------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
*Radiation alert under ozone hole in southern Chile
*CZECH REPUBLIC: NUCLEAR PLANT OPENS
*Czech nuclear plant gets green light
*Czechs Start Nuclear Plant, Anger Austria
*No 'tilt' toward India
*Don't Fear Saddam
*Lawyers call for phased pull-out from nuclear energy
*Top North Korean official en route to Washington
*Clinton, North Korean Meet to Try to Ease Tensions
*North Korean Envoy Starts Washington Meetings
*Clinton meets with top N. Korean minister
*Russian Barge Held Radioactive Cargo
*Profiling Safeguards
*ENERGY DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATING BIAS
*WEAPONS OVER WORKERS

MILITARY
*Drug-related crimes keep Colombian army busy
*Biker bosses back at the table
*U.S. Companies Tangled in Web of Drug Dollars
*Alaska's Voters to Decide On Legalizing Marijuana
*Tories Fail Tough Test on Drugs
*Northwest Heroin Use Is Epidemic
*TURKEY: NATO WAR GAMES
*Pakistan's Record on Rights Criticized
*No concession to Iran
*N. Ireland's story
*N. Korea Celebrates Party's Start
*North Korean Visits U.S.
*HOLGER JENSEN: Please remit payment
*IRAQ: TURKEY FLIES IN RELIEF
*NEWS OF OTHER LIFE FORMS
*Underground Fire Smolders in Peat Bog

OTHER
*Car-Makers Say Diesel Isn't Just for Trucks Anymore
*'A trillion-dollar market'
*In Caribbean, Endangered Iguanas Get Their Day
*Record Ozone Hole Refuels Debate on Climate
*Paying for Conservation
*Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich On Human Nature, Genetics and the Evolution of Culture
*Genetics without guesswork
*Officials taken to alleged burial site
*Baltimore's top cop sets example
*Board to investigate botched raid
*CITY COUNCIL HEARING ON POLICE
*Back Channels: The Intelligence Community
*Pentagon Can't Find Ex-C.I.A. Chief's Disks
*DEUTCH'S DISKETTES STILL MISSING
*The war on whistle-blowers
*Clinton, N. Korean Meeting Called 'Positive'

ACTIVISTS
*Confront the Transatlantic Business Dialogue in Cincinnati November 15-19
*SUZUKI INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION
*RadTimes # 65
*Chernobyl Victims Demand More Aid
*Women give full voice to concerns
*March for Palestine loud but peaceful
*University of Hawaii students are planning a protest
*CRANK IT UP


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

-------- chile

Radiation alert under ozone hole in southern Chile

Planet Ark
CHILE: October 10, 2000
Story by Chris Aspin
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8499

PUNTA ARENAS, Chile - A wide swath of southern Chile was on alert yesterday as dangerous levels of ultraviolet radiation hit peaks because of the depletion of the protective ozone layer over the Antarctic.

Health authorities warned the 120,000 residents of this wool and fishing city - one of the few populated areas beneath the ozone hole in the southern hemisphere - not to go out in the sun during the day.

The ozone hole over the Antarctic this year has reached its deepest since scientists began measuring it 15 years ago, with more than 50 percent depletion being recorded throughout most of the hole, United Nations experts said on Friday.

That has left this windy city 1,400 miles (2,240 km) south of Chile's capital, Santiago, - and also the Argentine city of Ushuaia on the nearby island Tierra del Fuego - open to harmful ultraviolet radiation which can cause skin cancer and destroy tiny plants in the food chain.

The tip of the Americas, south of the Patagonia wilds where Britain's Prince William is on a character-building expedition, is the only landmass outside the Antarctic exposed to ultraviolet radition from the ozone hole.

WARNING NOT TO GO OUT INTO THE SUN

"We are warning people throughout the region not to go out in the sun between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.," said Lidia Amarales, the health minister in Chile's most southerly Magallanes and Antarctic Region, where Punta Arenas is the provincial capital.

Health authorities called an orange alert - the second most dangerous level in a scale of four - in which ultraviolet (UV) exposure can cause skin burns in 7 minutes. A red alert can provoke burning in 5 minutes.

"If people have to leave their homes they should wear high factor sun creams, UV protective sunglasses, wide brimmed hats and clothing with long sleeves," said Amarales.

Dr. Claudio Casiccia, head of the ozone department at the University of Magallanes, said ultraviolet radiation levels hit an all-time peak Saturday. "We are slightly below that level now but still on alert," he said.

Despite the alert, many local residents walked the streets unprotected yesterday. "I have to go to buy bread and scarcely have money for that, so forget the sunglasses and suncream," said Adriana Cerpa, a 28-year-old housewife.

Experts from the United Nations' World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Friday the ozone hole is at its deepest level on record and that "near total destruction" of the ozone in some layers of the stratosphere had been observed since the middle of September, much earlier than in previous years.

CHEMICALS CAUSING OZONE DEPLETION

Chemicals - including chlorine compounds used in refrigerants, aerosol sprays and solvents and bromine compounds used in firefighting halogens - are blamed for causing depletion.

Extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere during the southern hemisphere's winter spark off the chemical ozone depletion, a process that accelerates as the region enters spring-time.

For more than a decade, the hole has appeared in late August or early September, with the phenomenon peaking in the first week or two of October, a clear sign that greenhouse gases are eating away the earth's protective layer.

All 12 monitoring stations around the rim of the Antarctic have reported measurements of ozone this spring that are 50-70 percent below the norms in the years 1964-1976, before the ozone hole was detected, the Geneva-based WMO said.

An image released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Sept. 8 showed a hole appearing as a giant blue blob, totally covering Antarctica and stretching to the southern tip of South America.

NASA said the hole spread over 11 million square miles (28.3 million square km), an area three times larger than the land mass of the United States.

-------- czech republic

CZECH REPUBLIC: NUCLEAR PLANT OPENS

New York Times
October 10, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/world/10BRIE.html

Over the objections of Austria, a nuclear power plant 40 miles from the Austrian border was activated after the operators got the go-ahead from the Czech State Office for Nuclear Safety. Austria has threatened to block the Czech Republic's entry to the European Union over the issue, and protesters have blocked border crossings into the republic. Katka Fronk (NYT)

---

Czech nuclear plant gets green light

Washington Times
October 10, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports

PRAGUE - Workers took the first steps yesterday to begin activating a controversial nuclear-power plant 30 miles from the Austrian border.

The plant at the small village of Temelin has been a source of friction between the two countries, with some activists demanding a halt to the project. In a symbolic protest, hundreds of Austrians blocked two border crossings with the Czech Republic yesterday.

The first fission reaction was expected in 20 to 30 hours, and energy from the plant's first 1,000-megawatt reactor will be available for commercial use in December.

---

Czechs Start Nuclear Plant, Anger Austria

EUROPE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41004-2000Oct9?language=printer

TEMELIN, Czech Republic--Workers took the first steps to activate a new nuclear power plant 30 miles from the Austrian border, intensifying a dispute with Austria over the plant's safety. Thousands of Austrian environmentalists blocked the largest border crossing in protest.

The plant has caused the Czech Republic's sharpest diplomatic conflict with its western neighbors since the end of communism. Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel wrote to Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman Sunday asking him to postpone Temelin's activation and repeating an Austrian threat to obstruct Prague's efforts to join the European Union.

The State Office for Nuclear Safety gave permission for the start-up of the first reactor of the Temelin nuclear plant, a Soviet-designed facility that will operate with a Western control system. The first nuclear chain reaction is expected sometime today, and plant director Frantisek Hezoucky told reporters the reactor will be in full operation in five months.

A second reactor is to be completed 15 months after the first becomes operational.

-------- india / pakistan

No 'tilt' toward India

Washington Times
October 10, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison
News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-20001010212212.htm

"Tilt." That is such a Cold-War word, and Karl Inderfurth says it has no place in the lexicon of diplomacy regarding U.S. policy toward India and Pakistan.

The assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs insisted in an interview with the Voice of America that the United States favors neither regional rival on the subcontinent.

A VOA reporter mentioned the recent Washington visit of Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who also received the rare honor of addressing a joint session of Congress.

Mr. Vajpayee's visit followed President Clinton's five-day trip to India in March, when he stopped briefly in Pakistan to confer with Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who leads the military government. Mr. Clinton's trip marked the first time an American president visited India in 22 years.

All that led the VOA reporter to remark that the visits are evidence of a great strengthening of U.S.-Indian relations since the end of the Cold War 10 years ago.

"In fact, some observers claim to detect a tilt in U.S.'s policy away from the U.S.'s Cold War ally, Pakistan, and toward India," the reporter noted.

Mr. Inderfurth responded that such talk about a "tilt' is outdated.

"I think it's important to note that really 'tilt' is Cold War terminology," he said in the interview that was broadcast over the weekend on VOA television's "On The Line" show.

"It was said during the Cold War that India tilted toward the Soviet Union and that Pakistan tilted toward the United States. During that time the United States was seen as tilting toward Pakistan.

"That's over. The Cold War is over. . . . And we believe that 'tilt' is really no longer a meaningful term to use in the context of our relations in South Asia.

"We're not tilting toward either country, India or Pakistan."

Mr. Inderfurth said the United States has a "growing relationship with India" and a "long-standing friendship with Pakistan."

"But neither relationship is targeted or directed at the other," he insisted. "This is not a zero-sum game."

-------- iraq

Don't Fear Saddam

Washington Post
Tuesday, October 10, 2000 ; Page A25
By Jim Hoagland
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41007-2000Oct9.html

The savagery of the Palestinian-Israeli violence of the past 10 days blows open new opportunities for deadly mischief by Saddam Hussein and other Arab extremists. The overly cautious effort by President Clinton at containing Saddam is being rapidly overtaken by the new crisis in the Middle East.

Fear has been a constant companion and a poor counselor for Clinton on Iraq. Like the raven of Edgar Allen Poe, fear has perched in the Oval Office for nearly eight years, cawing to Clinton: "Don't."

In its final days, the Clinton administration has been moving to provide new support to Saddam's democratic opposition and to take baby steps toward dealing with Iran, the dictator's neighboring enemy. Better in extremis than never.

But the changes also underscore how needlessly hesitant Clinton was on Iraq while he had a relatively free hand to act. In an atmosphere of Islamic holy war on Israel, trying to maintain a coalition against Saddam becomes infinitely harder.

Fearful of being dragged into war by Iraqi guerrilla forces he once covertly supported, Clinton abandoned the guerrillas five years ago. Fearful of being dragged into war over U.N. arms inspections, he abandoned the inspections two years ago. Fearful of international criticism, he has submitted to travel and economic sanctions against Iraq being shredded daily by Russia, France, Turkey and Arab nations "friendly" to Washington.

A trickle of international flights, border openings and calls for lifting the economic embargo on Iraq has turned into a flood since violence erupted in the West Bank and Gaza on Sept. 28. Saddam has actively sought to exploit the poisonous atmosphere, promising Arabs he will send guns and troops to help Palestinians exterminate Israelis. What Clinton feared, his policies have helped produce.

Fear itself becomes a weapon that foes can learn to wield against America. Saddam has bought two years of unimpeded work on weapons of mass destruction by manipulating Clinton's valid but overdrawn concerns.

Those concerns have centered on the (undeniable) dangers of confronting this Arab dictator directly and on the less tangible impact of his fall on the region. The Arabist-leaning bureaucracies of the State Department and the Pentagon fear Iraq's possible disintegration, Iran's rise in the Persian Gulf power sweepstakes and the impact of democracy, should that come to Iraq, on neighboring Arab oil monarchies.

Such concerns underpin the roadblocks the administration has thrown up to Republican-led congressional efforts to get money, guns and training to Saddam's foes. Now, some of the roadblocks are being bypassed, under pressure from Vice President Al Gore.

After months of stalling, the State Department announced last week agreement to provide $4 million over five months to the Iraqi National Congress, the most significant anti-Saddam dissident organization. Another $4 million grant for the INC may follow early next year.

Details of the funding were not released. But they were outlined to me by INC and State Department sources. Getting a satellite television station and a new radio network broadcasting into Iraq this autumn is the INC's most urgent priority in its $1.8 million public information budget.

The State Department will also provide $425,000 to fund INC distribution of humanitarian relief in southern Iraq, with food and medicine likely to come from the Pentagon. And State offers the INC $190,580 to open regional offices in Tehran and Damascus.

Chicken feed as these things go? Yes. The CIA used to spend $300,000 a month on the INC. But the funding puts out new lines to countries with a serious interest in Saddam's downfall. Syria has a new leader in Bashar Assad, and Iran's leadership has been dancing an increasingly complex minuet of opening to the world, including the United States.

The INC will handle all contact with Iran to establish its office. But the U.S. funding for the office will be seen in Tehran--and by Saddam--as a step forward in the U.S.-Iran minuet. It will drive Saddam nuts, which is fine with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Albright is not cowed by the bureaucracy's Iranophobia, and she seems to understand the perils of allowing fear to dictate policy.

So perhaps does Gore, who broke with the Democratic Party leadership to vote for Operation Desert Storm a decade ago. As he gradually gets control of administration policy through the election campaign, it tends to reflect his more hawkish views.

Or this may be a ploy, a $4 million investment in reducing Gore's vulnerability: The INC would have nothing today if Senate Republicans had not pushed and harried the Clinton-Gore team to give them support. And George W. Bush's foreign policy advisers include people who have understood and fought Saddam's evil every step of the way, even when others on the Bush team did not.

But Gore should get the benefit of the doubt at this stage. Whether he or Bush wins, an era of policy stained by fear should be coming to an end. Saddam should soon be deprived of his most effective weapon.

-------- japan

Lawyers call for phased pull-out from nuclear energy as part of human rights

Tue, 10 Oct 2000
JPS <jpspress@twics.com>

TOKYO OCT 10 JPS -- The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has adopted aresolution calling for nuclear power plants to be phased out.

The resolution was adopted at the Federation's 43rd Convention for Human Rights Defense held on October 5 and 6 in Gifu Prefecture. It stated that Japan with its policy of continuing its excessive dependence on nuclear energy is isolated from the world in which the trend is towards getting away from nuclear power generation and developing renewable energy sources. It also pointed out the undemocratic decision-making process by which over 90 percent of the national budget for research and development of energy goes to nuclear energy.

Aimed at a drastic change from such a policy, the resolution proposes the following five points: (1) a ban on the new construction and extension of nuclear plants and phased abolition of the existing plants; (2) legislation to promote publicly funded R&D of renewable energy; (3) administration on nuclear energy safety and regulation separate from administrative bodies promoting nuclear energy; (4) an end to reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel; and (5) a freeze on the policy of dumping high-level radioactive waste underground and more R&D seeking disposal options.

A symposium on energy policy was held as part of the convention for human rights defense, with the attendance of about 200 lawyers and 450 citizens. A Kobe University professor alerted the audience to the danger of dumping radioactive waste underground in earthquake-prone Japan. He criticized the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Organization's report for underestimating the danger. (end item)

JPS 10-030

U.S. pressured local parties and unions to scrap "Non-nuclear Kobe Port Formula"

TOKYO OCT 10 JPS --It was learned late last September that the U.S. consul general for Osaka and Kobe pressured local political parties in Kobe City to allow U.S. warships to visit Kobe Port in defiance of the city's ban on the entry of nuclear armed ships (the Non-Nuclear Kobe Formula).

Last May, U.S. Consul General in Osaka-Kobe Robert Ludan suggested this to representatives of ruling parties of the Kobe government (the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Party of Japan and the Komei Party), and in August, he exchanged views with three port workers' unions.

In November 1999, in a meeting with assembly members of Osaka Prefecture, Osaka City, Hyogo Prefecture, and Kobe City, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Foley called for the non-nuclear formula to be abandoned, hoping that U.S. vessels' entry will be realized while he is in office.

Then last March, Secretary of Navy Richard Danzig made a similar demand in talks with Japan's Defense Agency Director General Tsutomu Kawara.

Akahata on October 7 pointed out that behind the pressure is U.S. military plans based on the new Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation Guideline and the War Laws, quoting Ludan as stating to Kobe Shimbun, a local daily (February 28) that U.S. warships, if allowed to enter Kobe Port, will carry out training for the defense of Japan.

The Non-Nuclear Kobe Port Formula was unanimously adopted by the Kobe City Assembly in March 1975 which requires every warship entering Kobe Port to submit certificates stating that it carries no nuclear weapons. Although U.S. warships visited the port 432 times during 15 years till 1975, this has effectively blocked further U.S. warship calls at the port because of the U.S. policy which refuses to discuss the existence of nuclear weapons.

Legislation of a similar formula with Kobe's is spreading to other local governments such as Kochi Prefecture, Otaru City and Hakodate City in Hokkaido, and New Zealand has enacted a non-nuclear law.

Also the United Nations NGO Millennium Forum last May called for getting the Kobe Formula to be adopted by the governments of the world, and the 2000 World Conference against A and H Bombs stressed the need to develop the Kobe-Formula policy.

To counter this, the U.S. consulate general for Osaka and Kobe has sent a letter to a democratic organization in Hyogo which has protested to the call by the U.S. cruiser Vincennes at Osaka Port. In 1998, helped by Japan's Foreign Ministry, a Canadian warship called at Kobe Port without submitting a non-nuclear certificate.

The Kobe City Government maintains that it will call on any foreign ships to submit such a certificate. Thus whether to defend or scrap the Kobe Formula has become a hot issue. (end item)

JPS 10-032

Peace organizations call for opposition to largest ever joint Japan-U.S. forces exercises

TOKYO OCT 10 JPS -- Two Japanese peace organizations October 6 published an appeal calling on the Japanese people to oppose the largest-ever Japan-U.S. forces' joint exercises scheduled for November, the first under the War Laws.

In the appeal, the Japan Peace Committee and the Central Action Committee against the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty said that the joint exercises are a series of actions to put into practice the War Laws.

The U.S. Forces and the Japan Self-Defense Forces are now planning to hold comprehensive military exercises from November 2 through 18. It will include exercises for the search of U.S. soldiers, the rescue and evacuation of non-combatants from areas in conflict, and land combat.

If it is carried out as scheduled, a number of localities hosting military bases of the two forces will have to be involved in areas ranging from Misawa City in the northern prefecture of Aomori to Sasebo City in the southern prefecture of Nagasaki, plus Okinawa.

The appeal calls on all those who will be affected by the exercises to take part in the movement against the dangerous undertaking by setting up a nation-wide network to exchange information that might be useful for the struggle.

The appeal also calls for success of the October 21 concerted action against the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and the Japan Peace Conference 2000 scheduled for November in Okinawa. (end item)

JPS 10-034

Local residents terrified by U.S. low-flying exercises

TOKYO OCT 10 JPS -- As U.S. low-altitude flight exercises continue terrifying local residents in the Chugogu region (western Japan), about 100 residents from towns directly affected by the exercises met to discuss the damage from those exercises on October 7 in Geihoku Town in Hiroshima Prefecture.

The U.S. low-flying training frequently take place around Hiroshima and Shimane prefectures, disturbing and even terrifying the residents' lives.

In the symposium organized by Geihoku Town and citizens' groups, the town mayor said that he understands the residents' anxieties about possible accidents during the U.S. military practice. Over 90 percent of towns people have testified that they witnessed U.S. aircraft flying at a very low altitude, he said. Recently the low-flying aircraft have been witnessed on Sundays, national holidays, and even at night, the mayor complained.

A schoolmaster said that some pupils start to cry because of aircraft's sonic booms and its appearance. He added that he is worried about adverse effects low-altitude flight might have on the children's mind.

A citizen reported that he daily witnesses bombing exercises by U.S. fighter aircraft near a civilian airport.

A village mayor said he will make efforts to get a quiet sky back in cooperation with residents and peace organizations as well as the government. (end item)

-------- korea

Top North Korean official en route to Washington

CNN
October 10, 2000 Web posted at: 9:23 a.m. HKT (0123 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/east/10/09/n.korea.usa/index.html

WASHINGTON -- North Korean President Kim Jong Il's right-hand man is expected to arrive in Washington on Monday night after leaving California earlier in the day.

Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok is serving as special envoy for the reclusive Kim, son of the founder of the ailing communist nation. His visit is aimed at improving his country's relations with an old foe and may include discussions about a new security plan for the divided Korean Peninsula.

Planned for more than a year, Jo's visit offers further evidence of North Korea's intent to emerge from its historic reserve toward the outside world.

It also comes in tandem with a thaw in relations between North and South Korea, which culminated in the June summit between Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

Tough, modern, outward-looking

Little is known about Jo, a soldier of 50 years and the first vice-chairman of the country's national defense commission. He arrived Sunday in San Francisco, California, for a one-day stopover before continuing on to Washington.

A former air force commander, he is described as tough and highly nationalistic. But Jo also has a reputation by North Korean standards for being modern and outward-looking.

Published accounts say he is 78 years old, but an official biography provided by North Korea listed only his military and official appointments.

Jo has been involved in the North's rapprochement with South Korea. Analysts say Jo's active role illustrates how Kim Jong Il has brought a military long associated with hard-line policies into the gradually warming relations on the Korean peninsula.

Leader likely to discuss ballistic missiles

While in Washington, Jo is slated to meet with U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Once enemies during the 1950-53 Korean War, United States and North Korea have no diplomatic relations but have been talking about opening liaison offices in Washington and Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, as a first step toward exchanging ambassadors.

http://www.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/east/10/09/n.korea.usa/n.korea.pyongyang.lg.jpg

Among their likely topics: U.S. fears about North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile technology as well as its military sales to governments Washington opposes.

The United States has a keen interest in learning from Jo about Kim Jong Il's proposal to give up ballistic missile programs in return for foreign assistance with launching North Korean satellites.

As a representative of the Pyongyang government, Jo is expected to express the country's official desire to be removed from the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist-sponsoring nations.

Last week, the two countries took a minor step forward on terrorism when they issued a joint statement agreeing to exchange information and work toward removing North Korea from the State Department list.

But the North Koreans have yet to comply with a U.S. demand that they expel members of the extreme leftist Japanese Red Army who hijacked a Japanese airliner to North Korea in 1970.

Ambassador Wendy Sherman, coordinator of U.S. policy toward North Korea, tried last week to downplay expectations that the visit will lead to breakthroughs.

"The very fact of this visit is important and I believe historic," she said. "We are hopeful, of course ... that we will make progress on issues as well. But I think that remains to be seen, because this is a long process."

CNN Hong Kong Bureau Chief Mike Chinoy and Reuters contributed to this report.



---

Clinton, North Korean Meet to Try to Ease Tensions

Reuters
October 10. 2000 Filed at 4:36 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-korea-u.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and North Korea held their highest level meeting ever Tuesday, seeking to ease tensions a half century after they fought each other in the Korean War.

President Clinton met Jo Myong-rok, second-ranking official to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, for about 45 minutes in the White House Oval Office for talks a U.S. official described as ''very positive, direct and warm.''

Jo, vice chairman of North Korea's National Defense Commission, was the most senior official to visit Washington from the secretive, Stalinist state, which in recent years has sought to end its diplomatic isolation.

U.S. officials hope his three-day visit will serve to promote reconciliation between Pyongyang and Seoul following the historic June summit between North Korea's Kim and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

Washington also hopes to make some progress in persuading North Korea to rein in its nuclear and ballistic missile weapons programs and to meet conditions to lose Pyongyang's U.S. designation as a ``state sponsor of terrorism.''

In a sea change from the hostility and suspicion that have largely marked relations since the 1950-53 Korean War, U.S. officials described the Oval Office talks in upbeat terms and both sides stressed a desire for more constructive ties.

``This was an excellent start,'' Ambassador Wendy Sherman, coordinator of U.S. policy toward North Korea, told reporters, saying both sides had summarized their positions in a meeting that was more ceremonial than substantive.

In the making for a year, Jo's visit marked a gradual thaw in U.S.-North Korean relations driven largely by U.S. fears of North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile technology and its military sales to governments that Washington dislikes.

The United States fought with the South during the Korean War and has remained a staunch ally of Seoul ever since, stationing 37,000 troops in the country.

Sherman told reporters Jo gave Clinton a letter from Kim, son of the founder of North Korea, which said U.S.-North Korean relations were at an important point and expressed ``the hope that we would improve it further.''

UNIFORM SENDS SIGNAL?

In a visit as important in symbolism as in substance, Jo changed out of the gray business suit he wore to the State Department Tuesday morning and into full military dress for his White House talks with Clinton.

U.S. officials saw this as a signal that Pyongyang's military is solidly behind the opening to the United States after years of enmity.

``He was also, I think, conveying a very important message to us and to the citizens of North Korea and of the region that this effort to improve relations is one that is shared not only by the civilian side, by the foreign ministry, but by the military as well,'' Sherman told reporters.

On his arrival Monday night, Jo said he hoped his visit would ``remove deeply rooted and age-old distrust'' and promote U.S.-North Korean relations ``consonant with the environment of peace and reconciliation prevailing on the Korean peninsula.''

Sherman suggested the meeting between Clinton and Jo was relatively relaxed for such a rare meeting, with some flashes of humor and give-and-take exchanges.

``The vice marshal noted that he had spend his life in uniform,'' she said. ``By the end of the visit ... after having made a very forceful and warm presentation ... the president noted that he thought he would be a pretty good politician.''

Separately Tuesday, the United States said it was discussing food aid for drought-stricken North Korea with U.N. agencies but the issue had not been discussed so far with Jo. Boucher said Washington would await the assessments of U.N. agencies before deciding how much more it would donate.

Jo's visit followed an agreement between Washington and Pyongyang last Friday to exchange data on international terrorism and to work toward taking North Korea off the U.S. list of ``state sponsors of terrorism.''

The main requirements for being dropped from the list are that North Korea expel Japanese Red Army members who hijacked a Japanese airliner to North Korea in 1970 and make a public denunciation of terrorism.

The two countries have no diplomatic relations but have been talking about opening liaison offices in Washington and the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, as a first step toward exchanging ambassadors.

U.S. officials said the United States was also interested in learning more from Jo about Kim Jong-il's proposal to give up North Korea's ballistic missile programs in return for foreign assistance with launching North Korean satellites.

---

North Korean Envoy Starts Washington Meetings

Reuters
October 10, 2000 Filed at 8:48 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-korea-n.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top North Korean official began meetings in Washington on Tuesday on the first such visit since the 1950-53 Korean War.

Jo Myong-rok, a soldier with 50 years of service, paid a courtesy call on his host, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as the special envoy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, son of the founder of the secretive Stalinist state.

Washington hopes the three-day visit by Jo, the vice chairman of the National Defense Commission and the highest ranking North Korean after Kim Jong-il, could further heal ties between the former Cold War enemies.

After his brief call at the State Department, Jo will head to the White House for talks with President Clinton.

Albright will host a dinner later on Tuesday for Jo, who is due to meet with Defense Secretary William Cohen on Wednesday.

Washington wants to talk to Jo about his country's weapons programs, its status as a ``state sponsor of terrorism'' and how to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula.

One U.S. official said Washington was hopeful that the meetings could lead to a further ``step-by-step'' reduction in tensions between the former enemies.

``What is significant about this meeting is we have been looking for a so-called high-level visitor to come to the United States to reciprocate from a meeting that Dr.Perry made to Pyongyang last year,'' he said, referring to a groundbreaking visit in 1999 by the former U.S. defense secretary who had been coordinating American policy toward North Korea.

U.S. OFFICIALS SEE SIGNAL OF BETTER TIES

Kim's decision to send Jo, his second in command, came as a surprise to Washington, the official said.

``I think that's a signal from North Korea that they want to work at improving relations with the United States,'' he added.

Jo's visit follows an agreement between the two countries last Friday to exchange data on international terrorism and to work toward taking North Korea off the U.S. list of ``state sponsors of terrorism.''

The two countries, enemies in the Korean War, have no diplomatic relations but have been talking about opening liaison offices in Washington and the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, as a first step toward exchanging ambassadors.

``We'll have a chance to talk about how they view the North-South dialogue and how they want to see a further reduction in tension in the Korean peninsula,'' the U.S. official said.

He said the United States also was interested in learning more from Jo about Kim Jong-il's proposal to give up ballistic missile programs in return for foreign assistance with launching North Korean satellites.

Jo's visit has been in the making for almost a year and reflects a gradual thaw in U.S.-North Korean relations, driven largely by U.S. fears of North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile technology and its military sales to governments that Washington dislikes.

It has gone in tandem with a rapprochement between North and South Korea, which culminated in the June summit between Kim Jong-il and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

---

Clinton meets with top N. Korean minister

USA Today
10/10/00- Updated 02:58 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue03.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a groundbreaking encounter, President Clinton met Tuesday with a senior North Korean official and outlined his concerns about Pyongyang's policies in a number of areas, including missile development.

Clinton spent an hour with Cho Myong Nok, first vice chairman of North Korea's National Defense Commission and right-hand man to Pyongyang's supreme leader, Kim Jong Il.

Cho presented Clinton a personal letter from Kim. White House spokesman Jake Siewert said the letter offered proposals for easing tensions on the peninsula.

He said the administration will determine ''whether we can build on the progress that's already been made in the region'' since the leaders of North and South Korea had their summit meeting in June.

Clinton is the first American president to meet with a North Korean official.

Ambassador Wendy Sherman, the top State Department adviser on North Korea policy, told reporters after the meeting that Cho explained North Korea's concerns in what she described as a ''forceful and warm presentation.''

At another point, she called the session ''very positive, direct and warm.''

''This was meant to be an introductory and very historic meeting between the president of the United States and a personal special envoy of Chairman Kim Jong Il and I think this was a very good beginning to our visit,'' she said

Clinton outlined his concerns to Cho but Sherman said the meeting was not a negotiating session. ''This was not a substantive bilateral,'' she said.

Sherman said it was significant that Cho wore his military uniform to the White House because it showed the North Korean top brass, not just the civilian leadership, is eager for closer ties.

Cho was wearing a business suit when he began his day with a courtesy call on Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the State Department. He turned up at the White House little more than an hour later wearing his military uniform. As he made his rounds during the morning, he made no public comment.

He was scheduled some sightseeing in the afternoon. After a meeting with congressional leaders in the early evening, he was to be guest of honor at a State Department dinner presided over by Albright.

The deferential treatment given to Cho is unusual considering the fact that the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.

He is the highest ranking North Korean official to visit Washington.

With tens of thousands of U.S. troops deployed in South Korea for decades, tensions on the peninsula have been an American obsession. Despite skepticism in some quarters, officials believe recent developments offer the prospect of a peaceful evolution.

In a written statement he issued Monday night on his arrival in Washington, Cho said he shared that optimism.

''It is an important task before our two governments to promote the (bilateral) relations onto a new stage consonant with the environment of peace and reconciliation prevailing on the Korean peninsula at this historic moment into a new century.''

''During our visit we will do our best to have frank discussions with American leadership so as to remove deeply rooted and age-old distrust and make an epochal change in advancing the relations between our two countries onto a new stage.''

In June, Kim Jong Il had what was widely seen as a highly successful summit with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. That same month, Clinton eased economic sanctions against North Korea that had been in place since the Korean War.

The talks here were expected to focus on North Korea's missile development program and the possibility of Pyongyang's removal from the State Department list of countries alleged to sponsor international terrorism.

After an overnight visit to San Francisco, Cho arrived in Washington on Monday night. Besides Clinton and Albright, he also planned talks with Defense Secretary William Cohen.

During his stay on the West Coast, Cho's host was former Defense Secretary William Perry, who stepped down recently as an adviser to Clinton on North Korea. Cho's visit reciprocated a Perry visit to Pyongyang in 1999.

Don Oberdorfer, a Korea expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said U.S. officials were ''amazed and pleased'' when the North Koreans offered to send Cho to Washington. The administration had been expecting a lower ranking official from the foreign ministry.

''The main concerns of the U.S. are regarding military and security issues. This guy is in a much better position to speak to those than a foreign ministry type,'' Oberdorfer said.

He described Cho as a top general who is outranked only by Kim Jong Il himself on the defense commission.

Clinton acknowledged last week that he strongly supported reconciliation and said he saw Cho's visit as a step toward achieving that goal.

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Russian Barge Held Radioactive Cargo

Associated Press
October 10, 2000 Filed at 11:38 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Radioactive-Materials.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- A river barge that overturned in Russia's Far East over the weekend was carrying radioactive materials in a sealed container, the Ministry of Emergency Situations revealed Tuesday.

No radiation has leaked from the three-ton container holding iridium-192, which is now resting on the bed of the Amur River near the village of Keselevka, about 3,900 miles east of Moscow, ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said.

Russian news agencies had reported that the barge was carrying diesel fuel in barrels when it capsized Saturday.

Beltsov said some barrels with diesel were on board, as well as food, consumer goods and metal. He could not say how the container would be raised from the river bed.

The ministry was informed of the radioactive cargo only Tuesday, said spokeswoman Irina Andreyanova. She could not say why the ship operators had not immediately notified her ministry, which is partly responsible for responding to nuclear accidents.

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

-------- new mexico

Profiling Safeguards

ABC News
10/09/00
By H. Josef Hebert The Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/profiling001009.html

Energy Secretary Acts Against Racial Profiling Energy Secretary Bill Richardson noted there are "enough instances ..." to raise suspicion that discrimination has occurred at the Energy Department. (Linda Spillers/AP Photo)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - Amid lingering resentment among Asian-Americans over the Wen Ho Lee case, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced safeguards today to guard against racial profiling within the department or among its private contractors.

Richardson said he would "not tolerate even hints" of racial profiling and ordered his inspector general to investigate whether any such activity has occurred.

"We have made progress addressing concerns of racial profiling, but more needs to be done," Richardson said.

Richardson said in an interview that he remains convinced that Lee, Taiwan-born former Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory scientist, was not singled out in an espionage investigation because of his Asian background.

Still, said Richardson, there are "enough instances throughout the complex" to raise suspicion that such discrimination may have occurred in other circumstances.

Once and for All

"I want to eliminate once and for all any future suspicions," he said, although not elaborating on specific cass. "I will not tolerate even hints of racial profiling."

In addition to the inspector general's probe, Richardson ordered revision of outside contracts to include guarantees against racial profiling; and he ruled that a contractor can be forced to pay for failing to deal with profiling.

Richardson acted against a backdrop of resentment among Asian-Americans about handling of the Lee case, an issue that could have political overtones just weeks before the presidential election.

"This case, perhaps more than any other cause we've seen, has really galvanized the [Asian-American] community, more than campaign finance reform, more than welfare reform," said Victor Hwang, an attorney for the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus.

Attempt to Deflect?

Hwang, whose group has joined a lawsuit Lee filed against the government charging privacy infringement, said he views the additional actions by Richardson "as a way to deflect an external investigation."

Asian-Americans have joined into a growing political force especially in such key states as California. Many Asian-American activists have been outspoken critics of the Clinton administration's treatment of Lee, from singling him out early on as virtually the only target in a lengthy espionage investigation to confining him for nine months without opportunity for bail.

Last month Lee, 60, who was fired from his job at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in March 1999, was freed from jail after the government dropped all but one of 59 security violation charges. He was never charged with espionage, and no evidence surfaced that he provided secrets to anyone.

The Lee case "has been resolved. We think the matter is closed," Hwang said. The broader issue remains of others who may have been or still are being singled out because of race, Hwang said in a telephone interview.

For three years prior to Lee's firing at Los Alamos, he was the primary focus of an FBI investigation into the alleged loss in the 1980s of one of the country's most sophisticated nuclear warheads.

Intelligence experts since have said if China obtained the information, it could have come from many sources.

Richardson and Attorney General Janet Reno have denied Lee was singled out because of his race or national origin. The former counterintelligence chief at Los Alamos, Robert Vrooman, has insisted that Lee was.

"Every time Lee's motive was discussed, I came down to his ethnicity," Vrooman reiterated at a Senate hearing last week.

---

THE MORROCK NEWS DIGEST
TUESDAY OCTOBER 10, 2000
http://morrock.com

ENERGY DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATING BIAS: U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has opened an investigation of potential bias in his agency, and has ordered safeguards put in place to guard against ethnic profiling in the department or among its private contractors. Richardson's moves were prompted by criticism of the government's handling of disgraced physicist Wen Ho Lee -- but Richardson said Lee was not singled out because of his Chinese ethnicity.

-------- ohio

DEADLY ALLIANCE | PART 1: WEAPONS OVER WORKERS
Decades of risk: U.S. knowingly allowed workers to be overexposed to toxic dust

October 10, 2000
BY SAM ROE BLADE STAFF WRITER
http://www2.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Avis=TO&Dato=99999999&Kategori=SRDEADLY03&Lopenr=9999095&Ref=AR&AvisData=TO

Over the last five decades, the U.S. government has risked the lives of thousands of workers by knowingly allowing them to be exposed to unsafe levels of beryllium, a material critical to the production of nuclear weapons.

As a result, dozens of workers have contracted beryllium disease, an incurable, often-fatal lung illness.

In the Toledo area alone, at least 39 workers have contracted the disease after being exposed to levels of beryllium over the federal safety limit. Six of these workers have died.

A 22-month investigation by The Blade shows that the U.S. government clearly knew, decade after decade, that workers in the private beryllium industry were being overexposed to the hard, lightweight metal, which produces a toxic dust when manufactured or machined.

But federal officials continued to subsidize and encourage the industry to produce beryllium despite numerous government, scientific, and company reports showing that the material could not be made without putting workers in extreme danger.

Some workers were exposed to levels of beryllium dust 100 times above the safety limit, the government's own contemporaneous records show.

When safety regulators tried to protect workers, they ran up against an overwhelming alliance: the beryllium industry and the defense establishment.

Protection of the industry has reached all the way to the White House cabinet, where in the 1970s President Carter's Defense and Energy secretaries helped kill a safety plan.

They feared the plan would cut off beryllium supplies for weapons, and that would "significantly and adversely affect our national defense," U.S. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger wrote to two cabinet members at the time.

The Blade investigation, based on tens of thousands of court, industry, and recently declassified government documents, reveals a decades-long pattern of the government putting beryllium production and costs ahead of worker safety.

"The [government] cannot stand for a cessation of production," one federal official, Martin Powers, told colleagues in 1960 in response to health concerns.

Dr. Peter Infante, director of standards review for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, says the government has done a poor job protecting beryllium workers.

"These are all deaths and disease that could have been prevented," Dr. Infante says. "That's the sad thing about it."

Victims ask why

Victims question why the government risked their lives for weapons.

"We're killing ourselves trying to kill someone else," says Gary Renwand, a 61-year-old who contracted the disease at the country's largest beryllium plant, outside Elmore, O., 20 miles southeast of Toledo.

Among the local workers who have died:

Gary Anderson, a former Elmore high school football star.

Marilyn Miller, the wife of a dairy farmer in Bradner.

Ethel Jones, a Fremont, O., resident whose son, Eric Johnson, also contracted the disease.

Others have had their lungs so ravaged that they can no longer breathe on their own.

"If they had told me I'd end up hooked up to an oxygen tank my whole life I would have run away from the damn place," says Butch Lemke, who was overexposed at the Elmore plant and has been on oxygen for 15 years.

No one knows how many people have ever contracted the disease. Researchers estimate 1,200 documented cases nationwide and hundreds of deaths. But they say the disease often is misdiagnosed or goes undetected.

And it is difficult to determine how many victims have had exposures above the safety limit.

This much is clear: Beryllium disease has emerged as the No. 1 illness directly caused by America's Cold War buildup.

"I know of no other disease that we can document that is solely attributable to the work that we have conducted in the production of nuclear weapons," says Dr. Paul Seligman, director of the Energy Department's Office of Health Studies.

Among The Blade's findings:

Decade after decade, the government has knowingly allowed workers at privately operated beryllium plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania to be exposed to amounts of beryllium dust far above the U.S. safety limit. The plant outside Elmore, owned by Cleveland-based Brush Wellman Inc., has never consistently complied with the safety limit in all parts of the facility.

Production and costs have been put ahead of safety even when workers were in danger. In one case, federal officials said it was policy that saving money would come before safety when choosing some beryllium suppliers.

Safety enforcement by OSHA has been virtually nonexistent. Even though dozens of workers have contracted beryllium disease at the Elmore plant, several of whom have died, OSHA has conducted only one full inspection of the facility in the past 20 years.

Even though beryllium is a highly toxic material, the government has little idea which companies are using it, how many people are exposed, and whether they are being protected. This means thousands of Americans may be exposed to dangerous amounts of beryllium and not even know it.

Despite mounting illnesses and deaths, the government has not tightened exposure limits in 50 years. It has tried only once, and the Carter administration stepped in and helped kill the plan.

Long a strategic metal, beryllium is lighter than aluminum and six times stiffer than steel. It makes nuclear weapons more powerful, missiles fly farther, and jet fighters more maneuverable.

And it has been critical to the space program, having been used in the early Mercury missions, the space shuttle, and the Mars Pathfinder.

But when the metal is ground, sanded, or cut, and the resulting dust inhaled, workers often develop a disease that slowly eats away at their lungs. About a third with the illness eventually die of it.

Scientists still consider the illness mysterious Scientists still consider the illness mysterious - even bizarre. Tiny, invisible amounts of beryllium dust can be deadly; the federal exposure limit - 2 micrograms per cubic meter of air - is equivalent to the amount of dust the size of a pencil tip spread throughout a 6-foot-high box the size of a football field.

And while some people are unaffected by the dust, others get sick at seemingly insignificant exposures. So researchers think some people are genetically susceptible to the illness. Those individuals often develop the disease years after their last exposure to beryllium - up to 40 years later.

Federal officials have not been oblivious to the illness. Millions of dollars have been spent to improve safeguards and identify victims.

And it is unknown whether every single beryllium worker has been overexposed; the available exposure data are too sketchy.

Nor is it known precisely what constitutes a safe exposure. Exposures over the federal limit do not seem to guarantee illness, and exposures under the limit may not guarantee safety. In fact, more and more scientists think that people can get sick at levels under the limit.

What remains clear is that over the years, beryllium plants with close governmental ties have consistently exceeded the federally mandated safety limit with the government's full knowledge, and workers in those facilities have gone on to develop the disease.

Martin Powers, a former U.S. Atomic Energy Commission official in charge of obtaining beryllium for the government in the 1950s, says federal officials knew about the high exposures and tried to control them.

But he says the government did not want to shut the plants because that would mean stopping weapons production.

"What is the greater risk? To possibly expose people to health injury in the plant or shut down the national defense?"

Mr. Powers, who left the government to become a beryllium industry executive, says workers, at times, were put at increased risk for national security reasons.

"You know you are putting them at increased risk. You hope the risk doesn't materialize, doesn't become a reality."

The Energy Department, which is responsible for maintaining the nuclear weapons arsenal, says there are no substitutes for beryllium. So as long as America wants bombs, workers will face dangers.

"Building weapons is an extraordinarily risky process," the Energy Department's Dr. Seligman says.

Some victims say they knew there was a risk, but they didn't know they were being overexposed.

Brush Wellman, America's largest beryllium producer, says it has always posted air test results on plant bulletin boards and has discussed high exposures with employees.

But it acknowledges that by the time high dust counts are discovered, workers have already been overexposed.

Magical metal turns deadly Discovered in France in 1798, beryllium wasn't produced commercially in America until the 1930s. When it was, it was extracted from beryl and bertrandite ores and processed through a series of chemical steps.

Among the first uses of beryllium: fluorescent lights. Workers coated the insides with beryllium-containing phosphors to help make the glass tubes glow.

At the time, beryllium dust was considered harmless. No one wore respirators, and no one appeared to be getting sick.

Then came World War II.

Suddenly, the U.S. government needed tons of beryllium for the top secret Manhattan Project, the $2 billion effort to build the world's first atomic bomb.

Beryllium plants signed government contracts and began shipping orders to Manhattan Project sites. To maintain the secrecy of the project, shipments were in unmarked packages, identified only by code names, such as Product 38.

"The word 'beryllium' should never be used," one government document warned.

In 1943, federal officials ran into a problem that threatened supplies: Beryllium workers, many in the Cleveland area, began developing a mysterious illness.

They were coughing, losing weight, and becoming breathless. Many recovered, but some grew sicker and died.

A Cleveland Clinic doctor concluded in 1943 that beryllium dust was toxic. But the U.S. Public Health Service, in a report that same year, thought some other agent was to blame.

As the controversy brewed, the government stepped up its beryllium orders. When the factories couldn't keep up, the government spent millions to expand them.

By the mid-1940s, dozens of people had become sick, both at Manhattan Project sites and in the fluorescent light industry.

And the mysterious disease was exhibiting a new twist. Researchers studying the fluorescent light industry concluded in 1946 that workers were getting sick months - even years - after their last exposure to beryllium. No one was recovering from this form of the illness, which would become known as chronic beryllium disease.

By now, most scientists and industry leaders agreed that beryllium dust was toxic.

The government recommended safety improvements and supplied respirators for some workers. But it was also deeply concerned about its image.

A 1947 secret report by the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission, or AEC, warned that the disease "might be headlined, particularly in non-friendly papers, for weeks and months - each new case bringing an opportunity for a rehash of the story. This might seriously embarrass the AEC and reduce public confidence in the organization."

Despite mounting sickness, the AEC remained "acutely interested in maintaining and expanding production of beryllium," according to the report, which was recently declassified.

The agency's mission - building nuclear weapons - depended on it.

"The AEC appears to be stuck with beryllium," the report said, "and hence stuck with the public relations problem."

Disease strikes Lorain residents Just weeks after the government outlined its public relations fears in 1947, a tragedy began to unfold: People living near a beryllium plant in Lorain, O., started coming down with the disease.

One 28-year-old woman dropped to 85 pounds. Another became so weak she had to remain in bed.

Government officials were stunned. Never before had people been known to contract metal poisoning by living near a factory.

Fear in Lorain spread quickly. Citizens stormed a city council meeting, and Councilman Leo Svete had to pound the gavel for 15 minutes to restore order.

The AEC took air samples around the plant, and the Ohio Health Department announced it would conduct a rare and massive project: It would X-ray as many Lorain residents as possible.

X-ray stations were set up at schools, JC Penney, and Abraham Motor Sales. In all, 10,500 people were X-rayed - a fifth of the entire city.

And when the inquiry was over, 11 citizens who had never set foot in the plant were found to have the disease.

The wife of one worker got it by handling her husband's dusty work clothes. But the other victims, the AEC found, got it strictly from beryllium air pollution.

Among them: 7-year-old Gloria Gorka, a chubby girl with curly hair.

"We noticed she kept panting and had a hard time breathing when she exerted herself in the least little way," recalls her father, Joseph, an 81-year-old now living in Florida. "We just thought she was having a hard time getting over the measles."

When her schoolteacher called and said Gloria was having difficulty walking up one flight of stairs at school, her parents took her to a doctor. But there was nothing anyone could do.

"It was so sad," recalls her 79-year-old aunt, Angela Barraco. "By the time she died she was nothing but skin and bones."

AEC officials concluded that the victims had been exposed to surprisingly minute levels of beryllium. They recommended that citizens should no longer be exposed to more than .01 micrograms per cubic meter of air - an amount invisible to the naked eye.

The limit was the first air pollution standard in American history.

As for the limit inside beryllium plants, officials weren't sure what to do. They discussed the matter for weeks, and then an AEC health official and a medical consultant to the fluorescent light industry settled on 2 micrograms while riding in a taxi.

This limit, based largely on guesswork, was dubbed "the taxicab standard."

Officials knew workers might become ill at lower levels, a 1958 AEC report states, but "because of the relatively small numbers of people involved," it was seen as "an acceptable risk."

Costs made a priority over worker safety Publicly, the government was cracking down.

While the AEC was setting limits on pollution, the U.S. Public Health Service was convincing fluorescent light companies to stop using beryllium.

Government officials issued warnings about the lights already in use: Children shouldn't use them as lances, and burned-out tubes should be broken under water.

But unbeknownst to the public, the government was embracing beryllium, ordering more for weapons.

In fact, in 1949 the AEC adopted a policy that weapons production and economics would come before worker safety when the United States was choosing some beryllium suppliers.

One top official who was upset about this, records show, was Wilbur Kelley, manager of the AEC's New York office.

In the summer of 1949, he and his staff were concerned that the government was planning to buy beryllium hydroxide - the vital feed material for all beryllium products - from a plant outside Reading, Pa., operated by the Beryllium Corporation.

Mr. Kelley had reason to be concerned: Dust in the plant was hazardously high, and several workers had died.

In a series of letters, Mr. Kelley pleaded with his AEC colleagues not to buy beryllium from the firm.

"The AEC cannot avoid knowing that every time it enters into a contract for the production of beryllium in what it knows to be a medically unsafe plant the lives of an unknown number of people may be placed in jeopardy," he wrote.

The government, he wrote, "cannot shirk its moral responsibility in this matter."

But at a meeting of top AEC officials in Washington, Mr. Kelley was informed that, except in certain contracts, the government would no longer bear "the responsibility for health conditions associated with the procurement and production of beryllium materials," minutes of the meeting state.

It was decided that "further consideration of medical reasons would be dropped and that all consideration of the proposed arrangement with the Beryllium Corporation would be based strictly on economics."

It is unclear whether the AEC went ahead and bought beryllium from the Beryllium Corporation. But the government continued its association with the firm.

The AEC owned a small building on plant grounds that cast beryllium metal. The Beryllium Corporation ran the casting operation under a government contract.

For the next 20 months, from the summer of 1949 to the spring of 1951, workers in that building were exposed to dust up to 100 times the safety limit, records show.

Conditions in Beryllium Corporation's main plant were worse: Some workers were exposed to dust 500 times the limit.

And many people went on to get beryllium disease.

In fact, in the 10 years following Mr. Kelley's repeated warnings about the Beryllium Corporation, at least 37 people either working at the plant site or living nearby developed the illness, studies show.

Among them: a woman who paid weekly visits to a relative's grave in the cemetery across the street from the plant.

Plants kept open despite dangers The 1950s brought the Korean War and the arms race, the Cold War and the space race. America's desire for beryllium had never been greater.

The government didn't want a repeat of the Lorain neighborhood tragedy, and so it paid Brush Beryllium, the predecessor to Brush Wellman, to build and operate a plant far from residents.

The site: tiny Luckey, a farming community 15 miles south of Toledo. Here, only one or two farmhouses would be near.

And for the first time, the government had a safety standard - the one adopted in 1949 - to limit the amount of dust workers could be exposed to.

But year after year, records show, dust counts in the Luckey plant were high. Workers were even overexposed in the lunchroom.

Instead of closing the plant, the government eased enforcement of the rules, allowing workers to be exposed to levels five times higher than previously permitted.

But even with the relaxed rules, the plant couldn't keep the dust under control.

Eight years later, in 1957, the plant was replaced by a larger one 10 miles away near Elmore.

Under government contract, Brush Beryllium built, owned, and operated the plant. In return, the government agreed to buy 50 tons of beryllium over five years. The AEC signed a similar contract with the Beryllium Corporation for a plant outside Hazleton, Pa.

Both contracts had a health clause: If dust levels were consistently high, the government could close the plants.

Again, workers were overexposed throughout the 1950s and 1960s, industry and government records show. Dust counts at Elmore were regularly five times too high; some levels at Hazleton were 4,000 times over the limit.

Yet the Elmore plant was never shut, and the Hazleton plant was closed only once for about a month, according to a deposition by Mr. Powers, the former government and industry official.

The beryllium companies tried to meet the safety limit but to no avail. A Brush doctor blamed the failure on production demands, "triggered primarily by the space program."

One Brush document says every time the government considered closing the Elmore plant, "the Navy and AEC weapons people objected because they needed the metal for nuclear weapons and Polaris [missile] parts."

AEC officials, correspondence shows, weren't sure what to do about the high exposures.

One official wrote that better equipment had been suggested, but "this would increase the cost of beryllium by ten times," and "the plants would have to be shut down and rebuilt."

"The extra cost would be undesirable, but the latter factor is unacceptable because of AEC need for the metal."

Still, as bad as the dust counts were, they were improving and the disease rate appeared to be dropping. In fact, some officials thought the exposure rules might be too strict.

In 1960, a dozen AEC officials met to discuss the issue. They concluded that the plants, dangerous or not, must remain open, minutes of the meeting show.

"The [government] cannot stand for a cessation of production," one official stated.

That official was Martin Powers, in charge of buying beryllium for the AEC. But he was also responsible for ensuring that the beryllium plants were not overexposing workers.

Four months after this meeting, Mr. Powers left the government to work for one of the firms he had been responsible for monitoring: Brush Beryllium.

He would spend the next 26 years as a top executive with the company, often handling the government contracts and overseeing the health and safety program.

Today, Mr. Powers, 77, is retired from Brush but remains a paid company consultant. The government, he says, didn't know for sure that workers were going to be harmed by the overexposures. But he acknowledges the AEC was taking a risk that they might.

"I think there were certainly cases where you might have allowed marginal activities to exist hoping - but not really knowing - that they were going to be all right."

He says pressure on the AEC to keep plants running was enormous. He recalls receiving a phone call from an admiral who was livid about AEC plans to phase out a plant.

"This admiral called me and said, 'You will not shut that goddamn plant down. What are you, out of your goddamn-picking mind? I've got submarines out there. We need missiles.' "

Mr. Powers says he didn't agree with some government decisions. He says that the AEC for one or two years, about 1949 and 1950, insisted that Brush not put warning labels on beryllium products shipped to AEC facilities because it didn't want to alarm workers there.

Officials who made that decision, he says, "just didn't apparently feel it was their province to worry about the health issues."

Numerous workers would eventually develop beryllium disease after being overexposed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Among them: Gary Renwand, an Oak Harbor, O., resident who worked 35 years at Brush's Elmore plant.

Company records show that he was frequently exposed to high levels of dust - some amounts five times the safety limit.

Now, he is often in and out of St. Charles Mercy Hospital, battling heart and lung problems related to his disease. On one such day, he sits up in bed and recalls making beryllium re-entry shields for space capsules and watching the capsules on TV careen back to Earth.

"I thought, 'Hey, we made that shield.' And I was proud. I was part of this. A new era."

He forces a laugh.

"Young and dumb," he says.

Only once in the last five decades has the U.S. government tried to tighten exposure limits.

That was in 1975, when OSHA proposed cutting the exposure limit in half - from 2 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 1.

The plan met tremendous opposition from the beryllium industry and U.S. weapons officials. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger warned that the plan might drive beryllium firms out of the metal business and cut off U.S. supplies.

"The loss of beryllium production capability would seriously impact our ability to develop and produce weapons for the nuclear stockpile and, consequently, adversely affect our national security," he wrote in 1978 to Labor Secretary Ray Marshall and Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano, Jr.

Secretary Schlesinger wanted the scientific basis for the plan reviewed. Defense Secretary Harold Brown made a similar request.

So the plan was delayed until outside experts could review it. In the end, the experts concluded that the science behind the safety plan was indeed valid.

But the plan never went through.

One factor: In 1979, the Cabot Corp., now the owner of the beryllium plant outside Hazleton, Pa., quit making beryllium metal, leaving Brush Wellman as the sole U.S. supplier.

Almost immediately, the government cut a secret deal with Brush, according to government and industry records. Brush promised to continue to supply the Energy Department with beryllium for its weapons; in return, the agency promised to:

Pay Brush a one-time 35 per cent price increase.

Not develop other sources of beryllium.

Try to persuade OSHA to drop its safety plan.

Within a few years, OSHA's safety plan died.

Throughout the fight, one thing remained constant: Workers continued to be overexposed.

Today, more than 50 years after the disease was discovered, the rate of illness is higher than ever.

A study published in 1997 found that 1 in 11 workers at the 646-employee Elmore plant either have the disease or an abnormal blood test - a sign they may very well develop the illness.

And while dust counts at the Elmore plant are much improved, some remain over the legal limit, company records turned over in court cases show.

OSHA is responsible for inspecting the plant and making sure dust counts are low. If not, inspectors can write citations and issue fines.

But years have gone by without an inspector setting foot in the plant, OSHA records show.

When inspectors have found high dust counts, Brush Wellman has escaped penalties.

In fact, OSHA records show, Brush has never paid one cent for high exposures at any of its several facilities nationwide.

OSHA officials says there are simply not enough inspectors to regularly check the plants.

"We have about 2,000 compliance officers to cover 6 million work sites that employ more than 100 million workers," says OSHA spokesman Stephen Gaskill, who recently left the agency.

"So to say that we are spread thin is a severe understatement."

To make matters worse, no one knows what companies - from large corporations to small machine shops - are handling beryllium and whether safeguards are in place.

"There are beryllium-copper golf clubs now being used," says Dr. Peter Infante, OSHA's director of standards review. "Where are those being tooled and polished?"

Thousands of companies are believed to handle beryllium, but no one knows how many workers are potentially exposed. Estimates range widely, from 30,000 to 800,000.

Improvements, officials say, are in the works.

The Energy Department says it is spending millions to improve ventilation and air monitoring at government-owned sites. And Brush Wellman says it is improving equipment and work practices to reduce exposure.

Theresa Norgard, wife of disease victim Dave Norgard, of Manitou Beach, Mich., says she has heard such promises before. "Tired, worn-out phrases," she says. "Different time periods, same messages: 'Mistakes were made.

Now we're doing better. We're doing everything we can.' " Time and time again, she says, the government sacrificed the workers.

"They were just like pieces of equipment. They were disposable. They were dispensable. They weren't even seen as being human."


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

-------- colombia

Drug-related crimes keep Colombian army busy

Washington Times
October 10, 2000
By Steve Salisbury SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000101022922.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia - The army has long been involved in fighting narcotics trafficking, but it is not widely known that the blurring of the drug trade with other crimes- money-laundering, counterfeiting, credit-card fraud, cell-phone cloning - has pulled it into law-enforcement actions far beyond the war on drugs.

An example is Operation San Martin, carried out 13 months ago in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city. There the 80-man anti-narcotics Comando Especial del Ejercito (CEE) pulled off a sting operation and arrested two suspects on charges of distributing bogus greenbacks.

This reporter accompanied CEE agents during the sting and at the moment of the arrests. The details provide a rare glimpse of how the Colombian army has integrated intelligence and operational actions in a law-enforcement role.

Roberto, 46, was a small fish, and it showed in his disheveled appearance. But the balding ex-cop boasted that his boss, nicknamed El Gordo (The Fat One), had ties to criminal operations of the late Helmer El Pacho (The Sluggard) Herrera, the last of the seven top leaders of the Cali cocaine cartel to be captured.

The Sluggard was murdered in a Colombian prison on Nov. 5, 1998, by a visitor posing as his lawyer, and Fats had gone his own way.

El Gordo needed money

He was feeling heat over money Herrera's people said he owed them, according to Roberto. But Roberto said El Gordo was not limiting himself to drug trafficking; he was also selling counterfeit U.S. dollars.

This was also the story that Fernando, not the real name of an undercover CEE operative, said he had heard from an informant. Interviewed on army ground rules of anonymity, Fernando said he informed the CEE's commander, a lieutenant colonel, about the tip.

Seeing a possible connection with drug trafficking, the colonel authorized Fernando to tell the informant he should ask Roberto to call a feigned potential buyer of counterfeit dollars named "Juano." What Roberto did not know was that Juano was in fact Fernando, a sergeant with 18 years' experience and a ranking member of the CEE's three-man communications surveillance and intercept unit called the Centro para la Recoleccion de Informacion (CRI).

Hungry for a commission from El Gordo, Roberto called "Juano." Fernando pretended interest in buying counterfeit dollars and got Roberto's phone number from caller ID, so further calls from that phone could be monitored.

Thus began the monthlong operation called San Martin.

In a climate where competition between Colombia's national police and armed forces for anti-narcotics support from Washington make unit successes and headlines important, the CEE, which reports directly to Gen. Fernando Tapias Stahelin, the armed forces chief, decided to handle the operation alone.

A 'sting' was the answer

Anything remotely connected to narcotics was within the CEE's purview, so bringing in the police and possibly sharing the credit for success was not necessary. But having a prosecutor present to carry out judicial searches was.

In September 1999, a prosecutor was not permanently attached to the CEE, though one is now. So to make a legal arrest alone, the army had to catch those committing a crime in the act. The solution was a "sting."

Two or three weeks after their first phone conversation, Fernando won Roberto's confidence enough to set up an afternoon meeting in the dusty small town of Juanchito, just outside Cali. Another CEE undercover operative posed as Fernando's taxi driver.

They met outside a seedy, palm-thatched motel near the Cauca River. Roberto showed up on foot a couple of hours late, and nervous. Fernando was dressed casually, wearing wire-rimmed eyeglasses. As Fernando later recalled, Roberto looked at his short haircut with suspicion.

Roberto told P, the agent posing as a taxi driver, that "Juano" looked like a cop. P laughed this off, telling Roberto that he had worked for "Juano" before, and that he was really a duro - a hard guy.

When a police car pulled up about 200 feet away and the officers emerged to search people nearby - including two soldiers in plainclothes serving as back-ups for Roberto and his driver - "Juano" confirmed his hoodlum credentials by pulling a handgun from under his shirt and stashing it in a nearby tree.

Establishing confidence

The CEE backups showed the policemen their military ID cards and asked them not to let Roberto see the soldier's pistols. The cops obliged, but the later appearance of motorcycle policemen passing by spooked Roberto. He said El Gordo was waiting nearby with the counterfeit cash, aborted the meeting just before sundown and walked off, crossing the two-lane highway that runs parallel to the river.

This outcome made the CEE operatives wonder whether Roberto was really selling funny money or just bluffing.

The answer came a few days later when Roberto called "Juano" to set up another rendezvous.

On a September afternoon, a CEE intelligence captain, a corporal, a Colombian civilian shooting instructor assisting the CEE, and this reporter got into a green Chevy Blazer. We were all in civilian clothes, leaving the sprawling base of the 3rd Brigade in southern Cali.

The captain drove north along Cali's broad Quinta Street for about 15 minutes, weaving through heavy traffic, and made a right turn that took us past the Pascual Guerrero soccer stadium.

The captain dropped the corporal off in front, on the side of the street away from the stadium. Driving around the block, he dropped me off and I walked up a side street and turned a corner to where I could see the corporal.

Setting up the arrest

Monitoring and coordinating by radio, the captain drove around, several blocks away. Meanwhile, a white Mitsubishi van holding a squad of CEE commandos in camouflage fatigues parked out of sight a few blocks away.

After about 20 minutes, the clunky yellow taxi driven by P came into view, slowly following Fernando and Roberto walking downhill along the street in front of the stadium. Fernando had left the cab up the hill to join Roberto on the sidewalk.

The two men crossed the street and entered a cheap restaurant called Video Cafe on the ground floor of an orange-brick, two-story building on the street corner. P parked at the curb about 75 feet past the restaurant. The area stank of food fried in rank grease.

Fernando and Roberto sat at a table in back, away from a clutch of noisy patrons, but they remained in view from the street because there was no front wall.

Fernando was a little nervous, he later recalled, but he covered it up by taking a domineering stance. He had told Roberto he would bring 10 million Colombian pesos (about $5,000) for the transaction.

Maneuvering the end game

When Roberto asked him for the money, Fernando replied: "What money? Show me yours first. What I bring is real money. What you bring me is paper."

The deal the two had struck was that Fernando would pay 14,000 Colombian pesos (about $7) for each counterfeit $100 bill, and 5,000 pesos for each counterfeit $50 bill.

Roberto then shrugged at a tall, dark fellow standing near a street vendor at the corner.

"That man is El Gordo, but he is very nervous," Roberto replied when Fernando asked.

El Gordo beckoned to Roberto, who joined the big guy near a double-parked red Hyundai Excel. El Gordo wore a simple white plaid shirt, but it looked elegant in contrast to Roberto's green T-shirt and old jeans.

El Gordo slid into the driver's seat, started the Hyundai's engine and drove forward a bit. He handed a blue-and-white plastic bag to Roberto through the front passenger window.

Roberto walked back to sit with Fernando and pushed the bag toward him.

"Get that away from me," Fernando snapped. "Let's go to the taxi to do this."

There they met P, who was standing beside the cab. Fernando took a peek inside the bag and saw the counterfeit greenbacks.

Roberto was getting edgy. "Here is yours," he said, lifting the plastic bag. "Where is mine? In the bag in the taxi, right?"

Calling in the troops

Roberto was referring to a blue shoulder bag Fernando and P had put in the back seat of the taxi to create that impression. But Fernando replied that the money was in another car and said he would call his bagman, Jorge, to bring it.

Fernando dialed a number on his cell phone and handed it to P. "Bring the money," P told "Jorge," really a CEE sergeant. Those words were the signal for soldiers to move in.

Within 30 seconds, the commandos drove up and a there was a commotion. Fernando and P had drawn their 9 mm pistols. Roberto tried to run. Clutching his pistol with two hands,

Fernando aimed at Roberto, ordering him to freeze.

Commandos armed with U.S.-made M-16 A-2 rifles were pouring out of the van, fanning out among stunned patrons at the cafe's sidewalk tables to secure the area. Noises of confusion rose from the crowd.

"It's him, it's him," Roberto shouted to the commandos, pointing at Fernando as he tried to escape. But the commandos had choreographed the arrest with Fernando, and they seized Roberto without a struggle.

During the capture of Roberto, El Gordo backed the Hyundai around the corner and tried to drive away, but P ran over, stepped in front of the car and aimed his pistol at him.

Anticlimax but a precedent

The CEE plainclothes corporal, some of the commandos, their lieutenant and another plainclothes CEE intelligence captain who had arrived separately swarmed to the red Hyundai.

El Gordo got out of the car. No one was hurt. Soldiers examined his papers and those of a number of people on the street corner.

El Gordo denied having anything to do with the bag of counterfeit cash. But he and Roberto were hauled off to a detention room at the CEE compound on the Third Brigade base. The red Hyundai was also taken there and impounded.

At the military base offices, the CEE men counted $81,450 in counterfeit 100s and 50s.

The bills were hard to spot as fake with the naked eye, but their texture seemed too smooth.

The arrests were a fleeting victory for the CEE.

El Gordo was released from jail after a few weeks, and Roberto apparently walked free not long afterward.

However, the CEE's success in coordinating intelligence and operational actions to carry out police-style work has had a lasting impact on military anti-narcotics operations and seems to promise more.

-------- drug war

Biker bosses back at the table

Montreal Gazette
Tuesday 10 October 2000
AMANDA JELOWICKI and NELSON WYATT The Gazette; CP
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/001010/4659015.html

For the second time in two weeks, the kingpins of Quebec's most notorious biker gangs gathered for a meeting, again prompting speculation the two sides are attempting to reach a truce in their bloody five-year turf war over the province's illegal-drug trade.

At the end of September, the outlaw bikers sat down in a conference room at the Quebec City courthouse for unknown reasons, infuriating politicians, police and the public. The latest summit took the shape of a dinner party Sunday night at the Bleu Marin, a trendy restaurant on Crescent St.

Like the Quebec City meeting, the hosts of the Montreal soiree were Hells Angels leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher and Frederic (Fred) Faucher, interim head of the rival Rock Machine. Sunday's guest list included about 20 of their lieutenants, radio reporter Claude Poirier and a photographer from the crime tabloid Allo Police.

The bikers turned up without a reservation and mingled at the bar while waiting for a table, Bleu Marin manager Matteo Scanzano said.

They wore street clothes until after dinner, when it was time for the photograph. "When they walked in, they were dressed like anyone else. When they made a picture together, that's when they put on their famous jackets," Scanzano said.

The group occupied a long table in the middle of a dining room crowded with other patrons.

Boucher and Faucher sat facing each other in the centre, flanked by their respective lieutenants.

"The restaurant was very crowded. They sat and ate and drank like normal people," Scanzano said. "The majority had seafood and fish and some pasta (to eat), and some had meat."

While provincial police said they were aware of Sunday's meeting, they said it would not affect their efforts to crack down on outlaw biker gangs.

"Yes, we learned about it," Surete du Quebec spokesman Isabelle Gendron said, "but it doesn't change anything at all. I don't know if this means (there's a truce). You should ask them. We don't have a comment on this right now."

The two journalists, invited to capture the moment, were called to the restaurant by the bikers shortly after 7 p.m., Poirier said in interviews yesterday.

"To my great surprise, when I arrived with Allo Police photographer Michel Tremblay, there were 20 or 25 people sitting around the table," he said. "On one side was Nomads leader Mom Boucher, and on the other side was interim Rock Machine leader Fred Faucher. (The Nomads are an elite chapter of the Hells Angels.)

"They were in the middle of eating and were accompanied by several of their lieutenants. There were handshakes and accolades all around after the meeting.

"These people weren't very talkative, though. I asked if they would do an interview," said Poirier, who did not sit with the bikers. "They said they didn't want to do an interview and that the photo would be worth 1,000 words.

"After the photo was taken, they asked us to leave, and we left."

The photo is to be published in Allo Police on Friday.

The gang leaders and their lieutenants drank champagne after the meal.

A police cruiser pulled up in front of the restaurant toward the end of dessert, attracted there by several bikers who had gone outside for some fresh air. Several of the gang members were briefly detained by the police, Poirier said, while Boucher and Faucher slipped out. There were no arrests.

There are unconfirmed reports that the bikers have reached a truce in the war over control of Quebec's lucrative illicit-drug trade. Since the fighting started in 1995, more than 150 people have been killed, including an 11-year-old boy who was a bystander when a car bomb exploded.

Also last month, crime reporter Michel Auger, who has covered the biker war extensively for the tabloid Journal de Montreal, was wounded by gunfire in the newspaper's parking lot.

Biker experts speculated yesterday that the two attention-grabbing gatherings were designed to ease public pressure on the criminal gangs.

"What's important is that it was once again done in public," said Yves Lavigne, author of three books on the Hells. "These bikers could easily meet in private and no one would know there is a peace deal going on, but they want the public to know because this gets the public off their back."

Lavigne suggested the Hells, who he said were winning the turf war, had started laying the groundwork for a peace treaty at the beginning of the year, taking a lower profile except for when they attend gang funerals.

He noted the Hells signed peace treaties with rival gangs in the Scandinavian countries in 1997 and in the United States in 1998 and 1999.

"They all want to make money and they realize that war hurts the bottom line," Lavigne said from Toronto. "The last treaty to be signed, if it is signed, will be with the Rock Machine."

Staff-Sgt. Jean-Pierre Levesque, a biker expert with the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, likened Sunday's dinner to the September 1997 love-in between the Hells and Bandidos in Denmark.

"The Hells and Bandidos decided to meet and make a big show of it," he said. At that meeting, the gangs bought TV time and were shown smiling and shaking hands.

"They said there was no war and now it was a truce, no need for special laws or to kick them out of the city."

The Hells love the publicity, Levesque said.

"They play a game. They like rubbing it in the face of the police."

Constable Ian Lafreniere, a Montreal Urban Community police spokesman, said he was not impressed by the biker meeting.

"It won't change anything in the way we deal with criminal biker gangs," he said.

Allison Hanes of The Gazette contributed to this report.

---

U.S. Companies Tangled in Web of Drug Dollars

New York Times
October 10, 2000
By LOWELL BERGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/national/10PESO.html

On a rainy day last June, a group of corporate executives gathered in a conference room at the Justice Department for a meeting with Attorney General Janet Reno and other top government officials.

The executives represented some of the pillars of corporate America - Hewlett-Packard, Ford Motor Company, Whirlpool. The session was not publicized because those at the meeting shared an unlikely and potentially embarrassing problem: their companies, they feared, were being singled out in the nation's war on drugs, and neither they nor the government was quite sure what to do.

With the intensifying federal crackdown on money laundering, agents had been tracking drug money into the accounts of American corporations and their distributors and dealers. In fact, federal officials said, about $5 billion a year in Colombian drug money is used to buy goods and services - from cigarettes to computer chips - from American companies.

What makes that possible is a system known as the black-market peso exchange, a complex money trade that law enforcement officials say has become increasingly important to the Colombian narcotics trade.

The system - really a network of currency brokers with offices in New York, Miami, the Caribbean and South America - is essentially an underground money market that lets the traffickers exchange American dollars for Colombian pesos. Those dollars, which stay in the United States, are then bought by Colombian companies that use them to buy American goods for sale back home.

But the government's efforts to seize that money have put it on a collision course with corporations, which say they are victims with no way of knowing that they and their distributors are being paid with drug money.

As they met on June 6, those executives, lawyers and law enforcement officials found themselves grappling with a conundrum: when does drug money stop being drug money? How far does a company's responsibility go?

The questions have been confronting law enforcement officials for years.

"What are we going to do?" asked Greg Passic, a former drug enforcement agent who now advises the government on the economics of the narcotics industry. "We've got the Fortune 500 involved in our drug- money laundering process."

For a long time, because of lax enforcement of United States currency laws, the drug traffickers were able to launder billions of dollars through American financial institutions. A crackdown in the 1980's pushed traffickers to what they saw as a virtually fail-safe system for getting back their profits - the black-market peso exchange.

Their growing reliance on that system shows how deeply the drug trade has become entwined in the legitimate economies of the United States, Colombia and other nations.

Colombian officials said that as much as 45 percent of their country's imported consumer goods are bought with money laundered through the peso exchange.

On the American side, law enforcement officials said the exchange has largely eliminated the trade deficit with Colombia. The market, said the customs commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, "is the ultimate nexus between crime and commerce, using global trade to mask global money laundering."

So far, no large American company has faced criminal charges. And companies have almost always been able to prevent federal officials from keeping money that has been seized.

But in the last few years, as frustration has risen, the government has taken a tougher line. There have been Congressional hearings intended to put companies on notice by name. Prosecutors have issued warnings and stepped up efforts to seize laundered money.

At the same time, the government has encouraged companies to institute "know your customer" policies similar to those used in the financial industry. The policies gave dealers and distributors techniques for recognizing money laundering. Thus educated, the government thought, the companies would be less able to argue that they simply could not have known.

In drawing the line between legitimate and illegitimate profits, the government must not only prove that the money came from drug deals; it must show that the recipient "knew or should have known" its source.

In the war on drugs, that line has proved very fuzzy.

Trading Dollars for Pesos

Congress passed the first money- laundering laws in the early 1970's - requiring, among other things, that banks report any cash transaction over $10,000 - but the laws were loosely enforced. By 1979, the Federal Reserve Bank in Miami had more cash than the other federal reserve banks combined.

It took the uproar over the cocaine epidemic in the early 80's for banks to comply with the law. And with the resulting crackdown, traffickers resorted to the black market, which for decades had provided Colombian businesses with dollars at less than the official exchange rate of 2,000 pesos to the dollar. The rate in Colombia is fixed by the government.

One peso broker recently agreed to describe how the system works.

The process begins when the broker receives a call from a Colombian drug trafficker or his American representative. The two negotiate an exchange rate for pesos, usually 30 percent to 40 percent below the fixed rate. So $10,000 might be worth 12 million pesos instead of 20 million at the official rate.

The dollars are then delivered to the broker, who promises to deliver pesos to the trafficker's bank account after the dollars are sold to Colombian businesses. The dealer's insurance is the broker's knowledge that to do otherwise would almost surely mean death.

The broker maintains several runners - "smurfs," in law enforcement lingo - who deposit the cash into hundreds of United States bank accounts in amounts of less than $10,000, to avoid scrutiny.

At the same time, the broker's office in Colombia negotiates with business people there who want cheap dollars to buy everything from consumer goods to helicopters.

Usually, that exchange rate is 20 percent below market, so a business owner in Colombia might pay 16 million pesos, instead of 20 million pesos at the fixed rate, for $10,000.

The pesos are then transferred - in this example, 12 million pesos - to the traffickers' accounts. The broker keeps the difference, 4 million pesos in this instance. Then at the businessman's direction, the dollars in the American banks are used to pay for American goods.

The peso brokerage is one part of the process that supplies Colombia with inexpensive goods from the United States and around the world. Colombian authorities said the goods were often smuggled into the country, costing Colombia more than $300 million a year in tax revenue.

Colombia has made collecting that lost revenue a priority. But the black market has considerable appeal because it puts a lot of inexpensive foreign goods on the Colombian market.

The exchange has also increased American exports to Colombia.

"This is positive for U.S. business, there is no doubt about it," said Mike Wald, who runs a consortium of law enforcement agencies in Florida focusing on the peso exchange. "The Colombian, if he pays less for his dollars, can buy more goods. That's a pretty obvious economic fact. But we have to realize where this money originates. It's drug money."

Tangled With Drug Money

Two companies that have turned up in the American government's anti-laundering efforts are Phillip Morris and Bell Helicopter Textron.

Phillip Morris products in particular have been a major presence in Colombia. Marlboro cigarettes are readily available at prices investigators said indicated that they were bought with black market dollars and smuggled into the country.

Earlier this year, Phillip Morris was sued in the Eastern District of New York by the Colombian tax collectors. The federal lawsuit accused the company of being involved in cigarette smuggling and in the laundering of drug proceeds.

Phillip Morris has denied the allegations, saying that it did not know its products were being exploited for money laundering. In addition, without admitting wrongdoing, it recently signed an agreement with Colombia, pledging to stop its products from entering the black market or being used to launder money.

In 1995, in Federal District Court in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Phillip Morris's former distributors in northern South America were indicted for laundering $40 million in black market pesos.

A member of the defense lawyers said the money was used to buy Phillip Morris cigarettes, liquor and other products for the Colombian market. But the defense team member said the defendants did not know that the money came from drug sales.

Phillip Morris severed its relationship with the defendants in 1998 and said it did not know that its products were being smuggled or that black market money was used to buy them.

In another case, Bell Helicopter is challenging the seizure of $300,000 from its accounts, money, according to court documents, that was generated by drug smuggling.

It was part of more than $1 million that the United States believed was supplied a peso-exchange broker to buy a Bell aircraft. The helicopter was seized in Panama at the request of the United States.

The case has become a sore point for American law enforcement in part because the helicopter was sold to a Colombian businessman linked to the country's right-wing paramilitaries.

Seeking Cooperation

The deepening struggle between prosecutors and business executives is what led to the meeting with Attorney General Reno and other government officials, including Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder and Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart E. Eizenstat. The companies invited were Hewlett-Packard, Ford, General Motors, Sony, Westinghouse, Whirlpool and General Electric Company, Treasury officials said.

None of the companies returned phone calls seeking comment, except General Electric and Sony. Sony said it would have no comment. But General Electric's counsel, Scott Gilbert, said his company instituted a strict compliance program five years ago, after reports that its refrigerators were being used in money-laundering operations.

As part of its policy, Mr. Gilbert said General Electric warns dealers to be aware of "red flags" - a customer's lack of interest in discounts, an unwillingness to give information about the company, or unusual forms of payment like large amounts of cash or checks written on the account of a third party.

The new policy has cut sales of appliances to Latin America by 23,000 units, or over 20 percent, said an executive at General Electric.

Alan Dooty, a customs official, said the companies had been selected for the June meeting because their products had shown up in the black market in Colombia. The exception was General Electric, which he singled out as a "good citizen."

Before the meeting, some of the companies expressed concern that they would be punished. But once they arrived, Mr. Dooty said, they were assured that the government was seeking cooperation.

A follow-up session in July bogged down in legal murk.

An industry representative familiar with the meeting said: "The Justice and Treasury Departments realized that they were trying to identify drug money that had morphed, been transformed, in layers of transactions involving distributors, authorized dealers, financing arrangements with unregulated money lenders called `factors' and the other realities of commercial life."

More meetings are scheduled for this fall.

---

Alaska's Voters to Decide On Legalizing Marijuana

New York Times
October 10, 2000
By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/politics/10ALAS.html

ANCHORAGE, Oct. 5 - "Vote Yes Prop 5," proclaims the large yellow mural painted on the side of a building here, complete with a large cannabis leaf. A poster on the window offers a quote from Ronald Reagan, though he has certainly not endorsed this particular measure: "Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves."

And just inside the door here at the headquarters of Free Hemp in Alaska are more than a dozen versions of pamphlets offering reasons for Alaskans to support the broadest marijuana legalization initiative ever to appear on a state ballot.

One pamphlet proclaims that marijuana is a far safer drug than alcohol, another says that passage of the measure would "free police resources to fight real crime."

And a third, "Marijuana and the Bible," has a drawing of Jesus Christ and observes: "Nowhere in the Bible does it forbid people to grow, use or smoke cannabis hemp."

Here, in a state that many Alaskans like to describe as the most libertarian in the nation, voters are being asked in the Nov. 7 election to say "yes" to marijuana in a single, sweeping measure that would not only legalize consumption of the drug for anyone age 18 and over but also create automatic amnesty for those convicted of marijuana-related charges and even require the state to consider restitution for such people.

Supporters of Proposition 5 are visible all over Anchorage, holding up roadside banners, handing out the leaflets, displaying stickers on their car bumpers. They gathered signatures from more than 41,000 registered voters to get the measure on the ballot, more than twice the needed number and a figure that represents nearly 10 percent of the voters in the state. And if marijuana users are derided by drug critics as laid- back and apathetic, the frenetic energy that many are bringing to the cause belies that image.

"It's a travesty that we lock people up and make criminals of them for personal use of marijuana," said James Garhart, a 51-year-old messenger who says he has used marijuana "semi-daily" for years and now spends most of his free time working for the Yes-on-5 campaign.

"I think most people believe it's simply not a sane policy," Mr. Garhart said, "So I think this will pass."

Some opponents of the measure fear that the measure will pass because, they say, supporters are running a campaign that appeals to Alaskans' libertarian, leave-me- alone instincts and that often refrains from using the word marijuana. The leading organizations for the measure have names like "Free Hemp in Alaska" and "Hemp 2000," championing a cousin of marijuana that has many industrial uses and only a tiny fraction of the drug's psychoactive properties.

"I'm concerned that the word is not getting out about what this measure would do," said Wev Shea, the United States attorney here during the Bush administration and now a lawyer in private practice, who is a leading critic of the measure. "This thing is so overbroad, unless you really take the time to look at it, you don't realize the vast scope of it."

The measure has plenty of prominent critics, including Gov. Tony Knowles, a Democrat who calls it "foolish and dangerous," and Chief Duane Udland of the Anchorage police, who has warned that the measure could create a "drug culture" that would attract wayward elements from all over the world.

Many state leaders remain confident that there is no way the measure will pass, with many citing the recent Alaska Poll, a periodic statewide survey conducted by David Dittman, a prominent pollster here.

Of 518 residents surveyed in the last 10 days of September, 42 percent said they were "strongly against" the measure and 19 percent "generally against," while 35 percent indicated they were supporting it.

Alaskans voted two years ago to legalize the medicinal use of marijuana, and Mr. Dittman said there might be strong support for decriminalizing the drug in some fashion because the state electorate did indeed have libertarian tendencies.

"There's certainly an element of that in the Alaskan mentality, but it does not extend to amnesty, to restitution, to the idea that marijuana would all of a sudden be legal for teenagers," he said. "I think that's where they went too far."

Beginning in 1975, under a right-to- privacy ruling by the Alaska State Supreme Court, residents were allowed to possess small amounts of marijuana; in 1990, voters decided to recriminalize the drug. Still, private use of marijuana is rarely prosecuted here and, in interviews on the streets, it is clear that many Alaskans find that situation acceptable.

But that hardly means the measure will pass. For one thing, many voters seemed concerned that it would legalize the drug for people as young as 18. After all, Alaskans must be 19 to buy cigarettes and 21 to buy liquor.

Others said the amnesty was simply too broad or expressed fears, as one man put it, that passage of the measure would "attract a lot of the deadwood to move up to Alaska, get their check and get stoned." (Oil revenues enable the state to send a check from the so-called Permanent Fund to every Alaskan: this year, nearly $2,000.)

At the busy offices of Free Hemp in Alaska, workers answer phones and hand out brochures. People, some curious and some committed, wander in for information. A big sign reads: "Absolutely! No smoking anywhere, anything in the building."

Sil DeChellis, the treasurer of Free Hemp, explained that he and many other workers on the campaign detested cigarette smoke.

Next door, at the Cafe Pax, a coffee shop where an espresso machine sits under a large picture of Bob Marley taking a drag on what certainly looks like a marijuana cigarette, the chairman of Free Hemp, Al Anders, ticked off the ways he thought life in Alaska would improve if Proposition 5 passed.

"We'll save money on law enforcement costs, and the police can fight real crime," he said.

"We'll have a stronger economy, and some increase in tourism," continued Mr. Anders, who said he did not like to smoke marijuana because it aggravated his bronchitis. ("I prefer it in my chili," he said.) And, he added: "There may be more government revenue, because people will figure out how to tax it."

---

Tories Fail Tough Test on Drugs

New York Times
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/world/10BRIT.html

LONDON, Oct. 9 - Fresh from claiming to have unified his quarrelsome party, the Conservative leader, William Hague, was obliged today to abandon a vaunted new hard-line policy on first-time drug offenders after seven leadership associates said they had smoked marijuana in their youth.

The proposal, put forward at the upbeat Conservative Party conference last week, called for $150 minimum fines and criminal records for people caught with small amounts of soft drugs in their possession or even in their bloodstream. It was the centerpiece of a "zero tolerance" law- and-order approach that the party is adopting as strategy in the election expected in the spring.

The plan was immediately attacked by police officials and social organizations as draconian and unworkable and by senior figures in the party, who feared that it would cost them votes from young people and their parents. But Mr. Hague said he had approved it in advance and would stick by it.

The uproar exposed a dispute between authoritarian and libertarian branches of conservatism that appears to be replacing the issue of Britain's relationship with Europe as the party's main source of internal discord.

The Mail on Sunday asked the 22 members of the shadow cabinet - the men and women who are the out- of-power party's counterparts to government cabinet officers - if they had ever taken drugs. Eleven, including Mr. Hague, said they had not. Two declined comment, and two could not be reached. But seven admitted that they had.

The confessions were bashful ones, with the acts attributed to college- age curiosity and youthful interest in experimenting. "It was quite hard to go through Cambridge in the 1970's without doing it a few times," said Francis Maude, the shadow foreign secretary.

"Some friends put dope in my pipe," said Oliver Letwin, whose responsibility is the treasury.

David Willetts, the opposition's social security minister, said: "I was once offered cannabis at university. I had two puffs. I didn't like it."

The pun-loving British press had a merry weekend writing of principles going to pot, careers going up in smoke and party members who, hoping to be perceived as compassionate conservatives, found themselves seen instead as High Tories.

What was particularly damaging to the image of a freshly united party was evidence that the confessions had been deliberately planted by the liberal faction of the Conservatives in an effort to humiliate the leader of the hard-line wing, the shadow home secretary, Ann Widdecombe.

The Mail on Sunday is a newspaper with an authoritative voice among the Tory rank and file.

Miss Widdecombe brought cheering delegates to their feet on Wednesday with a stem-winding speech outlining the tough measures. Her address followed by a day a similarly bravura performance by Michael Portillo, the other well-known figure in the shadow cabinet, who set out a vision of the party's future as one more inclusive and tolerant of minorities, gays and other people marginalized by Tories in the past.

When Miss Widdecombe was asked later whether she approved of this social tolerance approach, she appeared to draw a defiant line in the sand by saying she did not know what the phrase meant.

Mr. Hague flew back from a long postconference weekend in Spain and promptly announced that the proposal "needs further consultation, discussion and debate." He said the drug proposals were back "on the table" and open to revision.

"We realize there are concerns about some of the proposals we have made," he said. "And so we are going to go to the police, to the medical profession, to drug rehabilitation workers, to teachers and to parents around the country and have this honest debate about drugs."

Asked whether he had confidence in the seven officials, he said: "Of course. Any cabinet or shadow cabinet that faces up to these problems is going to include people who 20 or 30 years ago had some experience of drugs. It would be extraordinary if it didn't."

To the extent that the dispute exposed shortcomings in Tory policy formulation and presentation, it undermined the central theme of the party convention - that after losing disastrously in 1997 and lagging far behind Labor in the polls until recently, the party was now "ready for government."

Peter Ainsworth, the shadow culture secretary - who was among those admitting college-age drug use - expressed frustration with this aspect of the episode. "The policy needs to be looked at again," he said. "And it needs to be discussed. And that would be a help, frankly, when making policy."

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Northwest Heroin Use Is Epidemic

Washington Post
Monday, October 9, 2000 ; Page A03
By Rene Sanchez Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35383-2000Oct8?language=printer

SEATTLE -- The junkies drift along downtown streets, scrounging for change and another hit. They cluster in alleys waiting for community vans to arrive with clean needles. And by the hundreds they straggle into Kim Murillo's health clinic here every month, doped up and wiped out by heroin.

"We're seeing so many people," she said. "Many of them are desperate to quit, but the habit can be extremely hard to break. They think they need it to survive. It's such a vicious cycle."

It is also an epidemic. No region in the country is having a deadlier struggle with heroin than the Pacific Northwest. The problem is not new, but all signs suggest that it has been getting worse.

Deaths from heroin overdoses have more than doubled in King County, which includes Seattle, over the last decade. They have risen so much in the nearest metropolitan area, Portland, Ore., during the same time that the drug is now ranked among the leading causes of death among white men there age 25 to 54.

Treatment centers in both cities are handling record numbers of heroin cases. Needle exchange programs are besieged with demand. Jailed criminal suspects commonly test positive for the drug. By some estimates, there are now as many as 20,000 heroin addicts around Seattle. In a report this summer, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called s ome of those statistics the most severe in the nation. Heroin use has been rising across the country, but the overdose fatality rate in the Northwest is twice as high as the national rate.

"We have a pretty big chronic user population, and it seems like more and more young people here keep getting recruited to the heroin scene," said Gary Oxman, the director of the Multnomah County Health Department, which covers Portland. "It really is exacting a large social toll on the community."

Heroin has become a drug of choice, and a public health scourge, in the Northwest for many reasons. It is plentiful, usually smuggled into the port here or north of the border in nearby Vancouver, then whisked down the Interstate 5 corridor by a sophisticated network of traffickers. It is also getting cheaper, often sold for only about $20 a dose. And what's available on the streets is mostly a crudely refined "black tar" heroin made in rural Mexico. Its potency is wildly unpredictable and thus more dangerous for addicts.

Both Seattle and Portland also are magnets for transient youths fleeing the otherwise largely rural Northwest. Without steady jobs or any other ties to the area, they easily can fall prey to the heroin culture because it is communal and easy to find. "For some this seems to fill a spiritual void," Murillo said.

Drug counselors say that underground circles embracing the drug have thrived particularly since Seattle became popularized last decade as a hip haven for "grunge" slackers, artists and musicians. Some local officials even wonder if the frequently rainy, cloudy weather in the region contributes to heroin use.

In Portland, Oxman said he believes the heroin problem in the Northwest intensified when traffickers changed their marketing strategy and essentially put the drug on sale. "They figured out it was more profitable to have more people hooked at a lower price," he said.

The clinic that Murillo directs, Stonewall Recovery Services, aids one of the most troubled groups of addicts, young gay men and lesbians. Some live on the streets of the clinic's neighborhood, which is near downtown and filled with fashionable coffee shops and restaurants. But it is also a hub for the heroin trade.

Murillo's staff counsels about 400 addicts a month. The clinic distributes about 36,000 clean needles to heroin users each month, hoping to protect them from diseases such as hepatitis or AIDS. It also enlists a brigade of recovering addicts to roam the area and try to persuade other drug users to get help.

"A lot of people want to quit, but the availability of heroin around here makes it almost impossible for them to stop," said one of those outreach workers, a 26-year-old addict named Luke, who declined to give his last name for fear of arrest. "You can find it almost on any corner."

Dressed all in black with a ponytail, he said that some addicts resist treatment because they no longer see any other way to live. "Once you experience the escapism, it can become your god," he said. "But people are dying. Some of this stuff is so bad that when they do a big slam, it knocks them out."

Here and in Portland, officials are fighting the problem in part by expanding programs that provide addicts with methadone, an opiate that satisfies a craving for heroin without the same destructive effects. They are also dispatching more health workers into the field to seek out and help heroin junkies. But hundreds of addicts still spend months on waiting lists for treatment.

Seattle Mayor Paul Schell recently appointed a community task force to study how the city can better treat heroin addiction. Health officials also are urging the county and the state to shift its philosophy more toward "harm reduction" than abstinence. Giving addicts CPR lessons or safe injection rooms supervised by nurses, they say, could save lives, reduce crime, and slowly but surely lure junkies in from the street for medical help to break their habit. But some elected officials say the steps could promote more heroin use.

Police also are cracking down. Last month, after a two-year undercover investigation, Seattle narcotics investigators and federal agents arrested nearly two dozen people and charged them with running one of the more organized heroin distribution rings in the city. But they suspect other traffickers are still rolling up and down the Northwest's I-5 corridor. "If you're transporting anything like this, Seattle is conveniently located," said Capt. Jim Pryor, the commander of Seattle's vice and narcotics unit.

The recent raid temporarily dried up some of the heroin market in Seattle. Yet it also could have some dire consequences. Health officials are bracing for a new rash of overdoses because heroin addicts desperate for a fix that has been harder to find lately apparently have been buying and injecting even cruder forms of the drug, or mixing it with other drugs.

"They have been needing much more to get high," Murillo said. "But then something stronger suddenly comes along and they don't realize it."

Last year, about 110 people each in metropolitan Portland and Seattle died from heroin overdoses. More than 1,500 heroin addicts are now in treatment around Seattle.

Officials say the victims are a diverse group. Some are middle-aged and middle class and held a wide range of prosperous jobs until they succumbed to addiction.

"They aren't necessarily just the young, inexperienced, rock-crazed types that people expect," said David Solet, an epidemiologist in the King County Health Department.

In both Portland and Seattle, public health officials say they are starting to see encouraging results from recent steps to expand treatment and needle exchanges and from the greater use of recovering addicts as mentors to junkies. Overdose deaths have even declined a bit lately. No one is predicting a swift end to the heroin crisis, though. A decade of soaring overdose rates suggests the problem is hardly just a passing fad.

"We're making progress, but we're in for a long struggle," Oxman said. "Among young people, this has become just another drug. And I wouldn't say that heroin has just been glamorized to them. The main thing is that it has been normalized. It's regarded with a lot less concern and fear than it once was."

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TURKEY: NATO WAR GAMES

New York Times
October 10, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/world/10BRIE.html

A NATO exercise involving 21,000 troops, 70 ships and 170 aircraft began with submarine maneuvers off the Turkish coast in the Aegean Sea. Seven nations are taking part in the exercise, which will extend through Oct. 25. The exercise brings Greek and Turkish forces side by side for a third time this year. (AP)

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Pakistan's Record on Rights Criticized

New York Times
October 10, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/world/10RIGH.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 9 - In a report released today, human rights advocates accused Pakistan