------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Veterans Tell of Brit Nuclear Tests
China Rebuffs U.S. on Missile Defense Plan
'Taiwan defeated by China in simulated wargames'
Protests Mark Atomic Waste Shipment
German industry says nuclear agreement not ready yet
'US Navy wants permanent port for n-powered carriers'
Costs of Building a Missile Shield
Bush Envoys Encounter Skepticism
U.S., China Talk Missile Defense
U.S. Diplomat in Beijing to Calm Fears on Antimissile Project
China Assails Missile Defense as Danger to World Security
Putin, Chavez declare commitment to multipolar world
Bush Meeting With Putin Nearly Set
Cheney: Energy Woes Take Time To Fix

MILITARY
Justices Set Back Use of Marijuana to Treat Sickness
DEA Reviewing Caribbean Arrest Rates
US outlines new Iraqi sanctions regime
Missiles fired across Israel, Lebanon border
From the "Doves" to the Hawks
Making Enemies in Space
Superpower lives here
Reserve Officers Fight Cuts

OTHER
Talking points on Cheney-Bush energy plan
U.S., EUROPEAN UNION TO COLLABORATE ON FUSION RESEARCH
EU, US sign energy research cooperation pact
Democrats Release Energy Plan
O'Neill: World Bank Needs to Focus
Mishandling of McVeigh Evidence Draws Senate Criticism
Shredding the Bill of Rights
Top-Secret Agency Breaks 'Silence'
TREASON HUNT Spying on the spies
Beijing gets voice data from plane
Top - Secret Agency Breaks 'Silence'
Accused Spy Hanssen Indicted Soon

ACTIVISTS
RADIOACTIVE ROADS & RAILS ACTION OF THE MONTH - MAY 2001
VIEQUES SUPPORTERS ARRESTED AT THE UNITED NATIONS
French Activists Briefly Stop German Nuclear Train
Protests Mark Atomic Waste Shipment


-------- NUCLEAR

Veterans Tell of Brit Nuclear Tests

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By RAY LILLEY
Associated Press Writer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-New-Zealand-Nuclear-Tests.html?searchpv=aponline
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=AUSANT&STORYID=APIS7C0DBTG0

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Two veterans of British nuclear tests in the 1950s said Tuesday that they were ordered to walk and crawl through an Australian desert shortly after authorities set off a nuclear bomb there.

Flight Lt. Roger Peart, 78, and Brig. John Burns, 84, were among seven New Zealanders who took part in blast aftermath tests at Maralinga in South Australia in 1956 and 1957 to experience the effects of nuclear fallout.

``We were marching and crawling and there was a truck passing every so often that would shower us with a bit of dust and dirt to make sure we got some of the fallout,'' said Burns, who was among a group of officers who walked through the test area in white rubberized suits.

The New Zealand and Australian governments have called for full details of the experiments following claims the British used servicemen as guinea pigs to help monitor the effects of nuclear fallout on combat troops.

New Zealand Defense Minister Mark Burton has ordered officials to provide him with a full briefing after Australian documents released last week showed New Zealand, Australian and British officers entered the ``ground zero'' areas of British atomic bomb blasts.

Burns said they got as close as about half a mile from ground zero.

Both men said they had suffered no ill-effects from the tests. While Peart and Burns wore protective clothing, they said other servicemen exposed to fallout wore only shorts and short-sleeved shirts.

The officers took showers after their walk and were monitored for radiation levels. Burns said his radiation reading was very low.

Burton said Tuesday he wanted to establish ``how well informed consent may have been'' for Peart and Burns.

Peart, who wore overalls and rubber boots in the contaminated area, said the men were not told about the purpose of the trial and the health risks until after they arrived at the site.

``I don't suppose it mattered how we felt. We were all serving officers. We just had to do it. We were relatively young and this was brand new and it was interesting to see one of these things,'' he said.

He said he had studied physics at a university and was aware of the effects of radiation, and that he trusted that those in charge of the trial dealt honestly with the servicemen.

``I don't think they intended to kill us,'' he said.

Burns said he had no qualms about going to Australia to observe the tests, but that he now plans to seek compensation.

``We were in the army, we were told to go, so we went,'' he said.

-------- china

China Rebuffs U.S. on Missile Defense Plan

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 15, 2001; 2:00 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28523-2001May15?language=printer

BEIJING, May 15 - China said today it would continue to oppose President Bush's plan to build a missile defense system, bluntly describing it as a threat to its national interests even as a senior U.S. diplomat arrived and sought to persuade Chinese officials it was good for world peace and stability.

"China's constant position is unchanged," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi. "We are opposed to the national missile defense system because it destroys the global strategic balance and upsets international stability."

Sun made the remarks even before talks concluded between Chinese officials and the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, James Kelly, who is here as part of a global diplomatic push by the Bush administration to ease fears and win support for its vision of a missile shield that would protect the United States against a nuclear attack.

Later in the day, the official New China News Agency reported that "the two sides held frank consultations on the missile-defense issue, and expressed willingness to continue consultations in this regard." The U.S. Embassy said it had no comment, but indicated the talks were finished and that Kelly would make a statement before leaving Beijing.

Bush's plan to build a missile defense system has met with skepticism from many countries, including allies, who worry it will result in a new arms race and cause the United States to feel invulnerable and act more recklessly. But China remains the most stubborn opponent of the system, largely because the few nuclear weapons it owns could be rendered useless if the U.S. system is effective.

The dispute is one of several that have strained relations between the two nations since the collision of a U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet off China's southern coast last month. China has also been angered by Bush's decision to sell a major arms package to Taiwan and to allow Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian to visit the United States before and after a trip to Latin America.

Kelly, the first senior Bush administration official to visit China, exchanged views on U.S.-China relations with two deputy foreign ministers, Li Zhaoxing and Wang Yi, and both sides pledged to work toward good relations, according to the official New China News Agency. Before the talks began, Kelly told reporters that China and the United States share "an interest in promoting peace and stability. Curbing the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction is a key element."

U.S. officials insist the national missile defense system, or NMD, is aimed at defending the United States against an attack by an unpredictable nation like North Korea or Iraq, but many Chinese officials suspect the plan is directed at them.

China also objects to a U.S. proposal to build a theater missile defense system, or TMD, to protect allies such as Japan or U.S. troops in South Korea, in part because such a system could also be used to protect Taiwan, the democratic, self-governing island of 23 million that Beijing claims as part of its territory.

Sun declined to say how China would respond if Washington presses ahead with its plans, but warned that "China will not just wait idly and see its national interests being undermined." Chinese officials have said previously that China may respond by expanding its nuclear forces, making its missiles more accurate or finding other ways to overwhelm the U.S. system.

"When you invent a new shield, you will invent new types of spear. It always goes on like that," Sun said. "Therefore all new plans like this will not bring any benefit. It's just like lifting a stone and dropping it on one's own feet."

In an apparent departure from previous Foreign Ministry statements, Sun said China is "more opposed" to a theater missile defense system because such a system would strengthen U.S. alliances in Asia and undermine the balance of power in the region.

In March, China's chief arms negotiator, Sha Zukang, said just the opposite, in what was seen as a softening of China's position. At a news conference, he reiterated Chinese opposition to a national U.S. missile shield, but said China would not contest U.S. plans to deploy an Asian theater missile defense system to protect U.S. troops. He also said China would resist any U.S. attempt to transfer missile defense technology to Taiwan.

----

'Taiwan defeated by China in simulated wargames'

Times of India,
May 15, 2001
http://www.timesofindia.com/150501/15nbrs14.htm

TAIPEI: China successfully invaded Taiwan after the island's naval and air force units were knocked out in simulated exercises, it was reported on Monday.

The computerised wargames, conducted in March ahead of a live-fire drill, were aimed to review the defense ministry's ongoing "Ku An" defense plan, the China Times quoted a military source as saying.

The blue force, representing China, had gained the upper hand over Taiwan's simulated air force and naval troops, the paper said.

The enemy had triumphed in the computerised games by landing on Taiwan soil, the paper added.

China has repeatedly threatened to take Taiwan by force should the island declare formal independence.

The paper said the computer had calculated the capability of all new weapons owned by the two rivals.

The blue force's armoury included Russian-built Su-27s, Kilo class submarines and Sovrenmenny (Modern) class destroyers while Taiwan mobilised French-made Mirage 2000-5s and US-built F-16s.

"The result has sparked shocks and controversy," the paper said.

"Some military officers thought the factors of the simulated wargames were not objective, but others thought the outcome is still worthy of reference," it said.

A live-fire anti-landing exercise was held on April 20 on Taiwan's southern Pingtung coast with some 3,000 troops involved.

The scenario for the largest military drill of the year, codenamed "Han Kuang (Han Glory) 17", had Chinese forces passing the central line of the Taiwan Strait and moving towards the coast, army officials said. (AFP)

-------- germany

Protests Mark Atomic Waste Shipment

The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 15, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010515/aponline145448_000.htm

BERLIN -- A train carrying nuclear waste from two north German power plants was on its way to a French reprocessing plant Tuesday after police cut free two protesters who had chained themselves to the track.

Six activists were detained following the overnight protest near the power plant at Stade, police said. The two protesters, who had attached themselves to a pipe that ran under the tracks, delayed the transport by about 30 minutes.

A second load of waste set off from a plant at nearby Brunsbuettel without incident, and the two trains were coupled together south of the city of Hamburg for the journey to the reprocessing plant at La Hague, in western France.

Two groups of about 40 protesters each blocked the tracks and caused brief delays to the train near the town of Lueneburg as it headed south, and about a dozen people were taken into custody, police said.

Police reported no major protests as the train traveled toward western Rhineland-Palatinate state, then crossed into France in the early evening.

Germany sends spent nuclear fuel from its power plants to France for reprocessing under contracts that oblige it to take back the resultant waste.

Nuclear waste shipments in Germany resumed in March after a three-year break imposed by the previous German government when radiation leaks were found in some containers.

The government lifted the ban last year, citing improved safety standards.

German anti-nuclear activists staged massive demonstrations in March to disrupt the first shipment, when German waste was returned from France. They delayed it by 18 hours.

In April, activists turned out in force in an attempt to disrupt waste shipments to reprocessing plants in France and Britain.

The government last year struck a deal to scrap the country's 19 nuclear plants, though the shutdown likely will take decades to complete.

The protesters want Germany's plants shut down faster and say shipments are unsafe. They aim to make the transports so costly that the government and power companies will be forced to stop them.

----

German industry says nuclear agreement not ready yet

GERMANY: May 15, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10819

BERLIN - German electricity utilities said yesterday they were not yet ready to endorse a nuclear power bill proposed by the Social Democrat-Greens coalition government that would phase out atomic energy in Germany.

Friedrich Kienle, head of the utilities' lobby group, the Electricity Association (VDV), told Reuters the industry still has doubts about the text of the proposed measure that follows the so-called atom consensus agreed in principle by government and industry last year.

But those doubts "are not so serious that they could not be cleared up," he added.

Kienle confirmed that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had proposed either May 22 or June 11 as dates for the signing of the nuclear consensus.

The nuclear consensus, negotiated a year ago, says Germany will phase out its 19 power stations by around 2020.

Each power station is allowed an operating life of up to 32 years before it has to close.

In addition, the plan states there should be no transport of spent fuel rods to waste processing sites from 2005.

Kienle said there are still different views on the regulation of nuclear waste shipments which are currently approved individually by the government.

There are also varying opinions on the question of modernising the Biblis nuclear power plant owned by German utility RWE .

The supervisory boards of electricity companies represented by the VDV still need to find agreement among themselves over issues like waste transport, Kienle said.

-------- japan

'US Navy wants permanent port for n-powered carriers'

Associated Press,
May 15, 2001
http://www.timesofindia.com/150501/15aspc15.htm

TOKYO: A citizens group on Monday urged the mayor of a city near Tokyo to oppose making it the permanent home base for US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

The group handed officials in the city of Yokosuka a petition with more than 70,000 signatures addressed to Mayor Hideo Sawada, asking the city to stop the Navy's plan to expand part of an area where the ships are docked.

The group said the construction was aimed at allowing future deployment of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and making the port their permanent base, said city official Nagatoshi Esashi.

The USS Kitty Hawk - a conventional aircraft carrier - is currently based at the Yokosuka Naval Base and is expected to retire around 2008.

The U.S. Naval Headquarters in Japan are located in the city, just south of the capital.

The citizens group is concerned that the conventional aircraft carrier may be replaced with nuclear-powered ones.

The citizens also urged Sawada to oppose future deployment and port calls by nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, Esashi said.

Esashi said Sawada will respond in writing within a week after studying the petition.

The Navy had no immediate comment.

Japanese have become increasingly concerned over the conduct of the U.S. Navy as officials last month said nuclear-powered submarines have made at least three unannounced calls in Japanese ports over the past six years in defiance of a bilateral accord.

In respect to Japan's pacifist constitution that bans use and possession of nuclear arms, a 1964 bilateral agreement makes it mandatory that the United States notify Japan at least 24 hours prior to port calls by U.S. nuclear-powered submarines.

The notice gives time for local authorities to check radioactivity levels in ports before and after the ships' visit.

The violations came amid a heightened public outrage over what is seen here as U.S. military arrogance - particularly after a Navy nuclear submarine hit and sank a Japanese civilian ship in Hawaii in February killing nine, including four teen-agers. (AP)ighbours | Asia-Pacific | Middle East | Africa | Europe | Americas Asia-Pacific

'US Navy wants permanent port for n-powered carriers'

TOKYO: A citizens group on Monday urged the mayor of a city near Tokyo to oppose making it the permanent home base for US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

The group handed officials in the city of Yokosuka a petition with more than 70,000 signatures addressed to Mayor Hideo Sawada, asking the city to stop the Navy's plan to expand part of an area where the ships are docked.

The group said the construction was aimed at allowing future deployment of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and making the port their permanent base, said city official Nagatoshi Esashi.

The USS Kitty Hawk - a conventional aircraft carrier - is currently based at the Yokosuka Naval Base and is expected to retire around 2008.

The U.S. Naval Headquarters in Japan are located in the city, just south of the capital.

The citizens group is concerned that the conventional aircraft carrier may be replaced with nuclear-powered ones.

The citizens also urged Sawada to oppose future deployment and port calls by nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, Esashi said.

Esashi said Sawada will respond in writing within a week after studying the petition.

The Navy had no immediate comment.

Japanese have become increasingly concerned over the conduct of the U.S. Navy as officials last month said nuclear-powered submarines have made at least three unannounced calls in Japanese ports over the past six years in defiance of a bilateral accord.

In respect to Japan's pacifist constitution that bans use and possession of nuclear arms, a 1964 bilateral agreement makes it mandatory that the United States notify Japan at least 24 hours prior to port calls by U.S. nuclear-powered submarines.

The notice gives time for local authorities to check radioactivity levels in ports before and after the ships' visit.

The violations came amid a heightened public outrage over what is seen here as U.S. military arrogance - particularly after a Navy nuclear submarine hit and sank a Japanese civilian ship in Hawaii in February killing nine, including four teen-agers. (AP)

-------- missile defense

Costs of Building a Missile Shield

IHT
Tuesday, May 15, 2001
http://www.iht.com/articles/19835.htm

Regarding "Bush's Missile Shield Can Work" (Opinion, May 4) by William Safire:

Like the Safeguard system, which Mr. Safire claims to have named during his stint as a speech writer in the Nixon administration - and which was rejected because of the deodorant soap of same name - this current missile defense stinks.

Mr. Safire says one should assume that "in time, after costly trial and error, the new defense will surely leapfrog the old offense." That is the point - "in time," but not now. The technology is not even on the drawing board. And costly trial and error is exactly what a responsible fiscal policy should avoid.

Far better to spend a fraction of the money on preventing rogue states from acquiring any nuclear or germ warfare capacity.

FREDRIC GOLDSTEIN.
Stockholm. Costs of Building a Missile Shield

----

Bush Envoys Encounter Skepticism

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The envoys President Bush sent to Europe and Asia to sound out allies and others on missile defense heard pretty much what the previous administration had heard: skepticism, and lots of it.

There were a few isolated voices of support, but it is clear the administration has more explaining to do before it convinces the rest of the world that it's time to build an anti-missile shield.

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, speaking for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said Tuesday as the final stop on the consultation tour was ending in Ottawa that the reaction abroad had been mixed.

``There was some positive reaction and a sense of, `Yes, this is doable,''' he said. The positive reactions came in Australia and Poland, he said, while acknowledging that others were skeptical. He did not indicate whether the questions and skepticism had changed the views of Rumsfeld, who is a driving force behind the administration's effort to build a missile defense.

``We'll factor their comments and reactions into our thinking and see where we go from there,'' Quigley said.

Where Bush goes from there is pretty clear. He has left no doubt he will push ahead with a missile defense. What is less clear is what kind of system he will pursue and how fast he will push it.

Beyond the skepticism of allies like Germany and France is a strong opposition, rooted in deep distrust, in Russia and China. Both fear the United States is seeking to extend its already dominant military position, although Bush says his goal is to make the world safe from potential missile threats like North Korea and Iraq.

When he publicly committed the United States to building a system to defend against ballistic missiles in a speech May 1, Bush said he was sending senior aides to allied capitals in Europe, Asia, Australia and Canada ``to discuss our common responsibility to create a new framework for security.''

The president wants to see an international consensus on the central theme of his missile defense plan: that deterring missile attacks today takes more than the threat of nuclear retaliation, it takes effective missile defenses, combined with cooperation to limit the spread of missile technologies.

Bush promised: ``These will be real consultations. We are not presenting our friends and allies with unilateral decisions already made.''

In fact, what the Bush envoys acknowledged abroad is that they have not yet settled on a specific plan.

``It's much too early to ask people to agree because we haven't come to any firm conclusions,'' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who led the delegation to Germany, told reporters in Berlin.

Of the talks with the Germans, he said, ``I think we found openness and willingness to discuss, but very, very serious questions were asked of us.''

French Defense Minister Alain Richard said the Americans need to provide more details on how they intend to proceed. ``I think it is a debate that is going to develop slowly,'' Richard said.

Swedish Defense Minister Bjorn von Sydow said his government's position is that whatever kind of missile defense is built, it should be done within the bounds of an international treaty, either a modified version of the existing Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty or a replacement agreement.

One theme of the U.S. consultations was that Bush is not contemplating a system of 100 percent protection.

``The missile defense that we envision is one that would be directed only at a handful of rogue states and only against a handful of missiles,'' Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, told reporters in New Delhi, India, after meeting Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee -- who supports the U.S. plan.

Russian reaction was cool. On Monday, Igor Sergeyev, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin, said the presentation by Wolfowitz was unconvincing.

``We did not hear coherent arguments in favor of Washington's plan to deploy a national missile defense system,'' Sergeyev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

China was even more critical. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said a U.S. missile defense would endanger the global strategic balance, spark an arms race and obstruct efforts to control the spread of weapons.

``When you invent a new spear, of course you will invent a new shield. When you invent a new shield, you will invent new types of spear. It always goes on like that,'' said spokesman Sun Yuxi. ``It's just like lifting a stone and dropping it on one's own feet.''

Sun said China would respond if Washington proceeds with the system, but he would not say how. China has previously said it could build more offensive missiles and improve their accuracy to overcome U.S. defenses.

``China will not just wait idly and see its national interests being undermined,'' Sun said.

On the Net:
Pentagon's missile defense office at http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/

--------

U.S., China Talk Missile Defense

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-China-US.html?searchpv=aponline

BEIJING (AP) -- Despite tensions over Taiwan and a U.S. spy plane, Beijing told a U.S. envoy Tuesday that it wants improved relations with Washington but said American ambitions to build a shield against missiles would spark a new arms race.

China had been thought likely to be the toughest stop on James Kelly's tour to win Asian support for the contentious missile defense system. After a morning of meetings between Chinese officials and Kelly, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, China said its opposition to the missile system had not softened.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the system would endanger the global strategic balance, spark an arms race and obstruct efforts to control the spread of weapons. He urged Washington to abandon its plans.

``When you invent a new spear, of course you will invent a new shield. When you invent a new shield, you will invent new types of spear. It always goes on like that. Therefore, all new plans like this will not bring any self-benefit,'' the spokesman, Sun Yuxi, said at a briefing. ``It's just like lifting a stone and dropping it on one's own feet.''

Sun said China would respond if Washington proceeds with the system, but he would not say how. China has previously said it could beef up its small nuclear arsenal or improve the accuracy of its missiles to overcome the U.S. defenses.

``China will not just wait idly and see its national interests being undermined,'' Sun said.

Kelly, who also visited Japan, South Korea, Australia and Singapore, said before his arrival in Beijing that he hoped to allay Chinese concerns about the system. Before the talks began Tuesday, he said China and the United States share interests ``in promoting peace and stability.''

``Curbing the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction is a key element,'' he said.

Washington says the system would defend against attacks by North Korea and other unpredictable states and isn't directed at China. China, however, fears the system would undercut its nuclear deterrent.

Kelly held separate meetings with China's chief arms control official, Sha Zukang, and an assistant foreign minister, Zhou Wenzhong, the U.S. Embassy said. In the afternoon, he met Vice Foreign Ministers Wang Yi and Li Zhaoxing.

Kelly did not brief reporters about his talks. The U.S. Embassy would not give details of the meetings.

But Xinhua, China's government-run news agency, said the two sides had ``frank consultations'' on missile defense and were willing to continue discussing the issue.

Wang and Li also told Kelly that ``China is willing to develop sound and stable relations with the United States.'' But they also said Washington must abide by commitments regarding Taiwan and ``the basic principles governing international relations,'' Xinhua said.

The report gave no details. But Kelly's meetings in China came in the wake of tensions triggered by the April 1 collision between a U.S. Navy surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter. The Chinese pilot was killed, and China detained the 24 Americans aboard the U.S. plane for 11 days. It still holds the plane.

President Bush also has angered Beijing by offering to sell weapons to Taiwan and by saying last month that the United States would consider military force to defend the island against Chinese attack. China regards the self-governing island as part of its territory.

Sun also said China also expressed ``strong dissatisfaction and opposition'' to Washington for allowing Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian to stop over in the United States.

Chen will visit New York next week on his way to Latin America, and Houston on his way home. At least two Republican lawmakers known for their anti-China views are expected to meet him. The State Department, in a move likely to further irritate China, said it does not object to the meetings.

Sun said talks have continued on the fate of the Navy EP-3E plane. China says it will not let the United States fly the plane home, suggesting that Beijing wants to make the United States suffer the inconvenience and expense of having to ship it back in pieces.

``We hope the U.S. will take a constructive and pragmatic attitude so as to enable a resolution to be found at an early date,'' Sun said. ``This is in the interests of both sides.''

--------

U.S. Diplomat in Beijing to Calm Fears on Antimissile Project

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/15/world/15BEIJ.html

BEIJING, Tuesday, May 15 - An American diplomat is meeting skeptical Chinese officials today in an effort to convince them that President Bush's plans to build a missile defense will not undermine China's power and security.

The diplomat, Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly, said he was here to begin a "dialogue with China on security and stability that reflects today's world."

The visit is part of a worldwide campaign by American diplomats to reassure allies and convince other nations with nuclear weapons that the missile defense is a necessary part of what Mr. Bush has called a "new framework" for global security, in which total nuclear arms would be reduced.

The plan has caused widespread unease in other nations, including many allies, who fear that it may leave the United States feeling invulnerable and better able to dominate world affairs. Nowhere is the opposition stronger than in China, which believes that its small nuclear deterrent force may be neutralized by the American system.

In a longtime strategy, China never tried to compete with the United States and Russia in the nuclear arms race, instead maintaining a minimal force, estimated at perhaps 18 intercontinental missiles.

With American and Russian missile systems severely restricted under the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, Beijing planners were said to have felt that if their nation was threatened with attack, they could credibly argue that at least one of their nuclear-tipped missiles could reach an enemy city in return, thereby deterring an attack.

American officials insist that the new missile defense is aimed at so- called rogue states like North Korea or Iraq that might try to field a few weapons. But the officials want to largely scrap the ABM Treaty. The systems under discussion would be large enough to counter China's small current forces. Many officials here apparently suspect that the proposal is secretly aimed at China.

China is developing improved missiles, and officials have said that if the American plan moves ahead, China may offset it by greatly expanding its nuclear forces and by developing decoys and other countermeasures. But the officials warn that regional and global arms races could be set off.

China also fears that the so-called theater missile defenses that the United States is developing to protect its forces in Asia could be extended to Taiwan, blocking Beijing's drive to reunite the island with the mainland.

In Singapore on Monday, Mr. Kelly suggested that the American missile defense plan would not be as extensive as China feared. "Part of the dialogue we will be having with China will be to allay the concerns they've expressed about something much grander than we have in mind," he said before departing for Beijing.

Some experts in Washington and Beijing have suggested that a compromise is possible if Washington strictly limits the number of interceptors and tacitly accepts China's right to increase its arsenal and maintain a credible deterrent.

But hawks in the Republican Party seek an advantage over what they see as a China that increasingly threatens American interests, and it may be politically difficult for President Bush to agree to such limitations.

--------

China Assails Missile Defense as Danger to World Security

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/15/world/15CND-CHINA.html?searchpv=nytToday

BEIJING, May 15 - While President Bush's emissary was here making the case for building a national missile defense, the Chinese government today publicly condemned the American proposal, calling it a fruitless step that would endanger global security.

James Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for Asian and Pacific affairs, spent today privately meeting Chinese arms control and foreign policy officials, presenting Mr. Bush's vision of a "new framework" for security involving anti-missile defenses and a sharp reduction in America's nuclear arsenal.

The Bush administration says the planned anti-missile shield is aimed at stopping attacks from small "rogue" nations like North Korea, Iran or Iraq and should not worry China.

But China fears that even a modest American missile shield will neutralize its small nuclear forces, currently believed to include only about 18 long-range missiles, and will make the United States feel invulnerable and more likely to bully other countries.

This afternoon, at a regularly scheduled press briefing, the foreign ministry's spokesman Sun Yuxi insisted that China's opposition to the program was unwavering and said that the proposed defenses would "harm others without benefiting the United States itself."

If the United States continued with the plan, he said, it would "lift a stone only to drop it on its own toes."

Mr. Sun said China hoped to persuade Washington to drop the plan through diplomatic means, but also warned: "China will not sit idly by and watch its national interests suffer harm."

Officials here have previously said that China could respond by greatly increasing its forces under its already planned deployment of improved missiles, or by developing decoys and other countermeasures. But Chinese officials also say this could set off a costly and dangerous arms race in Asia, where India and Pakistan have recently joined the nuclear club and may seek to match any increase in Chinese weapons.

Mr. Kelly is one of several Bush administration officials who are trying to reassure Washington's allies and other nuclear powers that the missile defense plan is part of a new vision of global stability and should not be feared.

"I've come today to conduct a dialogue with Chinese officials on security and stability that reflects today's world," Mr. Kelly said here this morning before starting a full day and an evening of meetings.

As of late Tuesday, American officials had not publicly commented on the discussions.

Today at the foreign ministry briefing, Mr. Sun also attacked Washington for allowing Taiwan's president, Chen Shuibian, to make extended transit stops in New York and Houston as part of a visit to Latin America in late May, and for agreeing to let Mr. Chen meet with interested members of Congress during the stops.

Under the terms of its recognition of China's Communist government, Washington does not hold public meetings with high-level officials from Taiwan, which Beijing considers an errant province.

-------- russia

Putin, Chavez declare commitment to multipolar world

Associated Press,
May 15, 2001
http://www.timesofindia.com/150501/15euro7.htm

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin and visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Monday declared their joint commitment to building a "multipolar" world to counter alleged U.S. dominance and announced "a new call to action" to combat drugs, poverty and terrorism.

Putin and Chavez greeted each other warmly in the gilded St. Catherine Hall of the Kremlin, joking and smiling. Jabbing a finger toward Putin, Chavez said he'd heard of the Russian leader's prowess in martial arts, and then he mimed swinging a bat to underline his own love of baseball.

The two also traded serious words of praise for one another, the nations they lead, and the potential for cooperation.

"We in Russia view Venezuela as an influential and authoritative state in Latin America, as a serious participant in the club of world powers," Putin said.

"Mr. Chavez belongs to a new generation of Latin American politicians who clearly understand the national interests of their countries," he said.

As for Venezuela, Caracas has a "huge interest" in political, economic and technological cooperation with Russia, Chavez said. He praised Putin for what he called "the revival" of Russia.

"We are very, very happy that the Russian people are now standing on their usual path, the path of a great Russia," Chavez said.

Putin and Chavez signed a political declaration affirming their nations' joint efforts "to build a new multipolar and peaceful world, built on the principle of noninterference in internal affairs and sovereignty."

"A strategic alliance has begun - a joint path," Chavez said.

"We believe in democracy, but not the kind of democracy that is forced on us."

Putin called his discussions with Chavez "a new call to action, a fight against poverty, drugs, terrorism and other sicknesses of our time." But neither he nor Chavez provided any details of what action they recommended aside exchanging information and joint efforts to train law enforcement officials.

The two leaders also called for fair trade opportunities for developing countries, and reiterated their demand that the United States lift its blockade of Cuba.

"Russia and Venezuela again announce their readiness to strengthen their relations with Cuba on the basis of respect, trust and independence and repeat their demand to integrate this country into the development structures of the American continent," the declaration said.

Like Putin, Chavez has unsettled Washington and some of its Western allies by courting leaders of countries including Iraq and Cuba. He has also defended China's human rights record; Putin is scheduled to sign a new, 10-year friendship treaty with China this summer.

Chavez, on a 22-day world tour, is scheduled to visit Iran, India, Bangladesh, China, Malaysia and Indonesia after leaving Moscow.

Members of the two delegations signed four more agreements, including one on technical-military cooperation and another on joint efforts to combat illegal drug trafficking.

However, other agreements were not finished in time for signing, including a key deal on trading oil and gas technology from Russia for the opportunity to extract petroleum off Venezuela's Caribbean coast.

However, the presidents said they would work together to keep oil prices up.

"We have a single approach on the most important question, of pricing," Putin said.

Russia was the world's second largest oil producing nation after Saudi Arabia last year, and Venezuela is a major producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Putin thanked Chavez for an invitation to attend an OPEC summit in Caracas.

Putin and Chavez also expressed hope that bilateral trade would grow - it jumped 350 percent last year, according to the Russian Economic Development and Trade Ministry.

According to ministry figures, Russian exports to Venezuela include rolled metal, fertilizers and machine tools, the Interfax news agency reported. Moscow's chief import from Venezuela is alumina, and it also buys carbon electrodes and coffee. (AP)

----

Bush Meeting With Putin Nearly Set

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Russia.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush plans to meet in Europe next month with Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Their meeting is expected at the end of a four-nation trip Bush already has planned.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has been working for weeks with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on a time and place convenient to the two leaders.

Bush and Putin also are expected to meet in Italy in July at an eight-nation economic summit meeting.

Ivanov is due to see Bush and Powell in Washington on Friday. An announcement could come then.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the two leaders wanted to meet in Europe in June and that only logistics had to be worked out.

At the top of the agenda would be Bush's intention to build a defense against missile attack and Russia's opposition to the program.

On Monday, the administration affirmed it would construct a defense against missiles, if one is needed, whatever Russia and other nations may think of the plan.

Bush and Powell are expected to make the point when they talk to Ivanov. They also are likely to tell the Russian foreign minister the administration wants to negotiate reductions in offensive nuclear arsenals, long a Russian goal.

Russia is opposed to the idea of a national missile defense, which is outlawed by a 1972 treaty that Bush has declared an irrelevant relic of the Cold War.

American diplomats have gone to Russia and other far-flung points talking to government officials about a U.S. anti-missile defense.

The Russian reaction was cool. On Monday, Igor Sergeyev, an adviser to Putin, said the U.S. delegation headed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz failed to convince Russian officials the plan was wise.

``We did not hear coherent arguments in favor of Washington's plan to deploy a national missile defense system,'' Sergeyev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Asked Monday if the United States would go ahead anyhow if Bush and his senior advisers opted for a missile shield, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said ``the secretary has made clear, the president has made clear that we intend to proceed with defense, and defense is part of our ... strategic framework.''

Russia has threatened to stop reducing its 7,000-warhead arsenal if the United States breaks out of the treaty. China says fielding missile defenses in Asia -- which the Bush administration said it would consider -- could escalate tensions over Taiwan.

Germany has taken a skeptical stance on a U.S. missile defense, while France also appears unconvinced the futuristic and expensive program is wise.

Bush has a busy travel schedule in Europe in June, including stops in Spain; NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium; Sweden to see European leaders; and Poland.

While Powell has met twice with Ivanov, in Cairo and in Paris, the Bush administration has given an impression that it intends to treat Russia without the priority the Clinton administration gave relations with Moscow.

The volatile Middle East, Russia's troubled economy and Russia's sale of weapons and technology are probable topics for discussion.

Bush has said he was ``confident we can have a good relationship with the Russians.''

``We've got some areas where we can work together,'' he said.

And Putin, taking a softer line in public than some of his top aides, said in March that worsening relations with the United States should not be ``overdramatized.''

AP White House Correspondent Ron Fournier contributed to this report.

-------- us nuc politics

Cheney: Energy Woes Take Time To Fix

By Sandra Sobieraj
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, May 15, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010515/aponline144419_001.htm

WASHINGTON -- The energy plan that Vice President Dick Cheney hands off to President Bush this week will offer no immediate relief for high gasoline prices and no immediate answers to two of the politically trickiest issues that Cheney's task force looked at - nuclear waste and gas mileage standards.

In an interview with The Associated Press three days before the president unveils his national energy strategy, Cheney did signal some distaste for tightening gas mileage requirements, referring to them generally as a "command-and-control approach."

The vice president, whose task force report already has been printed, said Monday that the Transportation Department will be ordered to study so-called corporate average fuel economy - or CAFE standards - after the National Academy of Sciences releases its findings on the CAFE standards in July.

The standards have, to the automobile industry's satisfaction, remained unchanged since 1975 despite the proliferation of gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, vans and pickup trucks.

Acknowledging that such standards "have made a contribution in the past" by promoting fuel-efficient vehicles, Cheney added:

"Whether or not there are changes that are warranted, whether or not CAFE standards or the command-and-control approach is the right way to go in all of that - we're going to look to the Department of Transportation for some guidance."

The product of three months of Cabinet-level study and dozens of consultations with interest groups, Cheney's energy recommendations will center on increasing the nation's energy supplies though expanded nuclear power, increased domestic oil drilling and more efficient movement of energy, including electricity, natural gas and petroleum.

Bush, armed with polls showing conservation is popular, also will discuss alternative energy sources when he releases the report Thursday during a trip to Minnesota and Iowa.

On Tuesday, Cheney previewed the plan for advocates for solar, wind and other renewable energy, who emerged from the private meeting and told reporters that Cheney promised that his recommendations include:

-An extension of the wind energy production tax credit.

-A 15 percent residential tax credit for users of solar power.

-An order for the Interior Department to address permitting delays in geothermal plants.

Cheney won unlikely - but not unconditional - support during a similar private meeting Monday with labor leaders from the Teamsters and big building trade unions who like what Teamsters president James Hoffa called "the amazing hundreds of thousands of jobs" that new drilling and new pipelines could create.

But, participants in the meeting said, Cheney would not guarantee that the jobs would be union jobs or, in response to a question from the Steelworkers union, that new pipelines would be made from U.S. steel rather than cheaper imports.

"We still have to look at the details," Hoffa said.

In Monday's interview, Cheney bristled at suggestions that the administration should be doing more to bring gasoline prices down. But he did leave open the possibility of Bush backing a reduction of the 18.4 cent-a-gallon federal gasoline tax, which is being proposed by GOP lawmakers fearing their party will be blamed in the 2002 congressional elections if energy prices soar.

"It might help temporarily," Cheney said.

A letter signed by nearly 70 Democratic lawmakers Monday urged Bush to demand relief from the OPEC oil-producing cartel and order a Federal Trade Commission inquiry into potential price gouging.

"Your administration has done little at this late date to address the coming crisis in gasoline prices," the Democrats' letter read.

Democrats and environmentalists have accused Bush and Cheney, both former oilmen, of catering to the energy industry here at home.

Cheney said jawboning OPEC may bring America the "momentary joy" of lower prices but the market would quickly respond with increases. The remarks were in contrast to Bush, who promised during his presidential campaign that if elected he would use his influence to tell OPEC, "Open your spigots!" White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Tuesday that the administration is quietly and diplomatically talking with OPEC leaders.

On the Democrats' other request, Cheney said, "There's no reason to believe there's price gouging." The only reason to order up an FTC investigation now would be to give the appearance of having a solution, he said.

On nuclear power, Cheney wants to give utilities incentives to build more nuclear plants, which would force the nation to deal with the problem of nuclear waste.

Nevada's Yucca Mountain is the "furthest along and most advanced" high-level nuclear waste repository, Cheney said. But, he added, "even there we're not to the point yet where we can make a final decision."

-------- MILITARY

-------- drug war

Justices Set Back Use of Marijuana to Treat Sickness

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/15/national/15DRUG.html

WASHINGTON, May 14 - The Supreme Court ruled today that federal law does not allow a "medical necessity" exception to the prohibition on the distribution of marijuana. The 8-to-0 decision dealt a setback, but not a definitive blow, to a movement that has passed medical marijuana ballot initiatives in eight states.

The ruling did not overturn the state initiatives or address any question of state law. Rather, the court ruled that marijuana's listing by Congress as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act meant that it "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States."

The court said in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas that the federal appeals court in San Francisco misread federal law when it ruled last year that an Oakland marijuana cooperative could raise a medical-necessity defense against the federal government's effort to shut down the pharmacylike cooperative.

The cooperative distributes marijuana to patients whose doctors say they need it to ease the symptoms of cancer, AIDS and other illnesses.

The Justice Department brought the case as a request for an injunction rather than as a criminal prosecution, which would have required a jury trial. Since nearly three-quarters of Oakland's voters supported California's Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that enacted the Compassionate Use Act to permit the medical use of marijuana, the government would have faced - and, indeed, still faces - a daunting challenge in finding a jury willing to convict someone for making marijuana available for that purpose.

The Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative was set up with the blessing of the city government and the police department.

The question before the Supreme Court today was a relatively narrow one: not the validity of the California initiative itself but of the federal courts' response to the government's request for an injunction. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the trial judge, Charles Breyer of Federal District Court, to tailor an injunction that would permit those with a serious medical condition that could be alleviated only by marijuana to have continued access to the drug.

The Clinton administration, asserting that the Ninth Circuit had committed a serious error that threatened to undermine federal drug laws, persuaded the Supreme Court to grant a stay of Judge Breyer's ruling last August. Justice Stephen G. Breyer did not participate in any phase of the case because Judge Breyer, who sits in San Francisco, is his younger brother.

Given the narrowness of the question before the court, the decision today left a number of questions unanswered. Among these were the availability of a medical necessity defense to individual patients who grow or possess marijuana for their own use, as opposed to a mass distributor like the Oakland cooperative, as well as whether state governments could carry out their medical marijuana initiatives by going directly into the distribution business. Two states, Nevada and Maine, are considering such a system.

Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, in addition to California, Nevada and Maine, have also passed medical marijuana initiatives in the last few years. Advocates for medical marijuana said today that this campaign would continue, with many noting that nearly all marijuana prosecutions are handled at the state rather than federal level.

Last month, a jury in state court in Sonoma County, Calif., acquitted a man who offered a medical-necessity defense to a charge of cultivating 850 marijuana plants.

Advocates of the medical use of marijuana say the drug is effective in combatting the nausea of chemotherapy and the wasting syndrome of AIDS. The California Medical Association, which supports the therapeutic use of marijuana under a doctor's direction, said today it was "very disappointed" in the ruling because of the organization's "core belief that patients should not suffer unnecessarily when other options fail."

There is a debate over whether a legal drug called Marinol, a synthetic version of the active ingredient in marijuana, offers the relief that some patients find in marijuana.

Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, an advocacy group here, predicted that the decision would "heighten the conflict in both legal and political terms" and could make it difficult for prosecutors to win a conviction in any marijuana case. Mr. Zeese said the distribution clubs were working on such new strategies as maintaining a "grow room" where patients would own their own marijuana plants, thus avoiding the potential legal pitfall of distribution.

Justice Thomas's opinion, United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, No. 00-151, contained some broad language suggesting that its analysis meant there could be no acceptable medical use of marijuana in any setting, not only in the context of distribution by large organizations. For that reason, Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to sign his opinion, writing in a separate concurring opinion that large-scale distribution was the only issue the case presented and on which the court would validly rule.

"Most notably, whether the defense might be available to a seriously ill patient for whom there is no alternative means of avoiding starvation or extraordinary suffering is a difficult issue that is not presented here," Justice Stevens wrote in an opinion that the other two justices joined.

California filed a brief in support of the Oakland cooperative, asserting that the federal law "unduly intrudes into California's traditional right to regulate for the health and welfare of their citizens."

Justice Stevens said Justice Thomas's opinion showed inadequate "respect for the sovereign states that comprise our federal union." This provoked a response from Justice Thomas, who said: "Because federal courts interpret, rather than author, the federal criminal code, we are not at liberty to rewrite it."

When he was governor of Texas, President Bush said that he was personally opposed to legalizing marijuana for medical use but that states should have the right to decide for themselves. "I believe each state can choose that decision as they so choose," he said in October 1999, according to an article in The Dallas Morning News that Justice Stevens cited in his opinion today.

--------

DEA Reviewing Caribbean Arrest Rates

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Drugs-Caribbean.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, responding to reports that its Caribbean office inflated the numbers of drug seizures and arrests, said Tuesday he has ordered a review of the situation.

``I do have some concerns. I do have some questions,'' said DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall, testifying before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.

The Miami Herald reported Tuesday that agents in the DEA's office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, claimed credit for hundreds of arrests that were in fact made by local police.

A former supervisor was reported to have said that 70 percent of the arrests the DEA claimed from 1998 through 2000 were phony.

In his testimony, Marshall offered no details about the review. He said he was ``very concerned about the integrity of our statistics, the integrity of our agency.'' He promised ``forceful, direct action'' if wrongdoing is uncovered.

He said he was hopeful the review will be completed in the next few weeks.

Special Agent Waldo Santiago, spokesman for the DEA Caribbean office, said he had no knowledge of supervisors pushing for inflated arrest numbers. ``In my 10 years as a DEA agent here I have never been asked by supervisor to falsify a report,'' he said.

He added that for every statistic claimed by the office, there has to be an arrest report.

``There's a system -- we can't just claim 100 arrests. You have to arrest 100 people.''

The hearing also included testimony from top officials of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Adm. James Loy, the Coast Guard Commandant, said drug seizures are being carried out at record levels but are being outpaced by drug flows.

``Despite a strong effort and extensive interagency and international cooperation, we were unable to meet our 13 percent seizure rate target in 2000,'' Loy said.

He expressed doubt that the Coast Guard will be able to meet the 18 percent seizure rate set for 2002.

-------- iraq

US outlines new Iraqi sanctions regime

May 15 2001
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010515/1/paoj.html

UNITED NATIONS, The United States has given the four other permanent members of the UN Security Council the outlines of a proposed new Iraqi sanctions regime, diplomats said Tuesday.

The diplomats, who asked not to be identified, said the proposals -- given to the British, Chinese, French and Russian governments -- aimed to remove the most controversial parts of the sanctions imposed on Iraq in August 1990.

In particular, they would maintain the tight control on all imports of military equipment by the government of President Saddam Hussein, but would make it much easier for Iraq to purchase other goods, the diplomats said.

They said the proposals were currently being discussed in the capitals of the permanent council members, rather than at the United Nations.

Twelve of the 15 council members left New York on Tuesday on a mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo and its neighbours and are not scheduled to return until May 25.

The current six-month phase of the oil-for-food programme, which permits Iraq to sell crude oil and to import basic necessities under UN supervision, expires on June 3 and a council resolution is required to extend it.

The diplomats said the US ideas were general principles, rather than detailed proposals for reforming sanctions.

The oil-for-food programme was overhauled in a long and complex document, Resolution 1284, which was adopted by a deeply divided council on December 17,

Russia, France and China were among four members which abstained on that occasion and since then have been at odds with Britain and the United States over the impact of the sanctions and their potential for getting Iraq to comply with the council's demands.

Originally imposed to force Iraq to withdraw its occupying forces from Kuwait, the sanctions were later used as a stick to oblige Iraq to eliminate all its weapons of mass destruction.

But the UN arms inspectors withdrew in December 1998 on the eve of a bombing campaign by US and British aircraft, and Iraq has said it will not allow them back in, nor have anything to do with Resolution 1284.

In an effort to stave off criticisms that the sanctions were crippling the Iraqi economy and sending infant mortality rates up, the council in 1999 agreed to "fast-track" approval of most import contracts.

In particular, goods which were deemed to have no dual-use potential for military purposes were no longer to be scrutinised by the sanctions committee, but given prior approval.

From now on, the diplomats said, any imports that were not strictly forbidden would be allowed.

As of last Friday, a total of 3.7 billion dollars worth of contracts were placed on hold by the committee.

-------- israel

Missiles fired across Israel, Lebanon border

Associated Press,
May 15, 2001
http://www.timesofindia.com/150501/15mide6.htm

JERUSALEM: Guerillas in Lebanon fired two anti-tank missiles towards an Israeli army outpost near a disputed border territory Monday, the Israeli army said, triggering Israeli artillery fire.

There were no injuries on the Israeli side, the army spokesman said.

The missiles were at aimed at the Har Dov outpost, and an army dining hall was damaged in the attack. The outpost is near the disputed Chebaa Farms area.

Within minutes, according to Lebanese witnesses, Israeli army artillery fired at least 10 155mm shells at the suspected source of fire in the area, about three kilometers (1.8 miles) east of Kfar Chouba, a Lebanese village in the foothills of Mount Hermon. Israeli attack helicopters hovered overhead but did not open fire.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group most active against Israel, claimed responsibilty for Monday's attack. Hezbollah guerrillas have killed three Israeli soldiers and captured three others in the Chebaa Farms area since Israel pulled its forces out of south Lebanon last May, ending an 18-year occupation.

Israel withdrew behind a border drawn by the United Nations, but Hezbollah and Lebanon claim that Chebaa Farms is part of Lebanon. The United Nations determined that it is part of Syrian territory captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

Syria backs the Lebanese position on Chebaa Farms, and Hezbollah guerrillas have pledged to continue fighting until Israel leaves the territory.

The attack was the first since April 14, when Hezbollah guerrillas killed an Israeli soldier in a rocket attack in the Chebaa Farms region. Israeli warplanes retaliated two days later by bombing a Syrian military radar station in the central Lebanese mountains deep inside the country, killing three soldiers. Syria and Hezbollah have promised to respond.

Lebanese witnesses said two Israeli helicopters strafed the area where they supect the missiles were launched with machine gun fire. The army denied the report saying that although there were helicopters in the area, they did not open fire.

The attack across the U.N.-drawn line between Lebanon and Israeli forces came on the eve of a U.N. Security Council meeting to consider recommendations by Secretary General Kofi Annan to reduce the size of the peacekeeping force deployed in the border area.

It also came on the eve of the marking by Palestinians and other Arabs of al-Naqba, or "catastrophe," the Arabic term for the 1948 founding of the state of Israel. (AP)

----

From the "Doves" to the Hawks
Israel's Illegal Settlement Intentions Have Always Been the Same

by Sherri Muzher,
Media Monitors Network
http://www.mediamonitors.net/sherri8.html

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them," said Ariel Sharon, then Israeli Foreign Minister. He was addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party. Sharon continues to be defiant about settlements despite recent US criticism.

While the intentions have not always been so publicly dramatic, this sort of mentality has guided even the most so-called "dovish" of Israeli governments. Though former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was credited by western media as being the generous peacemaker, little is said about Barak, the settlement builder. In fact, Barak was biggest settlement builder since 1992. According to the Israeli Housing Ministry, Barak's government began construction of 1,943 housing units in the Occupied Palestinian Territories last year - the largest number in any year since 1992. The Israeli Ha'aretz has even noted that the building of these illegal settlement hasn't stopped since the second Intifada began. In the last quarter of 2000, work was begun on 954 housing units, up from 368 in the final quarter of 1999.

And according to leaks from the infamous failure known as the Camp David Summit, Barak's generous offer would have allowed for a whopping 80% of the current illegal settlements to remain in a final agreement. Generous offer for whom?

The rationale for such illegal building has been the altruistic reason of "natural growth" by Jewish settlers. Note that "natural increase," is an accepted statistical term involving the number of births minus the number of deaths. The natural increase in the Jewish population of the West Bank and Gaza is 3.4 percent. However, the term "natural growth" is far more flexible and has less to do with the need for housing then the actual intention of expansion. Natural growth was allowed for in the Oslo Accords and every prime minister since the late Yitzhak Rabin had taken advantage of this term. For example, Rabin used this terminology to construct thousands of housing units in the illegal settlements of Ma'aleh Adumim, Beitar Ilit, Givat Ze'ev and Gush Etzion. [All of these settlements border Jerusalem and it is reported that Rabin wanted to include these settlements to expand Jerusalem and include this area as permanent borders].

According to Ha'aretz, Benjamin Netanyahu also used the flexibility of the term to increase building starts by 100 percent in 1998. And Barak conveniently used the term to widen his electoral base, when he desperately needed the right-wing National Religious Party in his coalition. Despite condemnations of settlement building from time to time, Israel succeeded with its natural growth reasoning. The reasoning sounded humanitarian. So why not? Ironically, this humanitarian concept has never applied to Palestinian overcrowding. In fact, Palestinian homes are demolished on a regular basis, even when it results in the homelessness of many. In other cases, such as in January 1997, Netanyahu's government halted the renovation of Palestinian homes in Hebron. The rationale? The homes were near illegal Jewish settlements and such construction would be a security risk.

For settlers, the chance to move to the Occupied Palestinian Territories is simply too good of a deal to pass up. They enjoy the privileges of being Israeli citizens, are immune from closures affecting the Palestinian natives, and are legally-armed with assault weapons. Economic incentives? Tax breaks, generous grants for students and government-build day care centers. Business people generally receive grants equal to at least 20 percent of their investments.

The special treatment afforded to settlers has brought about disenchantment among many in the Israeli public. Still, it is apparent that each Israeli government feels the investment is worth it, no matter how unpopular or illegal it is. And the settlements are illegal. They violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which demands the occupier of foreign land to refrain from undertaking any procedures meant to change the status quo of the occupied territories, including the transfer of its civilians. They also violate UN security council resolutions 242 and 338, not to mention bilateral agreements which hold that unilateral actions designed to change the status of the West Bank and Gaza are violations.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell recently told Ariel Sharon that the United States opposes any expansion of the settlements, including Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. It was reported that Sharon rejected this. Sadly, it appears that Israel's settlement policy -- carried out by each successive government -- will continue. And sadly, it appears the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will follow suit.

Sherri Muzher is a Freelance writer for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and Former Executive Director of the Council for Palestinian Restitution and Repatriation.

-------- space

Making Enemies in Space

The New York Times
May 15, 2001
By PAUL B. STARES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/15/opinion/15STAR.html?searchpv=nytToday

STANFORD, Calif. - As the Bush administration tries in the coming months to convince a wary world that it has nothing to fear from American plans to develop a national missile shield, the first priority should be to ensure that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld does not bring any more damage to the cause. At the very moment President Bush's emissaries were fanning out across the globe to explain his goal of defending America from missiles launched by so-called rogue states, Mr. Rumsfeld chose to announce a major reorganization of the Pentagon's space programs, including assigning responsibility to the Air Force "to organize, train, and equip for prompt and sustained offensive and defensive space operations."

While Mr. Rumsfeld claimed that these reforms had nothing to do with any intention to deploy antisatellite systems or weapons in space, such protestations were cold comfort to the very countries that the United States seeks to assuage about its missile defense program, notably Russia and China. Unfortunately, both nations now have even more reason to be concerned.

It will not have escaped their attention that Mr. Rumsfeld has been clear about his support for the findings of a national commission that he led until last December, which first recommended the managerial changes and which also saw a need to develop "superior space capabilities" to be able "to deter and defend against hostile acts in and from space."

Mr. Rumsfeld's characterization of the president's national missile defense speech and his own decision to invigorate the military space program as the first two parts of the ongoing review of American security policy would not have reassured Russia and China. President Bush was careful not to refer to space or space-based systems in his remarks about missile defense, but Mr. Rumsfeld implicitly linked the two initiatives. Since none of the rogue states like North Korea and Iraq have any satellites to speak of, Russia and China can legitimately wonder whom America sees as its future adversary in space.

Their anxiety is increased by the knowledge that some of the missile defense systems currently under consideration - especially those to be based in space - would have the inherent capability to attack satellites. A satellite is less challenging to shoot down than a warhead. Satellites are more fragile and harder to disguise and move in predictable paths, making them easier prey. A mediocre antimissile system can still constitute a highly effective antisatellite weapon.

Thus, not all missile defense options available to the United States are viewed by other nations as unambiguously defensive. A missile shield that America may think is nonthreatening to Russia and China could still make those countries profoundly nervous in a serious crisis because of the menace it poses to their satellites. From their perspective, the most worrisome missile defense systems are those capable of intercepting their missiles and their satellites either in or from outer space.

But an appropriately structured missile defense program need not alarm the rest of the world. The United States should focus its research and development on ground-, sea- or air-based missile defense systems that are designed to intercept warheads either immediately after their launch - in the so-called "boost phase" - or as they re-enter the earth's atmosphere at the end or "terminal phase" of their trajectory. Such systems - which would not have offensive capabilities against satellites - are less likely to be considered provocative by Russia or China.

At the same time, the Bush administration should pursue a diplomatic strategy designed to promote space as a sanctuary from weapons attack even if it means forgoing some freedom to counter an adversary's satellites that might be used to target our forces in wartime. The goal of such a strategy should be to lock in America's unrivaled superiority in space. Moving aggressively in this realm, however, would only encourage others to challenge America's dominance and make a missile defense less attainable.

Paul B. Stares is associate director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford.

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

Superpower lives here

May 15, 2001
Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010515-2170942.htm

To be sure, there are many devils in the details of the new plan still to be worked out. The administration will begin to reveal them in congressional testimony this week, and President Bush is slated to give a major defense address at the Naval Academy May 25. But it is already clear from news accounts that the defense secretary is considering replacing the policy that has guided U.S. defense planners since the end of the Cold War retaining a force capable of rapidly and decisively conducting two large regional wars.

Over the past decade, this "two-war standard" has been both a blessing and a curse on the Defense Department. On the positive side, it has provided a minimum level of capability below which U.S. military forces would not be reduced. In the absence of the Soviet threat, retaining the two-war capability was intended as an expression of America´s desire to lead the way in creating a new security order. As Colin Powell put it when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the two-war standard was a sign saying, "Superpower lives here." For a military establishment then nearing free-fall, the standard provided a solid floor.

Since then, however, the two-war standard also has become a rallying point against attempts to reform the military internally. What began as a measure of overall military capability calcified into a fixation on two particular past and potential future wars: a North Korean invasion and a repeat of the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. As the U.S. military faced new threats, acquired new constabulary missions and even as the U.S. Air Force launched an unanticipated operation of "regional war" proportions in Kosovo, Pentagon planners seemed to keep their heads buried deep in the Desert Storm sand.

George Bush campaigned for president on a promise to reform the Pentagon. Messrs. Rumsfeld and Bush would not be the first to try to walk away from the two-war standard. Indeed, President Clinton and his three defense secretaries all tried and failed to do so. In 1993, the late Les Aspin floated a "win-hold-win" approach to solving the two-war dilemma; his idea was that air power could halt a second invader while ground and joint forces won the first war and then redeployed to the second. When this idea was revealed in the press and to angry allies the Clinton administration quickly disavowed "win-hold-win." The two-war standard thus was enshrined as the measure of U.S. military pre-eminence, and subsequent attempts to lower the standard failed, in large part thanks to the complaints of the Republican Congress.

Yet while the two-war standard remained official American policy, it was also apparent that the United States no longer had a force that met the standard.What became known as the strategy-resources gap metastasized to the point where even Clinton administration officials estimated it to be $100 billion per year. Not only was the active-duty force too small, but modernization slowed to a crawl, force readiness fell, military pay scales lagged, the quality of military life declined and innovation was stifled.

These are the many problems that have provoked the Bush administration´s strategic review and provided the impetus behind replacing the two-war standard. But if Mr. Rumsfeld is to succeed where his predecessors have failed, he must define a new but convincing way to maintain American military dominance and the world leadership that rests upon it. In the past, getting rid of the two-war standard has been a slogan for transformation zealots willing to make deep force cuts to pay for new weapons. But that would be robbing Peter to pay Paul; the real solution is to retain an adequate force and to increase defense spending.

The two-war standard, for all its drawbacks, does express an elemental truth about what it means to be the world´s "sole superpower." The Pentagon´s own 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review expressed it well: "If the United States were to forego its ability to defeat aggression in more than one theater at a time, our standing as a global power, as the security partner of choice, and the leader of the international community, would be called into question. Indeed, some allies would undoubtedly read a one-war capability as a signal that the United States, if heavily engaged elsewhere, would no longer be able to help defend their interests."Anything less than a two-war capability tends to become, in effect, a no-war capability.

There is no denying that the canonical version of the two-war standard needs to be reviewed. A Chinese strike against Taiwan looms as likely and as demanding as any other major regional conflict, yet this scenario is nowhere accounted for in Pentagon force planning. And despite a decade´s worth of no-fly-zone and other constabulary duties, there has yet to be a formal reckoning of these requirements for sizing U.S. forces.

The concern is that the administration will abandon the two-war standard without simultaneously offering a substitute.The burden of proof now falls to Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld to set a new standard that is an unambiguous expression of commitment to restore the military strength needed to maintain American global leadership. They need to remind both our allies and our adversaries that a superpower still lives here.

Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly are executive director and deputy director of the Project for the New American Century.

----

Reserve Officers Fight Cuts

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Reserve-Cuts.html?searchpv=aponline
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010515/aponline152827_000.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The head of the Reserve Officers Association wrote to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday urging him to reject any proposed cuts in the number of citizen-soldiers.

``Unfortunately, we hear persistent reports that you are considering options which would dramatically cut the size of the Reserves, particularly the Army Reserve and National Guard,'' wrote Jay Spiegel, the association's executive director, according to a text posted on the association's Web site.

In a telephone interview, Spiegel said his association had picked up indications inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill that one option under serious consideration in Rumsfeld's review of the military's structure is a cut of between 50,000 and 70,000 members of the 206,000-strong Army Reserve, and proportionally smaller cuts in the Army National Guard. He said Rumsfeld also may be considering cuts in active duty forces.

``The only question is how much and the timing,'' Spiegel said in the interview.

Spiegel said Rumsfeld is looking for ways to pay for increased spending on missile defense and quality-of-life improvements for the troops, among other initiatives, and that cutting reservists is a leading option.

Rumsfeld has not publicly revealed the options he is considering. His spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, would not say whether Spiegel's group was correct in saying Rumsfeld is considering cuts.

``He has made no public announcement of those decisions,'' Quigley said.

Spiegel said there is little public support for cuts.

``Americans want the most modern and effective fighting force possible and quite rightly reject the notion that such a force should be paid for by cutting the Reserves,'' Spiegel wrote.

To bolster his argument, Spiegel cited the results of an opinion survey conducted for his organization by ICR, a market research firm. In the poll conducted May 2-6 among 1,004 randomly selected adults across the nation, 64 percent of respondents said it was a ``very bad'' or ``fairly bad'' idea to reduce the number of reservists as a means of paying for additional weapons systems.

Thirty-two percent said it was very good or fairly good idea to cut the reservists for that purpose. Four percent did not know.

The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The Clinton administration put off making planned cuts in the reserves, saying they were in high demand to support peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and other noncombat missions around the world.

There are 865,000 men and women in the reserves and 1.4 million on active duty.

-------- OTHER

-------- energy

Talking points on Cheney-Bush energy plan

Tue, 15 May 2001
From: michael mariotte <nirsnet@nirs.org>

As you can imagine, things are very busy at NIRS....We'll be sending you several Alerts and other documents in the next few days--on Yucca Mountain, on MOX, and, of course, on the Bush-Cheney energy plan scheduled to be released Thursday, May 17. Following are some initial talking points on the plan, that may help you if you are talking to your local media, writing letters to the editor, to your elected officials, etc (and we hope you'll do all those things!) We'll also be putting a press release out on Thursday. On NIRS website (www.nirs.org) will be talking points (prepared by NRDC and UCS) on renewable energy and energy efficiency; these focus primarily on the nuclear issue. If there are nuclear-related issues related to the plan you think we've missed, or if you need more elaboration on any issue, let us know.

Thanks! Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Talking Points on Bush/Cheney Energy Plan:

Crisis? What Crisis?

The Cheney-Bush energy plan will call for construction of approx. 400,000 MW of new electrical generating capacity over the next 20 years (1300 300MW plants)-a dubious projection.

90,000 MW of new capacity is already under construction and scheduled to come online in the next 18 months (NY Times, 5/13/01). All of this new construction is taking place without gutting environmental regulations or eliminating public participation.

According to the Department of Energy study "Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future," cost-effective energy efficiency measures could obviate the need for about 180,000 MW of that capacity. Renewable energy sources could supply another 50,000 MW and many believe it could supply more.

Investment is also being made in natural gas distribution and transmission, and in the electric transmission grid. Natural gas prices are likely to fall substantially-and quickly--from their current high levels, making nuclear power once again uneconomic compared to gas. Rather than a shortage of electricity, the nation could be facing a glut of electricity in the near future.

Nuclear Reactor Relicensing

The Cheney-Bush energy plan will attempt to "streamline" the relicensing of existing nuclear reactors.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission already has streamlined reactor relicensing to the point that the public is basically shut out of the process. Important issues like radioactive waste disposal and aging of reactor components has been shunted to a generic format, and cannot be brought up in relicensing challenges.

A license extension is merely a piece of paper; it does not indicate that a reactor can really operate for more than its original 40-year license period. In fact, no U.S. reactor has yet operated for more than 40 years (only the small Big Rock Point reactor lasted more than 32 years). Reactors operate in unique conditions of high heat and intense radiation bombardment, which causes premature aging of components. Rather than extended lifetimes, most reactors may well close early. Relying upon 1970s-era reactors to maintain a reliable supply of electricity is akin to a cab company relying upon a fleet of Ford Pintos.

Relicensing and extended operation of a significant number of reactors would require construction of a second high-level nuclear waste dump. The existing (and unacceptable) proposed site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada cannot accommodate all the waste that would be generated by most reactors operating an additional 20 years. Yucca Mountain is years behind schedule, and current cost estimates place the program above $50 Billion, if it's ever completed. Attempts to find a second high-level waste site were abandoned during the Reagan administration because of intense public opposition.

Price-Anderson Act Renewal

The Cheney-Bush energy plan will call for renewal of the Price-Anderson Act, which limits nuclear industry liability in the event of an accident.

The view of nuclear utilities on the safety of nuclear power can best be seen by the existence of the Price-Anderson Act. No utility would build or operate a reactor if it were not shielded from the potential liability that could be accrued from a nuclear accident (upwards of $300 Billion in property damage and thousands of deaths and injuries). No other hazardous industry enjoys such liability protection-an indication of just how dangerous nuclear power is. A mature industry with a good safety record would not need the Price-Anderson Act.

The Price-Anderson Act limits total industry liability to about $7 Billion (some proposals have called for this number to be increased somewhat). This is far short of the potential damages described in Sandia National Laboratories 1982 Calculation of Reactor Consequences (CRAC-2) report. Taxpayers would have to make up the difference.

Accidents involving reactors using MOX (plutonium-based) fuel, under the DOE's proposed MOX program, would be substantially more severe than the same accident with a reactor using conventional uranium fuel. In addition, accidents at MOX-fueled reactors are somewhat more likely. Price-Anderson should not cover MOX reactors.

But Nuclear Reactors Don't Emit Greenhouse Gases! The Cheney-Bush energy plan will argue that nuclear power is an "emissions-free" technology that does not contribute to global climate change.

When the entire (and necessary) nuclear fuel chain is taken into account (uranium mining, milling, processing, enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor construction, and waste disposal), carbon emission from nuclear power are significant-at least 4-5 times above emissions from any renewable technology.

Effectively addressing climate change requires wise use of our resources. With its resource and capital-intensive nature, nuclear power is a drain on efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Energy efficiency and renewables (and developing technologies like fuel cells and microturbines) are far more effective-dollar for dollar-at reducing greenhouse emissions than is nuclear power.

Moreover, nuclear power is not "emissions-free." Its emissions-at every step of the fuel chain-are of radioactivity, one of the relatively few absolutely proven human carcinogens. These emissions take place daily and routinely; they do not require an accident. The emissions build up over time, and concentrate in plants and soil. That they are invisible and odorless does not make them less toxic. If radiation were the color and texture of oil-if people could see the radiation being released-no reactor ever would operate again.

But France is a nuclear paradise!

The Cheney-Bush energy plan may point to France as a nuclear success story. Indeed, Cheney already has stated that France has a program for its high-level atomic waste.

While France does receive some 75% of its electricity from reactors, there are no new reactors under construction there, and no new ones are planned. Instead, France plans to diversify its fuel base.

France does not have a successful high-level radioactive waste disposal program. French law requires that two sites be scientifically examined to determine which is more suitable for permanent storage. Only one site so far has even been chosen for examination; the search for a second possibility has aroused widespread public opposition. Construction of a French storage site is years-probably decades-away.

France's nuclear fuel reprocessing program has contaminated the Normandy coast-in 1997 beaches along the coast were closed when Greenpeace divers found contamination levels in the ocean up to 17 million times above background levels. France's breeder reactor program, culminating in the construction of the multi-billion dollar Super Phenix breeder reactor, was an abysmal failure. The Super Phenix closed after only a few years of sporadic and accident-plagued operation.

California needs power

Bush and Cheney surely will point to the rolling blackouts in California as proof that an energy crisis exists and that we must increase electricity production (even though there plan will not address California's short-term problems).

California's problems stem from its badly flawed utility deregulation law and a bottleneck in transmission lines that prevents surplus power in the north from reaching the southern part of the state. This deregulation law was essentially written by lobbyists for the same two utilities that are now crying poverty (Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison) as a way to quickly recoup their $20+ Billion in "stranded costs" for their Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear plants. Environmentalists opposed the law and in 1998 supported a referendum to overturn it. PG&E and SCE spent some $40 million in a successful effort to defeat the referendum.

The deregulation law, market manipulation by independent power producers like Reliant Energy and Duke Energy, low water supplies for hydropower in the Pacific Northwest, and a lull in power plant construction have left California vulnerable to electricity supply disruptions-especially this summer. The problem was exacerbated by a serious accident at San Onofre in February, which knocked out an 1100 MW reactor for several months.

The Cheney-Bush energy plan offers no immediate help for California. The state will have to institute major energy conservation and efficiency programs to make it through the summer. To that end, Governor Grey Davis has appointed energy efficiency expert David Freeman to run the state's conservation programs-probably the smartest move Davis has made during this whole crisis.

--------

U.S., EUROPEAN UNION TO COLLABORATE ON FUSION RESEARCH

May 15, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-15-09.html

BRUSSELS, Belgium, The United States and the European Union (EU) will conduct joint research in fusion energy and non-nuclear energy, under an agreement signed Monday in Brussels.

U.S. and EU researchers will cooperate in a variety of research areas such as fossil energy, renewable energy, energy efficiency and carbon sequestration.

"As our agencies begin this cooperation in non-nuclear science and technology under the 1997 Science & Technology (S&T) Agreement, we embark on a whole new era of collaboration," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham at a signing ceremony in Brussels. "This arrangement provides us with an opportunity to pursue alternatives to our mounting energy demands and help secure our needs for the future."

The DOE/EU Implementing Arrangement in Non-Nuclear S&T is the first major agency to agency agreement signed under the 1997 US/EU Government to Government S&T, which covers a range of potential cooperative efforts on fossil energy, renewable energy and energy efficiency, with a focus on fuel cell technology and carbon sequestration.

"With the signing of the new umbrella fusion agreement, we look forward to continuing our many years of successful collaboration in the field of fusion research," Abraham added. "This agreement also provides the opportunity to pursue new initiatives."

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to contribute $1.3 million over two years to develop hardware for use at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion device in the United Kingdom.

Other areas of cooperation under the agreement may include tokamaks - a doughnut shaped magnetic confinement design for fusion reactors - alternatives to tokamaks, magnetic fusion energy technology, plasma theory and applied plasma physics.

----

EU, US sign energy research cooperation pact

EU: May 15, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10818

BRUSSELS - The European Union and the United States have signed an agreement to collaborate on research products into energy, the European Commission said yesterday.

The agreement, signed by U.S. Secretary of State for Energy, Spencer Abraham and EU Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin aims to see the two blocs collaborate on nuclear fusion and non-nuclear energy projects including fossil fuels and climate change, renewables, energy efficiency and hydrogen power.

The Commission said collaboration was likely to involve developing joint standards, networking scientific experts and coordinating research projects.

"The signing of these agreements gives the right political signal and underlines the importance the European Union attaches to securing safe and clean energy supplies for future generations," Busquin said in a statement.

"The global challenges in the field of energy are such that a more systematic collaboration as well as learning from each other is becoming highly desirable, if not indispensable, for the sustainable development of our economies," Busquin added.

----

Democrats Release Energy Plan

By David Espo
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, May 15, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010515/aponline180241_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- Eager to draw a contrast with President Bush, House Democrats are unveiling an energy blueprint that calls for the government to hold down price increases for electric power while sparing environmentally sensitive areas from oil and gas exploration.

The plan also includes proposed tax credits of up to $4,000 for the purchase of energy-efficient homes and cars and additional tax incentives for businesses to invest in energy-efficient technologies or vehicles.

"Democrats believe in a balanced national energy policy that helps consumers by both increasing energy production and reducing energy demand," they said in an energy blueprint drafted for unveiling by House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., and other lawmakers.

"The Bush administration is merely following the same tired old Republican playbook: cast blame, insist on extreme anti-environmental proposals, and provide American families with no real help now or very little in the future."

The White House embraced portions of the Democratic plan, singling out provisions that would encourage residential weatherproofing, conservation and renewable fuels.

"The energy plan offered by the Democrats on the Hill has some areas of overlapping commonality with the plan that the president is about to propose and the president looks forward to working with Congress on those areas," spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

But he cited other provisions that "do not go in the right direction," including the electricity price caps and Democrats' call that Bush show willingness to tap the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Gephardt, Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, Rep. Bob Filner of California and others arranged to release the proposal at a service station a few blocks from the Capitol where gas lines formed during the energy crisis of the late 1970s. Democratic sources who spoke on condition of anonymity described the plan in advance.

The Democrats drew up their proposal as a contrast to the policy which the president is expected to release on Thursday. Political leaders in both parties say rising energy costs are is becoming a more significant concern of average Americans, in part because of higher fuel prices and in part because of the potential for a return to rolling blackouts in California.

Democrats intend to propose a blend of government intervention, tax breaks and additional federal funding to hold down prices and encourage energy efficiency in the short-term, and to increase domestic supplies in the future.

Included is a call for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to stop producers from charging "unjust and unreasonable wholesale prices" in the West. FERC would be told to return to "cost-of-service-based rates" until March 2003, a system that allows government to limit wholesalers' profits.

Democrats also want FERC to order refunds of any unjust charges that have occurred already and are pressing the Justice Department to "assure that illegal price-fixing does not occur."

In addition, they say, "Democrats reject opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration until all other proven reserves and other federal lands already open to development have been exhausted."

On gasoline prices, Democrats want Bush to signal willingness to tap the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the event of sharp price hikes. They accuse the president of "unilateral disarmament" by saying he won't do so.

In addition, they will press him to call on OPEC and other oil-producing nations to increase production as a means of holding down prices.

Longer term, Democrats want more money for existing programs for weatherization and low-income heating assistance.

And while the plan suggests more incentives for production, it departs from Bush's emerging proposal on several key points. It makes no recommendation for additional nuclear power plants, which the administration is expected to stress later this week. Instead, Democrats intend to say that they "support continued research in advanced technologies for nuclear power as well as continued efforts to find safe and environmentally sound methods to reduce nuclear waste and provide for its safe disposal."

Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, spoke dissuasively of some of the Democratic proposals, even before they became public.

Cheney, the administration's lead spokesman on energy, rejected calls for price limits and a federal investigation into allegations of price gouging by gasoline companies. "That's exactly the kind of misguided - I'm trying to think how to state this gracefully - politically motivated policies we've had in the past," he said.

Bush and Cheney both have roots in the energy business in Texas, a fact that Democrats are likely to underscore as the debate unfolds in the weeks ahead.

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

O'Neill: World Bank Needs to Focus

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-World-Bank.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The World Bank should scale back its activities and concentrate on helping borrowing countries boost their economies by raising productivity, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said Tuesday.

O'Neill said the World Bank and other multilateral development banks in Asia, Latin America and Africa ``can do a much better job than they have in the past. I want them to be associated with success rather than failure.''

Testifying before a House Appropriations Committee panel on foreign operations, O'Neill said he believed the World Bank's ``scope of activities is now too diffuse, and this reduces its focus on the core objective of raising per capita income.''

O'Neill said that when the bank makes a new loan or a grant it should ask how the decision is going to raise productivity or per capita income.

He said that to achieve these objectives, the banks should place greater emphasis on investment in education and technology in developing countries.

O'Neill said open markets, free trade, low tax rates and sensible government regulation were keys to economic growth in developing countries, as they have in the United States for the past 20 years.

``I also believe that greater priority should be given to strengthening the rule of law, good governance'' and eliminating corruption, he said.

While recommending that the development banks become more focused, he said, ``We must provide guidance on areas that can be scaled back.

``I am not of the view that each (development bank) must be a full service 'supermarket' for the developing world. Each of them could focus its lending and grants on essential development goals,'' O'Neill said.

O'Neill told the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., that Treasury would need $1.4 billion to finance its international programs. Treasury has allocated $1.2 billion for the development banks and $224 million for U.S. participation in IMF-World Bank debt relief program for the world's poorest nations.

He said U.S. contributions to the debt relief program now totaled $600 million and 22 countries had started to benefit from it.

-------- police

Mishandling of McVeigh Evidence Draws Senate Criticism

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/15/politics/15CND-MCVEIGH.html

WASHINGTON, May 15 - Lawmakers in both parties assailed the Federal Bureau of Investigation today for investigative breakdowns, slipshod evidence handling and information control problems that they said had culminated in the F.B.I.'s failure to turn over thousands of pages of interview reports in the Oklahoma City bombing case.

"Any kind of failure at the F.B.I., anything that happens at the F.B.I. that calls into question something they did or failed to do leads to a lot of mistrust with the American people," said Richard C. Shelby, a Republican senator from Alabama and chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, after his panel met in a closed session with F.B.I. Director Louis J. Freeh.

With lawmakers demanding a top-to-bottom review of the F.B.I., the law enforcement agency seemed to still be struggling today to account for all documents in its files related to the Oklahoma City bombing, which were supposed to be given to defense lawyers under an agreement with prosecutors in the case.

Last week, after the disclosure that 3,135 pages of documents had been located that had not been turned over to Mr. McVeigh's defense team, Attorney General John Ashcroft postponed Mr. McVeigh's execution until June 11 to give his lawyers time to review the documents that should have been turned over by the Government. They lawyers have said they are considering their legal options, including a longer delay in the execution.

At the Justice Department, as more documents have trickled in recent days from F.B.I. offices around the country, a senior official said that Government lawyers remained uncertain whether more documents might be unearthed. "We're open to it," the official said.

In Congress, questions over the document issue threatened to damage Mr. Freeh's reputation in his final days as Director after years in which he has been widely praised in Congress. Mr. Freeh has said he would resign next month. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Republican from Utah who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he would hold hearings that are likely to have the F.B.I. on the defensive for not knowing what was in its own files.

"There's no question these mistakes should not have been made in a high-profile case, or any case," Mr. Hatch said. "Every criminal defendant has the right to these types of materials and we've got to live up to our responsibilities," said Hatch. We must see that those rights are protected."

Democrats also demanded change at the F.B.I. Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, a Democratic member of the Judiciary panel, said he would propose creating a separate Inspector General for the F.B.I., which would report to Congress.

Currently, the F.B.I. has an internal affairs unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviews complaints of misconduct, but reports to the agency's director. The F.B.I. is also under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department's Inspector General which already reports to Congress.

Today, in the first of what are expected to be several days of harsh questioning by Congressional committees, Mr. Freeh sought to deflect the furor by repeating his contention that none of the belatedly discovered documents will cast any doubt on Mr. McVeigh's guilt.

But few senators seemed to prepared to accept Mr. Freeh's assurances without specific evidence and the uproar over the documents seemed to crystallize a mood of anger about number of festering complaints with the F.B.I.

Mr. Shelby said that Mr. Freeh said that the documents "won't have any bearing on the case." But the senator seemed unprepared to accept Mr. Freeh's characterization, saying "We'll have to wait and see."

"It's something that should not have happened, and it shows, probably, a lack of diligence somewhere in the F.B.I.," Mr. Shelby said. As F.B.I. director, Mr. Freeh is accountable Mr. Shelby said, but he added that other F.B.I. officials who failed to respond to repeated internal directives to turn over the documents "ought to be brought to task."

The intelligence committee meeting today was initially convened to discuss another F.B.I. embarrassment, the arrest of Robert P. Hanssen, a veteran F.B.I. agent who was has been accused of spying for Moscow. Mr. Hanssen eluded detection by F.B.I. spyhunters for more than 15 years before he was caught.

But the focus of the hearing quickly to shifted far from the intelligence matters to the McVeigh case and then to yet another F.B.I. case of keen interest to Mr. Shelby's constituents, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. in 1963 that killed four black girls.

Mr. Shelby said, "From what I've learned recently, the F.B.I. had information which they never furnished first to our former attorney general, Bill Baxley, when he reopened the bombing case" in the 1970s, "and only recently furnished it to the U.S. attorney's office in Birmingham."

F.B.I. officials said that they had discovered in their files audio tapes that were crucial in helping prosecutors win a conviction on May 1 against Thomas Blanton, Jr. who long been suspected of involvement in the crime.

-------

Shredding the Bill of Rights

by Gore Vidal,
May 15, 2001
Vanity Fair November 1998
http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0501/vidal/essay_last.html

Most Americans of a certain age can recall exactly where they were and what they were doing on October 20, 1964, when word came that Herbert Hoover was dead. The heart and mind of a nation stopped. Bue how many recall when and how they first became aware that one or another of the Bill of Rights had expired? For me, it was sometime in 1960 at a party in Beverly Hills that I got the bad news from the constitutionally cheery actor Cary Grant. He had just flown in from New York. He had, he said, picked up his ticket at an airline counter in that magical old-world airport, Idlewild, whose very name reflected our condition. "There were these lovely girls behind the counter, and they were delighted to help me, or so they said. I signed some autographs. Then I asked one of them for my tickets. Suddenly she was very solemn. 'Do you have any identification?' she asked." (Worldly friends tell me that the "premise" of this story is now the basis of a series of TV commercials for Visa unseen by me.) I would be exaggerating if I felt the chill in the air that long-ago Beverly Hills evening. Actually, we simply laughed. But I did, for just an instant, wonder if the future had tapped a dainty foot on our mass grave.

Curiously enough, it was Grant again who bore, as lightly as ever, the news that privacy itself hangs by a gossamer thread. "A friend in London rang me this morning," he said. This was June 4, 1963. "Usually we have code names, but this time he forgot. So after he asked for me I said into the receiver, 'All right. St. Louis, off the line. You, too, Milwaukee,' and so on. The operators love listening in. Anyway, after we talked business, he said, 'So what's the latest Hollywood gossip?' And I said, 'Well, Lana Turner is still having an affair with that black baseball pitcher.' One of the operators on the line gave a terrible cry, 'Oh, no!'"

Innocent days. Today, as media and Congress thunder their anthem, "Twinkle, twinkle, little Starr, how we wonder what you are," the current president is assumed to have no right at all to privacy because, you see, it's really about sex, not truth, a permanent nonstarter in political life. Where Grant's name assured him an admiring audience of telephone operators, the rest of us were usually ignored. That was then. Today, in the all-out, never-to-be-won twin wars on Drugs and Terrorism, two million telephone conversations a year are intercepted by law-enforcement officials. As for that famous "workplace" to which so many Americans are assigned by necessity, "the daily abuse of civil liberties... is a national disgrace," according to the American Civil Liberties Union in a 1996 report.

Among the report's findings, between 1990 and 1996, the number of workers under electronic surveillance increased from 8 million per year to more than 30 million. Simultaneously, employers eavesdrop on an estimated 400 million telephone conversations a year--something like 750 a minute. In 1990, major companies subjected 38 percent of their employees to urine tests for drugs. By 1996, more than 70 percent were thus interfered with. Recourse to law has not been encouraging. In fact, the California Supreme Court has upheld the right of public employers to drug-test not only those employees who have been entrusted with flying jet aircraft or protecting our borders from Panamanian imperialism but also those who simply mop the floors. The court also ruled that governments can screen applicants for drugs and alcohol. This was inspired by the actions of the city-state of Glendale, California, which wanted to test all employees due for promotion. Suit was brought against Glendale on the ground that it was violating the Fourth Amendment's protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures." Glendale's policy was upheld by the California Supreme Court, but Justice Stanley Mosk wrote a dissent: "Drug testing represents a significant additional invasion of those applicants' basic rights to privacy and dignity... and the city has not carried its considerable burden of showing that such an invasion is justified in the case of all applicants offered employment."

In the last year or so I have had two Cary Grant-like revelations, considerably grimmer than what went on in the good old days of relative freedom from the state. A well-known acting couple and their two small children came to see me one summer. Photos were taken of their four-year-old and six-year-old cavorting bare in the sea. When the couple got home to Manhattan, the father dropped the negatives off at a drugstore to be printed. Later, a frantic call from his fortunately friendly druggist: "If I print these I've got to report you and you could get five years in the slammer for kiddie porn." The war on kiddie porn is now getting into high gear, though I was once assured by Wardell Pomeroy, Alfred Kinsey's colleague in sex research, that pedophilia was barely a blip on the statistical screen, somewhere down there with farm lads and their animal friends.

It has always been a mark of American freedom that unlike countries under constant Napoleonic surveillance, we are not obliged to carry identification to show to curious officials and pushy police. But now, due to Terrorism, every one of us is stopped at airports and obliged to show an ID which must include a mug shot (something, as Allah knows, no terrorist would ever dare fake). In Chicago after an interview with Studs Terkel, I complained that since I don't have a driver's license, I must carry a passport in my own country as if I were a citizen of the old Soviet Union. Terkel has had the same trouble. "I was asked for my ID--with photo--at this southern airport, and I said I didn't have anything except the local newspaper with a big picture of me on the front page, which I showed them, but they said that that was not an ID. Finally, they got tired of me and let me on the plane."

Lately, I have been going through statistics about terrorism (usually direct responses to crimes our government has committed against foreigners--although, recently, federal crimes against our own people are increasing). Only twice in 12 years has an American commercial plane been destroyed in flight by terrorists; neither originated in the United States. To prevent, however, a repetition of these two crimes, hundreds of millions of travelers must now be subjected to searches, seizures, delays.

The state of the art of citizen-harassment is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, new devices, at ever greater expense, are coming onto the market--and, soon, to an airport near you--including the dream machine of every horny schoolboy. The "Body Search" Contraband Detection System, created by American Science and Engineering, can "X-ray" through clothing to reveal the naked body, whose enlarged image can then be cast onto a screen for prurient analysis. The proud manufacturer boasts that the picture is so clear that even navels, unless packed with cocaine and taped over, can be seen winking at the voyeurs. The system also has what is called, according to an A.C.L.U. report, "a joystick-driven Zoom Option" that allows the operator to enlarge interesting portions of the image. During all this, the victim remains, as AS&E proudly notes, fully clothed. Orders for this machine should be addressed to the Reverend Pat Robertson and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, while the proud new owner of "Body Search" will be automatically included in the F.B.I.'s database of Sexual Degenerates--Class B. Meanwhile, in February 1997, the "Al" Gore Commission called for the acquisition of 54 high-tech bomb-detection machines known as the CTX 5000, a baggage scanner that is a bargain at a million dollars and will cost only $100,000 a year to service. Unfortunately, the CTX 5000 scans baggage at the rate of 250 per hour, which would mean perhaps a thousand are needed to "protect" passengers at major airports from those two putative terrorists who might--or might not--strike again in the next 12 years, as they twice did in the last 12 years. Since the present scanning system seems fairly effective, why subject passengers to hours of delay, not to mention more than $54 million worth of equipment?

Presently, somewhat confused guidelines exist so that airline personnel can recognize at a glance someone who fits the "profile" of a potential terrorist. Obviously, anyone of mildly dusky hue who is wearing a fez gets busted on the spot. For those terrorists who do not seem to fit the "profile," relevant government agencies have come up with the following behavioral tips that should quickly reveal the evildoer. A devious drug smuggler is apt to be the very first person off the plane unless, of course, he is truly devious and chooses to be the last one off. Debonair master criminals often opt for a middle position. Single blonde young women are often used, unwittingly, to carry bombs or drugs given them by Omar Sharif look-alikes in sinister Casbahs. Upon arrival in freedom's land, great drug-sniffing dogs will be turned loose on them; unfortunately, these canine detectives often mistakenly target as drug carriers women that are undergoing their menstrual period: the sort of icebreaker that often leads to merry laughter all around the customs area. Apparently one absolutely sure behavioral giveaway is undue nervousness on the part of a passenger though, again, the master criminal will sometimes appear to be too much at ease. In any case, whatever mad rule of thumb is applied, a customs official has every right to treat anyone as a criminal on no evidence at all; to seize and to search without, of course, due process of law.

Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on. In 1970, I wrote in The New York Times, of all uncongenial places,

It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect--good or bad--the drug will have on the taker. This will require heroic honesty. Don't say that marijuana is addictive or dangerous when it is neither, as millions of people know--unlike "speed," which kills most unpleasantly, or heroin, which can be addictive and difficult to kick. Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall (or learn for the first time) that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each person has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbors' pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor's idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit).

I suspect that what I wrote 28 years ago is every bit as unacceptable now as it was then, with the added problem of irritable ladies who object to my sexism in putting the case solely in masculine terms, as did the sexist founders.

I also noted the failure of the prohibition of alcohol from 1919 to 1933. And the crime wave that Prohibition set in motion so like the one today since "both the Bureau of Narcotics and the Mafia want strong laws against the sale and use of drugs because if drugs are sold at cost there would be no money in them for anyone." Will anything sensible be done I wondered? "The American people are as devoted to the idea of sin and its punishment as they are to making money--and fighting drugs is nearly as big a business as pushing them. Since the combination of sin and money is irresistible (particularly to the professional politician), the situation will only grow worse." I suppose, if nothing else, I was a pretty good prophet.

The media constantly deplore the drug culture and, variously, blame foreign countries like Colombia for obeying that iron law of supply and demand to which we have, as a notion and as a nation, sworn eternal allegiance. We also revel in military metaphors. Czars lead our armies into wars against drug dealers and drug takers. So great is this permanent emergency that we can no longer afford such frills as habeas corpus and due process of law. In 1989 the former drug czar and TV talk-show fool, William Bennett, suggested de jure as well as de facto abolition of habeas corpus in "drug" cases as well as (I am not inventing this) public beheadings of drug dealers. A year later, Ayatollah Bennett declared, "I find no merit in the [drug] legalizers' case. The simple fact is that drug use is wrong. And the moral argument, in the end, is the most compelling argument." Of course, what this dangerous comedian thinks is moral James Madison and the Virginia statesman and Rights-man George Mason would have thought dangerous nonsense, particularly when his "morality" abolishes their gift to all of us, the Bill of Rights. But Bennett is not alone in his madness. A special assistant to the president on drug abuse declared, in 1984, "You cannot let one drug come in and say, 'Well, this drug is all right.' We've drawn the line. There's no such thing as a soft drug." There goes Tylenol-3, containing codeine. Who would have thought that age-old palliatives could, so easily, replace the only national religion that the United States has ever truly had, anti-Communism?

On June 10, 1998, a few brave heretical voices were raised in The New York Times, on an inner page. Under the heading BIG NAMES SIGN LETTER CRITICIZING WAR ON DRUGS. A billionaire named "George Soros has amassed signatures of hundreds of prominent people around the world on a letter asserting that the global war on drugs is causing more harm than drug abuse itself." Apparently, the Lindesmith Center in New York, funded by Soros, had taken out an ad in the Times, thereby, expensively, catching an editor's eye. The signatories included a former secretary of state and a couple of ex-senators, but though the ad was intended to coincide with a United Nations special session on Satanic Substances, it carried no weight with one General Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton's war director, who called the letter "a 1950s perception," whatever that may mean. After all, drug use in the 50s was less than it is now after four decades of relentless warfare. Curiously, the New York Times story made the signatories seem to be few and eccentric while the Manchester Guardian in England reported that among the "international signatories are the former prime minister of the Netherlands... the former presidents of Bolivia and Colombia... three [U.S.] federal judges... senior clerics, former drugs squad officers..." But the Times always knows what's fit to print.

It is ironic--to use the limpest adjective--that a government as spontaneously tyrannous and callous as ours should, over the years, have come to care so much about our health as it endlessly tests and retests commercial drugs available in other lands while arresting those who take "hard" drugs on the parental ground that they are bad for the user's health. One is touched by their concern--touched and dubious. After all, these same compassionate guardians of our well-being have sternly, year in and year out, refused to allow us to have what every other First World country simply takes for granted, a national health service.

When Mr. and Mrs. Clinton came up to Washington, green as grass from the Arkansas hills and all pink and aglow from swift-running whitewater creeks, they tried to give the American people such a health system, a small token in exchange for all that tax money which had gone for "defense" against an enemy that had wickedly folded when our back was turned. At the first suggestion that it was time for us to join the civilized world, there began a vast conspiracy to stop any form of national health care. It was hardly just the "right wing," as Mrs. Clinton suggested. Rather, the insurance and pharmaceutical companies combined with elements of the American Medical Association to destroy forever any notion that we be a country that provides anything for its citizens in the way of health care.

One of the problems of a society as tightly controlled as ours is that we get so little information about what those of our fellow citizens whom we will never know or see are actually thinking and feeling. This seems a paradox when most politics today involves minute-by-minute polltaking on what looks to be every conceivable subject, but, as politicians and pollsters know, it's how the question is asked that determines the response. Also, there are vast areas, like rural America, that are an unmapped ultima Thule to those who own the corporations that own the media that spend billions of dollars to take polls in order to elect their lawyers to high office.

Ruby Ridge. Waco. Oklahoma City. Three warning bells from a heartland that most of us who are urban dwellers know little or nothing about. Cause of rural dwellers' rage? In 1996 there were 1,471 mergers of American corporations in the interest of "consolidation." This was the largest number of mergers in American history, and the peak of a trend that had been growing in the world of agriculture since the late 1970s. One thing shared by the victims at Ruby Ridge and Waco, and Timothy McVeigh, who may have committed mass murder in their name at Oklahoma City, was the conviction that the government of the United States is their implacable enemy and that they can only save themselves by hiding out in the wilderness, or by joining a commune centered on a messianic figure, or, as revenge for the cold-blooded federal murder of two members of the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, blow up the building that contained the bureau responsible for the murders.

To give the media their due, they have been uncommonly generous with us on the subject of the religious and political beliefs of rural dissidents. There is a neo-Nazi "Aryan Nations." There are Christian fundamentalists called "Christian Identity," also known as "British Israelism." All of this biblically inspired nonsense has taken deepest root in those dispossessed of their farmland in the last generation. Needless to say, Christian demagogues fan the flames of race and sectarian hatred on television and, illegally, pour church money into political campaigns.

Conspiracy theories now blossom in the wilderness like nightblooming dementia praecox, and those in thrall to them are mocked invariably by the... by the actual conspirators. Joel Dyer, in Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Only the Beginning, has discovered some very real conspiracies out there, but the conspirators are old hands at deflecting attention from themselves. Into drugs? Well, didn't you know Queen Elizabeth II is overall director of the world drug trade (if only poor Lillibet had had the foresight in these republican times!). They tell us that the Trilateral Commission is a world-Communist conspiracy headed by the Rockefellers. Actually, the commission is excellent shorthand to show how the Rockefellers draw together politicians and academics-on-the-make to serve their business interests in government and out. Whoever it was who got somebody like Lyndon LaRouche to say that this Rockefeller Cosa Nostra is really a Communist front was truly inspired.

But Dyer has unearthed a genuine ongoing conspiracy that affects everyone in the United States. Currently, a handful of agro-conglomerates are working to drive America's remaining small farmers off their land by systematically paying them less for their produce than it costs to grow, thus forcing them to get loans from the conglomerates' banks, assume mortgages, undergo foreclosures and the sale of land to corporate-controlled agribusiness. But is this really a conspiracy or just the Darwinian workings of an efficient marketplace? There is, for once, a smoking gun in the form of a blueprint describing how best to rid the nation of small farmers. Dyer writes: "In 1962, the Committee for Economic Development comprised approximately seventy-five of the nation's most powerful corporate executives. They represented not only the food industry but also oil and gas, insurance, investment and retail industries. Almost all groups that stood to gain from consolidation were represented on that committee. Their report [An Adaptive Program for Agriculture] outlined a plan to eliminate farmers and farms. It was detailed and well thought out." Simultaneously, "as early as 1964, Congressmen were being told by industry giants like Pillsbury, Swift, General Foods, and Campbell Soup that the biggest problem in agriculture was too many farmers." Good psychologists, the C.E.O.'s had noted that farm children, if sent to college, seldom return to the family farm. Or as one famous economist said to a famous senator who was complaining about jet lag on a night flight from New York to London, "Well, it sure beats farming." The committee got the government to send farm children to college. Predictably, most did not come back. Government then offered to help farmers relocate in other lines of work, allowing their land to be consolidated in ever vaster combines owned by fewer and fewer corporations.

So a conspiracy had been set in motion to replace the Jeffersonian ideal of a nation whose backbone was the independent farm family with a series of agribusiness monopolies where, Dyer writes, "only five to eight multinational companies have, for all intents and purposes, been the sole purchasers and transporters not only of the American grain supply but that of the entire world." By 1982 "these companies controlled 96% of US wheat exports, 95% of US corn exports," and so on through the busy aisles of chic Gristedes, homely Ralph's, sympathetic Piggly Wigglys.

Has consolidation been good for the customers? By and large, no. Monopolies allow for no bargains, nor do they have to fuss too much about quality because we have no alternative to what they offer. Needless to say, they are hostile to labor unions and indifferent to working conditions for the once independent farmers, now illpaid employees. For those of us who grew up in pre-war United States there was the genuine ham sandwich. Since consolidation, ham has been so rubberized that it tastes of nothing at all while its texture is like rosy plastic. Why? In the great hogariums a hog remains in one place, on its feet, for life. Since it does not root about--or even move--it builds up no natural resistance to disease. This means a great deal of drugs are pumped into the prisoner's body until its death and transfiguration as inedible ham.

By and large, the Sherman anti-trust laws are long since gone. Today three companies control 80 percent of the total beef-packing market. How does this happen? Why do dispossessed farmers have no congressional representatives to turn to? Why do consumers get stuck with mysterious pricings of products that in themselves are inferior to those of an earlier time? Dyer's answer is simple but compelling. Through their lobbyists, the corporate executives who drew up the "adaptive program" for agriculture now own or rent or simply intimidate Congresses and presidents while the courts are presided over by their former lobbyists, an endless supply of whitecollar servants since two-thirds of all the lawyers on our small planet are Americans. Finally, the people at large are not represented in government while corporations are, lavishly.

What is to be done? Only one thing will work, in Dyer's view: electoral finance reform. But those who benefit from the present system will never legislate themselves out of power. So towns and villages continue to decay between the Canadian and the Mexican borders, and the dispossessed rural population despairs or rages. Hence, the apocalyptic tone of a number of recent nonreligious works of journalism and analysis that currently record, with fascinated horror, the alienation of group after group within the United States.

Since the Encyclopedia Britannica is Britannica and not America, it is not surprising that its entry for "Bill of Rights, United States" is a mere column in length, the same as its neighbor on the page "Bill of Sale," obviously a more poignant document to the island compilers. Even so, they do tell us that the roots of our Rights are in Magna Carta and that the genesis of the Bill of Rights that was added as 10 amendments to our Constitution in 1791 was largely the handiwork of James Madison, who, in turn, echoed Virginia's 1776 Declaration of Rights. At first, these 10 amendments were applicable to American citizens only as citizens of the entire United States and not as Virginians or as New Yorkers, where state laws could take precedence according to "states' rights," as acknowledged in the 10th and last of the original amendments. It was not until 1868 that the 14th Amendment forbade the states to make laws counter to the original bill. Thus every United States person, in his home state, was guaranteed freedom of "speech and press, and the right to assembly and to petition as well as freedom from a national religion." Apparently, it was Charlton Heston who brought the Second Amendment, along with handguns and child-friendly Uzis, down from Mount DeMille. Originally, the right for citizen militias to bear arms was meant to discourage a standing federal or state army and all the mischief that an armed state might cause people who wanted to live not under the shadow of a gun but peaceably on their own atop some sylvan Ruby Ridge.

Currently, the Fourth Amendment is in the process of disintegration, out of "military necessity"--the constitutional language used by Lincoln to wage civil war, suspend habeas corpus, shut down newspapers, and free southern slaves. The Fourth Amendment guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The Fourth is the people's principal defense against totalitarian government; it is a defense that is now daily breached both by deed and law.

In James Bovard's 1994 book, Lost Rights, the author has assembled a great deal of material on just what our law enforcers are up to in the never-to-be-won wars against Drugs and Terrorism, as they do daily battle with the American people in their homes and cars, on buses and planes, indeed, wherever they can get at them, by hook or by crook or by sting. Military necessity is a bit too highbrow a concept for today's federal and local officials to justify their midnight smashing in of doors, usually without warning or warrant, in order to terrorize the unlucky residents. These unlawful attacks and seizures are often justified by the possible existence of a flush toilet on the fingered premises. (If the warriors against drugs don't take drug fiends absolutely by surprise, the fiends will flush away the evidence.) This is intolerable for those eager to keep us sin-free and obedient. So in the great sign of Sir Thomas Crapper's homely invention, they suspend the Fourth, and conquer.

Nineteen ninety-two. Bridgeport, Connecticut. The Hartford Courant reported that the local Tactical Narcotics Team routinely devastated homes and businesses they "searched." Plainclothes policemen burst in on a Jamaican grocer and restaurant owner with the cheery cry "Stick up, niggers. Don't move." Shelves were swept clear. Merchandise ruined. "They never identified themselves as police," the Courant noted. Although they found nothing but a registered gun, the owner was arrested and charged with "interfering with an arrest" and so booked. A judge later dismissed the case. Bovard reports, "In 1991, in Garland, Texas, police dressed in black and wearing black ski-masks burst into a trailer, waved guns in the air and kicked down the bedroom door where Kenneth Baulch had been sleeping next to his seventeen-month-old son. A policeman claimed that Baulch posed a deadly threat because he held an ashtray in his left hand, which explained why he shot Baulch in the back and killed him. (A police internal investigation found no wrongdoing by the officer.) In March 1992, a police SWAT team killed Robin Pratt, an Everett, Washington, mother, in a no-knock raid carrying out an arrest warrant for her husband. (Her husband was later released after the allegations upon which the arrest warrant were based turned out to be false.) Incidentally, this K.G.B. tactic--hold someone for a crime, but let him off if he then names someone else for a bigger crime, also known as Starr justice--often leads to false, even random allegations which ought not to be acted upon so murderously without a bit of homework first. The Seattle Times describes Robin Pratt's last moments. She was with her six-year-old daughter and five-year-old niece when the police broke in. As the bravest storm trooper, named Aston, approached her, gun drawn, the other police shouted, "'Get down,' and she started to crouch onto her knees. She looked up at Aston and said, 'Please don't hurt my children....' Aston had his gun pointed at her and fired, shooting her in the neck. According to [the Pratt family attorney John] Muenster, she was alive another one to two minutes but could not speak because her throat had been destroyed by the bullet. She was handcuffed, Iying face down." Doubtless Aston was fearful of a divine resurrection; and vengeance. It is no secret that American police rarely observe the laws of the land when out wilding with each other, and as any candid criminal judge will tell you, perjury is often their native tongue in court.

The I.R.S. has been under some scrutiny lately for violations not only of the Fourth but of the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth requires a grand-jury indictment in prosecutions for major crimes. It also provides that no person shall be compelled to testify against himself, forbids the taking of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or the taking of private property for public use without compensation.

Over the years, however, the ever secretive I.R.S. has been seizing property right and left without so much as a postcard to the nearest grand jury, while due process of law is not even a concept in their single-minded pursuit of loot. Bovard notes:

Since 1980, the number of levies--I.R.S. seizures of bank accounts and pay checks--has increased four-fold, reaching 3,253,000 in 1992. The General Accounting Office (GAO) estimated in 1990 that the I.R.S. imposes over 50,000 incorrect or unjustified levies on citizens and businesses per year. The GAO estimated that almost 6% of I.R.S. Ievies on business were incorrect.... The I.R.S. also imposes almost one and a half million liens each year, an increase of over 200% since 1980. Money magazine conducted a survey in 1990 of 156 taxpayers who had I.R.S. Iiens imposed on their property and found that 35% of the taxpayers had never received a thirty-day warning notice from the I.R.S. of an intent to impose a lien and that some first learned of the liens when the magazine contacted them.

The current Supreme Court has shown little interest in curbing so powerful and clandestine a federal agency as it routinely disobeys the 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendments. Of course, this particular court is essentially authoritarian and revels in the state's exercise of power while its livelier members show great wit when it comes to consulting Ouija boards in order to discern exactly what the founders originally had in mind, ignoring just how clearly Mason, Madison, and company spelled out such absolutes as you can't grab someone's property without first going to a grand jury and finding him guilty of a crime as law requires. In these matters, sacred original intent is so dear that the Court prefers to look elsewhere for its amusement. Lonely voices in Congress are sometimes heard on the subject. In 1993, Senator David Pryor thought it would be nice if the I.R.S. were to notify credit agencies once proof was established that the agency wrongfully attached a lien on a taxpayer's property, destroying his future credit. The I.R.S. got whiny. Such an onerous requirement would be too much work for its exhausted employees.

Since the U.S. statutes that deal with tax regulations comprise some 9,000 pages, even tax experts tend to foul up, and it is possible for any Inspector Javert at the I.R.S. to find flawed just about any conclusion as to what Family X owes. But, in the end, it is not so much a rogue bureau that is at fault as it is the system of taxation as imposed by key members of Congress in order to exempt their friends and financial donors from taxation. Certainly, the I.R.S. itself has legitimate cause for complaint against its nominal masters in Congress. The I.R.S.'s director of taxpayer services, Robert LeBaube, spoke out in 1989: "Since 1976 there have been 138 public laws modifying the Internal Revenue Code. Since the Tax Reform Act of 1986 there have been 13 public laws changing the code, and in 1988 alone there were seven public laws affecting the code." As Bovard notes but does not explain, "Tax law is simply the latest creative interpretation by government officials of the mire of tax legislation Congress has enacted. I.R.S. officials can take five, seven, or more years to write the regulations to implement a new tax law--yet Congress routinely changes the law before new regulations are promulgated. Almost all tax law is provisional--either waiting to be revised according to the last tax bill passed, or already proposed for change in the next tax bill."

What is this great busyness and confusion all about? Well, corporations send their lawyers to Congress to make special laws that will exempt their corporate profits from unseemly taxation: this is done by ever more complex--even impenetrable--tax laws which must always be provisional as there is always bound to be a new corporation requiring a special exemption in the form of a private bill tacked on to the Arbor Day Tribute. Senators who save corporations millions in tax money will not need to spend too much time on the telephone begging for contributions when it is time for him--or, yes, her--to run again. Unless--the impossible dream--the cost of elections is reduced by 90 percent, with no election lasting longer than eight weeks. Until national TV is provided free for national candidates and local TV for local candidates (the way civilized countries do it), there will never be tax reform. Meanwhile, the moles at the I.R.S., quite aware of the great untouchable corruption of their congressional masters, pursue helpless citizens and so demoralize the state.

It is nicely apt that the word "terrorist" (according to the O.E.D.) should have been coined during the French Revolution to describe "an adherent or supporter of the Jacobins, who advocated and practiced methods of partisan repression and bloodshed in the propagation of the principles of democracy and equality." Although our rulers have revived the word to describe violent enemies of the United States, most of today's actual terrorists can be found within our own governments, federal, state, municipal. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (known as A.T.F.), the Drug Enforcement Agency, F.B.I., I.R.S., etc., are so many Jacobins at war against the lives, freedom, and property of our citizens. The F.B.I. slaughter of the innocents at Waco was a model Jacobin enterprise. A mildly crazed religious leader called David Koresh had started a commune with several hundred followers--men, women, and children. Koresh preached world's end. Variously, A.T.F. and F.B.I. found him an ideal enemy to persecute. He was accused of numerous unsubstantiated crimes, including this decade's favorite, pedophilia, and was never given the benefit of due process to determine his guilt or innocence. David Kopel and Paul H. Blackman have now written the best and most detailed account of the American government's current war on its unhappy citizenry in No More Wacos: What's Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It.

They describe, first, the harassment of Koresh and his religious group, the Branch Davidians, minding the Lord's business in their commune; second, the demonizing of him in the media; third, the February 28, 1993, attack on the commune: 76 agents stormed the communal buildings that contained 127 men, women, and children. Four A.T.F. agents and six Branch Davidians died. Koresh had been accused of possessing illegal firearms even though he had previously invited law-enforcement agents into the commune to look at his weapons and their registrations. Under the Freedom of Information Act, Kopel and Blackman have now discovered that, from the beginning of what would become a siege and then a "dynamic entry" (military parlance for all-out firepower and slaughter), A.T.F. had gone secretly to the U.S. Army for advanced training in terrorist attacks even though the Posse Comitatus Law of 1878 forbids the use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement. Like so many of our laws, in the interest of the war on Drugs, this law can be suspended if the army is requested by the Drug Law Enforcement Agency to fight sin. Koresh was secretly accused by A.T.F. of producing methamphetamine that he was importing from nearby Mexico, 300 miles to the south. Mayday! The army must help out. They did, though the charges against drug-hating Koresh were untrue. The destruction of the Branch Davidians had now ceased to be a civil affair where the Constitution supposedly rules. Rather, it became a matter of grave military necessity: hence a CS-gas attack (a gas which the U.S. had just signed a treaty swearing never to use in war) on April 19, 1993, followed by tanks smashing holes in the buildings where 27 children were at risk; and then a splendid fire that destroyed the commune and, in the process, the as yet uncharged, untried David Koresh. Attorney General Janet Reno took credit and "blame," comparing herself and the president to a pair of World War II generals who could not exercise constant oversight... the sort of statement World War II veterans recognize as covering your ass.

Anyway, Ms. Reno presided over the largest massacre of Americans by American Feds since 1890 and the fireworks at Wounded Knee. Eighty-two Branch Davidians died at Waco, including 30 women and 25 children. Will our Jacobins ever be defeated as the French ones were? Ah... The deliberate erasure of elements of the Bill of Rights (in law as opposed to in fact when the police choose to go on the rampage, breaking laws and heads) can be found in loony decisions by lower courts that the Supreme Court prefers not to conform with the Bill of Rights. It is well known that the Drug Enforcement Agency and the I.R.S. are inveterate thieves of private property without due process of law or redress or reimbursement later for the person who has been robbed by the state but committed no crime. Currently, according to Kopel and Blackman, U.S. and some state laws go like this: whenever a police officer is permitted, with or without judicial approval, to investigate a potential crime, the officer may seize and keep as much property associated with the alleged criminal as the police officer considers appropriate. Although forfeiture is predicated on the property's being used in a crime, there shall be no requirement that the owner be convicted of a crime. It shall be irrelevant that the person was acquitted of the crime on which the seizure was based, or was never charged with any offense. Plainly, Judge Kafka was presiding in 1987 (United States v. Sandini) when this deranged formula for theft by police was made law: "The innocence of the owner is irrelevant," declared the court. "It is enough that the property was involved in a violation to which forfeiture attaches." Does this mean that someone who has committed no crime, but may yet someday, will be unable to get his property back because U.S. v. Sandini also states firmly, "The burden of proof rests on the party alleging ownership"?

This sort of situation is particularly exciting for the woof-woof brigade of police since, according to onetime attorney general Richard Thornburgh, over 90 percent of all American paper currency contains drug residue; this means that anyone carrying, let us say, a thousand dollars in cash will be found with "drug money," which must be seized and taken away to be analyzed and, somehow, never returned to its owner if the clever policeman knows his Sandini.

All across the country high-school athletes are singled out for drug testing while random searches are carried out in the classroom. On March 8, 1991, according to Bovard, at the Sandburg High School in Chicago, two teachers (their gender is not given so mental pornographers can fill in their own details) spotted a 16-year-old boy wearing sweatpants. Their four eyes glitteringly alert, they cased his crotch, which they thought "appeared to be 'too well endowed.'"

He was taken to a locker room and stripped bare. No drugs were found, only a nonstandard scrotal sac. He was let go as there is as yet no law penalizing a teenager for being better hung than his teachers. The lad and his family sued. The judge was unsympathetic. The teachers, he ruled, "did all they could to ensure that the plaintiff's privacy was not eroded." Judge Kafka never sleeps.

Although drugs are immoral and must be kept from the young, thousands of schools pressure parents to give the drug Ritalin to any lively child who may, sensibly, show signs of boredom in his classroom. Ritalin renders the child docile if not comatose. Side effects? "Stunted growth, facial tics, agitation and aggression, insomnia, appetite loss, headaches, stomach pains and seizures." Marijuana would be far less harmful.

The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was not unlike Pearl Harbor, a great shock to an entire nation and, one hopes, a sort of wake-up call to the American people that all is not well with us. As usual, the media responded in the only way they know how. Overnight, one Timothy McVeigh became the personification of evil. Of motiveless malice. There was the usual speculation about confederates. Grassy knollsters. But only one other maniac was named. Terry Nichols; he was found guilty of "conspiring" with McVeigh, but he was not in on the slaughter itself.

A journalist, Richard A. Serrano, has just published One of Ours: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. Like everyone else, I fear, I was sick of the subject. Nothing could justify the murder of those 168 men, women, and children, none of whom had, as far as we know, anything at all to do with the federal slaughter at Waco, the ostensible reason for McVeigh's fury. So why write such a book? Serrano hardly finds McVeigh sympathetic, but he does manage to make him credible in an ominously fascinating book.

Born in 1968, McVeigh came from a rural family that had been, more or less, dispossessed a generation earlier. Father Bill had been in the U.S. Army. Mother worked. They lived in a western-New York blue-collar town called Pendleton. Bill grows vegetables; works at a local G.M. plant; belongs to the Roman Catholic Church. Of the area, he says, "When I grew up, it was all farms. When Tim grew up, it was half and half."

Tim turns out to be an uncommonly intelligent and curious boy. He does well in high school. He is, as his defense attorney points out, "a political animal." He reads history, the Constitution. He also has a lifelong passion for guns: motivation for joining the army. In Bush's Gulf War he was much decorated as an infantryman, a born soldier. But the war itself was an eye-opener, as wars tend to be for those who must fight them. Later, he wrote a journalist how "we were falsely hyped up." The ritual media demonizing of Saddam, Arabs, Iraqis had been so exaggerated that when McVeigh got to Iraq he was startled to "find out they are normal like me and you. They hype you to take these people out. They told us we were to defend Kuwait where the people had been raped and slaughtered. War woke me up."

As usual, there were stern laws against American troops fraternizing with the enemy. McVeigh writes a friend, "We've got these starving kids and sometimes adults coming up to us begging for food.... It's really 'trying' emotionally. It's like the puppy dog at the table; but much worse. The sooner we leave here the better. I can see how the guys in Vietnam were getting killed by children." Serrano notes, "At the close of the war, a very popular war, McVeigh had learned that he did not like the taste of killing innocent people. He spat into the sand at the thought of being forced to hurt others who did not hate him any more than he them."

The army and McVeigh parted once the war was done. He took odd jobs. He got interested in the far right's paranoid theories and in what Joel Dyer calls "The Religion of Conspiracy." An army buddy, Terry Nichols, acted as his guide. Together they obtained a book called Privacy, on how to vanish from the government's view, go underground, make weapons. Others had done the same, including the Weaver family, who had moved to remote Ruby Ridge in Idaho. Randy Weaver was a cranky white separatist with Christian Identity beliefs. He wanted to live with his family apart from the rest of America. This was a challenge to the F.B.I. When Weaver did not show up in court to settle a minor firearms charge, they staked him out August 21, 1992. When the Weaver dog barked, they shot him; when the Weavers' 14-year-old son fired in their direction, they shot him in the back and killed him. When Mrs. Weaver, holding a baby, came to the door F.B.I. sniper Lon Horiuchi shot her head off. The next year the Feds took out the Branch Davidians.

For Timothy McVeigh, the A.T.F. became the symbol of oppression and murder. Since he was now suffering from an exaggerated sense of justice, not a common American trait, he went to war pretty much on his own and ended up slaughtering more innocents than the Feds had at Waco. Did he know what he was doing when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City because it contained the hated bureau? McVeigh remained silent throughout his trial. Finally, as he was about to be sentenced, the court asked him if he would like to speak. He did. He rose and said. "I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, 'Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.'" Then McVeigh was sentenced to death by the government.

Those present were deeply confused by McVeigh's quotation. How could the Devil quote so saintly a justice? I suspect that he did it in the same spirit that Iago answered Othello when asked why he had done what he had done: "Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: from this time forth I never will speak word." Now we know, too: or as my grandfather used to say back in Oklahoma, "Every pancake has two sides."

-------- spying

Top-Secret Agency Breaks 'Silence'

By Ron Kampeas
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, May 15, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010515/aponline144522_000.htm

FORT MEADE, Md. -- Once, the National Security Agency insignia, a bald eagle perched on a skeleton key, surveyed a barren terrain of top-secret letterhead, its forbidding stare known only to a privileged few.

Now, it spreads its wings over teddy bears, tie-dye shirts and nail-trimmers sold to tourists, part of an effort to let Americans get a glimpse of what the nation's premier eavesdropping agency does.

Competing with a dozen other agencies for intelligence dollars, the largest and most secretive of them wants to spread the word about itself - without revealing too much.

Most of its work - absorbing intelligence gathered from spy-plane flights like those near China, for example - is still plenty hush-hush.

But its openness around the edges is a departure for the 49-year-old organization jokingly called "No Such Agency" and perhaps best known for efforts not to be known at all.

"It's changed all right," said author James Bamford. Twenty years ago he faced threats of prosecution for publishing NSA-related documents; recently he faced a crowd of agents at his book launch on the NSA campus.

"Instead of putting me in jail," he said, "they're throwing me a book party."

The NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, accelerated the change after his 1999 appointment, perhaps most dramatically by making public two lacerating reports on agency deficiencies.

"There are some things that we can say, that we ought to say," he commented in an unusual interview with the History Channel.

The end of the Cold War led some to question the need for a national eavesdropper and subjected intelligence budgets generally to a harder look.

"Like everyone else in the intelligence community, the NSA is being forced to reveal more than it wants to about itself," said Norman Polmar, who wrote "Spy Plane: The U2 History," an NSA-related exploit gone wrong.

The internal NSA reports released by Hayden said that "ineffective leadership" and "our insular, somewhat arrogant culture and position" had led Congress to cut money to the agency, which gets the largest share of the $30 billion intelligence budget.

Openness only goes so far. A European Union team angrily left the United States last week when NSA and CIA officials refused to meet with its members. The team is investigating whether the United States engages in economic espionage.

NSA agents were once what snoops called "top secret famous" - nameless shadows celebrated only among the select few in the intelligence community.

Their coups were legion: Agency eavesdropping allowed President Kennedy to learn Soviet bluff lines during the Cuban missile crisis, and the NSA's Berber linguists linked Libyan agents to the 1986 bombing of a German discotheque that killed a U.S. soldier.

But in recent years, the progenitor of information technology in the 1950s has been lagging behind Silicon Valley.

In January 2000, the NSA's overtasked computers shut down for three days.

Hayden slashed staff - the agency now has 38,000 - and hired outside contractors. Last year, Congress increased intelligence funding by 7 percent.

To be sure, sleight-of-hand tics persist at the NSA. Gift shop purchases appear on credit card statements credited to a mysterious Civilian Welfare Fund.

The NSA museum, vaunted as the hallmark of its new openness, concentrates on World War II codebreaking.

"It's an outstanding tool in helping people understand what the NSA is about without getting into some of the problematic issues," said agency historian Patrick Weadon.

"It's too much about war," complained Sandro Dallaturca, a Belgian banking encryptologist who had been looking forward to learning about encoding techniques.

Missy Spiegl, 15, whose father works for the NSA, thought the museum might give her some family insights.

"I've been trying for years to get out of my dad what he does, but I can't," she said.

Inside the agency, change has been palpable.

The NSA has farmed out some research, allowed an ex-agent to publish an account of how he redesigned an internal communications system and cooperated on Bamford's book, a largely sympathetic history of the agency by an author who favors more spending on intelligence technology.

That may have been an astute move on the NSA director's part, Polmar said. "Honey catches more than a fly swatter."

Spreading suburbs have brought neighbors close to the agency's long-isolated campus. After a few mishaps - including a SWAT-team swoop on a real estate photographer - the NSA reached out to the community.

"They are the hidden powerhouse of the county," said Janet Owens, Anne Arundel County leader. She's thrilled the NSA recently enticed General Dynamics to build a local plant.

Staffers once forbidden to say where they worked now lead one of the nation's largest blood drives. NSA firemen train local volunteers in how to contain a chemical attack.

There's the after-school tutoring: Linguists monitor drug traffickers by day and teach Spanish by night; code-cracking mathematicians walk teens through logarithms.

And there's a 4-year-old park commemorating the 152 people who have died in service to the agency and country.

"I am military intelligence and I am always out front ... always," reads the plaque.

-------

TREASON HUNT Spying on the spies
Counterintelligence experts say privacy rules hamper their work

By Toby Westerman,
WorldNetDaily.com
May 15, 2001
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22818

U.S. spy cops are hampered by privacy restrictions in their efforts to stem the activities of Russian agents working in the United States, according to counterintelligence experts, who deem the foreign operatives a "severe danger to the national security of this country."

The statements were made by counterintelligence specialists addressing a Heritage Foundation Forum, "Espionage in the New Millennium," held last week and telecast on the C-SPAN network.

Attempts to thwart the activities of foreign intelligence officers working in the U.S. are often hindered by laws dating back to the 1970s and 80s, which were initially designed to safeguard the privacy of U.S. citizens.

As a result, counterintelligence agents are restrained from opening mail, even if sent to a known foreign agent, and severe restrictions are placed upon U.S. agents' use of wiretaps, according to Herbert Romerstein, author and head of the Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation at the U.S. Information Agency from 1983 to 1989.

Romerstein is the author of "The Venona Secrets," an examination of the super-secret operation to counter Soviet espionage in the U.S. during World War II and in the post-World War II era.

Referring to the case of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, accused of spying for the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federation, Romerstein stated that, "the Hanssen case couldn't be broken through standard intelligence methods."

Hanssen's file was removed from Russian intelligence and physically transferred to the U.S., Romerstein reminded his audience. It is generally acknowledged that the FBI's investigation of Hanssen was based upon his Russian file.

"I knew Bob Hanssen," Romerstein said, describing the accused spy as "a very interesting, very, very smart man." Hanssen "knew every strength, every weakness of the FBI's counterintelligence program," Romerstein stated.

Hanssen's knowledge of FBI procedures and legal restraints on the agency enabled him to send stolen secrets through the mail without fear of detection, according to Romerstein.

In Romerstein's estimation, Hanssen caused such severe damage to the U.S. intelligence network, that he should be executed if he does not actively cooperate with U.S. authorities to repair, to some degree, that damage.

Although severely restricted in funding, the SVR -- the foreign intelligence successor to the KGB -- is able to recruit "the best of the best" from Russian universities who "know precisely what they want," according to Stanislav Levchenko, a participant in the forum and former KGB senior officer who defected in 1979.

Levchenko stated that Russian intelligence today has little need for large numbers of agents in "residences" -- base facilities from which intelligence agents plan and carry out their operations. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian intelligence now seeks to use the increased number of Russians who are able to come to the U.S. and attempt to utilize them in intelligence operations.

The SVR also cooperates with the "Russian Mafia," which Levchenko describes as "the most vicious criminal organization in the world." According to Levchenko, the SVR and the "Russian Mafia" are "getting united" -- pooling their efforts and resources. "The larger part of the Mafia," Levchenko said, "is running the state."

Russian intelligence also gains important information from those doing business in Russia, including consultants, journalists and lecturers. According to Levchenko, the practice of using foreign visitors to Russia for intelligence purposes goes back to the time of Lenin.

The intelligence threat to the U.S. is not, however, limited to traditional "cloak and dagger" activities.

In an interview with WorldNetDaily, Kirk Reagan Menendez, deputy executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, stated that the Russian and Chinese agents based in Lourdes, Cuba, are intercepting cell phone, e-mail and other methods of electronic communications in the U.S.

Menendez, who has been monitoring the on-going "Wasp Network" spy case in Miami, told WND that the testimony of prosecution witnesses in court confirmed the electronic surveillance activities in Lourdes, which are directed at civilian as well as military targets.

The "Wasp Network" refers to a group of Cuban agents operating in the United States who attempted to obtain sensitive military information for Havana. The FBI eventually broke the ring, and the ensuing trial has continued since last year.

The Cuban-American exile community remains of prime interest for Cuban surveillance.

Various sources have pointed to a large, sophisticated electronic surveillance -- and warfare -- presence in Cuba, employing Russian, Chinese and Cuban operatives.

----

Beijing gets voice data from plane

May 15, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010515-76611809.htm

China´s government learned important U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities from the downed U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane, including that U.S. eavesdroppers can identify individual Chinese military officers by the sound of their voices, The Washington Times has learned.

Defense officials with access to classified reports said the Chinese did not know about the U.S. intelligence community´s ability to recognize individual voices from intercepted communications until after they began studying the EP-3E and its equipment.

The aircraft has been held on Hainan island since it made an emergency landing April 1. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday told a Cable News Network interviewer that the resolution of the impasse could be reached in the next several days.

He said: "I´m quite sure that in the next few days we will find a way to resolve this that will be satisfactory to both sides. I´m quite confident we will resolve this issue and get our airplane back. We´re in serious conversations with the Chinese."

But as the dispute continues, so have revelations about the U.S. electronic spying capabilities.

Chinese government officials first learned of the identification technique after some 100 intelligence technicians from Beijing were sent to study the craft at Lingshui air base, where the EP-3E has been stranded.

The U.S. plane is still on Hainan island, and it is still the object of contention and a diplomatic standoff between the U.S. and China. The United States prefers to repair and fly the craft home. The Chinese insist it cannot be flown away.

CBS News reported last night that the Pentagon is proposing to cut the wings off the EP-3E and then load the pieces onto a large transport transport aircraft, either a U.S. C-5 or a foreign-owned Russian Il-76. The Pentagon had no immediate reaction.

Pentagon sources who requested anonymity have explained that military and civilian linguists have been trained to distinguish among individual "targets" of electronic eavesdropping and to make the voice identifications. Doing so requires that the linguists have very clear communications, free of static or other noises, and that is something advanced U.S. eavesdropping equipment has achieved.

The EP-3E that was captured contained some of the U.S. intelligence community´s most modern intercept gear and was one of several EP-3Es recently outfitted with the new equipment.

The aircraft recently got what the Pentagon calls a Sensor System Improvement Program that integrates tactical communications, electronic-support measures and a special signal processing and exploitation system.

The plane also was fitted with a new airborne signals intelligence-gathering system installed as part of an upgrade program called the Joint Signals Intelligence Avionics Family Block Modernization (JMOD). The system helps improve the onboard processing of electronic communications and signals intercepted during flight.

Much of the equipment on the aircraft was destroyed by the crew after the collision. However, the Chinese obtained a cache of classified documents, officials said. The captured documents are believed to have revealed the sophistication of the U.S. intelligence-gathering capability, according to officials familiar with recent U.S. intelligence assessments of what the Chinese military learned from the downed aircraft.

The information the Chinese gleaned from the aircraft is expected to make it more difficult for special U.S. planes, ships and satellites to gather data on Chinese political and military targets, Pentagon officials said.

They said the Chinese could equip their radio and telephonic equipment with filtering and masking devices to frustrate U.S. eavesdropping.

"This will make it harder to collect, no question," said one official.

Another U.S. intelligence official explained it is the linguists and technicians of the National Security Agency, the Pentagon´s electronic spying service, who are able to identify the voices of foreign officials whose conversations are intercepted. For example, they learned to identify Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi when he was speaking on Libya´s communications net.

And back in the 1970s, the NSA was able to listen to the mobile telephone conversations of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev as he rode through Moscow in his limousine. "The NSA people are very good," the official said. "They could tell whether Brezhnev or someone else in the car belched."

James Bamford, author of a new book on the National Security Agency, "Body of Secrets," said the U.S. intelligence community has been able to identify specific voices from communications for many years.

"Interceptor operators can even tell when someone has a cold," Mr. Bamford said, noting that many times operators who listen to intercepted communications have photographs of the people they secretly eavesdrop on.

It´s not likely that what the Chinese have learned about U.S. spying capabilities has eased their objections to U.S. intelligence gathering near their coasts. In fact, they are repeating demands for an end to all surveillance flights as a infringement of their sovereignty.

Nonetheless, the flights have resumed, with an RC-135 jet carried out the first reconnaissance flight since such the April 1 collision

--------

Top - Secret Agency Breaks 'Silence'

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-No-Such-Agency.html?searchpv=aponline

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) -- Once, the National Security Agency insignia, a bald eagle perched on a skeleton key, surveyed a barren terrain of top-secret letterhead, its forbidding stare known only to a privileged few.

Now, it spreads its wings over teddy bears, tie-dye shirts and nail-trimmers sold to tourists, part of an effort to let Americans get a glimpse of what the nation's premier eavesdropping agency does.

Competing with a dozen other agencies for intelligence dollars, the largest and most secretive of them wants to spread the word about itself -- without revealing too much.

Most of its work -- absorbing intelligence gathered from spy-plane flights like those near China, for example -- is still plenty hush-hush.

But its openness around the edges is a departure for the 49-year-old organization jokingly called ``No Such Agency'' and perhaps best known for efforts not to be known at all.

``It's changed all right,'' said author James Bamford. Twenty years ago he faced threats of prosecution for publishing NSA-related documents; recently he faced a crowd of agents at his book launch on the NSA campus.

``Instead of putting me in jail,'' he said, ``they're throwing me a book party.''

The NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, accelerated the change after his 1999 appointment, perhaps most dramatically by making public two lacerating reports on agency deficiencies.

``There are some things that we can say, that we ought to say,'' he commented in an unusual interview with the History Channel.

The end of the Cold War led some to question the need for a national eavesdropper and subjected intelligence budgets generally to a harder look.

``Like everyone else in the intelligence community, the NSA is being forced to reveal more than it wants to about itself,'' said Norman Polmar, who wrote ``Spy Plane: The U2 History,'' an NSA-related exploit gone wrong.

The internal NSA reports released by Hayden said that ``ineffective leadership'' and ``our insular, somewhat arrogant culture and position'' had led Congress to cut money to the agency, which gets the largest share of the $30 billion intelligence budget.

Openness only goes so far. A European Union team angrily left the United States last week when NSA and CIA officials refused to meet with its members. The team is investigating whether the United States engages in economic espionage.

NSA agents were once what snoops called ``top secret famous'' -- nameless shadows celebrated only among the select few in the intelligence community.

Their coups were legion: Agency eavesdropping allowed President Kennedy to learn Soviet bluff lines during the Cuban missile crisis, and the NSA's Berber linguists linked Libyan agents to the 1986 bombing of a German discotheque that killed a U.S. soldier.

But in recent years, the progenitor of information technology in the 1950s has been lagging behind Silicon Valley.

In January 2000, the NSA's overtasked computers shut down for three days.

Hayden slashed staff -- the agency now has 38,000 -- and hired outside contractors. Last year, Congress increased intelligence funding by 7 percent.

To be sure, sleight-of-hand tics persist at the NSA. Gift shop purchases appear on credit card statements credited to a mysterious Civilian Welfare Fund.

The NSA museum, vaunted as the hallmark of its new openness, concentrates on World War II codebreaking.

``It's an outstanding tool in helping people understand what the NSA is about without getting into some of the problematic issues,'' said agency historian Patrick Weadon.

``It's too much about war,'' complained Sandro Dallaturca, a Belgian banking encryptologist who had been looking forward to learning about encoding techniques.

Missy Spiegl, 15, whose father works for the NSA, thought the museum might give her some family insights.

``I've been trying for years to get out of my dad what he does, but I can't,'' she said.

Inside the agency, change has been palpable.

The NSA has farmed out some research, allowed an ex-agent to publish an account of how he redesigned an internal communications system and cooperated on Bamford's book, a largely sympathetic history of the agency by an author who favors more spending on intelligence technology.

That may have been an astute move on the NSA director's part, Polmar said. ``Honey catches more than a fly swatter.''

Spreading suburbs have brought neighbors close to the agency's long-isolated campus. After a few mishaps -- including a SWAT-team swoop on a real estate photographer -- the NSA reached out to the community.

``They are the hidden powerhouse of the county,'' said Janet Owens, Anne Arundel County leader. She's thrilled the NSA recently enticed General Dynamics to build a local plant.

Staffers once forbidden to say where they worked now lead one of the nation's largest blood drives. NSA firemen train local volunteers in how to contain a chemical attack.

There's the after-school tutoring: Linguists monitor drug traffickers by day and teach Spanish by night; code-cracking mathematicians walk teens through logarithms.

And there's a 4-year-old park commemorating the 152 people who have died in service to the agency and country.

``I am military intelligence and I am always out front ... always,'' reads the plaque.

--------

Accused Spy Hanssen Indicted Soon

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FBI-Accused-Spy.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawyers for Robert Hanssen said they expect the former FBI counterintelligence agent to be indicted Wednesday on charges of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia.

Hanssen's lawyers and federal prosecutors had been in plea bargain discussions. Hanssen's lawyers said Tuesday the talks stalled because prosecutors demanded to know what Hanssen would tell them about his alleged 15 years of spying for Moscow before they would rule out seeking the death penalty.

The government offered to extend the discussions for 30 days, but Hanssen's lawyers declined.

``We expect he will be indicted Wednesday'' on 21 counts of espionage and other charges, said Plato Cacheris, a Hanssen attorney.

``We felt they had more than enough time to resolve the issue of the death penalty,'' said Cacheris. ``We do not think the death penalty is justified.''

Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden declined to comment.

A preliminary hearing in the Hanssen case is scheduled for Monday, the deadline for federal prosecutors to hand down an indictment.

Hanssen was arrested Feb. 18 at a Virginia park where prosecutors said he left a package containing intelligence documents, allegedly for his Russian handlers.

The FBI has accused Hanssen, 56, a 25-year veteran agent and father of six, of passing along to Soviet and later Russian agents 6,000 pages of documents on secret programs that described how the U.S. gathers intelligence, technologies used for listening, people who work as double agents and other highly sensitive matters.

The government has asserted that Hanssen's activities began in 1985 and continued until he was arrested.

In exchange for the secrets, Hanssen was paid about $1.4 million in cash and diamonds, officials say.

The FBI began investigating Hanssen only last year. He has been held in jail at an undisclosed location.

-------- activists

RADIOACTIVE ROADS & RAILS ACTION OF THE MONTH - MAY 2001

Date: Tue, 15 May 2001
From: "Lisa Gue" <LISA_GUE@citizen.org>

Remind your Governor to consider transportation concerns when assessing nuclear dump proposal!

On May 4, the Department of Energy (DOE) sent letters to the Governors and Legislatures of every state, inviting their comments on a possible recommendation of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for development as a nuclear waste repository.

The Yucca Mountain Project, if approved, would launch an unprecedented nuclear transportation scheme, with 77,000 tons high-level radioactive waste from commercial reactors and atomic weapons facilities passing through 43 states, within half a mile of 50 million Americans. Transporting high-level waste is risky business, but the DOE has not detailed its plans for shipping waste to Yucca Mountain, and public concerns have not been addressed.

TAKE ACTION!

Write to your Governor and ask him/her to raise transportation concerns with the DOE. Urge your Governor to withhold support for the Yucca Mountain repository proposal until these concerns have been addressed. See sample letter following.

Find the address of your Governor online at www.nga.org/governors/1,1169,C_GOV_ADDRESS,00.html.

Copy letters to:

Carol Hanlon S&ER Products Manager U. S. Department of Energy Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office P.O. Box 30307 M/S 025 North Las Vegas, NV 89036-0707 or online at www.ymp.gov/timeline/ser/comment_ser.htm

Your Congressmember U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Find names and e-mail addresses at www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.htm

Your Senators U.S. Senate Washington, DC 20510 Find names and e-mail addresses at www.senate.gov/contacting/index.cfm

SAMPLE LETTER

The Honorable [Name of Governor] Governor The State of X [Address]

[Date]
Dear Governor X:

The Department of Energy (DOE) has invited your comments on its consideration of a possible recommendation of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for development as a permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste. I urge to consider the many unanswered questions about the transportation scenario for shipping waste from reactor sites across the country to Nevada, and to raise these issues with the Secretary of Energy.

The Yucca Mountain Project, if approved, would launch an unprecedented nuclear transportation scheme, with 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste shipments passing through 43 states, within half a mile of 50 million Americans. Likely transportation routes through our state include [see www.ymp.gov/timeline/eis/routes/routemaps.htm].

As the DOE rushes to recommend Yucca Mountain for development as a nuclear repository, many concerns remain about the suitability of site itself. In addition, many issues related to the large scale transportation of high-level waste through our state have not been addressed. Approximately 11,000 comments - more than half related to transportation concerns - were submitted on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Yucca Mountain Project, but the DOE has yet to respond.

Transporting high-level nuclear waste is inherently dangerous because it elevates the risk of radiological release and disperses this risk along transportation routes where our emergency response personnel may lack the training and equipment necessary to respond effectively to a radiological accident. Yet the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Yucca Mountain Project deals inadequately with the transportation scenario. For example, the DOE has not specified which routes would be used for Yucca Mountain shipments or whether the waste would travel by train or by truck, and has not identified a clear process for making these decisions.

The canisters that would be used to transport nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain have not been subjected to physical testing, and computer models rely on outdated testing parameters. Unanswered questions remain about the risk of sabotage and liability in the case of an accident. Even without an accident, nuclear waste transportation canisters routinely emit the equivalent of one chest x-ray per hour of harmful radiation. Also, property values have been shown to decline along nuclear waste shipment routes.

Please ask the DOE to address these transportation issues before finalizing a site recommendation. I urge you to withhold support for the Yucca Mountain repository proposal until these concerns have been addressed and the feasibility of transporting nuclear waste to Nevada has been adequately assessed.

Sincerely,
[Your name & address]
c.c. Carol Hanlon, DOE U.S. Representative U.S. Senators

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VIEQUES SUPPORTERS ARRESTED AT THE UNITED NATIONS

Protesters Condemn U.S. Navy's on-going violations of human rights on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico

Tuesday May 15, 2001.
U. N. Headquarters- New York, NY.

Vieques Support campaign http://palfrente.tripod.com E-mail viequessc@hotmail.com

At approximately 11:45 this morning, 28 Vieques supporters were arrested at the United Nation's headquarters in New York City in protest of the United States' Navy's stated intention to resume bombings within the next sixty days, on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. The peacefully assembled group of demonstrators engaged in this act of civil disobedience, in an effort to call on the U.N. to fulfill it's stated mission and "respond to serious violations of human rights", as mandated by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Organized by the David Sanes Rodriguez Brigade, protesters believe that the issue of human rights violations in Vieques represent one of the many reasons why the United States no longer deserves a place within the OHCHR.

For 61 years, the people of the Puerto Rican municipality of Vieques- made U.S. citizens by an act of the U.S. Congress-have been subjected to the expropriation of their lands, forced migration and expatriation, bombings and the destruction of the island's economy, natural resources and environment, at the hands of the United States Navy.

The U.S. government denies the impact of bombing practices in Vieques, and justifies its actions as essential to the U.S. national security. Yet, while the U.S. Navy's presence and practices have destroyed the island's key industries (fishing, agriculture, and cattle-ranching), the Navy employs only 30 of the island's 9400 local residents. Today, there exists an unemployment rate of almost 50%, and 72% of the island residents live below the poverty level, according to conservative estimates.

More startling is that the children of Vieques are born, and its people live, condemned to the slow and painful torture of preventable, painful and deadly diseases. For over sixty years, Navy bombings have produced toxic levels of lead and cadmium contamination. The Navy's admitted use of tons of explosives, uranium shells, and napalm has led to an island-wide cancer rate which exceeds that of the Puerto Rico's main island by 27%, according to Puerto Rico Department of Health. Other diseases such as lukemia, scleroderma, lupus, thyroid deficiencies and asthma plague the island residents in much higher rates than the Puerto Rican nation as a whole. Every bomb dropped on the practice range further spreads the contamination.

The David Sanes Rodriguez Brigade engages in this act of civil disobedience in solidarity with the people of Vieques and all the hundreds of people who have risked their freedom and their very lives, in order to put an end to the bombing and bring genuine peace to Vieques.

MEDIA CONTACTS: David Sanes Rodriguez Brigade 917-626-5847

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French Activists Briefly Stop German Nuclear Train

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-france-.html?searchpv=reuters

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - French anti-nuclear protesters briefly stopped a train transporting nuclear waste from Germany to a reprocessing plant in northern France on Tuesday.

About 40 protesters hurled red smoke generators, used by railway workers to order train drivers to stop, as the train passed near the eastern town of Strasbourg, causing the convoy to halt for a few minutes.

Two Euro MPs from the French Green Party, Alima Boumediene and Helene Flautre, took part in the protest.

Demonstrators had also slowed the train's passage across Germany. But the protests were minor compared to the riots in March that greeted the first return shipment in three years of reprocessed German waste from France.

The transport of the so-called Castor containers with around 54 spent fuel rods should reach the reprocessing plant at La Hague, northern France, on Wednesday morning.

The train is the second to transport German nuclear waste to France since the two countries agreed to resume such convoys in January after a two-year break.

Last month a train carrying nuclear waste from three southern German nuclear plants destined for La Hague was briefly held up near the French border after two women activists chained themselves to the tracks.

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Protests Mark Atomic Waste Shipment

New York Times
May 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Germany-Nuclear-Waste.html?searchpv=aponline

BERLIN (AP) -- A train carrying nuclear waste from two north German power plants was on its way to a French reprocessing plant Tuesday after police cut free two protesters who had chained themselves to the track.

Six activists were detained following the overnight protest near the power plant at Stade, police said. The two protesters, who had attached themselves to a pipe that ran under the tracks, delayed the transport by about 30 minutes.

A second load of waste set off from a plant at nearby Brunsbuettel without incident, and the two trains were coupled together south of the city of Hamburg for the journey to the reprocessing plant at La Hague, in western France.

Two groups of about 40 protesters each blocked the tracks and caused brief delays to the train near the town of Lueneburg as it headed south, and about a dozen people were taken into custody, police said.

Police reported no major protests as the train traveled toward western Rhineland-Palatinate state, then crossed into France in the early evening.

Germany sends spent nuclear fuel from its power plants to France for reprocessing under contracts that oblige it to take back the resultant waste.

Nuclear waste shipments in Germany resumed in March after a three-year break imposed by the previous German government when radiation leaks were found in some containers.

The government lifted the ban last year, citing improved safety standards.

German anti-nuclear activists staged massive demonstrations in March to disrupt the first shipment, when German waste was returned from France. They delayed it by 18 hours.

In April, activists turned out in force in an attempt to disrupt waste shipments to reprocessing plants in France and Britain.

The government last year struck a deal to scrap the country's 19 nuclear plants, though the shutdown likely will take decades to complete.

The protesters want Germany's plants shut down faster and say shipments are unsafe. They aim to make the transports so costly that the government and power companies will be forced to stop them.


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