------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Britain Welcomes U.S. Offer to Cut Nuclear Arms
President Bush speech on missile defense
Bush Confers With Allies on Missile Defense
Bush speech to outline shield
Bush Calls Allies in Advance of Missile Speech
World Wary About Bush Missile Plan
Bush NMD Proposal will Decrease Nuclear Security
NMD Plan Will Decrease Overall Security
The president's missile gap
ABM Treaty Glance
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NUCLEAR REGULATORY RESEARCH PUBLISHED
Computer found empty
Bush Favors Nuclear Weapons Cuts
Bush Energy Plan Will Emphasize Production
Q&A: Barium

MILITARY
A Troubled Osprey Wounds the Corps
'Fog of War' Lingers Post Cease-Fire
Friendly Fire

OTHER
Attacks Were Up Last Year, U.S. Terrorism Report Says

ACTIVISTS
Australia Police, Protesters Clash
Dust Settles After Global Day of May Day Protests


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- britain

Britain Welcomes U.S. Offer to Cut Nuclear Arms

May 1, 2001
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-us.html

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Tuesday it supported a commitment by President Bush to cut nuclear weapons and welcomed his contacts with Russia to explain controversial plans to replace an existing arms treaty.

Bush called for replacing the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) agreement to allow deployment of a missile defense system, a move which both Moscow and Beijing oppose because they say it could trigger a new global arms race.

``I welcome the president's commitment to reductions in U.S. nuclear weapons,'' British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said in a statement. ``It is good news that President Bush spoke to (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin today.''

Bush said the ABM treaty between the United States and Russia, which forbids deployment of a missile defense system, ignored technological breakthroughs of the past 30 years.

``We should work together to replace this treaty with a new framework, that reflects a clear and clean break from the past, and especially from the adversarial legacy of the Cold War,'' Bush said, addressing the topic for the first time at length since taking office in January.

He spoke with Putin by telephone on Tuesday to explain his missile plans, and said he would ``love'' to meet the Russian leader before a summit this summer.

Several Western states are also deeply concerned about plans for a missile system which some fear could disrupt the arms status quo between former Cold War foes.

French President Jacques Chirac has called them an ''invitation to proliferation.''

But Britain has voiced sympathy for the proposals. Its support could be crucial, because the United States may require permission to upgrade radar facilities in northern England.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has declined to make clear whether he would approve such a request, saying he has not yet been formally asked.

Blair and Bush discussed the planned missile shield, designed to counter the threat from so-called ``rogue states,'' by telephone before the major policy speech.

``We understand and sympathize with the concerns that the U.S. administration has,'' a spokesman for Blair said.

``We understand and recognize the argument that the nature of the threat is different,'' he added. ``We're not in the Cold War era. We understand why the U.S. administration feels the need to look at the nature of the deterrent again.''

-------- missile defense

President Bush speech on missile defense

May 1, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/bushtext050101.htm

Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. I appreciate you being here. I also want to thank Secretary Powell for being here as well. My national security advisor, Condi Rice, is here, as well as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Myers. Appreciate Admiral Clark and General Ryan for being here as well. But most of all, I want to thank you, Admiral Gaffney, and the students for NDU for having me here today.

For almost 100 years, this campus has served as one of our country's premier centers for learning and thinking about America's national security. Some of America's finest soldiers have studied here: Dwight Eisenhower and Colin Powell. Some of America's finest statesmen have taught here: George Kennan (ph).

Today, you're carrying on this proud tradition forward, continuing to train tomorrow's generals, admirals and other national security thinkers, and continuing to provide the intellectual capital for our nation's strategic vision.

This afternoon, I want us to think back some 30 years to a far different time in a far different world. The United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a hostile rivalry. The Soviet Union was our unquestioned enemy, a highly armed threat to freedom and democracy. Far more than that wall in Berlin divided us.

Our highest ideal was and remains individual liberty. Their's was the construction of a vast communist empire. Their totalitarian regime held much of Europe captive behind an Iron Curtain. We didn't trust them, and for good reason. Our deep differences were expressed in a dangerous military confrontation that resulted in thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at each other on hair-trigger alert.

The security of both the United States and the Soviet Union was based on a grim premise that neither side would fire nuclear weapons at each other, because doing so would mean the end of both nations.

We even went so far as to codify this relationship in a 1972 ABM Treaty, based on the doctrine that our very survival would best be ensured by leaving both sides completely open and vulnerable to nuclear attack. The threat was real and vivid. The Strategic Air Command had an airborne command post called the Looking Glass, aloft 24 hours a day, ready in case the president ordered our strategic forces to move toward their targets and release their nuclear ordnance.

The Soviet Union had almost 1.5 million troops deep in the heart of Europe, in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and East Germany.

We used our nuclear weapons, not just to prevent the Soviet Union from using their nuclear weapons, but also to contain their conventional military forces, to prevent them from extending the Iron Curtain into parts of Europe and Asia that were still free.

In that world, few other nations had nuclear weapons, and most of those who did were responsible allies, such as Britain and France. We worried about the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries, but it was mostly a distant threat, not yet a reality.

Today, the sun comes up on a vastly different world. The Wall is gone, and so is the Soviet Union. Today's Russia is not yesterday's Soviet Union.

Its government is no longer communist. Its president is elected. Today's Russia is not our enemy, but a country in transition with an opportunity to emerge as a great nation, democratic, at peace with itself and its neighbors.

The Iron Curtain no longer exists. Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic are free nations and they are now our allies in NATO, together with a reunited Germany. Yet, this is still a dangerous world; a less certain, a less predictable one.

More nations have nuclear weapons and still more have nuclear aspirations. Many have chemical and biological weapons. Some already have developed a ballistic missile technology that would allow them to deliver weapons of mass destruction at long distances and incredible speeds, and a number of these countries are spreading these technologies around the world.

Most troubling of all, the list of these countries includes some of the world's least-responsible states. Unlike the Cold War, today's most urgent threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in the Soviet hands, but from a small number of missiles in the hands of these states -- states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life.

They seek weapons of mass destruction to intimidate their neighbors, and to keep the United States and other responsible nations from helping allies and friends in strategic parts of the world. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the world joined forces to turn him back. But the international community would have faced a very different situation had Hussein been able to blackmail with nuclear weapons.

Like Saddam Hussein, some of today's tyrants are gripped by an implacable hatred of the United States of America.

They hate our friends. They hate our values. They hate democracy and freedom, and individual liberty. Many care little for the lives of their own people. In such a world, Cold War deterrence is no longer enough to maintain peace, to protect our own citizens and our own allies and friends.

We must seek security based on more than the grim premise that we can destroy those who seek to destroy us. This is an important opportunity for the world to rethink the unthinkable and to find new ways to keep the peace. Today's world requires a new policy, a broad strategy of active nonproliferation, counter-proliferation and defenses.

We must work together with other like-minded nations to deny weapons of terror from those seeking to acquire them.

We must work with allies and friends who wish to join with us to defend against the harm they can inflict. And together, we must deter anyone who would contemplate their use.

We need new concepts of deterrence that rely on both offensive and defensive forces. Deterrence can no longer be based solely on the threat of nuclear retaliation. Defenses can strengthen deterrence by reducing the incentive for proliferation.

We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today's world. To do so, we must move beyond the constraints of the 30-year-old ABM Treaty. This treaty does not recognize the present or point us to the future. It enshrines the past.

No treaty that prevents us from addressing today's threats, that prohibits us from pursuing promising technology to defend ourselves, our friends and our allies is in our interests or in the interests of world peace.

This new framework must encourage still further cuts in nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons still have a vital role to play in our security and that of our allies.

We can and will change the size, the composition, the character of our nuclear forces in a way that reflects the reality that the Cold War is over. I'm committed to achieving a credible deterrent with the lowest possible number of nuclear weapons consistent with our national security needs, including our obligations to our allies. My goal is to move quickly to reduce nuclear forces. The United States will lead by example to achieve our interests and the interests for peace in the world.

Several months ago, I asked Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to examine all available technologies and basing modes for effective missile defenses that could protect the United States, our deployed forces, our friends and our allies. The secretary has explored a number of complementary and innovative approaches.

The secretary has identified near-term options that could allow us to deploy an initial capability against limited threats. In some cases, we can draw on already established technologies that might involve land-based and sea-based capabilities to intercept missiles in mid-course or after they re-enter the atmosphere.

We also recognize the substantial advantages of intercepting missiles early in their flight, especially in the boost phase. The preliminary work has produced some promising options for advanced sensors and interceptors that may provide this capability. If based at sea or on aircraft, such approaches could provide limited but effective defenses.

We have more work to do to determine the final form the defenses might take. We will explore all of these options further. We recognize the technological difficulties we face, and we look forward to I've made it clear from the very beginning that I would consult closely on the important subject with our friends and allies, who are also threatened by missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

This treaty ignores the fundamental breakthroughs in technology during the last 30 years. It prohibits us from exploring all options for defending against the threats that face us, our allies and other countries.

That's why we should work together to replace this treaty with a new framework that reflects a clear and clean break from the past, and especially from the adversarial legacy of the Cold War.

This new cooperative relationship should look to the future, not to the past. It should be reassuring, rather than threatening. It should be premised on openness, mutual confidence and real opportunities for cooperation, including the area of missile defense.

It should allow us to share information so that each nation can improve its early warning capability and its capability to defend its people and territory. And perhaps one day, we can even cooperate in a joint defense.

I want to complete the work of changing our relationship from one based on a nuclear balance of terror to one based on common responsibilities and common interests. We may have areas of difference with Russia, but we are not and must not be strategic adversaries.

Russia and America both face new threats to security. Together, we can address today's threats and pursue today's opportunities. We can explore technologies that have the potential to make us all safer.

This is a time for vision, a time for a new way of thinking, a time for bold leadership. The Looking Glass no longer stands its 24- hour-a-day vigil. We must all look at the world in a new, realistic way to preserve peace for generations to come. God bless. (APPLAUSE)

----

Bush Confers With Allies on Missile Defense
President's Consultation Calls Precede Speech on Need for Development of a New System

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 1, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24121-2001Apr30?language=printer

President Bush phoned the leaders of four major allies and the secretary general of NATO yesterday to press forward with plans for missile defenses and to preview a speech he will deliver today arguing that deterrence is no longer enough to protect against possible nuclear attacks, senior administration officials said yesterday.

In his speech at the National Defense University, Bush will call the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty a figment of the past, without directly calling for its abrogation, a senior administration official said. He will also declare that the United States will explore all missile defense options -- land, sea and space-based -- to head off accidental launches as well as attacks and blackmail threats from rogue states.

The 1972 ABM treaty, which bans national missile defenses and has long been a cornerstone of international arms control agreements, "doesn't describe the current world," the official said, "and will get in the way of our pursuing promising avenues before us."

At the same time, Bush will call for consultations with Russia and China, and for cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal to the "lowest possible level," the official said.

Bush wants "to think in a new direction about how to protect the United States from rogue and accidental missile launch in the post-Cold War era," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "His message to Russia is that the development of a missile defense system -- so we can think beyond the confines of the Cold War era -- is the best way to preserve the peace."

The speech, however, is not expected to be much more specific about Bush's missile defense plans than an address he gave on the same topic nearly a year ago, on May 23, 2000, during the presidential campaign. One official said that some administration members felt there was little need for today's speech, seeing no point in fanning controversy before the administration has determined what kind of system it wants to build.

But another senior administration official said Bush wanted to "have real consultations" with allies, rather than present a plan as "a fait accompli." The official said "some real work has been done, but there are still some options as far as the architecture [of the anti-missile system] goes."

Fleischer said Bush made a series of calls yesterday, about 10 minutes each, to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO Secretary General George Robertson "to begin the consultation process."

American "consultation teams" will go to Europe next week, and the administration hopes to move talks forward by June, when Bush is scheduled to attend a meeting of NATO leaders, or by July, when heads of the Group of Seven major industrial countries are to meet. "We would hope to have made substantial progress by then," the senior official said, "but there's no deadline."

The official added that, although talks also will begin with Russian officials next week, "no one expects them to be excited" about the prospect of missile defense. It will take time for them "to make that mental shift" away from the ABM treaty and toward missile defense, the official said, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity.

White House officials declined to specify yesterday how much money they plan to spend on developing missile defenses, whether they would ask Congress for supplemental funds, or how soon new testing and construction might start. "We will look at what's necessary," said the senior administration official. "The goal here is to go against limited threats. This is not to go against thousands of warheads."

Administration sources said that all options were being examined, including space-based systems, "boost phase" systems that would intercept missiles soon after launch, and mid-course systems designed to knock down missiles in mid-trajectory. It is likely that the administration will back "layered" systems, meaning a combination of designs. The Clinton administration, in contrast, had settled on a mid-course system consisting of interceptor missiles based in Alaska. Even that relatively modest design proved to be a formidable technical challenge, and its construction was delayed after failures in flight tests.

"There are some promising ideas, and we're going to push hard to try to figure out which work and which don't," the senior administration official said.

The official added that although the president would suggest consultations with China, the administration does not have in mind a specific framework for such talks. The official said that China, which has a relatively small nuclear arsenal whose deterrent capability would be more affected than Russia's, should not oppose U.S. missile defenses.

"Anyone not intending to blackmail the United States or its allies has nothing to fear," the official said.

Asked whether the administration would use missile defense to protect Taiwan, the official repeated Bush's campaign position that the United States "wants to be able to use it where it thinks appropriate."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Congress last week that he would make clear to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov next month "our thorough and total commitment to missile defense programs."

The senior administration official who spoke yesterday stressed, however, that "this is a conversation. It's a two-way street. This isn't an opening offer. It's about the new environment we face and how best to deal with that new environment."

Fleischer added, "I think the point the president makes repeatedly about the need to develop a missile defense is that the Cold War is over, and the United States needs to protect itself and our allies and our troops that are stationed abroad from a different nature of threat. And the paradigm that existed in the Cold War is no longer the most imperative paradigm that should guide America's defense structures."

----

Bush speech to outline shield

May 1, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough and Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010501-45929860.htm

The Bush administration has decided to embrace a range of advanced technologies, such as space-based lasers and interceptors, as possible components of a global missile defense system, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday.

President Bush today delivers a major policy speech on the issue by generally outlining his goals for a limited shield against ballistic missiles.

He plans to talk about his proposal to unilaterally slash the U.S. nuclear arsenal while warning Russia that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty must be abandoned or changed to let the United States to erect a multilayered missile defense.

Officials said they expect the president to call for increasing the $4.5 billion now spent annually on developing missile defenses. The sources also say the president will repeat his campaign proposal to reduce the U.S. arsenal of 7,000 nuclear weapons below the 3,500 level dictated by the 1993 START II treaty.

This will mean reducing the number of Russian targets now in the Pentagon´s Single Integrated Operating Plan (SIOP).

Offering nuclear arms reductions is part of a White House strategy to win over nervous European allies and coax Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to change the ABM Treaty.

"He will say the ABM Treaty has the characteristic of belong(ing) to another world, that is the world of 1972, not to the world of 2001," said a senior administration official. "And also that it will prevent us eventually from developing and testing the promising options that we are uncovering in the review."

The White House yesterday kicked off a concerted campaign to convince Europe that missile defense will not lead to a new Cold War-style arms race.

Mr. Bush telephoned four leaders Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, President Jacques Chirac of France, Prime Minister Jean Chretien of Canada and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain. He also spoke with NATO Secretary-General George Robertson.

The United States soon will dispatch a diplomat to Europe to explain the president´s plan.

The hard sell is Russia, where Mr. Putin has warned of dire consequences.

Said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, "(The president´s) message to Russia is that the development of a missile defense system, so we can think beyond the confines of the Cold War era, is the best way to preserve the peace."

Added the administration official, "Putin himself has suggested from time to time that they understand that there is a new threat and that they understand that defense might be a part of addressing the new environment."

Pentagon aides say that they find considerably less opposition to the plan in private discussions with European counterparts than the allies express in public.

Some Europeans, the sources say, are somewhat ignorant of the limited nature of U.S. intentions to protect its soil against a limited attack, either from an accidental launch or a rogue nation such as North Korea or Iran.

The thrust of Mr. Bush´s speech at the National Defense University in Washington will be to outline a shift in direction from President Clinton´s missile defense approach. His aides adamantly wanted to adhere to most ABM Treaty limits on the number of interceptor sites and the use of space.

In contrast, Bush defense advisers want major treaty changes so the Defense Department can design a layered defense. Such a system would rely on ground, sea and airborne interceptors and lasers to knock down ballistic missile warheads in space or destroy the launch vehicle itself in the so-called boost phase.

The Clinton plan called for building a site for 100 high-speed interceptors in Alaska and a tracking radar on the state´s Aleutian island chain. He decided in July against deployment, after two test failures. But Mr. Clinton did bolster the hopes of missile defense advocates by signing into law legislation that makes it U.S. policy to deploy a system when technologically possible.

"I think it´s imperative that President Bush address the ABM Treaty and at least give some evidence that the ABM Treaty will not be allowed to hold back the development and deployment of an effective missile defense system," said Jack Spencer, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, which supports building a defense.

Mr. Spencer said he expects him to "make the official commitment to develop an effective multilayered defense system that protects the United States, and its friends and allies abroad."

"I think what we will end up doing is building a single land-based system in Alaska and deploying a sea-based system as soon as possible" while continuing research and development in space-based lasers and interceptors, he said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a strong backer of countering ballistic missiles, has headed two commissions whose findings heartened missile defense proponents.

One, a 1998 panel on the ballistic missile threat, concluded rogue nations would develop weapons capable of hitting U.S. soil sooner than intelligence agencies are predicting. A 2000 commission on space encouraged research into space-based weapons and defenses.

Said the administration official, "The goal here is still to go against limited threats. This is not to go against thousands of nuclear warheads. This is aimed at a particular kind of threat which is the small attack that is essentially a blackmail or terrorist attack and that anybody who´s not intending to blackmail the United States and its allies should have nothing to fear from this system."

----

Bush Calls Allies in Advance of Missile Speech

New York Times
May 1, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/01/world/01MISS.html

WASHINGTON, April 30 - President Bush began paving the diplomatic path today for his missile defense system and the possibility of renouncing the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. He called leaders of several major European and Asian allies in preparation for a speech about missile defense on Tuesday, telling them he wanted to begin consultations on a new nuclear strategy.

Mr. Bush is expected to announce a framework for his plans at the National Defense University here. But this afternoon a senior administration official said Mr. Bush would not discuss the budget, schedule or the likely architecture of a new missile defense system.

"We need to rethink the concept of deterrence that was in the past based on massive nuclear retaliation," the official said. While stopping short of saying the president would abandon the missile treaty, which has been a cornerstone of the arms control world for the last three decades, the official left little doubt that the president was headed in that direction.

"At some point in time we will have to pursue promising technologies, and the ABM treaty would likely be in the way," the official said. But the official told reporters that Mr. Bush had "no preconceived notion" of what kind of system he would like to build, or what nations, beyond the United States, it might protect.

Stung by accusations that he abandoned the Kyoto treaty on global warming without warning allies earlier this year, Mr. Bush appeared to go out of his way today to make sure that his fellow leaders were not surprised by what he is to say on Tuesday.

This morning he called Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada, and the NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson. On Saturday he called the new prime minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, to congratulate him and to say he would be sending a team of senior aides to Asia to begin discussing Japan's role in a related theater missile defense system.

Mr. Bush apparently has not yet called Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, who has vociferously opposed a unilateral American decision on missile defense. But Mr. Putin has more recently hinted that in exchange for some American concessions he might be able to live with some amendments to the ABM treaty. But the Russian position is still unclear, and the White House has gone to some length to play down the diplomatic objections to its plans.

Mr. Bush has repeatedly said the system is intended to protect against an accidental launch, to repel an attack by states like Iraq or North Korea, or to counter a terrorist threatening nuclear blackmail.

But China regards the system as an effort to suppress its own minimum deterrent - Beijing has deployed roughly 20 nuclear missiles able to reach the United States - and any hint that the system might also protect Taiwan against a medium-range attack is bound to strengthen China's suspicions that the new administration is trying to contain its military reach. Chinese authorities have threatened to respond by greatly increasing the size of their nuclear arsenal. Unlike the Russians, the Chinese have the cash to make good on that threat.

"This spills over directly into China policy, and the new administration's problems with China," Senator John F. Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat and a strong critic of Mr. Bush's missile defense plan, said in a telephone interview today from Boston. "What's the rush? This is essentially a satisfy-your-base, political announcement. It serves no other purpose."

Aides to Mr. Bush say the goal of the speech is to make the case - as he began to do a year ago during a campaign speech at the National Press Club here - that the ABM treaty is an outdated relic that does not fit America's current defense needs.

His press secretary, Ari Fleischer, said Mr. Bush's speech would "reflect on his view of the post-cold-war realities," and his belief that the ABM treaty was devised for a world in which two hostile superpowers were in an ever escalating race to build more warheads. Mr. Bush has offered to unilaterally reduce America's nuclear arsenal, but it was not known whether he will offer specific numbers in his speech.

"Consultation is key," Mr. Fleischer said, but he sidestepped questions about whether Mr. Bush was willing to amend his plan if allies objected to central elements of it.

The delegation that will be sent to describe Mr. Bush's thinking to American allies, and to Russia, will be led by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, and Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, officials said.

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World Wary About Bush Missile Plan

May 1, 2001
New York Times
By JOSEPH COLEMAN
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=ELECTION&STORYID=APIS7BNU8P80

LONDON (AP) -- World governments responded nervously to President Bush's decision to build a shield against missile attack, but some supported his pledge to consult with NATO allies and Russia.

Allies Britain and Canada issued statements Tuesday that stopped short of endorsing the plan, while Sweden, Germany and New Zeland expressed deeper concern.

But Australia's government said it would allow the United States to use joint military bases in Australia for the planned missile shield.

``This would simply be the continuation of a ballistic missile early warning partnership we have shared with the U.S. over 30 years, a partnership which makes a significant contribution to global strategic stability,'' said a spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who commented on customary condition of anonymity.

Much of the apprehension focused on Bush's declaration that a 1972 arms-control treaty was outdated.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the missile plan would ``inevitably impact upon global security and strategic stability.''

He emphasized the need to ``consolidate and build upon existing disarmament and nonproliferation agreements, specifically to prevent a new arms race and to maintain the non-weaponized status of outer space,'' U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

Annan appealed to all countries to avoid a new arms race and start negotiating irreversible disarmament agreements.

Many of the United States' European allies have been skeptical of Bush's missile defense ideas since his election, fearing that such a system could start a new arms race by prompting both Russia and China to increase their nuclear arsenals.

Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the 15-nation European Union, condemned the American plans.

``We urge President Bush to abstain from the National Missile Defense, just as we urge China, India and Pakistan to discontinue their nuclear arsenals,'' she said.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said his country had concerns about the defense plan. ``An effective, treaty-based arms control and disarmament regime must be preserved and expanded, including effective and verifiable prevention of proliferation'' of nuclear weapons, Fischer said.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff and Disarmament Minister Matt Robson said in a joint statement that ``the establishment of the missile defense system runs the risk of halting and reversing multilateral progress towards the elimination of nuclear weapons.''

Neither Russia nor China commented immediately on Bush's Tuesday announcement, his first major defense address.

Bush said that the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, which sets strict limits on testing and deployment of antimissile systems, was a Cold War relic. Today's threats, he argued, come from hostile nations like Iraq, not from Russia.

Supporters view the ABM treaty as a cornerstone of international arms control agreements.

Britain, one of the United States' closest allies, said it shared Bush's concerns about rogue states and agreed he ``had a case'' in arguing that the ABM treaty had outlived its usefulness.

But a statement from Prime Minister Tony Blair's office avoided endorsing the defense plan, while praising his promise to work closely with Russia and U.S. allies.

``We would welcome the very open approach the Bush administration has adopted in setting out its assessment of the missile threat, particularly from rogue states, and to setting out its ideas on a new approach to the offensive and defensive response to that threat,'' said a Blair spokeswoman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

``We share the U.S.'s concerns and we welcome President Bush's determination to consult allies on the future of missile defense,'' she added.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley noted that a unilateral American abandonment of the ABM treaty ``would be very problematic for us.''

But Foreign Affairs spokesman Michael O'Shaughnessy said later that Canada welcomed Bush's plans to work closely with Russia.

``We note with interest President Bush's proposal for ballistic missile defense,'' O'Shaughnessy said. ``The missile defense program will inevitably have a major impact on the broader global security environment, on strategic stability and on the multilateral arms control and disarmament process.''

``Canada's eventual evaluation of the proposed program will depend in part on how these impacts are taken into account.''

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Analysts Worry Bush NMD Proposal will Decrease Nuclear Security

U.S. Newswire
1 May
U.S. Nuclear Security
Contact: Stephen Kent of Kent Communications, 845-424-8382 or
Ira Shorr of Back from the Brink, 202-545-1001
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0501-132.html

News Advisory:

In a major speech today before the National Defense University President Bush will outline his plan for pursuing a multi-layered, robust national missile defense, coupled with unilateral deep cuts in U.S. nuclear arsenals.

But worried nuclear policy experts and former military commanders available for media interviews now say that although deep cuts is a laudable goal, linking them to missile defense will raise nuclear tensions and result in a net loss for Americans' nuclear security.

Russia, the only nation with the nuclear missile capacity to destroy the United States, feels threatened by NMD, the analysts say. Even with proposed reductions in the number of nuclear weapons, Russia fears that NMD could still enable the United States to deliver an unanswerable first strike. A U.S. first strike might destroy most of Russia's arsenal, while a defensive shield might handle the small number of Russian weapons that are left, rendering Russia's nuclear deterrent useless.

With the United States pushing ahead on missile defense and preparing to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia to build it, Russia has a powerful incentive to respond by placing more weapons aimed at the U.S. on hair-trigger, launch-on-warning alert, ready to fire within minutes, so as to be able to overwhelm a U.S. defensive shield.

But this puts Americans at greater immediate risk of nuclear attack. Russia's economic crisis, funding shortfalls and deteriorating command and control structures make Russia predictably jittery in handling large numbers of weapons on a hair trigger alert. In 1995 Russia came within minutes of launching hair-triggered nuclear weapons at American cities after misreading a weather rocket as a nuclear attack. Since then, Russia's early warning satellite systems have degraded further, making the next launch-on-warning episode more likely to prompt an actual launch at the United States.

"Reduced arsenals won't help us if NMD anxiety prompts Russia to squeeze the ever-thinning hair trigger on the weapons aimed at American cities," says Ira Shorr, director of Back from the Brink, an NGO advocating standing nuclear missiles down from hair-trigger alert. The White House has floated a proposal to unilaterally de-alert 50 Peacekeeper missiles, a tiny fraction of U.S. nuclear weapons currently on hyper-alert.

The following experts are available for comment in the hours and days following President Bush's nuclear policy speech. Though their positions on NMD and deep cuts may vary somewhat, they are in broad agreement that the White House proposal will be a net loss for Americans' nuclear security, and that the United States should take decisive steps toward getting all missiles off hair-trigger alert:

-- Bruce Blair, director, Center for Defense Information

-- Admiral (ret). Eugene Carroll, deputy director, Center for Defense Information

-- Joe Cirincione, director, Nonproliferation Program, Carneigie Endowment

-- Susan Eisenhower, president, Eisenhower Institute, Russian expert, general Eisenhower's granddaughter

-- Admiral (ret.) Noel Gayler, former comander in chief of Pacific forces.

-- Amb. Thomas Graham, president, Lawyers Alliance for World Security, former Special Assistant to the President for Arms Control, Nonproliferation and Disarmament under Clinton

-- Bill Hartung, World Policy Institute, expert on defense contractors vested interests in NMD

-- Lawrence Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, now at the Council on Foreign Relations

-- Jack Mendelsohn, executive director LAWS, former senior official with U.S. Mission to NATO and US negotiator on SALT II and START I

-- Ted Postol, MIT scientist who made national news charging that recent NMD test results were falsified and the technology was fatally flawed

-- Steve Schwarz, Bulletin of Atmoic Scientists, who broke the story in The New York Times last year on how the United States actually encouraged the Russians to put more weapons aimed at United States on hair trigger alert in order to make NMD more acceptable to them

-- Alice Slater, president, Global Resource Action Center for the Environment

-- Frank von Hippel, nuclear scientist, Princeton University, former adviser to the Clinton administration on arms control

For more information or to arrange interviews, call Stephen Kent, Kent Communications, 845-424-8382 or Ira Shorr, Back from the Brink, at 202-545-1001.

----

Security Experts: NMD Plan Will Decrease Overall Security

U.S. Newswire
1 May
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0501-138.html

Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers: Security Experts Say Bush Missile Defense Plan Will Decrease Overall Security To: National Desk Contact: Daryl Kimball of the Coalition To Reduce Nuclear Dangers, 202-546-0795, ext.136

WASHINGTON, May 1 /U.S. Newswire/ -- An alliance of 16 leading nuclear non-proliferation organizations said President Bush's call for a massive and expensive, air-, sea-, and space-based national missile defense system will decrease, rather than increase, overall American and international security and undercut the value of possible reductions in U.S. offensive nuclear weapons and standing-down U.S. weapons from hair-trigger alert.

"The Bush Administration is unwisely betting our nation's security against nuclear dangers on unproven and costly missile defenses," said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, a Coalition member organization. "Instead of deploying a technologically questionable defense against missile attacks, the President should focus on minimizing the most urgent nuclear dangers by reducing the Russian nuclear arsenal, securing excess nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, and convincing North Korea to end its long-range missile program," said Isaacs.

"The cost of the Bush national missile defense plan would be high, and the benefits to security very low. National missile defense deployment would cost well over $100 billion and would not provide any significant protection from weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, it would set off a dangerous action-reaction cycle, involving the U.S., Russia, and China," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers.

"Before the President commits the U.S. to this risky course of action, he must demonstrate that national missile defense will be effective and reliable, that it will be a cost effective use of taxpayer dollars, that it will not adversely affect other nuclear-risk reduction goals, and that diplomatic efforts to curb or freeze missile programs of concern have been exhausted," said Kimball. Earlier this year, the President said he was not ready to resume talks with North Korea on the verifiable elimination of their long-range missile program.

"There is no quick, easy or cheap national missile defense technology. The Bush administration should be careful not to give the false impression that it can develop an effective national missile defense in the near future," said Kimball. A recent independent Pentagon audit and reports from the General Accounting Office underscore the dangers of ignoring the limitations of NMD technologies for the purpose of meeting arbitrary, politically-driven deadlines. Contrary to the claims of sea-based and "boost-phase" national missile defense proponents, such technologies will not be available for over a decade or more.

"Contrary to Bush's goal of eliminating the mutual-assured-destruction policies of the Cold War, Bush's formula will make it more difficult to deal with lingering Cold War dangers and create new proliferation problems. U.S. national missile defense deployment would prod Russia into keeping a larger number of its strategic weapons on hair-trigger alert, thus perpetuating the dangerous nuclear standoff and risk of accidental nuclear war," said Stephen Young of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

If the U.S. deploys NMD, Russian officials have said they may equip its road-mobile SS-27 long-range missiles with multiple nuclear warheads, extend the life of its SS-19 missile, and build a new multiple-warhead submarine-launched missile. China, which now possesses 20 long-range, nuclear-armed missiles may respond by modernizing its arsenal for hair-trigger launch, and increase its strategic nuclear arsenal to as many as 250 warheads or more.

"Contrary to President Bush's assertion that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty is irrelevant, the agreement continues to stabilize the strategic nuclear balance and does not impede research and early development of national missile defense systems planned in the near future," noted John Rhinelander, of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security.

"The ABM Treaty remains essential to arms control as well as nuclear non-proliferation because it promotes stability and facilitates offensive nuclear weapons reductions. We must work with Russia, China, and others to accomplish our global security goals and not act unilaterally," added Rhinelander, the former U.S. legal advisor for the Nixon Administration's ABM Treaty negotiation team.

Today, President Bush hinted that the U.S. should reduce its deployed nuclear weapons arsenal from its current level of 7295 bombs and remove some U.S. nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert. The U. S. retains another 600-700 tactical nuclear weapons and another 2500 "reserve" nuclear bombs.

"Unilateral nuclear reductions and the standing down of some U.S. nuclear weapons would be a long-overdue and very welcome initiative that could jump-start the stalled arms reduction process," said Ira Shorr, director of the organization, Back from the Brink. "Unfortunately a spoonful of sugar can't make the NMD medicine go down," he said.

"The ultimate goal of any unilateral initiative by the Bush administration is to get Russia to reciprocate. U.S. NMD deployment will only encourage Russia to keep a larger number of its strategic nuclear forces on a high level of alert to preserve their ability to respond to a U.S. first strike. This perpetuates the danger of a nuclear war by accident or miscalculation," said Shorr.

"Rather than rush towards deployment of an unproven NMD system, President Bush should pursue verifiable, U.S. and Russian nuclear arms reductions, elimination of dangerous, Cold War launch-on-warning and targeting plans, and nuclear proliferation efforts, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and a verifiable freeze of North Korea's ballistic missile program," Kimball concluded.

--

The Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers is a non-partisan alliance of 16 national nuclear non-proliferation organizations dedicated to the pursuit of a practical, step-by-step program to address the threat of nuclear weapons. For further information on national missile defense and nuclear reductions, see http://www.crnd.org

--------

The president's missile gap

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
May 1, 2001
http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/apr01/defense-edit043001.asp

Today, in an address before a group of defense intellectuals, President Bush is expected to propose two dramatic changes in U.S. military policy. One is a common-sense but courageous reduction in U.S. nuclear forces. The other is a missile defense plan based on unproven technology that would likely squander billions, challenge international law, divide America from its allies and provoke its adversaries.

Even though the Cold War is over, the United States possesses more than 7,000 nuclear weapons, a number that is scheduled to be cut to 3,500 under an existing treaty. Bush is expected to announce even deeper cuts that could include slashing the number of nuclear warheads and taking some missiles off alert.

Absent a powerful adversary, the U.S. has more than enough punch to deter a possible attack; just one of the Navy's 18 missile-firing Trident submarines, for example, could inflict far more devastation on an enemy than the bombs that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Yet the constituency for maintaining a large nuclear force includes an entrenched military bureaucracy and its powerful congressional supporters and perhaps even the president's own instincts. Bush deserves high marks in acting to pare down the nation's nuclear deterrent force to a level consistent with the realities of the 21st century.

But his missile defense plan, with one possible exception, is the stuff of fantasy - a multitiered affair that would go far beyond the system pondered by former President Clinton.

The plan Clinton considered would have cost $60 billion over 15 years; Bush's plan would exceed that amount by a long shot. It also would force the U.S. to abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Under law, a signatory to the treaty can bail out with adequate notice; even so, adversaries - and some of America's allies - would claim the U.S. cannot be counted on to live up to its international obligations.

Test-firings have exposed serious flaws in space-based missile defense technology. A defense aimed at intercepting rockets as they slowly ascend into space seems more promising, but this approach appears to play a small role in Bush's scheme.

The Cold War is over, and our country's military strategy requires fresh thinking and new strategies. We can, and should, eliminate what we don't need. We also shouldn't attempt to build weapons that make America less safe.

-------- treaties

ABM Treaty Glance

May 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-ABM-Treaty-Glance.html?searchpv=aponline

Key provisions of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty between the United States and the former Soviet Union:

--Limits the scope of anti-missile systems. Based on the assumption that if both the United States and Russia are vulnerable to a devastating retaliatory nuclear attack, neither would launch a first strike.

--Neither party can deploy a missile defense that covers its entire territory. Either can have a defense that protects a single site, with no more than 100 interceptors deployed. Russia has such a system to defend Moscow; the United States deployed one to protect missile fields in North Dakota in the 1970s but shut it down.

--Ratified in 1972 and amended in 1974. Some argue the treaty is no longer in force because the Soviet Union no longer exists.

--Either party can withdraw from the treaty on six months notice.

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


RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NUCLEAR REGULATORY RESEARCH PUBLISHED

May 1, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-01-09.html

ROCKVILLE, Maryland, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has made available on its web site the findings and recommendations of an expert panel report on the role and direction of NRC nuclear research.

The report, which can be found at: http://www.nrc.gov/RES/nrc.html, will be discussed at an NRC meeting on May 10 in Rockville.

The 17 member panel of experts, chaired by former NRC commissioner Kenneth Rogers, is made up of congressional, industry, academic, government, international and public interest group representatives. The panel held a series of public meetings in developing the report.

Some of the highlights of the report include recommendations to maintain the necessary infrastructure for the agency's Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research (RES). This would require the establishment of minimum core capabilities and required resources.

For example, the report notes that many RES research facilities are aging and in need of upgrades, and that budget cuts have led to the loss of many technical experts. The report recommends that more experts be hired to keep abreast of technical developments worldwide that might impact regulatory activities.

Other recommendations call for increasing the office's cooperative research efforts with the Department of Energy, the nuclear industry, the Electric Power Research Institute and international organizations. Cooperative efforts can help all the agencies save money, the report notes, while cautioning that the NRC should not rely solely on the advice and guidance of outside organizations.

The Office of Research plans and implements programs of nuclear regulatory research to achieve enhanced safety, efficiency or effectiveness.

-------- tennessee

Computer found empty
Data slated for use in K-25 investigation

May 1, 2001
by Paul Parson
Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com

Some people said it was "criminal" that the hard drives were missing from a computer believed to be beneficial to the examination of historical contaminations of water at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site.

The issue is so troubling that the Department of Energy's Inspector General's office is being notified of the situation.

The missing computer equipment was discussed Monday afternoon by the Community Input Team, which provides stakeholder representation for the water examination.

The team includes representatives from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the Oak Ridge Site-Specific Advisory Board and the Paper, Allied-industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union.

William Noe, who once used the computer and is on the Community Input Team, confirmed that the computer would not start when technicians tried to examine it in mid-April. The computer's two hard drives had been removed and are missing along with multiple backup copies of the K-25 water line drawings and digital photos that could indicate possible cross-connected water lines.

Richard Frounfelker, a DOE representative on the Community Input Team, said the hard drives were reformatted after Noe left in late 1996 and the computer was given to someone else. He said this is a typical procedure within DOE. However, Frounfelker added that the person who took over Noe's computer said it did not work when he got it.

Frounfelker also provided a written history of what happened to the computer after Noe left. The document states the computer's "hard drive" was discarded in May 2000. Frounfelker was unable to confirm whether that applied to both hard drives or just one.

The missing computer equipment generated mixed response from Community Input Team members on Monday.

"This is bordering on criminal," said Sherrie Farver, who represents Coalition for a Healthy Environment on the team. "We're looking at negligence and possibly criminal negligence."

Norman Mulvenon, who represents the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee on the team, said it was just "ineptitude" on DOE's part.

Ultimately, the Community Input Team voted to notify DOE's Inspector General's office in writing expressing their concern about the missing computer equipment. It will be up to the Inspector General's office to determine if an investigation needs to be conducted.

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

Bush Favors Nuclear Weapons Cuts

By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Tuesday, May 1, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010501/aponline005827_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- President Bush intends to make deep reductions in U.S. nuclear weapons, perhaps without negotiating reciprocal cuts by Russia, officials say. The administration sees these reductions as one element of a new national security strategy that includes a global missile defense.

Bush was spelling out his vision for security in a speech Tuesday at the National Defense University - the same venue that then-President Clinton used exactly eight months ago to announce that he believed the technologies needed for a shield against ballistic missiles were not mature enough to commit to building one.

The president was presenting a "general framework" for a comprehensive security strategy, rather than specific details, a senior administration official said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Bush will shift emphasis toward a defensive nuclear strategy - not just missile defenses but also coordinated efforts to stop the global spread of nuclear weapons technologies - and away from the traditional U.S. strategy of deterring aggression by maintaining a large offensive nuclear capability.

The United States has about 7,200 nuclear weapons and is committed under the START II treaty to reducing that stockpile to 3,500.

Bush often has said he would like to reduce the nuclear arsenal to the lowest level possible while still maintaining enough weaponry to deter an aggressor, but he has not said exactly how low he would go.

The president in his speech Tuesday was not committing the United States to specific nuclear cuts, the senior administration official said. "We're not ready to get into numbers," the official said.

The officials also said Bush was not announcing a U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, although the administration has made it clear for months that it considers the 1972 treaty outmoded and an illegitimate stumbling block to developing effective missiles defenses at the earliest possible date.

Rose Gottemoeller, a foreign and security policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Monday the administration may be considering eliminating the nuclear mission for Air Force bombers like the B-2 and the B-52. It also is possible that Bush's expected reductions could lead to a reduced nuclear role for the Navy's Trident submarines or for the Air Force's intercontinental ballistic missile force. Bush was not expected to provide such details in his speech Tuesday.

Bush discussed his emerging nuclear policy in telephone calls Monday to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as well as Lord Robertson, the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Bush has said several times that he wants a missile defense that protects U.S. allies as well as the United States, which means it also would shield Europe and Asia.

The European allies have been cool to the idea of a large-scale U.S. missile defense, knowing that the Russians view it as an attempt by the United States to establish absolute military dominance.

"The message to Russia is that the development of a missile defense system - so we can think beyond the confines of the Cold War era - is the best way to preserve the peace," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

Fleischer made clear that while Bush is consulting allies, he does not plan lengthy deliberations with them.

"From the president's point of view, he views it as a question of leadership," Fleischer said. "He believes that if the United States leads and that we consult wisely, our allies and friends will find good reason to follow and to join with us."

Henry Cooper, who directed the Pentagon's missile defense programs during the first Bush administration, said Monday he hoped Bush would press for deployment of at least a rudimentary U.S. missile defense by 2004.

A senior administration official, however, said Bush would not announce a timetable for deployment, or a cost estimate.

Russia is likely to be encouraged by Bush's interest in further reducing the number of nuclear weapons, since President Vladimir Putin has pushed for cuts well below what the Clinton administration would accept. Putin has expressed an interest in cooperating with European nations on a regional missile defense, but he strongly opposes a missile shield that would protect the United States.

Jan Lodal, who was a senior Pentagon official during the Clinton administration and is an expert on nuclear strategy, said Monday the important question is whether Bush will commit to a level below the 2,500 warheads that Clinton and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed to pursue in 1997.

On the Net:
allistic Missile Defense Organization at http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/html/

-------- us nuc politics

Bush Energy Plan Will Emphasize Production
Cheney: Conservation Is Part of Effort

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 1, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24644-2001Apr30?language=printer

TORONTO, April 30 -- Vice President Cheney said today that the Bush administration's energy policy will emphasize increased generation over conservation and rely on an ambitious expansion of the country's oil, coal and natural gas industries in addition to a broader reliance on nuclear power.

Providing a preview of the recommendations the administration's energy task force will make to President Bush in the next few weeks, Cheney said he sees no "quick fixes" to the problems that have led to rolling blackouts in California and forecasts of higher gasoline prices for motorists this summer.

"The potential crisis we face is largely the result of short-sighted domestic policies -- or, as in recent years, no policy at all," Cheney told editors and publishers at the Associated Press's annual meeting. "As a country, we have demanded more and more energy. But we have not brought online the supplies needed to meet that demand."

He said 1,300 to 1,900 new power plants will be needed over the next 20 years.

Cheney, who is heading the task force that has been meeting in private since January, provided few details of the panel's conclusions. He said it would recommend "a mix of new legislation, some executive action as well as private initiatives" to bolster energy production.

But he made clear that the administration will base its policy on promoting a vigorous expansion of the traditional energy industry and will avoid the kinds of austerity measures that marked the country's response to the energy crisis in the 1970s.

"To speak exclusively of conservation is to duck the tough issues," Cheney said. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis -- all by itself -- for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

Cheney said alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power may provide an important part of the country's energy strategy in the years to come but that it is premature to rely on them now. "Years down the road, alternative fuels may become a great deal more plentiful," he said. "But we are not yet in any position to stake our economy and our own way of life on that possibility."

Bush promised during last year's campaign to develop a muscular national energy strategy, and named Cheney to head the task force less than two weeks after taking office. Various sectors of the energy industry have billions of dollars riding on the outcome of the administration's policy review.

Cheney said the plan will call for increased exploration for new sources of oil, coal and natural gas, and construction of refineries, plants and pipelines. He reiterated the administration's support for drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which he said could be tapped for oil without disrupting its environment.

Cheney, who was chairman of the oil services firm Halliburton Co. before taking office, called coal "the most plentiful source of affordable energy in the country" and said it will remain the nation's primary source of electricity for years.

"Coal is not the cleanest source of energy," Cheney said, "and we must support efforts to improve clean-coal technology to soften its impact on the environment."

The vice president called nuclear power one of "the cleanest methods of power generation that we know."

"But the government has not granted a single new nuclear power permit in more than 20 years," Cheney said. "If we're serious about environmental protection, then we must seriously question the wisdom of backing away from what is, as a matter of record, a safe, clean and very plentiful energy source."

Officials with the coal and nuclear power industries, which have had little to celebrate in recent years, welcomed Cheney's remarks.

"Bless his heart," said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. "We have been something of the whipping child for some time now. This is kind of like your dad when he compliments you when you were growing up. We've got people in Washington talking to us now."

Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said it was "heartening to see that the administration is not only recognizing but publicly acknowledging the positive role that nuclear energy plays in a diverse portfolio of energy sources."

Several environmental groups said the policy outlined by Cheney could negate whatever good will the administration had gained with its recent spate of environmentally friendly announcements. Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, called Cheney's prescription "an across-the-board attack on the environment."

Lois Corbett, executive director of the Toronto Energy Alliance, said: "I'd hate to think we'll have to throw up a huge iron curtain to keep American smog and acid rain on the American side. Clean-coal technology is an oxymoron. It's a dirty fuel."

Raney and other coal industry officials were summoned to an administration briefing last week in which Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and other administration officials promised that coal would be a key part of the energy policy.

Attendees said that although no specifics were discussed about tax breaks or relaxed regulations, they were assured the administration would work for a more stable and predictable process of getting permits to build or renovate coal-fired generating plants.

Administration officials said Bush's budget includes $150 million for developing clean-coal technology, new methods for converting coal to energy that result in less pollution. Cheney called conservation "an important part of the total effort."

-------- us nuc medicine

Q&A: Barium

New York Times
May 1, 2001
By C. CLAIBORNE RAY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/01/health/01QNA.html?searchpv=site01

. What exactly am I ingesting for a barium X-ray? Is it radioactive or otherwise dangerous?

A. The barium the doctor asks you to swallow (or take by enema) so that details of your digestive tract can be studied is a suspension of a compound called barium sulfate. It is a suspension rather than a solution because this material was chosen for its low solubility in water. This minimizes its absorption by the body and allows it to pass through unchanged.

Barium is not radioactive. It works as an X-ray contrast medium because it is radiopaque or radio opaque, that is, it blocks X- rays so that the resulting picture clearly shows in white the shape of organs that contain it. Otherwise the X-ray of internal soft tissue would show murky shadows of overlapping organs.

The doctor may ask you if you have allergies or hay fever, as some people are allergic to barium sulfate and people with other allergies are more likely to be. The compound may causes constipation or dehydration, so you will be urged to drink plenty of water after the test and may be given a drug to cause diarrhea, so that the barium is quickly cleared from your body. It may also worsen an intestinal blockage you already have.

There are other radiopaque agents, some containing iodine, which also blocks X-rays. Depending on the organ to be studied, some are injected rather than swallowed.

-------- MILITARY

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

A Troubled Osprey Wounds the Corps
Pressures to Build a New Plane Led To Deception and Deadly Shortcuts

By Mary Pat Flaherty and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 1, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25905-2001May1?language=printer

NEW RIVER, N.C. -- Their motto is "Semper Fidelis" -- always faithful -- but by January the members of an elite Marine Corps squadron felt betrayed and angry. Their commander was caught on tape telling his men to "lie" about the maintenance record of the V-22 Osprey, the helicopter-airplane hybrid that carries the aspirations of the 21st century Corps.

The shock of a trusted officer giving a seemingly illegal order was compounded by a uniformed Deep Throat. A secret tape of the conversation aired on national television.

The revelations couldn't have come at a worse time. Twice in the past year an Osprey had crashed. Twenty-three Marines had died, four from the squadron. There were reports of testing shortcuts, of warnings unheeded.

Bad as things were, there were intimations of even worse. Many squadron members viewed their fallen commander as a scapegoat for generals who minimized the Osprey's chronic problems to avoid jeopardizing the program's funding.

"People who have been heroes all my life are no longer my heroes," said one pilot.

The crisis of faith brought Marine Commandant James Jones down to the New River base to take the measure of his Marines. As he mounted the stage April 9 to address the Corps' sole Osprey squadron, he knew he had to give the speech of his life. He didn't shrink from the emotion of the moment.

This is about the Marines, Jones told his quiet audience at the base theater. This is about trust. This is about the uniform.

Command pressure and gung-ho Marine culture converged to unravel the Osprey squadron known as VMMT-204, according to internal Marine e-mails and documents, maintenance summaries, and interviews with Pentagon officials and a dozen senior pilots and officers. Few agreed to be quoted by name because of a pending Defense Department investigation.

Between Dec. 11, when an Osprey fatally crashed, and Jan. 18, when squadron commander Lt. Col. Odin "Fred" Leberman was removed, his unit went from celebrated to disgraced.

Those six short weeks not only cost Marine lives and derailed a promising officer's career. The Corps was also damaged. How far that damage extends is still uncertain, but already there is talk at Marine headquarters that the Osprey program has become a kind of cancer on the Corps.

For Jones, it has been an agonizing year of dealing with the loss of Marines, which he calls "something you never get used to." Now he must not only fix the Osprey but also heal the institution he leads.

"Clearly, there are some cultural questions that have to be addressed," he said in an interview yesterday. "And where we need to fix them, we have to pursue the remedies aggressively."

Named for a large raptor that dives to capture its prey, the Osprey by December had been in development for 18 years but had reached only limited production. Just 20 had been built and the cost had already reached $12 billion. The Marines hoped to get 360 Ospreys built by 2007 at a projected cost of $40 billion.

To the Marines, the Osprey looked like the next war-winner: it could land in tight spots like a helicopter yet tilt its overhead propellers and fly like a plane over great distances to deliver troops. Its speed and range would allow the Navy ships from which the Ospreys launch to operate farther offshore. That would make the ships less vulnerable to proliferating Third World missiles, promising to save the lives of future troops, military experts say.

The Corps anointed the Osprey as its must-have item, and designated Leberman and his squadron to prove it ready for day-to-day operations.

"Think of the pressure he was under," said a former Marine pilot who knows Leberman. "They throw 226 years of Marine tradition on him, tell him the future of Marine Corps aviation rests on him, and tell him to take that hill."

Paper Squadron, Constant Repairs

The son of a Navy dentist, Leberman entered the Marines in 1980 and made a solid career as a helicopter pilot.

"Fred was a popular guy, very steady, very professional, well-respected," said Quang X. Pham, a former Marine helicopter pilot who trained under Leberman in Pensacola, Fla.

Most notably, Leberman had flown a transport helicopter during the 1991 evacuation of 281 people from the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu, Somalia. In a daring mission, pilots had flown at night into hostile territory without maps, relying on place mats from a Mogadishu restaurant printed with the city's streets.

When he won command of the Osprey squadron in June 1999 at the age of 42, Leberman instantly gained prominence in the Corps. Yet when he arrived at New River, he had a "paper squadron."

It had no Ospreys because the aircraft still was being tested at sea and in Arizona. There were no maintenance manuals, one officer recalls, forcing the squadron to devise its own. Pilot manuals didn't arrive for another four months.

The first Osprey did not arrive in North Carolina until March 2000. It was promptly taken away to replace one that crashed in Arizona field tests in April, killing 19. It took until June for Leberman to get another Osprey. By December the squadron had nine, but parts inventories were kept to a minimum to save money. One pilot recalled an Osprey that was grounded for three days awaiting shipment of a single screw.

The squadron was constantly repairing chafed titanium hydraulic lines, which had been crammed alongside the wiring in a small engine housing in an effort by the contractors to lighten the Osprey.

"The problem is, we fielded the aircraft before it should have been," said one officer. Fixing such problems would be expensive. The Osprey program could not get the additional money, higher officers told the squadron, until a decision was made to put the Osprey into mass production, according to a pilot.

To get that decision, though, the Marines had to show that the Osprey was reliable to fly day in and day out. The objective was to have at least 80 percent of the fleet ready to fly at any given time and able to perform at least one assigned task. But in August and September last year, that figure stood at less than 20 percent, Osprey maintenance records show.

Still, in press briefings and interviews last fall, the Marine aviation chief, Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, and his deputy, Brig. Gen. James F. Amos, said they were confident the Osprey would be ready for mass manufacturing by the end of 2000.

Top Brass Scrutiny

E-mail exchanges among senior officers on just one day -- Nov. 21, 2000 -- show how intently the top brass was focusing on the squadron's readiness. The subject that morning was an experimental software program being tested at the squadron to record maintenance problems. Elsewhere in the Marines, a different system was in place that allowed for greater flexibility in coding problems.

The new program was more rigid. It reduced a mechanic's judgment about whether a plane was ready to fly and instead, relied on the computer to make that decision. Certain numerical codes would automatically flag an aircraft as "up" and ready for flight or a "downer" and out of service. Every minute of downtime counted against readiness.

The office of Maj. Gen. Dennis T. Krupp, head of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, called daily to get the readiness report, according to squadron members who gathered those figures.

At 9:24 a.m., Krupp wrote to Amos at the Pentagon saying that the new software could benefit from more flexibility.

"This is not 'cheating,' " Krupp wrote in the e-mail, "but simply understanding how the system works."

Amos responded he "had hoped to use the recent data as a strong case for full-rate production."

At 11:26, Krupp replied to Amos, "I'll see if we can come up with a better story than the NALCOMIS [the new software] paints."

Five minutes later, Krupp e-mailed Col. James E. Schleining Jr., Leberman's boss at New River. "Let's see if we can put a positive spin on the month of Oct/Nov," Krupp wrote, possibly using other measures.

Krupp added that headquarters was "in a sh.. [sic] sandwich" over the looming full production decision.

Through his lawyer, Lt. Col. Jeffrey G. Meeks, Schleining declined to be interviewed.

In late November, Krupp gave "a face shot to Leberman" -- a public dressing down -- over an Osprey grounded for repairs over a long weekend, when no one was there to work on it. "Anyone who heard that knew our job was to keep those numbers up, period," said an officer who witnessed the exchange.

Krupp declined interview requests from The Post.

While declining to discuss specific e-mails, Maj. Patrick G. Gibbons, a Marine spokesman, noted that "e-mail is a personal, informal and sometimes fragmented form of communication. We realize the content and context of some e-mails may require explanation."

By month's end, the Osprey squadron's average readiness for November was just 30 percent. Leberman told people he was waking up at 2 a.m. worrying.

Pentagon Purchaser Unpersuaded

In an hour-long meeting on Dec. 5, Marine officials tried to convince H. Lee Buchanan, then the Navy's top acquisition official, that the Osprey was ready for full production -- as many as 30 Ospreys a year, twice the pace set in 2000.

Buchanan told the Marines that he was especially disappointed by how often broken or worn-out parts kept Ospreys on the ground. Marine Col. Nolan Schmidt -- program manager for the Osprey since 1997, who declined an interview request -- showed Buchanan charts extrapolating an improvement. Buchanan wasn't persuaded.

It was a Catch-22. The Marines said more funding would make it easier to pay for improvements. Buchanan felt that once full production lines were running, it would be harder to make fixes.

Buchanan said no to full production.

The Marines asked for more time, and tentatively set another meeting for mid-December.

The Dec. 11 crash, the second in eight months, changed everything. The program itself came to a screeching halt, with the Ospreys grounded, another crash investigation launched and a special review panel appointed by the secretary of defense.

Maintenance Shell Game

The pilots of VMMT-204 are fit, young, capable men who hold deep faith in the Marines Corps, in America. They are a remarkably homogeneous group. Many have a toddler or two and live in new subdivisions on the edge of Jacksonville, N.C., in neat homes with prints of 19th century battles on their living room walls.

They have the practiced manners of the military, reflexively using "sir" or "ma'am" even as they talk with deep emotion about lost comrades. They live close to death. One crew member bumped from the Arizona flight died in the December crash. The co-pilot who died in the December crash had piloted the first flight the Marines cleared after the Arizona accident -- on it were the commandant and his wife, riding in a show of faith in the Osprey.

But the December crash shook many in the squadron in ways the April crash had not. The April crash occurred in testing and was blamed on pilot error. The December crash involved an Osprey delivered to the fleet, and in the hands of the Corps' most experienced Osprey pilots.

The December accident investigation made it clear that a leak in a chafed hydraulic line, coupled with a software glitch, had brought down the Osprey. The finding was disturbing because the crews had long flagged similar problems with the lines.

Against the backdrop of crashes, some members of the New River squadron were already engaged in what amounted to a shell game on maintenance records, interviews with key participants in the Osprey unit show. Exactly how the process started and who ordered it are questions being pursued by the inspector general, but current and former squadron members told The Post it worked like this:

If one Osprey was downed for repairs and problems cropped up with another, a work order went in that made it appear all of the parts were needed for just one aircraft.

In addition, the crews began avoiding the numerical codes that would automatically down an Osprey. If they saw a problem that needed to be recorded, they made a note in a remarks field of the computerized work order. That avoided an automatic downing, but still allowed vital information to be known, said some squadron members.

"It was all about those numbers," said one officer familiar with the maintenance investigation.

Leberman was caught between pressure from above and resistance from below. Beneath him were some experienced majors and captains who thought the Osprey was being pushed too fast. They acted as a restraint, keeping the command pressure from the maintenance crew, said one pilot. But as Christmas approached that buffer thinned out.

About 10 of the officers were away from New River running flight simulations and investigating the second crash. Others were assigned as casualty officers to help the families of the deceased. Another group had left for the holidays.

"There was no adult supervision," one officer said.

Just before the long Christmas weekend, an Osprey was downed for repairs, racking up days of lost time. The following week, Leberman had an e-mail from Schleining reminding him not to put in work orders over weekends, said two sources familiar with the exchange. "Tough situations require tough solutions," the e-mail read in part.

On Dec. 29, before the New Year's weekend, Leberman gathered the squadron in its ready room. He didn't realize he was being taped secretly by a squadron member, whose identity remains unknown.

'We Need to Lie'

Leberman talked about the folly of letting an Osprey sit for repairs over a holiday. He referred to the computerized work order system that undercut readiness. Frustrations that had been building for months boiled over.

"We need to lie. And the reason we need to lie or manipulate the data or however you wanna call it is that until Milestone Three comes along -- and Milestone Three being a full-rate production decision, this program is in jeopardy," Leberman said, according to a transcript reviewed by The Post.

"Everyone says the readiness was bad," he continued. "Everyone's hitting on this particular bit of information . . . believe me, the general gets a brief at seven o'clock every morning."

Once a full production decision was settled, "we can go back to truthfully reporting," Leberman said.

The speech was met with silence, according to an officer who was there.

The tape kept running after Leberman left and squadron members conferred:

"I wanna make damn sure that they're safe before we do fly," said one voice. "And with the way we're having to do things lately, it's gonna be real easy for one of us to miss something. And I -- I -- that's the feeling I have in my gut right now. And that -- that's not good to have."

"I've had butterflies in my stomach," said another voice.

"Our job is -- our mission is to scrap everything we know, come up with something new so the [expletive deleted] numbers go up and our place is financed later. I completely understand that."

More voices:

"We've got our marching orders, let's march on."

"We're not addressing the problem that the rules are wrong."

"The program doesn't have the time to address that."

Before the squadron left for the New Year's weekend, according to interviews, the pending work orders on Ospreys were deleted from the computer. The downtime clock stopped.

As VMMT-204 entered the New Year the unit looked perfect.

Deception Goes Public

By Jan. 10, it had become apparent inside the squadron that the manipulation of the computerized work orders defied credibility. It also left the squadron still needing parts for Ospreys that the computer showed were fine.

"You crash an airplane, and suddenly your readiness goes from 20 percent to 100 percent?" said one officer who learned of the data manipulation when he returned after the holiday. "Who on earth is going to buy that?"

Leberman called off the process and told his superiors the squadron would rise or fall on the real readiness numbers, according to two officers.

But it was too late. The taped speech had been mailed to the secretary of the Navy with an anonymous letter from someone claiming to be a squadron mechanic.

The "deception," the letter said, did not cause the two fatal accidents in 2000, "but if it continues it will cause many more. . . . It all stems from the attitude that we have to have the plane whether or not it is ready."

The squadron's problems were about to go national. CBS's "60 Minutes" also got a copy of the tape and broadcast portions in mid-January.

Top Marines were shocked to have a Corps scandal made so painfully public. A senior Marine officer recently told The Post that Leberman's order to lie was "easily the most surprising thing I've ever heard from the mouth of someone entrusted with command."

Leberman was relieved of command Jan. 18. Investigators seized his files and computer. Within a week, the Marines asked the Pentagon's inspector general to take over the investigation. More than 30 investigators descended on the squadron's roughly 250 members. Every morning a list was posted of the 20 or 30 enlisted Marines due to be interviewed that day. For officers, the notice came in a phone call.

The taping and public revelations caused "the fabric of the squadron to tear," said one pilot.

One lower-ranking officer who is not a pilot remembers feeling let down by both ends of the chain of command. At the top, the generals had applied too much pressure. At the bottom, someone had violated a trust. In the middle was Leberman.

One pilot maintains that "the only one who has not lied about this aircraft was Colonel Leberman. His honesty got him in trouble. He was trying to explain to his Marines what was going on." The pilot continued, "he was directed -- huge amounts of pressure were put on him by the chain of command."

Not everyone agrees. "Nobody should have said what he said," said another pilot.

On April 18, Defense Department investigators told Leberman he will be charged, according to Leberman's lawyers, Lt. Col. John Schum and Capt. Brian Kasprzyk. "Lieutenant Colonel Leberman declines to speak publicly on the matters that you are going to report," they said in a prepared statement. Nor would the lawyers say what those charges would be.

A statement Leberman released in January said he was confident the investigation will show his comments "were taken out of context and in no way compromised the safety of my Marines."

Reengineered Aircraft, Personnel

Leberman now works at Camp Lejeune as a training projects officer. Among other things, he has been involved in a project on noise abatement for neighborhoods near the base.

The Marines are now recommending that the computerized work order software be withdrawn because its accuracy is unreliable, according to an internal Marine message from April 1.

A special review panel recently recommended that the Pentagon scale back Osprey production by Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. and Boeing Co. to the bare minimum. The panel also said it wanted retesting and redesign of major systems before the Osprey returns to flying. The flawed systems that surfaced during development should have been addressed, the panel added.

Some parts of the aircraft are likely to be reengineered. And far-reaching personnel changes loom for the leadership of Marine aviation and the Osprey program, according to a senior officer.

The New River base newspaper recently reported the grounded Osprey squadron was persevering. "Like any good group of Marines, they have adapted, overcome and improvised," focusing on maintenance and flight simulations. Many of them still believe in the Osprey: "If you take it from the cockpit forward, it is by far the greatest plane I've ever flown," said a veteran pilot, referring to the Osprey's advanced electronics.

But one senior officer says the squadron is "waiting for the other shoe to drop" as the Pentagon determines whether higher officers are implicated in a falsification of records.

"If anyone was involved, the answer to that question should be forthcoming," said Marine Commandant Jones, who is scheduled to testify today about the Osprey before two congressional committees.

Trying to Restore Trust

When the commandant faced the Osprey squadron in New River on April 9, he said, "it wasn't to give them a pep talk."

Instead, it was to look them in the eye and assess how badly their trust in the Marine Corps had frayed. It was also to tell them to pull up their socks and move on, Gen. Jones said yesterday. "Trust is a two-way street. It isn't just from the top down. It's also from the bottom up."

An infantryman by training, Gen. Jones was talking to aviators, a distinct subculture within the Corps. A Vietnam veteran, he grasped for an analogy that would resonate with Marines born long after that war had ended.

In a different world, in a different time I've been where you have been, Jones said.

In the Vietnam War, the Pentagon touted the M-16 rifle as the finest infantry weapon ever made. But in the aftermath of the battle for Hill 881 North near Khe Sanh, dead Marines were found with jammed M-16s clutched in their hands. As their last act, those Marines were desperately trying to disassemble their weapons.

Jones said he had faith the Osprey could be made right, just as the M-16 had been through a redesign. But if he were proven wrong, he said, the Corps had to summon the moral courage to walk away from the Osprey.

He left the stage knowing he had given the best speech he could, yet uncertain whether he had overcome the skepticism, frustration and discouragement that was obvious from his Marines' questions.

On the flight home, Jones turned to Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Alford L. McMichael, a man he trusts to read the mood of the enlisted men.

So how did it go? Jones asked.

McMichael shook his head: You've got work to do.

Staff researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

----

'Fog of War' Lingers Post Cease-Fire

By Richard Pyle
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, May 1, 2001; 1:38 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010501/aponline013805_000.htm

NEW YORK -- Carl von Clausewitz called it "the fog of war" - the confusion and terror of armed conflict.

As former Sen. Bob Kerrey faces accusations of leading a massacre of innocent Vietnamese villagers, so much hinges on the reliability of individual memories.

But psychologists, historians and Vietnam War veterans say even the most vivid battle memories are obscured by time, stress and, sometimes, the guilt of having killed or survived.

The passage of three decades dulls and distorts perceptions. Psychological blocks prevent a stitching together of details. Some veterans embellish or mentally edit their experiences, and then become so trapped in their lies that they come to believe their own fabrications.

"A lot of things you remember clearly just didn't happen that way. Someone else will tell it differently, and you'll say, 'Oh yeah, that's right!'" said retired Army Col. Robert Burke, who commanded a missile battalion in Vietnam.

And Vietnam, where the Viet Cong enemy could be indistinguishable from ordinary civilians, was a new kind of battleground.

"Vietnam as a counter-guerrilla war was very different from the world wars and even Korea. You never knew where anything might come from. Any moment you could be overwhelmed - and 15 seconds later, nothing," says Dr. Chaim Shatan, a professor of psychoanalysis at New York University and a pioneer in the study of post-traumatic stress disorder, which affects as many as 100,000 Vietnam veterans.

Shatan said his interviews with hundreds of veterans make clear the difficulties they have in recalling traumatic events.

"Most of them have struggled very hard to bring their memories into focus," he said. "You can never know the shame and guilt of being alive when others have died - whether friend or foe."

According to Kerrey, the night commando raid he led as a 25-year-old Navy SEAL officer on Feb. 25, 1969, resulted in the "mistaken" killing of 12 to 14 Vietnamese civilians in the village of Thanh Phong.

But one of the seven team members, Gerhard Klann, told CBS News and The New York Times that the civilians were killed on Kerrey's orders - some of them herded together and shot at point-blank range. Klann's charges will be aired on "60 Minutes II" Tuesday night.

The two accounts are so divergent that there seems no middle ground, no way of melding them into a single, accurate version.

Shatan said it is possible that, despite the wide differences, "they are both telling the truth to the best of their ability. It is not easy to bring out all the details."

Dr. Frank Ochberg, a former associate director of the National Institute of Mental Health and another expert on post-traumatic stress disorder, said there are "flashbulb memories" - details that are never forgotten.

But in the subconscious development of memory, other factors come into play, such as "the desire to try to transform reality" to fit a preferred image of oneself, he said.

The trauma of combat, said Ochberg, "makes it possible to remember things in a part of the brain that causes you to focus on certain events and completely ignore others." The events relating to the SEALs raid, he said, "could have been transformed for all involved, including the Vietnamese witnesses."

Dr. Henry Roediger, an expert in cognitive psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, said it was possible both Kerrey and Klann are speaking the truth as they believe it. But, he said, "if these people were rounded up and shot, I find it hard to believe that Kerrey would not remember that."

If that were the case, he added, "I would expect one or more of the others to come out and admit that it was true."

In "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement," to be published this week, author Gerald Nicosia argues what happened in Thanh Phong was commonplace and "the nation's aversion to hearing such stories" caused veterans to "bury (them) in the psyche."

"Vietnam vets took part in some of the worst things this country ever did," he said in an e-mail interview. Then, he said, they had little chance to talk about their experiences.

"To even try speaking of it got them labeled un-American and kicked in the pants by the nation that had sent them to do its dirty work," he said. "The question we should ask is not why it took so long for someone like Bob Kerrey to confess to Vietnam atrocities, but why we have made it so hard for these men and women to tell us what they actually experienced."

--------

Friendly Fire

ABC News,
May 1, 2001
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html

- In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.

"The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants."

Gunning for War

The documents show "the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government," writes Bamford.

The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show.

Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof ... that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic]."

The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western Hemisphere - only 90 miles from U.S. shores.

The earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to provide firepower.The military leaders now wanted a shot at it.

"The whole thing was so bizarre," says Bamford, noting public and international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Castro.

Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military - not democratic - control over the island nation after the invasion.

"That's what we're supposed to be freeing them from," Bamford says. "The only way we would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians were doing all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny, basically what we were accusing Castro himself of doing."

'Over the Edge'

The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military.

Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job.

The secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military leadership about their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Kennedy administration viewed as too liberal, insufficiently experienced and soft on communism. At the same time, however, there real were concerns in American society about their military overstepping its bounds.

There were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates to vote conservative during the election.

And at least two popular books were published focusing on a right-wing military leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the day. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military, warning a "considerable danger" in the "education and propaganda activities of military personnel" had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford.

"Although no one in Congress could have known at the time," he writes, "Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge."

Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan "pretext" operations at least through 1963.

One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base - an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.

"There really was a worry at the time about the military going off crazy and they did, but they never succeeded, but it wasn't for lack of trying," he says.

After 40 Years

Ironically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy.

As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK's release, Congress passed a law designed to increase the public's access to government records related to the assassination.

The author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents.

Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained.

"The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after," says Bamford.


-------- OTHER

-------- terrorism

Attacks Were Up Last Year, U.S. Terrorism Report Says

New York Times
May 1, 2001
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/01/world/01THRE.html

WASHINGTON, April 30 - The number of international terrorist attacks increased by 8 percent last year, largely because of a surge in bombings by two rebel groups in Colombia and attacks by paramilitary groups operating there, the State Department said today.

South Asia remains the focal point for terrorism directed against the United States, the department's annual report on global terrorism said, with the Taliban in Afghanistan continuing to provide safe haven for international terrorists and Pakistan backing terrorist groups as well.

Despite the concerns about Pakistan and Afghanistan, contained in the report for the second year in a row, they were not added to the list of nations accused of state-sponsored terrorism. Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria have long held that designation, which brings with it strict sanctions.

The report is based on data collected in the final year of the Clinton administration, but officials said the Bush administration had ample time to review and change the report, and therefore it represents the first view of global terrorism under the new administration.

"Terrorism is a persistent disease," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said as he released the report this afternoon. "Many of you have heard me speak of the positive side of globalization. But terrorism shows the dark side as it exploits the easing of travel restrictions, the improvements of communication or the internationalization of banking and finance, making it easier for terrorists to do some of their work."

Of the 19 Americans killed in acts of international terrorism last year, according to the report, 17 died in the attack against the destroyer Cole in October in the Yemeni port of Aden. Another American victim was one of three aid workers killed in West Timor. An American journalist was killed when rebels in Sierra Leone fired at the car in which he and other journalists were riding. The State Department added the main rebel group in Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front, to its list of "other terrorist organizations."

Iran continues to top the list of countries accused of state-sponsored terrorism, backing groups that try to prevent Middle East peace. The report accused Lebanon of being "unresponsive" to American requests to bring to justice terrorists who conducted attacks against American citizens and property in Lebanon.

As far as the escalating violence in the Middle East, the State Department noted that the Israelis had accused Palestinian Authority security officials of facilitating terrorist attacks against Israel. But the report stopped short of accusing the Palestinians of such actions.

Overall, there were 423 terrorist attacks in 2000, compared with 392 the previous year. Rebel bombing attacks on multinational oil pipelines in Colombia accounted for much of the increase. Two hundred of the attacks in 2000 were directed against the United States.

For the first time, the State Department added the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, an umbrella organization of paramilitary groups, to its compilation of terrorist groups. The two main rebel groups are already on the more stringent list of foreign terrorist organizations.

"I think any group that is tempted to use terrorist tactics in their activity has to weigh in the balance the likely effect that will have on alienating not only the United States, but alienating the international community," said Edmund J. Hull, the State Department's acting coordinator for counterterrorism.

Human rights groups welcomed the inclusion of the paramilitary groups in the State Department report but they had sought to have them deemed foreign terrorist organizations, a designation that brings sanctions with it. Rights advocates argue that those groups have become the most serious destabilizing force in Colombia because their escalation of violence has damaged peace efforts between the rebels and the government.

"It's good that they are on the list, but now the United States should increase the political pressure," said Harvey Suárez of Codhes, a leading rights and refugee assistance agency in Colombia. "There should be an organized pressure, increased pressure, on the Colombian state and on the financiers of these groups."

-------- activists

Australia Police, Protesters Clash

MAY 01, 00:04 EST
By MIKE CORDER
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=AUSANT&STORYID=APIS7BN3BDG0

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Thousands of anti-globalization protesters scuffled with riot police Tuesday as chanting activists tried to shut down stock exchanges and business districts across the country.

Several people were injured when protesters tried to force their way into the stock exchange in Brisbane. Police on horseback charged and broke up a group of protesters in Perth on the west coast.

``The world belongs to the people. The streets belong to the people,'' protesters screamed in Brisbane.

The protests were organized by M1, a loose alliance of left-wing groups, environmentalists and labor groups. M1 is short for May 1, a traditional worker's holiday.

The coalition said it wants to stop money pouring into stock markets. Instead, it said, money should go to schools, childcare centers and debt relief for poor countries.

Police and protesters pushed and shoved each other as tempers flared on both sides outside the Sydney stock exchange. Protesters who sat in the road to block a police van taking away about 10 detained activists were dragged off by police.

Protests in Canberra and Hobart were peaceful. In Melbourne, protesters briefly threatened to storm a McDonalds restaurant and later burned an effigy of Prime Minister John Howard. And hundreds of protesters blocked the entrance to the Sydney headquarters of the Australian Stock Exchange. Traffic was disrupted in both Sydney and Melbourne.

--------

Dust Settles After Global Day of May Day Protests

May 1, 2001
By REUTERS

LONDON (Reuters) - From Cuba to Norway, Melbourne to Mexico City, the dust was settling early on Wednesday after a day of occasionally violent protests by anti-capitalists, trade unions and others swept the globe.

Hundreds were detained after skirmishes with police marred protests in Australia, Germany, Switzerland and Britain, while a rally in Havana lampooning President Bush drew the highest unofficial attendance with millions hitting the streets.

Germany saw some of its worst May Day riots for a decade. Police there fired teargas and water cannons at thousands of protesters in Berlin and Frankfurt after being pelted with bottles and stones.

In Sydney and Melbourne, stock exchanges were blocked by opponents of globalization, and in London thousands of anti-capitalists blocked a busy shopping district before a small group ran amok smashing windows of banks and high street stores.

The actions were inspired by violent street protests against the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999 and summits in Prague last year and Quebec City last month.

Protesters argue that multinational companies wield too much power over people's lives, exerting undue influence over policy set by democratically elected governments.

The McDonald's fast food chain has often been the target of such action, and Tuesday was no exception.

One of its Melbourne restaurants was forced to close after its was daubed with painted slogans ``McFilth'' and ``McCrap.''

NOT ALL ANTI-CAPITALIST

Capitalism and globalization were not the only targets of May Day demonstrations.

Violence involving thousands of left-wing activists in Frankfurt was triggered by a neo-Nazi skinhead march there. Five police officers were injured, while 55 protesters were detained and 31 others arrested.

In Russia, news agencies quoted police as saying that over 300,000 people had attended 480 marches without major incident in the world's largest country spanning 11 times zones.

An estimated 50,000 people took part in May Day rallies across Siberia and the Far East demanding higher wages, better working conditions, improved pensions and price controls. Marchers carried banners proclaiming ``We need a second Stalin.''

In Mexico City it was President Vicente Fox's controversial plan to extend the country's 15 percent value-added tax to food and medicine which sparked the most fury.

Cuba, meanwhile, focused on governments which voted to censure Cuba recently at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. A puppet parade culminated, predictably, with a grotesque-looking caricature of Bush.

Communist leader Fidel Castro looked on with a smirk, and said that the U.S. government was seeking, via the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, a ``gigantic annexation'' of Latin America and the Caribbean.

In South Korea about 20,000 workers faced 15,000 riot police in Seoul to protest against government economic restructuring and a harsh police crackdown on car workers in April.

In Taiwan, thousands of unemployed workers and union activists marched through Taipei, demanding jobs and the resignation of top government officials.

Thousands of Iranian workers marched to the parliament to protest against high unemployment and to demand tougher action against illegal foreign laborers.

In Zimbabwe, thousands of workers gathered for a May Day rally seen as a test of the government's ability to win key labor votes ahead of presidential polls expected next year.

In Hong Kong, hundreds of workers staged protests against high unemployment.

CREAM PIE ``EPIDEMIC''

In Oslo, protesters threw a cream pie in the face of Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorbjoern Jagland.

``Cream pie throwing has become an epidemic,'' the minister said, laughing off the attack during a May Day rally.

But demonstrators did not have it all their own way.

A huge police presence in London saw rallies by up to 5,000 anti-capitalists largely contained. There were sporadic outbreaks of violence, with riot police, some on horseback, using batons to break up smaller groups.

Demonstrators smashed windows of banks and department stores in the late evening as the main protests were breaking up, and around 60 arrests were made.

Despite the limited damage to London property, the cost in lost business to the city of seven million, one of the world's largest financial centers, was considerable.

The City of Westminster, which encompasses much of central London, estimated the loss in revenue to businesses due to the protests at 20 million pounds ($29 million).


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