------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Bunker-busting US 'mini-nukes' alarm scientists
Russia to continue nuclear cooperation with India
Nuclear power is not safe
Waste from Norway research nuke spewed into sewer
Consequences for Russia
Russia: Duma Passes Nuclear-Import Plan
Sweden says may delay nuclear plant shutdown
Scientists take aim at low-yield nukes
Nuclear energy poised for a comeback
INEEL finishes removing vestiges of airplane project
Radioactivity found in Fallon wells
Bibb says money isn't the problem at Y-12

MILITARY
U.S. May Withhold Main Radar Item on Taiwan's List
Bush is likely to defer arms sales to Taiwan
North Korea sends missile parts, technology to Iran
Rebel Group In Colombia Kidnaps 100, But Frees 70
Guerrillas hold workers of U.S. oil field
Amtrak Knows Where You've Been . . .
Skakel witness says he was on heroin
Iranian Attack on Iraqi Towns Condemned
Pentagon: Fix Osprey, don't kill it
Saudi rules anger top Air Force pilot

OTHER
Washington calls on its cows to ease energy crisis
Bush Endorses Rule on Lead Emissions Proposed by Clinton
ALASKA: A NORTH SLOPE SPILL
MANHATTAN: HUDSON DREDGING SUPPORTED
The Environment: Read My Lips
Administration to tighten arsenic water standards
THE QUEBEC WALL
Bush Says He'll Press Effort for Hemisphere Trade Pact
Drug cost will soar in FTAA: experts
Big business's voice alone is heard at summit
Towards the America´s summit
Summit Rosy Scenario
New Call Against Verniero
Patterns of Police Violence
Fire Dept. Delays Hiring Officer in Diallo Shooting
Inquiry of Torricelli Examining Claim He Took Unreported Gifts
Session of Cincinnati Council Draws a Crowd
MANHATTAN: CIVILIAN COMPLAINT REVIEW BOARD
Cincinnati´s racial fires
A National Humiliation
U.S. Threatens to Stop Talks With Beijing
Knotty Task of Beijing Talks:
China could force U.S. to escort planes
Beyond the spy-plane issue: Keep engaging China
Russia Passes Spy Plane Treaty
To be a fly on the wall
Subpoena for Albright in Bombings Trial

ACTIVISTS
Inside a Soccer Mom, a 60's Agitator Roars
THE QUEBEC WALL
Quebec police charge six with possession of explosives
6 arrested, arsenal seized in Summit security move
Worry about the 'Blue Bloc', not the 'Black Bloc'


-------- NUCLEAR

Bunker-busting US 'mini-nukes' alarm scientists

The Guardian
Wednesday April 18, 2001
Julian Borger in Washington, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0%2C3604%2C474368%2C00.html

The Pentagon is examining the feasibility of producing a low-yield nuclear warhead capable of hitting deep fortified targets such as Saddam Hussein's underground bunkers. But US scientists warned yesterday that "mini-nukes" would lower the threshold of nuclear war.

The Pentagon is due to report to the Senate in July in response to a Republican request to it and the energy department to find a way of destroying "hardened and deeply buried targets".

But a Pentagon spokesman insisted yesterday that work on mini-nukes had not yet begun.

"The 2001 defence authorisation bill authorises us to review the requirements for a weapon to use against hardened and deeply buried targets," Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Campbell said.

"There has been no research and development."

A 1994 law prohibits the US developing a nuclear warhead of less than 5 kilotonnes, lest "low-yield nuclear weapons blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war".

The request by two Republican hawks, Senators John Warner and Wayne Allard, to find a way of destroying targets such as underground bunkers directly challenges that law. Testing a mini-nuke would breach the 1996 comprehensive test ban treaty, too.

There is thought to be support for developing such a weapon in the energy department's nuclear research laboratories and the Pentagon. An adviser to the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told the Washington Post this week that President Saddam would not be deterred by any of the nuclear warheads in the US arsenal, "because he knows a US president would not drop a 100-kilotonne bomb on Baghdad".

In theory a mini-nuke missile released by a plane would point towards its target and fire its rocket motors, driving it deep underground. The weak nuclear charge would be exploded after a time-delay and the blast, supporters say, would be contained in the hole dug by the missile.

But a report by the Federation of American Scientists argues that the Earth-penetrating bombs now being tested have only penetrated 6 metres (20ft) below the surface. A nuclear blast at that depth, the report says, "will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area".

Robert Sherman, head of the federation's nuclear security project, said: "We have gone 56 years without a nuclear weapon being used anywhere. There is universal recognition that once you use the first nuclear weapon it becomes a great deal easier for someone to use the second.

"Its incredibly stupid to think you can use a small nuclear weapon, cross the nuclear firebreak and get away from it.

"Trying to sell it on the rationale that it can be used without collateral damage and that will be the end of it ... is incredibly irresponsible."

-----

Russia to continue nuclear cooperation with India

The Hindu
Wednesday, April 18, 2001
By Vladimir Radyuhin
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/04/18/stories/03180005.htm

MOSCOW, APRIL 17. Russia attaches top priority to nuclear cooperation with India and is working to clear international hurdles to further supply of nuclear reactors to India, the new Russian Atomic Energy Minister has said.

Mr. Alexander Rumyantsev, who replaced Mr. Yevgeny Adamov last month, reiterated Russia's resolve to continue nuclear cooperation with India. ``India is our strategic partner and we attach very great importance to nuclear cooperation with it,'' Mr. Rumyantsev told The Hindu.

Russia has offered to supply four more nuclear reactors for the Koodankulam power station in addition to two negotiated several years ago.

However, as a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Moscow is under restrictions to supply any more nuclear reactors to India, as the latter refuses to place all its nuclear programmes under ``full-scope safeguards'' by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Mr. Rumyantsev admitted the problem, but was confident it could be overcome. ``We are in talks with the NSG and I am sure we can reach an agreement. We can sign some sort of memorandum with the NSG allowing us to supply nuclear technology to India. Some members of the NSG do make such supplies to non- nuclear states.''

The Minister also vowed to continue nuclear fuel supply to India's Tarapur power reactors despite American protest. ``They criticise us but we carry on with the supplies.''

Earlier this year, Russia had submitted a detailed project report for the construction of two 1,000-KW reactors at Koodankulam and a contract is expected to be the signed in summer.

--------

Nuclear power is not safe

Montreal Gazette
Wednesday 18 April 2001
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/010418/5029146.html

Letter to the Editor

In response to Fred Nagy (Letters, April 11), atomic power is not the panacea to meet the world's clean-energy needs.

Here are three principal reasons against expanded use of radioactive electrical production: cost, longevity and safety.

A nuclear generating facility carries a foreboding construction cost, not only in building the reactors but the containment and backup safety systems as well. The lifespan of the average reactor is 25 years.

What use is a mothballed facility? It becomes a blight on the landscape.

Its decommissioning and waste disposal contribute other costs, not to mention the risk of transporting radioactive materials. We have seen fail-safe systems go awry, with Chernobyl and Three Mile Island coming to mind. The consequences of such disasters occurring more frequently causes one to shudder.

The alternatives to nuclear and fossil-fuel-burning electric plants lie in solar, wind, power-cell and point-of-demand geothermal energy.

All are renewable resources, and easily built in urbanized areas without harm to the environment. There would be no need for extensive power lines that scar our green spaces and remain vulnerable to ice storms, sabotage and right-of-way conflicts. Long transmission cables also rob current, and lessen efficiency.

As for nuclear energy: been there, done that. It's time to forge ahead to incorporate these new, environmentally safe technologies in order to fulfill our ever-increasing energy demands.

W. Wayne Franks LaSalle

-------- norway

Waste from Norway research nuke spewed into sewer

NORWAY: April 18, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10531

OSLO - Nuclear waste from a research reactor in Norway spewed into a city sewer for nine years after a pipeline mix-up, the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) said yesterday.

Some of the sewage sludge ended up as fertiliser spread on Norwegian farms near Halden, in southeast Norway. Officials said there had been no danger to human health from the low-level radioactive waste.

Sverre Hornkjoel, an NRPA scientist, said cooling water from the 42-year-old reactor, operated by the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), had ended up in the Halden sewers between 1991-1999 after the municipality tied the drainage to the city's sewerage system instead of leading it out to sea.

"The municipality made the howler, but it is still IFE which is responsible," Hornkjoel said. "In principle, this is a serious incident, but the emissions were very small," he said.

IFE spokesman Viktor Wikstroem said the cooling water had undergone tests before leaving the Halden reactor, part of an international project to test fuel rods for nuclear reactors, which showed emissions to be below the safety limit.

"Our annual emissions are 4,000 times lower than what you and I and everyone are exposed to each year," Wikstroem said. "It is the municipality which made the error."

Nuclear waste from the reactor's cooling water then ended up as sludge sold to farmers in the area who used it as fertiliser. The pipeline has now been correctly connected so that the waste ends up in the sea.

"It is frightening that IFE has so little control over its emissions," said Nils Boehmer, a nuclear physicist with the ecological organisation Bellona.

Boehmer said IFE was "cowardly" in trying to push the responsibility onto the municipality and should offer free radiation tests to farmers in the area rather than trying to play down what had happened.

Norway has no nuclear power plants and no nuclear weapons. The Halden reactor is part of a research project run by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

-- russia

Consequences for Russia

Wednesday, April 18, 2001
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30369-2001Apr18?language=printer

LAST THURSDAY Secretary of State Colin Powell told Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov of the Bush administration's support for preserving the freedom of Russia's NTV television network, reiterating a concern that the administration had repeatedly voiced publicly. On Sunday, security forces evicted NTV's journalistic team from the network's studios, forcibly installing new management selected by the state-controlled gas company. On Monday, the same government toadies shut down the newspaper Sevodnya, another beacon of the post-Soviet free press controlled by NTV's holding company, Media-Most. Yesterday, the apparatchiks ousted the editorial team at Itogi, a Media-Most weekly news magazine published in cooperation with Newsweek (which is owned by The Washington Post Co.).

The sum of these actions is clear: President Vladimir Putin has flouted the appeals of the United States and other Western governments that he preserve Russia's free media. Instead, piece by piece, his cronies have crushed the most prestigious television, newspaper and magazine organizations in the country. The claims of Mr. Putin's surrogates that they are motivated by business concerns, never very plausible, have been shredded in the last week: The first action of the new managers has been to dismiss the independent journalists who enraged Mr. Putin with critical reports on the war in Chechnya, on corruption and on reconstruction of the secret police apparatus. One group of journalists, led by television anchor Yevgeny Kiselyov, tried to move to a cable television network; on Monday, government tax police, led by a recent Putin appointee, brought charges against that network's directors.

The Bush administration and the governments of the European Union, Canada and Japan now face an important challenge: to ensure that Mr. Putin suffers some consequence from his grossly anti-democratic behavior. To avoid action after the many warnings to Moscow would be a serious blow to Western credibility. At the same time, the sanction must be suited to the offense; it would make little sense, for example, for the administration to curtail aid programs to Russia that support non-government groups or are aimed at dismantling nuclear warheads and preventing the leakage of nuclear materials. The nuclear cooperation programs directly support U.S. security interests, and Mr. Putin's autocratic behavior can best be countered by increasing, not curtailing, U.S. aid to human rights groups, small independent newspapers and other organizations struggling to keep an independent civil society alive.

White House officials say they are seeking to coordinate a response to Mr. Putin with other governments, which is good. The most effective message to Mr. Putin can be delivered not by the Bush administration alone, but by the Western-led international organizations his government aspires to be part of. Even as he moves to centralize power and stifle opposition at home, Mr. Putin imagines leading Russia back into a position of world influence, and revels in his membership in the G-7 group of industrialized nations and the Council of Europe. Russia's place in those prestigious but largely ceremonial organizations is ripe for reconsideration.

The United States supported Russia's addition to the club of seven rich democracies even though it was neither rich nor fully democratic; the idea was that inclusion in annual summit meetings would encourage Moscow to cooperate and eventually integrate with the democratic West. But Russia has ruptured that premise; and there should be no place at a summit of Western democracies, or any European political council, for a government that has suppressed freedom of speech, built up a secret police apparatus and waged a brutal campaign of repression like that in Chechnya.

Mr. Putin has been unwilling take the West seriously when it has raised these issues; if he is disinvited from the next G-7 summit meeting, he just might.

------

Russia: Duma Passes Nuclear-Import Plan

Radio Free Europe
18 April 2001
By Sophie Lambroschini
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/04/180418105729.asp

Moscow, (RFE/RL) -- Russia's lower house of parliament today gave preliminary approval to a controversial three-bill package that would allow Russia to import and store nuclear waste from other countries.

The State Duma passed the three-bill package on the second of three readings. The Duma is to consider the package in a third reading before passing it on to the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, for consideration.

The plan has the support of both the Kremlin and the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry, which says the country could earn up to $20 billion by importing and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

Critics point to Russia's poor nuclear-safety standards and say the plan could be disastrous for the environment and human health.

Duma deputy Grigory Yavlinsky, whose liberal Yabloko faction openly opposed the plan, calls the vote a step in the wrong direction:

"According to us, today another step was taken toward a mistake -- which cannot be undone in the future -- to allow the import of nuclear waste to Russia."

The vote came just three weeks after a government reshuffle ousted the plan's author and prime supporter, Yevgeny Adamov, from the top post at the Atomic Energy Ministry. Adamov had come under criticism after a Duma report accused him of corrupt business activities.

Observers had hoped his replacement, Aleksandr Rumyantsev, would temper enthusiasm for the proposal, but Rumyantsev defended the plan at a news conference Monday (April 16). He described the world's spent-fuel market as a rich opportunity that Russia should seize before its foreign reprocessing competitors -- like France's Cogema or Britain's BNFL -- do the same:

"To tell the truth, none of these companies has declared so far that they're competing with Russian reprocessing firms. At present there are around 200,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in the world. Our project is to take 10 percent of this and import it for storage and reprocessing."

Rumyantsev says taking in spent fuel is the only way for Russia to finance repairs to its existing nuclear infrastructure.

But Aleksei Yablokov, the head of environmental affairs under former President Boris Yeltsin, said at a news conference yesterday that Russia's safety standards are insufficient for taking on such a potentially risky project:

"It's the most polluting type of technology. The dirtiest part of the radioactive cycle is the reprocessing. We store it underground, and then it ends up in the Arctic Ocean somewhere."

Environmentalists and independent experts argue that Russia's two existing nuclear storage facilities are already almost full. They have also said the reprocessing itself, which isolates plutonium, puts Russia at danger of nuclear theft and potential terrorism.

Independent nuclear expert Vladimir Kuznetsov told RFE/RL earlier this year he doubted any of the money would finance environmental programs as provided in the bill package. He said most of the revenue would either be gobbled up by costly preparations to transport, store and reprocess the spent fuel, or disappear into Russia's secretive nuclear and defense sectors.

Yavlinsky suggests that Duma deputies who voted in favor of the plan put their own personal interests ahead of the country's welfare:

"The parliamentary factions supporting the atomic energy ministry proved once again that they consciously agreed to the import of nuclear waste to Russia in exchange for money, benefits and privileges, which they will obviously receive."

Attempts to block the import plan through a national referendum failed last year when electoral authorities invalidated some of the nearly 2 million signatures collected to support the vote.

-------- sweden

Sweden says may delay nuclear plant shutdown

SWEDEN: April 18, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10530

STOCKHOLM - Sweden has said it may postpone the planned 2003 closure of a controversial nuclear reactor plant if alternative electricity supplies are not secured.

Prime Minister Goran Persson said during the Easter holiday that the second reactor at the Barseback plant in southern Sweden would be shut down only once it was certain that the lost production could be replaced from other energy sources.

"We don't want to prolong this by a single day but at the same time we are not going to put ourselves in a situation where we could get problems in case of a cold winter," Persson was quoted as saying by the Swedish daily Dagens Industri.

Persson's spokeswoman Anna Hellsen confirmed the report yesterday.

"This is what the Prime Minister said," she told Reuters, but declined to elaborate.

The first Barseback reactor was closed in 1999 at a cost to the state of some 8.3 billion crowns ($809 million) and was part of a plan to phase out nuclear power. The government said last summer that the second Barseback reactor would be shut down in 2003.

Barseback lies some 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) across the border from Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, which has banned nuclear power.

Persson was responding to Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, who last week expressed concern that Sweden would not follow its aim to shut the reactor by 2003.

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

Scientists take aim at low-yield nukes

Environmental News Network
Wednesday, April 18, 2001
By United Press International
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/04/04182001/upi_nukes_43098.asp

A Washington-based scientific organization said on Monday that a new type of Earth-burrowing nuclear weapon under study by the United States government would inflict massive civilian causalities and undercut global efforts to quell the proliferation of nuclear arms.

Less deadly than Cold War-era bombs, the so-called "mini-nukes" would, in theory, penetrate hundreds of feet below the Earth's surface, destroying bunkers packed, for example, with chemical or biological weapons while leaving civilian populations above it unscathed.

Scientists at the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy's nuclear laboratories are spearheading the research.

Proponents, including a small number of politicians, planners and government scientists, argue that, because of their limited collateral damage and precise guidance systems, mini-nukes would be ideal for countering rogue states that deploy chemical weapons against American troops.

But a study released by the Federation of American Scientists, an organization overseen by more than half of the current American Nobel Laureates, took issue with those claims, arguing that low-yield nuclear bombs are a technological impossibility.

"No Earth-burrowing missile can penetrate deep enough into the Earth to contain an explosion with a nuclear yield even as small as 1 percent of the Hiroshima weapon," wrote Princeton University physicist Robert Nelson, the author of the FAS study. "The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with especially intense and deadly fallout."

The study stated that a 1-kiloton explosion, less than one tenth of the Hiroshima bomb, would have to burrow 450 feet to avoid civilian impacts.

It noted that when conducting nuclear explosions at the U.S. government's Nevada Test Site, scientists must bury a 5-kiloton explosive 650 feet below ground. Even then, the study reported, there are many documented cases where the local environment is exposed to radioactivity.

The report said that burrowing to a depth that is safe for civilians would destroy a warhead's ability to function.

Apart from technological considerations, some experts said the weapon would obfuscate distinctions between conventional and nuclear weapons and make their eventual use more likely.

"This type of weapon is much more problematic than proponents would have us believe," said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "If you start saying that the most powerful country in world needs nuclear weapons to deter chemical and biological attacks, then you have to ask why everyone doesn't need them? You swing open the door to global proliferation of nuclear weapons."

While some conventional weapons can destroy bunkers, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed former Pentagon official last year saying that the military needs a weapon capable of destroying a bunker buried beneath 300 meters of granite without hurting the surrounding population.

Sen. Wayne Allard, (R-Colo.) and Sen. John Warner, (R-Va.), inserted a provision into the 2001 defense authorization bill that required the DOD and DOE to study the burrowing bombs but did not allocate any funds for their development.

The results of those studies are due before July 1, 2001.

"Sen. Allard wants to look at ways to address the growing problem of so-called harden targets such as bunkers," Sean Conway, spokesman for Sen. Allard, told United Press International. "He will review the FAS study but he is waiting on the DOE and DOD report to make his final decision. He didn't want to take any options off the table until it was studied."

Some of the government's leading nuclear scientists have called for scaled-down nuclear weapons.

"Some targets require the energy of a nuclear weapon for their destruction," wrote Stephen M. Younger, associate laboratory director for nuclear weapons at the DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory in June 2000. "Precision targeting can greatly reduce the nuclear yield required to destroy such targets. Only a relatively few targets require high nuclear yields. Advantages of lower yields include reduced collateral damage, arms control advantages to the United States and the possibility that such weapons could be maintained with higher confidence and at lower cost than our current nuclear arsenal."

"The United States will undoubtedly require a new nuclear weapon because it is realized that the yields of the weapons left over from the Cold War are too high for addressing the deterrence requirements of a multi-polar, widely proliferated world," Paul Robinson, director of Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., said in a speech on March 28, 2000. "Without rectifying that situation, we would end up being self-deterred."

A spokesperson in his office told UPI that Robinson could not comment by press time because he had not read the FAS study.

The Department of Energy also did not comment by press time.

Speaking of the report, Bob Sherman, director of nuclear security projects at FAS, told UPI "we hope the information will give a useful perspective to claims of nuclear labs that they need to resume nuclear testing in order to get small, very strong warheads which they claim would do useful things we can't do now."

"I think the low-yield systems are a solution in search of a problem," said John Pike, a military expert and the director of GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va.

"There is no real evidence that potential adversaries are constructing these deep underground bunkers and if there were, there is no particular reason to believe we could locate them with sufficient precision to destroy them."

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

Nuclear energy poised for a comeback

Environmental News Network
Wednesday, April 18, 2001
By John Roach
http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/04/04182001/nukes_42979.asp

Blackouts roll across California. Icebergs calve in the Antarctic Peninsula. Salmon migrate via barges. Water creeps up on island nations. The United States wants energy. The Earth needs to cool down.

Are nuclear reactors the answer?

Vice President Dick Cheney thinks so. Cheney has jumped on the nuclear energy bandwagon as an answer to both the U.S.'s energy crisis and the world's high fever.

"If you want to do something about carbon dioxide emissions, then you ought to build nuclear power plants. They don't emit any carbon dioxide. They don't emit greenhouse gases," Cheney said recently on MSNBC's "Hardball" program.

Cheney believes that greater use of nuclear energy must be a part of the country's long-term energy strategy. Currently 20 percent of U.S. power is nuclear. If the Bush administration get its way, the figure will rise.

The administration touts nuclear energy as emission-free. As such, it is one way President George W. Bush's group can deal with global warming, a major thorn for the administation since it reneged on the Kyoto Protocol in March.

Emission-free, perhaps, but nuclear energy is as hazardous and controversial today as it was 20 years ago, said Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington, D.C.

"When you get outside of the Beltway and outside of the moneyed interests, there certainly remain concerns about nuclear waste, catastrophic accidents and proliferation of nuclear weapons material from this technology," he said.

Resurrection of the nuclear industry, the aim of a bill introduced in March by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, constitutes a resurgence in proliferation of nuclear weapons material, said Gunter.

"Given that a domestic market won't [support the industry], they are going to have to sell around the world," he said. "What this poses is the threat of proliferation in terms of the number of holders of the basic building blocks of nuclear weapons."

Storage of nuclear waste is another issue of major concern. The Department of Energy has long studied the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada but hasn't decided if the location is suitable.

Environmentalists point to the area's volcanic and seismic activity as evidence against the site.

-------- idaho

INEEL finishes removing vestiges of airplane project

KTVB News
APRIL 18, 2001, 11:15 AM
http://www.ktvb.com/news/newstory.html?StoryID=6349

The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory has finished tearing out the last remaining buildings used to design a nuclear-powered airplane which never flew.

Underground buildings which sheltered workers while tests on the nuclear engines took place during the late 1950s were removed.

Those tests accounted for some of the biggest releases of radioactivity from the site.

At the height of the Cold War, the military wanted a nuclear-powered plane that could stay aloft almost indefinitely without refueling. It was thought the plane would be used as a military command center in the event of a nuclear war.

The plane never flew because the massive shielding needed to protect crews from the reactor wasn't exactly conducive to flight.

President John Kennedy scrapped the project in 1961, after more than one billion dollars were spent.

Mercury, lead, asbestos and radioactive contamination had to be removed from the buildings.

----- nevada

Radioactivity found in Fallon wells

April 18, 2001
SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2001/apr/18/511709614.html

RENO -- A federal report shows ground water used for drinking in the Fallon area contains radioactive minerals that exceeded federal standards in 31 of 73 wells tested in the early 1990s, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported today.

State and federal officials said they neglected to consider the U.S. Geological Survey report in their investigation of a cluster of 12 childhood leukemia cases diagnosed in Fallon over the past few years.

The report has surfaced only because a former USGS director thought the information would be important to the investigation and wondered why it hadn't been considered, the newspaper said.

Assemblywoman Marcia de Braga, D-Fallon, learned about the report Tuesday and was outraged that it hadn't been brought up sooner.

"This could turn out to be significant in terms of the leukemia cluster," she said. "Clearly, radiation is one of the listed causes of leukemia. The researchers need to follow up on the radiation levels in the wells."

The significance of the ground water radiation is not clear, investigators said. It will be examined as one of many environmental factors, including agricultural chemicals, jet fuel from the nearby Navy base and other pollutants to be investigated.

The Geological Survey report, released in 1994, showed the shallow and intermediate ground water used for drinking water in the rural areas of the Carson Desert contained high amounts of naturally occurring uranium and radioactivity.

The city's municipal water supply, which serves about a third of the Fallon's population of about 8,300, comes from deeper wells that don't contain dissolved uranium, state and federal officials said.

Radiation is one of the few known triggers of leukemia, said researchers. In the Fallon area, 12 children have been diagnosed with the same type of acute lymphocytic leukemia since 1997, 11 of in the last two years.

Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set uranium standards for drinking water at 30 micrograms per liter. The 1994 USGS report shows one shallow well logging 310 micrograms per liter and another shallow well measuring 210 micrograms per liter.

The EPA standards do not go into effect until December 2003, EPA senior environmental scientist Jon Merkle said. "That is very surprising that such a recent report took so long to pop up," Merkle said.

The federal uranium limits only apply to municipal drinking water sources, but exposure risks from any source are the same, he said. "The health risks are the same whether your family is getting water from a public well or a private well," Merkle said.

The USGS report also showed radioactivity levels - presumably from the dissolved uranium - exceeded EPA standards in nine of 56 wells in the shallow or intermediate aquifer, the newspaper said.

Dr. Randy Todd, state epidemiologist, said he was unaware of the USGS report until a meeting with state and federal health and environmental officials Tuesday. USGS officials said the report was distributed to state and local officials in 1994 and didn't get much attention at the time.

"I guess it was on a shelf someplace," Todd said.

The report and ground water radiation levels never came up during the three-day Legislative hearing in February or the U.S. Senate hearing on the leukemia cluster last week, deBraga said.

John Nowlin, the former USGS director in Reno, said he called the Reno office two weeks ago to ask about the 1994 report.

"There was no big hue and cry when the report was released in 1994, before the uranium standard for drinking water was adopted," he told the newspaper.

"I knew it had been distributed and discussed back then, but I wondered why it hadn't been mentioned lately."

Todd said the USGS report will be significant in the state's testing of nine private wells used or formerly used by the families in the leukemia cluster. He said those wells are being tested for all contaminants mentioned in the state's clean water law, including uranium and radioactivity.

State health and environmental officials met Tuesday with officials of the USGS, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The officials exchanged information and began to plan a joint state-federal probe of the disease cases and possible causes, Todd said.

"There are a number of agencies whose data might be useful in this," he said. "We have to sift through all the information and come up with protocols for environmental and biological sampling in the area."

Sun reporter Mary Manning contributed to this story.

Comments:
Several factors appear to be involved in the Fallon leukemia cluster in kids.

1. Arsenic in well water, a toxic metal carcinogen which damage immunity
2. Uranium and radiation in some well water.
3. Soil contamination from fallout.
4. Parential exposures to fallout contributing to offspings potential for leukemia.
5. Town sits on NTS aquifer, which many have contained H-3 and Sr-90 at varing levels.
6. Jet fuel residues in the air, water, soil, jet fuels contain benzine.

-------- tennessee

Bibb says money isn't the problem at Y-12

Knoxville News-Sentinel
April 18, 2001
By Frank Munger News-Sentinel senior writer
http://www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/munger/fm04182001.shtml

There hasn't been much information available in Oak Ridge about the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, particularly the budget for 2002, so I placed a telephone call to North Carolina.

What?

On the surface that doesn't make much sense, but I figured Dr. Bill Bibb, a retired Energy Department official who lives on the Carolina coast, might have some information on Y-12 and maybe a few opinions, too. He did and, as it turned out, he was not reluctant to share them.

Bibb oversaw Y-12 operations when he headed DOE's defense programs in Oak Ridge and for a time held a key defense post at agency headquarters in Washington. After leaving federal service, he founded Citizens for National Security, an advocacy group that includes many weapons-manufacturing experts formerly on the Y-12 payroll.

The budget looks pretty good, according to Bibb, who traveled to Washington last week to meet with friends and do a little intelligence gathering. He has been a supporter of the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-independent agency within DOE that was created a year ago to manage the nuclear weapons program.

"I think the NNSA is committed to providing funding for these (production) plants over and above what I think any of us had originally hoped for. By that, I mean the NNSA has clearly recognized there is an infrastructure problem. You can't ignore maintenance and infrastructure," he said.

Unfortunately, Bibb said, the nuclear weapons complex has deteriorated in the post-Cold War era.

"When we suddenly had this great 'peace dividend,' it was like, 'Let's cut back on staff, cut back on maintenance. We'll probably never need it again.' Well, hello! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to think that nuclear weapons need to be rebuilt now and again, refurbished."

Bibb is worried about the declining numbers of experienced technical staff within the weapons complex.

"What are you going to do when a lot of your graybeards walk out the door? You can't recruit these kinds of things," he said.

Bibb suggests that the precision associated with manufacturing warheads is something that requires years of on-the-job training.

He said skilled craftsmen have arrived at Y-12 over the years, fully confident of their abilities, only to find themselves totally unprepared for the machining standards in place at the Oak Ridge complex.

"The talent that's required is just unbelievable," he said.

Bibb said it looks like the Oak Ridge Centers for Manufacturing Technology at Y-12 is not receiving the kind of support that's needed.

The ORCMT was created a decade ago to facilitate the transfer of technologies from the nuclear weapons program to U.S. businesses, particularly those in the state and region. Besides helping industry solve manufacturing problems, the Oak Ridge centers were supposed to help keep key personnel available for weapons work.

The plant's "work for others" program, involving projects for the military and other federal agencies, also seems to have lost priority and momentum, he said.

While money for modernization of Oak Ridge facilities appears to be ready and available in Washington, Bibb said there apparently are some problems in putting this money to work.

"I'm not as concerned with the funding as I am with the commitment by BWXT Y-12 to get on with the job," he said. "Y-12, I think, has gotten satisfactory funding, adequate funding. Now the issue is: Can the new contractor utilize it effectively? That's the big question in my mind, and I would say the jury is still out."

BWXT is the new contractor in Oak Ridge, replacing Lockheed Martin last November as manager of Y-12, and Bibb said he's disappointed with what's he seen so far and what's he heard from informed officials within the weapons complex.

"When Martin Marietta came to town (in 1984, succeeding Union Carbide), we saw a lot of early-on accomplishment. We saw new people pumped up. All I'm seeing right now is the same old, same old. I don't have that warm and fuzzy feeling.

"We're supposed to be choosing (contractors) who are the best and brightest. I don't see Bechtel (one of the corporate partners in BWXT Y-12) shipping in some of their world-class project managers. It's these kinds of things that worry me, not the money. One of the worst things in the world is if you get the money and don't know what to do with it .... I don't see all these new things that BWXT said when they won the contract."

While expressing disappointment with BWXT's performance to date, Bibb also put the needle to the National Nuclear Security Administration's leadership.

He credited the NNSA with pushing for refurbishment of aging facilities, but Bibb said the new agency should have done a lot more in a year's time. He suggested that a bloated organizational chart is no way to make people accountable.

"I think you're going to see some frustration on The Hill" regarding the NNSA's lack of progress, he said.

Senior Writer Frank Munger covers the Department of Energy for the News-Sentinel. He can be reached at 865-482-9213 or at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This column is also available on the Web at www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/munger/

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

U.S. May Withhold Main Radar Item on Taiwan's List

New York Times
April 18, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/world/18MISS.html

WASHINGTON, April 17 - President Bush's senior national security aides have recommended that he defer the sale to Taiwan of advanced destroyers equipped with a highly sophisticated ship-borne radar system but have advised him to provide a range of less advanced weapons to counter China's growing arsenal.

The recommendation, by a team of senior deputies in the State and Defense Departments and the White House, was discussed this afternoon at a meeting of the National Security Council.

Officials declined to discuss that session, other than to say that Mr. Bush is expected to make a final decision next week. He and his senior advisers - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice - could chose a different path, officials warn.

What Mr. Bush sells to Taiwan, and how he words his decision about whether Taiwan may ultimately obtain the advanced radar system, known as Aegis, or equipment that could perform a similar function, could set the tone of his dealings with China for the next several years.

For Mr. Bush the decision is particularly delicate because pro-Taiwan conservatives in his own party have urged that he agree to Taiwan's entire shopping list, especially after the 11-day detention of the crew of the American spy plane that collided with a Chinese fighter jet on April 1.

But much can be done to strengthen Taiwan's defenses without selling the high-profile Aegis, and many of Taiwan's deficiencies cannot be resolved through the sale of weapons alone.

Administration officials insist that the standoff with China over the April 1 collision will have no influence on their final decision on what to sell Taiwan. But taken together, the collision and the arms sales are likely to define Mr. Bush's relations with Chinese leaders, and it is far from clear how China will view his decision.

Beijing has said that any sale of advanced weapons to Taiwan would severely damage relations with the United States, though Washington has made such sales in the past.

According to officials familiar with the report, Mr. Bush's top aides concluded that Taiwan did not yet have the technical skill to handle the Aegis system, which could protect Taiwan against a missile attack.

Instead, they recommended selling less sophisticated Kidd-class destroyers. Nor would they sell Taiwan the Army's advanced antimissile system, known as PAC-3, because it has yet to be deployed by American troops. There is continuing debate over whether to sell Taiwan diesel-powered submarines armed with conventional torpedoes.

Top United States Navy officials urged in March that Taiwan should get more sophisticated weapons.

But today, "there was no big fight over any of this," one senior Administration official said. "The issue now is how we present it." The official noted that China's reaction may depend more on the signals Mr. Bush sends about future sales.

If he decides to defer the decision on the Aegis, as now seems highly likely, Mr. Bush would be able to hold open the possibility of selling the system to Taiwan later if China continues to improve its ability to threaten the island, which it regards as a renegade province.

The United States has no diplomatic relations with Taiwan and has always left ambiguous the extent to which it would aid Taiwan if it were attacked by China. The United States promised in 1982 that it would not increase the quality and quantity of arms sold to Taiwan, but that has always been interpreted by Washington to mean it could help the island maintain a defensive posture proportional to the perceived threat.

Deferring the decision on the sales also gives Mr. Bush some leverage over Taiwan's leaders. He wants to keep them from from provoking Beijing, while encouraging them to invest in what one senior official called "the business of a modern defense."

"There would be some conditionality on the sale of Aegis," said another senior official involved in the decision. "Before you buy your Ferrari, you better build the garage first."

During the presidential campaign last year, Mr. Bush talked occasionally about taking the ambiguity out of American military commitments to Taiwan, to support its democratic practices and send a message to Beijing. Speaking of the Clinton administration during a campaign stop at a Boeing plant last May, Mr. Bush said, "They have been inconsistent on Taiwan. I will be clear."

But as president he has discovered that clarity has its limits.

Mr. Bush is facing the tug of conflicting priorities: He wants to show his support for Taiwan, without undercutting a relationship with China that seems to be off to a rocky start.

Mr. Bush appears to be weaving toward a middle ground - a sale he can defend to his own party without risking a new rupture with China.

Taiwan has long sought the Aegis system because it would give it a clear advantage in the South China Sea. Mounted aboard an advanced destroyer, the Aegis is designed to track more than 200 targets, including sea-skimming missiles, and aerial attacks. Because China does not have the ability to mount an invasion, suppressing its considerable missile threat is vital.

But Bush administration officials, like their predecessors, fear that before the system is up and running - which could take eight years and more - China would have time to counter it with new weapons.

Mr. Bush's decision is bound to be examined closely in Congress, where several conservatives called recently for more arms sales to Taiwan.

Senator Craig Thomas, the Wyoming Republican who heads the Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific affairs, said today that he supported deferring any immediate sale of the Aegis system to Taiwan, because it would be unnecessarily provocative. "We're committed to helping Taiwan if they are attacked," he said, "but we don't need to be waving red flags in people's faces."

That is why the White House is leaning toward less sophisticated destroyers and diesel submarines to add to Taiwan's tiny fleet.

"Like a horse with legs at the end of the race, the submarine option seems to be gaining ground," said Bates Gill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on the Chinese military. But it is unclear who would build the submarines; American shipyards have moved on to more sophisticated gear, Mr. Gill noted. "There's even talk that the Germans might do the building, but assemble it here in the United States," he said.

---

Bush is likely to defer arms sales to Taiwan

USA Today
04/18/2001
By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-18-taiwanarms.htm

WASHINGTON - Even as U.S.-China tensions continued to flare over a downed U.S. plane Wednesday, the Bush administration signaled that it would not sell Taiwan four destroyers equipped with high-tech radar. China has adamantly opposed the sale. U.S. officials said that though no final decision has been made, President Bush likely will defer the sale of four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with the Aegis radar system. China has warned that the sale would seriously damage U.S.-China relations.

In Beijing, meanwhile, U.S. officials threatened to break off further talks with China about the downed EP-3 surveillance plane and the 11-day standoff that resulted from China's detention of its 24-member crew.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the initial 21/2-hour meeting in Beijing between U.S. and Chinese officials was "unproductive." State Department officials expressed disappointment as well.

"I think we would say that the issue of the return of our aircraft was not discussed in any significant manner, in any manner that was productive," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

As a result, U.S. officials said, U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher planned to tell Chinese authorities to respond to U.S. demands to return the plane or today's second session would not be held. On the Aegis sale, administration officials said Bush has been advised to defer it because Taiwan doesn't have the technical expertise to run the system. But officials say another prime concern was enraging Beijing and causing permanent damage to the U.S.-China relationship over the sale of destroyers that take from eight to 10 years to deliver. Administration officials say, however, that the Taiwan arms package Bush will announce next week likely will include other substantial items, including less technologically sophisticated Kidd-class destroyers. A decision still is pending on selling Taiwan diesel-powered submarines.

Under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, the United States has pledged to sell Taiwan defensive weapons.

Bush also is considering using a future Aegis sale as leverage against China, and the White House still is formulating how to frame the arms-sale announcement, which is expected to be made Tuesday.

One possible scenario: Bush might say he intends to sell Taiwan the Aegis system as early as next year unless China eases its military buildup. China has about 300 short-range missiles that can reach Taiwan.

The context of Bush's announcement will also affect how much political flak he takes from Congress, particularly from the GOP's conservative wing, where there is significant support for the Aegis sale. Aides to GOP leaders in the House and Senate say that if Bush uses the threat of a future Aegis sale as a warning to the Chinese, the level of dissent on Capitol Hill will be relatively low.

In another U.S.-China development Wednesday, China blocked a U.S. resolution condemning Beijing's human rights record. In a 23-17 vote, the 53-nation United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva approved a "no action" motion by China on the U.N. resolution, which criticized Beijing for its crackdown on groups such as the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

Contributing: Paul Wiseman in Beijing

---

North Korea sends missile parts, technology to Iran

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/18/01
Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010418-25542720.htm

North Korea sent a shipment of missile components and technology to Iran two weeks ago aboard a transport aircraft, The Washington Times has learned.

The components were photographed late last month by a U.S. spy satellite as they were being loaded aboard an Iranian Il-76 transport jet at a North Korean airfield, according to U.S. intelligence officials familiar with reports of the arms transfer.

The officials identified the airfield as Sunan International Airport, located about 12 miles north of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.

The shipment is the second missile component transfer detected this year by U.S. intelligence agencies and is a sign Pyongyang is stepping up its missile- related exports.

In late February, a missile shipment was spotted at a North Korean port waiting to be loaded on a ship for an unidentified customer. The transfer was delayed because the port was frozen.

That shipment included chemicals and fuel-related materials, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.

The missile shipment that took place in late March included various components for Iran´s growing arsenal of medium-range and short-range missiles, including rocket motors and air frames for missiles.

The shipment also included crates of documents that intelligence officials believe are manuals and reference material related to developing missiles.

One official said intelligence reports indicate the missile components are intended for Iran´s medium-range Shahab-3 missile program.

The problem of North Korean missile exports was discussed in meetings last month between President Bush and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

Mr. Bush said after one meeting that he is concerned that North Korea is "shipping weapons around the world."

Mr. Kim later said that lasting peace on the Korean peninsula will require solving the problem of North Korean missile exports.

North Korea is a major supplier of missile components to Iran and made a similar transfer last year.

That sale involved the export of 12 rocket motors made for North Korea´s 600-mile-range Nodong medium-range missiles. The engines were photographed being loaded on an Iranian 747 jetliner at Sunan Airport.

The shipment followed the imposition of economic sanctions on North Korea in January for earlier missile-related transfers.

In January, the State Department imposed sanctions on a North Korean missile company, Changgwang Sinyong Corp., for its transfers to Iran.

The company has been linked by U.S. intelligence to missile sales to Iran, including short-range Scuds, for several years.

The sanctions were not announced but posted quietly in the Federal Register.

The State Department said it was invoking a law passed last year called the Iran nonproliferation act, which requires U.S. sanctions barring U.S. government contracts with countries that sell weapons of mass destruction and missile-related equipment to Iran.

A CIA report to Congress said North Korea is one of the three major exporters of ballistic missile-related goods, technology and expertise to Iran. The others include Russia and China.

"Tehran is using this assistance to support current production programs and to achieve its goal of becoming self-sufficient in the production of ballistic missiles," the CIA stated in the report made public in February. "Iran already is producing Scud short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) and has built and publicly displayed prototypes for the Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM)."

The report said North Korea´s missile sales are a major source of hard currency for the cash-strapped Communist government in Pyongyang.

A senior U.S. military official said in a recent interview that U.S. and other foreign aid to North Korea has kept the government from collapsing. The aid allowed North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to avoid making changes to the system, this official said.

Henry Sokolski, director of the private Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said reports of the latest missile transfer raise new questions about whether there should be any deals with North Korea.

"Missile sales seem to be business as usual, and there should be no deals between the United States and North Korea until they are halted," Mr. Sokolski said.

The Bush administration is reviewing past policies toward North Korea.

-------- colombia

Rebel Group In Colombia Kidnaps 100, But Frees 70

New York Times
April 18, 2001
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/world/18COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, April 17 - A leftist rebel group that has bombed oil pipelines and played havoc with Colombia's oil industry struck again on Monday, abducting about 100 employees of an American oil company.

By early today, at least 70 of the captives - all Colombians working under contract for Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles, - had been released unharmed, the company said in a statement.

But late today, 27 remained in the hands of the National Liberation Army, or E.L.N., which has long accused multinational companies like Occidental of exploiting Colombia's natural resources.

Although the Liberation Army, Colombia's second-largest rebel group, did not offer detailed explanations for its actions, experts on Colombia's conflict saw the mass abduction as an effort by an ever-weakening rebel movement to gain recognition.

The 37-year-old rebel group, which has been hit hard in recent years by illegal paramilitary groups, had been angling for the government to cede a Rhode-Island-sized swath of land in northern Colombia as a safe haven for peace negotiations. But the plans have instead been put on hold as conflict between invading paramilitary fighters and the rebels has escalated in the region of Bolívar Province earmarked for the demilitarized zone.

"When nothing moves forward, these people try a harder line, and they try a harder line to get attention," said Manuel Ernesto Salamanca, a political scientist at the Javeriana University in Bogotá. "We have to keep in mind that the E.L.N. is in a process of complete debilitation, and these types of actions make waves, but in a very negative way."

The Liberation Army said in a communiqué read on a radio station that the kidnapping was part of "our offensive against oil policy until such time as" the company, "together with the government, fixes a mechanism for dialogue with Colombia's rebels."

The kidnapping took place along a road in eastern Arauca Province, not far from the Venezuelan border, when the rebels stopped a convoy of vehicles carrying the workers. Occidental officials said the captives were blue-collar employees under contract with the company.

This is not the first time the Liberation Army has carried out audacious mass kidnappings to get its point across. Since 1999, in the face of battlefield losses and government slights, the group has hijacked an airliner, kidnapped worshipers at a church and abducted dozens of diners from roadside restaurants outside Cali.

Since the 1980's, the group has also been known for its attacks against the oil industry. This year, the government says, the group has stepped up a series of bombings of the Caño Limón oil pipeline, which stretches 500 miles from Arauca province in the eastern hinterlands to Colombia's northern coast.

There have been 63 bombings of the pipeline, most believed to have been undertaken by the Liberation Army, resulting in a loss of $3 million a day, a spokesman for Ecopetrol, Colombia's state-owned oil company, said today. Last year, there were 98 attacks.

The Caño Limón oilfields of Arauca, Colombia's second-largest, produce an average of 120,000 barrels of crude each day. But in March, with attacks against the 15-year-old pipeline on the rise, the average dropped to 9,000.

Oil is Colombia's most important export, generating about $3.5 billion last year, but national oil production has fallen from a daily average of 2.2 million barrels in the first three months of 2000 to 1.9 million in the same period this year. The attacks have also lowered the price of Colombian crude, with buyers paying about $2 less per barrel because of the uncertainty of buying from companies operating in the conflict- racked nation.

"What happens is the Colombian government receives less value for the oil," said an Ecopetrol spokesman. "In addition to the cost of repairs, and the costs associated with cleanup, there's another loss because the crude is sold at below value. The country pays on all sides."

---

Guerrillas hold workers of U.S. oil field

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/18/01
World Scene
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010418-121284.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia -- After releasing dozens of hostages, suspected leftist guerrillas yesterday still held captive 27 Colombian contract employees of U.S.- based oil giant Occidental Petroleum, the company said.

The mass abduction appeared linked to faltering peace talks, and it highlighted the perils facing the oil industry in the war-wracked South American country.

Authorities accused the leftist National Liberation Army of abducting the employees late Monday along a highway in eastern Arauca state, near a huge oil field operated by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum.

-------- drug war

Amtrak Knows Where You've Been . . .

New York Times
April 18, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/opinion/L18AMTR.html

To the Editor:

You report that Amtrak shares information about its passengers with the Drug Enforcement Administration and receives a 10 percent cut of assets seized from drug couriers (Week in Review, April 15). For the fee, Amtrak, without being asked or subpoenaed to produce information about any person in particular, simply reveals all its passengers' names, itineraries and payment methods to the drug enforcement agency.

What other companies are selling information about their customers to the government? Does the F.B.I. know what books we buy or what videos we rent? Does the Internal Revenue Service know about our routine banking practices or to whom we send overnight letters and packages?

Big Brother appears to be watching more than ever. What's shocking is that routine information about us is in effect being sold to the government as a regular part of at least one company's "program." I want to know what other companies are doing the same thing.

MARK S. ARISOHN New York, April 16, 2001 The writer is a lawyer.

---

Skakel witness says he was on heroin

USA Today
04/18/2001 - Updated 04:35 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-04-18-skakel.htm

STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) - A witness at a hearing to determine whether Kennedy nephew Michael Skakel should be tried for the 1975 murder of a Greenwich teenager testified Wednesday that he was using heroin when he told a one-judge grand jury that Skakel confessed to the killing.

But the witness - Gregory Coleman, who was a student at a Maine treatment center with Skakel when they were younger - did not recant his testimony that Skakel confessed to the beating death of Martha Moxley.

Coleman has said Skakel told him he shattered Moxley's skull with a golf club and declared: "I'm gonna get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy."

Under questioning Wednesday, Coleman said he was under the influence of heroin when he made the comments about Skakel to the grand jury and during a television interview.

Coleman was being cross-examined by Skakel's defense lawyer, Michael Sherman, about inconsistencies in his testimonies.

"I was on drugs when I came before the grand jury," Coleman said Wednesday.

"That's kind of scary," Sherman replied.

Coleman said he used the drug at a hotel before he spoke to the one-judge grand jury that investigated the case and recommended that Skakel be prosecuted.

Coleman also said he had used heroin and crack cocaine before a TV interview in which he said Skakel had confessed.

"Are you on drugs now?" Sherman asked Wednesday.

Coleman said he wasn't. "Give me a urine test," he said.

"No thanks," Sherman said, drawing a reprimand from the judge.

The hearing that began Wednesday is intended to determine whether sufficient evidence exists to try Skakel for the murder of Martha Moxley, whose body was discovered in October 1975 on her family's Greenwich estate.

No arrests were made for more than 24 years. Skakel, 40, was charged in the killing in January 2000 and later arraigned as a juvenile. A judge ruled in January that Skakel should be tried as an adult.

Skakel is the son of Rushton Skakel, the brother of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel.

An earlier probable cause in juvenile court hearing had focused on alleged confessions Skakel made while a resident at the Elan School, a substance abuse treatment center in Poland Spring, Maine.

One student, John Higgins, said Skakel confessed to him one night 20 years ago during an erratic, tearful conversation. But Higgins admitted he lied to investigators when they first asked him about the alleged confession. He also admitted asking about a $50,000 reward in the case.

During Higgins' testimony, tears trickled down Skakel's face.

"He's just very upset about hearing this moron get up there and lie," Sherman said at the time.

Coleman has previously admitted to a long battle with drug addiction, alcoholism and homelessness, at times living under a bridge.

Two other Elan students testified for the defense that they never heard Skakel confess.

-------- iran

Iranian Attack on Iraqi Towns Condemned

Middle East News Online
By Middle East News Online Reporter
Wednesday April 18, 2001
http://www.middleeastwire.com/newswire/stories/20010418_meno.shtml

BAGHDAD, Iraq: While Iran considers its attacks on opposition bases inside Iraqi territories, a legitimate act of defense, Iraq saw Wednesday's surface-to-surface Scud missile attack as cowardly and dangerous.

Iran fired 66 Scud missiles against bases for People's Mujahideen, and several Iraqi towns located near the Iraq-Iran border. Several people were reportedly killed, mostly Iraqi civilians.

"Iraq condemns this cowardly Iranian act of aggression which constitutes a flagrant violation of the UN charter and the rules of international law," the official INA news agency quoted an Iraqi official as saying.

The official warned that Tehran should bear "full responsibility under international law for the human and material losses caused by this cowardly aggression." While the Iraqi official estimated the number of Iranian missiles fired at 56, a spokesman for the Mujahideen group said that as many as 66 missiles reached targets inside Iraq.

Iran has repeatedly violated Iraqi territorial sovereignty in recent years as it attacked Iraq-based opposition groups.

Iran says that some of these groups stage violent attacks against Iranian targets, and its acts are mere reprisals.

Both Iran and Iraq host some of each other's opposition groups.

Despite semi-normal diplomatic ties between Iran and Iraq, tension rises in such occasions, renewing fear of a large-scale war to ignite once more.

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

Pentagon: Fix Osprey, don't kill it

USA Today
04/18/2001 - Updated 09:30 PM ET
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-18-osprey.htm

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon panel recommended Wednesday against canceling the controversial V-22 Osprey program but outlined a litany of problems that must be fixed before the tilt-rotor aircraft can go into full-scale production.

"This is a troubled program," said panel member Norman Augustine, former chairman of Lockheed Martin. Yet, "starting anew is not the answer," he said.

Although the Osprey was involved in two fatal crashes last year, the panel found no inherent safety flaws in the hybrid aircraft, which has tilting engines that let the Osprey take off like a helicopter and fly like a plane. But the panel said the contractors, Bell Helicopter Textron and Boeing, should make design changes to the aircraft's engines and make numerous other changes.

Until those changes are made and a new round of testing is complete, Osprey production should be cut to the minimum necessary to keep plants open, the panel said. The current fleet numbers about a dozen.

The panel did not estimate how long the fixes will take or how much they will cost. The Pentagon already has spent nearly two decades and $12 billion to develop the Osprey. Total cost, including production of a fleet of 380 Ospreys, is estimated at $40 billion.

The Marine Corps has is relying on the V-22 to replace its aging Vietnam-era helicopters. Ospreys are designed to fly faster and farther and can carry more troops than conventional helicopters.

Paul Czysz, an aerospace-engineering professor at St. Louis University and an Osprey critic, says it will take at least two years to fix most of the problems but up 10 years to iron out flight-software irregularities.

Despite the panel's conclusion, the Osprey remains an endangered aircraft. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is looking for weapons programs to kill to save money, and the Osprey is one possibility.

The panel limited its investigation to safety and maintenance issues. Among its recommendations:

Re-engineer the tilt-rotor engine housing to make more room for hydraulic lines that have proved vulnerable to chafing. The Osprey has suffered three hydraulic-system failures, including one in December in North Carolina that killed four Marines.

Fix software glitches that contributed to the December crash. Previous problems with flight-control software caused a near-crash in sea trials in 1999.

Install a cockpit warning system to alert pilots about a dangerous loss of lift in flight known as a "vortex ring state." That occurs when the Osprey descends too rapidly at low forward air speeds. Loss of lift played a role in an April 2000 crash in Arizona that killed 19 Marines. The pilots had little warning.

Improve training manuals now plagued with incomplete and confusing information. Rely less on flight simulators and more on actual test flights.

Protect Osprey funds from being used for other military programs. The panel said chronic underfunding contributed to development problems.

The panel also recommended against giving the aircraft the ability to "auto-rotate," or keep its rotor turning if an engine fails so the craft can land safely. To save money, the members recommended instead that pilots be trained to glide to a safe landing in plane mode. Critics say the Osprey has a very poor glide capability.

The Marines also will have to live with the powerful "downwash," or strong force of air moving rapidly downward when the rotors are in helicopter position. The Osprey's downwash has limited some combat operations. The panel said a requirement that Marines be able to climb out of the aircraft on ropes will likely have to be scrapped as too dangerous.

Until the fixes are made, the panel recommended that testers limit night flights and fill its passenger cabin with sandbags, not Marines.

The Pentagon was set to approve full-scale production in December but grounded its test fleet instead after the North Carolina crash. The Osprey has been controversial since then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney tried to cancel it in the first Bush administration. Recently, the program has been roiled by reports that an officer falsified maintenance records.

Contributing: Dave Moniz

---

Saudi rules anger top Air Force pilot

USA Today
04/18/2001 - Updated 04:45 PM ET
By Edward T. Pound, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/nphoto.htm

WASHINGTON - Maj. Martha McSally is the highest-ranking female fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, the first woman in that service to fly a combat aircraft into enemy territory. But she does not like the way she and other American military women are treated in Saudi Arabia, the male-run oil kingdom they are risking their lives to protect. In Saudi Arabia, McSally says, she is "treated like a Muslim piece of property." Whenever she and other women leave their military installations, their commanders require them to wear a black head scarf and a black neck-to-toe robe, known as an abaya, to satisfy the Saudis' strict interpretation of Islamic religion. They also must sit in the back seat of cars. The Defense Department, McSally says, does not want to offend its host. "It is a customary Muslim outfit for women," she says, "but I'm not Muslim and I'm not Saudi. I am a Christian."

The Pentagon sees the dress code as a necessity. Officials say it respects cultural and religious customs, avoids conflict with the Saudi public and helps the military complete its mission.

To McSally, the Pentagon is abandoning American values by imposing such a dress code on its women while allowing men to dress in casual Western clothes when off base. She says she's not arguing for unrestricted dress but believes women should be allowed to "cover up in American clothes."

McSally has quietly tried to persuade the Pentagon to modify the policy for the past six years. She discussed the issue with then Defense Secretary William Perry in 1995. She lobbied then-Air Force Secretary Whit Peters last year, and she has written memos and met with top generals in the Air Force. She says she got nowhere.

Now, she says, it is time to speak publicly - and she hopes her candor will not damage her career. "I've fought and spoken and been patient and worked within the system for so long to try and effect some change in this policy so, the fact that I would just be truthful I would hope wouldn't hurt me and, if it does, then so be it," she says.

Not all women see it her way. Air Force Maj. Lisa Caldwell, a senior spokesman for U.S. forces in the Middle East, has no problems with the restrictions. She says the policy allows military women to "show respect for Islamic law and Arabic customs."

Caldwell is based at the Eskan Village military compound near Riyadh, the Saudi capital. She says whenever she leaves the compound, she puts on her scarf and robe. "I am a guest here and I want to blend into the culture," she says. "That old saying, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do.' "

Capt. Richard Johnson, an Air Force spokesman based in the United States, adds, "We abide by the rules set by the government. It is not just a cultural issue, it is a force-protection issue. You always have to be on the alert for terrorist attacks. We just want to blend in with the population, be less of a target to terrorists."

Home to the holiest of Islamic sites, Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia is a religious state where freedom of worship is not allowed. The country's leaders also prohibit or restrict freedom of speech, press, assembly and association. Women's rights are restricted. In public, they must cover themselves head-to-foot, they can't drive and they must sit in the back seats of cars. Rules and codes of conduct are enforced by the mutawa, the religious police.

"Culturally, they are different and it's their country," says Col. Jet Jernigan, an F-16 pilot with the South Carolina National Guard and a Gulf War veteran. The strict Islamic customs, he adds, "clearly make it more complicated to operate there."

In recent years, that reality has hit home for Jernigan's F-16 unit and others who have deployed to Saudi Arabia. While the Saudis allow female Air Force air traffic controllers to work there, they are not permitted to talk to pilots. Jernigan says the male Saudi pilots don't like to be given instructions by females. "They wanted them off the radio," he says.

The U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia is based on mutual need. The Saudis want a strong U.S. military presence and the United States wants to safeguard global oil prices and the huge reserves in the Middle East. Since the Gulf War, the United States and allied air forces have enforced no-fly zones over southern and northern Iraq to protect ethnic minorities and to prevent troop movements that could threaten Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.

U.S. forces keep a low profile. The June 1996 terrorist bombing of Khobar Towers, which killed 19 Americans, caused the U.S. military to move to heavily guarded, remote sites such as Eskan Village and Prince Sultan Air Base at Al Kharj. The Air Force says that it has about 5,000 people in Saudi Arabia, 17% of them women.

McSally, 35, who deployed to Saudi Arabia for a one-year tour last November, is one of the Air Force's great success stories. The valedictorian of her high school class in Riverside, R.I., McSally placed 25th in her graduating class of 1,000 at the Air Force Academy. But, at 5-foot-3, she was one inch shy of the minimum height requirement for pilots. She got a waiver, based on her academic credentials and physical strength.

A champion triathlete, McSally later became one of the first seven women trained as fighter pilots. She also served as a flight instructor and did tours in Kuwait in 1995 and 1996. While there, she flew her single-seat A-10 Warthog jet 100 hours over southern Iraq enforcing the no-fly zone. Now, she runs search and rescue for that operation, based at Eskan Village.

McSally is one of 39 female fighter pilots in the Air Force. She has been promoted to lieutenant colonel, effective May 1. She gave her blunt assessment of the dress policy in interviews with USA TODAY while on leave in the United States and in an exchange of e-mails.

No indignities for men

She says men do not face the same indignities. They are directed, in writing, not to wear Muslim attire, she says, and are instructed to wear collared shirts and long pants when they leave their bases.

McSally says she's no crusader. But, as a Christian, she says, she is highly offended by the policy. "Just as we don't want to make someone who is not Jewish wear a yarmulke on their head, why would we have our female troops being mandated to wear Muslim clothing?"

Other women find the policy off-putting, she says, but are reluctant to tell the brass. McSally tells of some discomfiting encounters with religious police: "Some of our gals who have walked through a mall - they are kind of lax on the headgear thing where some of them just wear them around their neck - but there have been times where a mutawa comes up and just gets angry and starts kind of hitting them with little sticks and telling them, 'cover your head, cover your head.' "

McSally says she's not arguing for tank tops and short-shorts. "All I am saying is I will wear baggy pants or a baggy skirt, I will wear a long sleeve shirt. I will even wear a hat if you want me to," McSally says. "I mean, American clothes. I appreciate that (the Saudis say) cover up, well, fine, these gals are American soldiers. They are not Saudi Muslim women."

At a minimum, she says, American women should be allowed to wear long-sleeve shirts and long pants when traveling at night in a car, between bases. On official business, she says, women should be able to wear their uniforms, without covering themselves with the required black robe.

McSally acknowledges that change could take time. "Going downtown in free time to shop or eat dinner with friends" in casual clothes, she says, would be a marked change requiring a commitment by the United States and the Saudis.

She says U.S. officials could start by telling the Saudis how important it is for the two countries "to have a mutual respect." She believes she can prompt change. When she was deployed to Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait in the mid-1990s, women had to wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts on base. After she raised the issue, the policy was changed to allow women to wear shorts on base. Separately, she says, military women in Kuwait were allowed to wear long pants and shirts off base.

McSally says she understands the Air Force concern about protecting women from possible terrorist attacks but says there are times when there would be no risk if women dressed in American clothes. "Women driving in a car with other American soldiers from one base to another or to the airport - there is just no risk whatsoever," she says.

After learning she would be deployed to Saudi Arabia last year, McSally says she did not plan to wear the Saudi robe and scarf. When she informed senior officers of her decision, she says, she was warned that she would suffer "serious consequences" if she refused to comply with the regulations.

Later, she consulted a superior, Gen. Michael Moseley, in Washington. She says he advised her to wear the abaya and to press her views within the military, if she felt so strongly. She decided to wear the abaya. "I almost tubed my whole career over this," she says.

Moseley says many soldiers don't want to wear the abaya but understand the necessity. "The policy inside of this is huge," he says.

After arriving at Prince Sultan Air Base in the evening last November, McSally put on an abaya and a scarf for the 70-mile ride to Eskan Village. "I rode in a Suburban with tinted windows with a bunch of American men in collar shirts and jeans," she recalls. Since then, she seldom has left the base. "I don't want to go off base and wear the abaya." She sends others off base on work-related duties.

Not 'the same values'

Her logic, she says, is: "Saudi Arabia is a nation that does not have the same values as us. They are not democratic. Their human rights record is not real super."

McSally adds, "I understand for security reasons why we need to be allies with the Saudis. But, it is also part of our national security strategy to promote American values abroad. We, in the military, sign up to give our lives for the freedoms that we value deeply and people have died for before us.

"I am certainly willing to suck it up with the rest of the troops in some harsh condition when we are all treated the same. But, when you separate your troops into two groups and then impose the values of your host nation on one of them, to me that is abandoning your American values."

She says superiors have told her that there was no intent to demean, that the Defense Department wanted to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia and complete its mission without major incidents. "I believe that," she says, "but I wonder if I were a two-star general, would I have to wear an abaya and not drive."

McSally says the Air Force has given her great opportunities. "In general, the leadership has been very supportive of women in the military," she says. But the dress policy is "ridiculous and unnecessary."

Contributing: Dave Moniz

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Washington calls on its cows to ease energy crisis

USA: April 18, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10540

SAN FRANCISCO - Washington state, faced with a severe drought, dwindling reservoirs and a looming electricity shortage, is calling on its cows for help.

Clean-burning, environmentally friendly dung deposited by the state's 246,000 cows could be just the "green" fuel needed to fill the growing hydro-electric gap, state officials said.

"Due to the energy situation, we've gotten a lot of interest from private companies working on ways to utilize manure better," Gloria Edwards, a spokeswoman for the Washington state Dairy Federation, said Tuesday.

The high cost of so-called biogas power plants has discouraged their construction in Washington, but two bills making their way through the state senate and house could overcome this barrier by handing potential producers a sales tax exemption.

According to a recent study cited by the Dairy Federation, waste from dairy cattle in just one county could generate up to 10 megawatts of electricity, enough to light up 8,000 homes.

Running an energy-efficient biogas plant involves mixing dung, bacteria and occasion heat, yielding a gas that is up to 75 percent methane that is used in turn to fire electric turbines.

The Dairy Federation said Portland General Electric began building a tiny biogas facility in March on a dairy farm near Salem, Oregon, relying on the farm's 500 cows for fuel.

The plant is expected to generate 100 kilowatts of power, enough for around 65 homes, by July, the group said.

The need for creative energy alternatives has become acute throughout the Pacific Northwest following one of its driest winters on record. Hydro-power during normal rainfall years provides up to 70 percent of the region's electricity.

While the rush to build conventional power plants is seen by most state officials as coming too late to ease the crisis this year, the Dairy Federation points out that a new, $300,000 biogas plant would take just five months to build and could be paid off in six years.

-------- environment

Bush Endorses Rule on Lead Emissions Proposed by Clinton

New York Times
April 18, 2001
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/politics/18ENVI.html

WASHINGTON, April 17 - Facing criticism that it cares more about promoting industry than protecting the environment, the Bush administration announced today that it would go forward with a regulation proposed by President Bill Clinton to require thousands of businesses to make public the details of their emissions of lead into the environment.

The announcement, which could have been a routine event at the Environmental Protection Agency, was made in a relatively splashy fashion at the White House. It followed an announcement on Monday that the administration was leaving in place regulations expanding protections for wetlands. In both cases, the president himself issued statements applauding the decisions.

With environmental groups threatening protests on Sunday, the 31st anniversary of Earth Day, Mr. Bush's spokesman emphasized today what he said were the positive steps the president had taken on the environment. These include putting money in his proposed budget to clean up the national parks and nearly doubling the money for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Some Republicans said that until this week the administration had been ham-handed both in its environmental policy and in its announcements, and urged Vice President Dick Cheney in a meeting on April 4 to make better public presentations of their case.

The announcement today - supported by a broad array of environmental groups and opposed by small businesses - allows a rule by the Clinton administration to take effect. It will require companies that handle as little as 100 pounds of lead a year to report to the Environmental Protection Agency how much is released into the air, soil and water. Until now, the reporting threshold had been at least 10,000 pounds a year.

Officials estimated that the rule meant nearly 10,000 additional plants would have to report emissions.

The new rules, which businesses are challenging in court, will do nothing directly to curb emissions and, some environmentalists pointed out, fulfilled Mr. Bush's view that regulations should not be too costly to business. But the details provided by the companies will be available to the public, and businesses say that setting up a way to provide the information will cost them.

The announcement on the lead reporting rules was made by Christie Whitman, the E.P.A. administrator, who said public scrutiny had helped reduce emissions of other toxic substances. "Information is power," she said.

In response to a question at a news conference, Mrs. Whitman sought to correct what she said was a false impression that Mr. Bush favored industry over the environment. "This president cares about these issues," she said. "This administration has an extraordinarily good environmental record."

The administration is expected to continue such announcements for the foreseeable future.

"There will be a series of new initiatives the president is launching," Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesman, said today.

Mr. Fleischer disputed suggestions that the decision was an effort to blunt criticism from environmental groups, who are planning Earth Day demonstrations in Washington and in Quebec, where Mr. Bush will be discussing trade policies this weekend.

The timing of this week's announcements was driven in part by the calendar. The administration had 60 days from the effective date of many rules approved in the final days of the Clinton administration to reject the rules or let them stand.

Mr. Fleischer today denied that the recent announcements were being done for effect. "The president is not concerned about his image," Mr. Fleischer said. "The president is concerned about results."

Still, the White House has clearly been stung by the reaction to many Bush decisions, which critics in the Democratic Party and leaders of private environmental groups contend place the health of the economy above that of the earth.

These decisions include Mr. Bush's opposition to a treaty on global warming, his reversal of a campaign promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, his eagerness to drill for oil in Alaska, a decision to repeal tighter limits for arsenic in drinking water, his proposed budget cuts of 6.7 percent in environmental programs, his proposal to limit the ability of citizens to use lawsuits to protect endangered species, rolling back standards for air- conditioners even as he proclaims an energy crisis, and the lifting of a rule that limited chemical runoff from mines.

Today, a Gallup poll showed that Americans favored environmental protection over energy drilling and economic growth. It also showed that the public disapproved of the administration's decision not to adhere to the treaty on global warming. And a coalition of environmental groups is beginning a television advertising campaign on Wednesday denouncing the president's environmental policies and urging viewers to tell their legislators to restore money he proposes to cut from the budget for environmental programs.

Last week, Laura Bush, the first lady, gave an interview to USA Today in which she described at length the eco-friendly aspects of the Bushes' new ranch house near Crawford, Tex., where the couple recycle their rainwater and household water for irrigation and use a geothermal heating and cooling system so efficient that they scrapped plans for solar energy panels.

Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters, said of the administration: "They know they're in political trouble on the environment, and they wanted to make a show about some positive action, so they came out today with modest forward action, not something bold and sweeping. The environmental community is still very skeptical and deeply concerned about the trajectory this administration is taking."

But it is not just the leaders of environmental groups to whom the White House is trying to appeal. Polls have shown repeatedly that the public places a high value on the environment and gives Mr. Bush low marks for his handling of it.

"His weakest issue-rating has been on the environment," said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster.

A New York Times poll conducted last month showed Republicans more or less equally divided on Mr. Bush's handling of the environment. But Democrats, independents, women and suburbanites all lopsidedly favored protecting the environment over producing energy, regardless of the cost. Mr. Bush cannot afford to alienate independents, women and suburbanites, the majority of whom voted last year for Al Gore. The big states with important suburban voting blocs - New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois and California - all went to Mr. Gore.

"Bush won states like West Virginia because of Al Gore's environmental extremism," Mr. Bolger said. But, he said, the president cannot continue to count on that same dynamic. "It will be hard for Bush to win New York, New Jersey or Connecticut. Swing voters in the Northeast - I'm not sure how important they are in terms of crass political calculations, but you don't want to be seen as anti-environment. You don't have to be as green as Al Gore, but there's a middle ground."

Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, said that in the meeting of moderates with Mr. Cheney, the lawmakers told the vice president: "The environment is the one area you aren't handling well."

Mr. Shays said Mr. Cheney agreed. "They didn't argue with us," Mr. Shays said. "What they are changing now is their presentation."

That matters to other Republicans for whom the environment is an increasingly important issue.

Representative Clay E. Shaw Jr., a Florida Republican who squeaked into his 11th term last year with just 50 percent of the vote, said of Mr. Bush's handling of the environment: "As a Monday-morning quarterback, you can certainly see that the message could have been softened, it could have been eased out. The president is going to have to continue to make these announcements to let it be known that he is evenhanded. It's just smart politics."

---

ALASKA: A NORTH SLOPE SPILL

New York Times
April 18, 2001
National Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/national/18BRFS.html

Nearly 93,000 gallons of a mixture of salt water and crude oil have spilled from a pipe on the North Slope and saturated about an acre of tundra, officials said. The spill apparently occurred in a corroded section of pipe in the Kuparuk oil field and is believed to be one of the largest ever in the area, though most of the mixture is salt water. Environmentalists say the spill is one of many that occur in the area and cited the threat of similar accidents as a reason to block President Bush's proposal to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, about 100 miles to the east. The Phillips Alaska company said the spill was discovered on Sunday night and the pipe shut down; clean-up efforts are continuing. Sam Howe Verhovek (NYT)

CALIFORNIA: ENERGY ADVISER APPOINTED Gov. Gray Davis named S. David Freeman, left, the general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, as his chief energy adviser, responsible for carrying out state programs to conserve electricity as part of an effort to avoid rolling blackouts this summer. Mr. Freeman, who is 75, is also widely expected to become the first head of a new state public power authority that could build and maintain power plants if private industry failed to do so. A measure to create the authority is pending in the Legislature. Todd S. Purdum (NYT)

TEXAS: WEEDS IMPEDE RIO GRANDE Weeds are choking the Rio Grande, officials say. Carlos Rubinstein, the American official who supervises the river, said that unusually high temperatures were responsible for an explosive growth of hydrilla and hyacinth in the Rio Grande, the border between Texas and Mexico. When the river's flow to the Gulf of Mexico was interrupted two months ago, water officials said waves from the Gulf of Mexico created a formidable sand bar at the river's mouth. Now they say the river cannot flow over the sand bar because the weeds are pooling the water farther upstream. Officials were unsure how the nonindigenous plants reached the Rio Grande, but any plan to fight them will require the approval of both Mexican and American officials. Environmentalists say pumping for irrigation and other uses has also strained the river. (AP)

---

MANHATTAN: HUDSON DREDGING SUPPORTED

New York Times
April 18, 2001
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/nyregion/18MBRF.html

The City Council passed a resolution yesterday supporting the federal Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to dredge the Hudson River of potentially dangerous PCB's. It also urged General Electric, which deposited the PCB's and opposes dredging, to "put an end to this drawn-out affair and take responsibility for its actions," said Stanley E. Michels, chairman of the Council's Environmental Protection Committee. The resolution came shortly after a member of G.E.'s board lobbied Council members, saying that dredging would stir up contaminants that would otherwise remain buried. Yesterday was the deadline for public comment on the dredging plan. Diane Cardwell (NYT)

---

The Environment: Read My Lips

New York Times
April 18, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/opinion/L18ENVI.html

To the Editor:

Re "E.P.A. Supports Protections Clinton Issued for Wetlands" (front page, April 17):

I tentatively applaud the Bush administration's protection of wetlands. But we must recognize that the announcement of an environmental policy and its rigorous enforcement are very different things.

If Christie Whitman, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is dedicated "to keeping our waterways clean and safe," she should carry out the E.P.A.'s plan for dredging the Hudson River of the PCB's that General Electric dumped into it.

I'll begin to accept the Bush administration's commitment to protecting our water when it enforces a proposal rather than sets it aside for further study.

ROBERT HILL New Brunswick, N.J., April 17, 2001 The writer is on the staff of the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group.

•To the Editor:

Re "Bush Isn't All Wrong About the Endangered Species Act," by Bruce Babbitt (Op-Ed, April 15):

Congress should reject Mr. Babbitt's proposal to dilute the judicially enforceable requirement in the Endangered Species Act about how the Fish and Wildlife Service must map "critical habitat" for endangered species.

Judge J. Skelly Wright once warned that the goals of our environmental laws could get lost or misdirected in the vast halls of the federal bureaucracy; the role of the federal courts, he said, was to enforce the law when the agencies would not.

Eliminating the wildlife service's legal obligation to map critical habitat, and leaving the decision to bureaucrats bombarded by the complaints of industry lobbyists, virtually ensures that Congress's goal of protecting endangered species would get lost or misdirected.

JOHN D. ECHEVERRIA Washington, April 16, 2001 The writer is director of Georgetown University Law Center's Environmental Policy Project.

•To the Editor:

Bruce Babbitt, the former interior secretary, makes a convincing case that political attempts to undermine the Endangered Species Act are bipartisan (Op-Ed, April 15). Mr. Babbitt finds that President Bush's proposal to impose budget restrictions on habitat protection is merely controversial. He favors instead a delay of habitat protection, apparently to avoid opposition from developers and landowners.

This is bad biology and runs contrary to a recommendation from scientists that habitat that is important to the survival of imperiled species must be immediately protected.

A better approach is simply to obey the law as written. This would avoid court-mandated actions and, most important, be consistent with the wishes of citizens everywhere to preserve nature's legacy for future generations.

SAM HITT Santa Fe, N.M., April 16, 2001 The writer is the founder of Forest Guardians.

---

Administration to tighten arsenic water standards

USA Today
04/18/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration, under fire for scrapping Clinton standards for arsenic in drinking water, announced plans Wednesday to tighten the standards within nine months.

Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said she was asking the National Academy of Sciences to examine the impact of a range of possible reductions.

Bush had drawn heavy criticism from environmentalists and others last month when his EPA killed a Clinton administration regulation that would have tightened the standard to no more than 10 parts of arsenic per billion in drinking water. The current standard, set in 1942, is 50 parts per billion.

Whitman said she wanted a panel of scientists at the academy to examine a standard in the range of 3 to 20 parts per billion.

"The Bush administration is committed to protecting the environment and the health of all Americans," Whitman said in a written statement, promising a final regulation within nine months.

She said the decision to seek a report from the academy would "ensure that a standard will be put in place in a timely manner that provides clean, safe and affordable drinking water for the nation and is based on the best science."

The Bush administration's decision on March 20 to stop the regulation put into place three days before the end of the Clinton presidency created an uproar among environmentalists, congressional Democrats and members of the public.

Whitman argued there was insufficient scientific evidence to justify the $200 million annual cost to municipalities, states and industry of meeting the new Clinton standards by 2006.

"I have said consistently that we will obtain the necessary scientific review ... and that we will establish that standard in a timely manner," she said Wednesday.

The administration plans to issue a new regulation that still meets the same timeframe for compliance as the Clinton standard.

In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences said that arsenic in drinking water can cause bladder, lung and skin cancer, and might cause liver and kidney cancer.

The Clinton EPA had initially proposed setting the standard at 5 parts per billion last year in response to a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council, but then settled at 10 parts per billion.

Environmentalists, who have argued for years that the arsenic standard should be stricter, criticized the EPA on Wednesday for putting off a final decision.

"We're outraged that this is going to assure a year of delays for protection of public health for millions of Americans," NRDC senior attorney Erik D. Olson said.

He said the parameters set by Whitman are "a pretty clear signal" that the EPA is headed toward settling at 20 parts per billion - twice the amount that Clinton would have allowed.

-------- imf / world bank /ftaa

THE QUEBEC WALL

From: "mike sysiuk" <msysiuk@hotmail.com>
Wed, 18 Apr 2001
by Michel Chossudovsky

THE QUEBEC WALL: What lies behind Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)? by Michel Chossudovsky Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa [18 April 2001]

The Summit of the Americas will be held inside a four kilometer "bunker" made of concrete and galvanized steel fencing. The 10 feet high "Quebec Wall" encircles part of the historic city center including the parliamentary compound of the National Assembly, hotels and shopping areas. Cars will enter through closely guarded checkpoints; laissez-passers have been issued to official delegations, to the CEOs of major banks and corporations, as well as approved media and "selected invitees." (Click to see map of the "Security Perimeter" at http://www.securitesommet.ca/pages/p_citoyen/p_cito_pe_f.html).

Outside the bunker, more than 6,000 police and security forces are on hand, equipped not only with "pepper spray" but also with "multi-shot" Arwen 37 guns shooting hard-coated plastic bullets. The latter --according to a RCMP spokesperson-- are

"... 'meant to crack a rib and put them in a lot of pain', ... Tactical squads are usually required to test such less-lethal weapons --such as Tasers, which deliver electric shocks-- on themselves. But Toronto Police Constable Leighton said it would be 'too dangerous' to do so with the Arwen." 1

With Canadian Armed Forces personnel dispatched to Quebec's capital from military bases in Nova Scotia, the security apparatus in Quebec promises to be "better organized" than at the Seattle WTO Millenium Summit in 1999. In Seattle, the city's riot police was integrated with Gang Squads and SWAT teams of the Tactical Operations Divisions constituting the "more militarized components" of the police force.

By any standard this is the largest police operation in North America directed against ordinary citizens. Rather than "cordoning off" the conference center which is standard practice in international summits-- the Canadian authorities have chosen to "fence in" a large part of the downtown area --not only denying the rights of citizens to protest but also preventing residents from moving around within their own city.

And those who defy the Quebec Wall will be taken to Orsainville penitentiary which has been emptied of its entire prison population (including several members of the Hells Angels) to make room for these more dangerous "troublemakers."

THE QUEBEC WALL IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Barely a week before the Summit, the Canadian and provincial governments, the City of Quebec and Quebec City's Police force were taken to court by a Montreal lawyer and the Vancouver based Canadian Liberty Committee (CLC). In a signed affidavit, the Canadian government representative stated that democracy was not under threat, to ensure:

''freedom of expression ... the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has [sent] invitations to the Summit to approximately 60 representatives of interest groups and lobby groups." 2

Moreover, "alternative protest sites" ("sites alternatifs de manifestation") have been designated --on the other side of the Wall-- so that the rank and file of these same civil society organisations can do their own thing.

The "People's Summit", organized by NGOs and major trade unions-- will receive "financial contributions for the holding of seminars, colloquia and public meetings."3 The federal government has allocated Can$287,000-- a comfortable amount of money, but "peanuts" in comparison to the 46 million dollar budget allocated by Ottawa for the police operation and the erection of the Wall.

WHO'S IN, WHO'S OUT

The official list of civil society invitees has not been made public but we have a good idea who the "partner" civil society organizations are. The invitees include leaders of major trade union federations as well as several CEOs of mainstream NGOs. 4

The ritual is broadly similar to that of the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO) Millenium Summit. Several months ahead of time, the WTO and Western governments had called for a "dialogue" with the leaders of selected civil society organisations. A carefully worded AFL-CIO petition had been drafted urging the WTO Summit to adopt "trade and investment rules [which] protect workers' rights and the environment". In Seattle, Labor's buzzword was to "make the global economy work for working families". 5

Similarly, last January at the global business Summit in Davos --regrouping the World's top corporate execs, heads of State and VIPs, the leaders of some 59 "civil society" organisations --including the CEOs of Greenpeace, Oxfam UK, Amnesty International and Save the Children Alliance-- were also in attendance.

The ploy is to selectively handpick civil society leaders "whom we can trust" and integrate them into a "dialogue", cut them off from their rank and file, make them feel that they are "global citizens" acting on behalf of their fellow workers but make them act in a way which serves the interests of the corporate establishment:

The participation of NGOs in the Annual Meeting in Davos is evidence of the fact that [we] purposely seek to integrate a broad spectrum of the major stakeholders in society in ... defining and advancing the global agenda ... We believe the [Davos] World Economic Forum provides the business community with the ideal framework for engaging in collaborative efforts with the other principal stakeholders [NGOs] of the global economy to "improve the state of the world," which is the Forum's mission. 6

AFL-CIO's John Sweeney and Canadian Labor Congress (CLC) Ken Georgetti --together with Bill Jordan of the International Confederation of Free trade Unions (ICTFU)-- were also in Davos, mingling in a friendly environment with financier George Soros, Microsoft's Bill Gates and World Bank President James Wolfensohn. Meanwhile the rank and file protesters of these "civil society" organisations were being beaten with clubs and assaulted with water cannons by the Swiss riot police "outside" the Conference venue at the "counter-Davos."

RITUAL OF DISSENT

In the New World Order, the ritual of inviting "civil society" leaders into the inner circles of power --while simultaneously repressing the rank and file-- serves several important functions. First, it says to the World that the critics of globalization "must make concessions" to earn the right to mingle. Second, it conveys the illusion that while the global elites should --under what is euphemistically called democracy-- be subject to criticism, they nonetheless rule legitimately. And third, it says "there is no alternative" to globalization: fundamental change is not possible and the most we can hope is to engage with these rulers in an ineffective "give and take".

While the "Globalizers" may adopt a few progressive phrases to demonstrate they have good intentions, their fundamental goals are not challenged. And what this "civil society mingling" does is to reinforce the clutch of the corporate establishment while weakening and dividing the protest movement.

An understanding of this process of co-optation is important, because tens of thousands of the most principled young people in Seattle, Prague and Quebec City are involved in the anti-globalization protests because they reject the notion that money is everything, because they reject the impoverishment of millions and the destruction of fragile Earth so that a few may get richer. This rank and file and some of their leaders as well, are to be applauded. But we need to go further. We need to challenge the right of the "Globalizers" to rule. This requires that we rethink the strategy of protest. Can we move to a higher plane, by launching mass movements in our respective countries, movements that bring the message of what globalization is doing, to ordinary people? For they are the force that must be mobilized to challenge those who would plunder the Globe.

THE FTAA: PRIVATIZATION OF A HEMISPHERE, UNDER U.S. CONTROL

The FTAA is a good deal more than a trade agreement. Throughout the Americas, it would radically transform the social existence of sovereign nations.

Fundamental economic, social and institutional relations would be enshrined into a set of legally binding conditions. All public services that are at least in part subsidized by the State, would be opened up to international tender under the terms of the proposed clauses on "national treatment." If a government finances health or education, this service must be opened to international bidding. And who would bid? The large corporations would take control, all community based facilities would be transformed into profit-making undertakings ---schools, sports clubs, day-care centers, everything.

Moreover, the FTAA clauses would literally allow for the privatization of municipalities. Water, sewer systems, roads and municipal services would be owned and operated by private companies (rather than by citizens) much in the same way as the "gated communities" in the US. More generally, the FTAA would destroy local economies, depress wages and impoverish millions of people. The agreement --entrenched in international law-- would annul or invalidate national laws.

The FTAA would also allow for the privatization of water, inter-city highways as well as entire urban areas. The FTAA would also lead to the demise of national, regional and municipal governments.

IMF MEDICINE BECOMES PERMANENT

Moreover, under FTAA rules, the enforcement of the IMF's deadly "economic medicine" --which has served to destroy national economies and impoverish developing countries --would no longer hinge upon cumbersome loan agreements, which for the governments had the advantage that they were not "legally binding" documents.

But under FTAA rules, Latin American governments would have no political leverage whatsoever; they would loose their "right" to even negotiate with their creditors: the "economic medicine" would become permanently entrenched in international law. Countries would not longer be "bonded" by external debt; they would be permanently "enslaved" by their creditors.

CHARTER OF RIGHTS FOR CORPORATIONS

The FTAA would grant a "charter of rights" to corporations, which would not only override national laws but would also enable private companies to sue national governments, demand the annulment of national laws and receive compensation for potential lost profits which result from government regulations.

While some of these broad issues will be debated at the People's Summit, they have not been included in the demands of trade union leaders from the US, Canada and Latin America. Regrouped under the umbrella of the ICFTU, The trade unions have called upon the FTAA Summit to include the usual core labor standards, environmental and human rights clauses in the agreement.

THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

This is not a trade deal; it is the American Empire. Behind the FTAA are the powers of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. Ironically, while local economies including public services would be deregulated, under the FTAA the production of weapons of mass destruction by America's major defense contractors would remain heavily subsidized...

Although not officially on the FTAA agenda, the militarization of South America under "Plan Colombia", the signing of a "parallel" military cooperation protocol by 27 countries of the Americas (the so-called Declaration of Manaus) is an integral part of the process of hemispheric integration. US strategic interests are at stake.

The imposition of "free" trade by Washington is an instrument of economic conquest which serves US corporate interests as well as those of the military-intelligence-apparatus. Trade Negotiator Richard Zoellnick --who is slated to play a key role in Quebec City-- is part of the Bush National Security Team working closely with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

DOLLARISATION

The deregulation of national banking institutions is part and parcel of the Summit agenda. Supported by the Bush administration, Wall Street wants to extend its control throughout the hemisphere, eventually displacing or taking over existing national financial institutions.

With the help of the IMF, Washington is also bullying Latin American countries into accepting the US dollar as their national currency. The greenback has already been imposed on five Latin American countries including Ecuador, Argentina, Panama, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The economic and social consequences of "dollarisation" have been devastating. In these countries, Wall Street and the US Federal Reserve system directly control monetary policy. The entire structure of public expenditure is controlled by US creditors. Real wages have collapsed, social programs have been destroyed, large sectors of the population have been driven into abysmal poverty.

While not officially part of the FTAA Summit agenda, the adoption of the US dollar as the common currency for the Western Hemisphere is being discussed behind closed doors.

Militarisation and "dollarisation" are the essential building blocks of the American Empire.

DISARMING THE NEW WORLD ORDER

With mounting dissent from all sectors of society against the FTAA, the official Summit desperately needs the token participation of "civil society" leaders "on the inside", to give the appearance of being "democratic." The Summit is seeking the endorsement of these organizations in exchange for token modifications of the Agreement, which do not put into doubt the overall legitimacy of the FTAA nor modify substantially the workings of the proposed free trade area.

The hidden agenda is to weaken and divide the protest movement and orient the anti-globalization movement into areas that do not directly threaten the interests of the business establishment and --more importantly-- which do not raise the broader issue of Washington's political hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush's trade negotiator Robert Zoellnick is preparing fast-track legislation packaged under the "presidential trade promotion authority", with a view to rushing the FTAA (without amendments) through the US Congress. In other words, instating the American Empire will not be subjected to the uncertainties of parliamentary consent.

In turn, in consultation with the AFL-CIO, the powerful Business Roundtable (BR) and The Emergency Committee for American Trade (ECAT) --integrated by the representatives of America's largest corporations-- are pushing the line of the trade union bosses, they are demanding the Bush administration "to make labor and environmental standards part of future trade talks."6

While most of the protesters who have converged on Quebec City (including Quebec's vibrant student movement) reject the trade deal outright, the leaders of some of the mainstream "civil society" groups want to get their human rights, democracy, labor and environmental clauses embedded into the official texts and then "cry victory," we've done it! 7 However, by doing this they would not only go against their rank and file, they would also provide --without fully realizing the implications-- legitimacy to an all encompassing process which destroys institutions and impoverishes millions of people.

The American Empire cannot be amended; it must be rejected, fought and defeated. The FTAA must be closed down!

ENDNOTES

1. Toronto Star, 22 March 2001.

2. Canada, Province de Quebec, District de Quebec, Cours supérieure, No. 200-05-014848-019, Affidavit de Denis Ricard, Section II, paragragh 16).

3. According to the signed affidavit, Canada, Province de Québec, op cit.

4. CLC K. Georgetti and AFL-CIO J. Sweeney are also on the guest list of the official FTAA Summit in Quebec City. While the Council of Canadians (COC) has stated that it will decline Ottawa's invitation, Matthew Coon Come, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations has accepted. Among union leaders, the President of the Quebec's FTQ Henry Massé has accepted, while making clear that he will also be participating (outside the bunker) in the People's Summit in solidarity with his rank and file.

5. See AFL-CIO, "Make the Global Economy Work for Working Families", http://www.wslc.org/wto/index.htm. , October 1999)

6. See World Economic Forum, Press Release, http://www.weforum.org/whatwedo.nsf/documents/what+we+do?Open 5 January 2001.

7. In these Times, 16 April 2001

Related texts by Michel Chossudovsky:

Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order, November 1999 at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/chuss/seattle.htm

Global Poverty in the Late 20th Century, Journal of International Affairs, Fall 1999 at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/chossu.htm .

CBC "Commentary", on the FTAA and the likely fate of the Canadian Dollar, CBC, 9 April 2001.

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Bush Says He'll Press Effort for Hemisphere Trade Pact

New York Times
April 18, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/world/18PREX.html

WASHINGTON, April 17 - President Bush pledged today to intensify his efforts with Congress to win negotiating authority to build a free trade area from Alaska to Argentina just days before he travels to Canada for a summit meeting of leaders from the hemisphere.

In a speech before the Organization of American States, the central forum for 34 governments of the Americas, Mr. Bush said striking down trade barriers was critical to sustaining democracy and generating wealth throughout the region.

"There is a vital link between freedom of people and freedom of commerce," Mr. Bush said. "Democratic freedoms cannot flourish unless our hemisphere also builds a prosperity whose benefits are widely shared. Open trade is an essential foundation for that prosperity and that possibility."

On Friday, Mr. Bush plans to join his colleagues from Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean in Quebec City. The politicians plan to commit themselves to meeting a January 2005 deadline to create what would be the world's largest free trade zone, encompassing 800 million people.

"Nothing we do in Quebec will be more important or have a greater long-term impact," Mr. Bush said.

Despite his statement, Mr. Bush has yet to submit legislation to Congress to seek trade-negotiating or "fast track" authority. Supporters of the free trade area say such authority, which lapsed in 1994 under President Bill Clinton, is essential because it requires lawmakers to vote for or against an agreement without amending it.

Mr. Bush said that he was devising a strategy with congressional supporters to win the negotiating authority and that he had personally pressed his case with more than 100 lawmakers. "Trade promotion authority gives our trading partners confidence that they can rely on the deals that they negotiate," he said.

But skeptics in Congress said they would not support the authority unless the president guaranteed that any agreement would include provisions to protect labor rights and the environment. "If we learned anything in Seattle, it's that both labor and the environment need a seat at the table," said Michael Siegal, a spokesman for Max Baucus of Montana, senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. "These concerns need to be addressed in the scope of the agreement."

Thousands of demonstrators are widely expected to converge on Quebec over the weekend to protest the effects of globalization on workers and the environment in a sequel to the protests in 1999 at the Seattle trade talks. At a news conference today in Quebec, labor, environmental and consumer groups criticized the proposed free trade area.

The president of the Sierra Club, Robbie Cox, called the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 among the United States, Mexico and Canada "one of the most highly irresponsible trade policies in U.S. history" and said it must not be the basis for a broader agreement.

Many Latin American governments oppose including labor and environmental rules in trade negotiations, saying they do not want other nations dictating their domestic laws. The issue was especially contentious with Mexico in the talks that resulted in Nafta. Negotiators ended up relegating labor and environmental standards to side agreements that have generally been viewed as inadequate.

On Monday, after meet