------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Nuclear Arms Key to New Russia - U.S. Talks
Natural Gas Plant Passes Early Test
Federal Energy Regulation Commission - What is it?

MILITARY
Rebels in Sierra Leone Mine Diamonds in Defiance of U.N.
Macedonia Leader Insists on Peace
Colombian army pounds rebel groups in continued offensive: army
Colombian Army Pursues Guerrillas
California begins 'medipot' trials
Iraq Says Oil Remains Option to Combat Sanctions
U.S. Navy mounts huge drill in South China Sea

OTHER
Scientists Muck Around in Toxic Mud
Norton takes Interior on 180-degree turnaround
The Limiting of Science Is Cutting Off Hope
Making Rules in the World Between War and Peace
China Tries Internet Entrepreneur
Italian Cop Remorseful After Summit
F.B.I. Is Investigating a Senior Counterterrorism Agent
LAPD Suffering Recruitment Problems
Your Father Is a Spy

ACTIVISTS
6th Annual Gulf War Veterans' Conference
15 Face Felonies In Missile Protest



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- russia

Nuclear Arms Key to New Russia - U.S. Talks

August 19, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-russia-usa.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A top U.S. arms official flies into Moscow this week for talks with Russian officials hungry for pledges on nuclear arms cuts that could clear the way for a deal on missile defense.

John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control, will meet Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov on Tuesday -- the fifth top U.S. official to visit Moscow in a month.

Russia wants to nail down the outline of a new arms reduction accord, which many experts see as vital to securing Moscow's grudging acceptance of U.S. plans to develop missile defense.

So far, Moscow has refused to revise or dump the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty which bans national missile defense. Washington says the pact is a Cold War relic that must go if it is to confront the threat posed by ``rogue states'' like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week failed to persuade his Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov to drop the ABM treaty. Ivanov made it clear concessions on missile defense must be linked tightly to verifiable cuts in nuclear arsenals.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Bush last month agreed to link talks on the two issues, and ordered officials to step up the pace of talks on defining a new ''strategic relationship'' reflecting the end of the Cold War.

COLD WAR LEGACY

Rumsfeld last week said his talks in Moscow showed Russia remained ``captured to a certain extent by the old Cold War mentality, fear and apprehension and concern about the West.''

Moscow has brushed off such talk and complains that Washington has failed to spell out what a new relationship could entail in the security, economic and political fields.

Foreign Ministry experts told the Itar-Tass news agency ahead of Bolton's arrival that Moscow wanted guarantees that warheads taken off missiles as part of a START-3 strategic arms reduction treaty would not be switched back at a later date.

``The American side insists that cuts in nuclear potential should be studied separately from the issue of deployment of a U.S. national missile defense system,'' one official told Tass.

``But strategic stability is impossible without a tight link between defensive and offensive systems. Mr. Bolton's visit to Moscow could bring answers to these questions,'' he said.

However, many Russian officials believe a current review of the U.S. nuclear stance, which Rumsfeld said last week should be completed in one to two months, makes real progress impossible.

In addition, Moscow wants any agreements in legally binding, verifiable treaty form, unlike Washington which wants to avoid complex treaty negotiations and favors a more flexible approach including memorandums of understanding.

``The system of control under agreed conditions must be retained, for it leads to an increase in confidence, including between partners,'' said Igor Sergeyev, defense minister until he was named as Putin's security advisor earlier this year.

Some U.S. officials concede that any Russian agreement to missile defense would include ``rules of the road,'' which some Russian experts believe could include ceilings on the number of interceptor rockets featured in any U.S. missile shield.

SUMMIT CLOUDS

Washington would prefer to win some form of Russian acquiescence on missile defense before its vigorous testing schedule begins to ``bump against'' the ABM treaty within months, possibly as early as next spring.

But Rumsfeld made it clear last week that Washington would push ahead if no agreement was possible and give the statutory six months notice of quitting the accord, rather than violate it. Moscow expects that to happen in October or November.

That could cast a cloud over a summit between Putin and Bush at the latter's Texas ranch in November, although U.S. officials are already saying they do not expect a deal on a new security relationship or missile defense and arms cuts by then.

However, Bush has made it clear that before Putin comes to his ranch, he wants his military chiefs to tell him how many warheads the United States actually needs.

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

-------- maryland

Natural Gas Plant Passes Early Test
FERC, Coast Guard Reviews Ahead

By Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 19, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28101-2001Aug18.html

The Calvert County Planning Commission approved a plan by a Tulsa company to renovate and expand a natural gas storage and import plant at Cove Point on the Chesapeake Bay.

The commission's approval, which came Wednesday, applies only to the physical improvements proposed by the Williams Co. The $120 million project also needs approvals from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Coast Guard, according to Greg Bowen, a deputy planner for the county.

The planning commission did not deal with issues of licensing, safety or boat traffic, Bowen said.

The Coast Guard, which is overseeing the impact of the plan on local waterways, will hold a public meeting on the project from 3:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Holiday Inn Select in Solomons.

Williams Co. wants federal government approval by September so that it can begin to import liquid natural gas to the offshore pier in April, according to company officials.

Last month, a study by FERC regulators determined that the plan would not significantly affect the "quality of the human environment." The report, which was the subject of public comment on Aug. 2, recommended that the company file an emergency response plan with a handful of local, state and federal authorities, conduct a noise survey and follow limitations on ship docking and unloading. They also asked that the company establish communication procedures with the nearby Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant.

The improvements to the Cove Point plant, built in 1974, could make Williams Co. the second-biggest taxpayer in the county behind Calvert Cliffs, according to a local official.

The plant's two former owners, the Columbia and Consolidated Natural Gas companies, had operated a liquid natural gas terminal and related pipeline facilities. The import operation ended in December 1980 because of falling domestic natural gas prices and a dispute with exporters from Algeria, the main source of the product, according to Williams Co. officials. The onshore facilities were then reopened in 1994 to provide a natural gas storage service.

Williams Co. bought the plant in June 2000 and wants permission to reactivate the offshore facility and to build a fifth storage tank with a capacity of 2.5 billion cubic feet. The present four storage tanks accommodate about twice that amount.

The pier where the product is unloaded -- about a mile and a quarter offshore and connected to the plant by an underwater tunnel -- would also be refurbished to handle tankers that typically are about 1,000 feet long and 150 feet wide, according to a county official.

In March, more than 100 people attended a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission meeting in Solomons about the proposed project. Calvert County Board of Commissioners President David F. Hale (R-Owings) then endorsed the operation, which could bring the county $2 million in annual tax revenue. But some neighbors questioned the effect of increased shipping and potential risks to the nearby nuclear power plant.

---

Federal Energy Regulation Commission - What is it?

Washington Post
Tuesday, August 7, 2001; 1:14 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A91899-2001May29?language=printer

FERC is an independent federal regulatory agency responsible for seeing that the wholesale electricity prices that generators charge utility companies are "just and reasonable." It does not regulate the retail electricity rates that households, businesses and organizations pay directly -- that is up to state utility commissions. FERC also oversees rates for transmitting electricity between states, hydroelectric licensing, certification of natural gas and oil pipelines and pipeline transmission rates.

It has about 1,200 employees, with headquarters in the District near Union Station. Its budget this year is $175.2 million.

History

FERC was created through the Department of Energy Organization Act in 1977, when the Energy Department was established. Its predecessor, the Federal Power Commission, was abolished and its duties divided between FERC and the Energy Department. The FPC was established in 1920 to regulate the electric power and natural gas industries.

The FPC's authority over electricity rates was greatly strengthened with the passage of the Federal Power Act in 1935, one of the landmark laws of the New Deal.

Who's in Charge?

FERC is run by five commissioners who are appointed by the president to five-year, staggered terms. No more than three members may belong to the same political party. One member is designated by the president to serve as chairman.
• Chairman Curt Hebert Jr., Republican, appointed by President Bush, announced Aug. 6 that he would resign by the end of the month. • Linda Key Breathitt, Democrat • William L. Massey, Democrat • Pat Wood III, Republican • Nora Mead Brownell, Republican

-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

Rebels in Sierra Leone Mine Diamonds in Defiance of U.N.
Captured Children and Conscripts Used as Laborers

By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 19, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30720-2001Aug18?language=printer

KOIDU, Sierra Leone -- Sierra Leone's rebels are using the forced labor of children and young men to greatly expand their diamond mining here, despite an agreement as part of a fragile peace process to stop harvesting gems from one of the world's richest diamond fields.

The rebels of the Revolutionary United Front are digging in defiance of an accord with the government earlier this month, and the presence nearby of 800 U.N. peacekeepers. U.N. officials said their mandate was to enforce a cease-fire signed by the rebels and the government in November and did not include enforcing the mining ban.

International outrage over links between the diamond trade and the rebels, who have engaged in widespread abuses of civilians, led the United Nations last year to ban the trade of the stones from Sierra Leone unless the gems have a government certificate of origin. But the rebels, who say they are mining at an unprecedented pace, skirt the ban by selling to middlemen who appear to have little trouble smuggling the stones out of the country.

A mixture of RUF militants, adult and child conscripts, and local miners allowed in by the rebels has turned every possible diamond site into a pile of mud and gravel where the miners, dressed in rags and covered with mud, pan for stones. Children work beside adults, digging mud and gravel, sifting it and wielding picks and shovels.

With near-absolute control of the mining fields, the RUF levies a tax of one-third of all stones mined here by conscripts captured during the civil war and independent miners, according to rebel commanders. The rebels say their conscripts can keep two-thirds of the diamonds they mine. This could not be confirmed on a visit here, during which miners were skittish about providing anything more than the most basic details of their work due to the presence nearby of RUF overseers. The RUF has blocked government officials, police and soldiers from entering the eastern mining region.

The RUF commanders also acknowledged that while thousands of combatants have been disarmed in recent weeks under the peace accord, the RUF retains a military structure and weapons to enforce its control of the mining fields.

Proceeds from the stones, which are sold to smugglers for a fraction of their market value, fill the rebel coffers and pose the biggest obstacle to ending the war and restoring the economy of this impoverished West African country, U.N. officials and diplomats said.

While experts admit they are guessing at the value of the diamonds mined here, a recent World Bank study estimated that $138 million worth of diamonds was exported from Sierra Leone in 1999, of which only $1.2 million was legal. The RUF is believed to collect millions of dollars a year, experts say, even though it sells to smugglers at a discount.

While past cease-fires and attempts at disarmament have failed, the current peace process has gone relatively smoothly.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission here, the largest in the world, is supposed to deploy across Sierra Leone as the country heads for elections early next year. Fighting has virtually ceased as the U.N. has deployed 15,000 troops. But only in the past two weeks have peacekeepers established a permanent presence in this diamond-rich area, which covers about 1,600 square miles.

Diplomats and U.N. officials say the real test of the peace process will be what happens here, in the eastern slice of country and its alluvial mines, where, instead of expensive mining equipment, only a rudimentary shovel and sieve are required to pluck the gems from the rivers.

"The war was about resources, and it still is," one diplomat said. "Until the government gets control of its most valuable resources there can be no economic recovery. And if the RUF gives up the fields, they lose their financial base. How that contradiction is resolved will determine if the war really ends."

Pro-government militias known as Kamajors are also mining on the fringes of the diamond fields, but their fields are not nearly so rich as those controlled by the rebels.

As in other African conflicts such as those in Angola, Congo and Liberia, much of the brutal 10-year civil war in this country -- slightly bigger than West Virginia -- was fought over natural resources. The rivers of eastern Sierra Leone contain some of the most easily mined and plentiful supplies of diamonds on the planet.

The war here was particularly brutal. The rebels systematically abducted children to use as combatants, raped women and burned villages to impose a reign of terror in areas under their control, including most of the nation's rural areas. The rebels and pro-government forces both went on terror sprees, hacking off the arms, legs and ears of thousands of civilians, including children as young as 2.

Control of the diamond fields changed hands several times, and the government even hired South African mercenaries to clear out the rebels in exchange for several million dollars and 40 percent of the mining profits. But the rebels have exercised uncontested control here since 1997.

Once a prosperous town, Koidu is now reachable only by air or by roads from the west and south, roads that are mostly deep ruts and vast mudholes, littered with the burned and stripped hulks of wrecked cars, tanks and armored personnel carriers.

An RUF commander known as Major Nikol, supervising several hundred almost-naked miners laboring in a field of mud and water pools, said that those working were captured during the war and forced to fight for the rebels, and are now forced to work as miners. In the same field sit rusting cranes and bulldozers left by foreign mining companies that worked here when they were protected by the mercenaries.

The miners' ranks are swelled by children captured during the war, as well as by RUF units that have traded in their guns for shovels. They crowd the main road, carrying shovels, buckets and round, rustic sifters called "shake-shakes," made of screen and bamboo. The town, nearly deserted six weeks ago, now has rows of tin huts selling mining gear.

"They are under our supervision, and the RUF is responsible for their security," Nikol said, sitting under a tree as a light rain fell and his men watched to make sure those digging did not try to hide any stones. "They pay us one-third of what they get, because we are a cause, a party, and we need the money. We are mining now more than ever."

The money, Nikol said, could be used to finance the RUF's transformation into a political party to contest presidential elections next year or for "other purposes," especially if Foday Sankoh, the RUF's top leader who was captured 15 months ago, is not freed from prison.

"If we are not respected in the mining fields, if our leader is not freed, then the struggle continues," Nikol said as his entourage cheered and clapped. "You cannot defeat us in war. That is all I can say. The struggle continues."

The extent of the RUF control was shown by the unwillingness of the miners, even those claiming to have come here voluntarily to seek their fortune, to discuss details of their work or compensation. Only after much negotiation did Nikol allow a few photos to be taken.

The miners said that when they leave the fields, they strip -- not only to rinse off the mud but also to show they are not hiding any stones.

Observers and diplomats said it was impossible to guess how much the diamonds extracted here were worth. While the finished diamonds are valued at tens of millions of dollars, the miners receive only a tiny fraction of that.

Many of the diamonds, according to miners and residents, are sold to women known as "mamas" who visit regularly. Easily distinguishable here, where most people wear only rags, the elegantly dressed women wearing gold jewelry collect the stones from RUF commanders, pay cash, then resell the diamonds to Lebanese and Israeli diamond dealers in the cities of Bo and Kenema, 60 miles south of here, according to knowledgeable middlemen.

Despite a new system under which all diamonds from Sierra Leone are supposed to have certificates of origin from the government to be legally exported, most of the stones are smuggled through neighboring Liberia and Guinea, according to U.N. investigators and other sources.

U.N. spokesman Patrick Coker said that since the cease-fire, 13,000 RUF combatants and their counterparts in the pro-government Kamajor militias have disarmed countrywide, about half the total expected to eventually turn in their weapons. About 5,000 in the Koidu area have disarmed in the past two weeks.

U.N. officials said it was not their job to stop the mining here, and that the task would be dangerous and difficult.

"It is not in our mandate," a senior U.N. official said. "It is up to the government to do what it has to do, to do its job. If they didn't mine, what would all the demobilized combatants do, with no jobs and no skills? There is only mining."

While 790 Pakistani troops have set up a base here, U.N. officials said that Bangladeshi troops who rotated through earlier had begun mining and traded fuel for diamonds, undermining the mission's credibility.

Former combatants have flooded Koidu, a once-prosperous town razed during the war. U.N. troops must regularly chase miners away from the only bridge that links Koidu to the outside world because the miners dig the gravel from around the pylons, causing fear that the bridge will collapse.

Few crops have been planted in recent years because the rebels and government forces stole what little was grown, and many residents show signs of malnutrition.

"You can see we are not rich," said Salu Ansumana, a 15-year-old wearing only a pair of briefs and standing up to his thighs in a mud pit, when asked about his work. "If we had money, we would not be here. We are working hard for other people, not ourselves. Now I cannot say any more."

-------- balkans

Macedonia Leader Insists on Peace

August 19, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Macedonia.html

SIPKOVICA, Macedonia (AP) -- The reclusive leader of Macedonia's ethnic Albanian guerrillas stepped out into the open Sunday, inviting reporters to his mountain hide-out to declare that his fighters will hand their weapons to NATO soldiers and honor a peace deal.

Dressed in a camouflage uniform and flanked by rebels armed with assault rifles, Ali Ahmeti, the political leader of the insurgents' National Liberation Army, said the time had come to work for peace in this troubled Balkan nation.

``We will give up all our arms, because we will no longer have any need for them,'' he said of the rebels, who began fighting for more rights for minority ethnic Albanians in Macedonia six months ago.

Ahmeti told reporters crammed into a village school that he has begun contacts with a NATO advance team that began moving into the country this weekend to determine whether a tenuous cease-fire is holding well enough to deploy the full 3,500-troop mission.

The alliance will decide later this week whether to move ahead with the British-led Operation Essential Harvest. The mission would collect rebel weapons -- a key element of a peace deal meant to end the country's crisis.

The alliance's supreme allied commander in Europe, Gen. Joseph Ralston, travels to Macedonia on Monday to take part in the security assessment.

Even as NATO's advance forces poured in, the shooting continued, although on a much smaller scale. Macedonian state radio reported sporadic firefights overnight near the country's second-largest city, Tetovo, but said there were no casualties.

Civilians also blockaded the main road to the border in the town of Stenkovac for a second day Sunday, preventing NATO-led peacekeepers from traveling back and forth to Kosovo. The support base for peacekeepers in Kosovo is located in Macedonia.

Amid the swirling anticipation of the deployment, the rebels sought their moment of attention. The usually reclusive Ahmeti, promised that after the peace deal, the rebels would no longer be so mysterious. The insurgents, he said, want to assimilate again into society and live normal lives together with Macedonians.

``We have to think about the future and we have to remember the past as something bitter,'' Ahmeti said. ``We have to create the conditions to accommodate both Albanians and Macedonians.''

Ahmeti deftly deflected questions about his own political future, but he clearly was king in his stronghold in Sipkovica, 25 miles outside the capital, Skopje.

Children lined up and cheered as he entered his car. Uniformed men guarded his every step in a village patrolled by rebels carrying assault rifles and grenades.

Four-wheel drive vehicles painted in camouflage colors and bearing registration plates with the NLA emblem sped through the village, ferrying rebels to checkpoints on the outskirts.

But Ahmeti insists he is willing to give up the territory his group holds for the sake of ensuring the peace deal works.

``This is our territory and their territory,'' he said of the Macedonians.

NATO repeatedly has stressed that if the full multinational force is deployed, it will not act as a peacekeeping body separating the two factions in Macedonia and will only collect weapons voluntarily handed in by the rebels. The mission is to last only 30 days.

Many rebels say they want NATO troops to remain in the country much longer.

``I don't think they will leave. They will stay much longer,'' said Selman Sefeori, 46, who lives in the New York City borough of Brooklyn but returned to his native Macedonia to fight about five months ago.

He admitted he is considering holding on to one of his weapons ``just in case,'' instead of handing it in to NATO.

``Nobody trusts the Macedonians,'' he said.

-------- colombia

Colombian army pounds rebel groups in continued offensive: army

Sunday August 19, 9:28 AM
Agence France-Presse
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010819/1/1cf00.html

The Colombian army said it was continuing a "devastating" offensive against leftist rebel groups Saturday and inflicting major casualties, though no hard numbers, or confirmation from the guerrilla groups, were available.

"We are carrying out a tremendously important operation, of great magnitude, and the military aircraft have hit guerrilla targets with devastating effects," Armed Forces Commander General Fernando Tapias said Saturday.

He declined to specify how many casualties had been inflicted in the past four days, saying it was impossible to determine since the maneuvers and air bombardments were taking place in forested areas "as big as any European country."

On Friday, army estimates of the number of rebel casualties ranged from 50 to 100.

There was no word on army casualties and to date neither of the two rebel groups targetted have made any statement on the offensive or its toll.

Bogota's police chief meanwhile said 208 kilos (460 pounds) of explosives were found in a Bogota neighborhood Saturday, and accused the 4,500-strong National Liberation Army of planning bomb blasts and car-bomb attacks from Venezuela.

General Jorge Linares said two men had been arrested in connection with the find.

Violence and bomb blasts have escalated in Colombia since President Andres Pastrana froze peace talks with the ELN on August 8, saying it lacked the will to seek peace.

The army offensive also follows the signing by Pastrana Thursday of a controversial new law granting the army special legal powers and allowing him to set up a crack military unit to protect Colombia's energy production assets and environment from rebel attacks.

Army commander General Jorge Mora on Saturday called the operation entirely offensive and "unprecedented."

Elite units of more than 4,000 soldiers were attacking positions of the 16,500-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the 4,500-member National Liberation Army (ELN) by air and land, in diverse parts of the country, he said.

Regular troops were also conducting offensives against mixed FARC and ELN commands in the oil producing department of Arauca in northeastern Colombia, and in north, south and central Colombia, Mora said.

Operations against the FARC were concentrated in the coca-growing departments of Guaviare, Guainia and Vichada, after Colombian military intelligence detected a 1,500-strong FARC column outside the demilitarized zone in southern Colombia where the group is based, army sources said.

More than 30 Arpia and Black Hawk helicopters and OV-10 combat airplanes were used to pummel the region, the sources said.

Independent sources told reporters in Meta department, which borders Guaviare, that the region had been bombarded by military airplanes, but they could not say how many people had been killed or if the victims included civilians.

A demilitarized zone in the heart of a 42,000-square-kilometer (16,000-square-mile) swath of jungle and savanna was effectively ceded to the FARC in November 1998 as an inducement to peace talks, which have so far yielded no result.

While rocky peace talks have continued between Pastrana's government and the FARC in the last two years, attacks and kidnaps by the rebel group have gone unabated.

The Colombian government announced July 23 it could only reach a truce with FARC, the country's oldest leftist guerrilla group, following a cease-fire and a suspension of all hostilities.

Since 1964, leftist guerrillas have fought Colombia's government and, more recently, right-wing paramilitaries in a bloody civil war that has killed some 200,000 people, mostly civilians.

--------

Colombian Army Pursues Guerrillas

August 19, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-Fighting.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Thousands of soldiers backed by jets and helicopter gunships pursued a column of rebels through Colombia's southern jungle Sunday, killing 20 guerrillas, including a high-ranking commander, the military said.

In a major assault, the army deployed 3,500 soldiers, dozens of helicopters and fighter planes after locating more than 1,000 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in the jungle near San Jose del Guaviare, about 185 miles southeast of Bogota.

Soldiers killed Urias Cuellar, ``the second man in the military hierarchy of the FARC,'' Gen. Carlos Alberto Fracica, commander of the Army's Rapid Response Force, said in an interview with the television station RCN.

The army said that three soldiers were also killed in the fighting late Saturday and early Sunday.

Rebel representatives could not be reached for comment. It was not immediately clear how important a commander Cuellar was.

The rebel force was located a week ago, after it left a rebel-controlled region where informal peace talks have been staged, the army said. The army launched the offensive Thursday.

The army said the guerrillas had been planning to attack military bases in the southeast as well as the communities of Barrancominas, San Jose del Guaviare, Mapiripan and Puerto Alvira.

The leftist 16,000-strong FARC, Colombia's largest guerrilla group, has been fighting the government for more than three decades. Fighting kills about 3,000 people a year.

The government and the FARC have held sporadic peace talks for the past three years, but have failed to reach substantive agreements. President Andres Pastrana ceded a swath of territory the size of Switzerland to the FARC early in the negotiations in an attempt to jump start the process.

-------- drug war

California begins 'medipot' trials

August 19, 2001
By Thomas D. Elias
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010819-393684.htm

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- The nation's first government-run clinical trial of "medipot," or medical marijuana, began slowly and ironically here last week when a 37-year-old AIDS activist forswore his longtime use of marijuana for six weeks.

After his pot-free interval, Philip Alden will spend six more weeks smoking government-rolled joints to test how they affect both nausea and the pain and numbness he often feels in his hands and feet. The marijuana will come from a federally owned field in Mississippi.

The $500,000 study, which will take about 18 months to complete, will eventually involve 60 patients in a trial carefully controlled to exclude recreational marijuana users.

It began just two months after the Supreme Court ruled that federal narcotics laws supercede California's 1996 Proposition 215, which attempted to legalize medical marijuana for patients with recommendations from their doctors. Illustrating the unsettled state of the scientific controversy over medipot, that U.S. ruling was quickly followed by a law passed in Canada allowing patients with diseases as varied as AIDS and arthritis to legally cultivate marijuana gardens after obtaining a doctor's approval.

The study was approved by the Food and Drug Administration early this year following a three-year effort by county officials who aggressively lobbied for the clinical trial.

Mr. Alden, who suffers from a form of AIDS that prevents his body from absorbing many nutrients, reports he has seen his muscles wither unless he lifts weights and takes heavy doses of steroids and other medications that often make him feel nauseated.

"I really hope the study produces some hard data," he said. "If marijuana does nothing but calm nausea and increase appetite, it's still worth it."

Many medipot advocates claim the plant can also stem the progress of some forms of cancer and multiple sclerosis.

However, some in the health community say that more testing and research need to be done to prove the medical effectiveness of marijuana.

"So far, there is only anecdotal evidence that marijuana has any benefit," says Dr. Dennis Israelski, director of the study and chief of infectious diseases and AIDS medicine for the San Mateo County Hospitals and Clinics. "I am no advocate of medical marijuana. What's really great about this is that we have the scientific approach, but it's also being generated from sincere compassion amongst our political leaders."

But County Supervisor Mark Nevin definitely is an advocate. He spent three years fighting for federal approval of the county study and says: "We hope they will lead to proving once and for all that the substance in marijuana relieves pain and suffering for the very sick."

The trial has received no organized opposition within the county.

But California's Narcotics Officers Association disapproves of the effort. "It is our firm belief that any movement that liberalizes or legalizes substance abuse laws would set us back to the days of the 1970s when we experienced this country's worst drug problem," the group said in a position paper.

Mr. Nevin, however, said the study is not an effort to legalize marijuana but to determine whether it should be considered a therapeutic agent for some patients.

Dr. Israelski said the new study might also reveal whether pot can be used safely in a "real-life setting and not wind up in the hands of friends, or children or even pets."

In an attempt to exclude drug abusers from the trial, would-be subjects are being given three weeks of intensive physical and psychological tests. These tests also aim to eliminate patients whose conventional therapy might be adversely affected by the use of marijuana.

Patients are required to keep daily logs of their pot use, consumption of alcohol and any other recreational drugs and to turn in the stubs of joints during their weekly visits to doctors.

Dr. Israelski said county officials will also make unannounced visits to the homes of patients to check out conditions and marijuana use.

"We have to make sure we're not just being used to get free marijuana, but we also have to put some faith and trust in our patients," he said.

-------- iraq

Iraq Says Oil Remains Option to Combat Sanctions

August 19, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-oil-iraq.html

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said on Sunday Baghdad reserved the right to use oil as an instrument to try to lift U.N. sanctions.

``We are using all the means at our disposal to defend our people and dignity. If we use economic power to serve our own legitimate interest, then this is legal and noble,'' Sabri, who was appointed earlier this month, told Reuters.

His statement follows an article last week in the influential Babel newspaper, owned by President Saddam Hussein's son Uday, arguing that Iraq should stop awarding long-term and large-volume oil contracts at least until November, when the current ``oil for food'' program expires.

Iraq halted its U.N.-administered oil exports in June for a month in protest against a U.S. and British proposal to revamp the 11-year-old trade sanctions to target the Iraqi administration more narrowly.

Sanctions were imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Publication of Babel's article has kept the oil market guessing whether Iraq's U.N.-approved exports of 2.2 million barrels a day will continue to flow smoothly.

Sabri, a former journalist who oversaw the foreign media during the Gulf War, did not rule out normal oil production under the U.N. program.

``We want a lifting of sanctions. We agreed on this memorandum of understanding (oil for food) as a temporary arrangement,'' Sabri said at his Baghdad office.

He said Iraq's policy of seeking international support to bust the sanctions that had destroyed its economy was working, with more countries trading normally with Baghdad.

``These sanctions were imposed to achieve unlawful and illegal designs by the United States and Britain against Iraq.

``It is wearing thin. Who is supporting them in the Arab world? Only two regimes that are attached and controlled by American embassies in Riyadh and Kuwait,'' he said in reference to the monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The minister said Iraq had no knowledge of press reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is on a visit to Kuwait, was attempting to mend relations between Iraq and the country it invaded in 1990.

Iraq had not been contacted by Syria in this regard, he added, and laid down Iraq's own conditions for a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

``They should stop their contribution to armed aggression against Iraq, stop putting their bases at the disposal of American and British planes and stop financing this war,'' Sabri said.

Western planes police ``no-fly zones'' in northern and southern Iraq from bases in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The West set up the enclaves to protect the areas' Kurdish and Shi'ite populations from what Washington describes as a threat of attack from Iraqi forces.

``We pose no threat to anybody,'' Sabri said.

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

U.S. Navy mounts huge drill in South China Sea

August 19, 2001
By Helen Luk
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010819-46027630.htm

HONG KONG -- The U.S. Navy held an unusually large exercise in the South China Sea, three days before sending a battle group into Hong Kong for a routine port call.

There was no immediate response from the Chinese government to the Friday drill by two U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups -- described by the U.S. Navy as a "rare meeting at sea."

But one defense analyst said yesterday that it was a show of force to China.

Although Beijing claims the entire South China Sea as its territory and has garrisoned several islands, the United States and other major powers do not recognize the region as Chinese territory.

Other Asian countries -- including Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei -- also have territorial claims in the area.

The USS Constellation and the USS Carl Vinson conducted the one-day training exercise, a spokesman of the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet said through the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong yesterday. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

The spokesman said 14 vessels, at least 130 naval aircraft, more than 20 U.S. Air Force aircraft and more than 15,000 personnel joined forces in the exercise.

The operation, which involved tests of complex air traffic control procedures and ship maneuvering, was conducted amid a continuing, large-scale Chinese military drill off its southeast coast opposite Taiwan.

Pro-Beijing media here have dubbed the Chinese war games near Dongshan Island in Fujian province as the country's "largest and most advanced" ever, involving tens of thousands of troops, fighter jets, warships and missiles.

But independent defense analyst Paul Beaver said the two American vessels are "very potent forces."

"The Americans did these things for a reason," the London-based Mr. Beaver said.

"There's no doubt that this is a clear message being sent that America still cares about the Taiwan Strait situation."

The U.S. Navy spokesman, however, denied the drill was intended as a display of force in response to the Chinese war games.

"There is no intent to send a specific message to the People's Republic of China," he said.

Relations between the United States and China have improved since Beijing returned a U.S. plane packed with electronic surveillance equipment that had made an emergency landing April 1 on Hainan after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet sent to intercept it.


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Scientists Muck Around in Toxic Mud

August 19, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-EXP-Digging-for-Dirt.html

MOONACHIE, N.J. (AP) -- Michael Jackson sinks his feet into blackened, mercury-tainted mud on the edge of a swamp littered with old, broken bottles and smelling a little like gasoline. He takes a metal spatula, sniffs the dirt and scoops a hunk of it into a 50-milligram test tube.

``There's a lot of bacteria in this soil,'' said Jackson, a Rutgers University microbiology graduate student. ``They'll eat anything they can.''

Since last October, Jackson and fellow graduate student Jann Weile have been coming to Berry's Creek to collect the most toxic, contaminated soil they can find. The creek, one of the most chemically extreme environments in New Jersey, is a Superfund site and former headquarters of a mercury plant in the Meadowlands.

Jackson and Weile are in search of pay dirt in the mud, microbes that can survive in unconventional, toxic conditions. Those microbes, Jackson says, may be used one day to create a new antibiotic, an industrial enzyme, possibly a bacteria that can help clean up toxic sites.

``Someone's trash is someone else's gold,'' he said, wading in the sticky mud.

Jackson and Rutgers professor Gerben Zylstra have a three-year contract with Diversa Corp., a San Diego-based biotechnology company, to provide soil samples from several sites at the Meadowlands.

Diversa isn't saying if it has found anything useful. But since collections began, the company has asked Jackson to double his output from 100 to 200 samples a year.

Diversa has collected samples from hot boiling springs at Yellowstone National Park and Antarctica in the hopes of finding proteins or molecules that have unique genetic properties, company spokeswoman Hillary Theakston said.

``The presence of toxic metals and other chemicals would have some unique survival properties,'' Theakston said. ``It would be really hard if you can imagine trying to recreate those conditions.''

A Rutgers professor who met Diversa representatives at a conference suggested the Meadowlands, wetlands that have been rehabilitated over the years to foster the growth of muskrat, swans, phragmites grass and several endangered species.

For many decades before that, however, the area was known as a dumping ground for toxic waste, other trash, and, some suspected, possibly dead bodies. Authorities once searched the swampland for the body of presumed-dead union leader James Hoffa, and in more recent years looked for New York socialite Irene Silverman.

Jackson said the Meadowlands is ideal for the Diversa research because it has a history that is well-documented by a group called the Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute, which works with Rutgers and the Hackensack Meadowlands Developmental Commission.

Whether Jackson is looking for hydrocarbon spills, pesticides or heavy metals, the institute will point him in the right direction.

One day in July, Jackson and Weile drove to a warehouse parking lot, crossed a wooden bridge over a mud flat and hiked through 10-foot high weeds before arriving at Berry's Creek. They stepped carefully down the bank into the mud. Weile donned thigh-high rubber boots and plastic gloves to collect samples from the water, while Jackson stayed on the shore to scoop up the mud.

The blacker the mud, he says, the more toxic. A bluish-pink sheen in a site like this is also a giveaway for heavy chemical contamination, he said.

Back in his lab, Jackson extracts the DNA from some of the soils and ships them within 24 hours to Diversa, a developer of farm, chemical, industrial and pharmaceutical products. The company has signed a three-year contract with Rutgers, although it refuses to disclose the amount.

Diversa supplies Rutgers with the equipment needed to take the samples, under the contract. If Diversa makes a discovery found in the toxic soil, although product development may take years, Rutgers will receive a small percentage of the profits, university officials said.

And Zylstra's lab is doing its own research on bioremediation, or using bacteria to eat other toxic compounds and clean up toxic sites.

``If you can find a bacteria that can live in an oil spill and manipulate its genetics,'' Jackson said, ``you might have something.''

----

Norton takes Interior on 180-degree turnaround

By Timothy Egan
Sunday, August 19, 2001
Seattle Times
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=norton19&date=20010819

COEUR d'ALENE, Idaho - On the stump, Interior Secretary Gale Norton was painting a picture of an Arctic wildlife refuge stocked with nearly invisible oil-drilling pads, pumps, pipes and roads. She told oil and gas executives the industrial "footprint" in wildest Alaska would amount to a mere fraction of the size of Denver International Airport; a few days later in Idaho she compared the print to the much smaller Spokane airport.

In the hallway at the second event, her newly named ambassador to the West, an energy-industry lobbyist named Kit Kimball, was expressing concern about wolves roaming the Rocky Mountains and promising Western officials and business leaders that a fresh day had dawned at Interior.

Few things reveal what a change in power means so much as when someone new takes over at Interior. The secretary is the emperor of the outdoors, in charge of 436 million acres of public land, and the nation's leading water manager, controlling access to 31 million people. Thrown in as a sort of historical afterthought is the domain of American Indian trust lands.

Winners and losers are clear. Under Norton, grizzly bears, major environmental groups and new plans to bring wolves back to the West are out. Local governments in the West, mining and drilling advocates and off-road machines such as snowmobiles and swamp buggies - all snubbed by the Clinton administration - are in. She has yet to show her hand on Indian policy, though tribes give her high marks for listening.

Norton, a rangy native Westerner with a perpetual cheery smile, still has trouble believing 20 percent of the land in the United States is under her control. She has spent much of her professional life challenging the mission of some managers at Interior. Now, at 47, she rules them all.

"I just have to keep pinching myself," Norton said. "I still can't believe I'm actually doing this."

Her critics say there has been a hostile takeover at the Interior Department by industries that want to exploit public lands. They point to oil-, gas- and coal-industry lobbyists who have been given influential posts. And they say that aside from Frances Mainella, chosen to head the national parks, no one with environmental credentials has been named to a top job at Interior.

"The theme under Gale Norton is deference to industry and local political forces," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents about 10,000 state and federal employees who work on public lands. "For the average field biologist, merely doing your job could soon become a profile in courage."

Norton waves off such complaints. She says she is merely hiring people the previous administration kept out of power.

"Today, instead of unilateral actions, we should go for consensus actions," Norton said.

But on the land, where a diversion of water can mean either the death of a species or the bankruptcy of a family rancher, consensus has been elusive. Federal judges often end up as the final arbiters on everything from whether trout will live in the arid mountains of the Southwest to the future of snowmobile traffic in Yellowstone National Park.

Norton is no political neophyte. She came of age in Colorado in the 1980s at the same time the state and the rest of the Rocky Mountain West were taking on a more conservative tint. She worked at a legal foundation that fights environmental laws, did a stint with the Interior Department under President Reagan and was the GOP attorney general of Colorado. Norton has been a leader of Republicans seeking free-market solutions to environmental problems.

In recent speeches, she barely has touched the full range of concerns in her department. She has been promoting energy development in tandem with President Bush while playing down concerns about which plants or animals to protect under the Endangered Species Act.

She was unaware of a court order in New Mexico, for example, requiring her to decide within three weeks the fate of the rare Sacramento checkerspot butterfly.

Her language in speeches and interviews - rarely incendiary - has allowed her to bang the drum quietly for increased drilling and mining on public lands while avoiding the troubles of her one-time mentor, James Watt, the Reagan-era Interior secretary who drew attention for his heated rhetoric.

Norton says she has yet to build her legacy because she has been waiting to put her top political appointees in place. Now that she has named J. Steven Griles, a former lobbyist for mining and chemical interests, as the No. 2 person at Interior; Camden Toohey, a lobbyist for Arctic oil drilling, as her top official in charge of Alaska; and Kimball, a lobbyist for Western business issues, as her chief aide in the West, Norton is ready to go.

"The most important question is what are we going to do now," Norton said at the Western Governors' Association meeting in Coeur d'Alene last week. "I want history to record that under our watch we combined thought with action."

Norton's most consistent theme so far is that the federal government has ignored the concerns of Western communities. She often evokes an image of clueless Easterners who cannot fathom that the combined size of the new national monuments created by President Clinton, for example, is bigger than Connecticut.

"The federal government controls half the land in the West," Norton said. "We have a tremendous impact on people's lives."

To Western governors, the pledge of more resource extraction and greater local control is welcome. They long have complained too much federal land is out of reach, even though 95 percent of the Bureau of Land Management's property in the Rocky Mountains' most resource-rich area is open to leasing.

"She is the first Interior secretary to visit my state and not take anything with her on the way out," said Gov. Jane Dee Hull of Arizona, a Republican.

"Secretary Norton is a true friend of the West," said Gov. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, also a Republican.

Kempthorne played a major role in Norton's decision this summer to abandon a plan to bring grizzly bears back to the wildest parts of Idaho and Montana.

To some people in Idaho and Montana, the decision was puzzling. The group trying to bring the bears back - an alliance of timber workers, hunting-and-fishing enthusiasts and community environmental leaders - seemed to represent the sort of local, broad-based activism Norton has said she wants to promote. Norton consulted neither the coalition nor the scientists who have worked for nearly a decade to restore grizzly populations.

Asked why the coalition was ignored, Norton said it did not have the support of the governors of Idaho and Montana. "And we are talking here about an animal that is dangerous," Norton said.

The plan's withdrawal reflects an early trend in Norton's tenure. She has been inclined to cite lawsuits by industry groups or states as reasons for reconsidering department policy.

"People use these lawsuits as a way to undermine federal rules and policy," said Ben Beach, a spokesman for the Wilderness Society. "One of the things that's troubled us so much about Secretary Norton is her willingness to cave in to these special interests."

Norton says many of the Clinton-era decisions were made in haste without consulting people who stand to lose access. Under her watch, people who depend on public land for recreation or profit and stand to lose by a federal decision will be consulted, she said.

Asked if there is a single proposal by the energy or recreation interest groups to use public lands that she opposes, Norton said nothing came to mind.

"I can think of a lot of things that I would oppose, but nothing specific right now," she said.

Of late, Norton said she has been reading about Theodore Roosevelt, a founder of American conservation. "I was impressed that he helped to start the Boone and Crockett clubs," she said, referring to the society of conservationists who hunt.

As for wildlife refuges, national monuments and wild areas set aside by Roosevelt - often over the objections of local industries - Norton had a different answer. Those initiatives were not necessarily a model for her.

"In Teddy Roosevelt's day, the West looked a lot different than it does today," Norton said.

-------- genetics

The Limiting of Science Is Cutting Off Hope

New York Times
August 19, 2001
By ABRAHAM VERGHESE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/19/magazine/19WWLN.html?searchpv=nytToday

A few months ago I visited an AIDS organization called the Freedom Foundation outside Bangalore in South India. The whitewashed buildings, once part of a chicken farm, had been converted into a haven for people with H.I.V. infection. By scrambling and cajoling, the volunteer staff managed to get antiretroviral drugs for every infected child. But for the adults wasting away from unchecked H.I.V. infection, the future did not look bright. Had they been able to afford the medications, or for that matter, been residents of the United States, patients in my county hospital in El Paso, Tex., I felt they soon would have had flesh on their bones, the strength to sit up and the prospect of a future.

Patients and caregivers at the Freedom Foundation could only look to the horizon and hope that someday, in some research lab, a scientific breakthrough would result in a novel means of attacking H.I.V., something both effective and affordable. If this should happen -- whether vaccine or drug -- the odds are great that it will come from an American research lab. The United States has not only been at the forefront of AIDS research, it has also become the de facto biomedical research wing of our planet. All over the world parents of children with AIDS, with spinal-cord injuries and with so many other diseases dream of miracles that might change their children's future, and it is to the U.S. that they look. The quaint image of a researcher with a pith helmet and microscope working in a jungle is an illusion; the tough questions of basic science require sophisticated institutions and expensive tools of molecular biology -- and money.

How surprising and embarrassing then that we might be slamming the door on cloning human embryonic cells. As for the stem-cell research that uses the cells derived from leftover embryos in fertility clinics, President Bush has restricted federal financing to studies with the 60 cell lines supposedly already in existence. This means that research with the potential to reverse the course of Parkinson's disease or diabetes will be hamstrung, at least in America. The House vote against all human cloning, in its abruptness and its finality and in the magnitude of its penalties for those who dare oppose it, made me think of the Taliban and their draconian edicts: very little sorting out of details, few distinctions, meaningful debate drowned out by fundamentalist rhetoric and then an a priori proclamation of what society needs, followed by the order -- destroy the Buddhas.

Let me make clear, I am a clinician, not a researcher. The moral and ethical concerns about human cloning or embryonic stem-cell research do not escape me. Far from it, I know how easy it is to slide down the slippery slope of abusing technology: amniocentesis and ultrasound technology in some parts of India are used largely to find and abort female babies. Still, on the continuum between benefits and risks, was there not a place where we could have allowed narrowly targeted research by our best scientists to proceed? No human versions of Dolly the sheep, thank you very much, but why not a limited exploration of the potential of stem cells from cloned embryos to reverse debilitating diseases? America, the beautiful, the brave -- where is our courage? The world with good reason expects better of us.

This is the paradox that I find most curious: we are at once a sophisticated nation benefiting from scientific and technological advances, and yet we can display a surprising backwardness. My patients often know more about their diseases from the Internet than I do. Television routinely takes us into operating rooms, courtrooms and outer space. We live in the era of the new, new thing, we have the moxie to build an unproved missile defense system, but when it comes to stem cells and cloning, our puritanical fears get the better of our sophistication, and we backpedal to a dubious moral high ground.

In my H.I.V. clinic in Texas a few weeks ago, I saw a young woman -- a physician -- who was failing her treatment regimen; the virus she harbored had evolved to resist the drugs I had her on. But I had in my hands the results of a genotype test in which her particular viral strain had been probed for the gene patterns that predict resistance to new drugs I plan to use. ''Wow,'' my intern said as he examined the viral gene printout that looked like a felon's rap sheet, ''I didn't know we could do this.'' Yes, son, fortunately we can. The ethical debate when it came to cloning genes and to recombinant DNA did not shut down the science.

Stem-cell and cloning research may not live up to scientists' expectations. But the possibility of bringing relief to those who are suffering is simply too precious to pass by. To turn our backs on such research robs patients with incurable disease of the one thing they cling to -- hope. William Osler, the great man of American medicine, said, ''It is not for you to don the black cap and assuming the judicial function, take hope away from any patient . . . hope that comes to us all.'' This statement, cherished by generations of medical students, could well serve as advice for our society as we ponder the future of science.

Abraham Verghese is the Grover E. Murray Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Texas Tech. His latest book is ''The Tennis Partner.''

-------- human rights

TERMINATOR
Making Rules in the World Between War and Peace

New York Times
August 19, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/19/weekinreview/19WEIN.html?searchpv=nytToday

WE are facing an implacable enemy," the top-secret report to the president said. "There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply."

The nation must "destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against us," the report said. And citizens must come to "understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy."

The year was 1954; the president was Dwight D. Eisenhower. The report was the intellectual basis for lethal American covert action, including the attempted assassinations of Cuba's Fidel Castro and the Congo's Patrice Lumumba, among others. But after these secrets were revealed in Congressional hearings 25 years ago, public revulsion led to a presidential order outlawing assassination by American officials and agents.

Now, Israel is destroying its implacable enemies through a policy it calls "liquidation": lethal, anticipatory self-defense. The Palestinians call it "assassination," and say about 60 of their activists have been killed since September. Are there rules in this game? Do norms of human conduct or international covenants apply? Can a state legally destroy its enemies by any means necessary?

International laws have never stopped secret intelligence services.

Mossad officers, for example, picked off Palestinians (including one victim of mistaken identity) after the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In 1976, a mile from the White House, a time bomb planted by Chile's secret police killed that country's former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier. Bulgarian agents killed the dissident writer Georgi I. Markov with a poison-tipped umbrella in London in 1978. British special services murdered three suspected Irish Republican Army members at Gibraltar in 1987.

Legal experts argue over the rules of engagement in a field of battle "that is very gray - the zone between the poisoned umbrella and all-out war," said John Norton Moore, director of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia.

The Israelis should halt "targeted assassinations" of Palestinians, the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said last month. He called the policy an affront to "international law, in particular human rights law, but also to general principles of law." The United Nations charter says, "in peacetime, the citizens of a nation, whether they are political officials or private individuals, are entitled to immunity from intentional acts of violence by citizens, agents or military forces of another nation."

BUT the Israeli Army says it is in something close to a state of war with the Palestinians. "The Israeli view is that they have been in a perpetual state of war since 1948," said Ruth Wedgwood, a professor of international law and diplomacy at Yale and Johns Hopkins, "and the fact that their adversaries do not wear uniforms does not matter.

"What's delicate about the Israeli argument," she said, "is that they haven't said they are at war with the P.L.O., but the vocabulary they use is that of a state of war. If Israel is indeed at war with the P.L.O., these people - anyone in the chain of command - are fair targets." But, she added, "no one really knows what to do in this netherworld between peace and war."

The Israelis first defined and defended their liquidation policy days after it began. "International law actually only recognizes two situations: peace or war," said Col. Daniel Reisner, the head of the international law branch of the Israeli Army's legal division. "But life isn't as simple." Israel is not exactly at war, he said, "because war is a conflict between two armies or two states," and the Palestinians have neither. But "we are definitely in the area of armed conflict," he said. And under the laws of war, "you are allowed to target combatants."

Is this assassination? "Assassination is not a legal term, at least not in international law," he said. This is what the Israelis are callinganticipatory self-defense.

International laws don't precisely define "terrorism" and "assassination." But if terrorism is a war crime committed in peacetime - the random killing of civilians for political ends - assassination has a sharper aim: to kill someone specific in the enemy's political or military chain of command.

In theory, no innocents die. In practice, sometimes they do. If a suicide bomber's satchel is a tool of terror, and a sniper's rifle a tool of assassination, what is a precision- guided missile aimed at a terrorist target that kills unintended victims?

Did the American bombs that killed the 15-month-old daughter of the Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi at his home in 1986 fall in that gray zone? Was that an assassination attempt against a foreign leader? The United States argued that since Colonel Qaddafi had been plotting terrorist attacks on its citizens, it had the right to strike directly at him.

In the name of counterterrorism, Congress, in 1996, passed and President Clinton signed a law authorizing "all necessary means, including covert action and military force, to disrupt, dismantle and destroy international infrastructures used by international terrorists." And "infrastructures" meant "anything and everything that supports a terrorist" - including the terrorists themselves," explained Mark M. Lowenthal, who was then staff director of the House intelligence committee.

In 1998, after the bombing of the American Embassy in Nairobi, the United States fired cruise missiles at Afghan camps where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding. More than 20 people were reported killed. Few tears would have been shed in Washington if Mr. bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist suspect, had been hit.

"If terrorists attack you and you respond by bombing, are you violating the U.N. charter?" said Mr. Moore, a former State Department international law counsellor. "I think not. If there is an identifiable group that you know through your intelligence is engaging in attacks against your people, you have every right to defend yourself."

"That is not assassination and should not be talked about as assassination," he said. "It is lawful under the U.N. charter."

But Jeffrey H. Smith, the former general counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency - whose director, George J. Tenet, has tried to broker a Mideast peace - said Israel must have hard evidence of an impending attack by a specific individual to justify killing him.

"It raises profound questions under international law for the Israelis to retaliate against a Palestinian leader in the absence of specific information, that he was about to attack them," he said. "A military or intelligence operation designed specifically to kill an individual because he or she is a leader of an opposition group, even if that group advocates violence against you, raises a very real question as to whether that operation is authorized by international law. In my view, it is not."

"This is not just a narrow legal question," he said. "You have to ask: does it work? Does it deter terror? Does it brand the state that does it an international outlaw? Does it expose them to retaliation against their leaders? And what does it say about the morality of those who do it?"

THE legal concept of anticipatory self-defense is not new. In 1839, anti- British rebels planned to invade Canada by crossing the Niagara on a steamer. A British force entered the United States, set the ship ablaze and sent it over the falls. Two Americans were killed.

The secretary of state, Daniel Webster, said the British could justify sinking the ship by proving "a necessity of self-defense, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." There, in a nutshell, is a legal theory setting limits on killing a suspected terrorist.

But for Mr. Lowenthal, the former House staffer, the binding authority in this conflict may not be a legal theory, but a literary plot.

He recalled Alexandre Dumas's "The Three Musketeers." The plot hinges on a carte blanche written by Cardinal Richelieu, minister of France. His note provides an all-purpose alibi for an assassination. It says, "It is by my order and for the good of the state that the bearer of this has done what he has done." That, Mr. Lowenthal says, may be as good an explication of Israel's liquidation policy as any.

--------

China Tries Internet Entrepreneur

August 19, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Online-Dissent.html

BEIJING (AP) -- Defiantly flashing an ``OK'' sign to his family, the organizer of an Internet site that published writings about democracy has been tried in China in a case that highlights the government's determination to stamp out online dissent.

No verdict or sentencing date was announced for Huang Qi, who stood trial in a closed-door two-hour session Tuesday at the Chengdu Intermediate Court, said his father-in-law, who asked to be identified only by his surname, Zeng.

The completion of the trial, which was postponed in February in an apparent effort to avoid spoiling Beijing's winning campaign for the 2008 Summer Olympics, comes as China is tightening its already stringent controls on cyberspace.

Huang is the first Chinese Webmaster known to have been prosecuted for publishing political materials.

He was arrested in June 2000 after his site carried articles about an outlawed would-be opposition party, the Tiananmen Square protests, the banned Falun Gong spiritual sect and other topics deemed subversive by prosecutors.

Many government ministries have their own Web sites, but China's communist leaders are keen to harness the economic, educational and technological potential of the Internet.

Internet bars -- called ``wangba'' in China and often just a few computers hooked up in the back rooms of mom-and-pop stores -- have sprung up in cities and towns throughout the country. Many Chinese Internet pursuits are innocent; online computer games and chatrooms are popular.

But the government fears the Internet is also providing a forum for political dissent, giving voice to critics who otherwise have had few ways to make themselves heard. Falun Gong has used the Internet to publicize the deaths and torture of practitioners in custody. Online pornographers are also skirting government bans.

A senior Chinese leader, Vice Premier Li Lanqing, on Thursday ordered a crackdown on Internet bars he said are letting in minors and providing ``electronic games with unhealthy content as well as other criminal activities,'' the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily reported Friday.

Huang and his wife started the Web site -- www.6-4tianwang.com -- in 1999 to publicize information about missing people. But the site's name also made it a magnet for information the government dislikes. In Chinese, ``6-4'' is shorthand for June 4 -- the date in 1989 when China's military ousted protesters from Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds along the way.

``This is a bellwether case for the development of the Internet in China,'' Huang's father-in-law, Zeng, said Friday.

Zeng said he and his daughter -- Huang's wife, Zeng Li -- had learned from lawyers that the trial was underway and were only able to see him in a passageway leading to court.

Zeng said his daughter shot a photograph of Huang, but that bailiffs confiscated her film. ``We wanted a picture,'' Zeng said, ``because it could be a decade before we're able to see him again.''

Huang, 37, appeared to have lost considerable weight, but smiled, flashed an ``OK'' hand sign and told them to ``be at ease,'' Zeng said in a telephone interview from Huang's offices in Chengdu. ``He was thin, but seemed to be in good spirits.''

As the Internet has expanded in China, so have official restrictions. The government has issued at least 60 sets of regulations aimed at controlling Internet content since 1995, Human Rights Watch said in an Aug. 1 report. The New York-based group cited the names of 15 people detained or sentenced in Internet-related cases, many for posting or downloading political materials.

Huang was accused of inciting the overthrow of state power and the destruction of national unity. Conviction can bring a prison term of up to five years, or longer if judges deem the crimes particularly serious.

Huang's wife says he did not post the articles prosecutors say were subversive. A statement on the couple's Web site says Huang lost control of content when the site moved to a U.S.-based server in April 2000.

Zeng, the father-in-law, said Huang's lawyers told them judges would now report their opinions to a Communist Party legal committee, which would issue a verdict. He said bailiffs told them Huang's case was ``political'' and that he could face 10 years or longer in jail.

``The officer said that it's no big deal, that Huang wasn't a murderer or arsonist and that he ought to be out in a few years with good behavior,'' Zeng said.

-------- police / prisoners

Italian Cop Remorseful After Summit

The Associated Press
Sunday, August 19, 2001; 11:38 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32071-2001Aug19?language=printer

ROME -- The police officer accused of fatally shooting a protester during last month's Group of Eight riots said he feels sick about what happened and would have done anything to have avoided it, a newspaper reported Sunday.

"I never thought I would find myself in a situation like this," Mario Placanica told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. "I'm sorry, I couldn't do anything else. If I could have had the choice and avoided what happened, I would have."

His comments were published on the eve of the one-month anniversary of 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani's death.

Giuliani was shot and killed as he tried to rush a paramilitary police jeep with a fire extinguisher on the first day of the July 20-22 summit.

On Monday, memorials and demonstrations are planned in Genoa, Rome and other Italian cities to mark the anniversary of his death. A sit-in is also planned in front of a Genoa jail where some demonstrators are still being detained.

An estimated 100,000 protesters had massed in Genoa for the G-8 summit to champion a variety of causes, from debt relief to the environment. A small core of them turned violent, torching cars and buildings and clashing with police.

Charges of police brutality have mounted in the weeks since, and three senior law enforcement officials in charge of security at the summit have been removed from their posts. Placanica is under investigation for manslaughter.

The 21-year-old Carabinieri officer said he was still grappling with Giuliani's death, the first in over two years of anti-globalization protests and the first in an Italian demonstration in 25 years.

"I am still sick about what happened," he was quoted as saying in the front-page interview. "I think about it always."

Placanica himself was injured during the riots and said he was recuperating in the countryside with his girlfriend's family.

The officer said he might send a message to Giuliani's father - but that he wasn't up to speaking to him yet: "I have inside difficult things to explain - even to myself."

----

F.B.I. Is Investigating a Senior Counterterrorism Agent

New York Times
August 19, 2001
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/19/national/19FBI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 - The F.B.I. has begun an internal investigation into one of its most senior counterterrorism officials, who misplaced a briefcase containing highly classified information last year. The briefcase contained a number of sensitive documents, including a report outlining virtually every national security operation in New York, government officials said.

The official, John O'Neill, 49, is the special agent in charge of national security in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office. The job is among the most powerful in the F.B.I., and, although Mr. O'Neill is not widely known, he has overseen cases like the terrorist bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen last year and the bombings of American embassies in East Africa in 1998.

The briefcase incident was seen as potentially so serious that the Justice Department conducted a criminal investigation. The inquiry ended in recent weeks with a decision by the department's internal security section not to prosecute, law enforcement officials said.

Mr. O'Neill left his briefcase in a hotel conference room while he attended an F.B.I. meeting in Tampa, Fla., last summer. The briefcase was stolen, but the local authorities recovered it and returned it to him within hours with the contents.

Jill Stillman, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said that department officials would not comment on the matter. Requests to discuss the matter with Mr. O'Neill were made to bureau officials in New York and Washington. In both cases, they said that he declined to comment on the case.

After the criminal inquiry, the bureau's internal affairs unit began its own investigation to determine whether Mr. O'Neill had violated F.B.I. rules against mishandling classified information.

Officials identified one document in the briefcase as a draft of what is known in the bureau as the Annual Field Office Report for national security operations in New York. The closely guarded report contained a description of every counterespionage and counterterrorism program in New York and detailed the budget and manpower for each operation. The document, submitted to bureau headquarters, is used as a central planning tool each year.

F.B.I. agents are prohibited from removing classified documents from their offices without authorization. Violations are punishable by censure, suspension or even dismissal, depending on the seriousness.

But the outcome of the internal inquiry is uncertain. Even if the inquiry finds that Mr. O'Neill violated regulations, he is unlikely to be sanctioned. He has been planning to retire and told associates in recent days that he would step down next week. He is expected to take a job as a private security consultant.

Several officials said that Mr. O'Neill became the subject of especially intense scrutiny partly because law enforcement officials did not want to treat the matter lightly after the cases of John M. Deutch, the former director of Central Intelligence, and Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos nuclear weapons scientist.

Mr. Deutch lost his security clearances and was the subject of a Justice Department investigation for mishandling classified material after he placed classified documents on unclassified computers in his home. Mr. Deutch was pardoned by President Clinton in January.

Dr. Lee pleaded guilty in September 2000 to one count of mishandling classified material just as the rest of the government's case against him collapsed.

In Mr. O'Neill's case, F.B.I. officials were alarmed, in part, because of the sensitivity of the documents involved, including details about the bureau's counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations. One document contained highly sensitive information about an F.B.I. source.

Mr. O'Neill immediately reported the incident to his superiors. But after the Tampa authorities recovered the briefcase, it was taken from him and the documents inside it were fingerprinted to determine whether anyone had touched the briefcase and whether the documents might have been handled by a foreign intelligence service.

The investigation concluded that the documents in the briefcase had not been touched and that it had probably been stolen by thieves who were thought to be responsible for several hotel robberies in the Tampa area at the time.

Mr. O'Neill started as an entry- level clerk at the bureau and has been an agent for more than 25 years. Throughout his career, associates said, Mr. O'Neill has been regarded as a dedicated, relentless and hard-charging investigator who was one of the F.B.I.'s brightest stars. But associates said that he sometimes chafed at the restrictive rules of conduct at the bureau and that his single-mindedness had sometimes irritated colleagues in the bureau, at the C.I.A. and at the State Department. Mr. O'Neill's aggressiveness has led to serious frictions in the Cole bombing case, for example.

This year, the United States ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, blocked Mr. O'Neill from returning to Yemen to oversee the F.B.I. investigation of the bombing of the destroyer Cole. Mr. O'Neill had led the initial team of agents in Yemen after the bombing last fall, but ran afoul of Ambassador Bodine over what she considered his heavy-handed style, State Department officials said. She considered the F.B.I. contingent too large and objected to the agents' insistence on carrying heavy weapons, they said.

But Mr. O'Neill has many admirers. Barry W. Mawn, assistant director of the F.B.I. in charge of the New York office, said that Mr. O'Neill was a tireless worker and had his "complete confidence" since Mr. Mawn took over the office last year.

"John is recognized worldwide as probably one of the best in conducting both counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations," Mr. Mawn said.

James K. Kallstrom, the head of the New York office in the mid- 1990's, said that Mr. O'Neill "has been a major force for the public safety of the United States and the security of the United States for over two decades."

Like a number of Mr. O'Neill's friends and supporters, Mr. Kallstrom made clear that he thought Mr. O'Neill had been the victim of a smear campaign by people seeking to damage his reputation, perhaps because he was being mentioned for a national security job at the White House, a job he apparently never sought.

"The notion that individuals in public service or anywhere else are absolutely perfect human beings who never have a fault or lapse of memory or never make a mistake is a standard that no one should be held to," Mr. Kallstrom said.

Mary Jo White, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, praised Mr. O'Neill in a statement Friday as "one of the unsung heroes in our nation's efforts to combat terrorism in the United States and around the world."

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LAPD Suffering Recruitment Problems

August 19, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Police-Recruitment.html

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Signing bonuses and a $1 million advertising campaign have not helped the Police Department reverse a decline in its numbers.

In each of the last three years, the number of officers leaving the department has averaged 50 percent more than the number of departures each year in the previous decade.

The current force numbers about 9,000 officers, some 800 less than two years ago.

``We've been hemorrhaging officers the past several years, losing them when we just can't afford to,'' said Mayor James K. Hahn.

The Rampart Division scandal that broke about two years ago has affected morale, but department officials are not convinced that it is the reason recruits are staying away. The scandal involved anti-gang officers who allegedly robbed, beat, framed and shot suspects over a period of several years in the 1990s.

``We simply believe there's no tangible proof any of these problems are causing us difficulty in our hiring,'' said LAPD spokesman Lt. Horace Frank.

An incentive program in which city employees receive cash for recruiting officers was increased in May to $500, but only three people took advantage of it that month.

And earlier this year, City Council decided to spend $1 million on an advertising campaign selling the softer side of police work, such as helping to deliver babies.

The department also recently decided to increase the maximum age for hiring from 35 to 40 and to offer a $2,000 signing bonus for new officers.

``We'll just have to see how the ads and everything else we are doing turns out,'' said Police Chief Bernard Parks.

Many believe the department's hiring process is one of the major problems. Before entering the Police Academy, recruits must pass a series of exams and background checks that can take longer than a year and that weeds out roughly 93 percent of all candidates.

-------- spying

'Your Father Is a Spy'
Lives of CIA Man, Family Turned Into Turmoil as FBI Pursued Wrong Guy

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 19, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20983-2001Aug16?language=printer

The 28-year-old CIA personnel employee was escorted into a cramped, windowless room with a small table and four metal chairs. "Please sit down," a waiting FBI agent told her. "We have some bad news for you."

"Your father is a spy," the agent told the woman. "He's working for the Russians."

In another building on the CIA campus in Langley, in another small and windowless room, her father -- a decorated agency veteran of nearly 20 years -- was being accused of espionage.

Thus began one family's ordeal at the hands of the FBI, which fingered the wrong man in its quest to unmask a spy, upending the lives of the CIA officer and his three children for the next two years.

The accusations leveled in August 1999 prompted the CIA to suspend the officer for 21 months. He remained under surveillance, and his daughter was denied a promotion. His ex-wife, two sons and two sisters were interrogated at work and at home by FBI agents who cast doubt on the man they thought they knew. Friends and colleagues whispered about the traitor in their midst.

All of it turned out to be wrong. The real spy was Robert P. Hanssen, an FBI counterintelligence agent who pleaded guilty last month to 15 counts of espionage. The CIA officer returned to work in May with all his security clearances restored. "There are no lingering doubts or suspicions here," a CIA official said.

FBI officials say that while they regret the impact on the intelligence officer and his family, the bureau's rough tactics were justified by the magnitude of the national security breach. The FBI partly blames a startling coincidence: Both the man and Hanssen lived on the same street near Nottoway Park in Fairfax County, where Hanssen left some of the secrets he compromised to the Russians.

But the CIA officer's sons and daughter said in interviews with The Washington Post last week that they are still haunted by the actions of the FBI, which left their family in limbo for two years and has rebuffed their request for a full apology. Because The Post does not identify covert U.S. intelligence operatives except in rare circumstances, the names of the man and his family have been withheld from this article.

His children wonder what would have happened if the FBI had not obtained a KGB dossier that pointed to Hanssen. The daughter says she still has nightmares about the investigation. The sons are suspicious of a government they once revered.

"We were raised to be patriotic, to love our country and respect authority," said the youngest son, 32, who co-owns a copy-machine business in Virginia. "I'm still patriotic today, but I don't feel the same way about a lot of things -- about the FBI, about people in power. They're not always telling the truth like they say they are."

'We Know What He Did'

The CIA officer's youngest child loved and revered her father. She followed in his footsteps by joining the agency, thrilled by its clandestine side and comforted by its familial culture. When the FBI accused her father of treason, her world was set on end.

Trapped in the stifling room, she began to weep uncontrollably. She stood up and turned away from the two FBI agents and the CIA representative who were there, facing the wall as the sobs came in waves. "I was hysterical," recalls the woman, now 30. "I was ashamed."

When she resumed her seat, an older male agent began the interrogation while a younger female took notes. The agent showed the daughter one of her father's jogging maps, alleging it pinpointed the location of "dead drops," hiding places for passing secrets to Russian operatives. He said her father -- who clips coupons and drives to Woodbridge for less expensive gasoline -- had a fascination with diamonds and other luxuries. He said that the man who typed with two fingers on his outdated Tandy PC was a mastermind of computer codes.

Her denials only angered him. "Come on!" the agent screamed, pounding the table repeatedly. "We know what he did!"

The story was similar from Virginia to Connecticut, from New York to Kentucky. FBI agents fanned out in pairs on Aug. 18, 1999, descending on scattered members of the family wherever they could be found.

The message was always the same: Your beloved relative, awarded five commemorative medals for his work on behalf of the United States, is really a Russian spy. We have all the proof we need, and only need to confirm a few basic facts.

In Connecticut, two agents warned one of the officer's sisters that, if she didn't cooperate, the FBI would go to a nursing home to interrogate her infirm mother, 84.

In Kentucky the next morning, two agents caught up with the officer's youngest son at his office. He had just returned to work after the birth of his second child.

They accused the son of holding property he did not really own, and of using a Social Security number that was not his. They asked about his father's alleged financial extravagance, and showed him a map he did not understand. The agents said it came from his father's den, and that it reflected a secret life of espionage.

After more than an hour, the son stumbled out of the interrogation, past whispering co-workers and into the drizzle outside.

"I felt like I didn't want to be alive," recalls the man, who has since moved back to Northern Virginia. "You believe your father and all that. But when they come in like that and say they have it all locked up, it's hard not to wonder: Could it be true?"

By the end of the second day, Aug. 19, the FBI had tracked down the last of the CIA officer's direct relatives. His oldest son was in Manhattan on business, and was about to catch a flight back to Washington when his phone rang. Three FBI agents insisted on giving him a ride to LaGuardia Airport, quizzing him while trapped in rush hour traffic.

He called his father the minute he got home that night, and drove over to his Vienna house, which happens to be on the same street as Hanssen's. His father met him in the driveway.

"I just want to make sure you believe me," the father said.

"You never have to worry about that," the son replied, and they hugged.

'Wrong Conclusions'

The investigation that eventually netted Hanssen was not the first time that the FBI, or any other intelligence agency, has been so terribly wrong.

Just last week, the Justice Department released portions of a report on the investigation of Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee. It concluded that the FBI and the Energy Department may have gotten the wrong man, and for a crime that might not even have been committed in the first place. Meanwhile, a fugitive abortion clinic bomber is now the suspect in the Atlanta Olympics bombing case, first pinned on security guard Richard Jewell.

Yet many intelligence experts are particularly discomfited by the emerging details of the case against the CIA officer, which sources said was based largely on the man's circumstantial connections to several cases that later turned out to have been compromised by Hanssen.

One of these was the investigation of Felix Bloch, a State Department official suspected of, but never charged with, spying. The CIA officer was awarded a medal for his role in unmasking a Soviet agent who had telephoned Bloch and thus cast Bloch under suspicion. But Bloch was soon warned by the KGB, derailing a planned arrest.

The interrogations also indicate that the FBI placed a great deal of stock in the mysterious map recovered from the officer's home, which turned out to be the jottings of an avid distance runner with meticulous record-keeping habits. He also keeps a list of radio stations he tunes in during trips to Connecticut, and maps out all journeys before departing, his family says.

The man jogged in Nottoway Park near his home, an area that the FBI learned had been used for exchanges with Russian agents. In hindsight, there are other connections between the CIA officer and Hanssen -- besides living near each other, they were companions on an intelligence-related trip, for example -- but those connections were coincidences learned after the probe shifted to Hanssen, sources said.

"There are a whole litany of examples throughout the western world of counterintelligence services jumping to the wrong conclusions," said David Major, a former FBI counterintelligence official. "This phenomenon of putting people on lists and investigating them goes with the territory. But if you can't prove it, you have a responsibility not to go too far in your tactics."

The tactics used against the CIA officer were many and varied. Before the FBI confronted him as a suspect, for example, the man was subjected to a polygraph test under false pretenses, which he passed, according to his attorney, John Moustakas of Shea & Gardner. Later, a person posing as a Russian emissary was sent to his house to say that his espionage had been detected and to offer an escape plan; the CIA officer reported the incident the next day, the lawyer said.

The FBI also engaged in secret searches of the man's garbage and of his home, which turned up the alleged spy map. He was put under physical and electronic surveillance. His family says they had chronic telephone problems during that period, and a Bell Atlantic technician discovered a bug on the line at his Vienna home.

FBI officials did not respond to three telephone calls seeking comment for this article. But in a June letter to the man's attorney, Acting FBI Director Thomas J. Pickard said that while he regretted the investigation's impact on the officer and his family, "I do not doubt the necessity of the investigation, nor the integrity of the personnel who carried it out."

Moustakas compared that response to the form letter that an airline would send a passenger whose flight was delayed. "My client was not merely inconvenienced," Moustakas wrote Pickard. "His life was turned upside down."

The FBI had no other contact with the officer or his family after he was placed on paid administrative leave in August 1999, according to his relatives and Moustakas. For 18 months, the family said, they were left hanging, wondering when a knock would come on the officer's door or if his name would suddenly flash on television.

"What hurts most is having to keep it all inside," said the officer's eldest son, 36, who is married and has a young daughter. "You can't tell anyone what you're going through."

Six months ago, on Feb. 18, a friend of the oldest son asked if he had seen the news: The FBI had arrested a spy. The son caught his breath. "What was the name?" he asked. His friend couldn't recall.

The son picked up the phone to dial his father, fearing that he wouldn't be there because he was in jail. His father answered. Dad wasn't a spy after all.

-------- activists

6th Annual Gulf War Veterans' Conference

Dear Gulf War Veterans Community:

Just a reminder that the 6th Annual Gulf War Veterans' Conference is rapidly approaching. This year's conference will be held in Atlanta, GA October 5-7, 2001, and will highlight key researchers and others working on Gulf War veterans issues, including Dr. Robert Haley and keynote speaker H. Ross Perot. Other speakers will address government and private research, current information on claims against Iraqi assets, VA claims assistance, treatment trials and the Anthrax vaccine program.

This year's excellent conference is at the Holiday Inn Airport North, 1380 Virginia Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30344 . All individuals are responsible for hotel reservations and payment. Call the hotel at (404) 762-8411 to reserve your room. Advise the hotel you are with the National Gulf War Resource Center....

To register, visit http://www.ngwrc.org and print and mail in the registration, or you can register on-line through our partner Donate.net.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Atlanta!

Charles Sheehan-Miles President, National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc. http://www.ngwrc.org

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15 Face Felonies In Missile Protest
U.S. Raises Stakes for Delayed Launch

By Jeff Adler and William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 19, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30950-2001Aug18?language=printer

LOS ANGELES -- When a group of Greenpeace activists, protesting a Star Wars missile defense test, entered a restricted area at Vandenberg Air Force Base last month, they assumed they would be arrested, held for a few hours and charged with misdemeanor trespass -- just as others have before them, including the actor Martin Sheen.

But the international group of 15 protesters and two journalists say they were shocked to find themselves facing felony charges of "conspiracy to violate a safety zone," as well as the lesser offense of violating a direct order.

If found guilty, the protesters face a maximum sentence of six years in prison and fines of $250,000. The group was arraigned in federal court here on Monday and pleaded not guilty. Trial was set for Sept. 25, but the case will likely be delayed for months.

"I didn't even know what a felony was," said Nic Clyde, 32, a Greenpeace leader from Australia, who is freed on $20,000 bond but ordered to remain in Los Angeles after spending six nights in jail. "But I knew it sounded bad."

The felony charges are highly unusual for protests that are nonviolent and in which no property is destroyed, said several legal experts not involved in the case.

Frances Olsen, a UCLA law professor who teaches a class on civil disobedience, called the felony charges "draconian" and "saber rattling," aimed at producing a chilling effect on future protests of this kind.

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said the protesters warranted felony charges because they knowingly proceeded into a federally restricted marine area, delaying the missile launch and endangering the safety of the protesters and those sent to arrest them. Mrozek said the felony charges did not represent any policy change by the administration.

"They violated the safety zone despite repeated oral and written warnings by the United States Coast Guard," Mrozek said.

The serious nature of the charges have garnered widespread media attention, especially outside the United States and in the home countries of the 15 protesters, who, including six Americans, are from Sweden, England, Australia, Germany, Canada and India.

The journalists, who documented the protest, are photographer Stephen Fitzpatrick Morgan from the United Kingdom and videographer Jorge Torres from Spain. They also face felony charges.

The 15 protesters are either employees or volunteers who work with Greenpeace, a well-funded international environmental organization that opposes testing and implementing a space-based anti-missile shield, saying it increases the likelihood of a nuclear exchange.

Because of the felony charges and the threats of long prison terms, Greenpeace's publicity machine is gearing up to make "The Stop Star Wars 17" into international celebrities and perhaps martyrs to the cause.

The foreign protesters are staying together at a group house in Los Angeles, accompanied by a public relations manager, as they have been ordered by the court not to leave the country.

This is the first time in 30 years of protests that the government has charged Greenpeace demonstrators with felonies, said Carol Gregory, a Greenpeace spokesman.

But protests are nothing new to Vandenberg Air Force Base, a center and launch site of missile defense tests.

In the last year, three other groups of protesters were arrested at Vandenberg but were charged with misdemeanors. Those protests were on land, but in previous years, demonstrators arrested on the ocean along the Vandenberg beaches also were charged with misdemeanors.

The actor Martin Sheen, who plays the president on the NBC television show "West Wing," was arrested during a demonstration Oct. 7 and charged with misdemeanor trespassing, to which he pleaded guilty in June. Sheen was fined $500 and sentenced to three years of probation, although he could have received six months in jail and fines totaling $5,000.

The Greenpeace protesters do not deny trying to disrupt the missile test July 14, which was briefly delayed by the activists and their arrests.

According to Air Force Capt. Tom Knowles, Coast Guard and Vandenberg officials repeatedly warned the protesters, who were traveling in a pair of inflatable skiffs, not to enter a "boat exclusion area" near the launch site.

The boats did enter the area, and two protesters jumped from their craft and swam onto Vandenberg's Minuteman Beach. The two swimmers were arrested but displayed signs of hypothermia and were taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital, Knowles said. The launch, originally scheduled for 7:05 p.m., occurred at 7:40 p.m.

Jon Aguilar, a former Marine who swam to shore during the incident, said he is not anti-military but disagrees with the proposed missile defense program.

"There is a likelihood that this thing could start a new arms race," Aguilar said. "Bush is leading us right down the wrong road.

"I don't feel left with an option but to protest," he said.

One of the 10 defense attorneys on the case, Katya Komisaruk, said that the government prosecutors have not signaled any desire to offer lesser charges in exchange for guilty pleas.

"The government is taking an extremely aggressive stance against a group of nonviolent protesters," Komisaruk said.


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