------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Nagasaki Residents Mark Bombing
Letter to the United Nations
Senate Leader to Challenge Bush on Missile Defense
Jiang Dodges Query on Missile Shield
U.S., Russia End Round of Talks On Missiles, Prepare for Another
Russian Doubts U.S. Missile Defense
Russia Shows Footage of Kursk
Plutonium Plan Faces Overhaul
U.S. to Make First Payment in Death Tied to an A-Plant
Sick Nuclear Workers Receive Checks
What About the Other Radiation Victims?
Hodges vows to block plutonium shipments
Remarks by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle:

MILITARY
Putin Signs Decree to Control Biological Weapons
Israel Prepares Massive Blow Against Palestinians
Navy Ends Vieques Exercises
Russia Offers to Fill in for NASA
Rumsfeld Near Deadline for Reshaping the Military
Cracks Found in F - 22 Fighter Plane
Pentagon Not Pleased With Missiles
Pentagon's 2-War Plan in Retreat Defense:
In 'army of one,' restless soldiers just desert
For Military Retirees, Some 'Better' Benefits

OTHER
Justice plans to pay for DNA tests
Army Corps Moves to Ease Wetlands Rules
Bush to Announce Stem Cell Research Decision
Cholesterol Drug Taken Off Market
Indigenous Peoples Organize at United Nations
Top FBI Officials Facing Inquiry
Spy-tech touts its protection
Ruling in Oregon Halts Federal Undercover Probes

ACTIVISTS
Mexico's Poor Rally Against Fox's Policies
Catholic Priest Arrested at Protest
Environment Gets New Consultant




-------- NUCLEAR

-------- japan

Nagasaki Residents Mark Bombing

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Nagasaki-Anniversary.html?searchpv=aponline

TOKYO (AP) -- Nagasaki residents paused Thursday to remember the dropping of an atom bomb that killed as many as 70,000 people in the world's second nuclear assault.

Standing near where the bomb exploded, participants at Nagasaki's Peace Park bowed their heads Thursday, many clasping their hands in prayer as a bell rang out and an air-raid siren filled the skies with its plaintive cry.

``The citizens of Nagasaki have continuously struggled to realize a 21st century free from nuclear weapons,'' Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito, an outspoken opponent of weapons of mass destruction, said in a speech. ``Nevertheless, no fewer than 30,000 nuclear warheads still exist on our planet, and the nuclear threat is today on the verge of expanding into space.''

In the annual ceremony, a crowd of attendants observed 60 seconds of silent prayer at 11:02 a.m. -- the time a U.S. plane dropped the so-called ``Fat Man'' bomb. City officials estimated the number of participants at 4,500, while more people were expected to visit the park throughout the day.

A bomb dropped on Hiroshima three days before the Nagasaki attack killed about 140,000 people. An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 people gathered Monday in Hiroshima to commemorate the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing there.

Nagasaki is about 600 miles southwest of Tokyo on the main southern island of Kyushu. Hiroshima is 430 miles southwest of the capital.

Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, bringing World War II to an end.

In an address, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi promised to press for the speedy enactment of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- a 1996 agreement that would prohibit all test explosions of nuclear weapons as well as other nuclear explosions.

``We will aggressively appeal to other countries for their cooperation in carrying this out,'' Koizumi said.

So far, 160 countries have signed the 1996 treaty and 67 of them have ratified it. But the United States has been reluctant to ratify and -- eager to beef up its missile-defense program -- appears ready to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow.

The Nagasaki and Hiroshima ceremonies are among a series of poignant services held every summer to recall the final days of World War II.

In late June, residents on Okinawa gather at the ``Cornerstone of Peace'' park to venerate the quarter of a million people who died in a decisive 1945 battle on the southern Japanese island -- one of the bloodiest campaigns in the war.

According to the nationwide Asahi newspaper, Koizumi is one of only a few prime ministers to have attended all three memorial services while in office.

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Letter to the United Nations and the Member States Governments
We Call for the Start of Negotiations on a Treaty Totally Banning and Eliminating Nuclear Weapons, Without Delay

World Conference Against A & H Bombs
Nagasaki, August 9, 2001
http://www.twics.com/~antiatom/ab/e01wc/Naga/e-govltr.htm

We, participants from all over Japan and 20 other countries, assembled at the first World Conference against A and H Bombs of the 21st century, send this letter to the United Nations and each of its member States Governments in the hope that a nuclear weapon-free world will be swiftly achieved.

The NPT Review Conference held in the final year of the 20th century, agreed by consensus, including the nuclear weapons states, on an "unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals". The UN Millennium Assembly, supporting the "unequivocal undertaking", adopted resolutions calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. This shows that the call of the atomic bomb sufferers, that "the error of the 20th century must not be repeated in the 21st century" has been widely embraced by the international community.

However, some nuclear weapons states are still motivated to maintain and modernize their nuclear forces. The so-called missile defense program intended to reinforce "nuclear deterrence", weaponization of outer space, and the attempt to hamper the CTBT entering into force are in contravention of their promise to eliminate nuclear weapons. Threatening the world with overwhelmingly destructive nuclear forces and putting narrow national interests above global concerns is incompatible with the international order based on peace and justice, established by the UN Charter.

Recalling that the "the elimination of atomic weapons from national arsenals" was set forth in the first resolution of the UN General Assembly as a fundamental principle, we call on the UN and each of its member states Governments to swiftly put into action the "unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals". For this, consultations and negotiations on a treaty totally banning and eliminating nuclear weapons must be started without delay. We therefore propose that a decision to start such negotiations be adopted by the coming UN General Assembly and other negotiating bodies.

-------- missile defense

Senate Leader to Challenge Bush on Missile Defense

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By ALISON MITCHELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/09/international/09DASC.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader, plans to continue his challenge to President Bush on missile defense by accusing the president of taking a "single-minded approach" to national security, according to an advance text of a speech Mr. Daschle is to deliver on Thursday.

The South Dakota Democrat argued in the speech that Mr. Bush's policies increase the risk of nuclear weapons spreading to countries that do not now have them and uses money that ought to be spent on more pressing security threats.

Mr. Daschle's remarks, to be made in a speech to the Woodrow Wilson Center , are part of an effort by prominent Democrats to portray Mr. Bush as a unilateralist. They set the stage for a struggle in September when Senate committees, under the control of Democrats, begin considering Mr. Bush's request for $343.3 billion for military programs for the new fiscal year, including $8.3 billion for missile defense.

Trying to paint Democrats as more responsive than Mr. Bush to the broader needs of the American military, Mr. Daschle said the $8.3 billion would represent a 57 percent increase for missile defense, at the expense of other security programs.

"We support an increase in both the Pentagon budget and in missile defense," he said, according to an advance text of the speech. "But a 57 percent increase this year - along with the prospect of hundreds of billions of dollars in future years - would cannibalize the personnel and force structure that deal with the threats we are likely to face."

Last month Mr. Daschle, who as the Senate majority leader is now the most powerful Democrat in Washington, was rebuked by the White House for calling Mr. Bush's foreign policy isolationist just as the president was embarking on an overseas trip. Republicans accused Mr. Daschle of ignoring the maxim that "politics stops at the water's edge.

But Mr. Daschle has not backed off. Noting that the administration has recently found fault with six international agreements, he said, "Instead of asserting our leadership, we are abdicating it."

With the cold war over, he argued, "Fear of a common enemy no longer keeps our allies by our side. Our allies will follow us only if we use our unparalleled strength and prosperity to advance common interests. Only then will our power inspire respect instead of resentment."

As Democrats have stepped up such charges, the president's senior advisers have replied that the administration would apply the standard of American national interest in determining whether to support or reject international accords.

In the case of global warming, administration officials say, for example, that the pact would endanger the American economy and harm global financial health. On relations with Russia, the administration has stated that the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty is outdated and stands in the way of coupling historic reductions in nuclear arsenals with a new defense against ballistic missiles.

While Mr. Daschle said in the text of his speech that Democrats could under "the right circumstances," support a limited missile defense system, he accused Mr. Bush of putting far too much emphasis on a defense shield and of looking at complex relationships with Russia and China through the distorting prism of missile defense alone.

"What else could explain for example, President Bush's personal embrace of Russia's president Vladimir Putin - while avoiding any public mention of Putin's crackdown on Russia's free press and their continuing atrocities in Chechnya?" he said.

Setting the stage for a battle over Pentagon priorities, Mr. Daschle described the chief threats to the United States as coming not from intercontinental ballistic missiles, but from "biological and chemical weapons and bombs that could be smuggled in a cargo container, bus or backpack" as well as attacks on such infrastructure as computer systems.

"National missile defense," Mr. Daschle said, "is the most expensive possible response to the least likely threat we face."

His speech cited a list of tradeoffs that could be made if Congress provides the missile defense program with only a 10 percent increase in the next fiscal year, freeing up $2.5 billion for other programs that he says will address "more imminent, more immediate threats."

Among his recommendations were restored funding to help Russia control and destroy nuclear weapons, training for emergency workers to deal with chemical or biological attack, an increased counterterrorism budget, reinforced border patrols, increased research into cruise missile defense, and funding to help control North Korea's nuclear fuel production and re-engage it on ending its missile program.

"These are all here and now threats," he said, "and we could fund all of these programs at levels necessary to start addressing them without shortchanging our troops, the weapons systems they rely on or missile defense."

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Jiang Dodges Query on Missile Shield
Senator Indicates Plan Isn't 'Compelling Issue' for China

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 9, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52106-2001Aug9?language=printer

BEIJING, Aug. 9 (Thursday) -- President Jiang Zemin took a softer tone on China's long-standing opposition to U.S. plans to build a missile defense system during a two-hour meeting with a group of U.S. senators on Wednesday, the head of the delegation said today.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he asked Jiang how China would react if the Bush administration reached an agreement with Russia that would allow it to build the proposed missile shield without violating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Instead of insisting that he would still be opposed to the missile plan, which could neutralize China's limited nuclear arsenal, Jiang avoided answering the question directly and spoke in general terms about the post-Cold War world, Biden said.

"I don't think it's the highest thing on their agenda," Biden said. "It just didn't seem to be the compelling issue for them at the moment."

Jiang's remarks came less than three weeks after President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Italy and agreed to work toward a new agreement that would reduce nuclear weapons on both sides while allowing the United States to build the missile shield.

Russia and China have been the most vocal critics of Bush's plan to protect the United States from a nuclear attack with missile defenses, and the two countries signed a pact in July voicing their joint opposition to the proposal. But if Bush persuades Moscow to accept the missile shield, China could be isolated. Jiang's answer seemed to reflect uncertainty on China's part about how it would proceed in that case.

Defense Minister Chi Haotian took a harder line during a separate meeting with the senators, telling them that there were "no grounds" for developing the missile defense shield, according to the official New China News Agency. Chi said the system would be "detrimental to trust among nations around the world."

Biden and three other senators -- Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) -- also pressed China on the recent detentions of U.S. citizens and permanent residents and on allegations that China is supplying missile technology to countries such as Pakistan and North Korea.

Jiang responded by insisting that China was abiding by the letter of all its commitments on arms proliferation, the senators said. But asked about alleged shipments to Pakistan and North Korea, the Chinese president went out of his way to emphasize China was not providing any missile technology to North Korea, the senators said.

"He wanted to be emphatic that it would be a bad development for Korea to gain the ability to launch missiles," Biden said.

Pressed on the detentions of U.S. citizens and residents, Jiang surprised the senators by immediately acknowledging the shortcomings of China's legal system. Specter said the president also agreed to his suggestion that the two countries explore a new agreement that would specify the legal rights of U.S. citizens detained in China.

Jiang spoke at length about his worries about the Chinese economy, describing how China is struggling to reconcile its efforts to embrace technology and build a market economy with the resulting unemployment and social unrest, the senators said.

The senators said they were struck by Jiang's answer to a question about how he pictured China and the world nearly two decades from now. Jiang described a prosperous nation at peace, but then added, in English, "Maybe I'm being naive."

--------

U.S., Russia End Round of Talks On Missiles, Prepare for Another

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 9, 2001; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50722-2001Aug8?language=printer

U.S. and Russian defense officials yesterday wrapped up two full days of talks at the Pentagon on ballistic missile defenses and possible cuts in both nations' nuclear arsenals, setting the stage for consultations next week in Moscow between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.

One senior defense official described the talks as "an exchange of information, more than an exchange of views." The official, who asked not to be named, said delegations of about 10 members apiece discussed "offensive and defensive systems and the broader framework for cooperation that President Bush and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin have envisioned."

The U.S. delegation was led by Douglas J. Feith, a lawyer recently confirmed as undersecretary of defense for policy. Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, first deputy chief of Russia's general staff, led the other delegation.

Bush and Putin announced last month in Genoa, Italy, that they had agreed to link discussions on ballistic missile defenses with large cuts in the massive arsenals of offensive nuclear warheads that both countries have maintained since the end of the Cold War. Meeting on the last day of a summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations, the two leaders issued a statement calling for "intensive consultations on the interrelated subjects of offensive and defensive systems."

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice met with Putin and other top Russian officials four days later in Moscow and laid out a schedule for continuing talks. They included this week's meetings at the Pentagon and Rumsfeld's trip next week to Moscow.

The discussions in both capitals are designed to set the stage for talks between Bush and Putin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Shanghai in October, followed by a meeting in November at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex.

Rumsfeld has said the Bush administration has no immediate intention of violating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in pursuing its ambitious missile defense plan, expressing a hope that a new security framework can be negotiated in talks with the Russians. The treaty prohibits the construction of national missile defenses.

Putin has said Russia remains deeply committed to maintaining the ABM Treaty as a cornerstone in the nations' security and arms control relationship.

Putin has challenged the Bush administration to engage in arms control talks aimed at reducing each side's nuclear arsenal to 1,500 warheads. U.S. officials have yet to indicate how deeply they are willing to cut the U.S. nuclear force, which numbers about 6,500 warheads.

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Russian Doubts U.S. Missile Defense

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- After two days of U.S.-Russia talks at the Pentagon, the head of Moscow's delegation said he doubts that America can build even in the distant future a missile defense system that will work.

Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky spoke to reporters Thursday about his deliberations, which ended the day before, on Bush administration proposals to lift treaty restrictions on missile defenses and reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.

``In the very distant future, we will not be able to solve the problems'' of building a system that will work all the time, Baluyevsky said in a news conference at the Russian Embassy.

``I am convinced that the future generations will arrive at a different conclusion, a more simple conclusion'' on how to defend themselves rather ``than building such a system,'' he said through an interpreter.

The talks Tuesday and Wednesday were intended to prepare for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's meetings in Moscow next week with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. Baluyevsky said the two sides indeed had prepared an agenda for the Moscow meeting.

The administration wants an accommodation on missile defense soon with the Russians because the Pentagon has said the program is due to come into conflict with treaty restrictions by early next year. In the spring, the Pentagon may start construction of underground silos for missile interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska.

The Bush administration is committed to developing and deploying a nationwide defense against long-range missiles, but it has not persuaded Moscow to scrap or amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty that prohibits such defenses. The Russians' position has been that breaching the ABM treaty would unravel the fabric of arms control, including treaties reducing offensive nuclear forces.

At their summit meeting in Italy last month, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to discuss the ABM treaty and missile defense issues in the context of additional cuts in nuclear forces.

Asked if he came away from this week's meetings with a clear idea of just when the United States will violate the treaty, Baluyevsky said: ``Are you absolutely sure they will violate it?''

``Let's not jump the gun,'' he said. Consultations began only late last month, he said, ``and are continuing on diplomatic and military tracks.''

-------- russia

Russia Shows Footage of Kursk

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Submarine.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- Divers using special drills and chains will start slicing off the mangled front section of the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk on Aug. 12, exactly one year after the disaster that destroyed the huge vessel and killed 118 Russian seamen, officials said Thursday.

The Russian Navy released video footage of the underwater preparations to lift the Kursk from the Barents Sea floor next month. The video, shot Aug. 2 and shown on Russian television stations Thursday, showed divers' hands maneuvering outside the stricken submarine and amid a mass of wires and pipes between its inner and outer hulls.

It also showed the process of removing pieces of hull, as well as cables and systems that Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said were in the fifth compartment, which contains the Kursk's nuclear reactors. Russian officials insist there is no risk that the reactors will be damaged in the risky operation to raise the vessel, scheduled for mid-September.

Before the submarine is lifted, divers will cut off the front section, which Russian officials say may contain unexploded torpedoes. That section will be left on the sea floor, though Russian officials say they may raise it later.

Dygalo said divers will start the cutting Aug. 12, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The Kursk plunged to the sea bottom after explosions during exercises on Aug. 12, 2000. All 118 men aboard were killed. A memorial service is to be held on the anniversary Sunday at the Kursk's home base in the port of Vidyayevo.

On Thursday, divers continued cutting holes the Kursk's double hull, to which steel cables will be attached to raise the submarine. The cables will be connected to hydraulic lifting devices anchored to a giant barge, which is to bring the Kursk to the Arctic port of Murmansk.

The cause of the explosions remains unclear. Russian officials say it could have been prompted by a collision with a World War II mine or a Western submarine, though outside experts believe it was likely an internal malfunction.

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

Plutonium Plan Faces Overhaul

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Suplus-Plutonium.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Energy Department is revamping a Clinton-era plan to dispose of 50 metric tons of surplus plutonium amid cost overruns, prompting threats from South Carolina's governor to block shipments into the state.

An Energy Department report, made public Thursday by a private group, concludes that the cost of disposing of the plutonium will be at least $6.6 billion over 22 years, about 50 percent more than estimated two years ago.

At the same time, the Bush administration has put on hold part of the program that called for some of the plutonium to be put in glass logs for eventual burial at the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository in Nevada, once that facility is approved.

That decision has brought complaints from South Carolina officials who are concerned that the department will ship tons of plutonium from its weapons facilities into the state for processing with no assurance the material will ever leave the state.

``When South Carolina agreed to accept plutonium ... DOE agreed that there would a clear exit strategy,'' South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges said recently.

Hodges, a Democrat, said the ``shifting nature'' of the government's plutonium disposition strategy suggests that the Energy Department ``plans to renege on many of its prior commitments'' to the state.

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who talked with Hodges earlier this week, is eager to resolve the dispute.

In 1999, the Clinton administration announced a ``dual strategy'' for getting rid of the excess plutonium from Cold War-era warheads and plutonium found at various weapons facilities. Under the plan, 33 metric tons would be converted into a mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel for burning in civilian power reactors. Another 17 metric tons, thought too impure for conversion would be immobilized in glass containers and eventually buried in Nevada.

But earlier this year, the administration stopped funding the immobilization program and announced the entire plutonium disposal plan was being reviewed.

Abraham said that it was too expensive to pursue both programs and that the department would focus for now on building the MOX conversion facilities at the Savannah River complex. He suggested that the immobilization track would be resumed later.

But South Carolina officials fear that might never happen.

``The dual track was an essential component of our agreement,'' insists Hodges, pledging that if he is not assured of a ``timely exit strategy'' he would block shipments into the state -- raising the specter of a standoff with federal officials.

Years ago, Idaho's governor dispatched the highway patrol and set up roadblocks to keep nuclear spent fuel shipments out of that state until a settlement was reached with the Energy Department.

Meanwhile, an Energy Department report released Thursday by the Nuclear Control Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group involved in nuclear nonproliferation issues, showed the cost of the program has grown from about $4.4 billion in 1999 to $6.6 billion over its 22-year life.

``This shows a massive cost escalation,'' said Tom Clements, the group's executive director, adding it calls into question the MOX option which represents most of the increase. The institute opposes using plutonium for civilian reactors and argues all of it should be put in glass to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation.

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

U.S. to Make First Payment in Death Tied to an A-Plant

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/09/national/09NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - A year and a half after the government admitted that nuclear weapons production had sickened or killed workers, Elaine L. Chao, the secretary of labor, plans to make the first compensation payment on Thursday.

But despite a new law, for thousands of victims there is as yet no money and no procedure in place, because the Energy Department has not finished writing regulations; many will die before receiving compensation, experts say.

Ms. Chao plans to go to Paducah, Ky., to present the widow of Joe Harding - a worker at the uranium enrichment plant there who died of gastrointestinal cancer in 1980 - with a $150,000 check, coincidentally on the 56th anniversary of the last atomic bombing, of Nagasaki.

The case is one of the few clear-cut parts of the compensation program, because beyond three workers' groups specified by Congress, no one knows the number of exposed workers, or the extent of their exposure to radiation and toxic substances, or even the extent to which those exposures are responsible for their illnesses.

"These are the easy cases," said Dr. David M. Michaels, a former assistant secretary of energy who is now a consultant to the Labor Department. A law enacted in October creates the presumption that certain illnesses were work-related for employees at three uranium enrichment plants, of which Paducah is the only one still operating; or at a variety of plants that processed beryllium, a metal used in nuclear weapons that is toxic when inhaled; or at the Nevada Test Site, near Las Vegas, or on Amchitka Island, in the Aleutians.

Workers in groups not identified by the legislation are eligible only for a chance at state workers' compensation benefits. For years the Atomic Energy Commission and its successor, the Energy Department, told their contractors to fight workers' claims. And those state programs, mostly geared to more obvious damage, like back injury, hearing loss or loss of a limb on the job, hardly ever found in favor of workers.

Under the October law, the Energy Department is to appoint panels of doctors to review such cases, to estimate the radiation doses and to decide whether the illness is more likely than not to have come from the worker's exposure to radiation. But the panels are only now being formed and the regulations have not been written; the department hopes to have both in place by November.

No one knows how many people are eligible.

"These are people who incurred diseases in the last 60 years, since the beginning of the Manhattan Project," said Shelby Hallmark, director of the office of workers' compensation programs at the Labor Department. "A lot of those individuals, obviously, have died. There may not be an eligible survivor to pursue a claim."

One prevalent disease among such workers, Mr. Hallmark said, is cancer. Officials will have to try to calculate the extent of exposure to radiation or chemicals over the years of employment, and then the probability that the exposure caused the disease.

One person who would be eligible for a state program, if he lives long enough, is Tim Gannon, a former process operator at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, in Ohio. As a worker in one of the enrichment plants, Mr. Gannon, 41, is to receive a payment under the federal program, but unlike workers' compensation, that payment would not cover past medical expenses - now more than $100,000 - and future expenses.

Mr. Gannon, who worked at the plant for nearly 20 years, received a diagnosis of cancer of the colon, liver, rectum and kidney two years ago. His wife, Angie, who quit her job at a supermarket to care for him, said in a telephone interview, "The federal government is willing to acknowledge their wrongdoing, and willing to settle, but the Department of Energy, they don't want to do anything."

Under the Ohio statute of limitations, Mr. Gannon will soon be ineligible to apply for workers' compensation.

A spokeswoman for the Energy Department said the department had accelerated its rule making.

But the chairwoman of a Worker Advocacy Advisory Committee set up by the Energy Department, Emily A. Spieler, said, "The Energy Department is not in position to tell them whether they have conditions that would be compensable, and it has not yet set up a system that would pay compensation.

The government estimates that 650,000 people worked directly for the Atomic Energy Commission or the Energy Department or its contractors, most of them at government-owned weapons plants, but many more worked for subcontractors, often at other locations.

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Sick Nuclear Workers Receive Checks

By Lori Burling
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, August 9, 2001; 12:52 PM
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54234-2001Aug9?language=printer

PADUCAH, Ky. -- With knees trembling, Clara Harding clutched a $150,000 benefit check Thursday as U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao presented the first payment from a compensation program for sick nuclear workers.

"I haven't slept in three days, and I was up at 4 a.m. this morning," said Harding. Her husband, Joe, died more than 20 years ago after being exposed to toxic levels of uranium at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

The Department of Labor began accepting claims on July 31. The $150,000 lump-sum payments will go to former workers who have certain types of cancer and who worked at the plant before 1992. If the worker has died, the money will go to a surviving spouse, and, in some cases, to surviving children.

"There is no more poignant example of how people can transform their trials into triumphs than the tender story of Joe and Clara Harding," Chao said after the presentation.

Before Joe Harding died of cancer in 1980, his bones were found to contain up to 34,000 times the expected concentration of uranium. Yet while he lived, he was denied compensation because official records showed he was only exposed to small levels of radiation.

However, his widow and daughter, Martha Alls, continued to fight after his death.

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What About the Other Radiation Victims?

Thursday, August 9, 2001; Page A18
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51421-2001Aug8?language=printer

President Bush has signed into law a bill to compensate radiation victims in Utah, Nevada and Arizona for cancers that may have resulted from exposure to radiation from nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and '60s [news story, July 27].

Those at risk for this cancer were children at the time of the tests. But victims from the states that received the highest estimated radiation exposure -- Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana -- are ineligible for any compensation. My family lived in several states that received the highest per capita doses of radiation, and my brother, my sister and I are all being treated for thyroid cancer.

Perhaps this could be one area in which the White House and the Senate could reach consensus: that all thyroid cancer victims who lived in states that received radiation from nuclear weapons testing facilities be fairly compensated.

HOLLY MULLANEY
Stephenson, Va.

-------- south carolina

Hodges vows to block plutonium shipments

By James T. Hammond
CAPITAL BUREAU
Thursday, August 9, 2001 - 8:08 pm
http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2001/08/09/2001080910202.htm

COLUMBIA - Gov. Jim Hodges is making war plans to do battle with the United States of America.

"If it is necessary for me to lie down in front of the trucks, I'll do that. We're going to do whatever it takes," Hodges said Thursday as he began planning for Highway Patrol troopers to possibly stop federal plutonium shipments from entering South Carolina.

Hodges ordered state Public Safety Director Boykin Rose, saying, "I am ordering you to evaluate options for highway roadblocks or other measures to keep this action from occurring. We must be prepared to stand up to Washington."

The governor said U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham failed to reassure him the bomb-grade nuclear material won't be stored at the Savannah River Site indefinitely.

When asked about the governor's threat to put troopers at the state line to block the shipments, he responded: "The legacy of this facility is one of working together. That's what I want to do. I'm certain that's what the governor wants to do as well. Our goal will be to accomplish things together in a favorable way."

Abraham visited the plant near Aiken on Thursday, shook a lot of hands and assured SRS employees they remain a vital part of America's arsenal of democracy.

But the Republican Cabinet officer refused to commit to the long-term disposal strategy that the Democratic governor said is necessary for the governor to agree to accepting the material this month from Rocky Flats, Colorado. That federal facility is being closed.

"If it takes going to federal court, we'll do that," Hodges also said as he drew the line in the sand in what could be a toe-to-toe standoff with the federal government.

"Once the plutonium from other states arrives in South Carolina, it will no longer be an issue of concern for other states. We will be left holding the proverbial bag," Hodges said in his order to Rose.

Hodges said he fears the Bush administration has reneged on President Clinton's plans to consolidate the nation's 30 to 40 tons of surplus plutonium in the Savannah River Site, then either convert it to commercial nuclear fuel or "immobilize" it for permanent storage elsewhere.

Either strategy aims to make the material useless for nuclear weapons production. About 15 pounds of plutonium is used in the typical nuclear weapon.

Abraham visited the 300-square-mile federal nuclear facility that for a half-century has produced components for nuclear weapons. He toured the tritium facility that keeps that vital element fresh in nuclear weapons. And he reassured the 13,000 employees in a short speech that the facility will remain a focal point of federal cutting-edge science and engineering for years to come.

The federal government spends about $1.2 billion annually at SRS. But the Bush administration has called for more than $100 million in budget cuts that Hodges and U.S. Sen. Ernest Hollings say will delay permanent disposition of the plutonium indefinitely.

Hodges fears the Bush administration aims to move all the plutonium from sites in Texas, Idaho, Washington, Tennessee, and other states and concentrate it in South Carolina. The Democratic governor said such a move would eliminate all of South Carolina's political allies on plutonium disposal and allow federal authorities to leave the material in the state indefinitely.

When asked after his speech whether he is committed a long-term plan to remove the plutonium from Savannah River Site to another permanent storage site, Abraham remained evasive.

"We've had good discussions today with Hank Stallworth from the Governor's Office, and I talked to the governor earlier this week. I think these discussions can be productive," Abraham said.

When asked whether he intended to delay shipment of the plutonium from Rocky Flats, Abraham said, "Our plans are to work together with all the interested parties and to get the job done across the board."

Abraham noted that DOE has pledged to accelerate shipments of transuranic waste - plutonium-contaminated clothing, tools and other debris - from SRS to New Mexico.

"I think our record of meeting those commitments, which were sought for a long time, should be a good indication of our plans for the future," Abraham said.

Abraham also was non-committal about calling for the opening of a permanent nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. That state's congressional representatives have so far blocked opening the facility to the nation's radioactive waste, despite billions of dollars already spent to prepare and test the facility.

"We are about to begin analyzing the science there. My job is to do that objectively, so I don't have a pre-thought-out position. We'll take the science and go from there," Abraham said.

Hodges' threats of roadblocks and court action come from the playbook of former Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus, who in 1988 banned shipments of spent nuclear fuel from U.S. Navy ships to a federal facility in Idaho.

Andrus persuaded a federal judge to require an environmental impact study. When Gov. Phil Batt lifted Andrus' ban in 1995, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe parked their police cars in the path of trains bearing the nuclear waste shipments across their Fort Hall Reservation.

---

Hodges' letter to the Department of Public Safety

Posted Thursday, August 9, 2001

State of South Carolina Office of the Governor
Jim Hodges Governor
Post Office Box 11829
Columbia 29211

FROM: Governor Jim Hodges
TO: Boykin Rose, Director, Department of Public Safety
DATE: Thursday, August 9, 2001

As you know, the U.S. Department of Energy plans to ship plutonium from around the nation to South Carolina in the next few weeks.

Several years ago, we worked out an arrangement with the DOE that would have insured the temporary presence of plutonium at SRS while being either immobilized or converted, followed by pre-scheduled shipment to another location for final disposal. Recent actions by DOE cause great concern that temporary storage may turn into long term, or even permanent, storage. In addition, the promised plans for conversion of plutonium are in a constant state of flux.

Once the plutonium from other states arrives in South Carolina, it will no longer be an issue of concern for other states. We will be left holding the proverbial bag.

We cannot allow the federal government to jeopardize the health and safety of our citizens by shipping plutonium on our roads. We will not allow the health and safety of our citizens to be threatened by storage of plutonium without a definitive timetable for conversion and disposition in another state.

For this reason, I am ordering you to evaluate options for highway roadblocks or other measures to keep this action from occurring. We must be prepared to stand up to Washington.

My hope is the federal government will come to its senses and allow us to avoid this step, but we cannot take a chance.

-------- us politics

[On March 14, 2002, I was one of a small delegation of activists who met with Randy DeValk, aide to Senator Tom Daschle]

Remarks by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle:
Re-engaging the World - A New Century of American Leadership

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Thursday, August 9, 2001

From: Randy_DeValk@daschle.senate.gov (Randy DeValk)

First, let me thank Lee Hamilton for inviting me to be here today. We miss Lee's voice tremendously in Congress, but we are grateful to have it as a continuing part of the public debate.

I also want to note that being here is a good metaphor for what I'm about to say, because if the Woodrow Wilson Center can peacefully exist and thrive in the Ronald Reagan building, then we really can bridge any difference that divides us.

Before I begin, I just want to check on one thing -- President Bush is currently within the continental United States, correct? You can never be too careful.

On a more serious note, the Constitution outlines an important role for the U.S. Senate in foreign policy. I take that role seriously, and believe that the national interest is best served through an open, cordial, and honest debate about the direction of our foreign policy. I hope to further that goal today

The United States begins this century at a place unique in the history of the world. By any measure, the scope of our power and influence are unmatched.

With a GDP in excess of $10 trillion, our economy is larger than that of the next four largest nations combined. American innovation not only has yielded American prosperity, but fuels the engine of global growth and technological change.

Our military expenditures now are larger than those of all other countries combined. We are the only nation on the earth able to project power in every region of the earth. Consider this: B-2s stationed in Missouri flew halfway around the world to help bring an end to the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and returned home... without stopping to land.

The reach of American power is perhaps superceded only by the reach of American culture. In 1995, more than half of all the royalties and licensing fees in the world were paid to Americans. Our movies, music and media are everywhere -- the Senate may never hold confirmation hearings on Mickey Mouse, the Microsoft butterfly, or Madonna, but in many ways, they are seen as our ambassadors to the world.

At the same time we have achieved dominance, we are also confronted with the reality of truly global interdependence. By 2004, one billion people will be surfing the World Wide Web. The result is an exchange of ideas and information never before known.

I have seen the power of that exchange of information myself. For example, a few years ago, I visited Albania as part of a Congressional delegation.

While I was there, I found myself talking to a man in his early 30s.

He told me that, when he was a boy, if someone had a television with an antenna and they turned it to face the sea to receive uncensored information from Italy, police would come to their house and turn the antenna around.

For years, the Albanian government was able to keep its people shut off from the rest of the world. But as information about the changes sweeping across Central Europe crept in -- the people of Albania turned their eyes, their hearts, and, yes, their television antennas toward democracy.

Albania's road since then has been a rocky one, but in that story is a new global truth: when people live in places where human potential is unrealized, they look toward democracy. In an increasingly interconnected world, we must help them find it.

Those two trends in history + U.S. dominance and global interdependence -- would seem, in some sense, to be contradictory. Standing alone, we are stronger than ever before. And yet we are more vulnerable in more ways than ever before.

That is our paradox -- a nation as susceptible to an explosives-laden skiff as it is to a nuclear weapon... A nation that can be attacked by a single terrorist, or the rising tide of global warming... A computer virus, or a biological one... A nation unrivaled in its economic strength, but whose strength is increasingly tied to the economic and political stability of the rest of the world.

These contradictions create a number of challenges + some as old as the human race, and some as new as our newest technologies. But all demand our vigilance, and all demand our leadership.

First, we need to maintain the military strength and superiority we now enjoy, while preparing our military to meet the threats of tomorrow. This is our first obligation as public servants.

Second, we need to multiply our own strength by maintaining strong, solid relations with our allies.

Third, we need to recognize that it is in our national interest to help our former adversaries like Russia and China build pluralistic societies tied to the West.

Fourth, we must continue to be an active force for peacemaking from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, to the Balkans.

Fifth, we need to confront a new breed of global challenges: proliferation, terrorism, AIDS and infectious disease, and global warming.

And sixth, we need to maintain leadership in the global economy, expand trade, and deal with the growing economic disparities that arise from it.

And we must do all of these while recognizing that, in the wake of the President's nearly two-trillion-dollar tax cut, we now have limited budgetary resources at our disposal to do all of this.

In confronting these challenges, we face three options: We can act alone, we can act in concert with a handful of others, or we can try to bring together broad coalitions.

There are, to be sure, times when our national interest will compel us to go it alone. When President Reagan bombed Libya in 1986, when we retaliated against Saddam Hussein in 1993 or Osama Bin Laden in 1999, we were properly exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We should continue to do so when circumstances demand it, and our goals are advanced by it.

But many of the challenges we face, and most of the new challenges that are emerging, are global in nature and demand a global response.

Take proliferation, for example. We've made positive strides in the past several years. We've eliminated nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. We negotiated and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention and stopped North Korea's production of nuclear fuel. And we saw countries like Brazil give up their missile programs.

However, these successes must not breed complacency. India and Pakistan have joined the club of states possessing nuclear weapons. Some believe North Korea may have as well. Iraq, Iran, and Libya are trying to develop nuclear weapons. Russia still has the material and know-how to produce 60,000 nuclear weapons. At least a dozen countries have offensive biological weapons programs, and at least sixteen states have active chemical weapons programs.

And these numbers represent only states, never mind the non-state actors who may be pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

Remember, it did not take a long-range missile to deliver lethal force to the USS Cole, to the World Trade Center, to our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or to disperse sarin gas in the Tokyo subway.

As the bipartisan Baker-Cutler task force recently concluded, "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States is the danger that weapons of mass destruction, or weapons-usable material, could be stolen or sold to terrorists and used against American troops abroad or civilians at home."

No less threatening + and no less demanding of our international leadership + is the global pandemic of AIDS. To date, AIDS has infected 36 million people worldwide. In the 64 days since I became Majority Leader, one million people have been infected, and over 350,000 have died in Africa alone.

For many countries around the world, AIDS is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is a security crisis -- because it threatens the very institutions that define and defend the character of a society.

This disease weakens workforces and saps economic strength. AIDS strikes at teachers, and denies education to their students. It strikes at the military, and subverts the forces of order and peacekeeping -- and what has happened to many countries in Africa could well happen to others if current rates of infection continue unchecked.

No border can keep AIDS out, and no border is a sufficient barrier from the responsibility to fight it. Here is an international effort where President Bush has recognized that America has an obligation to lead. But it's not enough to simply get it, we need to get it done.

I'm proud that the U.S. was the first contributor to the Global AIDS Trust Fund. In the Senate we were able to include an additional $100 million for the trust fund this year, and in a bill now working its way through the Senate, we've added another $450 million in the fight against AIDS for the coming fiscal year.

These are important, but still insufficient, steps in our effort to confront and ultimately defeat this terrible disease.

Certainly, the Administration is right to state that our proper response to whatever threats we face must be determined on a case-by-case assessment of our national interests. But more often than not, we have a better chance to advance our national interests if we are in the game, rather than on the sidelines.

Two weeks ago in Bonn, Japan showed the world the benefit of being in the game -- emerging from a historic 180-nation international climate change accord as a hero and a leader.

In the final agreement, Japan won significant concessions, and left Bonn with their national interests strengthened in exchange for joining the international process. By contrast, our delegates were literally booed out of Bonn.

On six separate occasions in just six months, the Administration has demonstrated a willingness to walk away from agreements that were embraced by many of our closest friends and allies, and broadly supported by the international community:

- The Kyoto Protocol; - The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;

- A measure to create an International Criminal Court;

- The Biological Weapons Protocol;

- A global agreement to curb illicit sales of small arms and light weapons; and

- The Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty

Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of each of these individual agreements. I don't think reasonable people can ignore the consequences of tearing up each one.

Instead of asserting our leadership, we are abdicating it. Instead of shaping international agreements to serve our interests, we have removed ourselves from a position to shape them at all.

The Administration seems to have forgotten an essential fact of today's global age. With the Cold War over, fear of a common enemy no longer keeps our allies by our side. Our allies will follow us only if we use our unparalleled strength and prosperity to advance common interests. Only then will our power inspire respect instead of resentment.

If we continue down this path, our allies will be forced to fill the void we leave, not necessarily with our interests uppermost in their minds.

It is not enough, as President Bush has suggested, simply to send U.S. officials to international meetings... Woody Allen wasn't talking about foreign policy when he said that "85 percent of life is just showing up."

Of course, these problems did not begin with President Bush's inauguration.

In many ways, as the world's only superpower, we must accept that they come with the territory. Remember, our allies weren't so enthusiastic about President Clinton calling America the "indispensable nation."

But these problems have intensified so much, and so quickly, that I fear our allies may be tempted to treat us as a dispensable nation.

There's another way, a better way. And it's not a new idea, and it's not a partisan one either. I think President Nixon summed it up best: "Free-world leadership," he said, "does not mean dictatorship to the free world. It means consultation with the free world and developing from the leaders of the free world the best possible thinking that we can develop for attacking our common problems."

American leadership in this new world begins by maintaining and modernizing the alliances we already have.

The President took a significant step last month by acknowledging the importance of our participation in the NATO-led effort to prevent the resurgence of violence in Southeastern Europe.

I also believe that we need to adapt the NATO of today to the Europe of tomorrow. We encourage and support NATOs efforts to expand this important alliance. In addition, we welcome our European allies' plans to increase their collective defensive capabilities. My hope is that the actual resources will match their intentions + and that this effort will be made in concert with NATO.

We need to build on the progress we have made in Asia with our friends in Japan and South Korea.

We should stand with South Korean leader Kim Dae Jong as he pursues realistic engagement policies with the North, and not undercut him in this effort.

We need to work with our friends in Mexico, as well as address issues of concern throughout Latin America, including the promotion of democracy, human rights and the fight against poverty.

We need to work with the nations of Africa, to promote democratic reform, transparent institutions of leadership, and economic growth.

And while we recognize that U.S. troops are not the world's policemen, we must also recognize that it is sometimes in our national interest to project our power for peace -- so long as we also solve the riddle of how to effectively support the efforts of others to build the economic and political institutions that sustain peace when it is time for our peacekeepers to leave.

We have to strengthen the capacity of the UN and regional organizations to develop an international cadre of economic advisors and civilian police that can replace peacekeepers. And we have to do a better job of training the trainers, as we recently did in Nigeria, so that regional militaries can help bring peace to regional conflicts.

Finally, we must reach out in a clear-eyed way to those powers in transition that were once our adversaries + Russia and China.

The 20th Century, in many ways, was the story of our triumph over two great and pernicious adversaries + Nazism and Communism. Today, we do not need a great adversary to be a great country.

Unfortunately, some don't accept this reality, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, they would like to see China take its place. I believe we need to take a more nuanced view.

China is a nation at a crossroads. Today, China is in the midst of sweeping economic reform. Although democracy is growing at the local level, China still has a sordid record on human rights, and still has not guaranteed the right to worship, speak, or choose one's leaders.

The release of our visiting scholars, while welcome news, was not an exception. The arrest and release of Americans is hostage diplomacy, not a sign of improvement in the way China treats its people.

So the question for the U.S. is not whether we approve of everything China does - we don't.

The question is how to get China to embrace the norms of international behavior - including the rule of law.

Not by abandoning the kind of frank and open exchange that allows us to raise our differences in the first place.

Not by trying to isolate a nation with 1.2 billion people and a nuclear arsenal capable of reaching targets in the United States.

And not by turning our backs on what could develop into one of the largest economies on the planet.

We have to engage China ?? even as we challenge China on key areas of difference.

It is in America's clear national security interest to do so.

It is in America's vital economic interest to do so.

And in the long run, it is the only way to help bring freedom and reform to the people of China.

Similarly with Russia: It is a good thing that we are talking with Russia about strategic stability. Russia's potential arsenal of 60,000 nuclear warheads gives us 60,000 reasons to engage.

But it is much more than that. Russia is an emerging democracy, a process whose outcome is still far from certain. Russia borders 14 countries, many of which are undergoing fragile transformations of their own. The political and economic well-being of Russia affects the well-being of Europe and the rest of the world.

This was demonstrated when Russia defaulted its debt, and the shockwaves were felt from Frankfurt to Sao Paolo, to Tokyo, to Wall Street.

That's why it was troubling to watch President Bush reduce our complex relationship with Russia to a simple matter of trust between two leaders. The stakes are too high to base our strategic relationship on one man's assessment of another man's soul.

Just to prove how complex our relationship is, within a few short weeks of President Bush's endorsement of Vladimir Putin as an honest, straightforward man that Americans can trust -- Putin was hugging Zhaing Zemin in Moscow, and signing a Sino-Russian treaty of friendship and cooperation + the first such pact since 1950.

We need to speak out against Russian behavior we see as retrogressive + but we have a fundamental interest in helping Russia build a modern and pluralistic democracy tied to the West.

I fear the administration is looking at our complex relationships with our allies and with Russia and China not through a spectrum of shared concerns, but rather through the prism of missile defense.

What else could explain, for example, President Bush's personal embrace of Russia's President Vladimir Putin + while avoiding any public mention of Putin's crackdown on Russia's free press and the continuing atrocities in Chechnya.

The Administration seems to have turned one of its campaign promises on its head: instead of being better to our long time friends and more realistic with countries like Russia; in the name of NMD, it is doing just the opposite.

Now let me be clear: Democrats support mutually-agreed upon modifications to the ABM treaty and a robust national missile defense testing program. Under the right circumstances, we could support deployment of a limited national missile defense.

However this administration's single-minded approach jeopardizes larger U.S. political, economic, and security goals around the world: It shortchanges our ability to deal with our more immediate threats here at home. It encourages other countries to either increase their existing arsenals, develop new weapons, or seek other means to exploit perceived U.S. vulnerabilities. And -- if we choose to act unilaterally + it will make it harder to develop the necessary multilateral responses to arms control and a whole array of global issues.

Many supporters cite the recent successful intercept test as a reason to push ahead. I congratulate the scientists and engineers who made this technological feat possible. But to use the success of one or two preliminary tests as a blanket justification for deployment is premature.

I would remind everybody that in this latest test, we knew who was launching, where it was being launched from, when it was being launched, what was being launched, and the flight path it would take. For good measure, there was a homing beacon on the target missile.

If our adversaries would be kind enough to meet all of these conditions, and if we are willing to accept a 50 percent success rate, then maybe I'd share their assessment.

But I wouldn't bet my life on it + let alone the security and fiscal health of the United States.

The chief threat to America is not from big, lumbering ICBMs, launched with a clear return address. The chief threats today come from biological and chemical weapons and bombs that could be smuggled in a cargo container, bus, or backpack. They come from attacks to our economic infrastructure + the computer systems, communications networks and power grids on which America is dependent. They come from terrorists who do not have the infrastructure to launch ICBMs, and who leave no return address.

National Missile Defense is the most expensive possible response to the least likely threat we face.

If we are to pursue such a strategy, we need to be clear about the trade-offs.

In spite of his claims that the federal government should be able to live on a 4 percent spending increase, President Bush's budget asks for a 10 percent increase for the Pentagon, including a 57 percent increase in missile defense.

We support an increase both in the Pentagon budget and in missile defense. But a 57 percent increase this year -- along with the prospect of hundreds of billions of dollars in future years -- would cannibalize the personnel and force structure that deal with the threats we are far more likely to face.

So let's take a closer look at the trade-offs. If we were to provide overall missile defense with the 10 percent budget increase the Pentagon enjoys under the President's proposal + we could pursue a broad array of missile defense technologies consistent with the ABM treaty + which top experts tell us we can do for quite some time. We would also free up about 2.5 billion dollars this year alone.

What does 2.5 billion dollars get us? As Michael O'Hanlon at the Brookings Institution and others have shown, it would allow us to make significant investments in programs that address the more imminent, more immediate threats we face.

It would allow us to substantially:

- Restore the cuts the President made in the U.S.- Russia programs to control and destroy Russia's nuclear weapons and weapons material, and find alternative employment for their nuclear scientists and workers.

- Train and equip our local emergency workers to deal with the consequences of a chemical or biological weapons attack.

- Continue to fund our modest obligations to control North Korea's nuclear fuel production and reengage the North Koreans on ending their missile program. After all, this is the front end of the potential threat missile defense is intended to address.

- Increase research and development into cruise missile defense. Cruise missiles are less sophisticated, more available, and therefore a more likely threat. Yet we have no defense against this more immediate threat.

- Concentrate on developing and deploying theater missile defenses, which would be needed tomorrow to protect our soldiers if we are thrust into another Gulf-like war.

- Secure our borders and points of entry against terrorism and other threats. We could beef up customs, airport and seaport security, and the Coast Guard. On a daily basis, these agencies keep drugs, criminals, and, as we saw in Vancouver last year + terrorist explosives -- from entering our country.

- Increase our counterterrorism budget to dismantle terrorist networks that have the intent + and demonstrated will + to strike Americans.

- We could fight cyberterrorism by increasing computer security. Just last week, we saw the "code red" virus paralyze computer systems worldwide, including at the Pentagon. With our economy and national security increasingly reliant on computer networks, those networks demand greater protection.

- And we could fund scholarship programs for foreign language and foreign regional studies programs and expand intelligence community staffing. Anyone who heard the chilling transcript of the exchanges between the Peruvian pilots and the American liaison officials that led to the attack on a missionary flight now understands the importance of being able to speak the language.

These are all here and now threats, and we could fund all of these programs at levels necessary to start addressing them -- without shortchanging our troops, the weapons systems they rely on, or missile defense.

Think about that: we're not talking about cutting missile defense's budget, freezing missile defense's budget, or even holding it to the four percent the President said is appropriate for government spending.

If we simply increase national missile defense by the same ten percent the President proposes to increase the Pentagon budget, we can provide resources to every one of these programs, and thereby increase our security in every one of these areas.

There's one final, overarching, component of our national security + and that is our economy. Our economy is the envy of the world, and the foundation of all of our strength.

Increasingly, that economic strength depends on economic engagement.

One of the most significant ways we engage the world is through trade. Four percent of the world's consumers live within the United States; 96 percent live outside our borders. The only way our economy can continue to grow is if we can sell American products to the 96 percent of consumers who live in other countries.

While greater globalization is an in inevitability, the form and direction it takes are not.

We need to recognize that the benefits of trade come with real costs, and to the extent we recognize those costs and address them, we better position ourselves to maintain and enhance our status as the world's leading economic power.

We need to address head-on the concerns and fears that people have about globalization. But we should not use these concerns as a pretext for protectionism. As we move forward in opening markets and increasing trade, we need to address core labor standards and environmental protections, and help people who are dislocated by trade and globalization.

Here at home, I have introduced a proposal with Senators Baucus and Bingaman to expand the universe of people eligible for trade adjustment assistance, and the benefits they receive.

As others have suggested, the rising tide of trade does lift boats, but not all boats. Some are even capsized. We have a responsibility to expand our economy, the global economy, and to help make sure the benefits and burdens are shared fairly.

Internationally, we need to make sure that globalization does not result in the wealthy nations getting wealthier and the poor nations getting poorer... and more desperate.

We need to do our part to lift developing nations out of poverty. We need to make the necessary investments in our foreign assistance budget. We have a moral obligation to continue our efforts to relieve the debts of developing countries that use the savings to invest in their people. We need to help poor countries develop institutions and the rule of law to help them join the global economy, and provide the basic protections that are the right of all humans.

Every Memorial Day, when my brothers and I were young, my father would take us to the veterans cemetery in our hometown of Aberdeen, South Dakota. I remember standing with him, looking at all of the headstones with their service crosses. He never said a word. I remember the stillness as he stood there. I could see how moved he was. Years later, I learned he had a special understanding of the sacrifices made by those who serve.

My father was an Army Sergeant in World War II. He was in the 6th Armored Division, and landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 7th, 1944. He was injured in that landing -- and as he recovered, one of his many duties was getting word back to the states about the dead and the missing, so their loved ones could be notified.

He saw on that beach, and in the letters he had to write, the sacrifices that our democracy has demanded of the generations before us.

Today's strength was bought with those sacrifices. God willing, the place we now enjoy in the world will not have to be secured in the future on the field of battle.

But for that to be the case, we must secure it through the wisdom of our decisions, and a recognition of our responsibilities.

Our strength is our great blessing, our freedom is our great inheritance, and by meeting our obligations we can secure them at home, and spread them throughout the world.

Thank you.


-------- MILITARY

-------- biological weapons

Putin Signs Decree to Control Biological Weapons

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international/arms-russia-decree.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW, Aug. 9 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his approval on Wednesday to lists of goods and technology related to missiles and biological weapons over which the state will exercise tough export controls.

The move may help address fears in Washington and elsewhere that post-Soviet Russia could be a source of powerful arms for hostile states as its vast and now impoverished armed forces and many thousands of weapons scientists struggle to make ends meet.

A Kremlin statement gave few details but said one presidential decree set down the list of controlled germs, toxins and genetically modified micro-organisms, related equipment and technology.

A separate decree dealt with equipment, materials and technology which could be used to produce missiles.

The Kremlin statement gave no further details about the decrees, which were issued to specify a framework to implement a law on export controls passed by parliament in 1999. It did not specify what items were on the various lists.

``The decrees have been signed to protect national interests, carry out Russia's obligations under the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Conventions and those concerning non-proliferation of missiles capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction,'' a Kremlin spokesman told Reuters.

Russia has consistently dismissed Western worries that it eased control over chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But Putin has said ambitions by some states to create such weapons and means of their delivery could become a major challenge for the post-Cold War world, requiring tougher regulatory measures from the international community.

The United States has announced plans to create a missile defence system to avert potential attacks from ``rogue states'' like Iraq or North Korea whom Washington suspects of developing nuclear and germ weapons, as well as long range rockets.

Russia acknowledges the potential threat of such attacks but says that the missile defence plan would undermine international stability rather than tackle the problem.

-------- israel

Israel Prepares Massive Blow Against Palestinians

Thursday, August 09, 2001
By George Friedman
Fox News
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,31209,00.html

It appears Israel is preparing to implement its final option: break battle gridlock with the Palestinians and destroy them once and for all.

Rather than tolerate the continuation of random, spontaneous violence, the Sharon strategy will be to silence them entirely. It will require a massive military blow against the Palestinian political infrastructure. It will involve the decapitation of the Palestinian leadership and the exile or deaths of the political elite. Weapons caches will be sought and destroyed, communications facilities ruined. From Israel's standpoint, the Palestinian community must be isolated and controlled.

There is also a chance that Israel may apply this strategy to two other long-standing problems: the Syrian control of Lebanon and the potential Iraqi military threat against Israel.

International condemnation, including the potential for sanctions, will follow any Israeli action. From Israel's point of view, a broader strike carries minimal additional cost. The current absence of external constraints against Israel by the United States and regional neighbors may lead Sharon to consider expanding his elimination strategy against Syria and Iraq as well.

A confluence of factors, stemming from the Six Day War in 1967, is driving Israel toward such a massive military option.

Israel's national security requirements historically have exceeded the capacity of the nation's industrial plant. Israel's national strategy is predicated on a negative: at all costs avoiding a war of attrition it cannot wage indefinitely.

So Israel always has strived to maintain a massive technological edge over its enemies, primarily by maintaining a strategic relationship with an outside power that could provide the means to maintain that edge.

For more than a decade spanning the mid-1950s to 1967, Israel's main patron and ally was France (after a brief relationship with the Soviet Union in the early 1950s). Then came 1967, and Israel made a major shift.

In that war, Israel concluded that the benefits of seizing the territory outweighed the loss of French patronage, and Jerusalem defied France's demand not to launch the attack. Israel calculated - correctly, in retrospect - that its national interest in redefining the regional balance of power outstripped its interest in placating France and that it could replace French patronage with American support.

A prime reason Israel went to war in 1967 was to redefine its frontiers. Seizing the West Bank and Golan Heights allowed Israeli forces to be anchored on the Jordan River line and the Golan Heights (as well as to expel Egypt from the Sinai Desert). Throughout decades of low-intensity conflict and the 1973 war, all of these Israeli gains from 1967 have remained intact.

The drawback was that the move to the Jordan line placed a large, hostile Palestinian population under Israeli control and responsibility. For the past 34 years, Israeli energy has been sapped by the need to maintain security on the West Bank while avoiding a level of military action that would lead to a rupture in U.S. aid and political support.

But that also contained the seeds of failure for diplomatic efforts, such as the Oslo peace strategy. Given Israel's intractable security requirements, the West Bank can never be economically autonomous. Since Israel controls the transport and communications infrastructure to support its Jordan River strategy, Palestine cannot be allowed to become militarily independent. Therefore, the political autonomy and sovereignty for Palestine inherent in the Oslo process has been an illusion.

When it became clear to Palestinians at Camp David last summer that Oslo meant this condition would be institutionalized permanently, the result was the re-emergence of the deep hostility of Palestinians toward Israel and a resumption in the ongoing cycle of violence.

Since 1967, the United States has been the primary patron for Israel, and it has been for fear of alienating the United States that Israel has rejected the elimination of the Palestinian threat - until now.

This is even more the case because of the current global geopolitical situation. Neither Russia nor China is inclined to inject itself into the crisis through arms shipments to Syria or Egypt. Moreover, Cairo itself is constrained in its actions by the United States because of its dependence on weapons and foreign aid from Washington.

Russia might ultimately have such an interest, but not now. President Vladimir Putin is preoccupied with his diplomatic balancing act between China and the United States and is not prepared for a massive challenge of fundamental American interests in Egypt.

China is a potential replacement source, but there are logistical and operational limits that would make such an effort a long, costly and complicated affair. It is not clear that China has a geopolitical interest in a deep challenge to the United States either.

Israeli leaders know that a window of opportunity has opened for them to deal definitively with the strategic consequences of 1967.

Israel appears willing to pay the price of international condemnation and ostracism it will incur with the elimination of the Palestinian threat. From its viewpoint, this is a small price to pay to try to end the low-intensity warfare that has raged since the failure of the Camp David initiative.

George Friedman is the chairman and founder of STRATFOR, the global intelligence company.

-------- puerto rico

Navy Ends Vieques Exercises

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Puerto-Rico-Vieques.html

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Calm returned to the outlying Puerto Rican island of Vieques on Thursday after the U.S. Navy finished a week of contentious maneuvers and protesters went back to their normal lives.

The exercises -- which involved 21,000 sailors, 2,000 Marines and included ship-to-shore shelling, inert bombing and amphibious landings -- ended late Wednesday, Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Goode said.

Since the training began last week, the Navy has arrested 65 people for trespassing on federal property.

Puerto Rican police arrested four. One man was charged with obstructing justice after breaking through a police line, and three people were arrested after they allegedly threw firebombs at two sailors in a military vehicle. No one was injured in the incidents.

This round of exercises drew fewer protesters and arrests than the maneuvers from April 27 to May 1. At least 180 protesters were arrested then, including U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois who is to appear in court at the end of this month, environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who just completed his 30-day prison sentence, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist who is serving his 90-day trespassing sentence.

``We're already prepared for the next round,'' said Vieques protest leader Ismael Guadalupe.

On one day, about 30 fishermen and protesters using speedboats invaded restricted waters off of Vieques and stalled the exercises. Navy personnel scoured the firing range and detained three protesters the fishermen had dropped off there before training could resume.

The Navy conducts training on the Vieques range every few months, but President Bush has promised to end the maneuvers by 2003.

Bombing opponents say that's not soon enough.

In a July 29 nonbinding referendum, 68 percent of Vieques residents voted to stop the bombing immediately; 30 percent said they wanted the Navy to stay and resume use of live ammunition.

The Navy has used Vieques for about 60 years to train its Atlantic fleet, and it owns two-thirds of the island. The small anti-Navy movement gained mass support after a 1999 accident on the range in which a civilian guard was killed by off-target bombs.

The Navy has used inert ammunition since the accident.

-------- space

Russia Offers to Fill in for NASA

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Russia-Space-Station.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia is offering less expensive components for the International Space Station in a bid to prevent reductions in the 16-nation project, Russia's top space official said Thursday.

The Russian offer comes with NASA threatening to cut its budget for the station.

Russia's own money problems have repeatedly held up work on the international station. But now it has proposed using a backup of the station's cargo module, an additional Soyuz escape capsule and other parts to expand the station to a planned crew capacity of six instead of the current three by 2004, said Russian Aerospace Agency Director Yuri Koptev.

With space station budget overruns topping $4 billion in the next five years, NASA is being forced to scale back on research and commercialization to meet President Bush's budget. The planned cuts would also eliminate a U.S.-funded lifeboat for the space station and expanded living quarters.

The cuts have caused concern among other participants in the project, who fear they would mean fewer seats for their astronauts and less opportunity to do research. Koptev said Russia shared this concern.

``Building up the station without increasing the number of the crew means that no time is left for any scientific programs, because all the crew's time is spent on maintaining the station,'' Koptev said.

He said the proposed Russian components would be up to 2 1/2 times cheaper than the U.S.-designed ones. He said participants in the project will meet in October to discuss the Russian proposals.

In the past, it has been Russia that put the entire project behind schedule. The service module, which houses the crew, went into orbit on July 12, 2000 after more than two years of delay caused by Russian government funding shortages.

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

Rumsfeld Near Deadline for Reshaping the Military

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/09/national/09NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - Facing a deadline for a blueprint on transforming the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has just weeks to decide between drastic cuts in forces to free money for missile defense and new technology, or maintaining current levels of personnel and weapons, already stretched to fulfill their global mission.

Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputy met with military leaders late Tuesday in a two-hour closed session to debate these options for how best to both win wars and deter adversaries, Pentagon officials said.

The meeting broke up with Mr. Rumsfeld saying he still wanted answers to six basic questions, the officials said. They included the benefits of increasing deployments in Asia, the risk of reducing war-fighting capabilities in Europe and the measurement for how large a military is required to protect the country's interests around the globe while fighting one major war. The other questions had classified elements and the officials refused to disclose them.

The Pentagon is behind schedule in completing a review of strategy and budgets required every four years by Congress and due on Sept. 30. But this review took on an added urgency since President Bush made overhauling the military a centerpiece of his campaign and many in the military had thought the arrival of a Republican administration would mean an infusion of new resources.

The panel analyzing the number of soldiers, sailors, pilots and marines needed to defend the United States, as well as how much weaponry they should have, has been in intense and angry debate owing to limits in military spending imposed by President Bush's tax cut and other domestic priorities.

While Mr. Rumsfeld has said that cuts in forces are not predetermined by his review, he has also advocated missile defense and new technologies to transform how the military deters and fights wars. So he is searching to free money in the budget with a focus on reducing forces and squeezing efficiencies from the Pentagon's business practices, which in the past has proved exceedingly difficult.

The officials said that one presentation on Tuesday argued that "a steady-state option" - no severe cuts in the force structure - was still required to fulfill the nation's standing military commitments without subjecting the men and women in uniform to unnecessary combat risks.

The other option included a range of reductions in personnel and force structure, with the Army on the block to suffer the most serious cuts, losing perhaps 2 of its 10 active divisions.

The review panel discussed reducing the Navy by 1 or 2 of its 12 aircraft carriers.

And the Air Force was subjected to the widest swing in analysis, with options on the table ranging from cutting two air wings to adding two wings. The service's Air Combat Command has 25 air wings, although other wings are assigned to commands for education and training, space, special operations, mobility and the European and Pacific theaters.

The officials' description of the debate over force size is only a snapshot of the review, since the Pentagon is far from a final plan for Mr. Rumsfeld to take to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who have so far not taken an active hand in the Pentagon review. The plan on strategy and forces must be translated into a budget proposal, which must then be approved by a Congress that has expressed an extreme distaste for slashing personnel, bases or weapons.

The most difficult task facing the Pentagon's civilian and military leaders is calculating how large a military the country must finance, train, equip and deploy to meet requirements of the Bush administration's new security strategy, one which has not been wholly defined.

Since both civilians and the military agree that the current force structure is overworked even today, it is clear that the Bush administration inherited either too much strategy or too little military, and must rectify that problem. That is why any proposals to reduce the size of the military must be accompanied by a scaling back of the national security strategy if the administration hopes to win support for its plans in Congress, and among the military and civilian Pentagon planners.

The Pentagon session broke up without a decision, and Mr. Rumsfeld issued his six questions to the Senior Level Review Group, which is led by Mr. Rumsfeld and Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, and whose members include the three service secretaries, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the defense under secretaries.

At a Pentagon news conference today, Mr. Wolfowitz declined to discuss the specific options under consideration, but described the tensions facing the Pentagon's civilian and military leaders.

If the goal is to find savings, he said: "At the end of the day, you do have to look at personnel. It's one of the most expensive parts of what we do." But he then noted that it would be "pennywise and pound foolish" to reduce the 1.4 million people in the active-duty military if it meant losing highly trained people now - especially if it became clear that the military would need to grow again to meet future threats.

"This force management problem is a very real one," Mr. Wolfowitz said.

Gen. Richard B. Myers of the Air Force, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who joined Mr. Wolfowitz at the briefing, said that while the review has been intense, the process had not pitted civilians against the military.

"What we do have, of course, are passionate arguments because this is a tough process," General Myers said. "To characterize it, though, that on the one hand you have the uniformed military and on the other hand you have the civilian leadership is really oversimplifying the way it is."

General Myers, saying that "there is consensus we have to change," summarized the fundamental issue of the review: "It goes back to the fact that today, as has been said by much of the senior leadership, we do have a strategy-to-force structure imbalance that has to be corrected."

The guidelines, or "terms of reference," hammered out to direct the defense review, sought to lessen the load on the military by removing a requirement that the armed forces be prepared to fight and win two major regional wars almost simultaneously. That was replaced with a requirement to win decisively in one war, while also defending the homeland, maintaining global deployments to deter adversaries and being able to conduct an undetermined number of other military operations of a more limited nature.

So the panel is debating whether the Pentagon can assume the near- term risk of cutting its forces to finance new weapons the administration wants against future threats

--------

Cracks Found in F - 22 Fighter Plane

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Fighter-Cracks.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Small cracks have been found in one of the Air Force's six F-22 test fighter planes, but the cause has not been determined, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday.

The cracks are about seven inches in length, located on the right tail and were discovered during X-ray inspections done on the test aircraft, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.

No such cracks have been found on the other five planes in the test program, Quigley said.

``We're not sure what the cause of the cracking is, why we haven't seen it on the other (air)frames,'' the spokesman said.

The Air Force is trying to determine whether that aircraft had been put through different tests, or whether something differed in the production process that might have caused the cracks, Quigley said.

Technically, the cracks are called ``disbonding,'' because they occur in the layers of composite materials that are bonded together to form portions of the aircraft, Quigley said.

The F-22 is being developed by Lockheed Martin Corp. to replace the Air Force's aging F-15s. The problem has surfaced as the fighter program faces a critical review in the coming days.

The cracks were first reported in the publication ``Inside the Pentagon,'' which said the problem could lead to a redesign of the aircraft.

Asked whether that might be the case, Quigley responded, ``Not that I know of.''

No restrictions have been placed on the other five aircraft, and the problem does not seem to portend cost increases in the testing program, Quigley said.

Last week, the General Accounting Office reported that production of 333 of the planes will cost from $2 billion to $9 billion more than the $37.6 billion Congress specified as the cap for the program in 1997.

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the Government Reform Committee's national security panel, said those predictions of potential cost overruns -- the lower one by the Air Force and the higher one by the office of the secretary of defense -- put the Air Force's purchasing plans at risk.

--------

Pentagon Not Pleased With Missiles

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Minuteman.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Pentagon spokesman acknowledged problems Thursday with tests for upgrading the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile fleet.

``There have been five tests so far, and we have not been completely pleased with the findings of those five tests,'' spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley told reporters at a briefing.

The Pentagon wants to replace the 30-year-old electronic guidance systems on the missiles, housed in silos in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota.

The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that the $4.5 billion plan to upgrade the missiles has shown the new systems to be less accurate with a shorter range than the ones they are replacing.

Asked about the report, Quigley said, ``The testing of the new guidance system is a work-in-progress and, as with all test programs, you have some of your testing come out better than other tests.''

Quigley added that there doesn't appear to be enough information yet to make a long-term decision, and that additional testing is required. He added that the goal of the program is to have a system that is no less accurate than the current one.

``So does this concern us? Yes. This is an important system. This is a key element of our strategic deterrent force. And we will keep working this, and if there are shortcomings, we will eliminate them,'' Quigley said.

The Bush administration has proposed eliminating all MX intercontinental ballistic missiles, which would leave the 500 Minuteman III's as the workhorse of America's land-based nuclear force.

According to reports obtained by the Times, the upgraded models either had missed by distances that were considerably larger than their predecessors or had ``reduction in range'' during several tests last year.

The assessments concluded the tests ``did not decisively demonstrate that the accuracy key performance parameters had been achieved,'' the Times reported.

--------

Pentagon's 2-War Plan in Retreat Defense:
Deputy chief says armed forces must increasingly adapt to small-scale conflicts.

THE NATION
August 9, 2001
By ESTHER SCHRADER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000064566aug09.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon's chief strategic planner says the military must focus increasingly on preparing to fight numerous small-scale conflicts around the world, rather than two major wars simultaneously--a shift that could dramatically alter the makeup of the armed forces.

The comments Wednesday by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz come as the Pentagon is completing a comprehensive reassessment of the nation's military priorities. The reassessment, due to be sent to Congress by Sept. 30, is designed to lay the foundation for a top-to-bottom reshaping of the size and deployment of naval, air and land forces.

The contents have been the source of intense speculation inside the military and in Congress, and Wolfowitz's briefing provided the first public status report in months by a senior official. Wolfowitz told reporters that the Pentagon plans to emphasize rapid deployments, striking quickly in such places as Bosnia, East Timor and Haiti, while maintaining the ability to win a single major war. For almost a decade, the Pentagon has deployed troops to fight two major regional wars at the same time.

"As over the last 10 years we've drawn down the force structure and increasingly built a force size around two major regional conflicts," Wolfowitz said, the assumption has been that funding two majors wars was enough to cover a multitude of smaller wars. That strategy has "become increasingly inappropriate," he added.

Senior military officials expect that such a shift would provide significant savings through personnel cuts, closing military bases and axing older weapon systems to free up money to modernize the armed forces and build a missile defense system.

But military officials in the field warn that, in fact, such a shift in strategy might require a sizable increase in forces, depending on the number and potency of regional conflicts for which the military would need to prepare.

And any call for shifting funding away from conventional forces is likely to engender a storm of debate and dissent on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are deeply ambivalent about cutting weapon programs and military facilities that provide jobs for their constituents.

"On a strategic level, the implication of what they are doing is more emphasis on aerospace systems and missile systems and less emphasis on ground forces," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a conservative military policy think tank.

"On a political level, they may not get to enact any of this because they have not connected their military strategy to a political strategy. Congress will hear the Pentagon's plan and say, 'No. Get lost,' and that's that," Thompson said.

The formal requirement that the armed forces should be able to fight and win two major wars simultaneously dates to the early 1990s, when the Pentagon adopted it in the wake of the Cold War. The two-war strategy had been used to determine the size and capabilities of the U.S. military and to justify the need to keep 1.4 million troops on active duty.

The proposed changes are laid out in a document known as the "terms of reference," which the Pentagon is using to guide a comprehensive reassessment of specific policy and budget requests for everything from how many aircraft carriers will sail the seas to how many fighter jets to fly to how many troops will be on the ground.

The terms of reference also incorporate for the first time plans to give the military expanded duties in combating terrorist strikes on U.S. soil, both through the missile defense initiative and through a larger role for the National Guard and Reserve.

While the document itself is classified, an executive summary of it was given to reporters Wednesday, even as Wolfowitz and other senior officials work to complete the reassessment.

The document has been long awaited as a vehicle for Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's vision for transforming the military.

But hashing out the details of the plan--the nitty gritty of how many troops the Pentagon would have to work with, where they would operate and what weapons they would have--has proven unexpectedly turbulent, as various spending pressures have come to bear, including the slowing economy, the $1.35-billion tax cut passed by Congress in May and the declining budget surplus.

"They gave the Pentagon this guidance to try to change this two-war framework, and the military services came back and said, 'Lo and behold, it takes more people to do that than you need today,' " said Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution.

"The money to do all this has to come from some place. . . . They cannot maintain the force structure and do all the new things that Rumsfeld wants to do. Now the struggle is between Rumsfeld and the uniformed services as to where the remaining money will go."

--------

In 'army of one,' restless soldiers just desert

By Robert P. Hey and Samar Farah
The Christian Science Monitor
August 09, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0809/p1s4-ussc.html

WASHINGTON - Some will call two years after they've gone AWOL. Others call minutes before leaving their bases. Many want to know their options. Just as many simply want to tell their story. But whatever their circumstances, Jennifer Merrill, a volunteer at the GI Rights Hotline, says that deserters or would-be deserters in the military make up 90 percent of the calls she takes during her three-hour weekly shift.

"I think everyone in the military reaches that point where they wish they never went in," says Ms. Merrill, who served two out of a three-year enlistment term in the Army before she was discharged on medical grounds in 1997. "Only some are willing to overcome it."

In all branches of the military, the number of individuals who are simply walking away from their service commitment is on the rise. Approximately 9,400 deserted from the four main branches during fiscal year 2000. That's less than 1 percent of the 1, 371,280 men and women on active duty that year. But it's also about 2-1/2 times as many as deserted five years earlier, when the total was about 3,800.

There may be as many individual reasons for going AWOL as there are deserters. But many military analysts think they have a pretty good idea of what is causing the increase.

For more than a decade, they say, about one-third of those who enlisted in the military left before completing their first term of enlistment. From the late 1980s until the late '90s, military forces were largely downsizing.

During that time, the military was willing to let many enlistees who didn't fit in simply go home, and approved early discharge papers.

"If soldiers had a bad attitude or a bad aptitude," says David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organizations, commanders were told: "Help them get out."

Circumstances are different now. The military is no longer downsizing, and recruiting is much more challenging, with the services until a year ago having to compete with a roaring economy. As a result, the military is less willing to let enlistees - in whom it may have invested tens of thousands of dollars worth of training - just go home.

Now that they can't so easily receive discharges, analysts say, some enlistees who are determined to leave are just picking up and walking away anyway. Perhaps more important, they seem to be doing so with few repercussions.

In wartime, soldiers who desert face a court martial. Now, the process is practically mundane, with most deserters getting sent away with an other-than-honorable-discharge - a status that doesn't imply bad conduct in the way that a dishonorable discharge does.

In the Army, for example, once an enlistee surrenders or is captured, the paperwork for a discharge can take as little as three days, and is handled at one of two bases in the US that specialize in deserters.

Leaving under cover of night

Manuel Garcia, a former private first class who deserted the Marine Corps, knows the routine.

After an altercation with his corporal and souring relations with his company, Mr. Garcia had had enough. Convinced a discharge was unlikely, Garcia decided his surest way out was to simply leave his base in Hawaii. He did - late one night last February on a ticket to New York.

Garcia's plan, he says, was to return to his parents' house in New Jersey and, when he was ready, maybe turn himself in.

He knew the Marines would have a warrant out for his arrest. Yet, while getting approved for a new credit card may have been tricky, Garcia hardly felt like a bandit during that time.

"The only thing I was nervous about was getting caught [as I was leaving]," he says, referring back to his midnight crawl out of the barracks with his luggage.

Things didn't go quite according to plan. Police in Kearny, NJ., where Garcia was staying with his parents, arrested him two months after he went UA (unauthorized absence).

But after six weeks of part-time work on a base in Quantico, Va., he got what he wanted: an other-than-honorable discharge. This September, he returns to school at the Hudson City Community College in New Jersey.

The Army, for one, wants to cut down on its desertion problem. "We're making every effort" to rehabilitate soldiers, rather than discharge them, says spokeswoman Elaine Kanellis. This fall, the Army hopes to take the deserters who return, as 95 percent of them eventually do, and send them back to their original units.

The Army also tracks reasons enlistees leave early, whether or not it was with the service's permission. The ones most frequently cited are medical disorders, misconduct, personality disorders, and pregnancy.

Behind those stated reasons lie deeper ones, military analysts say.

The issue of retaining people who want to leave the military early is "really more a decision about economics, culture, and lifestyle today, and dealing with authority," says Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution here.

Thus, it is "harder to fix" than recruiting or reenlistment problems. In addition, more enlistees today see the military as an employer, he says, and are less willing to respect authority.

Also increasing as a reason, says Mr. Segal, is departure for "reasons of sexual orientation." Segal says many enlisted personnel are using this as a "get-out-of-jail-free card."

If someone is unhappy, he says, he or she can just tell a commanding officer they're gay and be discharged.

Regardless of why enlistees leave, many do so under extreme duress. "At some point, there's something that snaps," says hotline volunteer Merrill.

'An easy way out'

"Almost anyone that calls us wants out of the Army or whatever branch they're in," says Bill Galvin, a counseling coordinator at the Center on Conscience and War in Washington. But "even people with legitimate grounds for discharge, they ask, 'What if I go AWOL?' "

Mr. Galvin suggests that access to the Internet, making it easier for enlistees to learn their rights, might account in part for a rise in desertions.

Just this past week, he says, "I can think of two to three cases of people who decided to go AWOL... We didn't want them to, but [then] they find out it's an easy way out.... It's a no-brainer."

--------

For Military Retirees, Some 'Better' Benefits
Pentagon to Cover Extended Health Care

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 9, 2001; Page A17
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50728-2001Aug8?language=printer

The Pentagon's top personnel official said yesterday that the Defense Department is prepared to pay the cost of new lifetime health care and prescription benefits for military retirees age 65 and over, noting that those benefits will set military retirees well apart from other senior citizens in America.

Congress extended lifetime health and prescription benefits under the military's Tricare health insurance system last year to 1.4 million uniformed services retirees age 65 and older who are eligible for Medicare, in addition to their family members and survivors.

"This is a better package than the average American is going to receive," Undersecretary of Defense David S.C. Chu told reporters. "But these people have also done things that are different from the average citizen. . . . And part of our compact with them is how we honor them in their old age."

Chu said both new benefits would cost $3.9 billion in fiscal 2002, which begins Oct. 1.

"We will pay for it. We're not worried about the financing," said Chu, who served in the Reagan and Bush I Pentagons and is now responsible for personnel and readiness issues. "We realize this is a commitment the country has made to these people."

In a wide-ranging discussion of personnel priorities, Chu also said he hopes to produce a plan by February that will reflect Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's keen interest in reviewing the military's "up-or-out" promotion system and its penchant for rapid-fire transfers.

But he cautioned that change comes slowly at the Pentagon, especially in an area as Byzantine as its personnel policy. He said care must exercised in tinkering with a system that -- whatever its faults -- has produced a corps of officers that is "extraordinarily good."

"We have a winning hand here," Chu said. "The obvious issue is, why should we change a successful system?"

One obvious answer, he said, is that people who develop the high-tech skills needed in today's military to operate complex data systems or manage large organizations are often at the peak of their abilities just as the military forces them to retire.

A related phenomenon, said Chu, is the military's pushing of pilots and tank commanders into desk jobs as it promotes them through the ranks -- when all they wanted to do was remain in the cockpit or the driver's seat, where their war-fighting skills were exceptional.

"Senior officers say, 'The worst day of my life is the day I got promoted and I can't fly anymore,' " Chu said. "I think the critics would say we've driven the up-or-out principle a little bit too far, where people want to stay at a mid-level, which in terms of their personal agenda is supremely satisfying, and they don't really want to be a supervisor."

Similarly, Chu said, transferring officers and enlisted personnel to new assignments on average every 18 to 24 months often deprives the military of the skills it needs by moving personnel before real expertise is developed.

After years as a chief executive in the private sector, Rumsfeld remains "deeply skeptical about habits in which people spend so short a time in each post," Chu said. "For a variety of reasons, we're trying to jam too much into a 20-year career."

Thus, Chu said his challenge over the next six months is to figure out "how we keep the best of both worlds -- the incentives that come from 'up-or-out,' to avoid the kind of hanging-on behaviors that have afflicted our military in the past, [and] at the same time, give people who have found their niche and who are really very productive for us in that niche a chance to serve for longer than our current system."


-------- OTHER

-------- death penalty

Justice plans to pay for DNA tests

08/09/2001
By Richard Willing,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/august01/2001-08-09-dna.htm

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is preparing to offer $500,000 in federal grants to pay for DNA tests for inmates, even though the results could overturn their convictions.

The first-of-its-kind program would put the prosecutor-friendly Justice Department on the side of defense lawyers who argue that DNA tests should be offered in any case where they might prove a convict is innocent - even if all of the convict's appeals have expired.

"This is not what you might expect from (Attorney General) John Ashcroft, who is pretty hard-line pro-prosecutor," said Jerry Lyell, a defense attorney in Arlington, Va., who specializes in DNA cases.

The program, which has been approved by the National Institute of Justice, the department's research arm, could be announced as early as Friday. DNA tests can incriminate or exonerate a crime suspect by comparing the suspect's unique genetic profile with blood, semen or other biological evidence left at crime scenes.

Since the late 1980s, DNA test results have cast doubt on 92 convictions, including 10 that carried the death penalty, according to the Innocence Project, an advocacy group in New York.

The grants would go to state and local prosecutors who wish to re-examine convictions obtained in the mid-1990s or earlier, before DNA testing was widely used.

Death-row inmates, rapists and others with cases involving biological evidence would be eligible for the grants. At about $2,000 a test, the grants could pay for 250 tests. Prosecutors in Southern California, Minnesota and elsewhere began offering convicts free tests last year, tapping their office budgets.

Susan Gaertner, chief prosecutor in Ramsey County, Minn., says she likely will apply for U.S. funds to expand the testing program she began this year. "There's an unfair idea being promoted that innocent people are being sent to jail and that we prosecutors don't care. This is a way to let the public know that if there's an innocent person in prison, we want them out."

-------- environment

Army Corps Moves to Ease Wetlands Rules

Thursday, August 9, 2001; Page A20
Michael Grunwald
Washington Post
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50798-2001Aug8?language=printer

The Army Corps of Engineers yesterday proposed relaxing a series of year-old rules designed to protect streams and other wetlands, despite opposition to the move by several federal environmental agencies.

Environmentalists complained that the proposal would undercut President Bush's pledges to preserve wetlands, making it easier for developers and coal mining companies to dig them up and fill them in. They also said the plan would encourage development in flood-prone areas and noted that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies opposed it.

"For Earth Day this year, George W. Bush and his administration touted wetlands protection as an important part of their environmental agenda. However, President Bush's action today is a leap in the opposite direction," said Todd Hutchins of Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund.

But developers have said the Clinton administration's rules made it absurdly difficult to build small projects near wetlands. The National Association of Home Builders sued to try to stop the rules and has praised the Corps for trying to relax them.

Corps officials said that while their new plan for awarding permits under the Clean Water Act is not as strict as last year's initiative by the Clinton administration, it is much stricter than what preceded it.

"The revised permits will do a better job of protecting aquatic ecosystems while helping the regulated public with clearer, simpler language," said John Studt, chief of the agency's regulatory branch.

-------- genetics

Bush to Announce Stem Cell Research Decision

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Stem-Cell.html

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- After months of deliberations, President Bush will announce his decision Thursday night on whether to allow federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

``The president has carefully considered the scientific and ethical issues involved,'' said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. ``This is a decision that will have far-reaching implications for our nation 20 to 30 years from now and beyond.''

It's one of the biggest decisions of Bush's presidency, pitting many scientists and research advocates against anti-abortion forces.

``I am fairly comfortable with the decision that the president is going to make and I'm very confident that the American people will be as well,'' Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said on ABC's ``Good Morning America.''

Thompson has been pushing the president to let the research go forward.

As suspense mounted over the last several months, White House aides described the president as deeply engaged in the scientific and ethical issues involved, carefully weighing the issue and seeking a wide range of advice.

McClellan said Bush has met with dozens of experts with opinions across the spectrum.

McClellan said Bush reached his final decision Tuesday. Despite the political stakes, the White House has discounted the role of politics in his deliberations.

``The president does not make decisions by polls,'' McClellan said. ``His focus was on the scientific issues involved, the ethical issues involved.

``It's an important decision for the entire country. Decisions like this involve science, involve ethics. ... They are far-reaching and they are profound.''

Bush intends to disclose his decision in a 9 p.m. EDT nationally televised address from his ranch, where he is spending a month on vacation. The president planned to sit in front of a window with the ranch visible behind him. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said the speech would run about eight to 10 minutes.

At issue is federal support for research on cells extracted from embryos that are left over from fertility treatments. Supporters of such research see great potential for medical breakthroughs; opponents insist it is wrong to use human embryos for research. In order to remove the stem cell, the embryo must be destroyed.

Stem cells are capable of developing into any of the body's organs but not into a complete individual. These cells form inside an embryo a few days after fertilization.

By properly nurturing embryonic stem cells, experts say, they believe they can grow new cells to restore ailing organs in chronically ill patients. For instance, new insulin-producing cells could be grown, perhaps to cure diabetes.

``The president wants to share the decision with the American people himself so they can see and hear why he came to the decision he came to,'' Fleischer said. ``He wants to share this directly with the American people.''

Bush has wrestled for months with whether to allow the funding. conferring with a list of experts on the scientific, ethical and religious implications of the research.

He has insisted that political considerations were not part of his deliberations. But his announcement is sure to please and disappoint crucial blocs of the electorate. For instance, Roman Catholic leaders, including Pope John Paul II, have strongly urged him to bar the funding.

On the other hand, such conservative, anti-abortion Republicans as Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina have called for federal funding of such research because of the potential payoff in treatment of a number of diseases.

Congress has banned funding for research that destroys embryos, but the Clinton administration ruled that the stem cell research was eligible as long as the cells were extracted from the embryos with private money. Bush has delayed such funding while the policy is reviewed.

Some opponents of research into embryonic stem cells support instead the studying of somatic stem cells, which are made by mature tissue. But there is a debate over whether somatic stem cells are as flexible or as long-lived as embryonic stem cells. Many scientists advocate research on both types.

Although the president has avoided tipping his hand on his decision, his wife, Laura, said in a recent CNN interview that embryonic stem cell research could save lives and noted that leftover embryos from fertility treatments are destroyed anyway.

She also made a point noted by stem cell opponents -- that researchers could simply use stem cells from adults, rather than from embryos. ``I mean, there is other research -- other ways to get to the same kind of research,'' she said.

-------- health

Cholesterol Drug Taken Off Market
Numerous Deaths Linked to Baycol

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 9, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50968-2001Aug8?language=printer

The maker of cerivastatin, a popular cholesterol-lowering drug used by about 700,000 Americans, voluntarily pulled the medicine off the market yesterday because of numerous deaths associated with its use.

Officials at the Food and Drug Administration said 31 people have died of complications of severe muscle breakdown, a rare but well-recognized side effect of many cholesterol-lowering drugs. In about one-third of the cases, the person was on a second cholesterol drug, gemfibrozil, known to especially increase the risk of problems.

Cerivastatin is one of six "statins," a popular family of drugs prescribed to about 12 million Americans to treat, and possibly prevent, coronary heart disease. Reports of severe side effects, including death, are at least 10 times more common for cerivastatin than for other drugs in the class.

"We are not considering any regulatory action with regard to the other approved statins," said John Jenkins, director of the FDA's office of drug evaluation. The other statins are lovastatin (Mevacor), pravastatin (Pravachol), simvastatin (Zocor), fluvastatin (Lescol) and atorvastatin (Lipitor).

Bayer AG, the German company that makes cerivastatin, introduced the drug under the trade name Baycol in January 1998. The first death was reported in January 2000, with the number of complications rising markedly when a high-dose pill was introduced last August.

Before and after the first death, Bayer officials warned doctors against prescribing cerivastatin with gemfibrozil and strongly advised that patients be started on a low dose. That advice, and changes in cerivastatin's official labeling, appeared to change prescribing behavior to some extent, but not enough to eliminate the problem.

"We had options of keeping the lower doses on the market, but we took this decision in the interest of patient safety," said Paul MacCarthy, vice president of medical science for Bayer's U.S. operations.

Drug recalls are rare. From 1981 to 2000, the FDA approved 543 new drugs for use. Fourteen, or 2.6 percent, were subsequently recalled -- either voluntarily, or by FDA action -- for safety reasons.

Cerivastatin is fifth out of the six statins in number of prescriptions written, according to data provided by IMS Health, a pharmaceutical monitoring company in Pennsylvania. But the drug's market share was growing. It was 6.7 percent at the end of June, up from 2.5 percent at the end of 2000.

The drug is the third biggest selling prescription drug in Bayer's portfolio. Worldwide, it accounted for $560 million in sales last year, and was expected to grow to about $880 million this year, said Gunter Forneck, spokesman at the company's German headquarters.

Cerivastatin, which is used worldwide by about 6 million people, is also being taken off the market in Europe. It will remain available only in Japan, where gemfibrozil is unavailable.

Physicians have known since the first statin was introduced in 1987 that a few patients develop muscle inflammation, experienced as soreness or tenderness, while taking the drug. Occasionally, that progresses to whole-scale muscle breakdown, a condition called rhabdomyolysis. That, in turn, can lead to kidney failure, as the bloodstream is flooded with relatively toxic proteins released by the dissolving tissue. Jenkins said 29 of the 31 people who died had kidney failure.

People at increased risk for the complication are those taking both cerivastatin and gemfibrozil (sold under the trade name Lopid), and those taking the 0.8 milligram cerivastatin dose. The FDA advised people in those groups to stop taking cerivastatin and consult their doctors about alternative medicines.

Some deaths have also occurred with use of the 0.4 milligram pill, and when the drug is taken alone. The elderly, and possibly women, also appear to be at higher than usual risk for the complication.

Combination use of statins and fibrates -- the family to which gemfibrozil belongs -- isn't necessarily a mistake. The two types of drugs alter blood fats in different ways, and are sometimes intentionally prescribed to patients with severe cholesterol problems despite the rare risk of rhabdomyolysis, which generally reverses itself if the drugs are stopped immediately.

Because of the signs that the cerivastatin-gemfibrozil interaction was more common, Bayer put in the drug's labeling a specific prohibition against using them together. When the deaths began appearing, the company sent a letter to all doctors and prohibited its salesmen from giving away samples of the 0.8 milligram dose, said Tig Conger, Bayer's vice president for cardiovascular marketing.

The company recently presented the FDA data from a managed-care plan showing the education campaign had reduced "concomitant dispensing" of the drugs a little. Eliminating it altogether is nearly impossible, Jenkins said.

"There are just too many factors -- patients seeing multiple physicians or going to multiple pharmacies; patients forgetting to tell their doctors what medicines they're on or using leftover medication," he said.

The difficulty is clear from a case seen last year by Roberto Lufschanowski, a cardiologist at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. A man in his seventies appeared with rhabdomyolysis so severe he was too weak to lift his head off the bed. He had been prescribed gemfibrozil and another statin but had recently switched to cerivastatin when a non-physician friend gave him some samples. He survived.

Lufschanowski, who reported the case in a medical journal, said he expects cerivastatin's withdrawal will have no effect on statin use overall.

"The beneficial effects of statins are so overwhelming. They are a part of our routine care of patients with coronary artery disease," he said.

-------- human rights

Indigenous Peoples Organize at United Nations

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-un-indi.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Tribal chiefs from Canada to Peru and beyond on Thursday sought to get the grievances of indigenous people heard at the United Nations and said they were even shut out of a upcoming conference on racism.

Honoring the Seventh International Day of the World's Indigenous People, more than 700 activists, many of them from the United States, celebrated their cultures in spiritual rituals. They discussed ways to protect themselves from discrimination, economic exploitation and environmental degradation.

``It's a constant uphill battle just to get into the room where so-called consultations are taking place,'' said Dr. Ted Moses, a Cree chief from Quebec, Canada, about preparations for the U.N. conference against racism in Durban, South Africa, this month.U.N. forum, which goes beyond a traditional advocacy group and becomes a subsidiary of the U.N. Economic and Social Council. Eight of its members will be chosen by governments and another eight by indigenous organizations.

Marcial Arias of Panama's Kuna Indians said he hoped the forum would allow indigenous people to be included in a variety of treaties and U.N. conferences.

``We are not even mentioned in the Kyoto treaty'' on global warming he said, noting the destruction of the environment was an issue most indigenous groups took seriously.

He told a news conference he was the only indigenous person attending a U.N. forestry panel, even though deforestation affects millions of indigenous people.

Moses, in an address to the gathering, singled out the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome as a prime example of how U.N. bodies had been excluding indigenous peoples from their agendas.

``In our experience we are often excluded because of preconceived notions about our interests and capabilities,'' he said, among them economic and financial issues.

``We are also excluded as proponents of academic and research projects. Instead we are seen as the subjects of such projects,'' he said.

A high point of the gathering was a peace pipe ceremony by Arvol Looking Horse of the Lakota tribe in South Dakota, called Sioux by whites, that included prayer and incense from an abalone shell. Wearing a regal feathered headdress, he is the 19th generation to keep the white buffalo calf peace pipe.

The human rights group Amnesty International in a report to mark the occasion said indigenous people continued to be the victims of killings and disappearances in the Americas.

Intimidation, harassment and violent attacks were frequent occurrences in a number of countries, such as Honduras, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela,'' Amnesty said.

``Violence and threats against indigenous populations often take place in the context of disputes relating to the lands they live on and to the exploitation, by national and multinational companies,'' it said.

``In many countries in the Americas, indigenous people constitute the most marginalized and dispossessed sector of society, and are the victims of prejudice and discrimination,'' Amnesty added.

-------- police / prisoners

Top FBI Officials Facing Inquiry
Retaliation Alleged In Ruby Ridge Probe

By George Lardner Jr. and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 9, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49423-2001Aug8?language=printer

The Justice Department's inspector general has opened an investigation of alleged retaliation by senior FBI officials against agents who uncovered flaws in the bureau's handling of the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and its aftermath.

Investigators want to determine whether one agent's career was derailed and another was threatened for their pursuit of FBI abuses during the 11-day incident and the shortcomings of the bureau's reviews of who was responsible.

The probe, officials said, also will delve into broader complaints about a double standard of discipline at the FBI that many agents say serves to protect top managers from punishment and has sapped morale.

In particular, they said, the probe will examine the Justice Department's decision last January not to censure FBI Director Louis J. Freeh or discipline three other FBI veterans in the Ruby Ridge case. Freeh, who retired in June, may be interviewed, officials said.

The investigation is at least the sixth review of FBI conduct ordered in recent months, as news of a spy scandal, misplaced documents in the Oklahoma City bombing case and missing weapons has spilled from FBI headquarters.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine is heading the Ruby Ridge probe, which has been underway since late spring. Fine's office last month was given broader powers to monitor the FBI.

Many rank-and-file FBI agents have long complained that top bureau officials have covered for each other during controversies. A 1999 internal report found that members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) were far less likely to be disciplined for most complaints than other employees.

Freeh responded by giving a single panel power over discipline for all employees, disbanding an SES board.

Michael R. Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general whose attempts to investigate the FBI were frequently rebuffed, said a probe into allegations of retaliation would focus attention on charges that a "culture of arrogance" within the bureau thwarts accountability and outside oversight.

Fine's Ruby Ridge inquiry was triggered by the protests of agents who spent years examining the inadequacies of the FBI's early reviews of the bloody siege. The wife of separatist Randy Weaver, their 14-year-old son and a federal marshal were killed in the siege.

The agents -- John E. Roberts, John Werner and Frank L. Perry -- said they were outraged when they learned that final recommendations for disciplinary action against Freeh and three other FBI veterans had been rejected in the closing days of the Clinton administration.

The agents, who had been detached from the FBI to work on the case for the Justice Department, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that they had been subjected to threats and retaliation by senior FBI officials for conducting an aggressive investigation. Censure, the mildest form of discipline, was proposed for Freeh.

They were also openly critical of their boss at the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, Assistant FBI Director Michael DeFeo. Perry said DeFeo fought their recommendation to clear the names of three agents who, the agents concluded, had been unfairly disciplined in 1994 for failures at Ruby Ridge.

An FBI spokesman said DeFeo would not comment on the criticism.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility and a Justice Management Division task force recommended the sanctions against Freeh and the others. But Stephen R. Colgate, then assistant attorney general for administration, decided on Jan. 3, 2001, to impose "no new discipline" in the Ruby Ridge case and not to rescind any earlier punishments.

The prime target of the alleged retaliation was Roberts. He testified that he came under pressure "almost immediately" after he and Werner were assigned in May 1995 to determine whether earlier reviews of Ruby Ridge had unfairly blamed lower-level officials.

Roberts said he and Werner were told by senior FBI executives "that our assignment to the Ruby Ridge investigation could have an impact on our careers." Roberts said his wife, an FBI support employee, was hounded from her job in the Boston division and that his attempts to win a promotion have been rejected 14 times.

Werner testified that Roberts "has had his career seriously impaired because of his hard work on a number of high-profile cases," including Ruby Ridge. Werner said in an interview that he, too, was subjected to threats, but they had no impact because, unlike Roberts, he stayed out of the FBI's career development program. He is now retired.

Justice Department officials have declined to comment on the specific claims of retaliation.

The Ruby Ridge siege in northern Idaho began with a shootout between camouflaged federal marshals and Weaver; his son, Sammy; and a family friend, Kevin Harris. Sammy Weaver and U.S. Marshal William Degan were killed.

The next morning, with hundreds of lawmen surrounding the Weavers' mountainside cabin, an FBI sniper shot and killed Vicki Weaver as she stood behind the cabin door, holding it open for others fleeing into the house.

Initial FBI inquiries, which focused on the unprecedented shoot-to-kill orders the snipers had been given, were conducted by friends of some of the highest-ranking targets of the reviews -- then-Assistant Director Larry Potts and his top deputy in the Ruby Ridge crisis, Danny Coulson, who supervised the siege from FBI headquarters.

The first inquiry tried to justify the shooting of Vicki Weaver. The second inquiry asserted that on-site commander Eugene Glenn had issued the shoot-to-kill orders, without the knowledge of anyone at FBI headquarters. Of the 12 agents disciplined by Freeh in January 1994, Glenn received the stiffest punishment, a 15-day suspension and a demotion.

Roberts, then working in the FBI's Boston division, and Werner, a street agent in Raleigh, N.C., were assigned to the case in response to Glenn's complaint that he was being made a scapegoat. Glenn said that Potts approved the shoot-to-kill rules and that Coulson knew about them.

Werner said he and Roberts soon became convinced that senior FBI officials assigned to the early inquiries had conducted "a sloppy and incomplete investigation to protect higher-ups." The two agents' work quickly led to the suspension of Potts, Coulson and several others, as well as a criminal investigation.

But Roberts said they found they were investigating popular executives who had "a great deal of support from many in the FBI."

Shortly after he was assigned to the Ruby Ridge case, Roberts testified, a senior FBI executive in the Boston division demanded he quit and return to the Boston area. When Roberts declined, the executive threatened to have him removed and began "to take out his anger on my wife, a support employee in the Boston division" until she requested a transfer.

Roberts said when he told one deputy FBI director about the senior executive's actions, "the deputy director responded that the senior executive was his friend." Roberts said "the final decision not to promote me" was made by "one of the senior executives against whom I made allegations."

--------

Spy-tech touts its protection

August 9, 2001
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010809-29314000.htm

The electronic surveillance industry insists its mission is not unwarranted snooping but protecting public safety.

To demonstrate that, industry leaders are calling for either federal legislation or adoption of voluntary guidelines to safeguard against misuse of closed-circuit television cameras and new "facial recognition" cameras by police agencies that use the devices as crime-fighting weapons.

"This technology is about public safety and life safety. It is an invaluable tool for law enforcement to ensure we have safe communities in which we raise our families. It is designed to watch out for you, not to watch you," Richard Chace, executive director of the Security Industry Association, said yesterday at a news conference at the National Press Club.

"But we can't let technology go unchecked," said Mr. Chace, whose organization represents more than 350 electronic security equipment manufacturers, distributors and service providers worldwide.

"I feel I need help from the federal government to make sure there is no misuse," said Joseph J. Atick, president and CEO of Visionics Corp. of Jersey City, N.J.

Visionics is the firm that developed FaceIt, the computerized facial recognition technology recently installed in an entertainment district of Tampa Bay, Fla., to try to catch criminals.

In a control room, FaceIt analyses a video feed from 36 closed-circuit television cameras placed around the area known as the Ybor Center. As Mr. Atick explained yesterday, the software "instantly converts faces appearing in the field of view to 'faceprints.'" A "faceprint" is a digital code that measures a person's facial structure. "It can be used just like a fingerprint to establish someone's identity," he said.

Mr. Atick said the software "matches the live faceprint to those stored in a watch list mug shot database of criminals." If a match occurs, he said, the system sounds an alarm, and a trained officer compares the images.

Critics of FaceIt and other surveillance technology such as those being used to catch speeders have ranged from the liberal American Civil Liberties Union to conservative House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Texas Republican. The ACLU says such technology invades privacy and raises constitutional questions about illegal searches.

The terms "Orwellian" or "Big Brother" have been used frequently in news accounts about the surveillance devices.

Mr. Chace said the purpose of yesterday's news conference was to "change the debate" about this new, high-tech equipment. Until now, he said, most media reports have focused on "privacy issues and the potential implications of government abuse."

"It is time to stop focusing solely on how this technology could be potentially abused and start talking about how the technology can be positively used in a responsible and effective way," he said.

"It is time to focus on shoring up constructive public safety policies that remove any fear of 'Big Brother,'" he said, adding:

"It is time to stop irresponsible grandstanding and fear-mongering and to start open and honest dialogue on the shaping of policies which will ensure responsible use."

As for privacy concerns, Mr. Atick said courts have "consistently found" that a person cannot expect privacy in a public place.

He also said that faces that do not match a "criminal or a person under active criminal investigation ... should be purged instantly from the system."

--------

Ruling in Oregon Halts Federal Undercover Probes
Prosecutors Fear Discipline for Advising Investigators in Covert Operations After State High Court's Prohibition on Deceit

By Jeff Adler Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, August 9, 2001; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49484-2001Aug8?language=printer

A controversial ruling by the Oregon Supreme Court has prompted federal prosecutors there to suspend all major federal undercover investigations for the past year, halting everything from street-level drug stings to probes into organized crime and child pornography.

In a strict reading of the state bar's ethics code, the state Supreme Court last year prohibited lawyers from engaging in any form of deceit or encouraging others to lie. Because of the decision, federal and state prosecutors fear that they could face discipline for advising undercover investigators, who must misrepresent themselves as part of their work.

Rather than risk sanction, federal prosecutors stopped signing off on covert operations by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies in Oregon a year ago. The FBI and DEA cannot initiate undercover investigations without the authorization of the U.S. attorney's office.

Phil Donegan, an FBI special agent in Portland, said the court's decision has hampered hundreds of federal criminal investigations, from white collar fraud to organized crime. The bureau also halted an operation that targeted child pornography on the Internet.

"It has handcuffed federal law enforcement in the state," Donegan said. "If we're going to buy drugs, we have to walk up to the dealer and say, 'We're the FBI, and we'd like to buy drugs from you.' "

Donegan added that the FBI is trying to work within the confines of the court's decision but said, "It certainly gives [criminals] a lot of freedom."

State and local prosecutors are not required to authorize undercover operations, but they have stopped counseling investigators involved in them. Local detectives are still working undercover but are "flying blind," Portland Police Chief Mark A. Kroeker said.

"This has put a crimp in our operation because, naturally, you want to work with the prosecutor to put together the best case you can," Kroeker said.

The Justice Department has filed suit against the Oregon State Bar, challenging the ethics code. On Tuesday, a federal judge agreed to consider a motion to dismiss the suit and another to give the Justice Department a quick victory without a trial.

The Oregon Supreme Court decision stems not from a prosecutor's misconduct but from the unethical behavior of a private attorney.

In 1998, the Oregon State Bar ruled that Daniel J. Gatti violated the ethics code when he posed as a doctor to an insurance company he was preparing to sue. The Oregon State Bar's ethics rules prevent lawyers from engaging in "dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation." Similar ethics rules exist in many other states.

When Gatti appealed to the state Supreme Court, U.S. Attorney Michael Mosman asked the court to exempt prosecutors who advise undercover agents. The court refused.

The court upheld sanctions against Gatti last year and allowed no exceptions for prosecutors, prohibiting all Oregon lawyers from "encouraging" others to lie or misrepresent themselves.

The ruling's ripple effect has been far-reaching. In the past, prosecutors under Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers coordinated closely with investigators on both civil and criminal fraud cases to ensure that evidence was collected legally. But those conversations have ended.

"The two can't talk if there is any chance that the investigator is going undercover," said Kevin Neely, a spokesman for Myers. "So the investigator has to just go out and do it without any oversight from the attorney."

With district attorneys following suit, many anticipate that "there will be a number of investigations where the officers will act in good faith, but the evidence will be suppressed," said Joshua K. Marquis, the district attorney for Clatsop County and president of the Oregon District Attorneys Association.

Jeffrey Standen, a professor at Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Ore., said investigations conducted without prosecutors' advice could endanger detectives.

"Going uncounseled is not only going to lead to people not being convicted," Standen said. "Beyond that, it could put people in some difficult situations where they might reveal their identity."

In January, the Oregon State Bar asked the state Supreme Court to approve an amendment to the bar's ethics rules that would have allowed lawyers to advise or supervise certain clandestine operations. But the high court rejected that amendment in April, calling it too broad. Bar members are working on a revised amendment they hope to present to the state Supreme Court in the fall.

Defense attorneys contend that federal and state prosecutors are overreacting. They applaud the Gatti ruling for reminding lawyers not to use deceit.

"It's a very healthy thing," said John Henry Hingson III, a criminal defense attorney from Oregon City. "Law enforcement has become addicted to the use of the covert -- as opposed to the overt -- in criminal law enforcement."

Ed Harnden, president of the Oregon State Bar, maintains that prosecutors can tiptoe along the Gatti decision, supervising covert investigations without violating the code of ethics.

"It's a fairly fine line," Harnden said. "But I believe it's a fine line that is defensible and simply required in today's world."

The Justice Department decided to fight the ruling by filing a lawsuit in May against the Oregon State Bar, arguing that its prohibitions "encroach upon the authority of the federal government to engage in covert law enforcement activities that necessarily involve deceit or misrepresentation."

The Gatti ruling "has essentially tied our hands from going after the most dangerous and craftiest criminals we chase," Mosman said. "When you can't do undercover work, it doesn't mean you're out of law enforcement, but it means you're out of the business of catching those criminals who are the greatest risk to the population."

But critics say the Justice Department's lawsuit is a ploy to pressure Congress into repealing a 1998 federal law that requires state bar ethics rules to govern federal prosecutors. If that happened, the Justice Department could employ its own ethics regulations for U.S. attorneys.

"They want to police their own," said Hingson, the criminal defense lawyer. "This is something that [Attorney] General [John D.] Ashcroft should be very, very cautious about."


-------- activists

Mexico's Poor Rally Against Fox's Policies

By Kevin Sullivan Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 9, 2001; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49669-2001Aug8?language=printer

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 8 -- Thousands of impoverished, rural Mexicans blocked off Mexico City's historic central square and several government buildings today in an angry protest against what they see as the pro-business, pro-U.S. economic policies of President Vicente Fox.

Carrying banners that read "Fox means misery," the farmers complained of being left behind in Fox's drive to modernize national political and economic systems built by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed Mexico for most of the last century.

"Fox promised change that would improve things for Mexicans, not a change that would increase misery," said Francisco Zazaleta, a coffee farmer from the state of Oaxaca. "There are Mexicans who are dying of hunger. As much as they work, they can't earn enough to provide for their families."

Mexico's campesinos, or rural farmers, have suffered from the effects of increasingly open trade with the United States, which has driven down prices for their produce. Zazaleta said his region has warehouses full of coffee that cannot be sold because imports have driven prices down so far.

Corn farmers say that imports from the United States have increased by nearly 15 percent a year since 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed, dramatically cutting into the prices of the home-grown variety.

As a result, families that have farmed for generations now find their children fleeing for better-paying jobs assembling televisions or washing machines for export to the United States in plants along the U.S.-Mexican border.

--------

Catholic Priest Arrested at Protest

New York Times
August 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Protest-Priest.html

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. (AP) -- A Roman Catholic priest from Iowa was arrested Thursday for a seventh time protesting the nation's nuclear weapons.

The Rev. Frank Cordaro and three others were cited for trespassing at the Air Force base near Omaha. The arrest came on the 56th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.

Military police took Cordaro into custody and gave him a letter saying he was barred from the base. He was expected to be released within hours.

Cordaro, 50, first showed up to protest at Offutt Air Force Base years before he became a priest in 1985. The Des Moines, Iowa, diocese, relieved Cordaro of his duties as a priest in 1999 after a protest at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland landed him in prison for six months.

He has spent the last two years at Des Moines' Catholic Worker house, serving the poor.

After Des Moines Bishop Joseph Charron ordered him to rethink his future with the church, Cordaro agreed to curb his criticism of church doctrine on female priests, birth control and homosexuality. But, he said, he cannot stop protesting against the U.S. military.

Officials with the diocese have said they fear Cordaro is abandoning the people he is assigned to give pastoral care.

Tom Chapman, a spokesman for the bishop, said the diocese would not take any action unless Cordaro is sentenced to prison.

--------

Environment Gets New Consultant

By Judy Sarasohn
Thursday, August 9, 2001; Page A17
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51470-2001Aug8?language=printer

David Gardiner, executive director of the White House Climate Change Task Force in the Clinton administration, has started his own enviro consulting and lobbying firm, aptly named David Gardiner & Associates. He also served for six years as assistant administrator for policy at the Environmental Protection Agency and earlier as the Sierra Club's legislative director here.

He's doing some work now for the Union of Concerned Scientists and the International Finance Corp., among others. One of his efforts on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists will be to boost funding for renewable energy sources -- wind, solar and such -- in energy legislation as it wends its way through the Senate. He is not allowed to lobby the EPA until next year.

President Bush's rejection of the Kyoto treaty has "put climate change back on the public agenda," Gardiner said. "[S]trong signals from the Congress of their discontent with the Bush administration's stance on the issue, including last week's announcement by Senators Lieberman and McCain to move ahead with global warming legislation, means that measures to address global warming will be debated and enacted," Gardiner said.

Good news for lobbyists.

--------



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