems pale when compared to the conflicts posed by the individual IITRI staff members and the Illinois Institute of Technology law professors named to work on the review. While all are highly qualified, most members of the team have personal connections to federal-government agencies, the Clinton administration or even the Department of Justice itself. It does not take much imagination to question the objectivity of former government employees and Clinton-administration political allies.
The two lawyers who are part of the IITRI team have direct conflicts of interest. One was an adviser to the Clinton transition team in 1992 and 1993 and has since made the maximum legal donation to Al Gore's presidential campaign. The other is a former Department of Justice lawyer.
Of the seven scientists and computer technicians slated to work on the review, three are longtime defense contractors, and one was an employee of the National Security Agency until last year. Most have high-level government clearances. Yet Carnivore has been used to tap the Internet more often in national security cases than in crime investigations, according to the FBI. Men and women who have made their careers working in national security are not likely to rock the boat.
On top of that, the Justice Department has dedicated only $175,000 to perform this quickie six-week review. The American Civil Liberties Union calls that a "minuscule" amount of time and money. That's right, if Reno intends anything more than a whitewash.
The independent review was supposed to settle public fears about a two-year-old computer system that has been used secretly to tap into e-mail dozens of times. Instead, the Justice Department's decision to hire political insiders combined with its taste for secrecy has only increased concerns that the Clinton administration is not interested in an independent review.
FBI Assistant Director Donald Kerr told a Senate committee that "trust in the FBI's use of Carnivore should rest upon the FBI's openness and willingness to discuss this device."
Based on that standard, the public should have no trust at all.
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We made right choice
USA Today
10/04/00- Updated 08:58 AM ET
By Stephen R. Colgate
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/ncoppf.htm
Law enforcement must honor not only its duty to protect the public, but also its obligation to ensure the civil liberties of all Americans. That is why the FBI will subject its Carnivore system to an independent review.
Carnivore is a tool that enables federal agents, who have first obtained a court order, to gather information from electronic communications.
Last week, we selected an institute with outstanding technical expertise to review the technical aspects of the Carnivore system. The Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI) was chosen, not only because of its reputation, but also for its commitment to providing a thorough, timely and, most importantly, independent review.
While IITRI has previously done work with the government, that should not disqualify this institute, or any other university. In fact, virtually every university and research-and-development entity would have had significant research grants or contracts with some part of the federal government.
Further, IITRI has not had any significant recent contracts or grants with the Justice Department.
The team that IITRI assembles will have access to all of the information about Carnivore that we have, including the source code and the organization that created the program. It would not have been possible to divulge this information to all applicants before the selection.
Since 1936, IITRI has been a not-for-profit, university-affiliated research organization. If we interfere with the review in any way, we expect the team to say so.
The institute has a well-deserved reputation for independent, objective analysis. It knows its success depends on maintaining that reputation.
And we know it, too.
Stephen R. Colgate is assistant attorney general for