------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Nuclear Booty: More Smugglers Use Asia Route
Tehran Times On Possible Causes Of Persian Gulf War Syndrome
Caller claims US attacks by Japan's Red Army
Japan's Red Army Claims Responsibility
Japanese Red Army (JRA)
Sen. Biden Attacks Missile Defense Plans
Biden Gives a Tough Critique of Missile Shield
U.S.-Russia Nuclear Programs Questioned
Russian warplanes harass U.S. craft over Pacific
Russian Aide Emphasizes Opposition to ABM Plan
US SHIES AWAY FROM UN TREATIES ON TERRORISM
High alert evacuations
Make nuke industry pay for its mistakes
Where I Stand
Yucca Mountain doubts abound

MILITARY
U.N. Security Council Ends Yugoslavia Arms Embargo
EU: Macedonia Needs New NATO Force
Paramilitary cell declared terrorist
U.S. facing Colombian dilemma
Anti-Drug Chief Stirs Debate
Coalition watches war on drugs for rights violations
Iraq Says Civilians Killed
Iraq claims to shoot down U.S. spy plane
Israeli Tanks Encircle A City in West Bank
Bush 'tilt' to Israel provokes Arab world
President Bush's Address to the Nation
Family of Slain Chilean Sues Kissinger, Helms
Pentagon to be cut 15 percent
Biden warns of defense-budget battles

OTHER
Europe invites biotech debate
Broader stem-cell research sought
Scientists Urge Bigger Supply of Stem Cells
New World Trade Talks Sought
FROM SATELLITES TO PSYCHICS
Planes crash into World Trade Center
World Trade Center Towers Collapse
Plane Crashes Into Pentagon

ACTIVISTS
In Wake of Attacks, Public Discussions Planned
America's Terrorist Roots
Atrocities may be designed to provoke America
TRAGIC ATTACK
A Media Day In Infamy
Statement from the American Anti Discrimination Committee
Statement from the War Resisters League
D.C. Declared State of Emergency
Statement on Attacks in USA
Markets lose £67bn in one day
Taliban deny bin Laden's involvement in US attacks
Palestinian terrorist group denies carrying out attacks
MORNING OF HORROR
What today's papers left out
Who Done It?



-------- NUCLEAR

Nuclear Booty: More Smugglers Use Asia Route

New York Times
September 11, 2001
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/international/asia/11NUKE.html

ISTANBUL, Sept. 10 - The police in Batumi, a Black Sea port in Georgia, heard a rumor in July that someone wanted to sell several pounds of high-grade uranium for $100,000. The most tantalizing aspect of the tip was that one of the sellers was reportedly a Georgia Army officer.

All sorts of scoundrels have tried nuclear smuggling in recent years. Many are amateurs; most of what they try to peddle proves useless for making bombs.

But the possible involvement of an army officer gave the Batumi case a measure of deadly seriousness, beyond its status as another example of how the smuggling of nuclear material has shifted to Central Asia.

On the morning of July 20, the local antiterrorist squad burst into a small hotel room near the port, just outside the Turkish border. They arrested four men, including an army captain named Shota Geladze.

On the floor of the room, in a glass jar wrapped in plastic, sat nearly four pounds of enriched uranium 235, according to Revaz Chantladze, one of the police officers. The quantity was less than is usually required for a small atomic bomb.

Subsequent analysis yielded differing opinions. A Western diplomat said the uranium probably had no value for bomb-making, but Georgian officials called it the third seizure in two years of uranium with potential weapons use.

The appearance of a relatively large quantity of uranium on the black market in Georgia underscored American concerns that such trafficking has shifted from Europe to the Caucasus, Central Asia and Turkey.

Washington has responded by sending millions of dollars' worth of detection equipment to several countries in the region. The Americans are also providing training for border guards to learn to spot illegal shipments of nuclear material, and they helped to improve security at nuclear plants and airports.

The region is the gateway from Russia, which has huge stocks of nuclear material, to countries that are in the market for weapons material. Two of them, Iran and Iraq, are trying to develop nuclear weapons; a third, Pakistan, is expanding its nuclear arsenal.

Few smuggling incidents involve material that could be used to make bombs, and intelligence officials say they know of no successful attempt at smuggling weapons-grade material. But they concede that the scope of smuggling remains uncertain.

The rising number of incidents and the strong belief that only a fraction of shipments are intercepted have raised the level of anxiety here. The worries are heightened by the slackness of border controls and the economic instability that has left customs officers vulnerable to bribes.

"The nuclear material tends to come from Russia, but once it gets outside, the region is pretty wide open," Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington, said during a trip to the region to brief customs officials on suspected buyers.

The International Atomic Energy Agency provided new figures on Friday showing that the number of confirmed cases of nuclear smuggling had fallen in the rest of the world but had risen in Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Only four of the 104 cases from 1993 to 1995 occurred in this region, the agency reported, but from 1996 to last month, 16 of the 72 cases worldwide occurred in the region. The data covered only three weapons-related elements - uranium, plutonium and thorium - and only incidents confirmed by the international agency.

Intelligence authorities said smugglers are seeking new routes out of Russia and find their paths easier across the southern flank. "There has, since the mid-1990's, been a shift of smuggling to the Middle East and Asia," Alex Schmid, head of antiterrorism for the United Nations, told a conference recently.

In the last eight years, there have been 104 attempts to smuggle nuclear material into Turkey, according to an internal report by the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority. Most cases, like those elsewhere, involved tiny amounts of radioactive material with no weapons uses. But officials at the authority said a handful were potentially more serious.

In September 1998, eight people were arrested for trying to smuggle nuclear material from Russia through Turkey to an unknown destination. The police seized about 10 pounds of uranium 235 and a tenth of an ounce of a plutonium mixture.

Yasar Ozal, director of Turkey's nuclear research center, said the plutonium and uranium were not weapons-grade material, but appeared to be fuel pellets. Nonetheless, he said, the appearance of plutonium on the black market was alarming.

In another case, a Turk was arrested at the Bulgarian border carrying a small amount of enriched uranium 235 in May 1999. Authorities said that the quality was high and that the material might have been a sample that he was trying to use to drum up a larger sale.

But Ismail Caliskan, director of Turkey's police unit fighting smuggling and organized crime, said the danger from nuclear smuggling had been exaggerated. Almost every incident, he said, involved amateur criminals trying to sell radioactive material with no weapons value. The only buyers, he said, are undercover policemen.

Turkey illustrates the difficulty of monitoring borders. The country is slightly larger than Texas and has 120 border posts, including crossings to Iraq and Syria in the south, Bulgaria in the northwest and Georgia, Armenia and Iran in the east.

A senior customs official said only two border posts have systems to detect radioactive material, both donated by the United States. He asked that the locations not be identified, but said neither is at Habur, a busy crossing between Turkey and Iraq.

Locations without detection devices rely on visual inspections, something that can be difficult. A kilo of plutonium (2.2 pounds) is so dense it can be concealed in a container the size of a soft-drink can.

Some American detection equipment went to Uzbekistan, which has hundreds of miles of border in remote deserts and mountainous terrain. Border guards at three locations received van-sized detection units and 30 hand-held detectors far more powerful than Geiger counters.

Early last month, guards at a remote Uzbek post on the border with Turkmenistan stopped a sealed truck en route to Iran when one of the American-supplied devices went off, according to American officials.

The officials said they did not know what type of material the truck carried. They said the truck had come from Kazakhstan and passed undetected through the checkpoint at Gisht Kuprik on the Kazak border before being stopped in Alat.

Another American device, on the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, about 20 miles from Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, detected radioactive material in March 2000 in a truckload of scrap metal. Uzbek authorities said the truck was coming from Kazakhstan, bound for Pakistan with 10 briefcase-sized containers of radioactive material. The Uzbeks sent it back to Kazakhstan for analysis of the material and a criminal investigation.

A Western diplomat said that when the Uzbeks stopped the vehicle, a second truck loaded with scrap turned and went back to Kazakhstan.

What followed remains a bit of a mystery and an illustration of how regional rivalries can make it tougher to stop trafficking: The Uzbeks complained that the radioactive material disappeared in Kazakhstan and that no arrests were made.

The Kazakhstan government has a good record on trying to curb nuclear-related smuggling. It worked closely with the United States to protect its Soviet-era nuclear facilities, and 1,300 pounds of weapons-grade uranium was removed from the country in 1994 by American officials.

But Western officials said they, too, were left in the dark about the outcome of the inquiry into the material on the scrap-metal truck.

In Kazakhstan's first official explanation, Altynbek Sarsenbayev, assistant to the president for national security, denied that there were any briefcase-size containers. He said the problem arose because the scrap metal was contaminated with low- level radioactivity.


-------- depleted uranium

Tehran Times On Possible Causes Of Persian Gulf War Syndrome

Tehran Times
9-11-1
http://www.tehrantimes.com/News.asp?Da=9/11/01&Cat=2&Num=0#006

TEHRAN - A psychiatrist and a nuclear physicist in Britain have explained some of the reasons for the epidemic of Persian Gulf War Syndrome among soldiers who took part in the conflict.

In an interview, Dr. Simon Wesley said that many Persian Gulf war veterans have been affected by this disease. Some of the symptoms he described were muscle weakness, chest pain, fatigue, and persistent headaches.

He said that no one has been able to identify the exact cause of the disease, but exposure to depleted uranium or chemical and biological agents could be to blame. He said that the illness could also be psychosomatic.

Dr. Shahrestani, a nuclear physicist, said that traces of depleted uranium have been detected in the blood of affected soldiers, but that this is not necessarily the only cause of the disease. He also said that the cause of the disease could be exposure to chemical and biological agents of the Iraqi regime which were released into the atmosphere after the U.S. and its allies bombed the storage sites.

He also made it clear that if these theories are proven, then the defense ministries of the United States and other countries who took part in the war would be asked to pay tens of billions of dollars in compensation to the victims. He added that this is one of the reasons why doctors have been reluctant to speak openly about this issue.

-------- japan

Caller claims US attacks by Japan's Red Army to avenge Hiroshima

2001-09-11
http://www.iii.co.uk/uknews/?articleid=4191542&action=article

AMMAN (AFX) - An anonymous caller claimed responsibility for the spate of attacks in the US on behalf of Japan's Red Army militant group to "avenge the dead of Hiroshima".

"An anonymous caller speaking Arabic like a foreigner claimed responsibility for the attacks in a call to our newspaper," the editor of the weekly Al-Wahdeh newspaper, Fakhri Kawar, told Agence France-Presse.

"He said the attacks were carried out to avenge the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," he said.

Japan marked the 56th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima by the United States during World War II on August 6. More than 200,000 people were killed in that attack, while Nagasaki was likewise bombed on August 9, 1945.

Kawar, a former deputy, said the caller gave no more details and hung up quickly. "We take this claim seriously," he said.

About 20 Japanese companies have offices in New York's World Trade Center twin towers which were hit by two planes in the presumed attacks, Japan Broadcasting Corp. reported.

----

Japan's Red Army Claims Responsibility for US Attacks: Al Jazeerah

By Middle East News Online
September 11, 2001
http://www.middleeastwire.com/newswire/stories/20010911_3_meno.shtml

Amman (MENO) - In an unconfirmed report, sources from the Amman offices of Al Jazeerah satellite news channel indicated that a call came in from a caller who was "speaking Arabic with an accent" claimed that the Japanese Red Army is claiming responsibility for today's attacks against U.S. targets in New York and Washington D.C. Middle East News Online has been unable to verify these claims.

The communist group said that the attacks came in retaliation for US atomic bombs that killed thousands of Japanese in the World War II in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Japanese Red Army is an international militant group formed around 1970 after breaking away from Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. The JRA was led by Fusako Shigenobu until her arrest in Japan in November 2000. The JRA's historical goal has been to overthrow the Japanese Government and monarchy and to help foment world revolution.

Earlier today, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine initially took responsibility, but later an official from the organization denied any involvement. Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat condemned the attacks.

---

Japanese Red Army (JRA)
Anti-Imperialist International Brigade (AIIB)

by John Pike,
Federation of American Scientists
Saturday, August 08, 1998 7:35:41 AM
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/jra.htm

An international terrorist group formed around 1970 after breaking away from Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. Led by Fusako Shigenobu, believed to be in hiding outside Japan. Stated goals are to overthrow Japanese Government and monarchy and to help foment world revolution. Organization unclear but may control or at least have ties to Anti-Imperialist International Brigade (AIIB). Details released following arrest in November 1987 of leader Osamu Maruoka indicate that JRA may have been organizing cells in Asian cities, such as Manila and Singapore. Has had close and longstanding relations with Palestinian terrorist groups--based and operating outside Japan--since its inception.

Activities

During the 1970s, JRA carried out a series of attacks around the world, including the massacre in 1972 at Lod Airport in Israel, two Japanese airliner hijackings, and an attempted takeover of the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. In April 1988, JRA operative Yu Kikumura was arrested with explosives on the New Jersey Turnpike, apparently planning an attack to coincide with the bombing of a USO club in Naples, a suspected JRA operation that killed five, including a US servicewoman. Kikumura was convicted of these charges and is serving a lengthy prison sentence in the United States. In March 1995, Ekita Yukiko, a longtime JRA activist, was arrested in Romania and subsequently deported to Japan.

The Japanese Red Army has stopped operating in Japan, though some of its members are in Lebanese camps. Others have joined revolutionary movements in Latin America, including in Peru and Colombia.

Strength
About seven hardcore members; undetermined number of sympathizers.

Location/Area of Operation
Formerly based in Syrian-controlled areas of Lebanon; current location of members and cells unclear.

External Aid
Unknown.

-------- missile defense

Sen. Biden Attacks Missile Defense Plans as Costly, Risky

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 11, 2001; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6872-2001Sep10?language=printer

In a spirited attack on President Bush's plans for national missile defense, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said yesterday the administration was risking a new arms race and draining money from other domestic and military programs for a porous system that would never add to U.S. security.

"Missile defense has to be weighed carefully against all other spending and all other military priorities," Biden said in a speech at the National Press Club. "And in truth, our real security needs are much more earthbound and far less costly than national missile defense."

Biden's speech was the latest effort by Democrats in Congress to undermine Bush's missile defense plans, as well as his image on foreign policy matters among American voters.

Moreover, congressional Democrats have been trying to use their legislative clout to scale back Bush's missile defense proposal, especially now that the budget surplus is decreasing. Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee succeeded Friday in cutting $1.3 billion from the administration's $8.3 billion request for missile defense for the fiscal year that begins next month, apportioning the money to other military needs.

"Particularly in a tough budget situation, the decision [to favor missile defense] is not free," a senior Democratic adviser said. "You have to decide: Do you want a pay raise for the troops or missile defense, close bases or missile defense?"

Democrats on the panel also fenced off missile defense funds for tests in the next fiscal year that would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. To spend the funds, such tests would need to be approved by the Senate and House. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday he would recommend that Bush veto the defense spending bill should the language remain as it makes its way through Congress.

By focusing on the possibility of the Bush administration withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, the vote of the committee's 13 Democrats united missile defense supporters, including Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), with missile defense skeptics. All 12 Republicans on the panel opposed the measures.

Biden said yesterday that the United States should be a country "that doesn't abandon arms control treaties with the excuse that they are relics of the Cold War," paraphrasing a Bush speech that criticized the ABM Treaty. "I think many of those uttering that phrase are in fact themselves the relics of the Cold War," Biden said.

"Are we willing to end four decades of arms control agreements to go it alone, a kind of bully nation . . . and the hell with our treaties, our commitments in the world?" Biden said. "I don't believe our national interests can be furthered, let alone achieved, in splendid indifference to the rest of the world's views of our policies."

Biden also sharply criticized administration officials who suggested that China might be encouraged to resume nuclear testing so it could safely expand its small nuclear arsenal. "It seems to me it's absolute lunacy for us to invite China to expand its arsenal and resume nuclear testing," he said.

He said an expanded Chinese nuclear arsenal would prompt new nuclear weapons in rival India, then in India's rival Pakistan, and possibly in Taiwan and Japan, both concerned about China's expanding power in Asia. Biden added that U.S. plans for missile defense could also jeopardize Chinese cooperation with efforts to extend the freeze on North Korea's nuclear and missile programs through diplomacy.

"Let's not now raise the starting gun on a new arms race," Biden said. "It is sure, I promise you, to make my children and my grandchildren . . . feel less secure than we feel today."

He said Bush had shown "almost theological allegiance to missile defense," despite the possibility that systems under consideration would not be reliable. Biden noted that Rumsfeld said in May that if the system worked 70 percent of the time, that would be "plenty" to justify deployment. "Folks, 30 percent failure for any national defense system could be called plenty of things, but plenty successful is not one of them," Biden said.

Biden took issue with Bush's assertion in a May 1 speech that "Cold War deterrence is no longer enough." Biden said, "Name me a time in the last 500 years when the leader of a nation state has said, 'I know I face virtual annihilation if I take the following action, but I'm going ahead and I'm going to do it anyway.' "

Biden said U.S. deterrence during the Persian Gulf War a decade ago prevented Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction when George H.W. Bush was president. "When George the first said to him, 'If you do, we will take you out,' what did he do with 500,000 forces marching on Baghdad?" Biden said. "He had those Scud missiles everybody talks about as a justification for building this system. He had chemical weapons. He had biological weapons. Why did he not use them if deterrence does not work?"

--------

Biden Gives a Tough Critique of Missile Shield

September 11, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/international/11DEMS.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 - Declaring a profound difference with President Bush, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., said today that plans for missile defense sacrifice national security for the sake of a "theological" belief - and that the effort to make such a system work would cost astronomical amounts of money.

Mr. Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gave a toughly worded speech intended as an opening salvo in a campaign to slow dramatically the plans to test - and perhaps put in place - a limited national missile defense system. Mr. Biden, Democrat of Delaware, said the administration would create greater insecurity than at any time since the 1960's if it went ahead.

The system would undo arms control efforts of the last 40 years and set the United States against its allies - and it would not offer the protection that its proponents promise, he said.

Mr. Biden has fastened onto missile defense as the centerpiece of his critique of Bush foreign policy. In part, that is because the system is almost the sole focus of the administration's foreign policy, but it is also because plans for the system run against the senator's strong support for arms control.

"Are we willing to end four decades of arms control agreements, and go it alone, a kind of bully nation, sometimes a little wrongheaded, but ready to make unilateral decisions in what we perceive to be our self- interest?" Mr. Biden said in his speech at the National Press Club.

Plunging forward with the system would mean saying "the hell with our treaties, our commitments, our word," he said.

In his role as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, a job he assumed in May after Democrats won control of the Senate, Mr. Biden is now in a much stronger position to try to curb the proposed missile defense system. In an interview after his speech, the senator said he hoped to build an alliance in Congress to thwart the administration's plans.

The alliance would hinge on budget hawks who are skeptical of the system's costs and foreign policy experts who worry about what Mr. Biden called the "pell-mell rush" toward the system.

In his assault on national missile defense, Mr. Biden used several major arguments. First, he said, the administration had no idea whether the science and technology was available to build the system that it envisaged. Second, in the face of a difficult budget fight and a deteriorating economy, the country could not afford the cost.

Mr. Biden said he was heartened by the $135 million cut in the budget for missile defense by the House Armed Services Committee last month.

He said the cheapest system proposed by the Bush administration - similar to one suggested by President Bill Clinton - would cost $60 billion over 20 years, but could rise to as much as $120 billion.

A more complicated system that would combat decoys or munitions that carry biological weapons - known as layered defense - would cost between one-quarter trillion and half a trillion dollars, Mr. Biden said.

Even for that amount, he contended, the system might work "only nine out of ten times - assuming the administration knew how to build it."

Mr. Biden has many times stated his opposition to the unilateral withdrawal by the United States from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which forbids building a defensive shield.

The senator has said he favors more research on missile defenses and would be in favor of negotiating with the Russians for an amendment to the ABM treaty.

The administration had also said that it would prefer to reach an accord with the Russians on altering the treaty, but it insists that if it failed to come to an agreement it would unilaterally pull out of the pact.

Mr. Biden said the administration would be wiser to open a dialogue with North Korea that would bring about a "verifiable agreement" to end development, positioning and export of long range missiles by that government.

And he said the administration would be better off upgrading the Air Force for "real needs." "We could replace aging F-16's, A-10's and F- 14's with the Joint Strike Fighter for $233 billion," he said.

-------- russia

U.S.-Russia Nuclear Programs Questioned

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 11, 2001; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6764-2001Sep10?language=printer

Nearly three dozen U.S.-Russian programs designed to prevent the spread of Russian nuclear weapons and materials have foundered because of disorganization and a loss of trust between the two countries, according to an official who was instrumental in creating them.

The programs, which have cost the United States more than $5 billion to date, have "often lacked coordination not only with Russia but also within" the U.S. government, said Siegfried S. Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "Nothing really terrible has happened," Hecker said, but a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's nuclear complex "is largely intact, vastly oversized and overstaffed."

With the election last year of President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB official, and the resurgence of Moscow's security services, access to once-secret nuclear facilities has tightened, according to Hecker. "Today, the window of opportunity appears to be closing, both because Russia does not need our money as desperately and because the security services have begun to close up the complex," he said in a lengthy article published recently in The Nonproliferation Review, a journal of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Hecker, currently a consultant at Los Alamos, established early contact with Russian nuclear scientists after the collapse of the Soviet Union and was among the architects of the U.S. effort to avert the spread of Russian nuclear weapons. His comments come as the National Security Council is nearing completion of a review of the U.S.-Russian nonproliferation programs ordered by President Bush in March.

The administration already has signaled doubts about the effectiveness of the effort by cutting the budget proposed by the Clinton administration by $100 million. The programs, which will cost $872 million this year, have also been criticized by some lawmakers on Capitol Hill and by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The nonproliferation effort began in the early 1990s to keep Russian nuclear materials from spreading, and to stop nuclear scientists from selling their knowledge to other countries. That was quickly complemented by the Nunn-Lugar program, which partially funded the destruction of Russian nuclear bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines, as required by arms control treaties.

Overall, the effort gave rise to about 30 U.S.-Russian programs, managed by the Defense, Energy and State departments, aimed at tightening security at Russian nuclear facilities and providing money as an incentive to keep Russia's weapons scientists and engineers from moving abroad.

Speaking Friday at a meeting sponsored by the Monterey Institute of International Studies and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Hecker said that although he remains a supporter of the programs' nonproliferation goals, a major overhaul is warranted. "What is needed is a coherent, comprehensive, integrated strategy," he said.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union built nearly 20,000 nuclear warheads. Today, although the Russian strategic force is declining, many thousands of warheads remain deployed at dozens of locations and more than 60 storage sites. In addition, 1,000 metric tons of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium and between 125 and 200 metric tons of plutonium are spread throughout the country at various facilities. Russia maintains a large network of production facilities for uranium enrichment and nuclear reactors that continues to produce weapons-grade plutonium, as well as a network of three dozen nuclear weapons labs and dozens of specialized defense institutes.

Hecker warned that the primary joint program for protection, control and accounting for nuclear materials and warheads at many of these facilities "has all but come to a standstill." He blamed not only increased Russian security, but also U.S. bureaucratic demands that have "lost sight that these are Russian nuclear materials in the Russian nuclear complex."

He said a multinational effort to provide Russian scientists and engineers with civilian job opportunities has been a success, but an Energy Department initiative that teamed Russian institutes with Western businesses has floundered, in part because of Russian security concerns.

The Energy Department's nuclear cities program, aimed at helping Russian scientists in regions once closed to the West, has also run into trouble. Newly aggressive Russian guards have made it difficult for American businessmen to gain access to scientists with whom they are attempting to arrange deals. In addition, funding limitations on the U.S. side -- including a sharp cut by the Bush administration in the Clinton-proposed $30 million budget for next year -- have made it less attractive to the Russian government.

Two programs to reduce nuclear materials have had mixed success. One to turn highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium into fuel has been successful, and there is competition within the U.S. to get it expanded. The other, to burn plutonium or immobilize it so it cannot be used for weapons, has never gotten started, in part because the Russian plan for burning would cost $2 billion or more. In addition, the Russians continue to produce plutonium from reactors they use for energy generation and see plutonium as part of their broader plan to encourage nuclear power.

--------

Russian warplanes harass U.S. craft over Pacific

September 11, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010911-581488.htm

Russian warplanes threatened patrolling U.S. Navy P-3 aircraft over the Pacific Ocean last week as the American planes monitored a military exercise in the region, The Washington Times has learned.

At one point during the aerial harassment, a MiG-31 interceptor pilot flew his jet within 50 feet of a P-3 maritime patrol and reconnaissance plane.

The incident was similar to a Chinese aerial intercept that resulted in a collision earlier this year.

One alarming sign of the Russian intercept was a radio message sent by one MiG-31 pilot to his base stating his fire-control radar had "locked on" to the U.S. surveillance plane, U.S. intelligence officials said. A radar "lock" is a pilot's final step before firing a guided missile.

"It was a threatening action," said one official.

A senior defense official said the P-3 flights were legal and that the intercepts occurred in international airspace. This official said the P-3 pilots reported afterward that the Russian warplanes conducted the intercepts in a "professional" manner, despite the closeness of a pass by one of the MiG-31s.

In all, five MiG-31 Foxhounds took part in intercepting two P-3s on Sept. 4 and 5, officials said.

"One of them did get close, but the [P-3] pilot said he didn't feel endangered," the senior defense official said.

The Russian pilot "knew he was getting too close" and eventually broke off the intercept, the senior official said.

According to the officials, the Russian pilot performed an intercept maneuver called a "thump" -- the MiG-31 flew close to P-3 then gunned its engine. "The crew got bounced around by jet wash, but that was about it," said an administration official.

"This was not like Wang Wei," the defense official said, referring to a Chinese F-8 pilot the Pentagon has called a "hot dog." The Chinese pilot was killed on April 1 when his fighter collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3E electronic surveillance plane over the South China Sea. The EP-3E is an electronic spying version of the anti-submarine P-3 plane.

The latest incident occurred over the northern Pacific Ocean as the P-3 aircraft monitored a Russian submarine exercise near the Kamchatka Peninsula -- home to the major submarine base at Petropavlovsk.

The P-3 normally flies with a crew of 11 military service members.

The P-3s were monitoring an exercise that involved a Russian Oscar II attack submarine and a Delta III ballistic missile submarine, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Russian intercepts of U.S. surveillance aircraft come as U.S. and Chinese military officials are set to meet in Guam later this week.

The meeting will be the first session of a U.S.-Chinese military maritime commission to be held since the F-8 collision with the EP-3E. The two sides are set to discuss ways of avoiding future incidents.

After the April 1 collision with the Chinese interceptor, the U.S. EP-3E was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan island, in the South China Sea, and its 24 crew members were held captive for 11 days before being released.

Disclosure of the U.S.-Russian incident comes at a delicate time for the Bush administration, which is seeking to coax Moscow into agreeing to U.S. missile defense deployments.

Talks on the issues are set to be held in the next several days.

President Bush spoke by telephone yesterday to Russian President Vladimir Putin. An administration official said the aerial encounter in the north Pacific was not discussed.

The administration has not issued a formal diplomatic protest to the Russians, an administration official said, unlike the response to Chinese aerial intercepts. Diplomatic notes were sent to Beijing to protest dangerous Chinese aerial encounters in the weeks leading up to the April 1 incident.

A spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command, which is responsible for the P-3 flights, declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Russian strategic air forces began a major exercise in the northern Pacific yesterday. The maneuvers will include practice missile attacks, Russia's official Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Strategic Tu-160 Blackjack and Tu-95 Bear bombers and Tu-22 and IL-78 tanker aircraft reportedly will take part. The exercises are set to continue until Friday.

In response to the war games, the Air Force announced on Sunday that it is sending additional fighter aircraft "as necessary" to Alaska and northern Canada to monitor the exercises.

"Norad is the eyes and ears of North America, and it is our mission to ensure that our air sovereignty is maintained," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Ken Pennie, deputy commander in chief of Norad.

"Although it is highly unlikely that Russian aircraft would purposely violate Canadian or American airspace, our mission of vigilance must be sustained," the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) statement said.

The statement said the additional U.S. jets would remain at two bases in Alaska and one in Canada until the end of the Russian exercises.

The command took similar action in December as part of an operation called "Northern Denial" after Russian long-range bombers were moved to northern bases in a similar deployment.

-------- treaties

Russian Aide Emphasizes Opposition to ABM Plan

New York Times
September 11, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/international/europe/11RUSS.html

MOSCOW, Sept. 10 - Ronald Reagan liked to say, "Trust, but verify," in a world that bristled - and still does - with nuclear weapons.

But the Russian defense minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, suggested today that Al Capone said it better: "It is much better to persuade someone with a pistol and a pleasant smile than without a pistol."

With this flourish of Russian grit, Mr. Ivanov expressed Moscow's resolve to oppose America's missile defense plans on a day when President Bush was on the telephone to President Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Bush was seeking to buttress their personal relationship as the two men prepare for an autumn of summitry and high drama over whether the United States will withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty.

Kremlin officials were characteristically vague about the conversation, saying only that the two leaders had expressed "their satisfaction with the development" of relations. But their conversation took place against a backdrop of growing frustration in Moscow with the Bush administration's unwillingness to describe in any detail what its missile defense plans entail and the timetable for carrying them out.

Though Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin have declared that the United States and Russia are no longer enemies, military leaders in both countries have said they are taking steps that reflect a decline in trust.

On Sunday, the United States and Canada announced that they would send fighter jets and surveillance aircraft to monitor routine Russian military exercises in the Arctic region and the North Pacific.

"This is an issue where we're not expecting any threat from the Russians," said Capt. Ed Thomas, a spokesman for the American Air Defense Command. "But in our mission to ensure the sovereignty of the U.S. and Canadian airspace, complacency is something that we can't afford."

In Moscow, the commander of the Russian Air Force, Gen. Anatoly Kornukov, said one way Russia might respond to a American withdrawal from the ABM treaty would be to build up its force of strategic bombers. "The long-range strategic aviation of Russia," he said, is one means of nuclear weapons delivery "that missile defense fails to detect." Other experts have pointed out that other delivery methods that could not be detected include low-flying cruise missiles, shipping containers and even suitcases.

Douglas J. Feith, the American under secretary of defense for policy, arrived in Moscow today for another round of consultations on Mr. Bush's expressed goal of rewriting cold war strategic doctrines.

But the Russian defense minister signaled Moscow's rejection of any proposal that would undermine the treaty and its basic strategic bargain struck 29 years ago - that deterrence against nuclear attack is best achieved by each side's maintaining an adequate number of offensive nuclear weapons.

During a visit to the Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Mr. Ivanov said it would be possible to amend the ABM treaty, but not in a manner that would allow the United States to develop missile defenses to protect the entire country and thereby undermine the basic concept of the treaty.

It is "theoretically" possible to amend the accord, he said, "but what does theoretically mean - it means it must be clearly understood what kind of missile defense the United States is planning and what kind of technical possibilities are envisaged in the air, on the sea, on the ground and in space."

Mr. Ivanov was responding in part to comments made on Sunday in Washington by Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who reiterated that the president is determined to "move beyond the ABM treaty."

Mr. Bush's proposals to go forward with testing for a multi-layered national system of radar installations, space-based sensors and interceptor missiles has drawn significant opposition in Congress over questions of basic effectiveness and cost.

Over the weekend, a senior member of Russia's Parliament ridiculed the consultations that have been under way between Russia and the United States.

"I don't think the talks have failed," Dmitri Rogozin, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, told the magazine Vek. "It's simply that as yet there is nothing to discuss. At each session of the talks, the Americans tell us about rogue states and how intelligence reports indicate that by a certain year these states will have three- or four-stage missiles and be capable of posing a threat. We explain how absurd their apprehensions are; they make a show of not understanding, and go on with what they're doing."

--------
US SHIES AWAY FROM UN TREATIES ON TERRORISM

by Thalif Deen
Sep 11, 2001 (IPS)
http://www.ipsdailyjournal.org/daily/091201.htm

UNITED NATIONS, Less than 24 hours before the United States came under a wave of terrorist attacks, the United Nations was rejoicing over the fact that 83 of its 189 member states had ratified some 12 existing U.N. conventions against international terrorism. But what was "particularly gratifying", said Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his annual report to the General Assembly, was that 16 of those countries had ratified the landmark International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings which entered into force in May this year. The U.S., which was not on the list of 83 ratifiers, is one of the few countries that refuses to ratify international conventions, including those against terrorism. "Sign yes, ratify no," says a U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. If a country refuses to ratify a treaty, that treaty has no legal validity in that country, he added.

During the last four years, the United Nations has established two new conventions: the 1999 International Convention For the Suppression of Terrorist Financing and the 1997 U.N. Convention on the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings. Successive U.S. administrations have been thwarted by right-wing politicians in Congress who argue that the Washington should not be party to international conventions because they either override domestic law or are perceived as being not in the national interest. As a result, the United States has refused to ratify not only conventions against terrorism but also several other treaties, including a convention against landmines and those relating to climate change, law of the sea, and the creation of an international criminal court.

Nevertheless, Annan Tuesday expressed shock and grief following the day's terror attacks against New York's World Trade Centre and the U.S. defence department's Pentagon headquarters. Annan expressed his ''profound condolences to (the attacks' victims and their families) and to the people and government of the United States.'' ''There can be no doubt that these attacks are deliberate acts of terrorism, carefully planned and coordinated - and as such I condemn them utterly. Terrorism must be fought resolutely wherever it appears,'' Annan said.

In his report to the General Assembly Monday, Annan said he was looking forward to two new conventions currently under discussion: an International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism and an omnibus Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. Both conventions are scheduled for discussion by the Adhoc Committee on Terrorism during the current session of the General Assembly, which runs through mid-December. Meanwhile, the United States also has continued to express strong reservations over a Third World proposal for a major international conference to combat terrorism. Addressing the Ad Hoc Committee last February, U.S. delegate Robert Rosenstock said such a conference would have no practical benefits. "The issues suggested as possible subjects at such a conference had historically confounded a practical solution," he said.

Rosenstock told the Committee that a conference on terrorism would distract from pragmatic measures that could and should be taken - such as steps to facilitate and encourage universal adherence to the existing 12 terrorism conventions adopted by the United Nations. The U.S. delegate also pointed out that an effective vehicle to discuss these issues would be the 189-member General Assembly, which annually adopts more than half a dozen U.N. resolutions relating to terorrism. Rosenstock questioned whether an international conference on terrorism would be "a useful stimulus or a costly distraction."

The proposed conference, backed by the 119-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of Third World nations, is expected to tackle several sensitive subjects, including one of the most politically- divisive issues at the United Nations: how to distinguish a terrorist from a freedom fighter. The proposal for an international conference on terrorism has been kicked around at the United Nations for nearly a decade. But it has failed to get off the ground because it has raised questions such as: Should military attacks by armed forces of any state be deemed acts of terrorism when civilians are killed? To what extent were NATO bombings of the former Yugoslavia acts of terrorism and violations of the national sovereignty of a U.N. member state? Is not the assassination of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza acts of state terrorism?

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

High alert evacuations

Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Philadelphia Daily News
http://dailynews.philly.com/content/daily_news/2001/09/11/local/ALERT11C.htm?template=aprint.htm

Authorities went on alert from coast to coast Tuesday, halting all air traffic, evacuating high-profile buildings and tightening security at strategic facilities following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

... Military bases across the country went on alert. Extra security went into place at Department of Energy's nuclear weapons and research complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., home to the Army's main germ warfare defense laboratory....

-------- us nuc waste

Make nuke industry pay for its mistakes

Sept. 11, 2001
Las Vegas Sun
http://www.lasvegassun.com/opinion/

There is no reason why federal taxpayers should continue to subsidize the nuclear power industry through the 44-year-old Price-Anderson Act, which expires in August and is under consideration by Congress for renewal.

Under the act, owners of the nation's 106 nuclear reactors are liable only for a limited amount of the cleanup costs in case of a catastrophe. The owner of the reactor that had the accident would be liable for a maximum $200 million, and the operators of the other 105 facilities would each contribute a maximum $88 million. The total industry liability would be about $9.4 billion.

For comparison, consider that the April 1986 Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union cost $200 billion to clean up. Had that mishap occurred in this country, taxpayers under Price-Anderson would have had to pay about $191 billion.

Nevada taxpayers should not be forced to pay for nuclear plant accidents in other states. That burden should rest squarely on the companies that own the reactors.

--------

Where I Stand

September 11, 2001 at 9:34:58 PDT
Brian Greenspun
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/commentary/2001/sep/11/512337150.html

Mr. Abraham
AN OPEN LETTER to Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy.

Like you, sir, I was not present at the recent debacle you created to serve as a public hearing for those wishing to comment on the Department of Energy's plan to shove high-level nuclear waste down Nevada's throat. Actually, I was there at the place -- the barbed-wire laden, security guard heavy, top-secret looking, scary-to-the-public facility -- that you chose to hold the hearing. I chose, however, to leave around 10 o'clock when it was obvious to me that the number I was given to speak would not be called until well after 1 a.m. In truth, my name was called at 1:20 a.m. I left knowing that I could submit a written response. This, by the way, is that response that I trust you will insert into the record and give the same weight to that the law requires you give to the other comments made at the hearing.

Unlike you, however, there were hundreds of Nevadans who did show up to tell your representatives what they really thought about the DOE's plan to send what we all know will be unlimited tons of high-level radioactive waste to Las Vegas on its way to Yucca Mountain, which is just a few miles from the Fremont Street Experience. And what representatives they were. I don't remember their names but I am quite certain it doesn't matter. Those three people were sent to Las Vegas to grin and bear the hearing, make no comment, show no emotion and to maintain at all times a "what the heck am I doing here" look upon their faces. They succeeded on all fronts. Had you been there, Mr. Secretary, you would have had to come to the same conclusion that any discussion held that night was exactly like talking to a wall.

And that is what I would like to talk about today.

Nevadans have long known that trying to talk sense to the DOE was very much akin to speaking to walls. We have spoken of our concerns for health, safety and economic security, and we have heard nothing in return to help assuage our fears. We have talked about the laws that apply to siting the nuclear dump and the number of ways the DOE has avoided them and just plain ignored them, and we get nothing in return to help explain the subterfuge. We have talked for years about earthquakes, volcanoes and other natural disasters that could and will occur during the lifetime of Yucca Mountain, and we hear nothing in return from the DOE to explain why we are needlessly concerned.

In short, Mr. Abraham, we are talking to a wall that you have helped build and maintain which, by your actions last week, has reached new heights of disdain for the citizens of Nevada.

Since I have spent a good deal of my life butting up against walls, I am well suited to this particular task. Unlike others in the media who are willing to throw up their arms and admit defeat, I still believe that in a democracy it is undemocratic to impose a federal will upon an unwilling state. I still believe that reason and good sense can overcome the bureaucratic mantra that says once we have spent the money we have to go forward no matter how wrong we learn we have been. The opposite is true in America. The beauty of a democracy is the ability to change course when the facts and the will demand such action. This is one of those times.

Just three weeks ago the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper not unfriendly to your administration, ran a story under the headline, "Scientists Tout Method for Reprocessing Nuclear Waste." What followed was a lengthy story about the probability of transmutation and recycling of radioactive waste. Not the possibility, mind you, the probability. That means that given the time and the financial resources necessary, it is likely that an answer to the nuclear waste issue can be found.

The latest form of recycling high-level waste is known as pyroprocessing. It extracts plutonium from nuclear waste that gets around most objections that prior administrations had regarding nuclear security and it does so by allowing the end product to be reused in the production of energy, which has a moneymaking component attached to it. In short, this could be the answer that scientists have been searching for decades and, but for a few dollars and some time, could find that solution.

So, in the face of mounting evidence that science in the 21st century can and will solve the waste problem in a most efficient and geologically responsible fashion, what does the DOE do? Nothing. Unless you count stonewalling by stonefaced, uncaring bureaucrats determined to sit through the heat of the "public" hearings without listening to a word that was uttered, as doing something.

Why is it, Mr. Abraham, that you seem intent on pushing through a flawed political plan that was devised decades ago and that was based on science derived from caveman days -- burying the mess -- when you have at your disposal the wherewithal to chase a few scientific theories that hold the promise of a solution that works for everyone and not against anyone?

Is it about money? Could it be that you believe that once a few billion dollars have been spent chasing down a rabbit hole that it is incumbent upon you and President George W. Bush to keep throwing tax dollars down that same hole even when you know it is the wrong way to go? I hope that isn't your position because your administration has already told us that we have billions and trillions of dollars to spend doing what is right for America. Certainly, an acknowledgment that we have made a mistake that cost a few billion dollars but which will be rectified in the name of good public policy and doing what is the American thing to do will inure to the President's benefit and show him to be a man of good conscience and good sense.

And that's where you can help him be as good as he can be. You can take the heat for reversing what has been a bad plan from the get-go. You can recommend to President Bush that he spend the billions necessary to promote a good, sufficient scientific answer to this problem and abandon this dump theory long before President Bush needs to deal with it. You can make your own mark by ordering safe and secure dry-cask storage at the sites where the waste currently sits, while committing the funds necessary to challenge science to pursue what it already knows will be the right answer.

By doing so, you will avoid making George Bush an albatross around the necks of Nevada's political leadership; you will avoid a states rights confrontation that we haven't seen since Civil War days; you will avoid putting upon the heads and hearts of Nevada's parents the guilt of staying in a place they will know will kill their children or grandchildren; you will avoid a street brawl that will most surely happen in the U.S. Congress when Nevada's senior Sen. Harry Reid will pull out every stop to protect the state he loves; and you can earn a place in the history books for helping to solve appropriately a problem that no one else has yet been willing to tackle.

There is, shall we say, a whole lot riding on the way you carry out your constitutional responsibilities to this nation. If you think you want to do it the right way, Mr. Secretary, you can start by showing Nevadans that you give a damn about what they think. How about a real public hearing? One that has not only questions but answers that people can understand. One that benefits the public and doesn't manipulate them through clever lobbying agents. Just say the word and get on a plane.

We'll find a hall big enough and public enough to handle the democracy that will result.

---

Yucca Mountain doubts abound
Nuclear waste plan still faces scientific, budget uncertainties

Tuesday, September 11, 2001
By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-11-Tue-2001/news/16971492.html

While scientific uncertainties with the Yucca Mountain Project are being aired this week before a presidential panel, a top official with the Department of Energy program said Monday that budget uncertainties might jeopardize the project's pace and decisions on burying nuclear waste in Nevada.

Lake Barrett, acting director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said the huge difference between the House mark of $443 million for the program and the Senate's $275 million could put the Yucca Mountain Project into a tailspin.

The Yucca Mountain Project consumes 85 percent of the national civilian nuclear waste program's budget.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected to decide within a few months whether to recommend Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for construction of a repository to entomb the nation's most lethal nuclear waste. Most of the 77,000 tons of waste is in the form of spent nuclear fuel pellets currently stored at commercial power reactor sites.

"Should the actual appropriation reflect the Senate mark, the site recommendation would be in jeopardy, because technical work addressing the board's and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's concerns would be eliminated," Barrett told the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.

The panel, presidential appointees who report to Congress and the energy secretary, meets through Wednesday at the Crowne Plaza.

"The schedule for other key milestones, including submittal of a license application and the receipt of waste, would also slip indefinitely while a new program is structured at a different funding level," Barrett said.

He cited the Bush administration's statement to the Senate Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, which appropriates nuclear waste program money.

Providing only $275 million for the program "would require an immediate suspension of scientific work and result in a loss of key scientific personnel," the statement said.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a staunch opponent of the Yucca Mountain Project, chairs the appropriations subcommittee.

As for uncertainty involving the scientific study of the Yucca Mountain site, William Boyle, an Energy Department geologist and engineer, said peak doses of neptunium -- one of the longest-lived elements of the radioactive waste -- wouldn't occur until 275,000 years to 1 million years after waste is put in the mountain.

Boyle said those doses would occur whether the repository is operated at a so-called "low temperature" or a "high temperature" design.

Exposures to the public outside the 11-mile buffer zone would not reach 10 millirem -- or 5 millirem less than the federal radiation safety standard -- until after 400,000 years, well beyond the 10,000-year regulatory period.

The scientists' assessment of the impact of volcanic activity on a repository will be discussed by the panel and project scientists Wednesday.

Monday, two consultants for Nevada's Nuclear Project's Agency raised concerns about federal scientists' assessments of how metal alloys hold up in the potentially corrosive setting, 1,000 feet beneath the ridge.

Preliminary results presented by one consultant, April Pulvirenti of Catholic University of America, show that cracks and pitting develop in the waste-canister material, Alloy-22.

Another state consultant, Roger Staehle, from the University of Minnesota, said he had "serious problems" with the realm of operating temperatures Yucca Mountain Project scientists used in their corrosion studies -- from 180 degrees to 300 Fahrenheit -- and the chemistry involved.

Staehle said scientists should consider that the repository would operate at a a minimum 300 degrees. He said the hotter temperatures should be used in the calculations in case the repository is not ventilated.

The last scheduled public hearings on the government's plans for Yucca Mountain will be Wednesday night in Amargosa Valley and Thursday night in Pahrump.

Nevada's senators had received no word whether Abraham would attend Yucca Mountain hearings in Nevada this week, and they were assuming he would not be there. Reid wrote to President Bush last week asking that Abraham be compelled to attend.

Donrey Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault contributed to this report.


-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

U.N. Security Council Ends Yugoslavia Arms Embargo

By Colum Lynch
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7037-2001Sep10?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 10 -- The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously today to lift a three-year-old arms embargo on Yugoslavia, ending the last in a series of military and economic sanctions imposed against the Belgrade government over the past decade.

The action marks the U.N.'s formal recognition that Yugoslavia has embraced democratic rule and cooperated by surrendering former president Slobodan Milosevic in June to a U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

France and Russia, a close ally of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, led the campaign to end the arms embargo reimposed in 1998 to protest Serbia's military campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The United States endorsed the effort this morning by submitting the resolution lifting the embargo.

"The decision by the Security Council reveals the good relations, the constructive cooperation and the trust which exists now between the democratic authorities in Belgrade and the international community," said French ambassador Jean-David Levitte, this month's Security Council president.

The Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia in September 1991 in an effort to restrain fighting between Serbian and Croatian forces. It added comprehensive economic sanctions in May 1992 to protest Serb aggression during the war in Bosnia.

-------- balkans

EU: Macedonia Needs New NATO Force

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 10, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2293-2001Sep10?language=printer

PARIS, Sept. 9 -- European Union foreign ministers agreed today on the need for a new international military force to provide security in Macedonia after a NATO weapons-collection mission ends later this month.

But the ministers remained undecided on the exact makeup of the force, other than to say it should be led by NATO because the European Union itself is not ready to lead it.

The current NATO mission in Macedonia, called Operation Essential Harvest, entered its third week today, with ethnic Albanian insurgents arriving in trucks and cars to turn in their weapons at a depot in the mountain village of Brodec, near the border with Kosovo, an ethnic Albanian majority province of Serbia in Yugoslavia.

The rebels have agreed to turn in 3,300 weapons and end a six-month insurgency in exchange for amendments to the Macedonian constitution guaranteeing more rights for the country's ethnic Albanian minority. NATO officials said that when they finish collecting weapons at Brodec, the mission should have reached the halfway point.

But there have been fears, voiced more loudly in recent days, that Macedonia's fragile peace accord could unravel and the Balkan country could be plunged into civil war if NATO ends its operation as scheduled on Sept. 26.

Today, the European ministers meeting near Brussels acknowledged the pending "security vacuum," but there was no consensus on the nature of the new force, which must be approved by the Macedonian government. While the ministers broadly agreed to a German proposal for a new NATO force that would include non-NATO countries such as Russia, Finland, Sweden and Ukraine, there was division over whether the force should have a mandate from the U.N. Security Council.

"We all insisted on the need to avoid a security vacuum when NATO withdraws," Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel told reporters. "The option considered most realistic would be to deploy a NATO-plus force based on the troops already on the ground."

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had been pushing for a new NATO mission that would operate under a U.N. mandate after Operation Essential Harvest was completed. Finland, for one, said such a U.N. mandate was essential before it would participate. But others, such as Britain, said there was no time to obtain a U.N. vote; some EU members recalled how China used its Security Council seat to veto a U.N. peacekeeping force for Macedonia in 1999.

Having a U.N. mandate is seen as critical to ensuring the agreement of Macedonia's government, which includes a number of hard-liners opposed to concessions to the ethnic Albanians. Macedonia's president, Boris Trajkovski, told the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, that he would prefer to see any post-NATO force operating under a U.N. flag and mandate, diplomats said.

With European countries taking the lead in the current Macedonia operation -- Britain is providing about half the 4,500 troops and a Danish general is the commander -- some diplomats and military analysts were looking at Macedonia as the first test of the EU's efforts to form an independent defense force outside NATO.

The ministers rejected a proposal by Francois Leotard, the EU envoy to Macedonia, for a 1,500-member EU force, saying Europe was not ready to launch its own military operation.

-------- colombia

Paramilitary cell declared terrorist

September 11, 2001
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010911-698133.htm

The State Department has ruled that the anti-communist paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia is a terrorist organization, just one day before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is to visit that country.

The group, known by the Spanish acronym AUC, has long been affiliated with the military and blamed for thousands of killings and other human rights abuses during a 20-year rivalry with narcotics traffickers and leftist guerrillas.

"They claim to stand against kidnapping and extortion, and then engage in those very practices," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said yesterday.

Adding the AUC to the department's list of foreign terrorist organizations will cut the group off from its assets in the United States and block access to purchasing weapons here.

It may also jeopardize the more than $1 billion in U.S. military backing for Colombian President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia, aimed at defeating the guerrilla insurgencies, restoring peace and fighting drug production.

Mr. Powell arrives today in Colombia from Lima, Peru, where he met with hemisphere foreign ministers to adopt an agreement to strengthen regional democracies.

The special session of the Organization of American States, which Mr. Powell is attending on his first South American trip, is due today to approve the Inter-American Democratic Charter giving the OAS the power to suspend member states deemed undemocratic.

In Bogota, Mr. Powell will focus on Colombia's struggle against drugs and against leftist guerrillas, with the new listing of the AUC introducing a wild card into the talks.

"The AUC has carried out numerous acts of terrorism, including the massacre of hundreds of civilians, the forced displacement of entire villages, and the kidnapping of political figures to force recognition of AUC demands," Mr. Powell said in a statement released yesterday.

"Last year, AUC members reportedly committed at least 75 massacres designed to terrorize and intimidate local populations" and kidnapped hundreds of civilians including seven Colombian congressional representatives, the U.S. statement said.

U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson warned last month in the Colombian news magazine Semana that the AUC might be designated a terrorist group.

The AUC joined 30 other designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations on the State Department's list because it had become part of the drug-producing and smuggling chain supplying cocaine, heroin and marijuana to U.S. dealers and addicts, Mr. Reeker said.

The AUC's attacks on Colombian officials also threaten that South American nation's democracy and therefore threaten U.S. interests, Mr. Reeker said.

AUC leader Carlos Castano rejected that charge in an interview with The Washington Times.

"We have never harmed private or state interests of the international community in Colombia," he said.

The AUC has collaborated with the Colombian military in fighting guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, and the National Liberation Army, known as ELN -- both already designated as terrorist groups by the State Department.

But the AUC went far beyond the army in killing suspected guerrilla sympathizers.

U.S. Congress members critical of U.S. military aid to Colombia have said army units that collaborated with the AUC share some responsibility for its human rights abuses.

--------

U.S. facing Colombian dilemma

September 11, 2001
By Steve Salisbury
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010911-81846364.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is set to make his first official visit today and tomorrow to Colombia, where he will find this country of about 40 million people embroiled in a guerrilla war now financed by illegal drugs.

The 37-year-old conflict, which has killed up to 40,000 people over the past decade, threatens to destabilize its Latin American neighbors and raises serious national security issues for the United States.

The turmoil has already claimed several American lives in Colombia and flooded the United States with tons of cocaine and heroin and tens of thousands of Colombian illegal immigrants fleeing violence and economic crisis.

Among the dilemmas confronting the Bush administration and Congress are:

• A major anti-drug campaign in which a small percentage of drugs is intercepted and new exports routes spring up as quickly as old ones are shut down.

• A growing involvement in the drug trade by Marxist guerrilla movements seeking to overthrow the existing order.

• Large paramilitary groups united under the banner of the outlawed United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) fighting the rebels with past encouragement and support from the armed forces.

Bush backs Plan Colombia

In a visit here late last month, Marc Grossman, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, confirmed the Bush administration's support for Plan Colombia -- the anti-guerrilla program of Colombian President Andres Pastrana that was also endorsed by the Clinton administration. It aims to fight drug trafficking and to strengthen democracy by a combination of social, economic, law-enforcement, military and crop-substitution measures.

Of the $7.5 billion budgeted for Plan Colombia -- nearly half of it funded by the Bogota government -- about 27 percent is allocated to the military and police, according to Mr. Pastrana's office.

Last year, Washington earmarked $1.3 billion, largely for military helicopters, technical intelligence, and training of special anti-narcotics brigades. President Bush has proposed to broaden this aid by almost $400 million as part of an $880 million Andean Regional Initiative.

A step forward, two back

The anti-drug campaign has produced a stream of arrests, seizures and extraditions. However, it is often one step forward, two steps back, complain some law enforcement officials.

"It is like trying to push an elephant uphill," said Carlos Perdomo, former information chief of the Colombian national police.

Colombian police figures show that in 1995, 62,770 acres believed to be planted in coca was sprayed with herbicide by the Virginia-based DynCorp., a State Department contractor. From January 2001 to early this month, that figure climbed to 170,725 acres sprayed. Yet, over the same period, police statistics show the extent of identified coca fields rose from 125,777 to 403,496 acres.

And not all crops sprayed are necessarily killed. DynCorp.'s U.S. pilots say the herbicide glysophate has to remain on the plant for at least three hours in dry conditions, which cannot be guaranteed in Colombia's rainy countryside.

Long-term project

Colombian police estimate that 403,496 acres of coca plants can produce 947,076 kilos (more than 2 million pounds) of refined cocaine. But from January until early September this year, only 13,932 kilos of cocaine was impounded and destroyed, down from 46,698 kilos in 1998.

Why the drop? Because clever drug smugglers often stay one step ahead of the law, says an anti-narcotics official.

Critics say these figures show Plan Colombia is not working. But Mr. Grossman counters, "It is easy to forget that U.S. assistance to Plan Colombia is less than a year old."

"One has to be patient," said Luis Alberto Moreno, Colombia's ambassador to the United States. "This is going to take at least five years."

Crop shift has problems

A key element of the strategy is crop substitution. With unemployment hovering around 18 percent, underemployment 29 percent, and 24 million Colombians in poverty, according to official figures, tens of thousands of families have migrated to the wilderness to work in coca plantations, mostly in southern and eastern Colombia, far from government control.

"More than 34,000 farm families have already signed manual-eradication pacts," as part of a five-year $222.5 million USAID package to help peasants make a living from legal crops, said Mr. Grossman. That is about half the 70,000 families estimated to be farming coca by Santiago Medina, president of the Bogota-based think tank ANIF.

Farmers concede that some among them accept crop-substitution funds but continue to grow drug crops. Said Jairo Martinez, a small coca farmer in southern Caqueta province: "The problem of legal crops like corn and plantains is that it is not profitable to take them to market because there are no roads, and they weigh a lot. It is easy to carry a kilo of coca base [later refined into cocaine], and coca produces up to six harvests a year."

Coca cultivation pays

Mr. Martinez said a kilo of coca base fetches about $900, of which he nets a few hundred dollars after expenses. Coca pickers sometimes earn double Colombia's monthly minimum wage of $129.

While roads, bridges, and industrial palm and rubber farms envisioned in Plan Colombia take years to develop, Mr. Medina said coca farmers should be encouraged "to return to regions where the mainstream economy is."

"Coffee and clothing manufacturing are among the few labor-intensive industries that can quickly absorb the unskilled labor now employed in drugs," said businessman Miguel Posada.

Ironically, U.S. and European trade policies have contributed to a collapse in the price of coffee, Colombia's second largest legal industry after petroleum, and clothing exports have to compete against U.S. trade preferences for Central America.

"The U.S. can really help by giving us trade preferences," said Mr. Posada.

Bolivia's example cited

Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, cites Bolivia, once a leading coca producer, as a success story for Colombia to emulate.

"When Bolivia combined enforcement activity with alternative development, there suddenly came to be a very dramatic reduction in coca cultivated," Mr. Beers said.

But that country didn't have powerful guerrilla armies involved in the drug trade. In Colombia, income from drug taxation "is main source of supply for continued unrest," said Mr. Grossman.

Marxist guerrillas and the anti-Marxist AUC admit taxing drug crops. But captured receipts, documents, and testimonies indicate that the largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), also has a hand in the production and export of cocaine.

Snags for U.S. policy

With the destruction in the 1990s of Colombia's big Medellin and Cali cocaine cartels, the FARC has been filling the vacuum, says a Colombian intelligence officer. This complicates matters for U.S. policy, which calls for helping Colombia to fight the drug war while avoiding direct involvement in its guerrilla conflict.

"The Gringos' talk about fighting narcotics is a pretext for counterinsurgency," says the FARC's top military strategist, known as "Mono Jojoy." He says the FARC would like to be friends with the Americans. But the FARC killing of three U.S. activists who were staying with indigenous Colombian people -- said to have been ordered by Mono Jojoy's brother, who thought they were spies -- the kidnapping of American workers for ransom, and drug ties make some FARC commanders targets of U.S. law enforcement investigations.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Pastrana reject introducing U.S. combat troops. But U.S. communications intercepts, and aerial and satellite reconnaissance have, in fact, been used against guerrillas in drug areas, say Colombian military sources.

Army, rebels both grow

Colombia's 162,000-strong armed forces have improved substantially, with help from hundreds of U.S. military trainers. By next year, the Defense Ministry says Colombia's helicopter fleet is expected to reach about 170 -- up from from 76 in 1998.

Meanwhile, illegal revenues helped the FARC grow from fewer than 10,000 guerrillas in 1998 to 16,492 troops at the start of this year. The second-largest Marxist rebel group -- the National Liberation Army (ELN) -- has maintained its strength at around 4,430. The FARC's growth coincided with Mr. Pastrana's giving the group a territorial safe haven to woo it to the conference table.

According to public-opinion polls, most Colombians believe this was a political mistake, and it has become a major issue for next May's presidential elections. Some U.S. officials privately question allowing the FARC to keep its privileged sanctuary, but Mr. Pastrana argues that without it, "the conflict intensifies."

A violent society

According to Colombian statistics, up to 15 percent of Colombia's 24,316 killings last year were war-related. In 2000, the army reported 286 soldiers, 674 FARC rebels, and 204 ELN guerrillas and 67 AUC militiamen killed. Guerrilla attacks killed many of about 400 police officers slain that year, and the conflict claimed up to 2,000 civilians.

From Jan. 1 to Sept. 4, 2001, the army reported 218 army fatalities as well as 474 FARC, 162 ELN and 73 AUC dead.

On his visit here, Mr. Powell will find it hard to ignore the AUC.

"We want to tell the U.S. government and American people that our interest is the defense of the Colombians whom the state doesn't protect from the subversive aggression," said Calos Castano, 36, whose father and other relatives were murdered by guerrillas.

Paramilitaries seek role

Although state-armed legal civilian defense forces were an important factor in thwarting insurgencies in Central America and Peru, Colombia's legislature voted to dismantle militias in this country because of human-rights concerns. Moving to fill the void, the AUC, with more than 8,000 fighters, opposes the Marxist guerrillas through a combination of combat, massacres of suspected civilian collaborators, and civic action.

Robin Kirk of Human Rights Watch accuses the Colombian army of allowing the AUC to operate with near impunity.

Armed Forces chief Gen. Fernando Tapias rejects her charges, noting that soldiers and AUC combatants have died fighting each other and that high-ranking army officers linked to the AUC have been prosecuted.

No lack of theories

Mr. Castano, who recently relinquished his title of AUC military commander to become its "political director," has offered to negotiate with the government.

Warned by the FARC's septuagenarian leader, "Manuel Marulanda," that the FARC would abandon peace talks if the state negotiated with the AUC, Mr. Pastrana has rejected Mr. Castano's offer.

But Mr. Pastrana has signaled a willingness to resume peace talks with the ELN guerrillas, who stepped up their activity after negotiations were recently broken off.

The president hopes that by signing peace with the guerrillas first, the AUC will no longer have a reason to fight. But the government and FARC have not signed even the first major point on their negotiation agenda.

Says military chief Fernando Tapias, in Colombia's Semana magazine: "It is a question of militarily weakening them [the guerrillas] until they see in negotiation the best exit to the conflict."

-------- drug war

Anti-Drug Chief Stirs Debate
Treatment Advocates Fear Bush Nominee Backs Stricter Enforcement

By Cheryl W. Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7051-2001Sep10?language=printer

The nomination of John P. Walters to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, has rekindled an intense debate over the future of the nation's drug policy.

Dozens of organizations -- from the American Civil Liberties Union to the African-American Republican Leadership Council -- are watching Walters's confirmation process for signs of how he will craft drug policy and whether he will address some of the failings of the drug war.

"We are agnostic on his confirmation," said J. Bradley Jansen, deputy director of the Free Congress Foundation's Center for Technology Policy, a conservative think tank. "But what we are saying is that if we are going to conduct a drug war . . . we need to be more respectful of privacy and civil liberties."

Ronald E. Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association, said he hopes to see more money spent on drug treatment, particularly in poor and minority communities.

"This heavy-handed law enforcement approach hasn't worked," Hampton said. "We need to invest more in treatment and treatment on demand."

Walters was nominated in May by President Bush to take over the office formerly headed by retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who resigned in January when Bush took office. Edward H. Jurith, general counsel under McCaffrey, is the acting director.

Walters is no stranger to the drug policy office. He was its deputy director under Bush's father, has written extensively about drug policy and has developed anti-drug programs. He is currently president of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a national association of charitable organizations.

In recent years, a growing number of states has begun shifting the emphasis of drug policies for nonviolent offenders away from harsh sentences and toward more treatment. Many states have established drug courts, which offer some offenders treatment under the threat of incarceration if they commit repeat offenses.

Bush has promised increased drug treatment after a review of the best ways to provide it is completed.

Liberal organizations have criticized Walters for being too oriented toward enforcement at the expense of treatment and education.

"I'd like to see a lot more treatment," said Eric E. Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a liberal, Washington-based think tank that focuses on drug policy and policing. "I think a drug addict ought to be able to get drug treatment as easily as you can hail a taxi or order a pizza. It's an extremely efficient way to spend anti-drug dollars."

Sterling, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, said that under the Bush administration, drug policy could likely include redoubling criminal justice and interdiction efforts by enlarging the Drug Enforcement Administration, increasing the Coast Guard's capacity and developing new surveillance technologies.

"It's not a good thing because it's the most expensive and least effective way of affecting the drug marketplace in the United States," Sterling said. "I think that the biggest impact in this whole market would be to dramatically increase the availability of drug treatment."

Richard M. Romley, an Arizona attorney and a finalist for national drug policy director, said he believes the office needs to be reorganized if the Bush administration wants to begin fighting drugs successfully. The White House office should be expanded to include five regions because "not all parts of the country have to deal with the issues that states bordering Mexico must," Romley said.

In his job interview with the White House, Romley said he stressed prevention and treatment and a continued development of demand reduction programs, such as drug courts.

"I think there needs to be a fundamental shift," Romley said. "We have to change our culture."

Hampton, a former D.C. police officer, said he's not optimistic that the Bush administration's drug policy will address treatment. "Bush comes from a tough-on-crime, lock-'em-up and throw-away-the-key mentality," Hampton said. "Until we deal with the issues of why people take drugs . . . then we haven't dealt with the problem."

But Jansen predicted that a successful policy could be developed if Walters "looks to the Republican leadership."

"There are people who are knowledgeable and concerned . . . and can offer constructive advice," Jansen said.

--------

Coalition watches war on drugs for rights violations

September 11, 2001
By Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010911-84246542.htm

A broad coalition of conservative and civil liberties groups wants assurances that the Bush administration's war on drugs will respect constitutional rights and the privacy of citizens.

Bringing together such diverse groups as the American Civil Liberties Union and the social conservative Eagle Forum, the ad-hoc Coalition for Constitutional Liberties has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to question President Bush's top drug-policy nominee on issues of electronic surveillance and other law-enforcement tactics that they say violate citizens' Fourth Amendment rights.

In a letter to the committee, the coalition led by the Free Congress Foundation asks that John Walters - nominated as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by Mr. Bush - be questioned during confirmation hearings today about his views on how "drug policy drives government surveillance and invasion of privacy."

"As a taxpayers' group, we don't like the idea of paying the government to abuse our rights," Robert Fike of Americans for Tax Reform said at a press conference yesterday announcing the coalition, which neither supports nor opposes Mr. Walters' nomination.

"America is fast becoming a nation where private citizens live in terror - not of the drug lords, but of those empowered to protect the innocent," said Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center.

The coalition includes some groups that have endorsed the decriminalization of drugs, such as the Libertarian Party, as well as many others, such as the California Christian Coalition, whose members support continuing anti-drug efforts but are concerned about the potential dangers of federal surveillance.

In the letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the coalition complained about law enforcement technologies like the FBI's Carnivore system for secretly reading private e-mail, as well as about abuse of asset forfeiture laws and proposed regulations requiring banks to report "suspicious activities."

Three-quarters of all telephone wiretaps are authorized for narcotics investigations, the coalition said.

Even Amtrak has become involved in the drug war, the coalition said, citing an April report that the nation's passenger rail service had provided computerized information about its customers to federal drug agents.

Saying the drug war has led to "law enforcement out of control," Mr. DeWeese gave what he considered examples of citizens' rights being abused:

•Banks are required to report to federal authorities any customer conducting large cash transactions.

•Airline passengers are detained and questioned if they carry large amounts of cash, and passengers purchasing tickets with cash are subjected to surveillance.

•Police are being trained to use "massive fire power" against suspected drug dealers, "breaking into homes ... based on tips from suspicious informants." In some cases, police targeting drug dealers have attacked and killed innocent people by mistake.

•Public schools enforcing "zero tolerance" policies against drugs have suspended children for bringing aspirin to school.

Calling Clinton administration reports of success in the war on drugs "propaganda," Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation said that drug policy has become "a partisan political football."

"The war on drugs is much more valuable to politicians than to the public," Mr. Sterling said.

Mr. Fike, of Americans for Tax Reform, said: "We expect Walters to be confirmed and wish him luck - because he's going to need it."

-------- iraq

Iraq Says Civilians Killed

By Hassan Hafidh
Reuters
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7039-2001Sep10?language=printer

BAGHDAD, Iraq , Sept. 10 -- Iraq said today that eight civilians were killed and three were wounded when Western planes attacked farms 105 miles southeast of Baghdad on Sunday with missiles and cluster bombs.

The Pentagon said U.S. and British warplanes attacked three surface-to-air missile sites in Iraq's southern "no-fly" zone as part of a campaign to disable Baghdad's air defenses. A Pentagon official said three strikes occurred Sunday between 11 a.m. EDT and 1:30 p.m. EDT. All U.S. aircraft returned safely to their bases, the Pentagon said in a statement.

A Defense Ministry spokesman in London said the aircraft had attacked military targets and the dead and wounded were Iraqi soldiers.

But the official Iraqi News Agency (INA), citing witnesses, said the U.S. and British warplanes launched their attack when some people in the farming district were about to say midday prayers and others were shopping in a local market, leading to civilian casualties.

"America and Britain committed yet another savage aggression that targeted Iraqi civilians when their planes attacked al-Salihiya area in Wasit province, killing eight and wounding three," it said.

--------

Iraq claims to shoot down U.S. spy plane

USA TODAY
09/11/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/09/11/iraq.htm

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq claimed Tuesday to have shot down a second U.S. spy plane in less than a month. A U.S. military spokesman said an unmanned plane is missing and its loss was being investigated.

Maj. Brett Morris, spokesman for a U.S.-British military task force in the Persian Gulf, said the coalition force had lost an unmanned aircraft Tuesday similar to a U.S. spy plane lost last month.

"We have lost contact with our unmanned observation aircraft," Morris told The Associated Press in Manama, Bahrain.

"There is an investigation going on ... with regard to the Predator's disappearance," he said. "We are working with the assumption that the plane has gone and are trying to figure out why it went down and how it went down."

Morris said the plane took off early Tuesday for southeastern Iraq. The unmanned aircraft, which is controlled from land, disappeared later Tuesday morning while patrolling in the area, he said.

Earlier Tuesday, the state-run Iraqi News Agency reported that the plane was shot down at 11:30 a.m. near the southern city of Basra, about 350 miles south of the capital, Baghdad, the state-run Iraqi News Agency reported.

Wreckage of the plane was being collected, INA said, adding that the plane "carries highly advanced equipment."

"The plane was coming from Kuwaiti territory and it was used to provide the American enemy with information concerning our installations, vital sites and our air-defense formations," INA said, quoting an unidentified spokesman from the Iraqi Air Defense Command.

INA quoted the spokesman as saying the spy plane was "shot down in revenge for the martyrs of great Iraq and free Palestine."

On Aug. 27, Iraq claimed to shoot down an unmanned reconnaissance plane in the Basra area. The U.S. Defense Department acknowledged losing a plane in that area, but said it was unsure whether it had been hit by hostile fire or had crashed on its own.

The Pentagon has said the Predator was the first U.S. aircraft lost in Iraq in the 10 years since U.S. and British planes began patrolling "no-fly" zones - except for a "friendly fire" incident in 1994. Then, two American F-15 fighter jets mistakenly shot down two U.S. Army helicopters over northern Iraq, killing 15 Americans, five Iraqi Kurds, three Turks, two Britons and a Frenchman.

The United States and Britain have been patrolling Iraqi skies to protect Shiite Muslim rebels in the south and Kurdish insurgents in the north from government forces. The southern patrols also provide early warning of potential Iraqi military moves toward Kuwait.

Iraq considers the no-fly zones violations of its sovereignty and has stepped up its efforts to shoot down allied planes. In 1998, President Saddam Hussein offered cash prizes to any Iraqi military unit that shoots down an enemy warplane or captures a U.S. or British pilot.

-------- israel

Israeli Tanks Encircle A City in West Bank
Witnesses Report Shelling of Jenin

From News Services
Tuesday, September 11, 2001; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7279-2001Sep11?language=printer

JENIN, West Bank, Sept. 11 (Tuesday) -- Israeli tanks rolled up to the edges of the Palestinian-ruled city of Jenin in the West Bank early today in what the army called an encirclement designed to prevent suicide bombers from reaching Israel.

Witnesses said the tanks moved two miles into Palestinian territory, to the edge of Jenin, and began shelling the city and a nearby refugee camp, knocking out electricity. Hospital officials in Jenin said at least four Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire during the operation.

The Israeli encirclement of the city came after two Israeli soldiers were killed by snipers near Tulkarm, south of Jenin.

"Israeli forces have been operating since the night in territory under the control of the Palestinian Authority, close to Jenin, and seized controlling positions around it," the Israeli army said in a statement. "Access roads to the city have been blocked and they are under the full control of the Israeli army, in order to prevent the movement of terrorists into Israel."

Earlier, Israel and the Palestinians said they were willing to hold high-level truce talks, but the two sides remained at odds over where the meetings should take place.

However, the renewed violence cast additional doubt on whether the meeting between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, would take place. Israel army radio reported that the Palestinian Authority said the talks would be canceled if Israeli forces entered Jenin.

The attack on the West Bank city came two days after two suicide bombings in Israel, one by an Israeli Arab, killed three Israelis and the two bombers. Israel's government charged that the Israeli Arab crossed into Jenin before carrying out the bombing, and that the Palestinian Authority ignored Israeli requests to arrest him there. The Palestinians denied that he was in the West Bank.

Israel radio said tanks were apparently seeking to cut off all access to Jenin without entering it. A Reuters correspondent in Jenin said calls rang out from loudspeakers on minarets for Palestinians to confront the Israelis.

Separately today, Israeli forces closed Palestinian intelligence and security offices in Azariyeh, just outside Jerusalem. They also barricaded an office in nearby Abu Dis, Israel radio reported. It said the offices were closed because Israel believed Palestinian security was implicated in sending attackers into Israel.

The attempt to organize a meeting between Peres and Araft appeared to unravel late Monday after the two sides failed to agree on whether to hold the talks in Egypt or at the Erez crossing near the Gaza Strip.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Monday that he was trying to help renew Israeli-Palestinian security talks and that he spoke with Peres by telephone three times in recent days.

--------

Bush 'tilt' to Israel provokes Arab world

September 11, 2001
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010911-6602755.htm

The Bush administration is increasingly blaming the Palestinians alone for the Middle East violence - adopting a pro-Israel stance that has sparked anti-Americanism in the Arab world.

"If you call asking people not to be violent placing the onus on them, then it is," a senior administration official said in an interview late last week.

After the Palestinian uprising began last year, the State Department tried to sound neutral, blaming both sides and calling for restraint by the Israelis as well as the Palestinians.

But public and private statements in recent weeks have gone further than ever before to put the blame for the violence squarely on the Palestinians. "We believe they can do more," National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said in a weekend television interview.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a separate interview the same day that Israel had a right to retaliate in the face of violence from the Palestinians.

"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," Mr. Rumsfeld said on "Fox News Sunday."

"You have an obligation to your people to take action to try to reduce that level of violence or to eliminate it, if humanly possible," he said.

A former U.S. diplomat, Richard W. Murphy, said the comments by the Bush administration's "two heavyweights" represented a "tilt" toward Israel.

"[President] Bush put the onus on the Palestinians to cease violence," said Mr. Murphy, a senior Middle East fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "So the U.S. political leadership is, yes, tilted.

"Their reading is that [former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak made incredible peace offers that were turned down by a bloodthirsty [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat, who was unmasked in his real purpose - the destruction of Israel."

Analyst David Makovsky said the Bush administration is tilting toward Israel because Mr. Arafat repeatedly has reneged on commitments to CIA Director George J. Tenet and to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

"Bush believes is there is not adherence to commitments he made to the United States, there's not a basis to move peace forward," said Mr. Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

When the Bush team first came into office, the Middle East problem seemed remote, he said. "But when you are the guy commitments are made to, it gets personal."

The tougher condemnations of Palestinian attacks on Israel threatens to harden anti-American feelings in the Arab world, where large majorities see the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the single most important issue, according to a recent Zogby poll.

A group of Persian Gulf foreign ministers declared at a meeting on Saturday that they were "astonished" that their key ally, the United States, was condoning Israel's "racist aggressions" against Palestinians.

On Sunday, Saudi Arabian Gen. Salah Muhaya reportedly called off a visit to the United States to protest "U.S. policy on the continuing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people."

Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, in May had turned down an invitation to the White House, also to protest Washington's "pro-Israel" policy.

Brookings Institution analyst Shibley Telhami said the Arab public has been provoked by graphic pictures and reports on new Arab satellite television stations that blame the violence on Israel and, increasingly, on the United States.

"On a recent lecture trip there, I had to counter calls against American interests," he said. "Governments in the Middle East will oppose anything that will jeopardize relations with the United States and not allow violence against the United States. But the real message to the United States is the extent to which public pressure will affect U.S. interests."

Former Assistant Secretary of State Robert H. Pelletreau said "there is rising anti-American feeling in the Middle East," but so far it has not led to anything more serious than a boycott of fast-food chains. The Saudis, for example, recently contracted U.S.-based Exxon Mobile Corp. as a partner in the development of gas fields "despite anti-American public feeling," he said.

However, some multinational firms are increasingly doing business in the Middle East through their European branches to minimize the U.S. connection.

Mr. Pelletreau, currently with a law firm whose clients conduct business in the Middle East, said he worries, for instance, that a bomb at a Citibank branch in the region would start an exodus of American investors.

The senior U.S. official said in the interview that there is "a real frustration in the Arab world that translates into frustration with the United States. We're aware of that, but we can't transform the relationship of Israel and the Palestinians even if we'd like to."

"There are things we are doing and can do to buttress our relations in the Arab world to weather this period," he said, explaining that the Bush administration is working on "security relations, the economic realm, assistance programs and just normal diplomacy."

The official said several people, both in the White House and the State Department, are shaping U.S. policy on the Middle East.

At State, the policy is in the hands of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs William Burns and Director of Policy Planning Richard Haass.

At the White House, the policy-makers are Mr. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Miss Rice, National Security Council Middle East Director Bruce Riedel and "probably others," the official said.

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

President Bush's Address to the Nation

From the Oval Office
8:30 P.M. EDT 9/11/01
From: "Jim Gilmore, Chairman - Republican National Committee" <eLeader@mail.echampions2000.com>

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes, or in their offices; secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers; moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.

The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed; our country is strong.

A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.

Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America -- with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could.

Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans. Our military is powerful, and it's prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York City and Washington, D.C. to help with local rescue efforts.

Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured, and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world from further attacks.

The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington, which had to be evacuated today, are reopening for essential personnel tonight, and will be open for business tomorrow. Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business, as well.

The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

I appreciate so very much the members of Congress who have joined me in strongly condemning these attacks. And on behalf of the American people, I thank the many world leaders who have called to offer their condolences and assistance.

America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism. Tonight, I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us, spoken through the ages in Psalm 23: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me." This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

Thank you. Good night, and God bless America.

To view a video of President Bush's speech, please visit: http://www.rnc.org/

Volunteer Hotlines:

American Red Cross: Blood donations: 1-800-448-3543 Cash donations: 1-800-HELP NOW

Salvation Army: Cash donations: 1-800-SAL ARMY

FBI: Report any information about Tuesday's attacks: 1-866-483-5137 Report Terrorist Activity, secure server: https://www.ifccfbi.gov/complaint/terrorist.asp

----

Family of Slain Chilean Sues Kissinger, Helms
Military Leader Was Killed in Kidnap Attempt Linked to Nixon Administration

By Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 11, 2001; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7048-2001Sep10?language=printer

The family of Chilean military commander Rene Schneider, who was killed 31 years ago during a botched kidnapping, filed a federal lawsuit in Washington yesterday accusing Henry A. Kissinger, Richard M. Helms and other officials in the Nixon administration of orchestrating a series of covert activities that led to his assassination.

The lawsuit, which attorneys said is based heavily upon recently declassified CIA documents, seeks more than $3 million in damages from Kissinger, Helms and the U.S. government for "summary execution," assault and other civil rights violations. It alleges that Schneider was targeted because he stood in the way of a military coup designed to keep leftist Salvador Allende from taking power as Chile's president. At the time, Kissinger was Nixon's national security adviser, and Helms headed the CIA.

The suit revisits one of Chile's most notorious crimes and marks the first time that high-level U.S. officials have been sued in connection with the shooting. Schneider was the left-leaning head of the Chilean Armed Forces, and his murder was long considered to have been carried out by right-wing extremists within the military. The suit focuses on U.S. government ties to the assailants that were described in the declassified papers.

"The United States did not want Allende to assume the presidency, and my father was the only political obstacle for a military coup," said Schneider's eldest son, also named Rene Schneider, who resides in Chile. He and his brother, Raul, an artist living in Paris, are the named plaintiffs. "Obviously, he had to be taken out of the way."

The family chose to sue after carefully reviewing the materials that became public in the past two years, Schneider said. The documents, he said, "made me realize that my father's death is perhaps the one crime perpetrated outside the U.S. that most clearly links back to the U.S. government, the CIA, and Kissinger in particular.

"I don't want revenge," he said. "I want the truth to be established."

Kissinger did not return a telephone message left at his New York office. Helms denied wrongdoing but would not discuss details, saying that he hadn't seen the suit and that "it's a long and complicated case."

In his 1979 autobiography, Kissinger denied involvement in Schneider's death. He wrote that the group that tried to kidnap Schneider "proceeded on its own in defiance of CIA instructions and without our knowledge."

The role of the United States in Schneider's death has been studied for years. A Senate committee in 1975 found evidence that U.S. officials hoped to instigate a coup to stop Allende and provided arms and encouragement to those plotting the general's kidnapping. But the committee said its evidence showed the CIA had withdrawn support of the kidnapping before it was carried out and never envisioned that he would be killed.

Thousands of additional documents were declassified in recent years and provided a more comprehensive account of what happened. In addition, the CIA provided a report to Congress last year that detailed the agency's activities in Chile in the early 1970s.

According to the Schneider family, the materials showed that the CIA continued to encourage a coup in the days leading to the kidnapping. The CIA also provided $35,000 to some of those jailed for Schneider's death, the suit said.

"Every single factual assertion in this complaint is based on a document that has been furnished by the U.S. government," said Michael E. Tigar, the family's attorney.

The chain of events began Sept. 15, 1970, when Nixon met with Kissinger and Helms and ordered that action be taken to prevent Allende from assuming office after an election in which he had won the most votes. According to the lawsuit, Nixon said he was not concerned about risks and authorized $10 million to be spent on a military coup.

But military officials in Chile made clear that Chile's commander in chief, Schneider, would not go along with a coup, the suit said. The lawsuit said Kissinger and the CIA supported a secret plan to kidnap Schneider so that the military could take over before Allende's election could be approved by Chile's Congress.

On the morning of Oct. 22, 1972, after two aborted kidnapping attempts, Schneider was ambushed en route to work. The general's car was surrounded by about six cars, and struck from behind by one of them. The kidnappers smashed the back-seat windows on both sides. As Schneider was getting out his gun to defend himself, the assailants shot him. He died three days later at a military hospital, one day after Allende's victory was ratified.

Allende remained in power until a 1973 military coup that was indirectly supported by the CIA; he killed himself while under siege. Gen. Augusto Pinochet then began a 17-year reign in which thousands of people were killed or tortured. Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998 and indicted in Chile last year. But an appellate court recently suspended the legal proceedings because of concerns about his mental fitness for trial.

Military courts in Chile found that Schneider's death was caused by two military groups, one led by Roberto Viaux and the other by Camilo Valenzuela. Viaux and Valenzuela, both generals, were convicted of charges of conspiring to cause a coup, and Viaux also was convicted of kidnapping. The CIA aided both groups, the lawsuit said.

In a section of his autobiography entitled "The Coup That Never Was," Kissinger recounted the September 1970 meeting with Nixon and the plans to move forward with a secret coup agenda. He said there was less to the plan "than met the eye" because Nixon had a history of backing off plans as their implications became clearer.

Kissinger wrote that he ended the plan Oct. 15 and that Viaux's group acted on its own. He also wrote that no one, not even Viaux, ever intended to assassinate Schneider.

Peter Kornbluh, a Chile expert at the nonprofit National Security Archive, who lobbied for full declassification of Chile documents, said the lawsuit could force Kissinger, Helms and others to provide more information about what took place.

"This crime was Chile's equivalent of the Kennedy assassination at the time," Kornbluh said. "It was an unparalleled, unprecedented act of political terrorism."

Kissinger has faced other recent scrutiny. In May, he declined to appear before a French judge who wanted to question him about allegations of human rights violations in Latin America during the 1970s. He referred the request to the State Department.

Staff writer Anthony Faiola, staff researcher Robert Thomason and special correspondent Pascale Bonnefoy contributed to this report. Bonnefoy reported from Santiago, Chile.

--------

Pentagon to be cut 15 percent

September 11, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010911-12926836.htm

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday carried his battle to reform the military from the field to the bureaucracy, saying he has ordered commanders to reduce headquarters staff by 15 percent next year.

In a major policy speech festooned with military imagery, the defense secretary began a campaign to rid the Pentagon of overlapping bureaucracies, which he said pose "a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America."

Mr. Rumsfeld, his audience a group of civilian employees who could see their numbers shrink under his plan, said he already has picked targets for possible consolidation: public affairs, legal offices, the commissary system and the personal staffs of the service secretaries and four-star chiefs.

At commands inside and outside Washington, generals and admirals must trim headquarters by 15 percent so more troops will be available at the "teeth" and fewer at the support "tail" of the force.

"Our challenge is to transform not just the way we deter and defend, but the way we conduct our daily business," he said at a ceremony marking the beginning of the department's "acquisition and logistics excellence week." "The modernization of the Department of Defense is a matter of some urgency. In fact, it could be said that it's a matter of life and death, ultimately every American's."

The defense secretary's rhetoric could translate into deep cuts in the department's nearly 700,000 civilian jobs. It would also result in a shift of thousands of military personnel from the "tail" to combat jobs known as the "teeth."

He labeled a too-large bureaucracy a "threat" and an "adversary." But he tried to soothe individual employee fears by saying, "I have no desire to attack the Pentagon. I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself."

Mr. Rumsfeld, a former pharmaceutical company chief executive, took the defense chief's job with orders from President Bush to transform the military to counter 21st-century threats. That effort, the military found out yesterday, is not confined to military operations. Reformers will also scrutinize more mundane tasks, such as buying equipment, issuing legal opinions and moving memos from one office to the next.

On some fronts, the reform movement is already under way. The Pentagon previously has stated it wants Congress to authorize one more round of post-Cold War base closings in hopes of shedding 20 percent of its infrastructure, possibly saving $3 billion annually. It also plans to trim the B-1 bomber fleet by one-third, closing facilities in Georgia and Kansas.

Mr. Rumsfeld has set up a senior executive council (the deputy secretary, acquisition czar and service secretaries) to run the Pentagon more like a business. One of their first tasks is to identify functions that a private company could perform more efficiently than the Pentagon, such as cutting payroll checks.

"Business enterprises die if they fail to adapt," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "And the fact that they can fail and die is what provides the incentive to survive. But governments can't die, so we need to find other incentives for bureaucracy to adapt and improve."

Mr. Rumsfeld said the Navy, Air Force and Army all have separate staffs to support the service secretary and the service uniform chief, even though they work the same issues. Every agency has its own general counsel. "We have so many general counsel officers that we actually have another general counsel's office whose only job is to coordinate all those general counsels," he said.

He also mentioned duplicative offices for public affairs, legislative liaison, commissaries, health care. "I have a strong suspicion that we need fewer than we have, and we're going to take a good hard look and find out," he said.

There have been other full-throttle efforts at reforms, from the Ronald Reagan military buildup to the post-Cold War "revolution in military affairs." Still, the Pentagon today cannot account for all its spare parts and other assets, and takes years to field relatively simple equipment.

"Will this war on bureaucracy succeed where others have failed?" Mr. Rumsfeld said. He predicted it would, adding, "This effort is structurally different from any that preceded it, I suspect. It begins with the personal endorsement, in fact the mandate, of the president."

He said there is no reason the Pentagon cannot save roughly 5 percent of its projected $330 billion budget in fiscal 2002, which begins Oct. 1.

As he spoke, the battle continued in Congress over defense dollars, with some Democrats wanting to trim the request in the wake of reduced surplus projections.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, said uncertainty remains on whether Mr. Bush gets the $18.4 billion in defense spending he requested above Congress' 2002 budget resolution. "[The administration] understands that as the budget numbers tight up, that it's going to be tougher to get the defense numbers we need too," he said.

--------

Biden warns of defense-budget battles

September 11, 2001
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010911-98951204.htm

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday warned President Bush that he would face a "difficult fight" with congressional Democrats over his defense budget and denounced the administration's missile-defense plan as a "theological mission."

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, who took over the committee leadership from Sen. Jesse Helms after the Republicans lost control of the Senate earlier this year, asked Mr. Bush to re-prioritize his budget proposal to reflect the military's "real needs" and the hard economic times.

In a major speech on U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century, Mr. Biden praised the president for some of his actions so far, such as the handling of the reconnaissance-plane crisis in China in April and efforts to improve relations with both India and Pakistan. But he lashed out at the administration for identifying priorities -- namely, missile defense -- that are "a little out of whack."

"Our real security needs are much more earthbound and far less costly than national missile defense," Mr. Biden said at the National Press Club. "We could provide our Army, our Navy, Air Force and Marines virtually everything they need in the immediate future for a more stealth, more significant-lift-capacity military to deal with the real threats we face and still spend less on all of that than we will spend on a national missile-defense system."

Mr. Biden rejected the notion that American foreign policy should be based primarily on the "principle of national self-interest that defines strength as rigid adherence to inflexible theory."

He said U.S. interests can be "furthered when we meet our international obligations and when we keep our treaties."

Mr. Biden also dismissed the administration's "premise" that "deterrence no longer works." No head of a rogue state would dare to fire ballistic missiles at the United States because "he knows he'd be annihilated within a matter of 30 minutes," he said.

The Democrat-led Senate Armed Services Committee last week voted to reduce by $1.3 billion Mr. Bush's request to increase missile-defense funds by $3 billion to $8.3 billion. The action led Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to call for a presidential veto of the bill.

But Mr. Biden said missile defense should be "weighed carefully" against other military priorities "before we go raising the starting gun that will begin a new arms race" and "before we dip into the Social Security trust fund to satisfy the administration's almost theological allegiance to missile defense at the expense of more earthbound military and international treaties."

"The other day they sent up a budget that tells us they are going to increase our missile-defense initiative," Mr. Biden said. At the same time, he added, "they cut the program that exists between us and Russia to help them destroy their chemical weapons, keep their scientists from being for sale and destroy their nuclear weapons."

Mr. Biden's remarks were the latest in a series of attacks by Democrats on Mr. Bush's foreign and defense policy. In July, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle sharply criticized the president just as he was beginning a European trip. Later that month, Mr. Daschle accused Mr. Bush of "abdicating" world leadership.

Mr. Biden said yesterday the United States can't disregard the responsibilities that "flow from our ideals."

"We can't lose sight of the fact that leadership requires engagement, and partnership demands inclusivity," he said. "America must remain at the table, because walking away comes at a price."


-------- OTHER

-------- genetics

Europe invites biotech debate
NO GMO: Environmental activists held a demonstration in southern France late August after destroying crops of genetically modified corn.

September 11, 2001
Christian Science Monitor
ROBERT PRATTA/REUTERS
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0911/p6s1-woeu.html

The EU's farm ministers will hold a special meeting next week to hear expert evidence on biotechnology. By Peter Ford/Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

PARIS - Desperate to catch up with the United States on the cutting edge of biotech discovery, European governments face one major hurdle that has nothing to do with science or money: their voters. Europeans are increasingly skeptical about genetic engineering, whether it be the genetic modification of crops such as corn, or the cloning of human cells. And their doubts have had an impact: the European Union has approved no new genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for the past three years.

But attempts to boost consumer confidence with more and stricter regulations have run into difficulties on a different front. American exporters - who grow millions of acres of genetically modified corn, soy, and canola - say Europe's new rules discriminate against them. The Bush administration agrees, and is urging Brussels to drop a new labeling law for GM foods. Another trans-Atlantic trade war looms.

So, in a bid to overcome widespread disquiet, the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, is launching a drive to thrash out all the scientific and ethical questions in a continent-wide consultation, using public-access websites, conferences, and public debate.

"It is of strategic and long-term importance that Europe master the new frontier technologies, in particular the life sciences and biotechnology, and use them for the benefit of society," EC president Romano Prodi said last week.

By the end of the year, the consultation involving politicians, consumers, scientists, philosophers, businesspeople, environmentalists, doctors, and farmers, is due to culminate in a policy paper setting out Europe's strategic vision for biotech.

"A driving force" behind the campaign is the fear that "without knowing what we are doing, we are putting the brakes on European industry taking advantage of new progress," says Pia Ahrenkilde, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström.

"Europe cannot afford to miss the opportunity that these new sciences and technologies offer," the EC said in a discussion paper designed to launch the debate. But it also acknowledged that "public perception ... represents a challenge for all public authorities."

The European public is not convinced that the opportunities the Commission sees are worth the risks that worry many citizens.

While business leaders and scientists promise solutions to world hunger from genetically modified food crops, or new cures for disease by splicing human genes, European consumers are more likely to perceive threats to the environment, or the danger of people making identical clones of themselves.

Eurobarometer, the EU's polling body, found in a 1999 study, for example, that only 19 percent of respondents would be happy to eat eggs laid by chickens fed GM corn, and that 37 percent felt that biotech methods are morally acceptable in food production. That was down from 50 percent in a similar survey three years earlier, reflecting a general drop in support for GM technology.

That attitude was dramatically illustrated last year in Britain, where a group of anti-GMO protesters was acquitted by a jury on all charges arising from their destruction of an experimental cornfield.

On a continent battered by mad cow disease, dioxin-contaminated chickens, and other scares, food safety is a much bigger issue than it is in the United States. Prompted by Greenpeace and other environmental groups, a fierce debate over genetically modified food has gathered pace in Europe in recent years.

That has complicated biotech companies' efforts to introduce new strains of seed and food made from the new crops, in contrast to the trouble-free shift that the US made from conventional to GM crops a few years ago.

The EU has now introduced the strictest set of regulations on biotech food in the world, establishing lengthy approval procedures and demanding that all GMOs, or food derived from them, be clearly labeled.

That worries US exporters, whose soy and corn crops, for example, are now largely genetically engineered and who do not normally store GM harvests separately from conventional ones, making the traceability that European legislation demands impossible.

US sales of soybeans to the EU fell by 30 percent between 1996 and 2000, according to US Department of Agriculture figures. (about 68 percent of the US soy harvest is genetically modified).

The clash has the potential to become another major trade dispute, in the wake of the tariff war now raging over the EU's refusal to import beef from cattle treated with hormones, which most Americans eat with little complaint.

Europeans are uninformed and often ignorant of the issues surrounding genetic engineering, however, according to the Eurobarometer survey. Only 11 percent said they felt adequately informed about biotechnology, while 35 percent agreed with the statement that "ordinary tomatoes do not contain genes while genetically modified tomatoes do." Thirty percent said they did not know, suggesting that only 35 percent realized that all tomatoes contain genes.

The European Commission hopes to overcome such ignorance with its consultation campaign, on the assumption that the more people know about biotech the more they will accept it.

That proved to be the case in Britain, where public opinion shifted in favor of human stem-cell research over the course of a two-year public debate.

Meanwhile in the US, public opinion may be moving - although slowly - against genetically modified foods as the debate there heats up. An ABC poll last June found 52 percent of respondents saying GM foods were "not safe to eat," whereas a year earlier a Gallup poll found 51 percent seeing no dangers to health.

In the end, the EC has accepted the idea that consumers will make or break the new technology.

"The key to resolving the apparent dilemmas," it says in its discussion paper, inviting comments from ordinary people, "lies with Europe's citizens."

----

Broader stem-cell research sought

09/10/2001
By Kathy Kiely,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/sept01/2001-09-11-stem.htm

WASHINGTON - A new report from the National Academy of Sciences says stem cells from human embryos offer "unprecedented opportunities" for treating a host of diseases, but it suggests that the research program that President Bush approved may not be sufficient to realize them. The report by the academy, an independent panel of experts that advises the president, says much work remains before treatments can be developed.

However, its recommendation that such research be pursued aggressively is likely to anger those who urged Bush to ban stem-cell research and bolster critics who say the plan the president announced last month did not go far enough.

Stem cells come from 5-day-old human embryos and are capable of transforming into any kind of cell or organ. Research supporters say the cells show promise in treating a host of diseases. Opponents say the research is tantamount to murder because the process destroys the embryos.

Bush said he will support research only on existing stem-cell colonies or "lines." He opposes any federal funding for research on stem cells from embryos that have yet to be destroyed. But there is controversy over the number of stem-cell lines that researchers have to work on. Bush put the number at 64. The administration says that is adequate, though Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson acknowledges that fewer than half of those are available for research.

The academy says a prohibition on the development of new stem-cell lines could result in research on "inferior materials." "The smaller number of cell lines in use, the lower the genetic diversity that they represent," the report says.

It also warns that existing stem-cell lines cannot be reproduced indefinitely without running the risk of the sort of "genetic mutations" that scientists routinely see in cells that they culture in laboratories.

"There is no reason to expect stem-cell lines to behave differently," report says.

Supporters of research say it holds the promise of curing ailments such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and juvenile diabetes. The report also questions the potential for adult stem-cell research, which a number of anti-abortion lawmakers have held out as an alternative to the use of human embryos. Though there is considerable "enthusiasm" about the success researchers have had using adult stem cells in bone marrow transplants, the report says adult stem cells do not seem as versatile.

"Research on both adult and embryonic human stem cells should be pursued," the report concludes.

The report also recommends research into an "ethically controversial" form of cell cloning, which could be useful in developing ways to reduce the possibility of rejection by recipients of organ tissue developed from stem-cell research. But it would be prohibited if a ban on human cloning, which the House earlier this year approved overwhelmingly, became law.

"There is a scientific rationale for not foreclosing this avenue of research," the academy says. Its report argues that there is an ethical difference between cloning to reproduce a human being and "therapeutic cloning" that involves taking genetic material from a living person and transplanting it into a potential stem cell. This could then be used to develop transplant organs that are a perfect genetic match.

-------- health

Scientists Urge Bigger Supply of Stem Cells

New York Times
September 11, 2001
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/health/genetics/11STEM.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 - A panel of scientific experts has concluded that new colonies, or lines, of human embryonic stem cells will be necessary if the science is to fulfill its potential, a finding that is likely to inflame the political debate over President Bush's decision to restrict federally financed research to the 64 stem cell lines that are already known to exist.

In a 59-page report that examines the state of human stem cell science, the panel also endorsed cloning technology to create new stem cells that could be used to treat patients. Mr. Bush strongly opposes human cloning for any reason, and the House of Representatives voted in July to outlaw any type of cloning, whether for reproduction or research.

The report by the National Academy of Sciences, perhaps the nation's most eminent organization of scientists, is scheduled to be made public on Tuesday morning at a news conference in Washington. It does not address Mr. Bush's policy directly, though it strongly supports federal financing for stem cell research.

"High quality, publicly funded research is the wellspring of medical breakthroughs," said the report, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by Congressional supporters of stem cell research. It added that federal financing, and the government oversight that comes with it, "offers the most efficient and responsible means of fulfilling the promise of stem cells to meet the need for regenerative medical therapies."

Though the academy often issues its reports in response to requests from the government, it embarked on this study on its own earlier this year. The study was not an exhaustive review of the scientific literature in stem cells, but was rather intended to examine the prospects for the research and to make policy recommendations. The report was written and reviewed before Mr. Bush announced his decision on Aug. 9, and was not revised in response to the president's decision.

Stem cells, the human body's master cells, have the ability to grow into any one of the body's more than 200 cell types. Scientists hope to use them to create replacement tissues or organs - for instance, new insulin-producing cells that could treat diabetes, or new brain cells to treat Parkinson's disease.

But Mr. Bush and many others have moral qualms about the research, because the cells are extracted from human embryos that are destroyed in the process. Mr. Bush limited public financing to work on existing cell lines where the embryos had already been destroyed.

"While there is much that can be learned by using existing stem cell lines if they are made available for research," the report said, those cell lines might change over time. It also noted that the lines had been grown in the presence of animal cells, which could pose risks to human health if those stem cells were transplanted into people.

So the report called for new stem cell lines, which it said would be "important to replace those that become inviable." But the panel did not address whether the government, or the private sector, should pay for the creation of those new lines.

The report is being issued as Congress conducts a series of hearings intended to explore whether Mr. Bush's plan for stem cell research is sufficient to support the science. On Wednesday, the chairman of the academy's panel, Dr. Bert Vogelstein, is to testify in the Senate. This afternoon, Dr. Vogelstein, a professor of oncology and pathology at Johns Hopkins University, was on Capitol Hill briefing Democratic and Republican aides.

"The report clearly endorses strong federal support for stem cell research," Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said. "The administration's proposal may well be inadequate to develop the treatments and cures urgently needed by millions of patients suffering from serious illnesses."

But "that concern is hypothetical," countered Jay Lefkowitz, who as the general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget helped Mr. Bush devise his policy. "The president's policy permits a tremendous amount of basic research, which is absolutely necessary before we will even know if stem cell research can live up to its potential."

Mr. Bush, who had spent months considering whether taxpayer dollars could be used to pay for research on human embryonic stem cells, struck a compromise. In the weeks since Mr. Bush's decision, scientists and patients' groups have raised questions about the quality of the 64 stem cell lines. Last week, Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, said only about two dozen of the 64 lines had been fully developed and ready for research.

While enough to get basic research started, scientists and patients' groups said the lines would not be enough to turn stem cells into therapies. They said that the lines were not genetically diverse enough, and might be unsuitable for use in therapies because in growing the stem cells, scientists had nourished them with cells from mice. This is a standard laboratory technique, but experts fear mouse cells could transmit viruses when the stem cells are transplanted into people. Most experts say it would be best to grow new stem cells that are not mixed with animal cells.

The academy's panel agreed. In addressing how stem cells might be used as therapies, the seven-member panel, which included a neuroscientist, an immunologist and an ethicist, said the problem of tissue rejection would be a significant hurdle in the years to come. The panel called cloning an "attractive option" for overcoming this hurdle.

In this method, known as therapeutic cloning, scientists would take cells, typically skin cells, from a patient and insert them into a fertilized egg whose nucleus had been removed. The result would be an embryo that could, if implanted into a woman's womb, grow into a baby that would be an exact genetic replica, or clone, of the patient. But instead of implanting the embryo, scientists would extract stem cells from it, and use those cells to grow tissue that would be a perfect genetic match for the patient.

Cloning, of course, is hugely controversial. Mr. Lefkowitz said Mr. Bush opposed "any research that requires the creation of human embryos for the express purpose of destroying them," which, he said, "raises serious ethical and moral concerns."

The panel's report said well over 100 million Americans, with conditions as varied as cardiovascular disease, burns, spinal cord injuries and cancer, could potentially be helped by research on human embryonic stem cells.

Headed by Dr. Vogelstein, the panel also included Barry Bloom, a immunologist and infectious disease specialist at the Harvard School of Public Health; Corey Goodman, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Berkeley; Patricia King, a medical ethicist at the Georgetown University Law Center; Guy McKhann, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins University; and Myron Weisfeldt, a cardiologist who is chairman of the department of medicine at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

The academy is a federally chartered but independent group that studies technical issues for the government. It established the panel, which began its work in March, to assess what is known about stem cells, including how they become different types of tissues, as well as the differences in potential uses of cells obtained from embryos, fetal tissues or adult tissues.

The panel convened an all-day workshop in Washington on June 22, and heard from both proponents and opponents of the research.

At that workshop, opponents, including some scientists, argued that studying embryonic stem cells was not necessary because an alternative existed: so-called adult stem cells, which are derived from blood, bone marrow, fat and other tissues.

But the academy report concluded - as did a recent report by the National Institutes of Health - that research on both embryonic and adult stem cells should be pursued.

The panel also called for the creation of a national advisory committee of researchers, ethicists and others to "evaluate the technical merit" of any proposed human embryonic stem cell studies, and then approve or reject the work. Mr. Bush has said he will create a committee to advise him, but that committee would not have such oversight authority.

Noting that the government created a similar oversight committee to review gene therapy experiments, the panel said, "The use of embryonic stem cells is not the first scientific advance to raise public concerns about ethical and social issues in medical research."

Scientists have studied embryonic stem cells in mice for 20 years, and the report said that those studies have been important in demonstrating the potential of human embryonic stem cells. But while research in mice is necessary, the report said, it is not sufficient to make advances in treating human diseases. "Studies with human stem cells are essential," it stated, "to make progress in the development of treatments for human disease."

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

New World Trade Talks Sought

September 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Asia-Europe-Trade.html

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Asian and European economic ministers agreed Tuesday to push for a new round of World Trade Organization talks -- but only if they can find a formula acceptable to all, which has thus far proven elusive in the lingering divide between rich and poor.

European Union ministers expressed greater optimism than some of their Southeast Asian counterparts, however.

EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy heralded a ``spirit of Hanoi'' that should make it easier for the WTO to start a new round of trade talks at a meeting in Doha, Qatar, in November -- two years after the WTO's failure in Seattle that gave the anti-globalization movement powerful momentum.

But Malaysian trade minister Rafidah Aziz said afterward her nation had not altered its stance, seen by many as among the strongest taken against the WTO talks as they have thus far been proposed.

``No decisions are made here, it is an exchange of views,'' she said in an interview at the conclusion of the Asia-Europe Meeting, or ASEM, in the Vietnamese capital.

The Malaysian minister added that a statement released in the evening was from the chairman of the meeting, not from all the delegations.

Lamy acknowledged many difficulties were ahead but said there was still time to mend differences.

``There is still a dissenting voice or voices -- that is normal at this stage,'' Lamy told a news conference.

A draft of the meeting's statement said the 10 Asian nations and 15 members of the EU should use their ``political will and flexibility'' to help the WTO succeed in starting new global trade talks in Doha.

``To reach consensus on the launch of a round, ministers agreed that the negotiating agenda should be sufficiently broad and balanced to reflect the interests and concerns of all WTO members,'' the draft said.

Several said the meeting in the Vietnamese capital, with no protesters in sight, would help push the WTO cause.

``This is a good opportunity for Europe and Asia to confer, but Europe and Asia are only part of the equation,'' said Anthony Gooch, Lamy's spokesman. ``Latin America is important. Africa is important. The United States is important.''

Thai Commerce Minister Adisai Bodharamik, who expressed worries on Monday about the prospects for new WTO talks, said after meeting Tuesday with counterparts from the EU that things were looking better. The Europeans indeed seemed to be taking a more flexible approach, as they had previously said they would, Adisai said.

But he said developing nations remain concerned that the wealthy West will try to include too many topics in new trade talks, while Third World countries want a smaller agenda they can see in advance.

The Thai minister said the United States, which was not present at Tuesday's meeting, has shown a greater willingness to keep workers' rights out of new WTO talks -- removing one of the main sticking points that derailed the Seattle summit.

Those seeking new WTO talks say the weakening in global economies underscores a need for more liberal trade, while some acknowledge it can make it more difficult to achieve the necessary concessions from some nations.

ASEM seeks to boost trade ties between the 10 Asian economies and the EU, but much attention this time is focusing on the WTO.

Worried that a second failure to launch new WTO talks could be disastrous to the global trading system, the EU is lobbying developing Southeast Asian nations that have been cautious because of fears that the poor will once again be left behind by rich traders.

-------- spying

FROM SATELLITES TO PSYCHICS:
NEW CIA DOCUMENTS REVEAL AGENCY'S SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL EXPLOITS

Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001
From: The National Security Archive <NSARCHIVE@hermes.gwu.edu>
http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/press.html

Washington, D.C., September 10 ­ The National Security Archive today published over 40 declassified CIA and Intelligence Community documents tracing the CIA's involvement in the exploitation of science and technology for intelligence purposes. The documents illuminate some of the CIA's most significant achievements, from breakthroughs in overhead reconnaissance, to some of its more dubious efforts including an attempt to employ alleged psychics for "remote viewing" of Soviet installations and the wiring of cats for use in audio surveillance operations. The documents were obtained by Archive Senior Fellow Jeffrey Richelson for his latest book, The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology, and include material obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the National Archives, and the CIA public affairs office.

The documents show how the agency, in its first fifteen to twenty years became involved in the development of satellite and aerial reconnaissance systems, the technical analysis of foreign space and missile systems, the analysis of foreign nuclear programs, the collection of electronic intelligence to aid analysts of Soviet missile systems as well as those charged with determining the vulnerability of CIA reconnaissance aircraft. (One CIA program, PALLADIUM, involved manipulating Soviet radars to place "ghost aircraft" on the screens of Soviet operators ­ and determine how well the Soviets could detect aircraft of different sizes.) The documents also trace the evolution of CIA's science and technology activities and organization during the Cold War and beyond ­ as well as conflicts with the National Reconnaissance Office and Air Force with regard to satellite development and technical intelligence analysis.

In addition, to employing "psychics" to attempt to peer into Soviet and other foreign military activities, other questionable scientific activities, illustrated by the documents, included behavior modification research and the attempt to use cats as mobile bugging devices (a project dubbed "Acoustic Kitty"). A never before published document contains a rather negative evaluation of a "remote viewing" exercise directed at a facility the CIA designated URDF-3 (Unidentified Research and Development Facility-3).

The documents are available at the following URL:
http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/press.html

-------- terrorism

Planes crash into World Trade Center

September 11, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/nobyline-200191194511.htm

Terrorists crashed two planes into the World Trade Center and knocked down the twin 110-story towers this morning in a horrific scene of destruction. Explosions also rocked the Pentagon and the State Department and spread fear across the nation.

"I have a sense it's a horrendous number of lives lost," Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said. "I don't know yet. Right now we have to focus on saving as many lives as possible."

Authorities had been trying to evacuate those who work in the twin towers, but many were thought to have been trapped. About 50,000 people work at the Trade Center.

"This is perhaps the most audacious terrorist attack that's ever taken place in the world," said Chris Yates, an aviation expert at Jane's Transport in London. "It takes a logistics operation from the terror group involved that is second to none. Only a very small handful of terror groups is on that list. ... I would name at the top of the list Osama bin Laden."

President Bush ordered a full-scale investigation to "hunt down the folks who committed this act."

Within the hour, an aircraft crashed on a helicopter landing pad near the Pentagon, and the White House, the Pentagon and the Capitol were evacuated.

In Pennsylvania, a large plane, believed to be a Boeing 747, crashed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The fate of those aboard was not immediately known and it was not clear if the crash was related to the disasters elsewhere.

Authorities went on alert from coast to coast, halting all air traffic, evacuating high-profile buildings and tightening security at strategic installations. The Situation Room at the White House was in full operation.

"Everyone was screaming, crying, running, cops, people, firefighters, everyone," said Mike Smith, a fire marshal. "It's like a war zone."

"I just saw the building I work in come down," said businessman Gabriel Ioan, shaking in shock outside City Hall, a cloud of smoke and ash from the World Trade Center behind him. "I just saw the top of Trade Two come down."

Nearby a crowd mobbed a man on a pay phone, screaming at him to get off the phone so that they could call relatives. Dust and dirt flew everywhere. Ash was 2 to 3 inches deep in places. People wandered dazed and terrified.

Evacuations were ordered at the United Nations in New York and at the Sears Tower in Chicago. Los Angeles mobilized its anti-terrorism division, and security was intensified around the naval facilities in Hampton Roads, Va.

One of the planes that crashed into the Trade Center was American Airlines Flight 11, hijacked after takeoff from Boston en route to Los Angeles, the airline said.

The planes blasted fiery, gaping holes in the upper floors of the twin towers. A witness said he saw bodies falling and people jumping out. About an hour later, the southern tower collapsed with a roar and a huge cloud of smoke; the other tower fell about a half-hour after that, covering lower Manhattan in heaps of gray rubble and broken glass. Firefighters trapped in the rubble radioed for help.

"Today we've had a national tragedy," Bush said in Sarasota, Fla. "Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country." He said he would be returning immediately to Washington.

The crashes at the World Trade Center happened minutes apart, beginning just before 9 a.m.

Heavy black smoke billowed into the sky above one of New York City's most famous landmarks, and debris rained down on the street, one of the city's busiest work areas. When the second plane hit, a fireball of flame and smoke erupted, leaving a huge hole in the glass and steel tower.

John Axisa, who was getting off a commuter train to the World Trade Center, said he saw "bodies falling out" of the building. He said he ran outside, and watched people jump out of the first building. Then there was a second explosion, and he felt heat on the back of neck.

WCBS-TV, citing an FBI agent, said five or six people jumped out of the windows. Witnesses on the street screamed every time another person leaped.

People ran down the stairs in panic and fled the building. Thousands of pieces of what appeared to be office paper drifted over Brooklyn, about three miles away.

Several subway lines were immediately shut down. Trading on Wall Street was suspended. New York's mayoral primary election was postponed. All bridges and tunnels into Manhattan were closed down.

David Reck was handing out literature for a candidate for public advocate a few blocks away when he saw a jet come in "very low, and then it made a slight twist and dove into the building."

Terrorist bombers struck the World Trade Center in February 1993, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.

"A second occurrence is just beyond belief," said Ira Furber, former National Transportation Safety Board spokesman.

"It's just sick. It just shows how vulnerable we really are," Keith Meyers, 39, said in Columbus, Ohio. "It kind of makes you want to go home and spend time with your family. It puts everything in perspective," Meyers said. He said he called to check in with his wife. They have two young children.

In New York, "we heard a large boom and then we saw all this debris just falling," said Harriet Grimm, who was inside a bookstore on the World Trade Center's first floor when the first explosion rocked the building.

"The plane was coming in low and ... it looked like it hit at a slight angle," said Sean Murtagh, a CNN vice president, the network reported.

In 1945, an Army Air Corps B-25, a twin-engine bomber, crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in dense fog.

In Florida, Bush was reading to children in a classroom at 9:05 a.m. when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered into his ear. The president briefly turned somber before he resumed reading. He addressed the tragedy about a half-hour later.

----

World Trade Center Towers Collapse After Apparent Terrorist Attack

New York Times
September 11, 2001
By JAMES BARRON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/national/11WIRE-PLAN.html

In what appeared to be parallel attacks on quintessenial symbols of American financial and military power, planes slammed into both towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, and then a short time later another crashed into the Pentagon, outside Washington. Both of the 110-story towers at the World Trade Center collapsed about an hour later in a cloud of rubble.

There was an immediate fear of a large loss of life, with a police spokesman in New York City saying the death toll could be in the thousands.

President Bush, who was in Sarasota, Fla., called the incidents at the World Trade Center ``an apparent terrorist attack on our country'' and ordered a full-scale investigation to ``hunt down the folks who committed this act.'' He was taken for his safety to a military base in Louisiana and there was no immediate indication when he would return to Washington.

Vice President Dick Cheney and First Lady Laura Bush, who were in Washington, were taken to an undisclosed secure location.

The planes that smashed into the World Trade Center punched huge, fiery holes in the upper floors of the twin towers around 9 a.m. The crash of the second plane, 18 minutes after the first, was broadcast live by television stations whose helicopters had converged in the sky over lower Manhattan after the first crash.

Several witnesses said they saw bodies falling from the twin towers and people jumping out before the first of the buildings collapsed in a roar of rubble and smoke. The other tower fell about a half-hour after that.

The number of casualties was not immediately assessed at the World Trade Center, which was caught up in the usual midmorning rhythms of office workers taking the long elevator rides to offices hundreds of feet above the ground. In the hour between when the planes crashed into the two quarter-century-old skyscrapers and when they gave way, the authorities had begun trying to evacuate survivors.

Wall Street shut down soon after the crashes at the World trade Center, and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani - whose citywide command center is in one of the smaller buildings adjacent to the twin towers - ordered lower Manhattan evacuated.

Primary elections for mayor and other offices in New York City were called off after they had begun. All bridges and tunnels were closed and only emergency vehicles were being allowed to enter Manhattan.

Workers were also sent home in Washington, where the West Wing of the White House was evacuated and a two-block area around the White House was closed off to pedestrians and vehicles. Several Air Force fighter jets were seen flying over the capital as people streamed out of office buildings.

It was not immediately clear what airlines owned the planes that hit the World Trade Center.

But four planes were reported to be in trouble in the East. American Airlines and United Airlines each confirmed losing two planes, and some witnesses said they saw American's double-A logo on the tail of the first plane at the World Trade Center.

American said that it had lost two planes: Flight 11, a Boeing 767 from Boston to Los Angeles with 81 passengers, 9 flight attendants and 2 pilots, and the other was Flight 77, a Boeing 757 that left Dulles International Airport near Washington for Los Angeles with 58 passengers, 4 attendants and two pilots.

United also said that one of its Boeing 767's, which left Boston at 7:58 a.m. for Los Angeles, had crashed, but they did not know where. United said that plane was carrying 56 passengers, 7 flight attendants and 2 pilots.

``We are horrified by these tragic events,'' said Donald J. Carty, chairman and chief executive of AMR Corporation, the parent of American Airlines. ``Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of all involved.''

United also said that it was sending a team to Johnstown, Pa., where a United Airlines 757 crashed on the way from Newark to San Francisco. It was carrying 38 passengers, 5 flight attendants and 2 pilots.

In the minutes before the World Trade Center disappeared behind thick clouds of dark smoke, Barbara Geanne Mensch, a photographer who lives next to the Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan, said she heard a rumble like a truck going over the bridge, but louder than usual.

``I ran to the windows and saw the tower on fire,'' she said. Then she went to the roof of her building. ``I saw flames. I knew inside, my visceral reaction was, I am watching people die.''

Then the second plane came into view. ``It veered to the right and toward the tower, and then there was a ball of flames.''

Nicholas Gasper, a city transit employee who was standing on the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge, said he watched the second plane ``doing a tilt into the building. From what I saw it looked like the place sliced into the tower.'' He said the building shook. ``I am still shaking,'' he added minutes later.

Terrance Phillips, who was three or four blocks away, said he was looking at the fire from the first crash when he saw the second plane approaching. ``It crashed in and exploded. People were watching and then they started stampeding away.''

On the streets of lower Manhattan, people screamed at the sight of the second plane, said Mark N. Vamos, who was had just emerged from the subway at Broadway and Wall Street on his way to work. ``We all just stood there for a second and realized that tons of debris were about to fall on us.'' He went back into the subway.

James Wang, a 21-year-old Northwestern University student who was in Manhattan for the Democratic primary, was taking pictures in a park near the World Trade Center when the first tower burst into flames. When the second tower was hit, ``metal and debris and glass started falling,'' he said. ``It was from so high, you could see it slowly falling on you.''

In the next hour, ambulances and fire trucks raced to lower Manhattan from throughout the city and began carrying injured people to hospitals. At New York University-Downtown Hospital, Kathleen Zichy, the senior vice president for development, said ``a great number of patients'' came in during the 90 minutes after the first crash. But she said that because of the cloud of rubble from the collapse of the towers, ``You can't see six feet ahead of you in the street.''

St. Vincent's Hospital set up a treatment unit in the street outside its building in Greenwich Village, and at Bellevue Hospital, 20 patients had been admitted by 11 a.m., including a woman who was pregnant, a hospital official said. The official also said one man had been dead on arrival.

--------

Plane Crashes Into Pentagon, Symbol of American Power

By DAVID STOUT
September 11, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/national/11CND-PENT.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 - An aircraft crashed into the Pentagon, the massive office building that is the very symbol of the American military establishment, today about an hour after the conflagration began in New York.

The craft struck the five-sided structure with tremendous force, driving itself through the huge outer rings of the building and into the park-like central courtyard.

Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, told The Associated Press there were ``extensive casualties and an unknown number of fatalities.''

``We don't know the extent of the injuries,'' he said.

President Bush was in Florida when he got word of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. ``Terrorism against our nation will not stand,'' he said before he was flown to the safety of a military base in Louisiana.

Vice President Dick Cheney was in Washington and was taken, along with First Lady Laura Bush, to an undisclosed secure location. Security was tightened around other government leaders as well. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was not hurt, Mr. Flood said. Nor apparently was Gen. Richard Myers, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The present chairman, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, was out of town.

The crash was accompanied by a thunderous explosion that virtually collapsed one side of the gray structure, symbol of America's military might for more than a half-century. It is also the symbol to American enemies of what they see as American imperialism.

Many Pentagon employees told of being knocked out of their chairs by the explosion. Moments afterward, they began evacuating the building, creating a stream of white, blue and green uniforms among other people in civilian clothes. More than 20,000 military and civilian employees work at the defense center, which is in Arlington, Va., just across the Potomac River from the capital.

There were conflicting reports about what type of craft had smashed into the Pentagon. An early report said the craft that struck the Pentagon was a helicopter, but it was later confirmed that the craft was airliner, which witnesses said accelerated as it approached the building.

Almost simultaneously, there was a report, later determined to be false, of a car bomb exploding outside the State Department Building in northwest Washington, just a short distance from the National Mall and the Lincoln Memorial.

The Pentagon blast brought a quick evacuation of the White House, where mid-morning broadcast reports said a separate bomb threat was received. The Capitol, the Supreme court and virtually all other government buildings shut down, except for those that are headquarters to law enforcement agencies, where command centers were being set up.

The Pentagon attack, quickly following on the horror at the World Trade Center, brought the government to a standstill, at least for the moment. All the talk of tax cuts and budget deficits that had filled Washington corridors before today suddenly seemed irrelevant.

By midday, investigations were already under way to try to establish responsibility or blame for possible lapses in airport security and for what might be a failure of intelligence, since today's attacks were evidently coordinated and caught the country by surprise.

The terrorist attacks were certain to accelerate debate about how the United States should deal with threats from within and abroad.

Today's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon stunned official Washington as have few events in recent times. The effect was likened by some to the attack on Pearl Harbor or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The deadly bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995 seemed eclipsed by what happened today.

Early suspicions about today's attacks focused on Osama bin-Laden, the Middle East who has avowed his hatred for the United States.

By early afternoon, some three hours after the Pentagon attack, flames were still streaming from the Pentagon's windows. Secondary explosions were reported, and great billows of smoke continued to drift into the clear blue sky.

The Pentagon, completed in the 1940's, is one of the biggest office buildings in the world. Its interior is a maze of corridors and hallways. Each of the sides is so huge that only a large and powerful object traveling at great speed could push itself from the exterior of the building into the courtyard.

American Airlines confirmed at midmorning that it had lost two aircraft with a total of 156 people aboard, one a flight from Boston to Los Angeles, the other a plane leaving Washington's Dulles Airport for Los Angeles.

President Bush called the events an apparent ``terrorist attack'' and pledged that the federal government would ``hunt down'' those responsible.

The explosions and subsequent government shutdowns plunged the District of Columbia into a severe gridlock as government employees tried to make their way home. There was no panic in the streets, but the wail of police sirens was constant, and people gathered in knots to ask questions and share snippets of information and rumor.

More than a dozen fire engines could be seen around the White House. There was no access to Lafayette Square across Pennsylvania Avenue, which was being guarded by officers with sub-machine guns.


-------- activists

In Wake of Attacks, Public Discussions Planned

For Immediate Release 9/11/01
From: Greg Mello <gmello@lasg.org>
Los Alamos Study Group

Santa Fe ­ A series of public forums on domestic and international security, civil liberties, and related issues will take place this week in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Los Alamos. The discussions are being organized by the Los Alamos Study Group, a nonprofit disarmament research and education organization. Organized under the title "Security in the Wake of Violence: Where Do We Go From Here?", these discussions will provide a moderated venue for airing both the immediate and the underlying issues so painfully raised by today's attacks on key U.S. targets. How can the U.S. be made more secure?

• What is security? What are the building blocks of real security ­ for individuals, families, communities, and countries? • What is the role of the military? What roles do individuals play? What about communities? • What are the domestic consequences of our security choices? • How can the role of U.S. in the world be structured to avoid "blowback," the CIA term for angry response to our actions? • What might a balanced approach to security look like? • Could a climate of fear and insecurity result in a loss of civil liberties, and if so, what constructive actions might citizens take to prevent this? • What are the possible consequences of reprisals?

Forums will be held at the following times and places:

• Wednesday In Santa Fe, 7:00 pm: At the Unitarian Church, in Fogelson Hall, Barcelona Road at the corner of Galisteo Street, Santa Fe.

• Thursday in Albuquerque, 7:00 pm: At the UNM Continuing Education Conference Center, in Room C, 1634 University Boulevard (just north of Indian School Road), Albuquerque.

• Friday in Los Alamos, 7:00 pm: At Los Alamos High School, in the Topper Theater, 1300 Diamond Drive (just east of the Trinity Drive/Oppenheimer Drive intersection), Los Alamos.

Each forum will provide a mix of facilitated discussion, problem-solving, and short presentations by invited guests. For further information, call the staff of the Study Group at 982-7747.

----

America's Terrorist Roots

Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com
September 11, 2001
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11463

"Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman, or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed, or 'disappeared', at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame." -- Amnesty International, 1996

"Everything I did, I did for my country." -- Pol Pot

As people recoil in horror at what is undeniably, well, a horror and a tragedy, and as the U.S. undoubtedly starts to mount retaliatory attacks, here are a few brief reminders of how we got here.

I listened incredulously Monday as NPR's "Talk of the Nation" sunk to what I can only wish was a new low, with a spirited, cheerful, explicit hour-long defense of the wholesome goodness for the entire world of the American Empire and its current global military dominance. Two cheerleaders for this arrangement deftly handled softball questions, while nobody, in the segments I could stomach listening to, bothered to point out that, for example, this country was founded because our much- worshipped "Founding Fathers" didn't like being told what to do by bullies halfway around the world. Times haven't changed that much.

Yesterday, Henry Kissinger was facing accusations (thank you, Christopher Hitchens) of being a war criminal. He's not alone. Here's a short list of additional recent American war criminals-- essentially the American leaders of the last decades:

William Clinton, former President, for 78 days and nights of bombing the civilians of Yugoslavia (carried out by U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark under NATO auspices); continuation of sanctions and rocket attacks upon the people of Iraq; and illegal bombings of Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, and Afghanistan.

Gen. Colin Powell, Secretary of State, for his leading role in the attacks on Panama, Iraq, and covering up My Lai. George Bush, former President, for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and thousands of Panamanian civilians (along with kidnapping the country's leader, a former CIA protιgι).

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, former Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command, for his role in attacking Iraqi civilians.

Ronald Reagan, former President, for illegal attacks on El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Grenada, and Libya.

Elliot Abrams, former Assistant Secretary of State (and back in the new Bush Administration), for overseeing much of the death and fascism in Central America. Also Casper Weinberger, Secretary of Defense; Lt. Col. Oliver North; and many others.

Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State: Chile, Vietnam, East Timor, Angola, Iraq, and Cambodia.

Gerald Ford, former President, for giving approval to Indonesia for the genocide of East Timor.

And on, back through the war in Southeast Asia. "War criminal" means just that--inflicting a level of carnage barbaric and unacceptable even in time of war. It does not even begin to touch the many regimes -- today, Israel comes to mind -- that the U.S. has supported, armed, advised, and even installed, who have inflicted horrors on their own populations.

This is a day of complete horror in the history of the United States; and the American public as well as its leaders will demand retribution. Let's not forget, however, how we got to this day.

----

Atrocities may be designed to provoke America into costly military adventure

By Robert Fisk
12 September 2001

I can imagine how Osama bin Laden received the news of the atrocities in the United States. In all, I must have spent five hours listening to him in Sudan and then in the vastness of the Afghan mountains, as he described the inevitable collapse of the United States, just as he and his comrades in the Afghan war helped to destroy the power of the Red Army.

He will have watched satellite television, he will have sat in the corner of his room, brushing his teeth as he always did, with a mishwak stick, thinking for up to a minute before speaking; he is one of the few Arabs who doesn't feel embarrassed to think before he speaks. He once told me with pride how his own men had attacked the Americans in Somalia. He acknowledged that he knew personally two of the Saudis executed for bombing an American military base in Riyadh. Could he have been behind yesterday's mass slaughter in America?

Of course, we need a health warning here. If Mr bin Laden was really guilty of all the things he has been blamed for, he would need an army of 10,000. And there is something deeply disturbing about the world's habit of turning to the latest hate figure whenever blood is shed. But when events of this momentous scale take place, there is a new legitimacy in casting one's eyes at those who have constantly threatened America.

Mr bin Laden had a kind of religious experience during the Afghan war. A Russian shell had fallen at his feet and, in the seconds as he waited for it to explode, he said he had a sudden, religious feeling of calmness. The shell ­ and Americans may come to wish the opposite happened ­ never exploded. The United States must leave the Gulf, he would say every 10 minutes. America must stop all sanctions against the Iraqi people. America must stop using Israel to oppress Palestinians. It was his constant theme, untouched by doubt or the real complexities of the Middle East. He was not fighting an anti-colonial war, but a religious one. In the Arabia that he would govern, there would be more, not less, head chopping, more severe punishments, no Western-style democracy.

His supporters ­ Algerians, Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Gulf Arabs ­ would gather round him in his tent with the awe of men listening to a messiah. I watched them one night in Afghanistan in a mountain camp so cold that I woke to find ice in my hair. They were obedient to him, not the kind of obedience of schoolchildren but the sort of adherence you find among people whose minds are made up. And the words they listened to were fearful in their implications. American civilians would no more be spared than military targets. This was not a man who would hesitate to carry out his promises if he could. He was a man who would have appreciated the appalling irony of creating a missile defence shield against "rogue states'' but unable to prevent men crashing domestic airliners into the centre of America's financial and military power.

Yet I also remember one night when Mr bin Laden saw a pile of newspapers in my bag and seized upon them. By a sputtering oil lamp, he read them page by page in the corner of his tent, clearly unaware of the world around him, reading aloud of an Iranian Foreign Minister's visit to Saudi Arabia. Was this really a man who could damage America, who would have laughed when he heard that the United States had placed a $5m (£3.3m) reward on his head? Was it not America, I wondered then, which was turning Mr bin Laden into the face of "world terror?'' Was he really so powerful and so deadly?

If ­ and we must keep repeating this word if ­ the shadow of the Middle East falls over yesterday's destruction, then who else in the region could produce such meticulously timed assaults on the world's only superpower? The rag-tag and corrupt Palestinian nationalist groups that used to favour hijacking are unlikely to be able to produce a single suicide bomber. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have neither the capability nor the money that this assault needed. Perhaps the old satellite groups that moved close to the Lebanese Hezbollah in the 1980s, before the organisation became a solely resistance movement, could plan something like this. The bombing of the US Marines in 1983 needed precision, timing and infinite planning. But Iran, which supported these groups, has changed out of recognition since then, now more involved in its internal struggles than in the long-dead aspiration to "export'' a religious revolution. Iraq lies broken, its agents more intent on torturing their own people than striking at the country that defeated it so suddenly in 1991.

So the mountains of Afghanistan will be photographed from satellite and high-altitude aircraft in the coming days, Mr bin Laden's old training camps ­ and perhaps a few new ones ­ highlighted on the overhead projectors in the Pentagon. But to what end? When America last tried to strike at Mr bin Laden, it destroyed an innocent pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan and a few of Mr bin Laden's Muslim followers in Afghanistan. For if this is a war between the Saudi millionaire and President Bush's America, it cannot be fought like other wars. Indeed, can it be fought at all without some costly military adventure overseas.

Or is that what Mr bin Laden seeks above all else?

----

TRAGIC ATTACK: "SPACE-BASED WEAPONS / BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE IRRATIONAL," SAYS RENOWNED ATTORNEY DANIEL SHEEHAN.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA. - In the aftermath of the tragedies at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and the downed airliner near Pittsburgh, Pa., renowned attorney Daniel Sheehan, Director and General Counsel and Director of the Institute for Cooperation in Space, has publicly spoken out, calling "space-based weapons, ballistic missile defense irrational."

"Above all we should now realize that the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars on the construction of an anti-ballistic missile system (the so-called "missile shield") is clearly not a realistic or potentially effective response to an event of this complex nature. We should be on guard against those who would use this incident as an irrational source of support for such an irrational program," Sheehan states.

"The expenditure of hundred of billions of dollars, or any dollars at all, on an irrational missile shield system is most certainly not to be included in how we respond," Daniel Sheehan concludes.

Sheehan, a Harvard Law School graduate, who is famous for an impressive body of legal work including the Karen Silkwood case, Pentagon Papers case, Three Mile Island, and the Iran Contra case, states, "At a point in time like this in the lives of our human family it is essential that everyone remain calm, that we extend our prayers and condolences to all of the families of those killed and injured and pray for the recovery of those who are still in danger."

Sheehan continues, "It is equally important that we refrain from resorting to threats of physical violence against those whom we suspect may be responsible. However, it is essential that we respond to tragic actions of this nature by accurately and calmly assessing all of the factors which have contributed to its occurrence and that we craft steps to be taken to prevent incidents of this nature in the future."

"The policies of the US government and of a number of Middle Eastern nations and the non-rational invocations of cultural values have led to this complex tragedy," Sheehan says.

"Only a careful and rational analysis will demonstrate the degree of respect that we must pay to those who have died today," says Sheehan. "The period of mourning for our dead must be characterized by a calm and responsible analysis of what we must do to prevent a reoccurrence of such a tragedy and what we must do to begin to untie the complex knots of policy which have led to this tragedy."

ICIS - Institute for Cooperation in Space More Information: http://www.peaceinspace.com

----

A Media Day In Infamy

Geov Parrish, AlterNet
September 11, 2001
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11471

Historically, when national and local media respond to a breaking emergency, speculation and hyperbole take over. On Tuesday morning we witnessed, again, how powerful media images can electrify a world instantly; and, how we in the media sometimes use our power irresponsibly.

For hours in the morning, Tom Brokaw and NBC were reporting that the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- along with Hamas, one of the two groups responsible for many of the suicide bombings in Israel - - had claimed responsibility for the attack. That unsubstantiated claim turned out to be based upon one anonymous phone call to Abu Dhabi television, but it lasted for hours, until a DFLP spokesman could call and explicitly disavow it.

That was just the tip of it. Speculation was rampant, on absolutely no evidence, that someone Islamic -- usually Osama bin Laden -- was responsible, but that speculation often broadly invoked "Islam" as responsible -- using every adherent of one of the world's largest religions, with a couple of billion believers, as shorthand for "terrorist." Pat Robertson was on the 700 Club within an hour, blaming Islam itself, and later, on Fox, talking about Satan and Arabs. It was reminiscent of what turned out to be grossly inaccurate reports, in the first few hours after the Oklahoma City bombing, that "Arabs" were behind it. If I were Arab-American, I'd be scared.

As it became clear that the immediate attacks were over, the talking heads moved in. Across the country, media localized the story by reporting on our communal fear. It not only recited the local closings (done either out of prudence or panic), but, also, as the hours and repetition wore on, trotted in "experts" who offered speculation as truth. The cacophony itself added to our communal fear.

Mercifully, no New York official was foolhardy enough to immediately speculate on casualties. Had anyone put out a number, particularly a fantastic number, it would have been stripped of caveats and instantly bandied about as a received truth, adding to the public's sense of panic. Both national and local media also deserve credit for avoiding excessive speculation on the numbers of casualties.

But while speculation on who was responsible ran wild, without exception, not one talking head I saw or heard wanted to touch on the why, except for occasional references to madmen. But it was, and is, worse than that. The attackers were not insane; they were engaging in a cold-blooded, premeditated mass murder of another country's civilians to achieve political ends. Some of the networks' talking heads -- former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Al Haig come to mind -- had, in the past, overseen the same things.

Haig, interviewed by CNN's Judy Woodruff, decried that those who might "quibble," based on "a misguided sense of social justice," with a U.S. response that takes innocent lives abroad or denies constitutional rights at home. Woodruff did not question this remarkable assertion.

Our collective, emotional public response is to want vengeance. Who would feel differently? It's hard to say why this happened, but there has been so much bloodshed around the world that the U.S. has been associated with -- often with much higher death tolls than this attack but with fewer cameras present -- that it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that the same feelings we have this week -- of fear, vulnerability, rage -- are the feelings that motivated this cowardly attack in the first place. That was territory no media reports dared venture into.

----

Statement from the American Anti Discrimination Committee:

Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Subject: Attacks on Washington, N.Y.

Dear ADCers and Friends,

Assalamu'alaikum,
As we woke up today to the tragic news of three plane crashes into N.Y.C and Washington, please allow me to share with you the following points that are an early statement of ADC Fresno:

1. We have been, for a long time, trying as Arab-Americans to bring to the attention of the American people the atrocities being committed around the world, using American weapons subsidized by our tax money, as is the case with Israel. Israel has been receiving in excess of $10 Million a DAY in aid, mostly in the form of guns and warplanes being used to terrorize the civilian population of Palestine. We have repeatedly warned that such policy will eventually bring the U.S. into this conflict as a direct party. The decision by successive U.S. administrations to ignore such atrocities, and the arrogance with which this administration has dealt with the issue only expedited this eventual confrontation. We have said it before, the children of Palestine are left with no hope other than war against those gunning them down, and those supplying them with the means to do so. Violence begets violence! What do you expect when you wage war against a people that have done you no harm..?!

2. Regardless of early indications of responsibility, this has the appearance of a well-orchestrated attack on a global level. Whereas I would like to believe that Ben Laden (mentioned as a possible suspect already) is capable of logistically masterminding such an operation, I would not discount the prospect of the Mossad having a hand in this. Worldwide, public opinion has been steadily moving away from support of Israel, and has started seeing the Palestinians as the victims they are, in spite of substantial P.R. campaigns waged by Israel. This could very well be (another) attempt by Israel to demonize Arabs and Muslims, and to bringing them to a direct military confrontation with the U.S. The hope would be to turn public opinion around, enabling the current vicious Israeli government to quench Sharon's thirst for blood with a free hand and even more overt U.S. support. This should quiet down the criticism of the American people towards their governments collusion with Israel against Palestinian civilians..., so goes the theory. The Mossad has performed similar acts in the past, as has been documented by its own (Victor Ostrovsky- By Way of Deception), and I wouldn't be surprised if they had a hand in this one as well!

Arab-Americans, in general, and Fresno area ADC members express their deepest sympathies and condolences to the victims of this attack and their families. Blood shed, on either side, is not something we stomach, and we condemn this attack, as well as the daily attacks against Palestinians in the occupied territories. We take this opportunity to call on all parties, again, to stop the cycle of violence that has spread beyond the immediate borders, as has been expected. We call upon the United States government to exercise its global responsibility by playing the role of moderator and bringing the parties to the negotiation table.

Ghassan AbulGhanam President See: http://www.adc.org/

----

Statement from the War Resisters League

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
September 11, 2001

New York, New York As we write, Manhattan feels under siege, with all bridges, tunnels, and subways closed, and tens of thousands of people walking slowly north from Lower Manhattan. As we sit in our offices here at War Resisters League, our most immediate thoughts are of the hundreds if not thousands of New Yorkers who have lost their lives in the collapse of the World Trade Center. The day is clear, the sky is blue, but vast clouds billow over the ruins where so many have died, including a great many rescue workers who were there when the final collapse occurred.

Of course we know that our friends and co-workers in Washington, D.C. have similar thoughts about the ordinary people who have been trapped in the parts of the Pentagon which were also struck by a jet. And we think of the innocent passengers on the hi-jacked jets who were carried to their doom on this day.

We do not know at this time from what source the attack came. We do know that Yasser Arafat has condemned the bombing. We hesitate to make an extended analysis until more information is available but some things are clear. For the Bush Administration to talk of spending hundreds of billions on Star Wars is clearly the sham it was from the beginning, when terrorism can so easily strike through more routine means.

We urge Congress and George Bush that whatever response or policy the U.S. develops it will be clear that this nation will no longer target civilians, or accept any policy by any nation which targets civilians. This would mean an end to the sanctions against Iraq, which have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. It would mean not only a condemnation of terrorism by Palestinians but also the policy of assassination against the Palestinian leadership by Israel, and the ruthless repression of the Palestinian population and the continuing occupation by Israel of the West Bank and Gaza.

The policies of militarism pursued by the United States have resulted in millions of deaths, from the historic tragedy of the Indochina war, through the funding of death squads in Central America and Colombia, to the sanctions and air strikes against Iraq. This nation is the largest supplier of "conventional weapons" in the world-and those weapons fuel the starkest kind of terrorism from Indonesia to Africa. The early policy support for armed resistance in Afghanistan resulted in the victory of the Taliban-and the creation of Osama Bin Laden.

Other nations have also engaged in these policies. We have, in years past, condemned the actions of the Russian government in areas such as Chechnya, the violence on both sides in the Middle East, and in the Balkans. But our nation must take responsibility for its own actions. Up until now we have felt safe within our borders. To wake on a clear day to find our largest city under siege reminds us that in a violent world, none are safe.

Let us seek an end of the militarism that has characterized this nation for decades. Let us seek a world in which security is gained through disarmament, international cooperation, and social justice not through escalation and retaliation. We condemn without reservation attacks such as those which occurred today, which strike at thousands of civilians-may these profound tragedies remind us of the impact U.S. policies have had on other civilians in other lands. We also condemn reflexive hostility against people of Arab descent living in this country and urge that Americans recall the part of our heritage that opposes bigotry in all forms.

We are one world. We shall live in a state of fear and terror or we shall move toward a future in which we seek peaceful alternatives to violence, and a more just distribution of the world's resources. As we mourn the many lives lost, our hearts call out for reconciliation, not revenge.

--

This is not an official statement of the War Resisters League but was drafted immediately after the tragic events occurred. Signed and issued by members of the staff and Executive Committee of War Resisters League at the national office, September 11, 2001:

asif ullah Carmen Trotta Chris Ney David McReynolds Joanne Sheehan Judith Mahoney Pasternak Melissa Jameson

Contact: David McReynolds, 212-674-7268 Joanne Sheehan, 860-889-5337 War Resisters League, 212-228-0450

----

D.C. Declared State of Emergency;
Activists Call for U.S. Restraint

STATE OF EMERGENCY Sep 11 2001
http://dc.indymedia.org/

Washington, D.C. and northern Virginia has been declared a state of emergency and all people are being asked to stay in their homes until further notice after a plane crashed into the Pentagon this morning in what appears to be part of a coordinated terrorist attack against the United States.

The National Guard has been activated to clear traffic on roads and patrol the streets. The U.S. military has been put on a high state of alert, and military helicopters and fighter jets are buzzing in the skies above the District and northern Virginia.

President Bush has declared the plane crashes at the Pentagon and the World Trade Organization in New York as terrorist attacks, saying that freedom has been threatened and that the United States will "hunt down" and punish those responsible. "Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended," Bush said.

However, local activists in D.C. worry that the U.S. government and military are planning to escalate violence around the world in response. They say that the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Organization are the result of oppressive economic and military policies that the United States inflicts on other countries and people.

"There seems to be no acknowledgement of how this could be related to economic and military policies of the United States and the World Trade Organization," said Bork, an anti-corporate globalization activist.

"How can you not expect that something is going to happen. The U.S. is going to have to change its disregard for the rest of the world and the poor or they are going to see this continue to happen . . . This is a perfect example of why these policies have to change."

Emergency crews continue to operate at the Pentagon. No detailed information is yet available on how many people have been killed or injured but the airports and main roads have been closed. Area help agencies are asking people to donate blood.

----

Statement on Attacks in USA

From: "Laure Akai" <cube@zigzag.pl>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001

Statement #1

Innocent people never deserve to die for their country or because of their country.

Yet, now the realities of airstrikes and mass destruction has returned to the US. Newscasters, politicians and other shapers of public opinion all chorus that none of them have ever seen such things, yet many people around the world have this kind of devastation in recent memory and in fact have suffered on a far deeper and greater level. This is the one thing that has to be remembered above all in this situation, that airstrikes and murder are nothing new and that although all the victims before these have been dehumanized in the US media, people around the world have been suffering, often at the hands of the US military, for many years.

We are quite sad that civilians are killed in incidents like this. We have been sad for years. We've been mourning Chechens and Palestinians massacred for resisting or just for existing, we've been mourning the victims of wars around the world, of repression and political displacement.

The so-called terrorists, they surely must feel that they, their people or compatriots have been victimized by the US, and it's probably true. They probably have no hope at all that the US military will stop doing this, in particular since it arrogantly and inhumanely refuses to address many complaints about the plight of the Palestinians and the US role in supporting their suffering. And for these policy choices, who knows how many innocent american (and probably other) people have just lost their lives, victims to US foreign policy. (Perhaps also victims to a religious-fanatic reaction against globalization.) The State will be calling for terrorist blood, but it will continue to enact its murderous and socially irresponsible policies without accepting moral responsibility for their repercussions.

The State acts with or without the consent of the people but it cannot exist and act in such ways without the active consent of the people or without their passive apathy. The American populace to a large extent shares responsibility for the deaths of their compatriots, as they share responsibility for all deaths carried out by or in the interests of the US military. The americans en-masse have given up their citizenship in the real sense of the word; they act unconcerned about even the most alarming of political events, except when it hits them at home. Then they act indignant when the actions of their State has unwanted repercussions. But this is not civic responsibility, this is not global citizenship. Such a thing only starts to happen when people think about the consequences of the State's actions as they would think about the consequence of their own. That is, something real, something lived, something that has its consequences and something that each person should take responsibility for.

We call on anarchists around the world to use this opportunity to step up the attack on the State, the institution of representative power and on all military aggression carried out in State or religious interests. People must be made aware that by choosing a life of civic passivity instead of self-government, they are letting their lives be run by uncountable murderers who bring all sorts of disaster upon ordinary people. In order to stop the killings, we have to stop the government and the wars made of people deemed inferior by the powers of the world. We must also fight against the reactionary jihad and all forms of resistance which threaten to deliver equally murderous fates to their opposition.

The question in the end is a very simple one: how many people have to die before people act decisively to take power away from the murderers? And how many people have to die before the americans realise that they are people not at all different than they? Now the americans may feel pain that they are losing "some of their own", but as human beings, being been losing too many of our own for too many senseless reasons for years.

STOP THE GOVERNMENT NOW!
Praska Anarchist Group

----

Markets lose £67bn in one day

Tue, 11 Sep 2001
http://www.ananova.com/business/story/sm_395977.html

Around £67 billion has been wiped from the value of the FTSE 100 Index as the City reacted to the terrorist attacks in America.

The Footsie suffered its biggest one-day percentage fall since 1987, closing down 287.7 points at 4746.0, as panicked City dealers sold shares in droves.

Trading continued via computer screens despite the London Stock Exchange being evacuated and exchanges on Wall Street remaining closed.

The closing price represents a 5.7% fall during the day and means the index is now at its lowest since October 1998.

British Airways, which has cancelled all of its remaining flights to the US for the day, was the heaviest faller on the London market, down 21%, or 56p, at 208p, while airports operator BAA also lost 16%, or 1011/2p, at 5161/2p.

The prospect of higher oil prices pushed BP higher, up 271/2p at 5881/2p, and Shell 111/2p stronger at 543p.

Prior to the attacks, London shares had been in upbeat mood, surging past the 5,100 barrier and rebounding from Monday's slump as bargain hunters moved in to snap up stocks.

Telecoms and techs initially pushed the market higher as sentiment improved during the morning.

But events in the US had a devastating impact on the market in the afternoon.

----

Taliban deny bin Laden's involvement in US attacks

Tue, 11 Sep 2001
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_395955.html

Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers have condemned the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

The group rejects suggestions Osama bin Laden could be behind them.

The Taliban's ambassador to neighbouring Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, says bin Laden does not have the facilities needed to carry out such well-orchestrated attacks.

"It is premature to level allegation against a person who is not in a position to carry out such attacks," he said. "It was a well-organised plan and Osama has no such facilities."

----

Palestinian terrorist group denies carrying out attacks

Tue, 11 Sep 2001
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_395865.html

The leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine has denied his group is behind the terrorist attacks in America.

Qais Abdel Rahim says his group is against such terror attacks.

Earlier a Qatar-based TV station said it received a call from a man claiming responsibility on behalf of the radical PLO faction.

However, the West Bank office of Al Jazeera says they did not put stock in the claim, which was not broadcast by the station.

Mr Abdel Rahim, the head of the DFLP in the West Bank, said: "We are not responsible for this type of terror attack. We are against it."

The BBC says Israel is withdrawing diplomats from the US because it is feared they may become targets for further terrorist attacks, after planes crashed into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

----

MORNING OF HORROR

L. Neil Smith On Morning of Horror 9-11-01
By L. Neil Smith <mailto:lneil@ezlink.com>
Special to _The Libertarian Enterpise_
http://www.webleyweb.com/lneil

First of all, expect never to learn the truth about what happened at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and elsewhere this morning of September 11, 2001, any more than we did with regard to the murders of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, at Ruby Ridge, Waco, or Oklahoma City. Ambiguity and uncertainty serve far too many political interests.

Another certainty is that, although I'm told 50,000 people worked in the World Trade Center, more innocent individuals will die as a result of what the Old Media are lovingly referring to as a "lockdown" of Manhattan and other places, than any acts of terrorism that may have occurred. The military has just said they'll shoot down any plane they see flying. Only one civilian plane is in the air this morning, Air Force One; that's as grim a warning of things to come as I can think of.

"Collateral" deaths won't just happen as a consequence, say, of somebody with a heart attack being unable to get to a hospital, but whenever and wherever some dumb kid in an army uniform gets startled by a car backfiring and starts spraying everybody and his pet poodle with automatic rifle fire. Or to whomever the martial lawyers decide it's safe to liquidate using this foul mess as a cover. Or, vastly more ominously, to people in the not-so-distant future who decide they must resist the police state that will inevitably result from these events.

It's extremely difficult to think coherently about long term effects, let alone to get it all down in writing, when you learn that, not only were hijacked commercial aircraft used to commit these unspeakably evil acts, but that 90 passengers died helplessly in the first plane, and others yet unnumbered may have died in subsequent attacks. _Somebody_ has to think about it, though, or this situation will be used to turn the Bill of Rights off forever. Depending on the planning behind it, or who did the planning, it may already be too late.

All airports have been shut down today, and I shudder to think about what flying will be like from now on. The Clintons, Schumers, and Waxmans will try to shut down the Internet, calling it a breeding ground for terrorism. The Bushes and Cheneys will "reluctantly" go along.

Rush Limbaugh will cheer them on.

What should those who value their freedom do? Every chance you have, from this moment on, whether it's on talk radio, or on the letters to the editor page, on the Internet while it's still possible, or in communication with everyone you know -- it's time for even the most apolitical to write to senators and congressmen -- emphasize two points:

First, inform them that closing down the First or Second or any other Amendment is not an appropriate response to what's happened, and that any politician or bureaucrat in office who attempts to capitalize on today's horrors is committing the same sort of blatantly criminal act I've always insisted must be punished under Bill of Rights enforcement.

Second, these things happen to nations with imperial ambitions. There has never been a major act of terrorism I know of that hasn't resulted from an act of government that violated somebody's rights. The way to keep this sort of thing from happening again is to stop those violations.

Hideously enough, my new novel _The American Zone_, scheduled to be published next November by Tor Books, begins with an act very similar to this one, carried out to force the creation of a strong central government in the governmentless "North American Confederacy" that figures in so many of my books. As anybody who knows my work can safely predict, the evil scheme doesn't work and the villains are defeated.

Life isn't as predictably pleasant as fiction. Happy endings are few and far between. But it's important to act swiftly if we're to preserve anything resembling the freedom that made this civilization great.

Pass the word.

----

What today's papers left out

Spin Doctor Laura
9.11.01
Beware coverage
http://www.workingforchange.com

LAURA FLANDERS in NEW YORK - The smoke is heading my way in lower Manhattan. I can see it. And I can no longer see either of the World Trade Towers that were clearly visible from my block as I walked home last night.

That's about all I can tell you about this morning's attack in New York. In CNN's News Center in Atlanta, they know even less, but that isn't stopping their talk.

Two hours after attacks on two U.S. cities, it's not clear how the coverage will develop. There's no question, however, that TV speakers will be filling the rest of the day with talk about an event that none of them can explain. As the hours progress, "experts" will no doubt be interviewed. Greta Van Sustern was already asked for her analysis. CNN's legal expert talked from her vantage point at Washington's National Airport.

We can't predict the coverage, but we can recall the past. Here, thanks to our friends at FAIR, from 1995:

"Seldom have so many been so wrong -- so quickly. In the wake of the explosion that destroyed the Murrah Federal Office Building, the media rushed -- almost en masse -- to the assumption that the bombing was the work of Muslim extremists. "The betting here is on Middle East terrorists," declared CBS News' Jim Stewart just hours after the blast (4/19/95). "The fact that it was such a powerful bomb in Oklahoma City immediately drew investigators to consider deadly parallels that all have roots in the Middle East," ABC's John McQuethy proclaimed the same day.

"`It has every single earmark of the Islamic car-bombers of the Middle East,' wrote syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer (Chicago Tribune, 4/21/95). "Whatever we are doing to destroy Mideast terrorism, the chief terrorist threat against Americans, has not been working," declared the New York Times' A.M. Rosenthal (4/21/95). The Geyer and Rosenthal columns were filed after the FBI released sketches of two suspects who looked more like Midwestern frat boys than mujahideen."

There's been a tragedy. May all of us in the media not add to it today.

becky bond creative producer, working assets online 415.369.2107

---

Who Done It: "Muslim Militants" or "Our" Government?

Lest We Forget: A Brief History of US Government Directed and Fomented Terror

World Trade Center Bombing 1993:

"One of the largest acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history was the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. As it turned out, the FBI was fully aware of the bomb plot before the attack took place. The Muslim group involved had been infiltrated by Emad Salem, a former Egyptian intelligence agent who was hired by the FBI and ultimately paid $1 million. The FBI even provided the Egyptian with a timer for the bomb, prompting the Chicago Tribune to publish a report headlined, "FBI Tipster Said He Built NY Bomb" (Tribune, Dec. 15, 1993).

Source: Michael A. Hoffman II, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare 2001.

The Maine Bombing, 1898:

February 15, 1898, an explosion destroyed the American battleship Maine in Havana Harbor and helped propel the United States into a war with Spain. The USS Maine that sultry Tuesday night contained 350 crew and officers.At 9:40 p.m. the ship's forward end abruptly lifted itself from the water. Along the pier, passersby could hear a rumbling explosion. Within seconds, another eruption--this one deafening and massive--splintered the bow, sending anything that wasn't battened down, and most that was, flying more than 200 feet into the air.... In all, 266 of the 350 men aboard the Maine were killed.

The American press was quick to point to an external explosion--a mine or torpedo--as the cause of the tragedy. An official U.S. investigation agreed. On April 25, 1898, Congress formally declared war on Spain. By summer's end, Spain had ceded Cuba, along with the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam, to the United States. In 1976, Adm. Hyman Rickover of the U.S. Navy mounted yet another investigation into the cause of the Maine disaster. His team of experts found that the ship's demise was self- inflicted.

The Lusitania, 1915:

The Lusitania was a British cargo and passenger ship that was torpedoed and sank due to German submarine activity in May of 1915, just shy of ten years after she began her trans-Atlantic journeying. She was used to ferry goods and people between England and the United States. The Lusitania was very popular because of her speed and luxurious accommodations. She was considered "the acme of comfort," and deemed a "floating palace" by her passengers (Simpson 7).

As World War I escalated and German submarines took a prevalent role in the seas; Lusitania set out from New York on May 1, 1915, with the intent of delivering material to England in spite of threats of sinking by German authorities.

Six days later, on May 7, 1915, the Lusitania took a solid hit whose sound was described by passengers as a "peal of thunder," a "dull thud-like sound," or "like a million-ton hammer hitting a steel boiler a hundred feet high and a hundred feet long" (Hickey and Smith 184-185). Though they did not explode, water rushed into the first and second boiler rooms and caused the boat to shake from side to side. She then rose a little before a second massive explosion took her down into the sea.

The exact cause of the second explosion is a point of contention. The Lusitania shows evidence that she may have been torpedoed a second or even a third time - but the second, most destructive, explosion may not have been caused by a German torpedo, but rather may have come from inside the ship. The reason behind this speculation is that the Lusitania's cargo can be called into question. She had originally said she would take, along with her passengers, platinum, bullion, diamonds and various other precious stones, but these things were never found and port records do not list them either. She is believed to have instead carried, under the guise of bales of fur and cheese boxes, 3-inch shells and millions of rounds of rifle ammunition. If true, these materials comprised "a contraband and explosive cargo which was forbidden by American law and...should never have been placed on a passenger liner" (Simpson 157-158).

The torpedoes completed the destruction of the ship by their own power or they were aided by internal ammunition explosions. The ship sank within twenty minutes of when she was hit and took with her 1,201 people - and left only 764 to be saved by those who responded to her SOS (Simpson 9). Many American lives were lost as a result of the sinking, and because the Lusitania was never officially in government service, the United States believed the attack on her "was contrary to international law and the conventions of all civilized nations" (Simpson 8-9). The sinking of the Lusitania caused serious tension between the United States and Germany and led to America's declaration of war against Germany.

Pearl Harbor, 1941:

In the summer of 1940 Roosevelt ordered the Pacific to relocate from the West Coast to Hawaii. When its commander, Admiral Richardson, protested that Pearl Harbor offered inadequate protection from air and torpedo attack he was replaced. On October 7 1940 Navy IQ analyst McCollum wrote an eight-point memo for Roosevelt on how to force Japan into war with U.S., including an American oil embargo against Japan. All of them were eventually accomplished.

On 23 June 1941 ­ one day after Hitler's attack on Russia ­ Secretary of the Interior and FDR's Advisor Harold Ickes wrote a memo for the President in which he pointed out that "there might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way. And if we should thus indirectly be brought in, we would avoid the criticism that we had gone in as an ally of communistic Russia."

On 18 October Ickes noted in his diary: "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan."

The U.S. had cracked key Japanese codes before the attack. FDR received "raw" translations of all key messages. On 24 September 1941 Washington deciphered a message from the Naval Intelligence HQ in Tokyo to Japan's consul-general in Honolulu, requesting grid of exact locations of U.S. Navy ships in the harbor. Commanders in Hawaii were not warned.

Sixty years later the U.S. Government still refuses to identify or declassify many pre-attack decrypts on the grounds of "national security."

On November 25 Secretary of War Stimson wrote in his diary that FDR said an attack was likely within days, and asked "how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors."

On November 25 FDR received a "positive war warning" from Churchill that the Japanese would strike against America at the end of the first week in December. This warning caused the President to do an abrupt about-face on plans for a time-buying modus vivendi with Japan and it resulted in Secretary of State Hull's deliberately provocative ultimatum of 26 November 1941 that guaranteed war.

On November 26 Washington ordered both US aircraft carriers, the Enterprise and the Lexington, out of Pearl Harbor "as soon as possible". This order included stripping Pearl of 50 planes or 40 percent of its already inadequate fighter protection. On the same day Cordell Hull issued his ultimatum demanding full Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and all China. U.S. Ambassador to Japan called this "The document that touched the button that started the war."

On November 29 Hull told United Press reporter Joe Leib that Pearl Harbor would be attacked on December 7. The New York Times reported on December 8 ("Attack Was Expected," p. 13) that the U.S. knew of the attack a week earlier. On December 1 Office of Naval Intelligence, ONI, 12th Naval District in San Francisco found the missing Japanese fleet by correlating reports from the four wireless news services and several shipping companies that they were getting signals west of Hawaii.

On 5 December, 1941 FDR wrote to the Australian Prime Minister, "There is always the Japanese to consider. Perhaps the next four or five days will decide the matters."

Oklahoma City, 1995

Both the Federal government and the ADL were "tracking" Timothy McVeigh long before the Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995. McVeigh and at least a half-dozen other men planned the bombing while encamped at "Elohim City," a heavily-infiltrated "Christian Patriot" community in rural Oklahoma. ATF informant Carol Howe infiltrated Elohim City before the Oklahoma bombing. ATF internal documents prove Howe was an informant who overheard McVeigh and his accomplices plotting to blow up the Alfred E. Murrah building. Howe sent over 70 reports to her superior, ATF Special Agent Angela Finley, warning that a number of people at Elohim City were planning to bomb a federal office building in Oklahoma City.

Howe was not the only government agent privy to the Oklahoma bombing however. The shadowy Aryan Republican Army (ARA) gang of bank robbers were also complicit. Aryan Nations "East Coast Ambassador" and FBI informant Mark Thomas assisted ARA leader Peter Langan, an asset of the US Secret Service. Langan, the son of a US Marine Intelligence officer, was arrested for a robbery in 1992. The U.S. Secret Service intervened, however, arranging for Langan to be released on merely a signature bond. Langan subsequently formed the ARA, which was, from its inception, a government black op. For example, the ARA never encountered any bank guards or other police during any of their twenty successful bank robberies. Langan and his lieutenant were only arrested in connection with the robberies after independent investigators began to publicize Elohim City's ties to McVeigh. It was at Elohim where the ARA leaders, among whom was "John Doe No. 2" (Michael Brescia), held three meetings to plan bank robberies and other activities. (Langan's lieutenant conveniently "committed suicide" while in custody).

Many government black ops use Halloween Satanists as a cover for their crimes. In Oklahoma City it was "white supremacists" and "neo-Nazi" patsies. The orchestration was finite and detailed, right down to the appointment of District Attorney Robert Macy -- the prosecutor who allegedly stymied all efforts to get to the bottom of the Oklahoma City conspiracy --to head the special Grand Jury proceedings to investigate a conspiracy. This is the same Robert Macy who, when asked by Oklahoma state Rep. Charles Key why Macy didn't proceed with an investigation, allegedly replied, "They won't let me."

Macy's Grand Jury delivered no indictments of ATF agents or of shadowy right wing, neo-Nazi "useful idiots" like Chevie Kehoe. No, the only one indicted was the investigative journalist David Hoffman (no relation to this writer), author of the seminal book, The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror (Feral House, 1998). Rare book collectors take note: the entire remaining stock of David Hoffman's book was pulped and destroyed under legal threat from lawyers for agents of the FBI. Chevie Kehoe murdered gun dealer William Mueller and his entire family in Arkansas in 1996 because Mueller had inside information on Timothy McVeigh and the OK City bombing conspiracy.

As part of the "Revelation of the Method," recall that Aryan Nations member and L.A. daycare center shooter Buford Furrow "miraculously" eluded the largest police dragnet in the history of the LAPD, to report directly to his FBI handlers in Las Vegas in full view of the television cameras.

By the same process, Chevie Kehoe of Yaak, Montana and his partner, Danny Lee of Yukon, Oklahoma, killed the Mueller family while "dressed in FBI raid outfits" (Spokesman-Review, [Spokane, Wash.] April 8, 1999, p. B-3). In both these cases a symbolic hint was being intentionally sent to the public concerning who Kehoe and Furrow's real handlers are. At the time of the Mueller murders Kehoe was a resident of the Shadows Motel in Spokane, Washington, where he had been staying on and off since 1994. Kehoe was often visited at the motel by a child rapist and Aryan Nations activist who was also a master gunsmith and machinist.

"Witnesses also believe McCrea and Kehoe met Timothy McVeigh at the Shadows Motel shortly before the April, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing...A former manager of the motel has reported seeing McVeigh visiting Kehoe there a few weeks before the Oklahoma City bombing.

"...But the possible link between the Shadows Motel, Kehoe and McVeigh has been given little, if any, attention by the FBI...With McVeigh and his friend Terry Nichols convicted of the Oklahoma City bombing, there is reluctance to reopen the investigation, federal officials say." (Spokesman-Review, April 11, 1999, pp. B-1 and B-6).

Here is a frank admission of the government's refusal to apprehend other guilty parties in connection with the Oklahoma City bombing. The conviction of the scapegoats satisfies the Federal police. Why? Because any further indictments would tend to risk losing control over perpetrators who might reveal embarrassing details and unaccounted for facts that point to orchestration of the bombing by the Federal government itself.

Elohim City was presided over by Robert Millar, himself an informant who reported to FBI Senior Agent Peter Rickel, according to June, 1997 court testimony. Millar's son-in-law, Jim Ellison, was also a Federal informant. The "chief of security" at Elohim City was Andreas Strassmeier, a German intelligence officer who was in direct contact with McVeigh in the weeks preceding the bombing and who Carol Howe implicated as a co-conspirator.

Federal Judge Richard Matsch prohibited Howe from testifying at McVeigh's trial, saying her testimony might "confuse" the jurors. After Howe went to the media with her evidence, the government indicted her on a trumped up charge of explosives possession. She was put on trial in August, 1997. Her attorney showed that Howe possessed the explosives at the direction of the ATF and Howe was acquitted of all charges by a jury.

The HOFFMAN WIRE
September 11, 2001
Michael A. Hofman II,
Editor http://www.hoffman-info.com/news.html


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

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