------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
DU semiconductors?
Former air chief seeks nuclear command under IAF
Rumsfeld Defends Missile Defense
Military Contruction Now in Alaska
The many little ironies of the nuclear waste debate
Stacked Yucca hearing shows game already over and Nevada lost

MILITARY
Nigeria Seals Off Northern State to Stop Spread of Violence
Weekend warriors on 6-month duty
Rumsfeld Concerned About Iraq
U.S. attacks three Iraqi missile sites
U.S. Deplores Latest Mideast Violence
Fatah offices hit by Israeli missiles
Rumsfeld: Closing bases won't ruin the economy
Navy Confident About Salvaging Ehime Maru

OTHER
Torture Hurries New Wave of Executions in China
New Research Fuels Debate Over Genetic Food Altering
Researchers say hurdles remain
HEAR OUR CRY
Bid to censure Israel at summit foiled
China Slams U.S., Israel for UN Race Meet Pullout
How, and How Not, to Fix the F.B.I.
KGB's ghost still haunts Russia

ACTIVISTS
Dine' (Navajo) grandmothers go to Court




-------- NUCLEAR


-------- depleted uranium

DU semiconductors?

Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2001
From: uranium@t-online.de

The following DOE presentation gives an overview of the research being conducted on possible uses of depleted uranium. In addition to uses discussed earlier, such as radiation shielding, catalysts, etc. it also mentions the possible use of DU as a replacement for silicon in semiconductors:

Haire, M.J. and R.R. Price 2001. "Technical Review of Depleted Uranium Uses Research and Development Program," Office of Environmental Management, Washington, DC USA, U.S. Department of Energy, 01/16/2001.

http://www.ornl.gov/~webworks/cppr/y2001/pres/109607_.pdf (1.9MB PDF)

excerpt:

Task Justification

- Semiconductor devices that are based on uranium oxides appear possible and could offer significant improved performance compared to conventional Si, Ge, and GaAs materials

- If depleted uranium (DU) were used instead of silicon for semiconductive devices, 42,000 t/y of DU would be consumed. Approximately 20,000 t/y of DU is produced each year as tails from uranium enrichment operations

- Objective is to develop order of magnitudes improvements, new markets, and consume entire DU inventory

A first UO3 Schottky diode has been fabricated.
For technical details, see also:
http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/uses/semiconductors.cfm

-------- india / pakistan

Former air chief seeks nuclear command under IAF

The Times of India
SEPTEMBER 10, 2001

NEW DELHI: Former air chief O P Mehra has sought an immediate review of the reported government view on allowing army to raise a "strategic rocket command" saying nowhere in the world was such a strategic command part of the army as the air force was already handling such tasks.

"Assuming that these reports that army has been asked to raise a strategic rocket command are correct, I would urge a serious and immediate review of the issue," Air Chief Marshal Mehra said in an article.

Asking policy makers to "draw lessons from history", he said, "the world acknowledges that in the recent past and in the future, air power has been and will remain the dominant force in warfare".

"Nowhere in the world has a strategic command been under the control of the army. If this be so, would it not be appropriate for the decision-makers to review the contemplated decisions," he said, adding "the reasons for India taking a contrary stand are beyond comprehension and defy all reasoning logic".

"One can legitimately ask why set up another command when the Central Air Command of the IAF has been handling strategic tasks and can be called upon to handle the tasks visualised for the strategic rocket command," Mehra said.

-------- missile defense

Rumsfeld Defends Missile Defense

SEPTEMBER 09, 2001
Associated Press
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ELECTION&STORYID=APIS7EDPA980

WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday he would recommend that President Bush veto a military spending bill that cuts $1.3 billion from his request for missile defense and restricts testing.

``There is a hard core of people who, for whatever reason, are determined to kill missile defense. And I just don't believe that vulnerability of the American people to ballistic missiles is a rational policy,'' Rumsfeld said.

Last week, the Democratic-run Senate Armed Services Committee voted along party lines to reduce by $1.3 billion Bush's request to increase missile defense funds by $3 billion, to $8.3 billion.

The legislation also would limit the president's ability to conduct missile defense activities that would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

``I certainly would recommend a veto to the president,'' Rumsfeld said.

The restrictions would require a special vote by Congress before any money could be spent on an activity that the president tells Congress would violate the ABM treaty, even if the United States is no longer a party to that treaty.

The provision was part of legislation authorizing defense spending of $343 billion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

Rumsfeld was hopeful that when the House and Senate resolve differences in each chamber's defense spending plans, missile defense money will be restored.

``I have found over time that the American people care about their national security, they understand its importance, and that the Congress tends to be supportive,'' he said on ``Fox News Sunday.''

``So I think that a presumption that what came out of the Senate committee will necessarily end up as the final decision may very well prove to be wrong.''

The House Armed Services Committee last month voted to trim $135 million from the missile defense request.

Rumsfeld said the limit on missile defense in the Senate committee's bill ``basically ties the president's hands in the discussions with the Russians.''

``It says to the Russians that there are those in the Senate who are not willing to give the president the freedom to go forward with a test program that he intends to go forward with,'' he said. ``So it's important that that be defeated in the House and Senate.''

Bush is trying to strike a deal with the Russians to replace the ABM treaty with an arrangement that allows for national missile defense.

Rumsfeld, who plans to meet again later this month with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, said the administration was keeping an open dialogue with Moscow.

``It is entirely possible that we will be able to find a framework that we can establish between our two countries that is not Cold War-oriented,'' he said.

Rumsfeld, however, also said: ``If we're not able to find a framework that can be appropriate for our two countries going forward between now and the end of the year, the president has indicated he'll have to give consideration to giving a six-month notification for withdrawal.''

--------

Military Contruction Now in Alaska

September 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense-Alaska.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It hardly seems the stuff of geopolitical significance: In forested flatlands about 100 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska, contractors are taking down 135 acres of fire-scorched spruce and birch trees on a closed military post.

When they are done, they also will improve a few roads near Fort Greely and dig wells.

Next spring, given congressional approval, the Bush administration intends to dig some deep holes there, then fill them with five interceptor missile silos.

At some point during the work -- precisely when is open to debate -- the United States likely will come into conflict with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. It is one of the fundamental arms control treaties of the Cold War.

The administration says it will either withdraw from the treaty to avoid violating it, or it will reach a modified accord with Russia allowing the work to go forward.

Even during the Clinton administration, Fort Greely was a flashpoint for ABM treaty issues. Clinton considered using the fort as the home for 100 interceptors that would serve as the nation's sole missile defense.

The Bush administration has changed that. It is opting to test several missile defense technologies, including the ground-based interceptor program backed by the Clinton administration.

To do so, the military envisions a missile range spanning most of the north Pacific Ocean. Sites at Fort Greely, Kodiak Island, and Shemya, Alaska, would augment the existing test range that runs between Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

Ballistic target missiles would be launched from one part of the range, either from a ground-based site or from an airplane. New radars would track the missile as it arcs toward space, shedding boosters and possibly dropping decoys.

Around 200 miles above the Earth, the targets would tip over and fall back toward the surface. One or several experimental missile defenses -- ground-based or naval interceptors, airborne lasers, or possibly orbital weapons -- would try to shoot it down.

The ABM treaty has provisions against testing many of those defenses. Even using certain ship radars, or several radars in tandem, to track missiles during flight tests could create problems with compliance, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged in congressional testimony in July.

The giant range is necessary to give the programs adequate testing, said Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the Pentagon agency running missile defense.

He said there is only one trajectory for missiles flying between Kwajalien and California; with the multiple launch sites, there would be several.

Building the range will cost $800 million, much of that for a new, high-resolution radar in Hawaii, Lehner said.

Fort Greely would be an interceptor missile base. Crews there would practice loading and unloading interceptor missiles from silos. Others would run an operations center and conduct launch drills, but no plans are in place for missiles to take off from Greely, Lehner said.

Those five silos, however, would be operational, and nothing would prevent the missiles inside from being used in an emergency, officials said.

Should the interceptor program go forward, Greely likely would be the site for the real thing. The 135 acres being cleared at Greely would provide enough space for 100 silos, Lehner said.

Greely was shut down in the 1995 base closure round. Its virtue as a base was its arctic conditions. The Army tested equipment performance in temperatures that regularly dip below minus 50 degrees Farenheit.

Now, much of its 750,000 acres serves as a bombing range for military aircraft.

When the base closed, nearby Delta Junction, a community of about 3,000, lost about half of its job base. The town's economic development director is happy to see the military return.

``They will have an awful lot of construction people, and they will have a lot of rocket scientists working out there and living in the community,'' Pete Hallgren said.

For all the activity planned for Greely, Delta residents do not expect to see missiles overhead anytime soon. During tests, interceptors ordered launched from Greely would take off from Kodiak Island, Alaska, hundreds of miles to the southwest.

On the island is the Kodiak Launch Complex, opened by the state in 1998 as a commercial space venture. Because Kodiak, unlike Fort Greely, is already cleared for rocket launches, the military would simply rent the launch facilities and build two interceptor silos, and fire between two and four interceptor shots a year, Lehner said.

Kodiak might later be used to launch target missiles for airborne laser and naval interceptor tests, but the site is not suited for deployment of any ABM systems, he said.

A number of island residents have protested the planned launches, saying they want the complex used solely for civilian purposes.

A coalition of environmental and arms control groups sued the Defense Department last week to force a fresh round of environmental studies for the test range.

The Pentagon argues that studies performed under the Clinton administration are adequate. An additional study for the Kodiak operations has been ordered.

On the Net:
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization: http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/

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

-------- nevada

The many little ironies of the nuclear waste debate

Sunday, September 09, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Steve Sebelius
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-09-Sun-2001/opinion/16951473.html

On Wednesday, Nevadans from all walks of life came to the National Nuclear Security Administration building in North Las Vegas to tell the Energy Department they don't want the deadliest substance known to man to be stored in Nevada. And I couldn't agree more: The government should never again do biological weapons research here!

Oh, and then there's that whole nuclear waste thing.

The wrangling over the nuclear waste issue this week has been interwoven with irony as deep as the proposed nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain and disingenuousness as potent as a used plutonium fuel rod. A few examples:

• No one in Nevada's congressional delegation is opposed to nuclear power itself. So long as they can find a safe place to store nuclear waste (that isn't at Yucca Mountain) nuclear power is keen. Hello! Nuclear power is what got us into this mess in the first place.

• Although U.S. Sen. Harry Reid called for Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham personally to attend a trio of hearings in Nevada -- the first of which took place Wednesday in North Las Vegas -- Reid didn't attend, either. (Odd, however, that those hearings were scheduled after Congress went back into session.) Instead, Reid testified (along with the rest of Nevada's congressional delegation) via video conferencing. Hello! We're sure the boss, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., would have given Reid the day off, and no voter would ever penalize Reid or any other Nevada politician for missing votes in order to come home to fight the nuclear dump.

• While U.S. Sen. John Ensign believes Abraham should attend the hearings, and even called the White House to stress the point, he balked at signing a letter written by Reid calling on President Bush to ask Abraham to go. Hello! It's clear Ensign has to stay on Bush's good side -- so as to persuade him not to approve sending nuclear waste to Nevada, like that's really going to happen -- but he promised to fight his own party and the president on the nuclear waste issue. Now's the time!

• Even though Reid called for the Energy Department to video conference the hearings to other Nevada cities, and the department agreed, Gov. Kenny Guinn said he was unhappy because the department set up the equipment in state government buildings. Hello! You either want to give the public a chance to participate in the hearings or you don't. This idea that somehow Nevada is digging its own grave by using state buildings to hold the hearings is, in a word, stupid.

• Mayor Oscar Goodman gave his usual performance on nuke waste, uttering his usual lines, but at least one of those who'd seen his act before -- i.e. me -- was secretly hoping and praying that he wouldn't pull out the mayoral badge and threaten to arrest nuke truck drivers. Alas, he did it. Hello! He may have won over the crowd, but he didn't do the cause much good. Later, when he said he hoped the Energy Department would get the idea that he wasn't crazy, just dangerous, he left out a very real third possibility: Circus sideshow!

• Everyone involved, on both sides, treated the hearings as if they would produce this great gem of revelation: Nevadans oppose the nuclear dump. No really, they're against it. Seriously, hardly anyone in Nevada wants the dump here. No joke: The dump is unpopular in the Silver State. Hello! Is there someone, anyone, left in America who doesn't know this? The problem is not that they don't know, it's that they don't care.

There were some good points made during the hearing. Guinn said you can't trust the Energy Department after it claimed all those cancer-causing, above-ground nuclear tests were safe. True. Reid and Gibbons said transportation accidents are very real possibilities. Also true. Ensign backed transmutation, which would radically reduce the amount of waste we're talking about. Very true. And Berkley said the government shouldn't hold hearings before the final environmental assessment is done, and questioned whether the dump could meet strict environmental standards. Completely true.

It's just hard to hear those good points, sometimes, with all the noise in the background.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at Steve_Sebelius@lvrj.com.

---

Stacked Yucca hearing shows game already over and Nevada lost

Sunday, September 09, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
John L. Smith
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-09-Sun-2001/news/16950549.html

I spent a portion of my childhood being dragged from one blue-collar political function to the next.

By age 10, I'd endured enough boring speeches, eaten enough bad barbecue and witnessed enough shouting matches -- punctuated by the occasional fistfight -- to last a lifetime. In the process, I developed a kind of caucus intolerance, which has symptoms akin to lactose intolerance.

As I stepped Wednesday into the muggy room that was the site of a political farce that operated under the title of Department of Energy hearing on its Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, I was transported back in time.

But this wasn't bare-knuckle democracy in action. This was the window dressing on a world-class fix that was as tilted as any small-town caucus.

If the subject weren't so serious, it would have been comical. The hearing took place at the DOE offices at 232 Energy Way -- not exactly a level playing field -- in an overwhelmed meeting room that was perhaps 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the building.

Rather than schedule several meetings in Southern Nevada, the state's population center, the DOE chose to hold one in Las Vegas at its own headquarters and the rest in the job-hungry communities of Pahrump and Amargosa Valley, two spots on the map that might benefit economically from Yucca Mountain.

"This is going to be some event," exasperated moderator Barry Lawson said. But Lawson was wrong. It was tense and lasted more than eight hours, but it was a nonevent that had no chance of persuading the DOE to padlock the gate to Yucca Mountain.

Eighty percent of Nevadans oppose this project, but 100 percent of the DOE isn't listening. The voices of opposition were like NFL fans arguing about last year's Super Bowl. All their shouting couldn't change the score.

Those favoring the repository were far more organized than their frustrated opposition, which was reduced to heckling like barflies. Their outbursts were rude, but their cynicism was justified. They knew a dog-and-pony show when they smelled it.

The DOE and its Yucca Project allies salted the room with partisans, who filled so many chairs that the moderator was compelled to ask them to leave unless they were scheduled to speak. One-fifth of those seated stood and exited.

The speakers' list was balanced for the prime-time television broadcast. During the first three hours, Nevada's political contingent was offset by Yucca's advocates.

Our congressional delegation pitched its tired line of threats and facts via satellite from Washington, and Gov. Kenny Guinn and Mayor Oscar Goodman unleashed enough rhetorical heat to fry a side of beef.

Bitterness filled the room like smoke. Nevadans had been screwed, and now were being asked to describe the experience.

When finally given the opportunity.

While the politicians and pro-Yucca plants ranted early, and representatives of the Western Shoshone nation were the most credible speakers present, dozens of mere citizens were forced to wait until late in the evening before receiving their five minutes in the main room.

A priceless moment came when Dario Herrera, who in a few short years has skyrocketed through the political ranks from lowly state legislator to County Commission chairman and now to an expected run for Congress, with a straight face assured all present he wasn't there to deliver a political speech.

Did he know another kind?

No wonder Herrera has a big future in politics.

One of the most cogent remarks of the night was made by County Commissioner Myrna Williams, who mocked the DOE's scientific rhetoric by observing, "Did science demand that the hearings be held this way?"

Science, no.

Politics, yes.

I'd like to think there's a chance Nevada's voice will prevail, that Sen. Harry Reid's lofty position will hamstring the project, or that transporting 77,000 tons of radioactive waste will become too controversial. But after more than three hours, I felt that same old queasy feeling.

On the way out, I noticed the hosts of this unholy political event didn't even bother to hand out flat draft beer or charred spare ribs.

John L. Smith's column appears Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@lvrj.com or call him at 383-0295.


-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

Nigeria Seals Off Northern State to Stop Spread of Violence

September 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nigeria-Religious-Violence.html

JOS, Nigeria (AP) -- Frightened Muslims and Christians huddled together for safety at a police training grounds in this northern Nigerian city Sunday after three days of bloodletting between their two communities left smoke rising into the sky and charred corpses in the streets.

Blackened homes and hundreds upon hundreds of burned cars, some still smoldering, lined the road into the hilltop city of Jos, a peaceful community of 4 million people until tensions between Muslims and Christians exploded Friday evening after Muslim prayers.

Heavy police patrols and troops called out by President Olusegun Obasanjo were taking control Sunday. Police sealed the borders of Plateau state to keep violence from spreading beyond Jos, the capital.

The death toll in Jos was unknown, although residents said dozens were dying. Troops quickly began picking up bodies.

The Associated Press counted nine bodies, many blackened, one with a burned tire still around its neck, on one road into town.

``There is still fighting, but we hope with God's grace by tomorrow we can stop it,'' O.A. Adetut, a police trainee, said in Jos.

Security forces manned roadblocks every few hundred feet and intercepted marauding, rival gangs of Christians and Muslims.

``Don't you understand? They are killing our people!'' implored one of about 30 Muslims stopped by police as they drove through the streets in an open-bed truck.

The men, made to kneel in a culvert by a police school, pleaded for merciful treatment by authorities. Arms taken from them -- steak knives, pick axes, swords and clubs bristling with nails -- lay nearby.

On the grounds of the police school, 750 Muslims and Christians -- men, women and children -- crowded together, clutching small bags and other goods grabbed in hurried flight.

Jos, a one-time hill resort of Nigeria's former British rulers, exploded into violence over what some residents said was a simple slight -- a Christian woman trying to cross a street where Muslim men were gathered in Friday prayer.

Prized by missionaries -- today, many of them American -- for its good weather, the predominantly Christian city until now largely had been spared the Muslim-Christian clashes that broke out elsewhere in northern Nigeria last year.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Susan Pittman said the United States had not issued any public warning to Americans in Jos. U.S. authorities were closely monitoring the situation, she said.

Nigeria, a nation of 120 million people and 250 ethnic groups, is split into an overwhelmingly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south. Thousands have died in vicious Muslim-Christian clashes since several northern states introduced Sharia, or Islamic law. Last year, 2,000 people died in Kaduna state alone.

Jos, most of whose government leaders are Christians, had ruled out implementing Sharia. Religious tensions had been rising recently following a Muslim's appointment as chairman of a state poverty-alleviation committee.

Thick smoke rose from outlying villages Sunday evening. Fighting was said to have spread to the city's outskirts.

Some Christians and Muslims banded together to stop the fighting.

Tukur Mohammed, who is Muslim, described how residents of his neighborhood, Abattoir Giring I, had spontaneously formed a Muslim-Christian association in a successful bid to keep out violence.

Mohammed said he saw a man being shot by police just a few blocks away during unrest on Saturday. Christian and Muslim men together carried the body off the street.

Acting state Gov. Michael Bomang sent out what was described as an ``S.O.S.'' to dozens of cities and towns across Plateau state, telling them to act to safeguard lives within their own communities.

In Jos on Sunday, police repelled a Muslim gang that attacked some of the few Christians who ventured out for church services.

Frightened residents described determined killers keeping up hit-and-run attacks -- singling out victims, then closing in with guns and machetes when armed patrols were out of sight.

-------- balkans

Weekend warriors on 6-month duty

September 9, 2001
By Gerald Mizejewski
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20010909-53334536.htm

The send-off parties and farewell dinners have come and gone. The children have been prepared with long talks. And, in some cases, phone service at home has been temporarily turned off. It's a familiar ritual for the sailors and soldiers who make their living defending the country, this suspension of everyday life. But for members of Maryland's National Guard -- the doctors, lawyers and laborers who signed up for two weekends a month and 15 days a year -- this leave-taking is something new.

Today, 267 members of the 29th Light Infantry Division leave for Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, for six months -- its most significant deployment since World War II. Their mission: to enforce an uneasy peace in a place of centuries-old ethnic hostilities, the cradle of World War I.

Among them are Staff Sgt. Preston Curvey Jr.; Spc. Tabitha Salinas; Chief Warrant Officer Roger Weaver; 1st Sgt. Raymond Arpin; and Lt. Col. Ron Price.

These five soldiers have agreed to share their stories with The Washington Times before, during and after the mission.

The lives left behind don't take a six-month hiatus. Graduations are missed, weddings rescheduled, birthdays celebrated alone.

They leave a land of shopping malls and ballparks for a war-torn region still considered a combat zone after the civil war of the early 1990s. The work, however, is often routine and slow, leaving the part-time soldiers with lots of down time to think about what they're missing back home.

As each flies out of Fort Dix in New Jersey today, they take with them comforting thoughts of home and a common uncertainty about what lies ahead.

Staff Sgt. Preston Curvey Jr.

Staff Sgt. Preston Curvey Jr. has been doing his homework.

The Maryland National Guard infantryman has armed himself with a cache of Bosnian phrases and analyzed some of the major highlights of the Dayton peace accord.

He also has taken time to listen to an Army-issued compact disc with instructions on how to act and talk when out among the citizens around their base, Camp Comanche, about 30 miles north of Sarajevo.

And though there will be a Burger King and a Starbucks on base, he knows this won't be like his D.C. neighborhood.

For instance, offering a cigarette to one man without offering one to every adult present could be construed as favoritism toward one side.

It's important stuff to know if half your time is spent outside the base in the wild countryside.

"I need to know how to deal with people, not just my soldiers but those out there who are suffering," says Sgt. Curvey, speaking by phone from his parents' Wheaton home before his goodbye dinner.

"I have to be on my best behavior at all times," he says, adding that any infraction could reflect poorly on his entire country.

On most days in Bosnia, Sgt. Curvey, 45, will don his flak jacket, helmet, boots and M-16 with 180 rounds. He will set up checkpoints, keep a tally on the firearms kept in the region's weapons-storage areas and assist with the refugee relocation.

He is frustrated by the mines, he says, because as an infantry soldier he has been taught to take the shortest path. In Bosnia, he will be forced to stay to the roads -- or bring a mine-clearing team with him.

"I might be the victim of a mine," he says matter-of-factly when asked about the danger.

The Guardsman, who is a long-distance tractor-trailer driver in his normal life, has been given an added task as a planner. He is the only enlisted man in a 17-member "think tank" that determines the feasibility of directives that come from his general.

Sgt. Curvey, who is saving up to buy his own rig, has been in and out of the Guard since 1974. He served in the Persian Gulf war and six years ago was deployed to the Sinai Peninsula for a one-year peacekeeping mission.

The infantryman is single -- he was married once, but it "just didn't work out" -- and lives in a house he owns on Capitol Hill. He wishes he didn't have to miss the new lineup of television shows.

Sgt. Curvey comes from a long line of soldiers and a Southern Baptist background, but converted to Islam. He says Muslims have been removed from their homes over there, which he admits bothers him.

It is something he has been preparing for, with the rest of his studying, and he's confident that his feelings won't interfere with his work.

"Soldiers don't have the right to show their political or religious views."

Spc. Tabitha Salinas

Spc. Tabitha Salinas' life is 6-year-old Tyler.

The 21-year-old single mother loves eating dinner with her son or taking him ice skating at Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Their favorite mother-son activity is a day at King's Dominion amusement park in Virginia.

Leaving her little boy in the care of her family for six months will be torturous.

"He's my only child, and he's attached to me at the hip," Spc. Salinas says, hinting that she may take with her a stuffed Army bear she once gave to Tyler.

Spc. Salinas already knows about separation and sacrifice: When she returned from her six-month basic training three years ago, Tyler had grown so much he seemed like a different person. And while training for this mission in Louisiana, Spc. Salinas missed his kindergarten graduation.

There will be other milestones while she's away. Spc. Salinas' mother will videotape Tyler boarding the bus for Day One of first grade, so her daughter can watch it months from now.

"He understands that I'm going over to help other people," Spc. Salinas says. "He knows I'll be gone for Christmas. He's going to send me my presents."

However difficult this long-term separation between mother and child will be, deployment to Bosnia for a woman who has never left the country is still the opportunity of a lifetime.

"I can't wait. I'm, like, superexcited," she says, sitting in a boardroom inside the 5th Regiment Armory in Baltimore, where she works full time.

"I survived all the seven or eight shots," she said jokingly of the vaccinations she received. "I think I can survive a few months out of the country."

Spc. Salinas, a short, independent woman with a strong Maryland accent and a high school diploma, lives within earshot of the Baltimore Ravens' stadium in a house she bought at age 18. Her mother lives with her, and twin sister Tiffany, also in the Guard, is moving in while Spc. Salinas is away.

Tiffany Salinas didn't want to go and won't have to -- she gave birth to son Dominick about a month ago and is therefore exempt from the mission.

Spc. Salinas works full time as a military personnel technician in charge of processing discharges, transfers, enlistments and promotions. "I basically take care of the soldiers," she says.

Overseas, she will work in the administrative offices, doling out leaves, relaying emergency messages and "maintaining 85 percent strength on the ground at all times."

Tyler is not all that Spc. Salinas will miss. There are the comforts of home, like her waterbed and her beloved Ravens -- she attended every home game last season.

Warrant Officer Roger Weaver

Serving his country will be costly for Chief Warrant Officer Roger Weaver, literally.

The Baltimore banker will not make quite as much ordering around pilots for the next few months.

"I will be taking a pay cut," says Warrant Officer Weaver, an Army veteran who has flown helicopters in Vietnam.

Warrant Officer Weaver is a vice president and asset manager working in the commercial leasing and equipment division for Allfirst Bank. He has worked for the same company for 23 years.

A consummate professional, Warrant Officer Weaver, 57, showed up for work the day before he left for Aberdeen, Md., for final preparations. And he will be available for e-mail consultation with the home office.

His company will hire outside agencies and consultants to handle some of the work.

"This deployment is probably toughest on my co-workers because they will have to pick up the slack," he says from behind his desk in his downtown office..

Warrant Officer Weaver, an avid reader of historical books and a Cal Ripken fan, exudes an air of confidence and toughness -- a man accustomed to being relied upon.

He lives in Ellicott City in a massive house with his second wife, Becky, "a stay-at-home mom with no kids." Social worker daughter Gina, 33, and civil engineer son Rob, 22, are on their own.

Deployment "has got pluses and minuses. It is an exciting thing. It's also a very disrupting thing. My wife has been through this before," he says of Becky, to whom he's been married 23 years.

He could be speaking for all his fellow soldiers when he says, "I feel very honored to go to fulfill a national mission. "It's something I volunteered for."

Warrant Officer Weaver went on active duty in 1966, attended flight school and was shot down -- but not captured -- during a one-year combat tour as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. He has been a member of the Maryland National Guard since 1970. Two years ago, he flew humanitarian missions over El Salvador in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch.

"Emotionally, the hardest part is probably the first three or four days, that's my experience," he says. "The reality of the separation really hits you. After that you get into a routine, start doing your job and soldier on."

While on this mission, he will be responsible for the training and proficiency of all of the aviators in the command.

"I'm just expecting to work a lot," he says. "I'm expecting the weather to be much like Central Pennsylvania in the winter -- cold, damp, a fair amount of snow." That's what he can expect: Temperatures in Bosnia-Herzegovina vary between 35.6 and 42.8 degrees Fahrenheit during the coldest season, from January to March.

"After all, they did have a Winter Olympics there."

1st Sgt. Raymond Arpin

Life was hectic around 1st Sgt. Raymond Arpin's house in rural Harford County recently, but it had nothing to do with his impending departure to Bosnia.

Last-minute preparations for his daughter's wedding left Sgt. Arpin, a 32-year veteran of the Maryland National Guard, with little time to think about the work awaiting him in Bosnia.

Rebecca, 25, had always wanted to get married in the fall. She happened to choose this fall.

Plans changed, though, when her father -- a heating and cooling technician when not serving in the Guard -- was told to report for final prep by early September for eventual deployment overseas. The family moved the wedding to Sept. 1.

But again, plans changed, and Sgt. Arpin's superiors ordered him to report on Aug. 30.

He quickly wrote a request to plead his case, stressing that about 75 relatives and friends were coming from out of town, including the groom from Johnstown, Pa.

"The Guard always has said they were family-oriented," Sgt. Arpin says, rocking slowly in a chair on his front porch. "That's the first time I ever had to test it."

The two sides reached a compromise -- a four-day emergency leave -- and Sgt. Arpin gave his only daughter away at the same Baltimore church where he married his wife, the Shrine of the Little Flower Roman Catholic Church.

Sgt. Arpin, 53, is a true family man who will miss drinking a cold beer, tinkering with his model trains and playing in his lush yard with his two golden retrievers, Mickey and Abby. He often breaks the tension over his leaving with a joke and is protective of wife Roberta.

He joined the Guard when "the Vietnam War was hot and heavy." He liked what he was doing, not enough to do it every day, but enough to stay with it.

Sgt. Arpin has never been out of the country, except to Canada, and rarely leaves home for an extended time.

"Six months is a bit long. I haven't been away from home for six months since basic training," he says.

Still, he's luckier than most: He'll have a big piece of his life with him in Bosnia.

Only son Raymond, 22, a student at Towson University and an aviation mechanic with the Guard, will accompany his father on the long trip as part of the same unit.

"He made a lot of sacrifices to do this," Sgt. Arpin says. "He's missing three semesters from school."

While in Bosnia, Sgt. Arpin will oversee maintenance of Black Hawk, Huey and Cobra helicopters, everything from general upkeep to radar repair.

But what could a peacekeeping mission throw at a man who was able to juggle a wedding, almost twice?

"My job is actually very boring," he says "As long as I have good people under me, which I do, I don't have anything to do."

Lt. Col. Ron Price

It's time for Lt. Col. Ron Price to substitute recreational danger with professional danger.

The avid rock climber, skydiver and rescue diver for his local volunteer fire department is somewhat reluctantly giving it all up for a new kind of adrenaline rush -- life in a combat zone.

"It's always possible," he says, referring to the potential for a flare-up. "The U.S. forces over there don't stay in their compounds. They get out and about and enforce the Dayton peace accord. "They do the best they can to prevent loss of life."

Col. Price, 49, a divorced helicopter pilot from Columbia, Md., wasn't supposed to join the mission. He helped train others, and because of his expertise, got called up himself.

"The country has decided that it needs me to go there, and I feel that since they have invested a lot of money and training in me, that's probably a good thing," says Col. Price, who spoke softly and deliberately from behind his desk at the National Transportation Safety Board headquarters.

"I investigate aircraft crashes to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding the accident," says Col. Price, an aerospace engineer for the NTSB who last year searched the waters off Massachusetts for wreckage of EgyptAir Flight 990. "We look at pieces, parts and take measurements and find out how things broke, how they're supposed to break."

Some of the other engineers have accepted his caseload for the next six months.

Col. Price moved to the D.C. area in 1988 and joined the Maryland National Guard the following year.

After graduation from the Air Force Academy, Col. Price served from 1974 to 1979 as a fighter pilot based at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona. While with the Ohio National Guard, he flew a three-week mission to Honduras in 1988.

"Three weeks is palatable. Six months is harsh," he says.

In Bosnia, he will coordinate American aviators with Russian, French, British, Turk and Polish forces, among others. He recently finished Black Hawk school, so he may be called upon to pilot a helicopter from time to time.

Col. Price won't be seen off by family as he embarks from Fort Dix.

His former wife lives in Colorado with son Tyler, 15, who would have moved in with his father had the deployment not cropped up.

His other son, 18-year-old Jason, has just begun his freshman year at Colorado State University. His father missed his high school graduation and birthday because of training in Louisiana.

"They both understand and they're really good kids," Col. Price says. "But they still don't like it."

-------- iraq

Rumsfeld Concerned About Iraq

September 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iraq's pursuit of chemical and biological weapons threatens to become a serious problem, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.

Without monitoring by U.N. weapons inspectors, the Iraqis have been ``working diligently to increase their capabilities in every aspect of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile technology,'' he said. ``And as they get somewhat stronger, the problem becomes some greater.''

A CIA report delivered to Congress on Friday described the efforts of other countries to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Iraq may again be producing biological warfare agents, the report said, although confirming that is difficult given the inspectors' absence.

``That problem, particularly biological weapons, over the coming decade is going to be an increasingly serious one,'' Rumsfeld said on ``Fox News Sunday.''

``It will have to attacked from a whole range of methods,'' including bombing. ``Some of them are mobile. They can move them; they're in vans. So it is not a simple thing. But it'll have to be dealt with using a variety of techniques.''

The CIA report also said Iraq was working on an unmanned drone, called the L-29, that could deliver biological or chemical weapons.

Rumsfeld said other nations continue to trade with Iraq, allowing Saddam Hussein to improve his military technology and increasing the risk to U.S. and British planes enforcing two ``no-fly zones'' over Iraq.

``Then United States and the U.K. are forced to go in and take out those capabilities,'' Rumsfeld said on CNN's ``Late Edition.''

--------

U.S. attacks three Iraqi missile sites
25 planes involved; all return safely to base after mission

NBC NEWS
http://www.msnbc.com/news/626346.asp

Sept. 9 - U.S. warplanes attacked three Iraqi anti-aircraft missile sites in the southern "no-fly zone" Sunday afternoon, part of what U.S. defense officials told NBC News was a "continuing campaign to degrade Iraq's air defense systems."

TWENTY-FIVE WARPLANES struck three surface-to-air missile sites in a two-hour operation between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reported. All 25 planes returned safely to their bases in the Persian Gulf region.

Defense Department officials said the strike, the latest in a series of U.S. missions over Iraq 10 years after the Persian Gulf War, was aimed at preventing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from improving his air defense system and at reducing the threat to U.S. pilots patrolling the no-fly zones in both northern and southern Iraq.

Miklaszewski reported that the administration had chosen to conduct a series of low-key strikes instead of a major assault to avoid stirring up Arab-world sympathies for Saddam or aggravating tensions in the Middle East.

NBC reported last month that U.N. officials were concerned that so-called dual-use items ideal for Iraq's military machine were slipping through the sanctions net into Iraq, including solid rocket fuel, missile technology and equipment to resurrect its military-industrial complex.

Saddam's "threat to the rest of the world is now approaching the level it was when the Gulf War began," Gary Milhollin, whose Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms control sponsors the IraqWatch.org Web site, told NBC's Robert Windrem and Linda Fasulo in August.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday on CNN that the continued trade with Iraq increased the risk to U.S. and British planes. "Then United States and the U.K. are forced to go in and take out those capabilities," he said.

NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and MSNBC.com's Alex Johnson contributed to this report.

-------- israel

U.S. Deplores Latest Mideast Violence

SEPTEMBER 09, 11:24 EDT
Associated Press
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ELECTION&STORYID=APIS7EDOJ300

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. officials deplored the fresh violence Sunday in the Middle East and would not rule out the possibility that President Bush might soon meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the first time.

Both leaders are expected to be in New York in a few weeks when the U.N. General Assembly meets.

While Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon twice has visited the White House, Arafat has yet to be invited.

``The president has said he will meet with people when it's necessary to meet with people to advance the cause, but at this point in time there are no plans to meet with Yasser Arafat in New York,'' the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.''

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said it was a decision that Secretary of State Colin Powell and Bush will be considering.

``You always want to do what you can to try to stop violence in a region like that and get people talking again,'' Rumsfeld said on ``Fox News Sunday.''

Asked whether he thought Bush should meet with Arafat, Rumsfeld replied: ``I don't know. It depends on what takes place, and it depends on what the private discussions indicate might bear fruit. But the United States has to do what we're doing. We have to try to work with the people in the region to see if we can't reduce that.''

In the latest violence, Palestinian militants launched attacks Sunday that included a suicide bomber who detonated his explosives as passengers were getting off a crowded train in a northern coastal Israeli town. Four people were killed, including the bomber, was more than 30 were wounded.

The surge of violence, which also included retaliatory missile strikes by Israeli helicopters, threw into question possible truce talks aimed at ending more than 11 months of Mideast violence.

``The violence against innocent civilians is really senseless and it just shouldn't continue and were working every day with the parties to try and lower the level of violence,'' Rice said.

``We have in fact received recently new assurances from the Palestinian Authority that they are trying to stop the violence,but we're waiting to see,'' she said. ``We believe they can do more and that they really do need to do more.''

Rumsfeld said it was not clear to him that Arafat ``controls every aspect of what takes place'' by the Palestinians. ``But there's no question but that the terrorist acts and the killings that are taking place there and the responses to those terrorist acts are creating a very difficult situation in the Middle East.''

As for Israeli retaliation, Rumsfeld said: ``I think that any time people are doing suicide bombings and blowing up your people at bus stops and in restaurants, you certainly cannot sit there and tolerate that.''

Rice said the Bush administration wants to get peace plans by CIA Director George Tenet and the commission established by former Sen. George Mitchell back on track, but needs the cooperation of both sides.

``Until you can get to a situation in which there is less violence and in which terrorism has been removed from the picture, it's going to be very hard, but we're working on it every day,'' she said.

--------

Fatah offices hit by Israeli missiles

September 9, 2001
By Hadeel Wahdan
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010909-88449074.htm

RAMALLAH, West Bank --Israeli helicopters attacked offices of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday in what the army said was retaliation for recent shooting attacks.

No one was injured. The Palestinians accused Israel of trying to kill Mohammed Mansour, the Fatah leader in Ramallah, who had left the building moments earlier. The Israeli army would not comment on the accusation.

Fatah employees meeting with Mr. Mansour in the eight-story building said they heard helicopters flying overhead before three missiles struck.

"I was still inside when I heard some helicopters flying very close to the building," said one man, who escaped uninjured. "One missile entered the room." He managed to get out of the smoke-filled offices through a bathroom window.

The entire floor belonging to the Fatah movement was seriously damaged, but other offices in the structure apparently were not damaged. One missile that struck did not explode, Palestinian police said, and residents in the neighborhood were evacuated for fear it would.

The Israeli army said the strike was an answer to repeated shooting attacks in the West Bank in recent days, including a roadside ambush Thursday that killed one soldier. Israel repeatedly has accused the Fatah party of involvement in attacks, and many of its gunmen are wanted by Israel.

Dozens of Palestinians demonstrated in Ramallah after the attack, calling for revenge.

"Our response will be faster and more painful than Israelis can imagine," said Marwan Barghouti, leader of the Tanzim militia, which is affiliated with Fatah.

The strike proves that Mr. Arafat should not meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Mr. Barghouti said. Both sides had been trying to work out a meeting that Mr. Peres said would take place next week in the region.

Earlier yesterday, a Palestinian was killed and another seriously injured in an explosion near the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, an area known as a flash point in the more than 11 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

Izzaldine Issa, 25, was killed by a powerful explosion that went off in the yard of a house used by the Tanzim militia, witnesses said. Mr. Issa was a member of Tanzim and served in the Palestinian intelligence services, Tanzim officials said.

Tanzim accused Israel of booby-trapping the premises. The Israeli army said it was not aware of the explosion or of any clashes in the area at the time.

In the fighting, 607 persons have been killed on the Palestinian side and 165 on the Israeli side.

Palestinians expressed skepticism over Mr. Peres' announcement in Italy that he would meet Mr. Arafat next week.

Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath said more preparation is needed for such a meeting.

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

Rumsfeld: Closing bases won't ruin the economy

September 9, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010909-70516971.htm

The slumping economy may stiffen Congress' resistance to closing military bases, but Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says the changes are necessary to save billions the military needs to spend elsewhere.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Rumsfeld said Americans must understand that if the military is forced to keep open unneeded bases, it will be starved of money it needs to modernize.

Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed concerns by many politicians that closing bases will hurt local economies. "Life's hard," he said. "Yeah, it might" be more difficult to sell in Congress now that the economic boom is over. "But first of all, the economy's still growing, it's not in the dumps. And second, national security is darned important."

In a 45-minute interview Friday, he disclosed that he intends to announce this week a plan for substantially reducing the Pentagon bureaucracy by combining some of the civilian and military staffs in the armed services, reducing layers of civilian management and making across-the-board cuts in headquarters staffs.

Mr. Rumsfeld indicated the reductions would be less than 10 percent. He declined to give a specific figure or estimate how much could be saved.

The across-the-board cutbacks would mirror the "mindless, crude" reductions institutions sometimes are compelled to make out of economic necessity, Mr. Rumsfeld said. He said he would take special care to ensure that truly vital functions are not eliminated.

"You don't want to simply blindly reduce numbers in an organization where you have a thin veneer of civilian leadership," he said.

Mr. Rumsfeld said he was encouraged that the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday voted for a new round of base closures. While acknowledging that the committee traditionally supports Pentagon cost-saving initiatives, he said some members who voted for it this time had opposed it last year.

Winning approval in the House may be more difficult.

In the past, the Pentagon has taken one of two approaches to paring bases: close them and sell the property after investing huge sums to clean up the environmental damage they had incurred in decades of use; or realign them by shifting people from several smaller bases to one large one.

This time, Mr. Rumsfeld said, the Pentagon is proposing a wider variety of options, including:

• Mothballing some bases. He called this "pickling" - to stop using the base but keep the property. This avoids the often-enormous expense of environmental cleanup and keeps the base available for use in a national emergency. Taking this approach could save "a bucket of dollars," he said.

• Close only part of a base.

• Mothball part of a base and keep the rest open.

• Move people from high-rent office space onto bases that have extra room.

• Keep a base open but lease part of it rather than selling it.

Whatever the approach, Mr. Rumsfeld said, the goal should be to make it as simple and painless as possible.

"Try to do it in a way with the minimal trauma on the community. Get into it, get it over with and don't try to cut off the dog's tail one inch at a time hoping it hurts less," he said.

The Pentagon has proposed to Congress that in 2003 an independent commission act on recommendations from the Pentagon on which bases to close or consolidate. Mr. Rumsfeld said a single round of cuts could save the Pentagon $3 billion a year, although the savings would not start for several years.

Mr. Rumsfeld said he felt strongly that despite the political cost of asking Congress to close bases, it is necessary.

"Why the hell would I leave Illinois and Taos, New Mexico, and come down here simply to sit around with my finger in my ear and not do what I think is in the best interest of the country?" he asked, referring to his hometown of Chicago and his ranch in Taos. "It seems to me it's the right thing to do. The fact there are people fussing about it ... doesn't surprise me."

He noted that President Bush fought the Pentagon on closing bases in Texas when he was governor.

--------

Navy Confident About Salvaging Ehime Maru
Despite Setbacks, U.S. Will Not Give Up Effort to Raise Fishing Trawler Sunk by Submarine

By Sally Apgar
The Washington Post
Sunday, September 9, 2001; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63503-2001Sep8?language=printer

HONOLULU -- Despite a series of setbacks in its effort to raise a Japanese fishing ship accidentally sunk by a U.S. submarine, the Navy said last week it was more confident than ever that it would be able to recover the 830-ton wreck from a muddy hole 2,000 feet below the waves.

Rear Adm. William Klemm, who is in charge of the salvage operation, said the wreck of the Ehime Maru "is in much stronger condition than had been initially anticipated -- and has been able to withstand far greater structural stresses."

Klemm spoke at a news conference hastily called Thursday to squelch mounting speculation that the Navy would ditch the recovery effort after several mishaps in the past two weeks. On Aug. 31, for example, a cable that had begun to lift the stern of the fishing vessel off the ocean floor snapped, dropping the ship 24 feet.

The Navy said the stern was not damaged. In fact, Klemm maintained, the team of Navy, Japanese and civilian experts working to raise the ship is "more confident today that we will be successful than we have been at any point in this operation."

The Navy has been under pressure from Japan to recover the remains of nine men and boys -- four teenagers and five crew members -- who were lost and may have been trapped inside the Ehime Maru when it was rammed Feb. 9 by the USS Greeneville.

The nuclear sub, carrying civilians on a demonstration tour, was conducting an emergency surfacing drill. The trawler, carrying vocational high school students on a training voyage, sank in less than five minutes. Twenty-six of its passengers and crew were rescued.

The Japanese government and relatives of the missing are eager for the return of any remains or personal belongings. In accordance with Japanese tradition, the families want something of their loved ones recovered and placed in a tomb so that they can bring offerings and say prayers.

Capt. Bert Marsh, who supervised the search effort for the Ehime Maru and is running the day-to-day salvage effort, told reporters Friday that the setbacks have caused the Navy to modify its plans but not abandon them. He also said the cost of the operation might exceed the original $40 million estimate.

Currently, the Ehime Maru is nose down in the mud. The salvage team on board the Rockwater 2, a bright orange and red civilian ship contracted for the operation, is using remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, to place cables and steel lifting plates under the trawler.

The cables eventually will be attached to a lifting frame. Then the bow will be raised until it is level with the stern, which is suspended by a cable and dangling 22 feet off the ocean floor, Marsh said.

If all goes well -- and it has not so far -- computerized winches will keep the ship level as it is hoisted to about 100 feet above the sea bottom. Then, in what some experts call an unprecedented engineering feat, the Rockwater will tow the Ehime Maru 16 miles to shallow water off Honolulu International Airport.

There, at a depth of about 115 feet, Navy divers will be sent down to retrieve any remains and personal belongings, as well as to remove any remaining fuel. Their search will be videotaped by cameras mounted on their helmets. When the U.S. divers are finished, a Japanese team will be sent down. And, last of all, the ship will be towed to its final resting place in 6,000 feet of water.

The Navy has had one major piece of luck: There is far less fuel on board the ship -- perhaps only 10,000 gallons -- than the 45,000 gallons initially believed, Marsh said. That is important because one of the major risks of the salvage operation is a fuel spill.

In most other respects, the operation has encountered trouble. The first setback occurred in late August, when ROVs were unable to drill pathways through the mud underneath the ship to place steel cables. The cables were to lift the wreck with the help of the steel plates, which would distribute the Ehime Maru's weight. But the drill operators were working with little visibility, because the ROVs kick up silt that can take 40 minutes to settle.

The recovery team resorted to the contingency plan of lifting the ship by its stern, a move it feared could buckle the ship and further weaken its hull.

Initial attempts to raise the stern failed when two cables were placed incorrectly. Then came the Aug. 31 incident in which a cable snapped, causing the ship to fall 24 feet.

A few days later, a heavy-duty strap split while attempting the same lift. By the end of last week, the stern of the wreck had been suspended 22 feet off the ocean floor for more than 40 hours, pushing the bow deeper into the mud.

Still, Marsh was bullish. "We try to always have something in our back pocket," he said.

The next step, he said, is to fasten the stern lifting plates and rig cables to lift the bow. The Navy has sent for dredging equipment from the mainland to drill through the mud and aid the ROVs in placing cables. Once the cables are in place, Marsh said, the weight of the stern, where most of the heavy equipment on the ship is located, will be used "like a teeter-totter" to pry loose the bow.

The obvious risk, however, is that the stress will weaken the trawler's hull or even break it apart.

The Navy, which originally had planned to have the Ehime Maru in shallow water by mid-September, is no longer publicizing any timetable.

"We are looking at milestone events rather than setting a schedule," Marsh said.


-------- OTHER

-------- death penalty

Torture Hurries New Wave of Executions in China

September 9, 2001
New York Times
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/international/asia/09CHIN.html

HEFEI, China - Liu Minghe paused in a hospital room here to let a nurse take his blood pressure, which had surged dangerously in the few minutes since he began talking about how he had won his freedom from China's death row.

After she left, he begged off recounting in greater detail the torture that he said had led him to confess to a murder he did not commit.

"Let's just say it was `forced interrogation and confession under duress,' " Mr. Liu said, his speech slurring slightly because he is missing several of his lower teeth, which he said had been knocked out during his five-year incarceration.

Mr. Liu has been recuperating in a hospital in Hefei, 560 miles south of Beijing, since winning his release last month after having been sentenced to die in 1996 in one of China's "strike hard" campaigns, a frenzied national effort to purge the land of lawbreakers.

He managed to overturn his conviction on the grounds of insufficient evidence, thanks largely to his former Communist Party membership, his family's relatively high social position, and money. But many other people who are wrongly convicted and condemned to die in China may not be so lucky.

China routinely executes more people than all other countries combined. This year, though, has been far from routine. Without much notice at home or abroad, the government has begun sending unknown thousands of people to execution grounds, often after they have been tortured into confessing crimes that to foreigners seem minor.

Today China is in the midst of its third great wave of executions in the last quarter century, a campaign in which as many as 191 people have been executed in a single day, according to the state news media. Since President Jiang Zemin announced the crackdown in April, at least 3,000 people have been executed, and double or even triple that number have been sentenced to death. The pace of executions shows no sign of abating.

The wrongful conviction of Mr. Liu, and others like him, suggests that by the time the campaign ends in 2003 dozens - if not hundreds - of innocent people will have died in the capital punishment spree.

These periodic nationwide crackdowns, in response to rising crime and concerns about weakening social order, place huge pressures on the local police to solve crimes quickly, which they often do by extorting confessions through torture. In Hunan Province, newspapers recently reported that the police solved 3,000 cases in two days in April. Police in Sichuan Province reported that they had solved 6,704 cases, including 691 murders, robberies or bombings, in six days that same month.

The campaigns also pressure the courts to try the accused quickly, record the maximum possible number of convictions and show little mercy in sentencing.

Convictions are sometimes handed down within days of arrests. Appeals are processed briskly and executions are normally carried out within an hour after a sentence is confirmed. Usually, just a few months pass between an arrest and execution, occasionally only weeks.

The monthly tally of death sentences has become a kind of grim score card showing how each province is doing. But the real numbers remain a closely guarded secret. They are believed to be far higher than the confirmed tally, which has been compiled from press reports by people like Catherine Baber, a researcher at Amnesty International based in Hong Kong, or a Western diplomat in Beijing who does not want to be named.

Many, if not most, executions are not reported in the press at all. And many of the reports that are published simply say that a "group" of people were executed on a given day. A group can include anywhere from a few people to dozens. Amnesty International usually counts each group as just two.

Neither Ms. Baber nor the diplomat will venture to guess what the true number of executions might be. But both agree that this year's total will probably surpass 5,000. Some observers say the number could reach as high as 10,000.

It is also impossible to say how many of the people executed might be innocent.

Signs of Wrongful Justice

Certainly, many of them have been ordered to die for crimes, like bribery, that would earn them only brief jail terms in the West. But several wrongful convictions, like Mr. Liu's, have recently come to light, suggesting that many among the condemned are not guilty at all.

Mr. Liu, 63, married and a former associate professor at a technical institute in Wuhu, Anhui Province, was arrested during China's last great sweep in 1996, for the murder of Tao Ziyu, who was reputed to be his lover.

Her body was found floating shoeless in a shallow lotus pond not far from his campus residence. She had been strangled by someone's left hand, the police concluded.

An elderly woman reported seeing a woman arguing with a man near the pond shortly after Ms. Tao was last seen alive, visiting a friend who lived nearby. Mr. Liu, who is right handed, protested his innocence and said he could account for his whereabouts at the time.

But just before the end of the three-month period that police are allowed to hold suspects, Mr. Liu says they plunged him into brutal, round-the-clock interrogations.

His wife says he was handcuffed to a window so he had to either stand or hang from his wrists. She says he was only allowed to eat a few bites of food by lowering his head to a bowl. A document submitted to the court by his lawyers said that Mr. Liu had not been allowed to drink or close his eyes during the interrogation.

The police told him the questioning would continue for 10 days and that if he did not confess he would probably be executed, and offered him a lighter sentence if he did, according to his lawyers.

On the third day, Mr. Liu broke. In the videotaped confession, which his wife has seen, interrogators did most of the talking while a dispirited Mr. Liu answered "yes" to the scenario they presented.

Suspects in China are not allowed legal counsel, or any contact with the outside world while under interrogation. Mr. Liu's wife says her husband disavowed the confession as soon as he was allowed to see a lawyer.

"I couldn't bear it," she said he told the lawyer. "If I didn't confess, I would have died."

-------- genetics

New Research Fuels Debate Over Genetic Food Altering

New York Times
September 9, 2001
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/science/life/09CROP.html

New scientific studies on the impact of genetically engineered corn on monarch butterflies say the corn is having virtually no effect. The papers also make the provocative claim that earlier studies raising the question might have been flawed.

But the debate is far from ended.

The earlier papers reported that many monarch caterpillars died after ingesting pollen from the genetically modified corn. The new papers say that the pollen used in those experiments appeared to be mixed with other parts of the genetically modified plants and that it was those plant parts, not the pollen, that actually killed the caterpillars.

Defenders of the earlier work said it the new results were the ones that were open to question. The other plant parts, they said, might also be a part of the caterpillar diet, and the new studies, which looked only at pollen, could be ignoring important effects.

"It's part of what's naturally deposited in the field," said John Obrycki, a professor of entomology at Iowa State University and an author of one of the earlier reports.

While critics of genetically modified food have not yet seen the papers - which were released on Friday night to the press but not yet to the public - they are already pointing to this pollen issue. They also note that the studies addressed the short-term impact of the crop, which is called BT corn, but not the longer- term impacts of low levels of exposure to the pollen.

"The results suggest that the major BT corn varieties on the market are not immediately lethal to monarch butterfly caterpillars," said Rebecca Goldburg, senior scientist at Environmental Defense, an environmental group. "They don't take a very hard look at what might be called sublethal effects long term."

Even some of the authors of the new papers were hesitant to say that the question is completely settled, though concerns are certainly less than they were before. "I don't think there's a near and present danger," said May R. Berenbaum, a professor of entomology at the University of Illinois who edited the six new papers, which will be published online this week by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

BT corn contains a bacterial gene that causes it to produce a toxin that kills pests that eat the plant. In 1999, scientists at Cornell showed in a laboratory experiment that monarch butterfly caterpillars - which live on milkweed plants often found in or near cornfields - could be killed by eating milkweed leaves dusted with pollen from the engineered corn. A study last year at Iowa State showed that these toxic effects could be seen at pollen levels normally observed on the leaves in and near cornfields.

The new research, a combination of laboratory and field studies, was conducted by academic scientists with financing from the Department of Agriculture and agricultural biotechnology companies. The papers' overall conclusion is that caterpillars are not likely to be exposed to levels of pollen high enough to be harmful, except from one type of the corn that has a particularly high level of the toxin in its pollen. But that corn is being phased out. One of the papers estimated, for instance, that only 0.4 percent of the monarch population in Iowa would be expected to encounter a high enough concentration of pollen to be harmful.

Scientists found in laboratory tests that for the two most common types of BT corn, there would need to be at least 1,000 pollen grains per square centimeter on the milkweed leaves to affect the caterpillars. But the typical level found in field studies was much lower. "It's a rare event for them to come in contact with large amounts of pollen," said Mark K. Sears, a professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, a lead author on one of the papers.

Dr. Sears said the scientists could not duplicate in laboratory studies the earlier findings of harm, even with pollen piled on the leaves. He said the earlier work should be reevaluated. But he and his colleagues were using pure pollen. The older Iowa State study that showed signs of harm involved pollen containing pieces of anthers, the part of the plant that produces the pollen. These plant parts have higher levels of toxin than the pollen. The Cornell study did not specify the amount of pollen or whether it contained plant pieces.

When scientists doing the new work left these plant parts in the pollen, some caterpillars were killed. That suggests that it was these plant parts that killed the caterpillars in the earlier studies.

But Dr. Obrycki of Iowa State said that anthers tended to be shed by the plant along with the pollen and that they were found on milkweed leaves in cornfields. So the newer studies could be underestimating the effects. "They are missing part of the story by concentrating solely on pollen and emphasizing pure pollen tests to the exclusion of anther and pollen mixtures, which is more representative," he said.

-------- health

Researchers say hurdles remain

09/09/2001
By Steve Sternberg,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/healthscience/health/2001-09-10-vaccine.htm

Scientists reported Sunday that they have for the first time crafted a vaccine that strikes the AIDS virus, HIV, at the one time it is fully exposed and vulnerable.

The vaccine's most remarkable feature, one that distinguishes it from the other experimental vaccines that have been tried so far, is that it apparently can produce powerful antibodies that cripple AIDS strains from around the world. AIDS, like flu, mutates so quickly that researchers have long feared that no one vaccine could break the back of the epidemic.

Although scientists have succeeded in producing experimental vaccines that prime the immune system to clear HIV-infected cells from the blood, no one has managed to stimulate it to create antibodies that can clear the virus itself from the bloodstream, until now.

"While we're hesitant to get too excited, or overstate our findings, what we've seen so far is very, very promising," says Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of HIV and director of the University of Maryland Institute of Human Virology.

The vaccine was conceived by Anthony DeVico, 44, a biochemist at Gallo's institute. A decade ago, DeVico proposed to exploit new findings about the way HIV guards itself from recognition and eradication by the immune system.

The AIDS virus does this by masking its surface protein, called gp 120, so it is exposed to the immune system for only about half an hour, when it is attempting to invade a white blood cell. During that period, gp120 unfolds so that it can lock on to the human receptor called CD4, which serves as a gateway into the human cell.

DeVico decided to create a vaccine by permanently fusing the exposed portion of gp120 with CD4, stimulating the immune system to create potent antibodies that could disable HIV when it was most vulnerable.

DeVico and his colleagues have since injected several monkeys with the gp120-CD4 vaccine and tested their blood against HIV in a test tube. To their delight, They found that the monkeys' blood contained antibodies capable of attacking widely divergent HIV strains from Africa, North America and other parts of the world. DeVico reported the results Sunday at a meeting sponsored by the virology institute.

The next crucial test will involve injecting the monkeys with HIV, to see whether their vaccine-primed immune systems can eradicate hoards of virus circulating in their blood. Researchers also hope to ratchet up the vaccine's potency so that it will provoke the immune system to overwhelm the virus with deadly antibodies. And they must prove the vaccine is safe and effective in humans.

Wayne Koff, scientific director of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, an advocacy group based in New York, says other hurdles also remain. Although he praises the approach, he notes that it isn't easy to get HIV to expose the hidden protein, so the vaccine may be hard to produce in large enough quantities. Then researchers theymust convince government regulators that the vaccine merits approval.

Tim Fouts, who works with DeViccaDeVico at the institute, says the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases* has provided funding for the first human safety trials, scheduled to begin within three years.

Jose Esparza, head of the World Health Organization's push to develop an AIDS vaccine, called the approach "interesting" because it focuses on a region of HIV that is common to all circulating HIV strains and "freezes it" for recognition by the immune system. "It is exactly what we need in a vaccine," he says.

-------- human rights

HEAR OUR CRY:
Members of the Roma community protest outside the World Conference Against Racism.

Christian Science Monitor
September 10, 2001
MIKE HUTCHINGS/REUTERS
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0910/p7s2-wogi.html

Indigenous groups suffer at home - and at summit

Dalits and pygmies are among those upset with the outcome of the UN conference against racism. By Nicole Itano/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - Like many representatives of indigenous groups, Adolphine Muhlai is leaving the World Conference Against Racism disappointed.

The land of Ms. Muhlai's people, the pygmies of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been torn by a war - not of their own making - for the past six years. Each army accuses the pygmies, who are ethnically distinct from the rest of the Congolese population, of helping their enemy and her people are constantly displaced by the fighting.

"When you are discovered where you have been hiding with all your family, they proceed with inhumane practices like raping you in front of your family," she said, speaking at a special conference forum for the voices of victims.

The United Nations racism summit sputtered to a close Saturday evening, on an unscheduled ninth day. Exhausted delegates crafted a compromise on the two issues that had stalled negotiations for months: the question of an apology for slavery and whether Zionism would be equated with racism.

But for many conference attendees, there was little to celebrate in the belated deal. Activists like Muhlai had hoped that the conference declaration would include special protections for peoples like her own who are discriminated against in their own nations. They didn't get it.

Delegates and non-governmental organizations say many issues, most of which concern domestic situations, were excluded from the final declaration. For instance, the Dalits - low-caste Indians - failed to get language denouncing discrimination against people based on worth or descent.

The death penalty, discrimination against women, and religious intolerance were among the other issues that critics say were also ignored in Durban.

In fact, many indigenous groups say the conference declaration is a step backwards. It says they have no rights under international law, only those given to them by their national governments.

"They accept in the document that there are indigenous peoples," says Blanca Chancoso, a member of the Ecuadorean delegation to the conference. "But, at the same time, it says that the use of this term will not mean that the rights of these people will be recognized in the international declaration."

Ms. Chancoso - an official delegate - represented one of her country's largest groups of indigenous peoples: the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador. In her country, the mountain-dwelling Quichas, of which she is a member, remain mostly impoverished, their land given to multinational companies by a government in which they remain mostly under-represented.

The small number of other Latin nations - Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, and Nicaragua - who had indigenous representatives on their delegations took the lead in pushing for stronger language on indigenous peoples' rights, but Western nations mostly blocked their proposals.

Western governments, specifically Canada, feared that the declaration could have a legal effect on ongoing land disputes between indigenous peoples and governments.

Chancoso and her fellow delegates said the scarcity of indigenous representatives at the conference undermined its ability to address their concerns.

"Now, under this declaration, there are two people, the ones that are recognized in international law and others that are not, ones that are first class people and ones that are second class people," she said.

Muhlai, representing the pygmies, saw Durban as an opportunity to tell the world how they are discriminated against in law, how their ancestral lands have been stolen or destroyed by war, and how they are denied access to education and medical care.

"We hope that this World Conference Against Racism will bring something positive to our life as indigenous people," Muhlai said. "I think that ... we still have the right to respect and to life as everybody."

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, however, defended the conference outcome. Dr. Robinson added that indigenous peoples did get some concessions in the language of the text. It calls for greater resources for indigenous peoples and recognizes, for the first time, that there are many indigenous peoples rather than one people spread around the world.

"One of the goals of this conference was really to have a focus on indigenous peoples," she said. "Yes, the indigenous peoples want more, of course they do, but I still think this was a valuable conference for them."

----

Bid to censure Israel at summit foiled

September 9, 2001
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010909-31473726.htm

DURBAN, South Africa -- The U.N. conference against racism ended yesterday with participants offering Africans a near-apology for slavery and colonialism in a document that recommends new protections for victims of discrimination.

Attempts by Arab states to censure Israel dominated and divided the proceedings until the end, forcing the conference into a day of overtime.

Even when deals on the Middle East were struck yesterday morning, last-minute attempts to add thinly veiled references to Israel prompted some hardball parliamentary maneuvering as interpreters were walking out the door.

With no agreement possible, delegates voted 51-38, with 75 abstentions, to set aside the contested language.

The president of the conference, South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, declared the documents adopted before any of the delegates had a chance to speak.

No one walked out, and the conference moved to a close without Arab-backed language that denigrated Israel as a "racist state" and accused it of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity."

The issue was so contentious that the U.S. and Israeli governments withdrew their delegations Monday and boycotted the remainder of the event.

In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman said that U.S. officials could not comment on the final document because they had not seen it, but indicated there were no second thoughts about the decision to walk away.

"We appreciate the effort of other parties in the conference to remove the offensive language," said spokeswoman Susan Pittman. "We're confident that our withdrawal was the correct measure and hope the decision had some effect on a better but still flawed result."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who was in San Francisco, said that it is "unfortunate that it took this process to get results."

Israel's Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the country "expresses satisfaction," but that the final conference document was "not the best."

"The world rejected the attempts of the radical Arab nations to take over the conference and damage its intentions by turning it into a stage for attacking Israel," it said.

The conference produced two documents, a declaration and a program of action.

However, disputes over the Mideast and slave reparations pushed most other items off the agenda, leaving many participants bitter as they prepared to go home.

The plight of the Dalits -- the untouchable Hindu castes of India, Pakistan and Nepal -- was technically not included in the program of action, in part because participants were bogged down with slavery and the Middle East.

"Far too much time has been spent on bitter, divisive issues that have done nothing to advance the cause against racism," said the head of the Australian delegation.

He said the discussions on the Middle East were "the very antithesis of the conference."

Nonetheless, U.N. officials and many observers described the event -- formally known as the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances -- as a success.

"The issues have been addressed, not answered," said Mary Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. "The true measure of our work will be whether it makes a real difference in the lives of the victims of racism and discrimination."

She said her Geneva-based office had already expanded its anti-discrimination unit, and was looking to the U.N. General Assembly for additional funds to beef up its work with migrants, indigenous people and other oppressed groups.

The Durban action plan calls for the high commissioner's office to file annual reports on national and international compliance with the goals set out in the conference's plan of action.

More than 160 nations took part in the weeklong event and nearly a year's worth of negotiations leading up to it.

Just about every country had issues on the table, including those related to mistreated minorities, abusive or exclusionary laws, and embarrassing histories.

One of the most emotional and persistent stumbling blocks was how to deal with the legacy of colonialism and the slave trade.

African nations and their many supporters in the Arab and Latin worlds had demanded an apology and compensation, saying that the slave trade was rooted in economics.

Discussion of slavery largely excluded any mention of the slave trade that continues today in Africa. And little if any mention was made that black Africans also profited from the 18th-century trans-Atlantic slave trade by selling tribal enemies into bondage.

The Europeans and Americans feared that sought-after language, with phrases such as "crimes against humanity," would leave them open to unending lawsuits.

In the end, the African nations agreed to accept the Europeans' offer of "profound regret" for both slavery and colonization.

The conference document referred to both as "appalling tragedies."

Alioune Tine, who led a coalition of more than 100 African nongovernmental organizations, said he was overjoyed with the outcome of the conference.

"It is the first time these issues about the past have been discussed in an international forum," he said.

But when Kenyan Ambassador Amina Mohammed stood up and declared, "An apology and reparations are now in order," the Europeans shot back.

Belgium, speaking on behalf of the 15-nation European Union and more than a dozen other Western democracies, immediately pointed out that conference documents are nonbinding, and cannot be used to impose penalties.

--------

China Slams U.S., Israel for UN Race Meet Pullout

September 9, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-race-china.html

BEIJING (Reuters) - Official Chinese media criticized the United States and Israel Sunday for walking out of a United Nations racism conference, saying they had helped to undermine it.Israel ``undermined the seriousness and thoroughness of the conference,'' a signed commentary carried on China's official Xinhua news agency said.

The United States and Israel walked out of the conference on Monday in protest at anti-Israeli language, confirming the views of skeptics who said the entire U.N. event had been hijacked by the issue of escalating violence in the Middle East.

The two countries' withdrawal ``met with strong condemnation in the forum of international opinion,'' the commentary said.

The commentary quoted a delegate to the conference who belonged to a non-governmental Palestinian organization, as saying the United States is ``a country having extremely deep prejudice.''

The conference, which ended Saturday after nine days of tough talks by more than 160 countries, arrived at a package of measures including an acknowledgement of the ``massive human sufferings'' of the slave trade and measures to protect minorities and indigenous peoples.

-------- police / prisoners

How, and How Not, to Fix the F.B.I.

New York Times
September 9, 2001
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/weekinreview/09RISE.html

WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday, in the midst of the worst crisis in a generation at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III was sworn in as its director. Mr. Mueller took the oath of office in a private ceremony in the attorney general's office at the Justice Department. A few miles away, across the Potomac River, hidden behind a warren of security gates and thick cement blockades designed to prevent a terrorist car bombing, stands the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency - where there lies a lesson in just how slow and painful the F.B.I.'s path to recovery may be.

Mr. Mueller was installed with a mandate to reform the bureau. But if the agency is any guide, a simple change in leadership is merely an uncertain start. In fact, the C.I.A.'s lesson may well be that in federal agencies in crisis, creating fundamental change can be nasty, brutish - and prolonged. The leaders who make the first attempts at reform may not survive the political and bureaucratic heat they inevitably provoke. And the end result can be, not a restoration of the strength and reliability of a crucial institution, but a permanent erosion of that institution's power and influence.

The F.B.I. has been floundering thanks to - among other debacles - the unmasking of a Russian mole within the bureau's own ranks and the bureau's admission, days before the scheduled execution of Timothy J. McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing, that it had discovered thousands of pages of investigative reports that should have been turned over to his lawyers.

Increasing numbers of Americans think of F.B.I. agents as arrogant and fumbling flatfoots, far from the vaunted G-men of yesteryear. A CBS News poll in May found that only 24 percent of those surveyed had a favorable view of the bureau, down from 43 percent just one year earlier. (The poll, conducted by telephone, collected views of 1,063 Americans and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.)

Seven years ago, it was the C.I.A. that was fumbling so badly, and so publicly. The 1994 arrest of one of its officers, Aldrich H. Ames, as a longtime Soviet mole, along with an ensuing series of painful and costly mistakes, cemented the public impression of the agency as a federal institution in crisis.

The 1990's were marked by a painful stretch of a little over four years during which seven different people were either nominated or served as C.I.A. director or acting director. That constant turnover reflected the fact that the crisis atmosphere made the job of director of central intelligence unappealing, and nearly untenable. Without steady leadership or direction, the agency fell into a post-cold war identity crisis, affecting both morale and the agency's stature within the government. Middle managers left in droves, and the agency lost both turf and power to the F.B.I. and the Pentagon. The bureau moved in to dominate counterintelligence operations, while much of the agency's role in spy-satellite photographic analysis was shifted to the Defense Department.

The agency's history also shows how leaders in besieged government organizations must try to balance the need to satisfy Congress's demands for quick cleanups and new reforms with the need to stabilize plunging morale inside the organization and to convince employees that they can be part of the solution. Several former C.I.A. officials say that John M. Deutch's tenure as director in 1995 and 1996 was tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful in large part because he antagonized the career staff.

"If you want to reform an organization, the leader has to make sure that the people believe in him," observed Thomas Twetten, the former deputy director of operations at the agency.

There are some positive examples in the agency's history for Mr. Mueller to consider, too. Robert Gates, who served as its director during the first Bush administration, said the new director's best role model may come from a slightly earlier period of crisis at the agency: the aftermath of the Iran-contra scandal.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan asked his F.B.I. director, William Webster, to take over the C.I.A. Thanks to his reputation for personal integrity, Mr. Webster, a former federal judge, walked into the agency with the confidence of Congress. That gave him greater freedom to try to clean up the agency at his own pace, while keeping the career managers involved in the process.

"I think he gave the Hill and the media the confidence that he was trying to do the right thing," Mr. Gates said. "He had a skill in identifying the changes that needed to be made, but he also incorporated the professionals in the organization in making those changes." So far, Mr. Mueller's strong reputation as a federal prosecutor also seems to have impressed Congress; despite the turmoil at the bureau, he was confirmed by a unanimous vote in the Senate.

TO be sure, the F.B.I. hasn't always seemed particularly interested in learning from the C.I.A. - which may have contributed to some of its recent problems. Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, observed that the case of Robert P. Hanssen, the F.B.I. counterintelligence expert arrested in February for spying for Moscow, revealed that the bureau had not adopted the tough security measures imposed at the agency after the Ames case.

"I think what has happened at the F.B.I.," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "is that they took the attitude that, `This can't happen here.' "

-------- spying

KGB's ghost still haunts Russia

September 9, 2001
By Jim Heintz
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010909-6389966.htm

MOSCOW - The statue of feared Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, hauled away from its prominent pedestal amid protests in one of the most dramatic scenes of the Soviet collapse, has been quietly resurrected, half-hidden by trees in an out-of-the-way park.

The secret services themselves have also been repositioned in the past decade. The monolithic KGB was broken up into several agencies, and the main successor, the FSB, has made some concessions to openness such as putting up a Web site and opening a small museum.

But just as the baleful Dzerzhinsky statue isn't really gone, the KGB's descendants still exert substantial power in post-Soviet Russia, and critics see ominous indications that old oppressive practices are reviving under President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB operative and one-time FSB director.

"In some ways, the special services now have more influence than they did in the Soviet Union," said Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former KGB officer who has emerged as a harsh critic of the former intelligence agency's successors.

Unlike in East Germany and Romania, where angry citizens occupied their countries' secret police offices after communism fell, the crowds that saw Dzerzhinsky's statue come down outside KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square didn't invade the bleak and massive building where countless victims had been interrogated, imprisoned and executed.

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin later ordered the KGB's dismantlement, hoping to show that decades of secret police penetration into every facet of life had ended.

But the successors, especially the FSB, the Russian acronym for "Federal Security Service," remained powerful and even gained new powers.

This year, FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev declared that the agency would restore the policy of initiating investigations based on anonymous tips - a practice banned in 1988 by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader.

The policy revived grim memories of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's era, when anonymous complaints were a favored way of getting rid of an adversary.

Also this year, the FSB took formal charge of the war in Chechnya. Journalists' access to the war-wrecked republic has become further limited.

The FSB's control of the Chechen war "means they can put their own spin on it, they can prevent journalists from covering things, they can employ a lot more control than the Russian military could," said Amy Knight of Canada's Carleton University, author of "Spies Without Cloaks," a book about the post-Soviet secret services.

The FSB also has been given the authority to spy through the Internet by linking its offices with Internet service providers, a move that worries not only human rights activists but also Western businessmen considering entering the Russian market.

"The FSB gets to take a stab at trying to gather Western technologies...and that's a concern," said Mike Assante, vice president of intelligence at the U.S.-based digital security company Vigilinx. The company rates such espionage as the most serious threat to doing electronic business in Russia.

At the same time, the FSB is adopting increasingly tough measures on suspected spies, employing questionable evidence and laws that potentially incriminate everyone.

An arms control researcher, Igor Sutyagin, has been on trial for months for espionage despite his claim that he obtained information only from open sources. One of his colleagues has said some of the open foreign sources he used provided information that would be considered secret in Russia.

Similarly, Edmond Pope, who last year became the first American convicted of spying in Russia in 40 years, denied he illegally obtained plans for a top-secret Russian navy torpedo, saying the information he was planning to purchase had been sold abroad and was even taught at universities.

An American Fulbright scholar, John Tobin, was convicted of drug charges this year even though doubts about the evidence led the prosecutor to say she was ashamed to be involved in the case.

Although Mr. Tobin wasn't charged with espionage, the case took on a Cold War tinge when a local FSB spokesman said the U.S. scholar was suspected of being a spy in training.

Theories vary on why the Kremlin is granting the agency strengthened powers even as Russia tries to project itself as becoming democratic and safe for investors.

Some argue that Mr. Putin and other former KGB figures in the government - including Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, a close Putin ally - were indelibly stamped by the service.

"This is the way [Mr. Putin] was trained. It would be very difficult for him to change, for his colleagues to change and say, 'Gee, if we do this, we're going to be trampling on rights,'" Ms. Knight said. "His first gut reaction is always that kind of strong-arm reaction."

Mr. Preobrazhensky, the former KGB agent, said the secret services' resurgence reflects a sense of inferiority that has plagued Russia over the past 10 years. If the FSB sees spies under the bed, he said, that helps the country feel important.

"It's very difficult to catch real spies, and there aren't many real spies here these days," he said. "But the FSB can't say there are no spies here."

The FSB, meanwhile, tries to look friendlier to the public, but old habits die hard. Mr. Patrushev, the director, declined requests for an interview. Even the FSB's museum is unmarked, secreted in a few rooms over a grocery store.


-------- activists

Dine' (Navajo) grandmothers go to Court
Hearing on Tuesday, September 18, 2001 in Hopi tribal court, Keams Canyon, AZ

September 9, 2001
520-283-5379 and 520-283-6054
From: sdn57@earthlink.net, inea1111@webtv.net

BIG MOUNTAIN, AZ. On Tuesday, September 18, 2001, 9:00 AM, five (5) Dine' (Navajo) Indigenous women go to Hopi tribal court in Keams Canyon, AZ. These women, including 2 great grandmothers and 1 grandmother are charged with criminal trespassing. They were arrested and jailed by Hopi tribal police for hosting and participating in a Sundance, religious ceremony held July 8-15, 2001 in Big Mountain, AZ. These women are being persecuted because of their opposition to relocation and their exercise of freedom of religion and association. They have been living on their land for many generations.

On August 17, 2001, Hopi Range Management personnel with security provided by the Hopi tribal police, US government's Bureau of Indian Affairs rangers and county sheriffs bulldozed our sacred Sundance site and cut up our tree of life with a chain saw. To us this is the same as bulldozing Mecca and the Vatican. This is the way we are oppressed, bribed and manipulated by the US government. Our livestock, our religion, and our land base is our survival now and for many more generations to come.

Over 12,000 of our people have been forcibly relocated from our land and those of us who remain have been oppressed by inhumane laws. We are not allowed to repair our homes - we receive citations for using mud to patch holes on our roofs to keep the rain off our children. We have no civil rights - we cannot vote, we are subject to arbitrary arrest, and we cannot go to any court to appeal actions by the government. Our water wells have been dismantled and capped off. We are blocked from grazing lands for our livestock and our livestock are arbitrarily confiscated.

Possessing firewood to heat our homes is a violation of the law and we have to obtain permits from the government to perform our religious ceremonies.

We are looking at this from an Indian Dine' perspective. We are just living on our land and continue our ways of life. It is important we continue our ways of life, what we call our belief. We are the Caretakers of Black Mesa. We are not the ones harming the Hopi Nation because we do not go out and intimidate the Hopi people in their villages as they claim in the local press. We have friends in these villages. We help them by hauling wood and by providing mutton (sheep meat) for their ceremonies and weddings. The humble, really true Hopi don't come and tell us to relocate. We are not criminals. Aren't you supposed to commit a crime before being charged as a criminal? We are just protecting our beliefs over the Sundance, a religious ceremony conducted in our homeland for the past decade to strengthen our resistance. We are just exercising our belief. Our concerns were the subject of the first investigation by the United Nations of the United States in its 50 year history. The focus, religious intolerance. We have the support of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) from around the world, the European Parliament and the Belgian Senate. We want our freedom back as a First Nation.

These women are my sisters and my aunts. This is why I am urging media to attend their hearing on Tuesday, September 18, 2001 in Hopi tribal court, Keams Canyon, AZ.

For more information please contact John Benally in Big Mountain, P.O. Box 733, Hotevilla, AZ 86030, message phone: 520-283-5379 and 520-283-6054, e-mail: sdn57@earthlink.net


------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!