NUCLEAR
You'll Be Dealing With a Different Asia, Mr President-Elect
Russia Pledges Not to Sell Arms to Iran
U.S., Russia Complete Arms Talks
Iraqis delay agreeing to UN deal
Laser Shield Not Ready for Israel
Hawaii
Russian General Rejects U.S. Sanction Threat
Steam Leak Closes Chernobyl Reactor

MILITARY
Rebel Control of Large Zone in Colombia Is Extended
Defendants May Appeal Convictions Based on New Profiling Data
A Misguided Drug War
2 Bay Area Men Busted in Big LSD Lab Raid
Astronauts go outside to fix station wing
U.S. Accord Being Sought on U.N. Dues and on Court
Army Corps Falsified Data for a Project, Study Says
U.S. ship took 40 minutes to respond to order
Reality check
States
Pentagon deal averts satellite de-orbiting

OTHER
FILM REVIEW: 'Thirteen Days' a crisis in itself
Fearing Bush Will Win, Groups Plan Pollution Suits
E.P.A. Gives Its Plan on Hudson River PCB's, but a Fight Lies Ahead
Inquiry looks into tainted water
Vietnam, U.S. discuss Agent Orange
Dredging PCB's Could Be a Cure Worse Than the Disease, G.E. Insists
Corps fudged data to legitimize river project
Hatch the judge
States
Dolly Creators to Make GM Chickens to Fight Cancer
Reject gene-altered corn
StarLink's risks minuscule
Dolly cloners set deal with U.S. firm
Report Finds Police Abuse Unpunished
Federal Suit in Louima Case Takes Aim at P.B.A. Policies
Iowa
MPD on overtime
Russians May Free American Businessman Convicted of Spying
Pleas for Pope go to Putin
Moscow sentences American to 20 years
Suspect in New Year's Terror Plot Is Arrested in Algeria
Bush warns terrorists not to take 'advantage'

ACTIVISTS
PUBLIC CALL FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION ON VIEQUES
End The Dark Times, Protest On J20 In DC
Riots break out as EU summit opens
AIDS Activism
Protesters disrupt hearing
CITY COUNCIL MEETING DELAYED BY HOUSING PROTEST
ACTIVISTS' SUIT AGAINST COPS OVER '96 RAIDS GOES TO JUDGE
Judge hits police probe of '96 raid
Teargas greets EU summit leaders



-------- NUCLEAR

You'll Be Dealing With a Different Asia, Mr President-Elect

International Herald Tribune
Thursday, December 7, 2000
Douglas H. Paal
http://www.iht.com/articles/3570.htm

WASHINGTON Whoever wins the U.S. presidential election will have less time than he thinks to organize American policy for the Asia Pacific region. The old ways of doing governmental business, forged during the Cold War, are being complicated by the forces of globalization and the rise of nationalist sentiment.

The recent odd mix of American triumphalism and inattention to the region is increasingly at odds with trends there.

When the president-elect is finally determined, he and his team will begin preparing testimony for the key foreign policy appointees to deliver in their confirmation hearings next month. Their public remarks will set the direction and denote the departures of the new administration from its predecessor.

The Asia-Pacific region will compete, as always, for attention with the Middle East, Europe, Russia and other priority areas of concern. This competition has for the past 50 years usually been affected by the personal backgrounds of the top national security team, where Asian expertise has been rare and arms control and Soviet specialization common.

But there is an urgent need now for a comprehensive re-examination of policy toward Asia. The region is virtually bursting with potential for change, both negative and positive.

The self-confidence of Southeast Asia was shattered by the 1997 financial crisis, and the Association of South East Asian Nations has visibly declined in effectiveness, partly because of the crisis and partly because it has expanded too rapidly.

Democracy is being tested in Asia. Effective government in Indonesia is bordering on collapse. Leaderships are being challenged in Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Japan is politically and economically adrift. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum seems to have lost direction.

North Korea is showing signs of potential change for the better. Handling its transition and transformation will demand great diplomatic skill and regional coordination. Alternatively, guarding against a North Korean failure will require continued vigilance and deterrence.

Either way, the U.S. disposition of forces in Northeast Asia will come in for reassessment, as Japan and South Korea, weary of Cold War vestiges in their presence, contemplate new capabilities of their own. The Cold War justification for the U.S. military presence in Northeast Asia has disappeared, and a replacement has yet to be articulated.

China will host the next APEC leaders' meeting, in Shanghai in November. Given the press of other business in his first year, attending this summit is likely to be the only visit by the new U.S. president to the region in 2001. He must include prior stops in Japan and South Korea, to avoid being seen as bypassing key allies on his way to China. The visits will be crucial for American policy in the region.

U.S. dominance is greeted with mixed emotions in Asia. America is viewed as a benign balance to China's growing power, a vital market for Asian products and the source of an attractive culture. But U.S. power has been used to force unwelcome change, or Washington has failed to help when its friends were in need, as in the 1997 financial crisis when Thailand was neglected.

It is a big task to reorient U.S. policy in Asia, but not an impossible one. The Republican presidential contender, George W. Bush, has already laid heavy stress on rebuilding ties with allies and taking them into greater partnership. He spoke during the presidential debates of approaching policy with "humility" and of showing restraint in the use of American forces. These themes are generally welcomed in the region, although China has well-known reservations about the U.S. alliance structure.

American officials can offer to begin consultations with allies on how the existing structures and facilities associated with the U.S. military presence can be altered to make them more durable, dependable and strong. Potential adversaries should see a transparent consultative process that can be interpreted only as reaffirming the strength of a coalition of the willing. The aim of such alliances should not be Cold War style deterrence but to maintain the region's stability.

Globally as well as regionally, U.S. nuclear strategy requires clarification. Arms control goals and the role of theater and national missile defense need to be woven into a coherent policy. This must then be advocated in a more consultative manner, and with a conviction missing in recent times.

The United States and its Asia-Pacific partners need to adjust better to the effects of globalization in the region. The reforms begun after the financial crisis are far from complete. The 10 ASEAN members, together with China, Japan and South Korea, are addressing regulatory reforms and free trade arrangements, but the United States, Australia and New Zealand are excluded. Washington has yet to adjust to the coming reality of an Asian Monetary Fund.

Talks among officials on both sides of the Pacific over the next year will provide an opportunity to expand the American-led coalition of nations determined to maintain Asia's peace and prosperity. The U.S. president will then be well prepared to arrive on a state visit to China in November. China's future poses both promise and problems. With proper preparation, the new U.S. leader can arrive in Shanghai in a position of strength to deal with all the issues, including the hard ones. These include China's expanding force of missiles opposite Taiwan, its growing strategic weaponry and opposition to American dominance in the region.

The writer, a former special assistant on national security affairs for George Bush and Ronald Reagan, heads the Asia Pacific Policy Center in Washington. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

---

Russia Pledges Not to Sell Arms to Iran

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/world/07ARMS.html

BRUSSELS, Dec. 6 - Russia has assured the United States that it will not sell offensive weapons to Iran despite last month's decision by Moscow to resume arms transfers to Tehran, American defense officials said today.

The officials spoke with reporters after a 45-minute meeting between the Russian defense minister, Igor Sergeyev, and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen at NATO headquarters here.

Mr. Sergeyev said "they would sell only defensive weapons," a United States official told reporters at a NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels. "Most of these sales would be to service and maintain old Soviet equipment," the official added.

The exchange occurred when Mr. Cohen reiterated American concern about Moscow's recent decision, effective last week, to withdraw from a 1995 pact not to sell conventional arms to Iran, which the United States says is trying to develop nuclear arms and supports terrorist groups.

State Department officials went to Moscow this week to press Washington's concerns over the matter and to make sure that any new transfers to Iran do not include technology that might improve Tehran's Sahab-3 missile, now in development with a range of about 1,000 miles.

Moscow is prevented by other agreements from selling nuclear, chemical or biological arms and technology to Iran, which the United States says has an active nuclear arms program.

Washington has warned that it would consider sanctions against Russian companies or the government if sales of advanced conventional technology took place.

The Russians "have already pledged not to sell any equipment or expertise which would contribute to Iran's nuclear weapons program," another U.S. defense official said today.

Mr. Sergeyev told reporters on Tuesday that Moscow would stick with its international obligations on transfers to Iran.

But Russia wants to make money from a lucrative market at a time of high oil prices and appears to be taking advantage of the delay in determining President Bill Clinton's successor in the White House.

---

U.S., Russia Complete Arms Talks

Associated Press
December 7, 2000 Filed at 9:12 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-US-Iran.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Talks this week between U.S. and Russian officials on arms issues, including a dispute over Russia's failure to freeze sales to Iran, were frank and thorough, a U.S. official said Thursday.

The Russian government had announced late last month that it would no longer abide by a secret 1995 agreement between Vice President Al Gore and then-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to freeze sales of tanks and battlefield weapons to Iran.

Gore had promised that Washington would not penalize Moscow for fulfilling existing sales contracts for conventional arms to Iran on condition that the deals ended by the end of 1999.

The U.S. government responded to Moscow's abandonment of the deal first by threatening to impose sanctions, then by dispatching arms experts, led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State John Barker, to Moscow. The Russian side was led by Yuri Kapralov, director of the Foreign Ministry's department of security affairs and disarmament.

Discussions that wrapped up Thursday were ``full, frank and comprehensive,'' a U.S. Embassy official said on condition of anonymity. However, he could not say whether they had resulted in easing the dispute.

A top Russian Defense Ministry official, Col. Gen. Valery Manilov, called Russia's resumption of the Iranian arms trade an ``internal affair,'' saying U.S. threats of sanctions were ``unacceptable,'' the Interfax news agency reported.

``Military cooperation with Iran fully reflects Russia's international commitments, including in the area of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missile technologies,'' he was quoted as saying.

-------- iraq
Iraqis delay agreeing to UN deal

Infobeat
December 07, 2000
By WAIEL FALEH Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405230447

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Iraqi leadership postponed a decision Wednesday whether to accept the United Nations' latest extension of the oil-for-food program, the official Iraqi News Agency reported.

The meeting, headed by President Saddam Hussein, came a day after the U.N. Security Council renewed the program and unanimously approved a major increase in humanitarian aid for ordinary Iraqis trying to cope with a decade of U.N. sanctions.

``It was agreed to further discuss the (issue),'' said a statement released after the meeting of members from the country's two highest bodies, the Revolutionary Command Council and the Iraq Regional Command of the ruling Baath Party.

The statement, carried by the news agency, did not say how long the leadership will take to decide on the issue.

Under the program, Iraq is allowed to sell oil provided that the revenues are spent on food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies as well as equipment needed to maintain its petroleum infrastructure. The sanctions were imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

In Cairo, Egypt, Iraq's Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh told The Associated Press Wednesday that the oil-for-food program has been ``a total failure.''

``Renewing the (oil-for-food) memorandum is not the Iraqi demand. Iraq's demand is for the lifting of the embargo since Iraq has fulfilled all its commitments,'' Saleh at a meeting of Arab trade ministers in Cairo.

The oil-for-food program has generated $37 billion in revenue since 1996, and $24 billion has gone to humanitarian programs, the program's executive director Benon Sevan told the Security Council on Monday. The program has spent $793 million on administrative and operational costs, he said.

Currently, contracts valued at $2.5 billion have been placed on hold, and there is $4.7 billion available to purchase supplies, Sevan said.

However, Saleh said that Iraq has received only $8.8 billion in revenue and that contracts for $18 billion worth of oil were on hold.

According to Security Council resolutions, the sanctions can be lifted only after U.N. weapons inspectors certify that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction programs. Iraq has said that it has complied with the conditions, but has refused to allow U.N. inspectors to verify the claim.

-------- israel

Laser Shield Not Ready for Israel

Associated Press
December 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-BRF-Laser-Gun.html

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. (AP) -- A laser designed to protect northern Israel from rocket attack is not ready for action and will undergo further development in New Mexico, U.S. military officials said.

The Tactical High Energy Laser, or THEL, is being tested for use in Israel for protection against Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon.

Despite successful tests against Russian-made Katyusha rockets earlier this year, there is concern THEL is not ready for action.

``It is very fragile,'' Lt. John Costello, head of the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command, said Wednesday. ``It wasn't ready yet, and we recognized that.''

Costello said U.S. and Israeli militaries were interested in developing a smaller, mobile version of THEL.

-------- johnson atoll

USA Today
12/07/00
States http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Hawaii

Honolulu - Officials at the chemical weapons incinerator on Johnston Atoll, 825 miles southwest of Hawaii, are investigating the discovery of a nerve gas agent found in a waste bin. Army Pacific Command spokesman Joe Bonfiglio said it didn't pose any risk to workers or the environment. Workers detected the nerve gas at the end of a conveyor that collects hot ash from the incinerator.

-------- russia

Russian General Rejects U.S. Sanction Threat

Reuters
December 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-ru.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A top Russian general dismissed as ''unacceptable'' on Thursday U.S. threats to impose sanctions on Moscow if it resumes conventional arms sales to Iran after a five year break, Interfax news agency reported.

General Valery Manilov, Russia's deputy chief of staff, said Russia was meeting its international obligations and would not be lectured on arms exports, which were an internal matter.

Washington has warned it may impose economic sanctions on Russia if Moscow confirms its plan to pull out of a 1995 accord halting conventional arms sales to Iran.

Other accords prevent Moscow selling nuclear, chemical or biological arms to the Islamic republic, which the United States says sponsors terrorism.

Manilov rejected the U.S. pressure, saying threats of sanctions ``are unacceptable to Russia,'' Interfax reported.

Weapons sales to Tehran ``are an internal matter for the Russian Federation,'' he said.

U.S. arms experts held a second day of talks in Moscow on Thursday with Russian officials looking for reassurance that Moscow would not sanction any transfer of missile technology to Tehran.

A U.S. embassy spokesman said the teams had ``full and frank'' discussions on ``conventional arms sales, including to Iran.''

Defense Secretary William Cohen said then that his Russian counterpart Igor Sergeyev had told him Moscow would only sell defensive weapons the Iran.

Russia, which wants to boost arms exports to $4 billion this year, is seeking new markets as well as renewing ties with Cold War era clients. But it lags well behind the United States, which has about 50 percent of the $50 billion global arms market.

Iran is thought to want to build Russian-designed main battle tanks and fighter jets under license.

U.S. officials meanwhile want assurances from Moscow that the sales would not furnish Tehran with technology that could improve its Sahab-3 missile, which has a range of around 1,000 miles.

MISSILE SHIELD FLAP

Arms control issues are currently overshadowing U.S.-Russian relations.

Washington wants to build a space-based shield to protect itself against the perceived threat posed by hostile nuclear threshold states like Iran, North Korea and Iraq.

But the national missile defense system would violate the landmark 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with Russia. Moscow has refused to modify the treaty and threatened to tear up all arms control accords if Washington deploys the shield regardless.

Moscow says smaller nuclear warhead stockpiles and joint work on tactical missile defense could allay American concerns, and warns the U.S. plans could trigger a new arms race that could suck in China.

Manilov said on Thursday that China shared Russia's opposition to the system and both agreed any regional system should not be deployed in Asia.

China is concerned the United States could supply missile defense technology to Taiwan, considered a renegade province by Beijing, which has threatened to forcibly restore mainland rule.

-------- ukraine

Steam Leak Closes Chernobyl Reactor

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/world/07NUKE.html

KIEV, Ukraine, Dec. 6 - A steam leak at Chernobyl nuclear power station forced its last functioning reactor to shut down today, just nine days before the long-troubled power plant was to be decommissioned.

The Chernobyl complex, 75 miles north of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, has suffered a series of accidents since a reactor exploded 14 years ago, sending a radioactive cloud across much of Europe.

Officials said the station had not measured any increase in radioactivity after today's emergency shutdown. But the action did come on the eve of a decision by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on lending $215 million for the completion of two more Soviet- designed reactors.

Ukraine says it cannot afford to close Chernobyl, which provides 5 percent of all its electricity, without Western loans for decommissioning the plant.

The 1986 Chernobyl disaster immediately killed about 30 firefighters, and radiation has since been blamed for the deaths of thousands and a sharp increase in thyroid cancer and other diseases affecting one in 16 Ukrainians.

The shutdown was the second in as many weeks after cold weather snapped power lines last week, forcing the station to close because it had nowhere to feed its power.

The last reactor, No. 3, was restarted on Friday for its final weeks of operation.


-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

Rebel Control of Large Zone in Colombia Is Extended

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/world/07COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Dec. 6 - Despite flagging support for his peace efforts, President Andrés Pastrana opted today to give the nation's largest rebel group an eight-week extension on the demilitarized zone that the government ceded to the rebels two years ago.

Mr. Pastrana had until midnight to decide whether to let the rebels keep control of the zone - totaling 16,000 square miles in southern Colombia, the size of Switzerland - or retake it by force. With the extension, Mr. Pastrana is banking that government negotiators will be able to restart peace talks that have been all but dead since mid-November, when the rebels froze the talks to protest what they said was the government's inability to control right-wing paramilitary forces.

The extension will last until January 31, said Camilo Gómez, the government's lead negotiator. "It is clear the extension is aimed at resolving the frozen dialogues and to advance humanitarian accords that we had been working on," he said.

Mr. Gomez cautioned, however, that the extension came with conditions, namely restrictions on the entry of people and supplies into the demilitarized zone.

News of the extension was made public about 15 minutes before midnight, after Mr. Pastrana met with members of the Colombian Congress, government ministers and foreign ambassadors, including Anne Patterson of the United States.

"It's not an easy decision, but the president has a strong commitment to the peace process," Ms. Patterson said. "We all agree that a negotiated peace is the only way for Colombia."

Mr. Pastrana's decision comes two years after his government, hopeful that the 36-year war could be ended, created the zone for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. In November 1998, the government pulled 2,500 troops out of the area in Caqueta Province.

But that area has become a political liability for Mr. Pastrana. As peace talks sputtered, rebel attacks across the country mounted, many of them started from inside the territory, the government has said.

The rebels are also accused of forcefully recruiting teenage fighters who lived in the zone and using the territory as a safe place to hold kidnapping victims. This week, a Colombian newsmagazine reported that Venezuelan military officials visited FARC leaders inside the zone, without Colombian government approval. Colombian and United States government officials have also accused the FARC of reaping millions of dollars inside the zone by taxing coca farmers and drug traffickers and running coca-processing labs.

During his visit to Colombia last month, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the United States drug policy coordinator, said that what happened in the FARC-controlled area was predictable.

"It has been turned into an armed bastion of the FARC," Mr. McCaffrey said. "They're building roads, airfields. They're processing cocaine."

-------- drug war

Defendants May Appeal Convictions Based on New Profiling Data

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/nyregion/07TROO.html

TRENTON, Dec. 6 - A New Jersey appeals court ruled today that four defendants convicted of drug offenses after traffic stops by state troopers could file new appeals or reopen their cases based on information about racial profiling that surfaced after their trials or guilty pleas.

Also today, the lawyer for a man who says he was forced to spend 18 days in jail after being stopped because of his race moved to force Justice Peter G. Verniero of the State Supreme Court - who as attorney general in April 1999 was the first New Jersey official to acknowledge that racial profiling existed - to answer questions under oath in the man's federal civil rights lawsuit.

In June, an appellate panel ruled that criminal defendants in pending cases could introduce evidence of racial profiling to seek dismissals. But the decisions today by three judges of the Appellate Division of State Superior Court in Hackensack were believed to be the first in which people already convicted of crimes had sought to reopen their cases.

Judge Edwin H. Stern, on behalf of a unanimous panel, ruled in one case that defendants could raise profiling issues for the first time on direct appeal if they were convicted or pleaded guilty before Mr. Verniero's 1999 report on profiling.

That case involved two co-defendants who had pleaded guilty, and state lawyers argued that in doing so they had waived their rights to appeal. But Judge Stern wrote that "a guilty plea does not constitute a waiver of a `profiling' claim" if the issue of profiling had already been raised by the defense, or at least alluded to, before trial as part of an effort to suppress evidence obtained at a traffic stop.

"They're opening up the door here to people who have been convicted, at least before the report was published in 1999," said Carl H. Hadigian, the lawyer for Alexander B. Chapman, who along with Ruben Velez pleaded guilty to marijuana possession with intent to distribute and was sentenced in 1998.

The two other cases involved men who were convicted of drug offenses after jury trials.

Today's rulings do not apply to convicts who have already exhausted their appeals. But a lawyer who has been involved in many racial profiling cases, William H. Buckman, said he was already representing one prisoner whose direct appeals had been unsuccessful but who was seeking what is known as post- conviction relief.

Mr. Buckman said he would argue in court that documents about racial profiling that the state has only recently released constitute newly discovered evidence - one of the few grounds for such relief.

In a separate federal civil rights case, Mr. Buckman is also representing Jose Baez, a taxi driver who was arrested after a traffic stop and jailed for 18 days in Burlington County in February 1998. Mr. Baez has sued the troopers who arrested him, along with high-ranking law enforcement officials, and has sought to take depositions from Mr. Verniero and Paul H. Zoubek, director of the Division of Criminal Justice.

In a motion to quash a subpoena filed Nov. 16, Mr. Verniero's lawyers argued that civil litigants were "not generally entitled to depose high- ranking government officials - such as Justice Verniero and First Assistant Attorney General Zoubek - concerning their reasons for taking official actions," especially when information could be obtained from other sources.

In a response filed today, Mr. Buckman said that only Mr. Verniero and Mr. Zoubek could say whether they had "explicit knowledge" of racial profiling at the time of Mr. Baez's arrest.

"Plaintiffs are entitled to explore when these potential deponents knew of these conditions, what they did in response thereto, and how far the State of New Jersey is implicated, not only in the knowledge and nurture of profiling, but in its cover-up," Mr. Buckman wrote.

In a two-page statement issued on Friday, Mr. Verniero defended himself against accusations that he had misled lawmakers last year about the extent of his knowledge of racial profiling by the state police when he was attorney general. But Mr. Buckman argued in his papers today that that statement only bolstered his contention that Mr. Verniero should have to answer questions.

Mr. Verniero's statement came five days after the state released nearly 100,000 pages of documents detailing its history of profiling.

In another development today, an organization of about 600 black lawyers denounced profiling and called on the State Legislature to investigate the state police and the attorney general's office.

Ronald Thompson, president of the group, the Garden State Bar Association, said the reams of documents released on Nov. 27 confirmed that profiling had been an "ingrained, established practice" of the state police for decades and showed that high-ranking officials knew about it.

---

A Misguided Drug War

New York Times
December 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/opinion/L07COL.html

To the Editor:

Re "U.S. Weighs Expanding Aid Plan to Colombia's Neighbors" (news article, Dec. 4):

Plan Colombia, the United States' large-scale military escalation in Colombia, is already in trouble. Europe has not provided the resources we had hoped, and Latin American countries oppose the escalation of the drug war.

The plan's short history is consistent with efforts to interdict and eradicate drugs by every president since Richard M. Nixon. The results have not been promising. Since 1980, the price of cocaine and heroin has dropped and their purity has increased. There is more death and disease from drug use in the United States, and adolescent use of the most dangerous drugs is increasing.

Rather than building on failure, it's time to face reality: more of the same will not work.

KEVIN B. ZEESE President Common Sense for Drug Policy Washington, Dec. 4, 2000

---

2 Bay Area Men Busted in Big LSD Lab Raid
Pair produced third of nation's supply in Kansas missile silo, DEA says

San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, December 7, 2000
Seth Rosenfeld, Chronicle Staff Writer
mailto:srosenfeld@sfchronicle.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/07/MN154990.DTL

Two Bay Area men have been arrested for allegedly running a massive LSD laboratory hidden inside a decommissioned nuclear missile silo in Kansas.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents said their investigation showed that the lab, deep inside an old Atlas missile silo in rural Kansas, produced tens of millions of doses of LSD each month.

"They are predicting that this laboratory could have been supplying a third of the LSD in the United States and maybe the world," Shirley Armstead, a spokeswoman for the DEA office in St. Louis, told reporters after the arrests. "This particular laboratory is one of the biggest labs that has been seized in this country."

William Leonard Pickard, 55, of San Francisco, allegedly a longtime underground drug chemist, and Clyde Apperson, 45, of Mountain View, his alleged assistant, were each indicted on Nov. 9 by a federal grand jury in Kansas City, Kan., on one count of conspiracy to make and distribute LSD.

Pickard is in federal custody and Apperson was released on a $200,000 bond. They are scheduled for a Dec. 20 hearing on pretrial motions in U.S. District Court in Topeka, Kan. Their lawyers could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Reached at his home, Apperson declined to comment.

The purported conspiracy sounds like a take-off on Peter Seller's Cold War movie "Dr. Strangelove."

Atlas missiles were introduced in 1959, the nation's first intercontinental ballistic missile. Aimed at the Soviet Union, they carried powerful nuclear warheads and were stored horizontally on railways in underground concrete silos whose retractable roofs dotted the Midwest countryside.

The missiles were decommissioned in the mid-1960s, just as the hippie scene, the peace movement and psychedelic drugs like LSD became popular with American youth. LSD trips were touted as a chemical path to cosmic enlightenment and "inner space."

According to a DEA agent's affidavit, Pickard and Apperson converted the former nuclear silos to underground acid laboratories and each month made about a kilogram of LSD, enough for 10 million doses.

The LSD factory was discovered when a third person involved in the ring became an informant and told DEA agents about it, according to the affidavit, which was filed in court as the basis for one of the searches. The third person, who is not named in the affidavit, allegedly helped Pickard and Apperson find places to set up their labs.

The lab had been based in another former missile silo near Salina, Kan. But in July the informant moved it to the Atlas missile silo his family had bought as government surplus in Wamego, Kan., a sparsely populated area about 30 miles northwest of Topeka, the affidavit says.

The informant allowed DEA agents to electronically monitor his phone calls with Pickard, as well as an Oct. 23 meeting about the LSD operation with Pickard at the Four Points Barcelo Sheraton Hotel in San Rafael, it says.

On Oct. 27, the informant took a DEA agent on a tour of the silo, and in November agents videotaped Pickard, Apperson and the informant at the lab. Pickard and Apperson decided to move the operation, the affidavit says.

The defendants were under surveillance and were arrested after they fled from Kansas Highway Patrol officers who pulled them over on Nov. 6 as they allegedly attempted to transport their LSD lab from Kansas to Aspen, Colo., in two rental cars. Apperson was arrested that day, but Pickard evaded arrest until Nov. 7, the DEA said in court records.

DEA agents have searched two San Francisco addresses associated with Pickard, and on Nov. 7 searched Apperson's Mountain View home, where they seized computers and CD-ROMS that they suspect contain evidence of the LSD operation.

Pickard and Apperson are longtime clandestine chemists, according to the affidavit. In 1988, Pickard was arrested by Mountain View police for making LSD, but the charge was dropped because he had been an informant for both the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and the DEA, it says.

Apperson has no criminal history, the affidavit says.

On Nov. 18, the DEA issued a press release warning neighbors that agents in blue full-body protective suits would return to the silo to dismantle the lab, "so they wouldn't be alarmed by the appearance of the guys in the suits."

People who lived near the silo told the Topeka Capital-Journal they had been suspicious of late-night activity at the former military site.

"They were acting strange, but I figured they came from different parts," said Rod Etienne.

E-mail Seth Rosenfeld at srosenfeld@sfchronicle.com.


-------- space

Astronauts go outside to fix station wing

USA Today
12/07/00- Updated 12:08 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndswed04.htm

SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) - Two astronauts floated outside space shuttle Endeavour on Thursday for a tricky repair job: tightening a slack solar wing on the international space station. Spacewalkers Joe Tanner and Carlos Noriega were trying to get two loose tension cables back on their pulleys and reels. Thursday's outing, the men's third this week, was supposed to be a short, simple affair, but became longer and more complicated with the critical wing repair. They went out early to get the job done.

Perched 90 feet above Endeavour, Noriega planned to use a hook to pull on the slack cable while Tanner turns the reel to guide it back in place. They will not handle the few feet of braided wire cable with their hands because it could snag or rip their gloves.

''It doesn't look very hard, but there's a little bit of a learning curve on where you need to hold the cable so that it will guide easily onto the reel,'' said Glenda Laws, lead spacewalk officer.

Prior to the spacewalk, the right wing was to be rotated so that Tanner and Noriega could reach the pulleys and reels. Nonetheless, it was expected to be a difficult reach with the components above their heads.

''I'm a real optimistic sort of guy, and, yeah, I think we're going to be able to do it,'' Tanner said. ''I'll be overjoyed if we get it on the first try. But I don't anticipate that.''

A fellow astronaut working on the problem at the California manufacturer needed 15 tries to get it right.

If the hook doesn't work, the spacewalkers have forceps, needle-nose pliers and a vise grip at their disposal. If those tools fail, they planned to wrap each cable around a wrench to take up the slack until better repairs can be made on a future mission.

The two cables came off when the right wing was extended Sunday night, leaving the blanket of solar cells slack. The problem was avoided with the left wing because of a slower procedure used to spread it Monday night.

Engineers fear the slackness in the right wing could cause it to tear, bend or even break during space station movements requiring thruster firings, or during shuttle dockings and undockings.

The repair job should take three hours, but NASA is willing to have Tanner and Noriega spend their entire six-hour spacewalk working on the wing, if necessary.

Mission management officials believe the work can be completed as well as the spacewalk's original tasks: installing a static-electricity monitor and reconnecting cables for a camera to be used to help install the Destiny lab module in January.

The $600 million electricity-producing wings - 240 feet from tip to tip - were installed Sunday by Endeavour's astronauts.

Inside space station Alpha on Wednesday, commander Bill Shepherd and his Russian crew installed a new air conditioner after one broke down a few days ago and repaired a carbon dioxide-removal unit.

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

U.S. Accord Being Sought on U.N. Dues and on Court

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/world/07NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 6 - With less than two days to go at a meeting to put finishing touches on the International Criminal Court, a group of nations friendly to the United States is scrambling, with diminishing confidence, to strike a deal that would let the Clinton administration sign on to the tribunal.

"Delegations are twisting themselves into pretzels to bring the Americans in," said Richard Dicker, a lawyer at Human Rights Watch and an expert on the court.

A similar drama is being played out this week on the issue of reducing American dues to the United Nations. On both issues, many nations, especially the Europeans, have been working overtime to keep the United States from drifting farther away from international organizations just as world trends become more global.

This evening, delegations said they hoped that the United States would introduce some new proposals on the court on Thursday.

The new court will be the first permanent international tribunal for trying individuals charged with war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Since the Nuremberg trials of Nazis, criminal tribunals have been ad hoc creations like the courts for war crimes in Rwanda and the Balkans.

This week, several countries - among them Australia, Britain and Switzerland - have suggested that a limited exemption given to France in 1998 when the treaty establishing the court was approved in Rome should be extended to the United States and other countries who sign. That exemption gave France seven years of immunity for war crimes in return for a promise to sign and ratify the treaty, which France subsequently did. The French said they needed time to align their military training and laws.

The United States poses a different problem, however. It is arguing for a permanent exemption for itself and for countries that do not sign. The Pentagon has demanded guarantees that no American soldier or official on duty abroad could ever be tried by the court, a stipulation that President Clinton, while professing to support the court, has shrunk from overruling. If the administration signs before Dec. 31, it does not have to ratify the treaty immediately. After that date, any country has to both sign and ratify the treaty to take part.

In Congress, opposition among Republican leaders has been extremely strong. Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has repeatedly said the court treaty will not be ratified on his watch.

"We're not against war crimes tribunals," a spokesman for the committee, Marc Thiessen, said. But without better checks on the court's jurisdiction and operation, particularly through the Security Council, the court is "fundamentally dangerous," he said in an interview.

"This court is the League of Nations of international war crimes," Mr. Thiessen said. "It is a flawed and failed first effort. Maybe in 30 years it can be improved."

In both the Senate and the House, a bill was introduced this year that would prohibit any court and all levels of government in the United States from cooperating with the International Criminal Court, though officials would be permitted to deal with ad hoc tribunals. The bill would also require permanent immunity for Americans before the United States could participate in any peacekeeping operation.

Moreover, the bill would stop military aid to any country that accepts the court, with the exception of NATO nations and important allies, virtually all of whom have already signed the treaty.

On Nov. 29, Congress picked up support from a significant list of former American officials, among them prominent advisers to Gov. George W. Bush. In a letter to Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority whip, 12 high-level officials, including four former secretaries of state, James A. Baker III, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz, and three former national security advisers, Richard V. Allen, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, said the court would infringe basic American constitutional rights.

The letter writers called the Congressional bill, the American Servicemen's Protection Act, "an appropriate response to the threat to American sovereignty and international freedom of action posed by the International Criminal Court."

--- u.s.

Army Corps Falsified Data for a Project, Study Says

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/national/07CORP.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 - Senior commanders at the Army Corps of Engineers manipulated an economic analysis to justify the proposed construction of a $1 billion system of locks along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, according to a sharply critical report released today.

The findings of the report, by the Army's inspector general, raised the possibility of disciplinary action against three officers, including a major general who retired last month as the corps' deputy chief and another who now oversees projects in the Southeast, including the recently approved restoration project for the Everglades.

The investigation, prompted by a complaint filed by a corps economist under the federal "whistle-blower" laws, focused on a narrow accusation that officials skewed an arcane economic analysis. But it concluded that problems extended throughout the corps, a branch of the Army responsible for flood control and other construction projects.

The report concluded that the corps had developed "an institutional bias" that favored large, expensive construction projects, like the locks proposed along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, regardless of their economic benefit.

The misconduct outlined today involved an ambitious seven-year, $54 million study of navigation traffic along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers north of St. Louis. While barge owners and agricultural corporations have advocated building new locks to ease congestion along the bustling waterways, the proposals have encountered opposition, including from environmental groups.

Investigators found that Maj. Gen. Russell L. Fuhrman, the corps' second-ranking officer, who for a time this year served as acting commander, exerted pressure that "led to the abandonment of objectivity in the economic analysis" of the locks project, the report said. That perception extended to many corps employees, who, the report said, "had no confidence in the integrity of the corps' study processes."

The investigators also found that Maj. Gen. Phillip R. Anderson, who commanded the corps' Mississippi Valley Division, gave "preferential treatment" to representatives of the barge industry, letting them contribute to feasibility studies even though they stood to gain from the results.

They also concluded that a colonel in the division, James V. Mudd, who has since retired, directly intervened in the study by ordering that a crucial statistic be altered to produce a more positive result.

In a statement, the Army announced that Secretary Louis Caldera had ordered the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. John M. Keane, who is responsible for meting out punishment, to consider disciplinary actions against the three officers. While two of the officers have retired, they could still face punishment, including a reduction in rank and benefits.

The officers declined to discuss the accusations, a corps spokesman, David W. Hewitt, said today, but in testimony included in the report today, they denied any wrongdoing.

Mr. Caldera also ordered the corps' new commander, Lt. Gen. Robert B. Flowers, to recommend "any warranted changes" in regulations or practices. That could set up a new confrontation with Congress, where the corps has considerable political clout since its construction projects bring jobs and money to districts around the country.

In March, after the accusations first surfaced, Mr. Caldera announced a series of changes that would give civilian leaders in the Army more direct control over the corps' projects, budgets and management. In the face of Congressional opposition, however, Mr. Caldera backed down. According to an internal memorandum written last week, the Army now intends to seek no legislative changes in the corps' structure or relation with the Army.

The report was released today by the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency that evaluates disclosures and complaints by federal employees. In this case, a civilian economist involved in the corps' study, Donald C. Sweeney, approached the office in February, prompting officials there to order an investigation.

The office's director, Elaine Kaplan, said in statement today that the investigation had substantiated many of Dr. Sweeney's accusations. Ms. Kaplan also criticized the Department of Defense and the Army for not yet detailing how it intended to address the issues raised by investigators.

Dr. Sweeney, whom corps officials reassigned after he concluded in a draft analysis that the proposed project was not economically justifiable, said the investigation had vindicated his decision to come forward. "I'm heartened that the process seems to have worked," he said.

The corps' study was never completed. Earlier this year, the corps extended it for another year. Mr. Hewitt, the corps spokesman, said that officials would redo the analyses that investigators concluded were manipulated.

Timothy D. Searchinger, a lawyer for Environmental Defense, an advocacy group that helped Dr. Sweeney in filing his complaint, said the findings that analyses were manipulated should prompt the Army to reconsider similar projects.

---

U.S. ship took 40 minutes to respond to order

Washington Times
December 7, 2000
By Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200012702218.htm

The carrier USS Kitty Hawk took 40 minutes to launch its first plane after its commander ordered a response to approaching Russian warplanes that buzzed directly over the carrier's conning tower, Navy sources say.

Their account contradicts an official version of the Oct. 17 incident in the Sea of Japan and a subsequent Russian flyover while the Kitty Hawk's crew underwent training in international waters near Russia.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon on Nov. 30 quoted the Navy as telling him, "In both cases, the planes were acquired by the battle group's radar at a considerable distance, and in both cases, interceptors were put into the air and the planes maintained a suitable distance away from the Kitty Hawk."

But two Navy sources say that in the first incident, the Russian planes, an Su-27 Flanker and Su-24 Fencer, flew directly over the Kitty Hawk's tower. One source said they swooped to 200 feet; another Navy official said "several hundred feet."

From the moment the commander ordered planes launched, it took 40 minutes to scramble aircraft.

The first to launch was an EA-6B Prowler, an electronic warfare jet unsuitable for intercepting, one Navy source said. Later, F-18s went airborne to cut off the two Russian planes. A Navy official disputed this, saying he was told that F-18 Hornets were the first to launch.

A retired Navy captain, who flew jets over the Sea of Japan, said the launch or "alert" time should have been 15 minutes in a strategic area bordered by North Korea, Russia and Japan.

"They didn't have the right alert status for where they were," the retired officer said. "It should have been a lot shorter alert time."

Kitty Hawk commanders were so unnerved by the aerial penetration they rotated squadrons on 24-hour alert and had planes routinely meet or intercept various aircraft.

The Russians were so proud of the maneuver they e-mailed the Kitty Hawk pictures the planes captured while passing over the ship and its warplanes. A Navy official confirmed, "Yes, there were e-mails with pictures sent to the ship."

Mr. Bacon said Nov. 30 that, "I think in the first incident there may have been a slight delay in the dispatch of interceptors because the Kitty Hawk . . . was in the process of refueling and therefore was not going fast enough at the moment of refueling to launch planes."

"In neither case," he added, "did the Navy feel that its operations had been compromised in any way. . . . I think it's the type of event that allows the U.S. Navy to show how prepared it is to respond and how quick it is to respond."

The Navy was criticized by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee for releasing inaccurate information about events leading up to the Oct. 12 terrorist bombing of the USS Cole.

The Navy first said the destroyer was attacked by a boat whose occupants posed as harbor workers and helped the ship moor to an in-harbor refueling island.

After briefing that version on Capitol Hill, the Navy changed the chronology. It said that, in fact, the Cole was already tied up and was in the process of refueling when the terrorists approached.

The change is significant because the revised time line raises questions about what steps the Cole's commanding officer took to protect the ship while it was tied up and taking on fuel. Navy spokesmen said initial reports from the ship were inaccurate.

Capt. Kevin Wensing, a Pacific Fleet spokesman, said yesterday the Kitty Hawk battle group tracked the two planes by radar and "took appropriate action."

"In each case, the carrier and its escorts were aware of the Russian aircraft presence and tracked them throughout and appropriate actions were taken," Capt. Wensing said. "While these types of overflights were commonly conducted by Soviet aircraft from the 1960s to the 1980s, the frequency has diminished during the past 10 years as our relations and level of cooperation have improved.

"The Navy utilizes a wide array of information and intelligence sources to provide the necessary data to classify any potential threats and to take appropriate actions," he said.

---

Reality check

Washington Times
December 7, 2000
Inside Politics
Jennifer Harper
News and political dispatches from around the nation.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inpolitics.htm

It's Pearl Harbor Day - the 59th anniversary of the Japanese attack that claimed 2,403 American lives.

Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican who served in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946 and is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, hopes America remembers - despite the election turmoil down in Florida.

"Shortly after World War II Dwight D. Eisenhower was asked where and when the next war would be," Mr. Warner told The Washington Times yesterday. "He paused, then said it would come unexpectedly, and from an unknown direction. That's still true. We still have to remember Pearl Harbor, we still have to remain vigilant, we still must keep our military strong."

"The events of nearly six decades ago serve as a stark reminder that freedom is not free, and we owe those who serve in our nation's military more than we can ever hope to repay," Rep. Floyd D. Spence, South Carolina Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told The Times.

---

USA Today
12/07/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Texas

Thalia - A student pilot and an instructor suffered minor injuries when they ejected from their T-38 trainer jet before it crashed and burned in a wheat field. The crash is the first involving Sheppard Air Force Base aircraft since May 1995, officials said. The cause is under investigation.

---

Pentagon deal averts satellite de-orbiting

USA Today
12/07/00- Updated 12:11 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsthu04.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon, citing the prospect of ''widespread anxiety'' among the American public, has found a $72 million solution that averts pulling Iridium communications satellites out of their orbits.

Instead of allowing Motorola Corp. to start de-orbiting its 70 Iridium satellites this month, the Pentagon will put them to use. It awarded a two-year $72 million contract to Iridium Satellite LLC of Arnold, Md., to provide unlimited airtime for 20,000 government users of hand-held satellite telephones, including military users worldwide.

The State Department, with 2,000 Iridium handsets, is the biggest government user, and they also are used by the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies.

In announcing the contract award Wednesday, the Pentagon said it includes options that could bring the cumulative value of the deal to $252 million through 2007. The deal enables Iridium Satellite to conclude its purchase of the satellite network of Iridium LLC, whose primary financial backer was Motorola.

Motorola, which failed to make a commercial success of its $7 billion Iridium satellite telephone venture, had made it known months ago that it intended to start de-orbiting the Iridium satellites unless it could find a buyer.

The deal with Iridium Satellite, under which Seattle-based Boeing Co. will operate the satellite constellation, is pursuant to a Nov. 22 order of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in southern New York.

The Pentagon has said little publicly about its concern regarding the de-orbiting of Iridium satellites. Although most satellite hardware would burn up upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, the fuel tanks might not.

A government study of Motorola's plan for bringing down the satellites concluded that the risk to life and property was within federal guidelines - a 1-in-10,000 chance of anyone being hurt on the ground by falling debris. Yet the Clinton administration was concerned that public fears would be aroused.

''This might create widespread anxiety and lead to a public outcry for ill-considered government action,'' according to a policy paper provided by the Pentagon on Thursday. It also expressed concern that there is no federal regulatory policy on how to handle a mass de-orbiting of satellites, since it has never happened.

''Although neither the FCC nor the executive branch believed it had any basis for blocking the mass de-orbit, both were concerned about the 'regulatory vacuum' into which Motorola's proposed action fell,'' the paper said.

The Pentagon said it needs additional satellite telephone communications. It cites the example of the USS Cole, the destroyer that was attacked by terrorists in Yemen on Oct. 12. Its power was knocked out temporarily and the crew had to rely on satellite phones



-------- OTHER

FILM REVIEW: 'Thirteen Days' a crisis in itself

Excite News
December 7, 2000
By David Holmberg Daily Bruin U. California-Los Angeles
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/001207/entertainment-arts-56

(U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES -- With missiles striking Hollywood and a tag line reading "You'll never believe how close we came," the poster for "Thirteen Days" contains more drama and explosions than audiences are likely to find in this hyped up history book of a movie.

In the film directed by Roger Donaldson, the drama surrounding the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is explored in full, excruciating depth.

Through the perspective of presidential aide Kenneth O'Donnell, played drearily by Kevin Costner, the tension builds slowly as facts about the Soviet Union's placement of nuclear weapons in Cuba are unveiled.

At the crux of the situation are President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood), and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy (Stephen Culp). With blood thirsty military advisers begging for war, these three characters alone must decide the destiny of the world.

While the fate of the free world is usually a compelling subject, it is not enough to move "Thirteen Days" beyond a tired trek through history.

Weaned on generations of action films, moviegoers have a love of disaster, and the eventual avoidance of nuclear holocaust is ultimately a let down. The hours of tension are not relieved, but just mildly eased and unfulfilling.

While overplaying a character is never forgivable, underplaying one is forgettable. It appears as though Donaldson directed Costner, Greenwood and Culp to strive for the appearances of inner struggle and internal conflict. It comes off, however, looking as though everyone is too tired to care.

Greenwood's version of JFK shows the national icon as weak and needing help. Costner bullies both of the Kennedy's into action and the real hero behind the crisis becomes unclear. All three force their accents, which although convincing, serve to strengthen the fact that these men are actors, not Kennedys.

Perhaps the film's greatest strength is its attempt to mix the grand international crisis with the intimate personal drama. Several scenes with O'Donnell's wife and children are shown to support this idea, but are negated by his apparent lack of feeling for them when national safety becomes his top priority.

While not a disaster, "Thirteen Days" offers little to compel viewers to rush to the nearest theater. Everything in this stereotypical political drama may prove more satisfying if taken from a history book.


-------- environment

Fearing Bush Will Win, Groups Plan Pollution Suits

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/politics/07ENVI.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 - Saying it was increasingly likely that Gov. George W. Bush would be the next president, a number of leading environmentalists have enlisted trial lawyers in a strategy to circumvent what they predicted would be the antienvironmental spirit of a new Bush administration.

The strategy would rely on the filing of huge lawsuits against polluters as an alternative to the enforcement of federal regulations and would borrow heavily from the legal tactics honed in the tobacco wars.

A test case that was filed in North Carolina in the summer by some members of the group, against Smithfield Foods, seeks to recover billions of dollars in real and punitive damages for the harm the plaintiffs contend was caused by the company's industrial-scale hog farms.

The campaign includes a half-dozen environmental groups and 15 law firms. Its leaders said the broad new legal effort, intended to fill what its proponents call a regulatory void, was to go forward whether Mr. Bush or Vice President Al Gore moved into the White House.

But members of the group - an alliance of environmentalists critical of Mr. Bush and trial lawyers who have been accused by Republicans of overzealous tactics - said their commitment had been redoubled by the prospect of a Republican victory.

"If things in Washington are going to be the way they were in Texas, this is going to be the wave of the future," said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the leader of the group, "because under Governor Bush, environmental regulation died in Texas over the past six years."

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Bush contended that the air and water in Texas had in fact become cleaner during his tenure. But he has made environmentalists uneasy with a record that relied in part on voluntary compliance with environmental standards, and by suggesting that environmental problems were better resolved in the board room than by legislation or the courts.

Mr. Bush has also been a leader among Republicans who have pressed for limits on damage awards in tort cases, drawing hard feelings among trial lawyers.

Environmentalists and lawyers who signed on to the campaign said that while the initial lawsuits focused on the hog industry, they intended to use those cases as a model for efforts to rein in other polluters nationwide.

If Mr. Bush is elected, said Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, "We're going to have to use every tool we can to try to make institutions live by the law, and this is an extremely important tool that we have to use much more creatively and consistently than in the past."

For 30 years, the main instruments for enforcing environmental conduct have been federal laws like the Clean Water Act, which direct the courts and federal agencies to impose penalties for noncompliance.

But environmentalists like Mr. Kennedy, who is involved in several conservation organizations and a lawyer for the National Resources Defense Council, contend that under the Clinton administration, enforcement of those laws has been lax. Now, they say, the tobacco wars and other legal battleshave taught that the most effective lever against corporate misconduct is the threat of court-ordered damage awards only a mass tort case can bring.

"This is a mechanism to bring an industry to the table," said Michael Papantonio, a Florida lawyer who is to coordinate the legal effort.

"Until now," Mr. Papantonio said, "the environmental world has never figured out how to use these traditional mass tort avenues to get a result."

Phil Carlton, who is representing Smithfield Foods in the case brought by Mr. Kennedy's group, the Water Keepers Alliance, argued that plaintiff's lawyers might be setting their sights on the wrong targets.

"Clearly, there is a big effort to get very imaginative with the use of tort law," said Mr. Carlton, a former associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.

"But where this goes awry," he said, "is that these plaintiffs don't have any standing to bring these lawsuits. If Bobby Kennedy has any standing in the state, my 40 years in the law have been a waste of time."

The case argues that Smithfield Foods constitutes a "public nuisance" because of the environmental damage caused by its operations in the state; the plaintiffs contend that billions of gallons of hog waste have contaminated North Carolina rivers.

In one court filing, the plaintiffs said that the cleanup would require restoration of 3.7 million acres of wetlands at a cost of no less than $40,000 an acre - or roughly $148 billion for these damages alone. The case is in court-ordered mediation.

Mr. Kennedy said future legal targets could include Midwestern power plants that emit mercury that settles in Eastern lakes, and industrial polluters in the Southeast whose emissions had contributed to a vast "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.

---

E.P.A. Gives Its Plan on Hudson River PCB's, but a Fight Lies Ahead

New York Times
December 7, 2000
NEWS ANALYSIS
By KIRK JOHNSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/nyregion/07HUDS.html

It isn't over.

Although the half-billion-dollar plan by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to dredge the Hudson River in upstate New York was presented yesterday as the long-sought answer to the river's troubles with toxic PCB's, experts on both sides of the issue say the real showdown is only now about to begin.

The General Electric Company, which legally dumped the chemicals in the river from its factories and would be saddled with all cleanup costs under the E.P.A. plan, has vowed to fight back with every resource at its command. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club say they plan to push just as hard, with a national advertising campaign that will expose what the group's leaders say is a corporate effort led by G.E. to gut the nation's environmental protection laws.

The politics could become even more volatile. Between now and June, when the E.P.A. is expected to issue its final order on the river after a 60-day public comment period, a new president and probably a new administrator of the E.P.A. will take office, and a new heir apparent at G.E. will be increasingly taking the reins of power.

Gov. George E. Pataki, whose administration came out last month in support of dredging, could emerge as a pivotal figure, environmentalists say, especially if he finds himself facing off with a Republican presidential administration that doesn't see the issue in the same way. "This is a lot bigger than the Hudson," said Chris Ballantyne, a Sierra Club spokesman. "It's become a national issue, and we're going to step it up."

In formally announcing the E.P.A.'s plan at a news conference in Manhattan yesterday, the agency's administrator, Carol M. Browner, also left open the possibility that the plan could be modified. She repeatedly urged G.E. to "come to the table," and suggested that the plan - despite the reams of scientific reports that she said support it - could allow for some negotiation.

"We listen to comment; we adjust depending on the comment," Ms. Browner said. "If G.E. wants to work with us in designing the components of the cleanup, how things will happen over what period of time, we would like to do that."

A spokesman for G.E. dismissed Ms. Browner's statement. "I don't think this is the day to be talking about negotiating, not until we more fully understand E.P.A.'s proposal and have more time to discuss with communities that would face the disruption and destruction that we think this proposal will bring to the Hudson," said Stephen D. Ramsey, the company's vice president for corporate environmental programs.

Even then, Mr. Ramsey added, talk about the Hudson is likely to go only so far. "I don't see the company agreeing to do anything that even approximates the scope of this project."

General Electric does not contest that its factories in Hudson Falls and Fort Edward polluted the Hudson with PCB's, or polychlorinated biphenyls. From 1946 until 1977, when the chemicals were banned, G.E. used PCB's to manufacture electric capacitors, and under state permits it was allowed to dump more than one million pounds of waste PCB's in the river. The chemicals were later linked to cancer in humans and to various illnesses in wildlife.

The scientific disagreement mostly centers on what those PCB's are doing now. G.E.'s own research shows that the chemicals, in the form of an amber-colored viscous oil that is heavier than water and lies on the river bottom, have been covered by layers of silt and sediment and should be left where they are.

The E.P.A. says that while most of the total chemical residue has dissipated - into the Atlantic at the river's mouth, into the fish that lived in the water and into the people who ate the fish - buried PCB's are still escaping and will remain a danger to people and wildlife until the chemicals are removed.

The agency's plan seeks to recover only the estimated 100,000 pounds that settled on the bottom in a 40- mile-long series of locations from Troy to the so-called Thompson Island pool just south of the factories.

But if geography in the river was important during the scientific investigation, political positioning will probably be the key dynamic in the days to come. Officials of groups like Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and Scenic Hudson, which have monitored and lobbied for years on behalf of the river, are already mapping out multiple chains of events that might unfold.

If Gov. George W. Bush of Texas becomes president, there will most likely be three main points on which the Hudson story will unfold, said Andy Mele, Clearwater's executive director. The first and perhaps most important will be Mr. Bush's appointment as head of the E.P.A. The second will be the new administration's ability to stand up to pressure from one of the world's largest corporations.

The third, Mr. Mele said, will center on Governor Pataki.

"My guess is that Pataki will lay low on the issue," Mr. Mele said. "If the Bush administration tells him to shut up, he'll shut up."

The executive director of Scenic Hudson, Ned Sullivan, disagreed, saying he thought the Hudson debate would elevate Mr. Pataki onto the national stage as never before.

"Governor Pataki has established himself as a leader on environmental issues and has come out in favor of this recommendation," Mr. Sullivan said. "That will send a very powerful and strong message that will be credible and will influence the next presidential administration."

For the moment, the Pataki administration is striking a cautious note. The governor had no public appearances yesterday, and the commissioner of the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, John P. Cahill, issued a statement saying that at the governor's direction, the agency would keep a close eye on the squabbling parties.

"D.E.C. will serve as a watchdog throughout this process to ensure that E.P.A. uses sound science at every step, protects local communities along the river during each phase and gives all interested parties a fair hearing," Mr. Cahill said.

Other experts said that while Mr. Bush has had little to say about the Hudson so far - because New York was not really contested during the presidential campaign, he was not pressured to take a stand - the degree to which environmental groups can make the river a national issue could be one of the new administration's first big tests.

The central goal for the environmental groups, said Laura Haight, senior environmental associate at the New York Public Interest Research Group, will be to try to bolster E.P.A.'s courage in standing up to strong, determined and well- financed opposition from a corporate giant, whoever becomes president.

"We've got Browner now and she's got the spine for it, but it will take a tremendous amount of public input into this process to keep reminding the E.P.A. where its spine is," Ms. Haight said.

---

Inquiry looks into tainted water

USA Today
12/07/00- Updated 06:00 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu12.htm

TORONTO (AP) - False test results. Mislabeled samples. Drinking on the job. Testimony at an inquiry into North America's worst E. coli contamination, which killed seven people and sickened 2,300, shows a town water system run by two brothers who falsified records to fend off regulators.

Frank Koebel, 42, broke down in sobs Thursday while testifying about the way he and his brother Stan, 47, operated the Walkerton water system, which became contaminated in May.

Stan Koebel, the manager of the town water utility since 1988, has been on medical leave since suffering an emotional breakdown during the crisis, and his lawyer says he is too unstable to face questioning. Koebel is to undergo a psychiatric examination Friday and arguments about his fitness to testify will be heard next week.

Previous witnesses told how water in Walkerton, a rural community of 5,000 located 90 miles west of Toronto, had a history of contamination from various bacteria, with Stan Koebel usually adding more chlorine than normal to kill it off.

That didn't work after heavy storms on May 12 caused local flooding that washed E. coli-rich cattle manure into town wells.

According to testimony, Stan Koebel was aware of the E. coli contamination as early as May 18. He played down any problem when questioned while unsuccessfully trying to add chlorine and flush the system as townspeople began falling ill.

On May 21, the regional medical officer, Dr. Murray McQuigge, issued a boil order for Walkerton water, and four days later, Ontario provincial officials took control of the water system. By then, five people had died and hundreds were sickened.

More than six months later, after spending $7 million for new pipes and other renovations, officials declared the water safe to drink on Tuesday.

Falsifying safety tests of the water was ''a regular event,'' Frank Koebel testified, describing how he would label samples from a utility faucet as having come from taps throughout town.

Some of the false addresses included Stan Koebel's home and the municipal offices, he said, even though he'd never taken samples there.

Koebel also said false levels of chlorine in the water were reported to make inspectors believe the water had been properly disinfected. Scales to measure the chlorine never worked, he said, so the brothers simply guessed at the proper amount and entered appropriate levels in the log books.

In the early stages of the E. coli outbreak, Koebel said he and Stan entered false information to correct mathematical errors or fill in blanks.

''We knew the (environment ministry) was going to be knocking on the doors,'' Koebel said.

A lifelong Walkerton resident who also served as a volunteer firefighter, Koebel said he never received any formal training for his licensed job as foreman of the water utility and was unaware E. coli could be fatal.

Koebel, who has suffered two heart attacks and is a borderline diabetic, told how drinking on the job was routine at the utility until he was admitted to a hospital for alcohol abuse in 1998.

He was the second witness to break down on the stand. Last week, Mayor Dave Thomson began sobbing as he acknowledged that Stan Koebel knew about the E. coli contamination as early as May 18 but failed to notify town or health authorities.

The independent inquiry began Oct. 16, presided over by Ontario Court of Appeals Justice Dennis O'Connor. Its findings and recommendations are to be presented to the Ontario attorney general and the public.

---

Vietnam, U.S. discuss Agent Orange

USA Today
12/07/00- Updated 05:46 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu09.htm

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Vietnam and the United States held ''frank and serious'' talks about Agent Orange at their first official discussions on the defoliant used during the Vietnam War, Vietnam said Thursday.

At a five-day meeting in Singapore, which ended Friday, they discussed research on the effects of the defoliant on people and the environment, Vietnam's Foreign Ministry said.

The Vietnamese delegation was led by Deputy Minister of Science Technology and Environment Pham Khoi Nguyen. The U.S. group was headed by Kenneth Olden, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

''We're optimistic that there will be further meetings,'' said Scott Weinhold, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi.

Earlier this year, the United States promised to conduct joint research on the effects of the estimated 11 million gallons of defoliants, primarily Agent Orange, sprayed by U.S. planes between 1962-71 to destroy jungle cover for communist troops.

President Clinton, who visited Vietnam last month, promised give Vietnam a computer system with information on where U.S. forces stored or sprayed Agent Orange.

Vietnam's government estimates there are 1 million victims of Agent Orange among its 76 million people, including veterans and civilians.

No scientific evidence has yet been found of a direct link between dioxin - the toxic component in Agent Orange - and multiple health problems suffered by those exposed to it.

Studies have suggested that birth defects, miscarriages and other complications are uncommonly high in areas that were sprayed during the war.

---

Dredging PCB's Could Be a Cure Worse Than the Disease, G.E. Insists

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/nyregion/07DRED.html

The debate over digging up the Hudson River's last industrial stain has always centered on a single question: Is the cure worse than the disease?

And the answer offered by a variety of experts on underwater toxic cleanups remains a resounding: It depends. They say that new dredging technologies can effectively attack buried spots of PCB's and, if used carefully, can keep contaminated silt from spreading and creating new problems.

But often, at least at several dozen other underwater cleanups overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency around the country, in the end the river bottom remains contaminated, though perhaps not to the degree it was.

Also, several experts point out, the proposal for the Hudson dwarfs anything that has ever been tried before. The amount of mud to be moved, 2.6 million cubic yards, would be more than all the mud moved in all the other cleanups combined. It would be more than enough mud to fill Giants Stadium to the brim.

Then there is the matter of cost. "The extra levels of care come with an increased bottom line dollar sign," said Dr. Richard F. Bopp, a geochemist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, who has studied the Hudson contamination for 21 years.

Still, he and many other experts say, there is little merit in simply waiting for the river to heal itself. This is the preference of General Electric, which is responsible for the cleanup under the federal Superfund law and has steadfastly opposed dredging. The company wants to focus instead on stanching PCB seeps in cliffs near its old factory sites.

As long as tons of PCB's remain banked in the bottom of the river, there is the prospect of further releases, said Robert E. Randall, the director of the center for dredging studies of Texas A&M University.

"Doing nothing doesn't seem to be the right thing to do, because then you have a continual exposure there, an ongoing risk," Dr. Randall said.

He is one of several dredging experts who said that the technological options had improved substantially in just the last five years. There are now variants of the old-style clamshell bucket that are positioned using satellites accurate to within an inch or so. These remove precise, truck- size cubes of mud and seal themselves to prevent water from leaking out as the mud is lifted onto barges.

There are also systems that cut into the bottom with screw-shaped bits and then vacuum the mud and water onto a barge or into a pipeline. But these devices can create more problems than they solve, because of the enormous volumes of water that must be treated before they flow back into the river.

At a news conference yesterday, Carol M. Browner, the E.P.A. administrator, focused on the hydraulic systems, but other officials stressed that their Hudson cleanup proposal does not specify a dredging technique, only the extent of dredging.

For years, General Electric has attacked dredging, pointing to the persistent surface contamination at other toxic cleanup sites, the unparalleled extent of the Hudson proposal, which it calculates could take 20 to 30 years to carry out, and the need to put any dredged material in landfills, where it may still pose environmental risks. The E.P.A. estimates the dredging would take five years to complete.

Stephen D. Ramsey, G.E.'s vice president for environmental affairs, said the E.P.A. was trying to gloss over the project as something that would not interfere with life along the upper Hudson. Instead, he said, it would be a huge effort.

Mr. Ramsey also said the agency was putting the cart before the horse, because it issued its decision before a federal panel of scientists had released its report assessing ways to clean up PCB's.

The analysis, by the National Research Council, is being reviewed, and is expected to be released by the end of the year.

---

Corps fudged data to legitimize river project

Washington Times
December 7, 2000
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200012721534.htm

Top Army Corps of Engineers officials rigged data to justify a proposed $1 billion lock expansion on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.

More broadly, the 10-month investigation by the Army's inspector general found "strong indications" that intense pressure from the corps' top ranks resulted in an agency-wide bias toward favorable evaluations for all river construction projects.

"The overall impression conveyed by testimony of corps employees was that some of them had no confidence in the integrity of the corps' study processes," the report said.

Corps spokesman Ron Fournier said the agency had not seen the report and had no comment.

The corps, an Army branch with a $4 billion budget for flood control and river-navigation construction, recommends that Congress fund its projects after analyzing which ones have the most net benefit to taxpayers.

The Army inspector general began its investigation after a whistleblower - corps economist Don Sweeney - came forward with charges that top corps officials had manipulated data to justify the lock project.

The inspector general found that 18 months ago top corps officials ordered alterations to a $54 million analysis of the future needs of the upper Mississippi River navigation system, even though they knew the changes were mathematically flawed.

The intention, the investigation found, was to reverse the seven-year study's preliminary determination that the cost of lengthening seven locks on the two rivers would far outweigh the economic rewards.

The report also concluded that politically connected shipping and agribusiness companies, which want lock expansions for speedier river passage, were improperly given preferential access to the process - even to the point of being assigned to calculate economic benefits for inclusion in the study.

Investigators said the corps officials' behavior was prompted by a desire to boost the agency's construction budget and a tendency to treat the barge industry as a customer.

Those influences "combined to create an atmosphere where objectivity in its analyses was placed in jeopardy," the report said.

The controversy was ignited in February when Mr. Sweeney filed an affidavit with the federal Office of Special Counsel, which determined there was "a substantial likelihood" of wrongdoing and directed the Army inspector general to investigate.

A letter accompanying the report from OSC chief Elaine Kaplan declared the report documented "evidence of serious misconduct and improprieties." Still, she found the investigation lacking because it did not, as required, include the actions the Pentagon intends to take to address the findings and did not adequately address several of Mr. Sweeney's specific charges.

The Army released a statement saying it has asked the head of the corps, Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers, to submit within 60 days recommended changes to the project-evaluation process. The Army vice chief of staff also has been directed to take action against accused military officers "as he deems appropriate."

The charges from Mr. Sweeney, who was placed in a different corps job after the preliminary conclusions, also led to congressional hearings and prompted the Army to ask the National Academy of Sciences to review the study. That report is expected in February.

The Army's report exonerated six corps officials, but validated the crux of Mr. Sweeney's allegations, which have been echoed by conservation and taxpayer groups that deride the lock-expansion proposal as an environmentally harmful boondoggle.

---

Hatch the judge

Washington Times
December 7, 2000
Inside the Beltway
John McCaslin
Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm

More bad news for Al Gore's bureaucrats. Inside the Beltway has learned that the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency, Nikki Tinsley, has forwarded the results of her month-long probe of "pro-Gore e-mails at the EPA" to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for possible disciplinary action.

On two occasions in recent months, this column was the first to report that the EPA had begun an internal investigation of e-mails that smelled of presidential politics - including one purportedly circulated by the EPA's chief administrative law judge, Susan Biro.

"The state of Texas, under the leadership of Governor George W. Bush, is ranked: 50th in spending for teachers' salaries, 49th in spending on the environment, 48th in per-capita funding for public health," Judge Biro's unflattering e-mail of the GOP presidential candidate began.

Then, last month, House Science Committee Chairman Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, alerted the IG to another unnamed high-level EPA official who mistook politics for pollution.

"It has come to my attention that an EPA manager is sending e-mails endorsing a political candidate and requesting other EPA employees and EPA contractors to pass on this information," the congressman stated. "I am very disturbed that an EPA employee appears to be using government time and property to campaign for a presidential candidate and request that you investigate this matter immediately."

Now, in a letter to the chairman this week, IG Tinsley finds: "[I]t was determined that this matter could be a potential violation of the Hatch Act," and as a result the matter was being referred to the Office of Special Counsel "to determine whether there was a violation of the Hatch Act and to bring a complaint for disciplinary action."

---

USA Today
12/07/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Alaska

Anchorage - Three major oil producers have announced an agreement to study construction of a natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope to the Lower 48. BP, Phillips Petroleum and Exxon Mobil expect to spend at least $75 million to work on design and permitting for the line. It would tap 35 trillion cubic feet of known natural gas reserves.

Arkansas

Stamps - The state Health Department says the risk of contaminating the public water supply from an aluminum waste recycling plant is extremely low. An analysis of supply wells showed clay layers protect the water source, a lake 245 feet underground. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the former Red River Aluminum plant a Superfund site. Residents blame the plant for some of their health problems.

Delaware

Dover - Public water wells across the state will be tested for contaminants that may have leeched into drinking water sources from toxic landfills. Environmental regulators said they will target water sources near federal Superfund waste sites and those identified by the state as containing toxic materials. The program comes after contaminants leeched into a public well field near New Castle.

North Carolina

Halifax - Halifax County commissioners have canceled a proposed regional waste landfill after local residents opposed it. The commissioners agreed not to consider the franchise agreement with Waste Management for the commercial landfill in Aurelian Springs. The agreement would have provided the county millions of dollars.

Oklahoma

Picher - Local leaders delayed a decision on whether to move their community from the middle of one of the USA's most hazardous waste sites. Mayor Sam Freeman said the Picher City Council voted to cancel a planned January vote on the issue to get more information on a land buyout and seek community sentiment about the proposed move two miles to the south. Picher is on the Tar Creek Superfund Site in northeastern Oklahoma.

Oregon

Salem - People who eat fish from a 45-mile stretch of the Willamette River between Oregon City and Salem run a greater risk of cancer, according to a study. Mercury, dioxin, pesticides, metals and other pollutants have been detected in the river, says the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

Wisconsin

Madison - A proposal before the state Natural Resources Board targets mercury pollution and would set rules forcing utilities and industries to cut emissions of the toxic metallic chemical. Environmental, sport and tourism groups contend the plan is critical to preserving Wisconsin's waters. The groups petitioned the board last spring for a 90% reduction in mercury emissions by 2010. But utilities say it can't be done that quickly without new technology and without raising rates.

-------- genetics

Dolly Creators to Make GM Chickens to Fight Cancer

Reuters
December 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-cloning-chick.html

LONDON (Reuters) - The Scottish scientists who created Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal, announced a deal with U.S. biotech company Viragen Inc (VRA.N) to breed chicken that produce life-saving drugs in their eggs.

Dr. Helen Sang, of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute said the deal will combine the nuclear transfer technology used to make Dolly with Viragen's expertise in developing anti-cancer proteins.

``The essence of this project is to create chickens which produce eggs containing new drugs to treat many serious diseases, including cancer,'' Sang said Wednesday in a statement.

Roslin scientists are already developing cows, sheep, goats and rabbits to provide proteins for drugs in their milk but birds provide a cheaper, faster and virtually unlimited production process through laying eggs.

``This collaborative effort is being undertaken to enable the production of a wide variety of drugs in greater volume and at a fraction of the cost when compared to conventional manufacturing methods,'' explained Gerald Smith of Florida-based Viragen.

NO SIGN OF BRITNEY THE CHICKEN

News of the deal that was announced at Edinburgh Castle was leaked in British newspapers during the weekend, along with news that Britney, reportedly one of a flock of genetically modified birds, would make an appearance.

But it seems to have been a case of counting eggs before they are hatched.

``There is no Britney,'' a Roslin spokeswoman told Reuters.

``The announcement is about work to be done in the future. It is not done yet,'' she added.

Dolly the sheep was produced by taking the nucleus out of a cell from the mammary gland of an adult animal and fusing it, using an electrical current, into another sheep egg cell from which the nucleus had been removed.

The same technology will allow scientists, for the first time, to precisely control where and how genes are inserted into hens.

``The collaboration with Viragen is a key part of our strategy to expand the institute's development of medical applications of Dolly technology,'' said Professor Grahame Bulfield, the director of the Roslin Institute.

TranXenoGen Inc (TXN.L), a British company that specializes in the production of human therapeutic proteins in chicken eggs is working on a similar project.

It is estimated that the genetically modified chickens will lay about 250 eggs, containing proteins for drugs, a year.

Viragen is collaborating with Britain's Cancer Research Campaign to develop a vaccine for the treatment of breast, ovarian and colorectal cancer.

It is also working with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York on a treatment for skin cancer.

Viragen's lead product, a treatment for hepatitis C called Omniferon, is being tested in clinical trials in Europe.

---

Reject gene-altered corn

USA Today
12/07/00- Updated 08:46 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/nceditf.htm

One of the easiest decisions any federal regulator will ever get to make is hanging fire at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where officials are being asked to approve for human consumption a type of corn that has been genetically jiggered to produce its own pesticide.

Two scientific reviews have failed to produce conclusive evidence that eating the corn, called StarLink, won't produce allergic reactions in infants and young children. On that basis alone, the EPA should deny the request. But the nature of the problem - particularly, the threat to public confidence in genetically modified foods - invites rejection for other reasons as well.

Because the EPA questioned StarLink corn's safety in human foods, it was approved in 1998 only for animal feed and industrial uses, such as making ethanol. A scientific panel affirmed the EPA's caution last winter, concluding there was insufficient data to judge the corn safe or not.

Since then, however, the corn has found its way into the food supply. At least 300 products including taco shells and chips have been recalled since September. StarLink's maker, Aventis CropScience, surrendered the corn's market permits and pulled the corn off the market. But the company is still on the hook for retrieving outstanding corn, an effort that will cost more than $100 million.

After the corn was found in food products, Aventis, which originally wanted permanent approval of the corn for human consumption, asked the EPA for temporary approval. Under the requested four-year reprieve, the pesticidal kernels would be allowed to travel through the food supply. At a hastily arranged meeting of an EPA science panel last month, Aventis and others argued the risk to human health was slight.

Indeed, the panel this week concluded the risk of reactions is low, given the small amounts in the food supply. But it also said there was a "medium likelihood" the corn's suspect protein was an allergen, that the scientific data was still inconclusive and that further study was needed.

Given the uncertainties, the EPA can hardly grant even temporary approval. The health questions are no better resolved today than two years ago. And giving Aventis a no-harm, no-foul pass will look like a bailout to skeptical consumers and critics.

About 70% of the foods in grocery stores today are genetically modified in some way, and consumers accept these products because regulators impose rigorous standards. Allowing Aventis to walk away from its own food-safety commitments would compromise the integrity of federal oversight and erode consumer confidence.

Aventis agreed to keep its "Frankencorn" out of the food supply. For whatever reason, it failed. Now it seeks after-the-fact permission for that violation. To this, the answer is easy. Both as a matter of science and regulatory integrity, the correct response is - no.

To comment

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---

StarLink's risks minuscule

USA Today
12/07/00- Updated 08:46 AM ET
By John R. Cady
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/ncoppf.htm

The presence of StarLink corn in human food products - for which it currently is not licensed - is a regulatory violation that should never have happened. But the overwhelming body of scientific evidence indicates that products containing StarLink corn pose no health risk to consumers. This is why the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should grant a temporary exemption to allow the inadvertent presence of StarLink corn in food products.

The vast majority of StarLink-containing corn has been removed from food production, and no more is being planted. The only issue is the status of products within the food chain that could contain trace amounts of this corn.

The EPA's own expert Scientific Advisory Panel reported that, given the minuscule levels of StarLink corn potentially in the food supply, there is a "low probability" the corn could trigger an allergic reaction in anyone. This point of view is shared by allergy experts and food scientists from the medical community, academia, the food industry and even the government's own scientists. The EPA itself has stated "there is no evidence of toxicity of either the Cry9C protein or the DNA responsible for its production."

The EPA is being asked to allow products containing trace amounts of StarLink to work their way through the food supply. The alternative is to force product recall after product recall, even though scientific experts believe these products are safe for consumers.

Why would such recalls be a bad thing? Consumer confidence in the safety of those food products would be needlessly undermined. This could have the unintended effect of lessening confidence in the overall safety of the U.S. food supply. Moreover, pulling an ingredient as pervasive as corn off the market could limit the availability of popular products.

The public will best be served if EPA makes a timely decision to allow StarLink corn-containing products to pass through the food supply, reflecting the body of science that indicates such products are safe for consumers.

Has a regulatory violation occurred? Yes. Should the responsible parties be held accountable? Absolutely. But do consumers face a risk if EPA grants a temporary exemption allowing StarLink in food products? Absolutely not.

John R. Cady is president and CEO of the National Food Processors Association. Rash of recalls only will undermine public confidence.

To comment

If you would like to comment on editorials, columns or other topics in USA TODAY, or on any subjects important to you: Send e-mail for letters to the editor to editor@usatoday.com. Please include daytime phone numbers so letters may be verified. Letters and articles submitted to USA TODAY may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms. To submit articles for consideration in The Forum, click here for more details.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/submit.htm

---

Dolly cloners set deal with U.S. firm

Washington Times
December 7, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-200012721119.htm

LONDON - The Scottish scientists who created Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal, announced a deal yesterday with U.S. biotech company Viragen Inc. to breed chickens that produce life-saving drugs in their eggs.

Dr. Helen Sang of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute said the deal will combine the nuclear transfer technology used to make Dolly the sheep with Viragen's expertise in developing anti-cancer proteins.

"The essence of this project is to create chickens which produce eggs containing new drugs to treat many serious diseases, including cancer," Dr. Sang said in a statement.

-------- police

Report Finds Police Abuse Unpunished

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/nyregion/07CCRB.html

More than 80 substantiated complaints of police abuse were lost and dozens of officers went unpunished because of serious mismanagement at the Civilian Complaint Review Board, according to a city report released yesterday.

The 65-page report, by the city's Department of Investigation, said the review board had markedly improved in recent years. But it concluded that the operations of the board, an independent city agency that investigates civilian complaints of police abuse, "still need improvement in some important respects." It recommended that the board hire a management consultant.

The report comes as Giuliani administration officials are trying to convince federal prosecutors in Brooklyn that they have significantly reformed the process under which complaints about police officers are investigated. The prosecutors, who are prepared to file a lawsuit seeking reforms if they fail to reach a negotiated settlement with the city, have based much of their findings on the number of substantiated review board complaints against officers that failed to result in discipline.

At issue in the report released yesterday are 82 such cases. The city initiated the investigation two years ago after media reports about more than 100 lost cases. The missing civilian complaints, which had been substantiated by the board, had never been sent to the Police Department, which decides discipline in part based on review board findings. The report also found that the board had improperly closed 130 cases.

The Department of Investigation said it found no criminal intent behind any of the problems. The investigation commissioner, Edward J. Kuriansky, attributed many of the review board's past problems to its budget problems between 1994 and last year. Mr. Kuriansky's report, which examined the review board's overall operations, said the agency's current staff of 121 investigators was three times larger than it was when the board became independent from the Police Department in 1993.

The review board has provided a backdrop for the debate in recent years over whether the Police Department adequately investigates and disciplines officers accused of brutality. Federal prosecutors have concluded that the city does a poor job.

For its part, the city criticized the review board for several years after it became independent. It cited slipshod operations and investigations that were too weak to provide the basis for disciplinary actions.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has been a longtime critic of an independent board, and as a mayoral candidate in 1992 he campaigned on his opposition to the idea. But in recent years, he has said the panel has become far more effective.

Critics questioned the timing of the report's release, citing the possible federal lawsuit and saying the misplacement of the files was never a mystery.

It was always assumed that they had simply been lost by an overworked staff at the review board, said Joel Berger, a lawyer who often represents plaintiffs in brutality cases.

"This is very suspicious," Mr. Berger said of the timing. "This is ancient history."

Patrick Clark, a spokesman for the Department of Investigation, said there was no connection between the timing of the report's release and the pending federal inquiry. He said the two-year review of more than 1,500 cases was "exhaustive."

The administration's pride in what it perceives to be its makeover of the review board was reflected in a call yesterday from the mayor's press secretary, Sunny Mindel, who volunteered that the agency's budget had roughly doubled during Mr. Giuliani's tenure and that staffing levels had jumped. The agency's budget climbed from $4.4 million in 1994 to more than $9 million for 2001, she said.

But until 1998, the agency struggled with a budget around $5 million. The increases came after a troubled period for the Police Department that included high-profile cases like the 1997 assault on Abner Louima in a Brooklyn station house, which prompted the federal inquiry.

Norman Siegel, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who tirelessly pushed for the board's independence, said the mayor's past unwillingness to accept the board caused many of the problems cited in the report.

"This is all on Giuliani's watch," Mr. Siegel said. "He needs to understand that his unwillingness to support the concept of independent civilian review has had a negative effect, and this report reflects that negativity. So his hands are not clean."

The 13-member board, appointed jointly by the mayor, the City Council and the police commissioner, is charged under the City Charter with investigating civilian complaints of police abuse that do not rise to the level of a crime.

The Department of Investigation's report found that all but 2 of the 82 missing review board cases were from the period from 1993 to 1995. The remaining two were from 1996.

Of the missing cases, 61 were within the 18-month statute of limitations during which the Police Department could bring administrative proceedings against the accused officers.

The 61 cases comprised 41 complaints of excessive force, 11 of abuse of authority, 8 of discourtesy and one of offensive language. The report concluded that the failure to forward the cases was the result of serious mismanagement, including the absence of adequate internal controls, poor organization and oversight.

Frank H. Wohl, the review board's chairman, said he was encouraged to see that the inquiry had found no errors since early 1996, saying it confirms that the board's current administration is working effectively.

He noted that the report said the board was experiencing "growing pains" when the errors occurred and said the board would carefully consider the report's recommendations.

---

Federal Suit in Louima Case Takes Aim at P.B.A. Policies

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By ALAN FEUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/nyregion/07PBA.html

Ever since the first guilty verdict in the Abner Louima case in the spring of 1999, no one has much doubted that Mr. Louima would someday be compensated for his suffering.

He had endured a horrific ordeal - being sodomized with a broken broomstick inside a Brooklyn station house. And then, three separate federal juries found that the officers involved in the case had either personally attacked him or had tried to cover up the assault.

But from virtually the moment that Mr. Louima first filed a federal lawsuit claiming that his civil rights had been violated in the attack and its aftermath, it has been far less certain whether he would win more than financial damages.

While his suit seeks monetary compensation from the city, it reaches for considerably more from another defendant, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, which is being asked not only for money but also to change some of its policies.

Mr. Louima's lawyers have said that the suit breaks legal ground in naming the P.B.A. They say that a police union has never before been held responsible when its members are accused of using excessive force, and that the lawsuit will expose what they say is the union's encouragement of a blue wall of silence.

While there have been other high- profile police brutality cases in the city's history, the lawyers have said that they decided to make their claims against the union in the Louima case for one reason: it provides the most egregious recent example of abuse by the P.B.A.

"It was just pretty clear that the union helps cover up acts of brutality so that the most brazen acts committed by the worst cops would never see the light of day." said Peter Neufeld who, along with Barry C. Scheck and Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., filed the suit on Mr. Louima's behalf. "Our position is that the union is a major player in the problem."

From the start, union officials, who say they have never been similarly named in any previous lawsuit, dismissed Mr. Louima's claims. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Joseph Mancini, a union spokesman, said that the P.B.A. had "publicly encouraged police officers to come forward with what they knew" about the attack on Mr. Louima.

For the last week, lawyers for Mr. Louima, the city and the P.B.A. have been meeting in federal court in Brooklyn. A gag order has been placed on the lawyers involved in the case, making it hard to forecast how successful Mr. Louima will be in gaining what he and his lawyers say are necessary reforms in the union.

The lawsuit was filed about a year after Mr. Louima was tortured inside a restroom of the 70th Precinct station house in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Aug. 9, 1997. At the time, Mr. Cochran stood outside his Manhattan office and said that the suit was "not necessarily about money," but about attacking the "endemic societal problem of police brutality."

The suit accuses the union of specific wrongdoing in the case, but at the same time, makes more general charges about systemic failures.

For example, it accuses the union of trying to derail the investigation into the attack by helping the accused officers get their stories straight and by counseling others to keep their mouths shut.

It also offers broader charges that the union has spent years promoting a destructive code of silence among its members. This was done, the suit says, through policies like the 48- hour rule, which prevents investigators from questioning officers suspected of a crime for at least two days, and a policy that allows union delegates to remain silent when questioned by law enforcement officials about conversations they might have had with union members.

In a recent motion to dismiss the lawsuit, lawyers for the union contended that the P.B.A. was neither involved in the attack on Mr. Louima nor in any attempt to cover it up. Moreover, the lawyers argued, Mr. Louima's legal team failed to link the union to any actual injuries Mr. Louima might have suffered.

While both sides acknowledge that the lawsuit is unique in naming the union, some experts, like Jerome H. Skolnick, of New York University Law School, said it was not illogical to demand reform in the suit.

"It's legitimate to raise the question of whether there is a pattern or practice of abuse by using a specific case," Mr. Skolnick said.

---

USA Today
12/07/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Iowa

Altoona - A police officer is recovering after he was accidentally shot with his own gun at the police department. Officer Danny Middleton was shot in the hip while handing his gun to another officer. Police Chief John Gray says the officers were talking about sidearms, and Middleton took his weapon out of his holster and thought it was empty.

---

MPD on overtime

Washington Times
December 7, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2000127194430.htm

When District leaders began searching for a new police chief three years ago, they faced several critical issues. While crime rates were certainly horrific, poor planning, low-tech operations, poor training and lousy recruiting and low morale were significant problems as well. Essentially, though, what troubled the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) was not the lack of money, although that was the perception at the time. The real problem was how the money was spent.

It is true that MPD does need more money for operations, capital improvements, training and technology. After all, Officer Friendly needs far more than call boxes, whistles and six-shooters to fight crime these days. Qualified law-enforcement officers are as much in demand today as qualified teachers.

"We were able to turn around recruiting in a very short time," Chief Ramsey told this page on Tuesday. "Our goal is get back up to 3,800 officers and to continue to move forward. We did that without going a dime over budget for FY 2000."

That was not easy amid preparations for Y2K, 50th anniversary celebrations for the United Nations, potential chaos during IMF/World Bank protests, the threat of rising homicide, robbery and burglary rates, and a drug market that continues to lower the quality of life in some neighborhoods. Also, MPD is under constant pressure to solve murders that occurred six, eight even 10 years ago, when crack ruled the underworld.

"We are rebuilding and improving," the chief said, "shoring up criminal investigations and the capacity to revisit old cases. We need and we want to add more detectives, including in some specialized areas, such as child abuse and neglect. One of the problems is our automated systems, many of our systems, are a little behind the curve. We're going to work to live within our budget this year as we did last (fiscal year). We're still going to have our hands full in the coming year."

Indeed they will. IMF-World Bank protesters are planning to hit the nation's capital twice in 2001. The Bush inauguration in January is expected to draw record crowds. The pro-life and pro-choice activists and the gay-rights activists are planning their annual treks. With all of this, police are still expected to be ever-vigilant regarding the usual gun-toters, rogues and nefarious creatures.

Managing law-enforcement takes extra planning, extra manpower and extra resources. For example, MPD spent $8 million on the IMF-World protest alone, including $6 million on overtime. The federal government, however, reimbursed the city for $4.5 million of those costs. Seems unreasonable to expect the Metropolitan Police Department to do more with less.

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Russians May Free American Businessman Convicted of Spying

New York Times
December 7, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/07/world/07CND-RUSSIA.html

MOSCOW, Dec. 7 - The chairman of Russia's presidential pardon commission predicted tonight that the panel will recommend on Friday the release of Edmond Pope, the American businessman convicted of espionage on Wednesday.

The chairman, Anatoly I. Pristavkin, a 69-year-old Soviet-era writer who heads the panel that makes recommendations on pardons to President Vladimir V. Putin, predicted during a brief appearance at the Kremlin today that Mr. Pope's appeal, signed this morning at Lefortovo Prison, would be acted upon swiftly after the panel meets on Friday morning.

"The commission will be humane as always and recommend to the head of state to pardon American national Edmond Pope," Mr. Pristavkin told reporters. "I hope the panel will be merciful," Mr. Pristavkin said in a later television interview. The final decision will be up to Mr. Putin, who did not comment on the case today.

Mr. Pope, 54, a former naval intelligence officer, was convicted of carrying out espionage for an unspecified country after his arrest last April and sentenced to 20 years. At the time, Mr. Pope and an associate were purchasing technical reports on the Shkval - or Squall - rocket-propelled torpedo from Professor Anatoly Babkin, the head of the rocket engine department of Moscow's Bauman State Technical University.

Russia's counter-intelligence service and state prosecutors alleged that Mr. Pope was acquiring secret information in the transaction. Mr. Pope argued that he had stipulated in advance that no secret information should be part of the package for which he paid $28,000 in a wire transfer from Pennsylvania State University, where Mr. Pope was associated, to a Baumen account in Moscow, according to Mr. Pope's lawyer, Pavel Astakhov.

The Squall torpedo is a high-speed, nuclear-tipped torpedo developed during the cold war that Russian scientists have been trying to adapt for conventional submarine use and sale to foreign navies. No Western navy has yet deployed such a high-speed underwater weapon.

Mr. Pope signed his appeal at Lefortovo Prison this morning after spending what his lawyer said was a sleepless night following his sentencing by Moscow Judge Nina S. Barkova.

In explaining the role of the pardon commission, Mr. Pristavkin said it "is not here to question the sentence. It considers the personality of the convict, his health, his family, his personal request for pardon and other circumstances."

He cited strong humanitarian grounds to release Mr. Pope. "Here, his letter says his father is dying and he is very sick himself, and, of course, he wants to join his family."

Aleksandr Y. Bovin, another member of the panel and a former Russian ambassador to Israel, said, "I think that proceeding from our own interests and in the interest of our relations with America, he should be pardoned."

The Clinton administration and a number of members of Congress condemned the verdict against Mr. Pope, who has suffered from a rare form of bone cancer, and called on Mr. Putin to release him.

The Russian leader, a former K.G.B. officer who later headed Russia's domestic intelligence service, insisted that Mr. Pope stand trial. By doing so, Mr. Putin has burnished his domestic image as a strong backer of his national security establishment. And analysts here said today that a decision to pardon Mr. Pope, in the face of American appeals, will garner a certain advantage for Mr. Putin in his relations with Washington.

In any case, any drawn out appeal of Mr. Pope's conviction while he languishes in a Russian prison could only erode Russian-American relations, perennially under pressure from disputes over NATO expansion, American policy in the Balkans and the new era of nuclear arms control.

For its part, Russia today made a pointed gesture of thanking the United States publicly for lifting quota restrictions on commercial satellite launches by Russian booster rockets as of Jan. 1. It said that such a step "opens up new opportunities for deepening mutually beneficial bilateral cooperation in the peaceful exploration of space" as the "striking example" of the international space station has shown, a foreign ministry statement said.

In an apparent effort to prevent future disputes over espionage in the defense and technology sector, Mr. Putin signed a decree last Friday setting up a committee in the Ministry of Defense to license and regulate the sale of Russian technology to foreign buyers.

Also today, Russia's foreign intelligence service did a little burnishing of its own image, releasing a compact disk with video and text devoted to the life of the famous Soviet spy Col. Rudolf I. Abel, convicted in the United States in 1957 and later traded for Francis Gary Powers, whose U2 spy plane was shot down over Western Siberia on May 1, 1960.

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Pleas for Pope go to Putin

USA Today
12/07/00- Updated 11:25 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu05.htm

MOSCOW (AP) - U.S. businessman Edmond Pope sent an appeal of his espionage conviction to Russian President Vladimir Putin and a pardon commission was set to consider his request, the president's press service said Thursday.

Pope was convicted Wednesday and sentenced to 20 years in a maximum-security prison by a court widely criticized as being biased. The commission is to discuss Pope's appeal Friday morning, the press service said.

Pope's lawyer, Pavel Astakhov, had earlier called on Putin to release the businessman from Pennsylvania, and suggested Washington push for his freedom.

Putin would have ''no choice'' but to pardon Pope if President Clinton appealed for clemency, Astakhov said.

''And in this case, the U.S. president has already repeatedly made such a request. If it's formulated as a petition for clemency, then the international practice, principles and the laws of diplomacy, as you will, leave no choice for our political leaders,'' Astakhov told The Associated Press.

Pope's wife Cheri spent the day meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, James Collins, and other embassy officials. She said that her request to see her husband had been turned down, and that she had not had a chance to discuss his next steps with him.

''I don't really understand the Russian judicial system,'' Cheri Pope said Thursday. ''I still don't know what the charges were.''

She said she had requested an English translation of the verdict and was told that it would take three to six days to prepare.

Pope, a retired U.S. Navy officer, was convicted of illegally obtaining classified blueprints of a high-speed underwater torpedo, the Shkval. Ever since his April 3 arrest, he has insisted on his innocence, saying that the plans were not secret because they had already been sold abroad and were published in open sources.

Pope and his family maintain he should be freed because of poor health. He has suffered from a rare form of bone cancer, which was in remission when he traveled to Russia this year, but his family fears it may have returned. Cheri Pope said her husband also suffers from high blood pressure, and he had trouble talking and writing notes during an hour-long meeting at the prison earlier this week.

She said her efforts to win her husband's freedom wouldn't stop.

''Every day I try to talk to someone that I think can help,'' she said.

But she has also concentrated on offering support to other members of the Pope family.

''Our family is devastated. Ed's Mom, I can't talk to her without her crying, and we cry together. It's been very, very difficult,'' she said.

Pope is the first U.S. citizen to be convicted of espionage in Russia since U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in 1960. He was exchanged for a Soviet spy convicted in the United States.

Pope, 54, of State College, Pa., is the founder of CERF Technologies International, a company specializing in studying foreign maritime equipment.

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Moscow sentences American to 20 years

Washington Times
December 7, 2000
By David R. Sands
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2000127211727.htm

A Moscow court yesterday sentenced Pennsylvania businessman Edmond Pope to 20 years in a maximum security prison on espionage charges in a decision that drew a sharp condemnation from the United States.

If the expected appeal to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is rejected, the 54-year-old former naval intelligence officer would be the first American convicted of espionage in Russia since U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union four decades ago.

The White House and the State Department immediately assailed the verdict and appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to release the ailing Mr. Pope, who has a history of bone cancer, on humanitarian grounds.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the verdict of the Moscow City Court "unjustified" and "wrong," citing both a lack of evidence and the sharp limitations put on Mr. Pope's lawyers to present a defens