------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Pakistan Scoffs at Bin Laden Nuclear Link
Pakistan Confirms Probing Scientists
Rumsfeld orders tests limited to comply with ABM Treaty
Missile Defense Tests Are Put Off
Analysis Missile Test Postponement Shows Priority Shift
River shore cleanup cost uncertain

MILITARY
Officials prefer bin Laden killed instead of captured
Strategy Fails to Splinter Taliban
Rebels 'Ready' but Waiting To Advance Toward Kabul
Top Taliban Foe Is Executed; U.S. Raids on Kabul Continue
US special forces beat retreat as enemy 'fought back like maniacs'
REVIEW STORY ON BIN LADEN'S HEALTH IS CONFIRMED
Pentagon Announces Taiwan Arms Sale
In-Depth Report Documents Milosevic Crimes
All Anthrax Tested Points to Single Source
Secret project manufactured mock anthrax
Ion Beam Technology Tested to Sanitize Mail
Pentagon Using 6 Weapons Detectors
UK commits troops to Afghan war
Bin Laden Family's stake severed in a Carlyle fund
Israel agrees to a partial pullout
Israeli Raid Turned Village Into War Zone
UN slams use of cluster bombs as 8 die
Pentagon Makes Rush Order For Anti-Terror Technology
Arming Soldiers for a New Kind of War
Protracted war tests US resolve

OTHER
German fuel cell developers pool resources
Say One Thing, Do Another
CALIFORNIA SCHOOL DISTRICT CONVERTS TO CLEAN FUELED BUSES
China WTO entry has global impact
Terror Law: A win for fear, a loss for freedom
Agencies Told to Improve Cooperation on Anthrax
U.S. Tells Cincinnati to Curb Use of Force by Its Police
Surveillance Switcheroo
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA
Official: CIA Relaxes Informant Rule
Tough Anti-Terror Campaign Pledged
Antiterrorism Bill Passes; U.S. Gets Expanded Powers
Al Qaeda is believed to have given initial funding

ACTIVISTS
Attack protesters arrested in Conn.
Even Conservatives Need the Anti-War Movement
16 Peace Marchers Arrested, Including Green Organizer



-------- NUCLEAR

Pakistan Scoffs at Bin Laden Nuclear Link

October 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack-britain-nuclear-binladen.html?searchpv=reuters

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan dismissed as absurd British media reports on Friday that Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the bloody September 11 attacks on the United States, had obtained nuclear material from Islamabad.

The Times newspaper and Channel Four television quoted Western intelligence sources as saying the Saudi-born dissident had obtained the material illegally from Pakistan, a nuclear capable country.

They said there was concern he could try to release radioactive material through a non-explosive ``dirty bomb.''

A Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman said the allegation was absurd.

``Our nuclear materials are in very safe hands, these are absurd allegations,'' spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan told Reuters.

Pre-empting further speculation, Khan also denied that two retired nuclear scientists, currently in ``protective custody,'' had been arrested on suspicion of giving out nuclear information.

``Absolutely not,'' he said.

Bashiruddin Mahmood and another colleague were recently picked up by the intelligence services. Khan said they had been questioned in relation to a non governmental organization they ran that worked in Afghanistan and had not been arrested.

RANGE OF WEAPONS

The Times and Channel Four said that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network of Islamic extremists, which operates out of neighboring Afghanistan, did not have the technology to make a nuclear bomb.

Citing an ``informed source,'' the Times said bin Laden appeared to have amassed a ``terrifying'' range of weapons, although the source said a nuclear attack was still beyond him.

Bin Laden could also be behind the spate of anthrax outbreaks terrifying the American public, although the FBI has yet to produce any conclusive links.

Both President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have given regular warnings that bin Laden would wreak even greater destruction if he could.

However, Blair's Downing Street office urged the public not to be unduly worried by the reports.

``We believe that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network would if they could develop a nuclear capability, but people should treat with extreme skepticism any reports that he has such a capability,'' a spokesman told Reuters.

Independent experts said it was unlikely bin Laden could have developed a nuclear capability.

``The barriers to being able to gain nuclear or even radiological capability are very high,'' said John Gearson, senior lecturer in defense studies at King's College in London.

``The talk of nuclear, biological and chemical terrorism is a classic scenario of us terrorizing ourselves. The fear of these threats is greater than the fear of what we know they can do,'' Gearson added.

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan Confirms Probing Scientists

October 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Nuclear-Scientists.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Two leading nuclear scientists are in custody for questioning about alleged pro-Taliban sympathies, the Pakistani government confirmed Friday.

Maj. Gen. Rashid Quereshi, a spokesman for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said the two men were being questioned about alleged ties to Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of Afghanistan's Taliban regime.

The men have not been charged and will probably be released within days, he said. The questioning was part of a wider, more general investigation of organizations and people who have worked with or in Afghanistan, he said.

Sultan Bashiru-Din Mehmood is a pioneering member of Pakistan's nuclear program. Pakistan began efforts to obtain nuclear technology in the early 1970s.

The Interior Ministry identified the other detained scientist as Abdul Majid, who worked with Mehmood for years at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. Intelligence agents took the men into custody Tuesday in the eastern city of Lahore.

Mehmood and his friends, most of them scientists and engineers, have been working on rehabilitation projects in war-ravaged Afghanistan. Mehmood's family insists he is loyal to Pakistan.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said the two scientists drew attention for contacting a nongovernmental organization, or NGO, working ``to help the Afghans with charity work and projects in the welfare area.''

``We are at present looking into the credentials of all NGOs that have worked inside Afghanistan,'' Khan said Friday.

The detained scientists are ``absolutely not'' suspected of passing nuclear secrets onto Afghanistan, Khan said. ``There is neither suspicion, nor was the situation related to that.''

Both Pakistan and its neighbor, India, have nuclear weapons. Musharraf insists that Pakistan's nuclear arms are in secure hands.

-------- missile defense

Rumsfeld orders tests limited to comply with ABM Treaty

October 26, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011026-27648144.htm

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday the Pentagon is curbing missile-defense tests to avoid possible violations of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, said the Bush administration will withdraw from the Cold War-era treaty as early as December if talks with the Russians on the pact fail to permit development of U.S. defenses against long-range missiles.

"We are determined to go ahead with missile defense," said one administration official.

The ABM Treaty bans deployment of any missile- defense system that can protect the entire territory of either Russia or the United States. Russia has a limited strategic defense deployed around Moscow. The United States has no strategic defenses.

Asked if the United States would withdraw from the treaty, Mr. Rumsfeld said: "What we have said is that the treaty needs to be set aside, and that the United States needs to go forward with a test program so that at some point in the period ahead we'll have determined what's the best way to deploy ballistic-missile defenses."

The Bush administration has diverged sharply from the Clinton administration, which opposed a national missile- defense system and viewed the ABM Treaty as the cornerstone of Washington's strategic relations with Moscow.

The defense secretary announced to reporters at the Pentagon that the United States has "voluntarily restrained our ballistic missile-defense test program."

Mr. Rumsfeld said "some lawyers" might have argued that a missile test planned for Wednesday and next month would have violated the treaty.

"As we all know, treaties and most legal documents have vagueness to them," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We've said we won't violate it; therefore, we do not want to be in a position of having a small minority of people suggesting that we in fact are violating it."

President Bush has made developing defenses against both long-range and short-range missiles one of his highest national security priorities.

Critics in Congress have sought to derail missile- defense deployment in favor of keeping the ABM Treaty, which they say is essential to preventing an international arms race.

But one critic, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, recently dropped legal provisions curbing missile-defense development in pending legislation after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A test that was scrapped by the Pentagon included one set for Wednesday that would have involved a ship-based Aegis battle management radar that was to track a strategic missile test target.

The Aegis radar would have tracked a missile interceptor while a separate, multiple-object tracking radar based at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., would have tracked a strategic missile target.

Officials said using the Aegis-equipped ship to help develop a national missile shield may have violated treaty provisions barring the use of nonstrategic weapons for strategic defense purposes.

A second Aegis radar test set for Nov. 14 to track a Titan II missile launch vehicle also was put off.

"For some time now, we've advised the Congress and the government of the Russian Federation that the planned missile-defense testing program that we have was going to bump up against the ABM Treaty," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "That has now happened."

The issue of modifying the treaty to allow a national missile-defense shield will be discussed next month when Russian President Vladimir Putin meets Mr. Bush at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Mr. Rumsfeld said in announcing the testing curbs that threats from the missiles of rogue nations remain.

Mr. Rumsfeld said nations that support terrorists and terrorist networks have chemical and biological weapons and are working on missiles that can strike the United States and its allies.

"Last month, terrorists took civilian airliners and turned them into missiles, killing thousands," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

"If they had ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction capable of killing hundreds of thousands, I don't think anyone can doubt but that they would have willingly used them."

--------

Missile Defense Tests Are Put Off
U.S. Delay Averts Face-Off With Russia

By Alan Sipress and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 26, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53149-2001Oct25.html

The Bush administration put the brakes on its missile defense program yesterday, steering clear of a confrontation with Russia by deciding for the first time to delay testing elements of the system that could violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

With President Bush hoping to close a deal on strategic weapons when he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in the United States next month, administration officials said they would put off a pair of exercises scheduled for this fall that involve using two radars to track rocket firings.

The announcement by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld marked an abrupt change of pace for an administration that has been determined to forge ahead with the development of missile defenses despite the restrictions of the 1972 treaty and the objections of U.S. allies and Russia.

Administration officials said the United States remains committed to freeing itself from the constraints of the ABM accord and to proceeding with the development of a missile defense shield. U.S. and Russian officials, however, have been reporting progress in their talks over limitations on strategic weapons. The decision to delay some testing improves the climate for the Bush-Putin meeting, while underscoring how the treaty is already hampering the administration's missile defense program.

"For some time now, we've advised the Congress and the government of the Russian Federation that the planned missile defense testing program that we have was going to bump up against the ABM Treaty. That has now happened," Rumsfeld said. "This fact, this reality, it seems to me, provides an impetus for the discussions that President Bush has been having with President Putin, and which will continue here in Washington early next month."

Under the Pentagon's development program, researchers would have used a radar system on a Navy ship and a separate radar in California to track the test firing of a long-range missile and the dispatching of an anti-missile interceptor to strike it. The sea-based radar would also have tracked the subsequent launch of a space rocket.

Though the firings of the missile, interceptor and space rocket are all allowed under the ABM Treaty, a Pentagon review group concluded that the use of the radars would violate the accord. "It was pretty clear-cut," said a senior Pentagon official.

Some Defense Department officials had suggested that the treaty should be interpreted as allowing the use of the radars in the testing program, according to administration sources. But other officials, in both the Pentagon and elsewhere, had argued against a liberal reading, saying it would be better to emphasize that the treaty was already hampering U.S. interests and should be scrapped as soon as possible.

Rumsfeld himself cast doubt yesterday on whether the scheduled exercises would have violated the ABM Treaty, which limits the use of certain radars as part of a long-range missile defense system, but he said the administration decided to avoid a dispute.

"As we all know, treaties and most legal documents have vagueness to them. We've said we won't violate it; therefore, we do not want to be in a position of having a small minority of people suggesting that we, in fact, are violating it," said Rumsfeld, who is one of the administration's chief advocates for missile defenses.

Administration officials have said since early summer that the United States must move quickly to withdraw from the ABM accord because the planned development of the missile shield would run afoul of the treaty in a matter of "months, not years." While most officials said they hoped to win Russian assent for both countries to pull out of the treaty, some in the administration have advocated a unilateral U.S. withdrawal if Moscow did not agree in time.

In the days leading up to the president's meeting with Putin in Shanghai last week, U.S. officials urged that Bush notify the Russian leader that the United States would withdraw at the end of the year. But Bush did not give this deadline.

Senior administration officials said the decision to delay elements of the test program was not meant as a reward to Russia, which has taken substantial steps since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to enhance relations with Washington.

"It is not a bone to anybody," Rumsfeld said. "It is simply the fact that the president and the administration is engaged in discussions with the Russians. We believe they are proceeding in a satisfactory way. And we believe that, in fact, at some point going forward, we'll have a way to permit our country to go forward with the kinds of testing and development of ballistic missile defenses that we believe is in the best interests of our nation."

Both American and Russian officials have said recently that a new strategic understanding -- which would allow greater latitude for missile defenses and sharply cut the number of nuclear warheads -- could be within reach.

The two sides seem to have traveled a considerable distance since earlier this year, when Putin called the ABM Treaty the "cornerstone" of international nuclear stability. After his talks with Bush in Shanghai, Putin told reporters that they had obtained an "understanding that we can reach agreements."

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a missile defense skeptic, welcomed the delay. "I'm happy they restrained. I don't think they would have restrained three months ago if they got to this point. . . . They are restraining now apparently because the president is in negotiations and doesn't want to, I assume, act unilaterally here," Biden said.

Senior administration officials said, however, that the decision to delay the radar exercises is proof that time is running out for the two countries to close a deal on shelving the ABM accord. Withdrawing from the treaty requires six months' notice.

"This shows that the ABM Treaty is already constraining us in a very material way," said a senior administration official. "These are aspects of tests that we canceled, and they need to be done at some point."

The first exercise would have revolved around a missile test that had already been pushed back until later this fall for non-treaty reasons. In this test, an anti-missile interceptor was to be fired from a U.S. test range in the central Pacific to strike an intercontinental missile with a mock nuclear warhead launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Both missiles were to be tracked by an Aegis radar system aboard a Navy ship. At the same time, another system based at Vandenberg, called a Multiple Object Tracking Radar, was to track the ICBM. Though the firing of the two missiles would not abrogate the ABM Treaty, the use of the two radar systems to monitor the action and collect valuable research data could be deemed a violation.

Use of the Aegis radar would be part of an effort to convert the Navy's regional defense system now used against aircraft and short-range missiles into a long-range shield against attacks on the United States from countries such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Some missile defense proponents say that by capitalizing on the existing Aegis radar capability and putting missile interceptors on ships, the United States could quickly and inexpensively develop a long-range defense.

But the treaty and subsequent protocols between the United States and the Soviet Union ban the tracking of ballistic missiles and anti-missile interceptors by sea-based radars or other radar systems not initially designed for this purpose. The accords also bar radar like the system at Vandenberg from tracking a long-range missile unless the system is located at a designated anti-ballistic missile test range.

A second exercise would have used the Aegis radar to track the launch of a Titan 2 space rocket as it carries an Air Force weather satellite into space. This would provide further information about the performance of that sea-based radar against a long-range missile.

Both exercises, part of an ongoing series in the missile defense program, would have involved using the existing radars in a new fashion to gather data about potential missile interceptors. By incorporating the radars in the missile defense development program, defense officials had been hoping to expand the information generated by the tests.

"When we put together the testing program earlier this year, we were instructed to put together the best plan we could, without regard to the treaty," said a senior officer involved in the program. "So we crafted a plan that would get the most data out of the tests."

The decision to forgo use of the radars came as a disappointment to program officials, who said it would handicap the overall development effort.

"The way I'd describe the impact is this: The less data we can collect, the more risk will be added to the program," the senior officer said.

But Michael E. O'Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, called the delay reasonable, especially since U.S.-Russian negotiations are at a critical stage. Moreover, he said, any setback in converting the medium-range shield into a strategic defense was of little consequence because the technology is "not that far along and not that promising against long-range missiles."

Staff writers Karen DeYoung and Steven Mufson contributed to this report.

-------- us nuc politics

Analysis Missile Test Postponement Shows Priority Shift

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 26, 2001; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53140-2001Oct25.html

Just two months ago, a gambling person would not have bet against the Bush administration's determination to pursue missile defense tests, even if it meant discarding the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty the president had branded a "relic" of the Cold War.

But yesterday's postponement of three missile defense tests provides the latest evidence that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have changed the administration's priorities. It is now putting a premium on good relations with Russia while coming up with a strategy over how to proceed with missile defenses and reduce the two countries' nuclear arsenals.

"Before Sept. 11, this [missile defense] was the number one foreign policy issue, the place where the Bush administration wanted to leave a legacy. Before Sept. 11, that was what they thought they would be judged upon," said Michael McFaul, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a Stanford University professor. "Obviously today that's not true. So it just matters a whole lot less. They know how they'll be judged and it has nothing to do with the ABM treaty."

Despite the administration's temporary retreat on the tests, some experts close to the administration said they believe the United States and Russia have been getting closer to an agreement on missile defenses, and that the administration is likely to ultimately get the latitude it needs to continue whatever missile tests it desires without dealing a severe blow to relations with Moscow.

But those agreements might not be finished by the time Russian President Vladimir Putin visits President Bush in Washington and the president's ranch in Crawford, Tex., next month despite considerable pressure to have something to show by that time. The administration's decision to put off the tests avoids a confrontation when it already has a lot on its plate with its war against terrorism.

The administration's retreat on the missile defense schedule was made more palatable because of Putin's gestures of friendship since the Sept. 11 attacks. Putin was the first foreign leader to call Bush after the attacks, and he has supported the U.S. campaign against terrorism in Afghanistan.

"It is clear that President Putin understands that Russia's future primarily lies to the West," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. "That's the source of inspiration, that's the source of technology, it's the source of capital, it's the source of debt relief, it's the source of security."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the tests were being put off to avoid violating the ABM Treaty. While the delay solves an immediate confrontation with Moscow over the ABM accord, the announcement that the United States already believes its testing is bumping up against the treaty makes the issue seem immediate.

Some experts familiar with administration strategy saw Rumsfeld's announcement as a way of keeping up pressure on Russia -- as well as more moderate members of the administration -- and of making his case that the United States needs to withdraw from the treaty sooner rather than later.

Indeed some experts say that Rumsfeld made no effort to avoid making a schedule of tests that would conflict with the treaty, even though one administration member said just three weeks ago that there was no clear collision between tests and the treaty until the spring. Many top administration officials still favor early notification of withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, which requires six months' notice.

All this takes place in the context of next month's Bush-Putin talks.

The administration has agreed to link the elimination of -- or radical changes in -- the ABM Treaty to the level of offensive nuclear weapons held by both countries. Russia is seeking deep cuts in those weapons, beyond the 2,000 to 2,500 level that President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed to in1997.

Bush aides favor deep cuts, but have not yet obtained final Pentagon agreement on what level is needed. Though the gaps between U.S. officials are not big, top Bush foreign policymakers have been overwhelmed by the demands of the war on terrorism.

A senior administration official said the issue of an offensive weapons ceiling was complicated by variables such as whether China increases its intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, whether India or Pakistan gain long-range missiles and whether Russia's government changes dramatically.

"In the Cold War, we had one target set. In the post-Cold War, we have multiple target sets and that has effects on your planning," a senior administration official said recently.

One factor that could push U.S. numbers lower might be the belief that a working missile defense system would reduce or eliminate the need to have a second-strike nuclear force, the official said.

The other issue in talks with Russia over missile defense is whether the ABM Treaty will be simply scrapped, amended or replaced by a new agreement. Many administration officials resist the idea of having any new treaty or revised treaty, saying that the United States and Russia are not going to attack one another and need to turn their attention to common threats.

The two sides have discussed a variety of possibilities, ranging from a joint statement about strategic principles, to a new agreement on weapons, to major changes in the ABM Treaty.

One key issue could be not what to put in the new document or what missile defense tests to allow, but simply what to call a new agreement. Sources close to the administration say that any new document would have to be different enough for the Bush administration to say that it had effectively put the ABM Treaty to rest, while Putin is seeking something that would enable him to say he salvaged the accord.

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

------ washington

River shore cleanup cost uncertain

Hanford News
Fri, Oct 26, 2001
By John Stang Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1026-2.html

The Department of Energy tentatively believes that an accelerated plan to clean up Hanford's river shore will cost about $2.7 billion.

That number comes from figures in a draft request for proposals that DOE unveiled a few days ago.

But the draft request also noted that $2.7 billion figure could easily change after DOE receives bids on the contract for the bulk of Hanford's river shore cleanup by 2012.

Bechtel Hanford's contract, which heavily focuses on cleanup along Hanford's Columbia River shore, will expire July 31, 2002.

River shore cleanup traditionally accounts for slightly less than 10 percent of Hanford's overall cleanup budget each year.

DOE's Richland office has proposed to speed up river shore cleanup significantly with the new, still developing contract. And DOE wants to hire one contractor to tackle this until the task is done.

This plan has a couple of major question marks.

No one knows yet how much the federal government will appropriate to Hanford's river shore cleanup in fiscal 2002, which is a key clue to DOE's long-term plans. And the $2.7 billion is a preliminary number that will likely be fine-tuned in 2002.

After receiving feedback on its draft request, DOE expects to issue a final request for proposals by Jan. 23 and to award the contract three to six months later.

This month's draft request divides the rivershore cleanup contract into two phases. The first phase's costs totaling $1.5 billion are more solid than DOE's estimates for the second phase, which total $1.2 billion and are more likely to change, according to DOE documents. A timetable has not been set yet for when the first phase ends and the second phase begins.

DOE's draft request calls for demolishing plus cleaning and sealing areas around the D, DR, F and H reactors. And it calls for the cleanup and demolition of the huge 324 and 327 lab buildings in the 300 Area as well as 12 smaller 300 Area buildings. Overall, the first phase is supposed to finish work on four reactors, 31 buildings, 45 waste burial sites and 267 waste sites.

The second phase is supposed to address the cleanup, demolition and sealing up of the complexes at the KE, KW and N reactors, plus the rest of the 300 Area.

That supposedly translates to three reactors, 230 buildings, four waste burial sites and 255 waste sites.

DOE's draft request for proposals calls for bidders to come up with their own estimates on what the first and second phases will cost. Then each bidder will propose target fees -- essentially its profits -- that DOE will pay for accomplishing work on time and on budget. That target fee cannot exceed 8 12 percent of a bidder's estimate for tackling the project.

The eventual contract will also trim a bidder's fees -- again its profits -- if work goes over budget and falls behind schedule.

Bechtel Hanford is eligible to bid on the new contract. But DOE is trying to get as many companies as possible to compete for the project.


-------- MILITARY

Officials prefer bin Laden killed instead of captured

October 26, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011026-26320994.htm

Bush administration officials are expressing a private consensus they want Osama bin Laden dead, not alive, in the event he is found in Afghanistan and there is a chance to capture him, senior U.S. officials said.

They said the consensus means the administration may avoid a direct confrontation between bin Laden and U.S. ground troops. Instead, the Pentagon will continue to try to kill the terrorist from the air once he is located, as he was last spring by a spy drone.

The Pentagon already has tried to kill him with a "lucky shot," bombing several cave complexes that serve as command centers. The ruling Taliban militia, however, claims that the head of the al Qaeda terrorist network continues to live.

The officials said the possibility of bin Laden being captured alive would present unprecedented security problems for the United States during a murder trial and while in custody. They also fear he would find ways to inflame his extremist Islamic followers.

The officials said there has been no official decision by President Bush - who wants bin Laden "dead or alive" - on whether to attempt a capture if the terrorist's location is determined. But they said the consensus in meetings among Pentagon, White House and State Department officials is that the United States would come out of the war on terrorism in better shape if bin Laden did not survive.

The most-favorable scenario, officials said, is to spot bin Laden from the air and kill him with a direct hit or entomb him in a cave with a 5,000-pound earth-penetrating bomb.

An even-better fate, they said, is for a country or group other than America to pull the deadly trigger, so as not to further ignite anti-U.S. passions among Islamic fundamentalists.

Bin Laden's own followers may grant the United States' wish. One administration official said a loyal cadre of well-armed bodyguards are sworn to kill bin Laden rather than see him fall into the hands of American special-operations forces or rebels opposed to theTaliban militia.

"That would make life easier on everyone," said the official. "We don't have to put him in handcuffs. Presumably, he gave them permission to kill him."

Added another official: "It's certainly in the realm of possibility because he very much wants to become a martyr."

Mr. Bush has said he wants bin Laden "dead or alive" for masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed more than 5,000, most of them civilians.

Behind the public pronouncements, a debate has raged inside the administration over which fate for bin Laden is better for the United States. Officials said the majority sentiment today is: death to bin Laden.

They said that if bin Laden is captured and held in custody, it would present a host of problems providing security for the world's most-wanted fugitive. At trial, the Justice Department might be forced to disclose intelligence "sources and methods" to prove bin Laden's guilt. It would also be impossible to find an impartial jury in New York, Virginia, or any other state, the officials said.

Pentagon officials say constant satellite coverage and communications monitoring have yet to spot bin Laden's hiding place amid Afghanistan's hundreds of deep, limestone caves. He has turned some cave hide-outs into residences and command centers.

The senior official said the United States knows of three bin Laden hideouts, but there have been no signs of his presence at any of them since the Sept. 11 attacks.

He is protected by about 40 bodyguards. The entourage moves in convoys defended by mounted anti-aircraft guns, shoulder-fired missiles and grenade launchers.

The United States has tried to kill bin Laden at least three times.

In 1998, after the Clinton administration linked bin Laden to deadly terrorist bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the Navy fired scores of Tomahawk missiles into one of his camps. Before Sept. 11, a CIA-operated Predator spy drone found bin Laden. But before the agency could arm the plane for an attack, he disappeared.

Since the air campaign began Oct. 7, the United States has bombed camps and caves where he may have been hiding - so far failing to kill the fugitive millionaire.

Asked on ABC television if U.S. commandos are under orders to kill or capture bin Laden if they find him, Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said, "U.S. forces operate under the international laws of conflict. And, obviously, one of the targets there is the command and control and the leadership.

But as you know, the U.S. armed forces are also humane. It depends on the circumstances. If it's a defensive situation, then, you know, bullets will fly. But if we can capture somebody, then we'll do that."

-------- afghanistan

Strategy Fails to Splinter Taliban
U.S., Pakistani Efforts Not Yielding Significant Defections

By Molly Moore and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 26, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53128-2001Oct25.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 25 -- U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agencies, hobbled by weak contacts and deep distrust, have failed to engineer any significant defections from the military ranks of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, according to officials familiar with the efforts.

The failure to lure defectors is a major setback for a central aspect of the strategy to topple the radical Islamic militia, the officials said.

Intelligence operatives trying to undermine the Taliban in Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces have met "stiff resistance" from even the most ardently anti-Taliban tribal leaders, senior Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Washington's expectations that some key tribal leaders and moderate Taliban military commanders would be willing to turn against the Taliban soon after bombs began to fall on Afghanistan were "horrendously naive," said one Western official monitoring the intelligence agencies' attempts to foment dissent.

A Pakistani journalist with extensive experience in Afghanistan, Rahimullah Yusufzai, said: "There were expectations that the Taliban would not be able to stay in power, there would be defections, there would be local divisions against them. Nothing of the sort has happened. None of the expectations have been fulfilled."

The failure to persuade even the most vulnerable leaders to sever their ties with the Taliban, coupled with the Taliban's resilience in the face of the U.S.-led bombing campaign and the squabbling of Afghan factions competing for power in a post-Taliban government, points increasingly to what one official here forecast as "a long and messy" U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.

Pakistani and Western officials blame the failures in sowing dissension within the Taliban on a combination of poor intelligence contacts and powerful religious and cultural bonds between even the most marginal commanders and the Taliban leadership.

Part of the problem stems from an abrupt shift last month in the agenda of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), which helped to create the Taliban in 1994 and has sustained it since. Under pressure from Washington to purge his government of Taliban sympathizers, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, revamped the ISI leadership and ordered the agency to switch almost overnight from overt operations supporting the Taliban to covert attempts to overthrow it.

As a result, the Taliban and its supporters developed an immediate distrust of their former patrons. ISI operatives who previously had worked openly in Afghanistan had to be pulled out of Taliban territory for their safety, leaving Washington and Islamabad with a human intelligence vacuum in a place where they had hoped to be active, authorities here said.

"We had human assets all over the country from our two decades of involvement in Afghanistan," said one senior Pakistani intelligence official. "The nature of the current operation is such that our assets have turned into liabilities."

"They clearly haven't had a single major defection since September 12," said Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author of a best-selling book about the Taliban. "That is a disaster. But how can Islamabad create defections when you have essentially betrayed the Taliban in the flick of an eyelash after seven years of being with them?"

At the same time, some Pakistani intelligence officials concede that the ISI has been far more enthusiastic in its pursuit of a post-Taliban political alternative than in its efforts to bring down the Taliban. One intelligence official described contact with ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders in southern Afghanistan on the issue of military defections as "exploratory," but called efforts on the political side "very intense."

Even those attempts, however, have been "without any tangible results," the official said.

ISI officials are not the only people trying to turn Taliban supporters and tribal leaders against Afghanistan's current rulers. Afghan exiles living in Pakistan are reportedly going to Afghanistan to build political support for a post-Taliban government and to encourage defections.

Hamid Karzai, a prominent Afghan tribal leader who lives in the southwestern Pakistani town of Quetta and is among numerous exiled leaders eager to regain some of their former power in Afghanistan, has been meeting with Pashtun tribal leaders inside Afghanistan for the past 2 1/2 weeks, according to his associates.

But one associate declined to characterize Karzai's progress other than to say,"There's a lot of work to do. He's doing well."

Current and former Pakistani intelligence officers point out that, regardless of issues of credibility and intelligence, they have little leverage to help them move Afghans away from the Taliban. Despite reports that the United States is providing money for bribes and holding out the possibility of leadership roles for defectors in a future government, Pakistanis explain that Afghanistan's ancient and complex web of cultural, religious and family ties often proves impervious to outside offers of material gain.

Most of the Taliban's founders and top leaders are from the Pashtun ethnic group, which is Afghanistan's largest, accounting for about 40 percent of the population. "During the Afghan war we used Islam, Pashtun nationalism and Afghan history to drive Afghans against foreign invaders," one intelligence official said. "In the present situation, we can't use any of them to trigger an intra-Pashtun coup against the Taliban.

"Pashtun tribesmen may change their political loyalties overnight, but it is unnatural to expect them to turn their weapons against fellow tribesmen to help foreign invaders," the official added.

Likewise, many ISI officers were less than enthusiastic about orders to approach friends in the Taliban and ask them to turn against its leader, Mohammad Omar. Those who were still able to approach tribal leaders or Taliban commanders in southern and eastern Afghanistan made only half-hearted attempts to persuade them to defect, some intelligence officials said.

"These [ISI] officials share Pashtun culture, deep religious upbringing and rich traditions with Afghans," said one official.

At the same time, the slow-moving and fractious effort to create a broad-based government to replace the Taliban and to identify Afghanistan's future leaders has yielded few potential Pashtun candidates.

"You cannot have defections until you have somebody there to defect to," said Rashid, the author.

And although there is widespread disaffection among everyday Afghans, and some local leaders, with the Taliban and its severe form of rule that largely restricts women to their homes and bans most forms of entertainment, defection remains out of the question for many.

"It would not be easy for them to defect even if they wanted to," said Yusufzai, the journalist. The Taliban "is not a political movement, it's a religious movement. That makes it more cohesive and stronger in terms of commitment and belief."

Most of the Taliban's leaders were impoverished students at religious schools in Pakistan, where poor families sent their young boys to be fed, housed and schooled in the teachings of the Koran, the Islamic holy book.

"For the first time, these people tasted power," Yusufzai said. "They know if they are out of power, they will be hunted down in each and every village and each and every house. That is the reason they will never defect or surrender."

Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan. Correspondent John Pomfret in Quetta contributed to this report.

--------

Rebels 'Ready' but Waiting To Advance Toward Kabul
Timing Uncertain; More U.S. Pressure on Taliban Sought

By William Branigin and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 26, 2001; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53126-2001Oct25.html

JABAL SARAJ, Afghanistan, Oct. 25 -- Afghan opposition forces intend to advance toward the capital, Kabul, but have not determined when to make their move and want U.S.-led airstrikes to first put greater pressure on the ruling Taliban, a top official of the opposition Northern Alliance said today.

The official, Abdullah, who is in charge of foreign affairs for the Northern Alliance, told reporters here that the opposition group has reached a "political consensus" for an advance on Kabul, but aims to be flexible and to avoid being tied down by a timetable.

"Our military forces are ready, but that does not mean we're about to move," he said.

Abdullah spoke as U.S. warplanes were bombing Taliban positions on the front line about 40 miles north of the capital for a fifth straight day.

In Washington, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the war on terrorism is "proceeding according to our plan" and denied that the Pentagon is taking a "piecemeal" approach to bombing front-line Taliban troops north of Kabul.

Briefing reporters at the Pentagon, Myers said the "vast majority" of today's airstrikes by about 80 U.S. warplanes were targeted against Taliban troops facing the Northern Alliance.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, appearing with Myers, said a B-52 bomber was used on Wednesday to carpet-bomb the Taliban front lines.

The Taliban again accused the United States of bombing civilians.

A Taliban spokesman said a bomb struck a bus on the outskirts of the southern city of Kandahar, killing at least 10 civilians in a fiery explosion, according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press, a news agency close to the Taliban.

Western planes also struck the village of Ishaq Sulaiman near the western city of Herat, killing 20 people as they emerged from a mosque, a Taliban spokesman told the Reuters news agency.

The claims could not be independently verified. U.S. officials have said they are only targeting alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden, his al Qaeda network and the Taliban -- and that they are trying to minimize civilian casualties.

A U.N. spokeswoman said today that U.N. officials in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, received new information confirming that nine people who died in a village near Herat on Monday night were killed by a U.S. cluster bomb. Eight people died in the bomb blast and one person was killed after he picked up an unexploded "bomblet," which subsequently detonated, spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker said.

In addition to its plans to move on Kabul, the Northern Alliance has been focusing on trying to take the key northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, whose capture could open a new supply route to the south. But the offensive has slowed in recent days in the face of what alliance commanders have described as strong counterattacks.

The fact that the alliance has not taken either Kabul or Mazar-e Sharif is not a sign of failure, Rumsfeld said in Washington.

When to make a final assault on either city, Rumsfeld said, "are judgments they make."

"And we try to encourage those judgments by providing ammunition, providing food, providing better targeting, doing what can humanly be done from the air to reduce the opposition forces in front of them," he said. "And that's what's been going on. So I think that there is progress that's been made."

Abdullah, the Northern Alliance foreign minister, returned today to the Panjshir Valley from the alliance stronghold of Khodja Bahauddin after a trip to Iran and Tajikistan.

In Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, he and Burhanuddin Rabbani, the alliance's titular political leader, attended a lengthy meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Abdullah said. He said Putin pledged continued support for the alliance "in all aspects," especially humanitarian aid, in view of a potentially difficult winter after three years of drought.

Asked if he was surprised by comments Wednesday by U.S. Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, who said the Taliban was proving to be a tough and resilient foe that would put up an extended fight, Abdullah said he was "not surprised at all."

He added: "So far the level of pressure on the Taliban is not such that we should expect them to be demoralized, to lay down their arms and run away. I don't believe there is such pressure on them."

Abdullah said that what Northern Alliance commanders consider a relatively low-intensity U.S. bombing campaign has "upset" some of them.

"I can understand that sense of frustration and admit it exists," he said.

A senior defense official in Washington said Pentagon strategists planning the air war believe that concentrating on destroying the Taliban's military infrastructure will be far more effective in the long term than merely bombing the front-line troops, who could soon find themselves without food, fuel, ammunition and other supplies as winter approaches.

"We want to choke the whole network off if we can," the official said.

Anthony H. Cordesman, a former defense official and military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Pentagon's strategy for destroying the Taliban's infrastructure and resupply capabilities has been far more effective than wasting large numbers of dumb bombs on dispersed troops and armor north of Kabul.

"From my viewpoint, I don't know whether [this] strategy will succeed, but it's the best strategy we have, and it would be a disaster to follow the strategy of the Northern Alliance, even if it knew what its own strategy is," Cordesman said.

High in the calculations of military planners in both Afghanistan and the United States is the approach of winter. Already some Afghan mountain passes are under snow. In past years, most fighting has lulled in snowy northern Afghanistan during the winter.

"I don't think we will be finished with this fight before winter," said Mohammed Hasham Saad, the top Northern Alliance representative in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital.

Nevertheless, Taliban officers have told their soldiers to prepare for an invasion by U.S. troops and to expect help from thousands of reinforcements from Pakistan, according to a Taliban member in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.

"They are drafting all the men from the villages around and giving them Kalashnikovs," said the man, a high civil officer in Jalalabad who spoke by telephone on condition his name not be used. "They said to get ready to resist the American infantry."

Loeb reported from Washington. Correspondents Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Islamabad and Doug Struck in Tashkent contributed to this report.

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THE MILITARY
Top Taliban Foe Is Executed; U.S. Raids on Kabul Continue

New York Times
October 26, 2001
By TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/international/26CND-ATTA.html

A leader of the Afghan opposition who had crossed into Afghanistan from exile in Pakistan to try to start a rebellion against the ruling Taliban was captured and executed today, the Taliban announced.

The leader, Cmdr. Abdul Haq, a hero in the fight against the Soviets in the 1980's, was caught trying to escape on horseback under cover of renewed United States air attacks, the Taliban said.

The death of Commander Haq, 43, who is not believed to have received any backing from the United States government, illustrates the difficulties of organizing resistance to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, said Michael R. Gordon, military correspondent of The New York Times. There is no equivalent there to the Northern Alliance, made up mainly of minority Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, which is fighting Taliban forces on a number of fronts.

His execution comes at a time when Western intelligence services are trying to enlist the help of pre-Taliban Afghan officials to encourage defections from the Taliban forces.

But a military official, responding to questions at a Pentagon briefing today, said he had no information on reports that the United States military tried to rescue Commander Haq after his capture.

The reports, details of which were sketchy, said that when Commander Haq was surrounded by Taliban forces he used a satellite telephone to try to contact Robert McFarlane, a former national security adviser from the Reagan administration. It was not clear why he might have made such a call.

Commander Haq, a Pashtun, like most of the Taliban and about half of all Afghans, was shot in the afternoon outside Kabul, the capital, with two companions. They were identified as Haji Dawrun and a man believed to be his nephew named Izatullah, Reuters reported.

"They were arrested alive and on the basis of the instructions of authorities" calling for death for serving the Americans they were put to death, the Taliban's education minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said.

Commander Haq had been trying to open a second front, winning support from Afghan tribal chieftains and second-level Taliban military leaders, Barry Bearak of The New York Times reported on Thursday from Peshawar, Pakistan, where the commander attended a meeting of Afghan exiles mapping a strategy for a post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Commander Haq was held in the eastern city of Jalalabad after entering Afghanistan with seven companions to visit his village on Oct. 21, his brother Haji Muhammad Din Haq said today at a news conference in Peshawar.

Commander Haq's entry into Afghanistan was reported by The Wall Street Journal, although it was publicly denied by his spokesmen.

After the commander's execution was announced, United States jets dropped 13 bombs on Kabul this evening local time, witnesses said.

Six bombs fell on the northern edges of the city, three bombs fell near the airport and then a further four bombs exploded elsewhere around the city, a Reuters correspondent reported.

Earlier, huge explosions shook Kabul on the Muslim day of prayer as United States jets pounded targets in and around the capital, witnesses said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said three of its warehouses were hit and burst into flames, destroying relief supplies. Three children were among five civilians said to have died in overnight raids.

The official at today's Pentagon briefing, Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, a deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he had heard reports about the "possibility" of damage to the Red Cross buildings. But he said he did not know if it was damaged by Taliban forces "or anyone else."

Admiral Stufflebeem said he did not agree with critics who said that the campaign was getting bogged down, adding, "This is a different kind of war than we've ever fought before."

In response to another question, he said the United States did not want to lose the support of moderate Arab countries by being seen to prolong the war.

"But part of the campaign is also showing our resolve and showing our strength," he said. "We're in the right. The terrorists are in the wrong."

After heavy overnight attacks around Kabul that included the use of cluster bombs for the first time on front-line Taliban positions north of Kabul, American jets swooped over the city around midday local time.

At least 11 explosions were reported to have hit Kabul in three bombing waves during the day.

At the warehouses used by the Red Cross, an Agence France-Presse reporter at the scene said trucks were overturned and sacks of relief supplies, including rice, beans, blankets, tents and oil were scattered among the debris.

The compound was also hit during an attack on Oct. 16.

Two of the three children killed in overnight raids were from one family living in the northwest area of Kabul and the third from the eastern part of the city, officials at the Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital told The Associated Press.

A Taliban Information Ministry official told Reuters that five civilians had been killed in today's attacks. There was no immediate word on any casualties this evening.

The United States has repeatedly said it is not targeting civilians. Today's reported deaths come after a United Nations official in Islamabad, Pakistan, said nine civilians had died in a village near a Taliban military compound outside the western Afghan city of Herat after it was hit by a cluster bomb.

In London today, officials said 200 Royal Marine commandos based in Oman were now "immediately available" for deployment in Afghanistan and another 400 would return to Britain from Oman and be put on "high readiness."

The British ground troops, who will be based on the assault ship Fearless, were described by Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram in Parliament in London today "as the lead element of an immediately available force to help support operations."

Britain will also send an aircraft carrier and other support ships to the region, Mr. Ingram said.

The commandos, specialist mountain soldiers, have also trained in Norway, where they honed their winter warfare skills.

British forces have been involved since the first night of the campaign, on Oct. 7, when British submarines fired cruise missiles into Afghanistan.

Since then Britain has taken a supporting role, mainly by providing surveillance and helping to refuel American bombers.

But with pressure on American troops mounting to finish the operation before the onset of winter and the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, beginning in mid-November, the addition of British troops was expected, Suzanne Kapner of The New York Times reported from London today.

--------

US special forces beat retreat as enemy 'fought back like maniacs'

Telegraph (UK)
By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
26/10/2001
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/26/war226.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/10/26/ixhome.html

THE American troops who took part in last Friday's raids inside Afghanistan encountered far heavier opposition than they expected, forcing commanders to call in the SAS for future missions.

The "cosmetic" raids were designed to provide a show of something happening on the ground, both for the psychological impact on the Taliban and to appease a US public increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of the war.

Targets were selected because they were thought to be poorly defended and could be easily filmed to demonstrate that ground troops could go where they wanted.

But the soldiers from Delta Force, the US equivalent of the SAS, and the US Rangers were stunned by the resistance they met and had to get out sooner than expected, Pentagon sources said.

"The raid was a success from the intelligence point of view," one said. "We got lots of intelligence. But our men were surprised by the amount of resistance they ran into.

"The speed with which the Taliban launched a counter-attack came as a bit of a shock. They fought like maniacs, we didn't expect that. Intelligence got it wrong."

Two US Rangers were killed when their helicopter crashed inside Pakistan. Another helicopter landed so quickly while attempting to get the Rangers out that it lost part of its undercarriage.

The wheels and metal were later exhibited for television cameras by the Taliban, who claimed to have shot it down.

Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, admitted yesterday that the Taliban was a more formidable foe than the allies expected.

He told the weekly magazine US News and World Report: "These are very tough people. They've made careers out of fighting, and they're not going to roll over."

Adml Sir Michael Boyce, Britain's Chief of Defence Staff, gave warning in an interview with the New York Times that "quick pinprick" operations would not be enough.

"The quick operation would be good for certain targets. It may be an important intelligence hit. It may be an al-Qa'eda senior person to be lifted."

But sometimes the troops would need to stay longer to achieve "a proper reconnaissance", he said. "It is conceivable that we could conduct an operation for a period of weeks."

Both Sir Michael and Colin Powell, US secretary of state, said the war could go on into the holy month of Ramadan, something that may strain further a coalition already showing signs of fraying.

But Sir Michael told the Financial Times: "We're not aware Ramadan stops terrorists claiming to be good Muslims from conducting terrorist raids."

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REVIEW STORY ON BIN LADEN'S HEALTH IS CONFIRMED

REUTERS
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001
From: The Progressive Review <news@prorev.com>

[The Review recently reported that Osama bin Laden was a very sick man due to kidney failure. This information ­ despite having been broadcast on national networks a year and a half ago ­ has been kept from the public since September 11by mainstream media. This Reuters story breaks the trend]

Exiled Saudi Arabian dissident Osama bin Laden is dying of kidney failure, according to a published report. Asia Week, quoting a Western intelligence source who has been tracking him, said in its latest edition the kidney disease had begun to affect bin Laden's liver and associates were trying to obtain a dialysis machine to stabilize his condition . . . The weekly news magazine said bin Laden, 45, who is in Afghanistan, remained mostly conscious and was able to talk and hold meetings. But the man is dying, Asia Week quoted the source as saying.

-------- arms sales

Pentagon Announces Taiwan Arms Sale

October 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Taiwan.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon said Friday it plans to sell anti-tank missiles to Taiwan to strengthen the island's ability to stop an amphibious attack.

The $51 million deal is for 40 Javelin anti-tank missile launch units with 360 missile rounds, as well as support equipment.

As a matter of policy, the United States is committed to providing Taiwan with defensive arms, although China strongly objects to the U.S. arms sales. China considers Taiwan a renegade province that must eventually reunite with the mainland.

-------- balkans

In-Depth Report Documents Milosevic Crimes
New Statistics Show Direction from Belgrade

October 26, 2001
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/10/kosovo1026.htm

Pristina, Kosovo, Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his inner circle of political and military leaders are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo, Human Rights Watch said today, three days before Milosevic's next hearing at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

The 593-page report released today, "Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo," uses innovative statistical methods and comprehensive field research to document the torture, killings, rapes, and forced expulsions committed by forces under Milosevic's command against Kosovar Albanians between March 24 and June 12, 1999, the period of NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia. More than 600 victims and witnesses of atrocities were interviewed for the report.

"This report implicates the former leadership of Serbia and Yugoslavia in numerous atrocities," said Elizabeth Andersen, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division. "The 1999 Kosovo campaign was clearly coordinated from the top, and some of these people still hold important positions today."

War crimes committed by Serbian and Yugoslav security forces did not occur in isolation, the Human Rights Watch report says. Three chapters of the report document abuses committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, which abducted and murdered civilians during and after the war, as well as violations by NATO, which failed to minimize civilian casualties during its bombing of Yugoslavia. A background chapter analyzes Kosovo's recent history and the international community's failure to stop what is dubbed a "predictable conflict."

"For a decade the international community tolerated human rights abuses in Kosovo in the name of regional stability," Andersen said. "This report stresses the importance of promoting human rights before a conflict erupts, as well as accountability for past abuses to halt the cycle of violence."

"Under Orders" breaks new ground in the depth and breadth of its documentation, including detailed case studies of dozens of villages, a statistical analysis of the abuses, photographs of perpetrators, a strategic overview of the Belgrade government's offensive, and the organizational structure of the Serbian police and Yugoslav army, both controlled by Milosevic.

A statistical analysis of executions in Kosovo, prepared in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), reveals the coordinated nature of the offensive. Three distinct waves of killings suggest the executions were not the result of random violence by government forces. Rather, "they were carefully planned and implemented operations that fit into the [Belgrade] government's strategic aims," the report concludes.

Witness and survivor testimonies in village after village describe how Serbian and Yugoslav troops systematically burned homes, looted businesses, expelled civilians, and murdered those suspected of participating in or harboring the KLA, including some women and children. At some sites, witnesses reported that bodies were removed to conceal the crimes. This cover-up was apparently confirmed in 2001, when seven mass graves were discovered in Serbia proper containing the bodies of Kosovar Albanians.

Rape and sexual violence were also components of the campaign, the report says, used to terrorize the civilian population, extort money from families, and push people to flee their homes. Human Rights Watch documented ninety-six cases of rape and sexual assault in Kosovo, although the total number of sexual assaults is certainly much higher. Human Rights Watch has urged the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to include rape charges in the indictment against Milosevic.

A chapter entitled "Forces of the Conflict" details the various government troops involved in the conflict, as well as key members of the KLA. Important commanders in the Serbian police and Yugoslav Army, all listed in organizational diagrams, include:

Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic, former Chief of the Yugoslav Army General Staff Col. Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, former head of the Yugoslav Army's Third Army Maj. Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic, former head of the Third Army's Pristina Corps Vlajko Stojiljkovic, former Serbian Minister of Internal Affairs Col. Gen. Radomir Markovic, former head of Serbia's state security service (SDB) Col. Sreten Lukic, former head of Serbian police in Kosovo Col. Gen. Vlastimir Djordjevic, former head of Serbia's public security service (RJB) Lt. Gen. Obrad Stevanovic, former head of Serbia's police department

Despite his direct involvement in the 1999 campaign, Nebojsa Pavkovic is currently chief of the Yugoslav Army General Staff. Sreten Lukic is currently chief of public security in the Serbian police. Ojdanic and Stojiljkovic, both indicted by the ICTY for crimes in Kosovo, are still at large, as are two other Kosovo-related indictees, Nikola Sainovic, former Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister, and Milan Milutinovic, still the President of Serbia.

The report also documents violations by NATO and the KLA. NATO bombs killed approximately 500 Yugoslav civilians between March and June 1999, and NATO did not take adequate steps to minimize this number, the report concludes. NATO's use of cluster bombs, although halted in the course of the conflict, is also criticized in the report.

Human Rights Watch also charged the KLA with committing serious abuses in 1998, in the course of fighting that led up to the NATO bombing. KLA abuses during this period included abductions and murders of Serbs and ethnic Albanians considered collaborators with the state. Elements of the KLA are also responsible for post-conflict attacks on Serbs, Roma, and other non-Albanians, as well as ethnic Albanian political rivals.

As many as one thousand Serbs and Roma have been murdered or have gone missing since NATO bombing ceased on June 12, 1999. Criminal gangs or vengeful individuals may have been involved in some incidents since the war, but KLA members are clearly responsible for many of these crimes. By late-2000 more than 210,000 Serbs had fled Kosovo; most of them left in the first six weeks of the NATO deployment. Those who remain are concentrated in mono-ethnic enclaves.

The international community's slow response after the bombing campaign is partially to blame for the post-war violence, the report concludes. The United Nations and NATO failed to take decisive action from the outset to curb the forced displacement and killings of Kosovo's non-ethnic Albanian population, which set a precedent for the post-war period. Two years after the war, a functioning judiciary system has not been established and an atmosphere of impunity persists.

The report welcomes Milosevic's April 2001 arrest and his subsequent transfer to the ICTY. But Human Rights Watch urged further action by the Serbian authorities and the international community to hold accountable all those responsible for crimes committed during the war in Kosovo, as well as during the wars in other parts of the former Yugoslavia.

"Holding Milosevic accountable is a first step," Andersen said. "But he is only one on a long list."

The report "Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo" is available online at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/.

The release, the table of contents, and the executive summary are available in Albanian at http://www.hrw.org/albanian/kosovo2001/kosovo1026-alb.htm and in

The release, table of contents, and executive summary are available in Serbian at http://www.hrw.org/serbian/kosovo2001/kosovo1026-serbian.htm

For more information on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo, please see:

Key documents on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at http://www.hrw.org/europe/fry.php

Kosovo: Focus on Human Rights (HRW Focus Page) at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/kosovo98/index.shtml

-------- biological weapons

All Anthrax Tested Points to Single Source

By Cat Lazaroff
October 26, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-26-06.html

WASHINGTON, DC, The anthrax sent to Florida, New York and Washington, DC is highly concentrated and from the same strain, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge told reporters at a White House briefing Thursday. The news came as officials announced that a State Department contract worker in Sterling, Virginia has been diagnosed with inhalation anthrax - the region's fifth such case.

Based on the latest DNA testing, "it is clear that the terrorists responsible for these attacks intended to use this anthrax as a weapon," said Ridge. "We still don't know who is responsible, but we are marshaling every federal, state and local resource to find them and bring them to justice."

Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, the president's advisor on Homeland Security, said that all the anthrax tested appears to have come from a single source (Photo courtesy The White House)

Ridge said that all the anthrax spores tested are from a type known as the Ames strain, named for a bioweapons research center in Ames, Iowa. The strain, which is used for research in universities around the world, is also used to test vaccines.

The "Washington Post" reported Wednesday that the anthrax spores were treated with a chemical additive that allows the spores to remain airborne longer - making it far more likely that those exposed will inhale the dangerous substance and develop the dangerous, often fatal, inhalation form of anthrax.

"I can say to you without question, this is anthrax, and the samples from New York, Washington and Florida are all from the same family or strain. That's been documented by DNA testing," Major General John Parks, the commanding general at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrik, Maryland told reporters.

"When we look at these spores underneath the microscope, they are uniform in size and highly concentrated, and highly pure," Parks added. "And these individual spores are very light, and if given some energy from, say, wind or clapping or motion of air in a room, they will drift in the air and fall to the ground."

"The good news," Parks said, "is that this strain is susceptible to all of the antibiotics that we have in the United States, from penicillin all the way to the most recent advanced quinolines that we have available."

Daschle said officials do not know whether the anthrax is coming from one source or multiple sources.

"I'm not prepared to tell you today the range of potential actors who could have created as pure and as concentrated and as respirable an anthrax as we are working on and investigating now. I don't know whether it's a large range or a narrow range," Ridge said.

But "clearly we are up against a shadow enemy," people who have no regard for human life, and who "are determined to murder innocent people," he said.

The letter which brought anthrax to Senator Tom Daschle's office carried the return address of a nonexistent school (Photo courtesy FBI)

Anthrax spores have now affected all three branches of the U.S. government. A letter containing anthrax was received at the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and anthrax spores have been found at mailrooms serving Congress, the White House, and - confirmed late today - the U.S. Supreme Court and the Central Intelligence Agency.

There are now five confirmed cases of inhalation anthrax in the Washington DC region. Two U.S. Postal Service workers from the Brentwood mail sorting facility in the capitol have died after inhaling anthrax spores in a back room of the center.

Two other Brentwood workers and a journalist who visited the Brentwood facility have also been diagnosed with inhalation anthrax.

On Thursday, the first postal worker with no direct ties to the Brentwood facility was diagnosed with inhalation anthrax. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher told reporters that a 59 year old contract employee working at the State Department's main mail handling facility in suburban Sterling, Virginia has anthrax.

Boucher said the unidentified mail handler went to the hospital Wednesday with flu like symptoms.

"He tested positive for the disease," said Boucher. Where and how he was exposed is not known, but the Sterling facility does receive mail directly from the Brentwood facility.

As a precautionary measure, all of the State Department's mail handling employees have been placed on antibiotics, Boucher said.

The Sterling mail handling facility "is completely closed" and "no Department facilities are accepting mail at this time," he said. Boucher also said mail will not be going out in the diplomatic pouch system.

The Postal Service has begun testing for anthrax contamination at hundreds of post offices across the East Coast, as well as in every government mailroom. Masks and gloves will be issued to all 800,000 Postal Service employees nationwide, and the agency hopes to begin treating mail with irradiation to kill anthrax spores.

Homeland Security director Ridge said that health officials have now tested and treated more than 4,000 postal workers in Washington DC, New Jersey, New York City and other affected areas. The main mail processing center in New York City tested positive for anthrax spores on Thursday.

After a closed door meeting Wednesday evening, director Ridge said the White House is calling for increased cooperation between federal agencies to ensure a more rapid response to further anthrax cases, in hopes of avoiding further loss of life.

The anthrax attacks claimed their first victim last month when a journalist in Florida died on inhalation anthrax after opening a letter containing anthrax. One of his coworkers contracted cutaneous, or skin anthrax, as have aides to television anchors in New York City where anthrax laced letters were also received.

----

Secret project manufactured mock anthrax

October 26, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011026-90218630.htm

The Defense Department financed a secret operation in 1999 called Project Bacchus, in which a team of scientists successfully built a clandestine bioterrorism lab and produced simulated anthrax with materials purchased on the open market.

The scientists set up the lab in Nevada and, within a short period of time and without attracting any attention, assembled the necessary equipment to process and produce about 2 pounds of bacteria, including one that simulated anthrax.

Operating out of a former barber shop and recreation hall without arousing any suspicion, the team purchased the necessary glassware, piping and filters from a local hardware store. It also ordered a 50-quart fermentation unit from Europe for growing the bacteria, high-ranking Pentagon officials said yesterday.

The officials said the team purchased a milling machine capable of grinding dried material into fine powder from a store in the Midwest.

The team was not allowed to produce real stains of anthrax, but only biopesticides during two production tests in 1999 and 2000. Pentagon officials who studied the results of the test said the scientists, with anthrax spores, could have produced enough of the bacteria to have killed at least 10,000 people.

The scientists succeeded in developing a lab capable of producing bacteria that could kill thousands of people, and did so on a budget of about $1.5 million - passed to them by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a Pentagon group assigned the task of containing the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Pentagon officials told The Washington Times the project proved that terrorists with cash and some expertise in the production and processing of bacteria could put together an anthrax lab with readily available equipment and supplies. And, the officials said, would-be terrorists could do so without being detected.

The anthrax that has been spread through the mail to media and government outlets in New York, Florida and Washington has been described as finely milled and that those responsible for it intended to use it as a weapon, said Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge.

Law enforcement authorities have said it does not appear to be a strain of anthrax that would have been produced in Iraq or Russia, the two countries known to have supplies of the bacteria - leading to speculation that it was produced in this country at a secret site.

Authorities have not tied the anthrax attacks in this country to terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 assault on America, but have not ruled out that possibility. They said Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the attacks, and his al Qaeda network have the necessary cash to fund a clandestine lab and that several of the organization's members are college-educated.

Earlier this year, as part of Project Bacchus, a special forces team was sent to the Nevada lab to "neutralize" the factory. The laboratory, which actually processed only harmless biopesticides, was successfully disabled without the release of its theoretically lethal contents into the environment.

Pentagon officials said anthrax has become a weapon of choice because it is easy to acquire, can be stored in dry, powder form and remains potent for decades. With some expertise, the spores can be dispersed in the air and inhaled by unprotected troops and civilians.

They said infection from inhaled spores is highly lethal, and spores that are not inhaled remain in the soil for many years. The U.S. military developed a strain of anthrax so lethal that just 8 gallons, properly dispersed, could kill everyone on Earth, they said.

Project Bacchus, first reported in a little-noticed story by New York Times reporter Judith Miller a week before the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was never revealed to other agencies within the government. No one at the White House was briefed about it.

Mrs. Miller was herself the target of an anthrax hoax, when a letter containing a powdery substance was delivered to her office. She is the author of "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret Wars."

Pentagon officials said the Project Bacchus lab was established as part of an effort by the government to determine whether terrorists could manufacture biological weapons in this country using materials purchased from private outlets and whether it could or would be detected.

Sensors placed outside the lab were designed to create what the Pentagon officials described as "signatures" - measurable heat changes, noises and emissions that could be sampled in the air and soil as well as patterns of energy consumption.

The signatures were designed to be categorized and used as guides in detecting other similar sites in the United States and abroad, they said.

--------

MAIL SAFETY
Ion Beam Technology Tested to Sanitize Mail

New York Times
October 26, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/national/26MAIL.html?searchpv=nytToday

The decision by the Postal Service to try using electron beams to kill harmful organisms in the mail prompted a debate yesterday among experts about the possible impact on everything from shipped eyeglasses to cookies.

Postal officials said last night that the service had started sanitizing mail to the government at an Ohio plant. But they said the service would not start routinely sterilizing mail until tests ensured there was no significant damage to mailed goods or health hazard to employees. They said the procedure would be done initially only on mail that appeared suspect.

As companies scrambled to offer various systems to the service and to private companies trying to cut the risk of anthrax assaults, experts said the technology had potential, but they urged caution.

"Any time you generalize and say something is a cure all for everything that ails you, you will overstep the technical limits and end up with egg on your face," said Dr. Irwin A. Taub, an expert on food irradiation and a former senior research scientist for the Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass.

The technology, known as ion beam sterilization, uses a particle accelerator to produce beams of electrons, which are then fired through mail. The electrons disrupt the DNA of any living things they encounter, killing them.

Dr. Taub and other experts said they doubted that the process could be used on cartons or other bulky mail because the electrons would not penetrate deeply enough to kill something inside a large package.

Experts generally agreed that foods sent through the mail would not be affected. No radiation or significant heat is generated in the process, which is already widely used to sterilize bandages, food containers, spices, surgical supplies and food for astronauts and the Army.

But the high-energy electrons that penetrate material to kill bacteria and spores could also destroy electronic circuits and data on floppy disks, and they could alter the inks in photographs, officials at some companies that build or operate sterilizing equipment said.

Brad Stone, a spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration, said his agency and the post office were discussing ways to avoid having mailed prescription drugs go through the devices. "There'll be a system to ensure they won't be adversely affected," Mr. Stone said.

The technique could also change some materials in unpredictable ways. For example, electrons can bounce around inside minerals, including gemstones and glass, in ways that change the color of the material. Topaz is routinely modified commercially from clear to blue through ion beam sterilization, though at greater energy levels than those proposed for sanitizing the mail. Mineralogists said similar reactions could occur in glass at the energy levels being considered by companies competing for postal contracts.

The consequences would vary tremendously depending on the type of glass, but clear glass could turn brown, for example, said Dr. George R. Rossman, a professor of mineralogy at the California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Rossman said he was also concerned that using this process to sterilize the mail could damage or alter mailed materials being studied by scientists. For example, pottery shards are sometimes dated by heating them and measuring minute amounts of light emitted. The light is a measure of how much natural radiation the clays absorbed over millenniums, Dr. Rossman said, but ion beam sterilization would confuse calculations.

Gerry Kreienkamp, a spokesman for the post office, emphasized that the service was still in the early stages of deciding how to handle the new risk and the technologies chosen to reduce it.

"We'll have to test this and make sure it works within our system," Mr. Kreienkamp said.

--------

Pentagon Using 6 Weapons Detectors

October 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Anthrax-Pentagon.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Defense Department parked six biological weapons detectors outside the Pentagon Friday after anthrax turned up at mail facilities for the Supreme Court, the CIA and an Army medical research lab.

``There was no threat. It's a precautionary measure,'' said Pentagon spokesman Capt. Tim Taylor.

The units can detect and identify eight different germ weapons, including anthrax, in 30 minutes. The detectors, which are mounted on a Humvee chassis, can also detect and identify chemical weapons.

Soldiers parked two of the detectors outside each of the three main Pentagon entrances Friday. The detectors were covered with camouflage netting.

Defense Department officials say Pentagon mail handlers have taken extra precautions since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the first anthrax attacks, including wearing masks and gloves while screening mail. The Defense Department ordered all military mail facilities to take similar precautions earlier this month.

Anthrax has not been detected in the Pentagon, Defense Department officials say.

The detectors were developed after the Persian Gulf war to provide mobile laboratories to help detect -- and therefore aid in protecting soldiers against -- biological and chemical weapons attacks.

The detectors use high-tech equipment that determines not only the identity of the germ but also its particle size, an important consideration for Anthrax, which is more lethal in its smallest form.

The military's biological defenses also include other detectors that constantly monitor the air for signs of anthrax and other germ weapons.

-------- britain

UK commits troops to Afghan war

Washington Times
October 26, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/nobyline-2001102614308.htm

LONDON, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Britain announced Friday it would make 4,200 of its troops available for the allied war on terrorism in Afghanistan. Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said the troops would form part of a large force of flexible size on standby in the region and would be drawn from a major military exercise recently conducted by British military units in the Gulf state of Oman.

A Ministry of Defense spokesman told United Press International the announcement did not imply immediate deployment of British troops in the Afghan war zone but made clear that Britain would have troops in the area ready to take on combat duties.

More than 22,000 British troops have been taking part in a military exercise in Oman that was scheduled before the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States. The spokesman said Britain was prepared to keep 4,200 troops from the exercise on standby in the region.

Over 17,000 troops from the exercise are due to return to Britain in the coming days, he said.

Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram earlier said 200 Royal Marines would be made "immediately available" to the US-led Afghan military campaign while Britain built up its standby military presence in the region.

The 200 troops will form part of a larger but flexible force that will be supported by a substantial amount of hardware and military vessels, Ingram said.

The British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, a submarine armed with cruise missiles, the destroyer HMS Southampton and the frigate HMS Cornwall will remain in the region, along with seven Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships and four support aircraft, including Nimrod maritime patrol and Hercules transport planes.

Although the bulk of the force involved in Oman exercises is returning home, defense officials said at least 400 other troops from the elite 40 Commando would be on standby in Britain when they returned to their base in Taunton, in western England. The 40 Commando, part of the Royal Marines' 3,500-strong commando brigade, is specially trained for winter warfare.

Ingram said Britain's troop commitment was a "concrete demonstration of our resolve to see the campaign against international terrorism through to the end."

Chief of Defense Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce told reporters the marines could be used to mount "precise surgical raids" against targets such as Taliban control-and-command centers or ammunition dumps.

"There may be times when we spend a very short time on Afghan soil and there may be a time when we spend days," he told a news conference.

If the U.S.-led operation expanded further, he said, Britain would bring "much, much larger forces" into the campaign.

Prime Minister Tony Blair in a message to the armed forces radio said the British role in the anti-terror campaign was a huge responsibility but a necessary one. "This is a battle that we have to undertake for the defense of civilized values everywhere and for the free world," he said.

He said, "It is only in circumstances where I believe it is absolutely essential that we commit British forces," calling the current campaign "a fight worth undertaking because of what is at stake in the world."

Blair said, "If these terrorists who killed over 6,000 people in America are allowed to carry on building up their terrorist network, possibly acquiring chemical, biological even nuclear weapons of mass destruction, our world will be an insecure, unsafe place and there will be no corner of the world -- particularly not a place like Britain -- that will be untouched by that."

-------- business

Bin Laden Family's stake severed in a Carlyle fund that invests in buyouts of military and aerospace companies

Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001
From: The Progressive Review <news@prorev.com>

KURT EICHENWALD, NY TIMES: The Saudi family of Osama bin Laden is severing its financial ties with the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm known for its connections to influential Washington political figures, executives who have been briefed on the decision said. The decision, reached late last week, was by mutual agreement, a senior executive with the investment firm said. It came largely as a result of public controversy about the family's stake in a Carlyle fund that invests in buyouts of military and aerospace companies, the executive said . . .

In recent years, Frank C. Carlucci, the chairman of Carlyle and a former secretary of defense, has visited the family's headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as have former President George Bush and James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state. Mr. Bush works as an adviser to Carlyle, and Mr. Baker is a partner in the firm.

-------- israel

Israel agrees to a partial pullout

October 26, 2001
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011026-342909.htm

Israel, bowing to U.S. pressure, will pull its forces out of recently seized West Bank cities late tomorrow or Sunday.

The Israeli Cabinet met last night and decided on the withdrawal after assurances from the Palestinians that their towns would not be used as staging areas for attacks on Israel, an Israeli diplomatic source said last night.

The Palestinian cities were seized by Israeli forces after an Israeli Cabinet minister was assassinated on Oct. 17.

Israeli and Palestinian security officials are to meet to work out the details of the Israeli withdrawal, which would begin after the close of the Jewish Sabbath tomorrow.

It is still not clear whether agreement will be reached for a withdrawal from all of the Palestinian cities.

Yesterday, Israel gave the first solid clue that defiance of U.S. pullout calls was ending. It pulled out of the West Bank village of Beit Rima and reported that it captured suspects in the slaying of its Cabinet minister last week.

Thirty-six Palestinians have died, including four yesterday, since the Israeli incursion into Palestinian-controlled territory after last week's assassination of Israel's tourism minister.

President Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, welcomed the move, reporting that "the president believes that Israel's partial pullout is a positive step," referring to Beit Rima.

"The president continues to urge Israel to lower tensions, withdraw its forces from all Palestinian-controlled areas and to exercise restraint," said Mr. Fleischer.

But Israeli armor and troops remained in areas of six West Bank cities during the day yesterday, apparently feigning a shrugging-off of calls by Mr. Bush for a complete withdrawal. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who spoke on Capitol Hill yesterday, censured Israel for a second straight day, sparking tough questions from members of Congress.

Several lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the Bush administration was attacking Israel for going after terrorists on its border even as the United States leads a war against terrorism in Afghanistan.

"I am worried about sending a message that says when [Israeli] citizens are murdered, they can't do what the United States is now doing, pursuing the terrorists wherever they are, by whatever means possible," said Sen. Gordon H. Smith, Oregon Republican.

Mr. Powell said he understood the security pressures on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, but added Israel eventually would have to return to the negotiating table with the Palestinians.

"We also have to keep in mind that ultimate security will come only when we can get back to a process of peace," said Mr. Powell.

Fighting between Israeli and Palestinian forces broke out in those six West Bank cities, adding more Palestinians to the death toll since Israel penetrated the areas under Palestinian control after the slaying of hawkish Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.

The only clue of what would come out of the Cabinet meeting was the fact that Mr. Sharon called the Cabinet into session.

Instead, Israeli Cabinet Minister Dan Meridor said yesterday in Washington it is a serious mistake to criticize Israeli efforts to capture or punish terrorists.

Five Palestinian policemen were killed Wednesday in Beit Rima, and Israel arrested 11 others, two suspected of links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which took credit for the assassination. Villagers said three others who were taken to an Israeli hospital also died, but hospital officials said the three were wounded.

The Palestinian Cabinet called the Israeli sweep an "ugly massacre" and declared yesterday a day of mourning. Earlier, the Palestinian Authority had charged Israel already had in custody the assassination suspects before it mounted it military attacks.

Israel said it had arrested two members of the four-man cell that carried out the assassination before their attack on Beit Rima, but that the reputed triggerman - Hamdi Koraan - was still at large.

An Israeli government statement said security forces have arrested 42 Palestinians "directly connected with terrorist activity" since the assassination and 36 Palestinians have been killed, including numerous civilians. Overall, in more than a year of fighting, 721 persons have been killed on the Palestinian side and 186 on the Israeli side.

In New York yesterday, the U.N. Security Council met last night to discuss the situation in the Middle East. The United States and France had both floated draft presidential statements aimed at easing tensions on the ground, in response to demands from Council members and the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Washington has maintained that the parties themselves should solve the problems in the Middle East, and that Council involvement could only inflame tensions.

The Council meeting indicated how frustrated the international community, including the United States, is with the escalation.

However, if the resolution includes a call for international observers, the United States will most likely oppose it.

Mr. Meridor, a minister without portfolio in Mr. Sharon's government dealing with strategic issues, met with senior State Department officials during his visit this week to Washington and said the U.S.-Israel relationship remains "basically very solid."

He said Israel understands the "need to be low key" while the United States seeks Arab and other Muslim nations to back the war on terrrorism and American bombing of Afghanistan, which shelters accused terrorist Osama bin Laden. But such understanding "needs to be mutual - we, too, are at war."

• David R. Sands and Betsey Pisik contributed to this report.

--------

THE MIDEAST
Israeli Raid Turned Village Into War Zone

New York Times
October 26, 2001
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/international/26MIDE.html

BEIT RIMA, West Bank, Oct. 25 - As Israeli forces slipped into this village under cover of darkness early Wednesday, some Palestinian defenders were sleeping on cots under the olive trees.

They were not expecting a major attack, people here said today, but many West Bank towns these days are on alert for incursions. Palestinian security headquarters have become favorite Israeli targets, so the open air has become more appealing.

What began with a few shots that one resident thought might be a wedding celebration grew within minutes into a thunderous barrage, as helicopters swooped out of the darkness to join in. The overwhelming Israeli force left at least five Palestinians dead. After a 22-hour siege, during which they detained and interrogated 43 residents of the town and arrested 11 of them, the soldiers left early this morning.

Palestinian assertions of a "massacre" here of at least 10 people, made Wednesday while Israeli troops barred independent observers from the village, appeared today to be overstated. But a reconstruction of the operation shows how closely the incursions, which Israel has described as a police action to round up terrorists, in fact resemble war.

In a telephone interview tonight, the commander of the Israeli operation said that while all five men killed were carrying weapons, at least three of them were not shooting. Palestinians said two or three of them were trying to escape.

The commander, a colonel who asked that he not be identified, said his troops killed two policemen. In one case, he said, a policeman with a semiautomatic rifle approached soldiers but did not fire before he was killed. In the other case, he said, the policeman shot first.

The helicopters, he said, killed two or three security men who were running through the village - in an attempt to escape, Palestinians said. "You can't allow armed Palestinians running inside the village while your forces are inside," the commander said. No Israelis were injured in the raid, he said.

Under treaty, Palestinian security forces are licensed by Israel to carry weapons, and Beit Rima is in territory that is under Palestinian civil and security control. Gen. Gershon Itzhak, the commander of forces in the West Bank, said he had contacted local commanders half an hour before the raid and urged them to keep their men indoors. Palestinian political and military officials denied that any warning was given.

The commander said that during the operation the safety of civilians was a higher priority than the safety of his own men, if only for practical reasons. "You don't have to be a prophet to understand that if you finish an operation like that with civilian casualties it's a disaster for Israel's prestige," he said. He said almost all the shooting ended about 20 minutes into the operation, but residents disputed that.

Today, blood and tissue from two of those said to have been slain by helicopter fire remained at the bottom of a stone wall in an orchard just east of the middle of town. Bees buzzed over them, and curious or mourning villagers clustered around.

The anger of some here today was not directed only at Israel. "They used the helicopters that you gave to them, you Americans," said Nafiz al Sheikh, a commander of the local forces. "You are the main reason for our disaster." Another man displayed one of the huge rounds he said was fired by Apache helicopers used in the raid. With a bitter smile, he called it "an American present for our people."

The Israelis have occupied parts of seven West Bank towns, including Beit Rima, since the killing last week of Israel's tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi. Apparently in reaction to the troops' departure from this village, Ari Fleischer, President Bush's spokesman, today hailed what he called a "partial pullout."

Five more Palestinians were killed in fighting in the West Bank today, four of them in Bethlehem, Palestinians said. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met late tonight with some cabinet ministers to discuss the timing of a withdrawal from other positions in Palestinian territory.

Abdul Karin Jasser, the mayor of Beit Rima, acknowledged that Palestinian claims of the number of dead appeared to be overstated, although he added that he could not be sure until everyone who had fled during the violence returned home.

The mayor said that of the five known to be killed, three were from the Palestinian security forces and two were police officers. He said the overwhelming Israeli force was senselessly lethal. "They were shooting indiscriminately from helicopters," he said.

He said the security complement of the town was eight men from the Palestinian security forces and six or seven policemen. "Do you think this number requires all these soldiers and tanks?" he asked.

The Israeli forces included at least two helicopter gunships and several tanks and armored personnel carriers. Though a Palestinian man displayed what appeared to be a tank shell, the commander said no shells had been fired.

It was a sentiment echoed around the village. If the Israelis were truly out to make some arrests, said one resident, Abdul Jalil Barghouti, "five army jeeps could have entered without a problem."

But the commander of the operation scoffed at such assertions. "It's a very tough village," he said. "I don't think you can enter this village peacefully and negotiate with the Palestinian policemen." Israeli officials said that in recent months some 14 shooting attacks against Israelis were carried out near here on a road leading to an Israeli settlement.

Israelis called Beit Rima a breeding ground for terrorists, closely linked to the killing of Mr. Zeevi. Its residents said Beit Rima, a town of 4,000 that winds along a ridge line with stunning views of terraced hillsides, was a quiet place with no extremist leaders and no more militants than could be found in any other West Bank village.

Some grafitti on buildings here hailed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which claimed responsibility for killing Mr. Zeevi.

On Wednesday, Israeli officials suggested that the Beit Rima raid was an outgrowth of its investigation of the killing of Mr. Zeevi. After withholding details of its investigation for days, the Israeli police released a flood of them on Wednesday while the operation here was underway, seemingly linking the events.

Three of five men closely connected to killing lived here at some point. But none of them were arrested or killed in the raid. While Israeli officials said soldiers found two men here connected to the killing, the nature of that connection was not among the details they released.

Palestinians here said Israel was exaggerating the connection to manufacture a rationale for the attack. Maj. Gen. Amos Malka, Israel's chief of military intelligence, said tonight of the link between the raid and the extremists who killed Mr. Zeevi: "The connection is not so strong." In a news conference in Tel Aviv, General Malka said, "I think that the event of the assassination of a minister of Israel was strong enough to launch some of the operations" against militants whom the Israelis had previously hoped that Palestinian authorities would round up.

The operation had been planned long before Mr. Zeevi was killed, the commanding officer said. "The fact that Zeevi's killers were from this village of course encouraged us to launch this operation," he said.

Israeli troops had a list of some 15 to 20 extremists whom they had hoped to capture in the raid. Of the 11 they arrested, two were said to be from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Men from the village described being taken at gunpoint from their homes before dawn on Wednesday. Soldiers bound their wrists and put hoods over their heads, they said, then transported them to a nearby military base for questioning.

Israeli troops carried out reprisals against the families of those accused of acts against Israel. They demolished the home of the father-in-law of one of the suspected killers of Mr. Zeevi. They also dynamited the home of Hana Namir Ahmad Barghouti, the widowed mother of a man wanted by the Israelis as a leader of Hamas, the Islamist group.

As she accepted the card of a Red Cross worker who offered to get her a tent, Mrs. Barghouti said the troops told her she was lucky they had not come months earlier.

"Thirty-three years my husband worked in Kuwait to build this house," she said, gesturing at the mound of concrete, rebar, carpeting and twisted metal. Israeli troops would not let her take her belongings.

-------- u.n.

UN slams use of cluster bombs as 8 die

The News (Pakistan)
Friday October 26, 2001
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/index.html

WASHINGTON: The United Nations has sounded an alarm over the use of cluster bombs by American aircraft attacking Afghanistan, saying eight people died in a Herat village by dozens of unexploded orange-coloured "bomblets" littering roads and fields.

Official said the cluster bomb dropped on the Herat village had left a village strewn with deadly unexploded "bomblets." The official said eight people from the village had been killed in the American attack which leaves people trapped in their homes. UN staff has sought information from the US military about munitions dropped at the village of Shaker Qala, and other locations, said a UN spokesperson. "Vehicles and pushcarts took an unconfirmed number of casualties ... to the main hospital in Heart," she said. Cluster bombs are dropped in a casing which splits open in mid-air, scattering up to 200 bomblets the size of soft drink cans. They are used to destroy vehicles, to start fires and as an anti-personnel weapon.

Sometimes they descend with mini-parachutes designed to prevent explosion on impact, so that they deny the enemy the use of an area such as an airfield. Shaker Qala lies near a military camp. "The villagers have a lot to be afraid of, because these bomblets, if they did not explode, are very dangerous," Dan Kelly, manager of a UN mine removal program for Afghanistan, was quoted as saying by local media. "They can explode if the villagers so much as touch them."

The United Nations report of the cluster bomb - a weapon used by American forces in every war since Vietnam that has frequently caused civilian deaths - was the latest of a growing number of accounts of American bombs going astray and causing civilian casualties. At the United Nations briefing where the incident involving the cluster bomb was disclosed, spokesmen said the Taliban had moved six tanks into another village outside Herat after an American bombing raid during the weekend. Afghans reaching Quetta said two villagers had died when five of the six tanks were struck in a subsequent American attack.

A UN official Dan Kelly was quoted as saying that Afghan employees of the programme in Herat had gone to Shaker Qala, the village where the cluster bomb hit, to place sandbags around the bomblets and to clear paths that would allow villagers to leave their homes. Kelly said the description of the bomblets given over the radio from Herat suggested that the bomb appeared to have been of a type designed to scatter bomblets over an area of 20 football fields.

He said that the bomblets, carried to the ground on small parachutes, contained a "shaped charge" capable of penetrating armoured steel up to five inches thick. These bomblets, he said, are usually used for attacks on armoured vehicles, troop concentrations, bunkers and other dispersed targets.

But they are deadly even if they fall to the ground unexploded, because their small size and bright colour make them intriguing to passers-by, especially children. In more than 20 years of war, thousands of Afghan children have been killed or maimed by bomblets left over from Soviet bombing of guerrilla groups in the 1980's.

Kelly appealed to the Pentagon to provide the United Nations with details of the payload, height and speed of the aircraft that dropped the cluster bomb. That would enable the mine-removal team to determine the "footprint" of the bomb and the area to search for the bomblets. With nearly 300 square miles of Afghanistan already taken up by uncleared minefields from the 22 years of Soviet military occupation and civil war, he said, "the last thing Afghanistan needs right now is more unexploded mines and bombs."

Since the American raids began 18 days ago, bombing mistakes have been reported almost daily. In one early case, a targeting error caused a bomb to strike a United Nations mine-removal office in Kabul, killing four Afghan employees. No confirmation of the two Herat strikes, the one involving the cluster bomb and the one near the mosque, was immediately available from the Pentagon, which has acknowledged several accidental strikes on civilian targets.

Cluster bombs dropped by US warplanes on a village in western Afghanistan killed nine civilians and forced the survivors to abandon their homes, the United Nations said Thursday here in Islamabad.

UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told a press conference in Islamabad that eight people were killed straight away in Monday night's attack on the village near the city of Herat and a ninth was killed after picking up one of the bombs. Another 14 people were injured, she said, and 20 of the 45 houses in the village were partially or completely destroyed. Bunker said local staff from the UN demining programme had visited the village -- which she identified as Shaker Qala -- after the attack.

"They reported that eight civilians were killed directly in the attack and that one civilian was killed -- as happens in these cases -- when he went to look at the object, touched it and it blew up," she said. "They have determined there were 45 homes in that village, 20 of the homes were partially or completely destroyed in the attack. "The rest of the population decided to voluntarily evacuate and have gone into Herat."

Bunker said the survivors were only able to leave the village after the deminers made a path with sandbags for boundaries so the people fleeing did not touch any of the remaining bombs. The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund said as well as the immediate deadly impact of the bombs, many of them did not explode on impact and could kill innocent civilians years later.

"There's already a framework of international humanitarian law that is very clearly defined," Hossain told reporters in Islamabad. "Whoever is conducting those operations are under a legal obligation to comply." Hossain said international law stated maximum care must be taken to avoid civilian casualties and damage to non-combatants.

He said the UN would monitor the US-led forces to ensure their actions complied with international law. But he would not be drawn on whether the dropping of cluster bombs on Shaker Qala or other US air strike blunders that have killed civilians during the 19-day military campaign had breached international law.

According to earlier UN reports, a hospital and mosque in a military compound within one kilometre (mile) of Shaker Qala were also hit in the same series of raids. Bunker said Thursday the UN still stood by its reports, despite the United States refusing to acknowledge that the village, hospital or mosque had been hit. She said there were "casualties" from the attacks on the hospital and mosque, but was unable to give any more details.

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

Pentagon Makes Rush Order For Anti-Terror Technology

By Greg Schneider and Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 26, 2001; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53844-2001Oct25.html

The Pentagon yesterday issued a rush appeal for ideas for fighting terrorism, asking contractors for exotic new surveillance technologies that could be used against faraway enemies, as well as at American airports and shopping malls.

In releasing an unusual "broad agency announcement," the Pentagon bypassed its cumbersome bureaucracy and posted a list of 38 sought-after systems or technologies on an Internet site used by contractors. It wants one-page proposals by Dec. 23 for products that could be in place in 12 to 18 months.

The requested items include a computer system for tracking anyone who buys material that could be used in making bombs, a portable polygraph machine for questioning airline passengers, and voiceprint software for automatically recognizing people speaking Middle Eastern languages.

Experts said the initiative reflects how a military heavy on jets and ships is shifting its investments to fight this new, unexpected type of war.

Officials put no price on the effort and said it was an attempt to find a new way of doing business in a time of urgent need. Many of the surveillance technologies are already highly developed in the commercial world. In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, they are being rapidly embraced for law enforcement, intelligence and security purposes.

The Pentagon's announcement came on the day the Senate approved a landmark bill that would greatly expand the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to tap phones, monitor Internet traffic and conduct other forms of surveillance in pursuit of terrorists.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Joseph Atick, president of Visionics Corp. of Jersey City, which makes facial recognition systems for identifying and tracking people.

"We're going from concepts and ideas to programs and appropriations," Atick said. "I'm very impressed how fast they've turned around. It just shows the urgency with which they are operating."

A Pentagon spokesman said the unusually broad request is an attempt to get innovative ideas from sources that might not otherwise have direct access to the Pentagon -- small companies, even individuals with imaginative solutions -- and quickly put them in place.

"This is an area that needs a little bit of thinking outside the box," said the spokesman, Air Force Maj. Mike Halbig.

Among other technologies, defense officials want proposals for facial recognition systems, computer programs that can predict terrorist behavior, and sophisticated scanners for spotting people who have handled weapons of mass destruction.

"This is exactly where [the U.S. military] is going to try to spend more money," said John Pike, a military analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a nonpartisan think tank. "For the most part, these are small gadgets that you don't have to have a Boeing or Lockheed Martin to build or develop."

Electronics expert David Rockwell of the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm, said many of the systems the Pentagon wants have been in development for years but until now have suffered from a lack of funding and attention.

Some of the areas "have potentially ominous overtones," Rockwell added. One item, for instance, calls for a tracking device that allows "monitoring of civilian as well as military targets."

"Some of this technology could be used in ways that have not been legal in the past and may become legal in the future," he said. "But I think that's happened during every time of war in the U.S."

Many of the technologies the Pentagon proposes are similar to devices that companies are already putting on the market.

"It sounds like they've done their homework. Most of these technologies are pretty ripe for these uses," said Richard Norton, executive director of the International Biometric Industry Association, which represents companies that make systems keyed to immutable characteristics such as fingerprints and certain facial characteristics.

Member companies expect their revenue to come in at $200 million this year, double last year's. The use of digital fingerprints by law enforcement agencies has become common, and banks, casinos and other businesses now routinely use facial recognition or handprint systems to identify fraud artists or improve building security.

Earlier this year, Tampa became the first U.S. city to use facial recognition in a public area to fight crime. Officials at airports in Boston and Oakland, Calif., are planning to install a facial recognition system, and officials at least a dozen other U.S. airports are considering such measures to increase security.

Civil liberties specialists said the military's effort would accelerate the development and adoption of biometric systems throughout society.

Improved facial and voice recognition systems could dramatically strengthen the ability of authorities to identify and track people, including those who might be innocent of any wrongdoing, said James Dempsey, deputy director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties advocacy group based in the District.

While there's little doubt such systems could help the military fight terror, the improved technology will almost surely migrate into civilian law enforcement agencies, Dempsey said.

The system used by Tampa police, for instance, was developed by Visionics Corp. with millions of dollars in backing from the Defense and Justice departments. And it is being used by a variety of police agencies for targeted surveillance.

"The government is increasingly going to be conducting scans -- facial scans, voice scans, data scans," Dempsey said. "They're going to be tapping into this digital ocean . . . of daily behavior."

--------

Arming Soldiers for a New Kind of War

New York Times
October 26, 2001
By ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/opinion/26KREP.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON -- During his campaign for president, George W. Bush endorsed the need to transform the American military in response to new types of threat. This now seems prescient, given the unconventional attacks on Sept. 11 and the ensuing war against terrorism. The first war of this new century is not even a distant cousin of the Persian Gulf War, much less of the cold war that still determines, in many ways, the size, form and orientation of our military.

We now confront enemies who align their strengths against our weaknesses. As horrific as using hijacked airliners is, the fact that terrorists are now using biological weapons is even more worrisome. And while acquiring a nuclear weapon is difficult, the possibility that terrorists might employ radiological waste to wage a dirty war seems disturbingly plausible. In short, the capacity to attack this country employing weapons of mass destruction is no longer the province of a few states; nor are the means of attack limited to long-range missiles. The nature of war is undergoing major, perhaps fundamental, change.

America's war against terrorism is only Exhibit A for those who argue that the character of war is being transformed. For example, the growing proliferation of ballistic and cruise missiles, and of weapons of mass destruction, is likely to enable even third-tier militaries to place American bases overseas in their cross hairs. Such bases, long a reassurance to allies and a deterrent to would-be adversaries, may become the 21st century's Omaha Beaches: killing zones for massed, immobile soldiers and war supplies. This possibility will only be avoided if the American military transforms itself so as to be able to project decisive power abroad in the absence of secure access to overseas bases.

A similar danger confronts the Navy. During the cold war, our Navy operated far out at sea. Today our naval forces find themselves maneuvering closer to shore to support our land-based ground and air forces. As they do so, they are becoming easier to locate and have less warning of attack. Attacks are likely to come not from enemy fleets but from coastal submarines, mines, and land-based aircraft and missiles.

Vulnerable overseas bases and large ships cruising dangerously close to shore are just two examples of how cold war military solutions have become liabilities. The Pentagon's recently completed Quadrennial Defense Review - an assessment and statement of purpose made by each presidential administration - recognizes these dangers and ably explains why the American military needs to change. Yet the review is nearly silent as to how; more precisely, it does not indicate which programs should be abandoned because they are outdated.

The details will come when the administration submits its defense budget and program requests early next year. However, we may have an early litmus test. The administration is expected to announce today whether it will go ahead and choose a manufacturer to produce nearly 3,000 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, at a price tag exceeding $150 billion - a huge sum even by defense-budget standards. Yet most of these short-range aircraft, intended to be the next generation of fighter-bomber for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, will have to operate out of large overseas bases or off aircraft carriers, precisely the sort of targets that the Pentagon recognizes have become vulnerable.

The Bush administration is taking some modest steps to bring the military up to date. For example, for a relatively small cost the Pentagon intends to reconfigure several Trident submarines to carry large numbers of long-range cruise missiles, a hedge against the growing risk to surface ships in coastal waters. Another program will speed the development of unmanned aircraft that could perform many of the Joint Strike Fighter's combat missions at a fraction of the cost.

Other transforming changes seem less likely to be pursued by the administration. One could involve making more long-range B-2 bombers. These would greatly increase the military's ability to strike even if overseas bases are at risk - or when, as is the case today around Afghanistan, their use is restricted or denied. Another initiative would center on building a squadron of small high-speed warships that, in battle, could be tightly linked by information technologies but physically dispersed. Such a force could prove far more effective in defeating coastal naval forces than a vulnerable aircraft carrier worth $5 billion and with thousands of sailors aboard.

Now that thousands of Americans have been killed by a foreign enemy and our soldiers are at war, it is difficult to argue for cutting some military programs. But the Pentagon's budget is not infinite, and poor or outdated programs do take money away from better ones.

The Bush administration has made the case for radically changing the military. Now it needs to implement its ideas. The process will take years, and failure to begin now will greatly increase the risks to our security as our enemies improve their ability to find and exploit our vulnerabilities.

Andrew F. Krepinevich is director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a former member of the National Defense Panel.

-------

Protracted war tests US resolve

October 26, 2001
By Brad Knickerbocker bradknick@aol.com
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1026/p1s3-usmi.html

WASHINGTON - The overriding lesson from this week in the "war" on terrorism may be that Americans need to prepare themselves for a conflict that - in terms of length, if not cost - will be unrivaled since the US pulled out of Vietnam nearly 30 years ago.

True, from Day 1, President Bush and his national-security coterie have been telling Americans that the fight will not be over anytime soon. It will have to be fought on many fronts. The costs could be high, including more attacks on the US. And victories - to the extent that they are publicly revealed at all - could be years in coming.

Yet the reality behind the official Washington rhetoric is just beginning to set in, as the military campaign completes its third week, and the news from both the battlefield of Afghanistan and the battlefield of America shows the difficulties in quelling an elusive band of terrorists.

Among the challenges now becoming more obvious:

• The appearance that the US is losing the battle for hearts and minds, as almost daily reports of bombing errors and civilian casualties mount.

• The complexities of finding political stability in a post-Taliban Afghanistan.

• The approach of the region's brutal winter and the Muslim holy days of Ramadan.

• What looks increasingly like a state-based anthrax attack on Americans that many officials here believe could be tied to the Sept. 11 hits on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

All this will test the Bush administration's ability to convince Americans, notorious for their short attention span, to stay committed to what could become a "perpetual war," going on for years. At the moment, US public resolve remains high.

"Support for military retaliation is so strong that the possible consequences of going to war - at this point - clearly don't outweigh the public's determination that it is the right thing to do," says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup poll. "Question after question in poll after poll has put in front of the American public ideas about what a real war might entail in terms of human and financial consequence. In response after response, the public perseveres in its support for retaliation."

For example, says Mr. Newport, "this past weekend, we asked about the possibility of up to 5,000 military or civilian deaths resulting from military action, and found that three-quarters or more of those interviewed still supported the concept of a military response, even in the face of these types of casualties."

These guys are tough

The Pentagon this week seemed to make a point of trying to lower expectations. At a Defense Department briefing, spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, who works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked what he'd learned about the strengths and the vulnerabilities of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.

"They are proven to be tough warriors," he acknowledged. "We're in an environment they, obviously, are experts in, and it is extremely harsh."

Yet beyond the air and ground war, there are other indications that Americans need to prepare themselves for an enduring conflict. For example, military and intelligence officials warn that the conflict could be prolonged and the US position weakened by a Taliban program of "denial and deception" that seeks to influence public opinion around the world.

In several areas, says a senior defense official, the Taliban has begun housing its troops in mosques and other village facilities. The regime, said by the US to be sheltering suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, also is placing such military gear as helicopters next to civilian sites rather than at airfields, according to this source, making it much more difficult for the US to attack without either endangering innocent Afghans with aerial bombing or exposing US ground forces to hostile fire.

"They're using fairly classical techniques," says the official.

The Pentagon this week also asked the defense industry for "help in combating terrorism" - another indication that the war won't be over soon.

In what's called a "Broad Agency Announcement," the Defense Department asked military contractors for aid in "defeating difficult targets, conducting protracted operations in remote areas, and developing countermeasures to weapons of mass destruction." "Its objective," the announcement says, "is to find concepts that can be developed and fielded within 12 to 18 months."

While evidence of the duration of the war is just beginning to sink in, US officials are having a hard time countering the almost-daily reports of civilian casualties in Afghanistan - which, over time, could impact the level of support for the war at home and abroad.

One problem is that the reports are difficult to independently verify. The occasional tour of hospitals, tightly controlled by Taliban officials, is "a time-honored technique designed to have a propaganda effect," says a defense official, seen most recently in Serbia and Iraq. (In some cases, the source says, videos repeatedly showed the same corpses and injured persons.)

How long do we want to go?

While the propaganda war goes on, concern is growing among some lawmakers in Washington about the political difficulties of waging a protracted conflict. "Now we're going to get into the tough calls," says Sen. Joseph Biden Jr. (D) of Delaware, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

"Case in point: How much longer does the bombing continue?" he told the Council on Foreign Relations this week. "Because we're going to pay every single hour, every single day it continues. We're going to pay an escalating price in the Muslim world. We're going to pay an escalating price in the region. And that in fact is going to make the aftermath of our, quote, victory more difficult to reconstruct the region."


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

German fuel cell developers pool resources

Reuters:
26/10/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13000/newsDate/26-Oct-2001/story.htm

FRANKFURT - Four German companies involved in developing fuel cell systems yesterday said they had formed a group to help launch the technology from 2005.

"The project partners believe that fuel cells after 2005 can find a market in the residential and industrial sectors and aim at anticipating this development through their joint fuel cell initiative," they said in a statement.

The founder members are Oldenburg based regional utility EWE, Mannheim city utility MVV and major gas importers and distributors Ruhrgas AG and VNG AG.

The group, which was open to new members, will carry out joint field trials and test runs to improve the technical basis, the marketing and contracting of fuel cell installations, the statement said.

The technology transforms gas into electricity through an electrochemical reaction without combustion.

It is an alternative power production method low in greenhouse gases emissions, but still requires financial support and government funding during the initial stages.

Giant utility RWE last month said it planned to launch its own small-scale combined heat and power (CHP) systems based on fuel cell technology by the end of 2004.

Apart from carbon-free power generation, fuel cell industries work on cars powered by the new technology.

-------- energy

Say One Thing, Do Another

Healing Our World: Weekly Comment
By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-26g.html

"We've embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil. ... Embrace the future and recognize the growing demand for a wide range of fuels, or ignore reality and slowly but surely be left behind." -- Michael Bowlin, CEO, ARCO (now BP), Houston, Texas, February 9, 1999

"No matter how advanced our economy might be, no matter how sophisticated our equipment becomes, for the foreseeable future we will still depend on fossil fuels." -- Presidential candidate George W. Bush, Pontiac, Michigan, October 13, 2000

"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Political and industrial leaders are fond of telling us that environmental issues can be considered only if there is enough time and money and only if the economy is not affected. Yet time and time again, environmental issues prove to be the fundamental basis for major policy decisions.

The decision to colonize North America was heavily influenced by the vast resources that were present. The European colonists began a relentless drive to capture those resources, and most fundamental U.S. doctrines, laws, and values were born out of the need to use those resources.

Very quickly, environmental issues surfaced as forests were denuded, streams diverted, and minerals mined. But no single resource may have changed the face of the world as much as fossil fuels have since their discovery.

Oil derricks in Los Angeles shortly after the discovery of oil there in the 1920s (Photo courtesy http://www.dieoff.org/)

With a seemingly endless supply of relatively cheap gasoline and natural gas for our homes and businesses, it is easy to believe that we can never run out. Yet this has never been the case and even oil industry analysts are discussing the inevitable end to this finite, non-renewable resource.

Now scholars and analysts are agreeing that we WILL run out of oil and other resources. As prices increase, the gap between those who have and those who don't will widen. Many of us who are those who have today will be the have-nots of tomorrow.

Oil industry investors, however, will not go down without a fight. Fossil fuels are now being searched out in places once deemed too costly to explore, and markets are being sought that would have once been considered out of the question.

All major oil companies are now working on alternative energy sources, but rather than encouraging their introduction more widely today, they are trickling out the technology. I suspect that when the last drop of oil is gone, the oil companies will miraculously unveil their new energy producing plants that run on hydrogen, wind, and solar power.

Traffic in Denver, Colorado (Photo by Warren Gretz courtesy National Renewable Energy Lab)

"For over 150 years, mankind has been used to an ever growing supply of cheap and abundant energy," said Colin J. Campbell at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Toronto in 1998. Campbell is the co-author of an article in the March 1998 "Scientific American" magazine entitled "The End of Cheap Oil." A former exploration geologist, he believes that oil production will peak within the decade.

"The implication of this on industry, world politics, and economics seems to me to be enormous," Campbell said. Others feel the peak may be two decades from now, but it will come.

When the quantity of oil already burned since oil extraction began equals the amount yet to be extracted, the peak will have been reached. More costly methods will be used for a while to extract oil from tar, heavy oil and hydrocarbons locked in shales.

The International Energy Agency in Paris thinks that oil production could peak before the year 2015. By 2020, the demand for oil could exceed the supply by 17 million barrels per day.

The end of oil production is a much harder date to predict and is not really as important as when production peaks. The peak will be a time of crisis if world dependence on oil continues unchecked since demand will exceed the supply. This is the time when the rich will become very much richer while the gap between economic classes widens.

Imagine paying five, 10, or even 20 dollars for a gallon of gas. It could happen in our lifetime.

These stark realities that jeopardize the profits of the world's biggest companies have affected the modern day foreign policy of the United States and nearly every nation on the planet. Countries will gladly go to war to insure that cheap oil is available.

The United States' dependence on fossil fuels has shaped its Middle East policies dramatically. Even today's war on Afghanistan has fossil fuel undertones that have not been revealed at press briefings.

Afghan refugees arrive last week at a camp set up by the Iranian Red Crescent just inside the Afghan border. (Photo courtesy International Federation Red Cross and Red Crescent)

Afghanistan is one of the world's most impoverished nations and many of its nearly 26 million people suffer daily from the effects of a decimated political, physical, and institutional infrastructure. But under that country's devastated landscape are significant fossil fuel resources. And the only route to get Asian and Russian oil to the Arabian Sea for transport to the West is through Afghanistan.

The Soviets estimated Afghanistan's proven and probable natural gas reserves at up to five trillion cubic feet. Soviet estimates from the late 1970s said Afghanistan's proven and probable oil reserves are around 95 million barrels. All oil exploration and development work as well as plans to build a 10,000 barrel per day refinery were halted after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

U.S. oil interests have already begun planning to extract oil and natural gas from Afghanistan. In January 1998, Unocal, the U.S. based oil giant formerly known as the Union Oil Company, signed an agreement with the Taliban to proceed with an 890 mile, US$2 billion, two billion cubic foot per day natural gas pipeline project, led by Unocal.

The Internet data service CountryWatch.com, in its description of the energy resources of Afghanistan, says, "the proposed $2-billion pipeline tentatively would run from Dauletabad south to the Afghan border and through Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan, to Quetta, Pakistan. The line would then link with Pakistan's gas grid at Sui."

Map of Afghanistan and its neighbors (Map courtesy CIA World Factbook)

The gas pipeline project consortium headed by Unocal is known as the Central Asian Gas Pipeline Ltd., or Centgas, which was formed in August 1996.

CountryWatch.com goes on to say, "Unocal and Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil hold a combined 85 percent stake in the consortium, while Turkmenrusgas owns five percent. Other participants in the project include Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company of South Korea, Itochu Corporation of Japan, and Indonesia Petroleum Ltd."

In August 1998, Unocal announced that it was suspending its role in the Afghanistan gas pipeline project in light of the U.S. military action in Afghanistan that year. The U.S. had launched cruise missiles against sites in Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden was suspected of training terrorists. The strikes were launched about two weeks after bombings, linked to bin Laden, of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Unocal has stressed that the gas pipeline project will not proceed until an internationally recognized government is in place. Putting such a government in place has been a stated objective of the current war effort.

Besides the gas pipeline, Unocal has proposed building a 1,000-mile, one million barrel per day capacity oil pipeline that would link Chardzou, Turkmenistan to Pakistan's Arabian Sea Coast through Afghanistan.

Unocal CEO Charles Williamson. Prior to becoming CEO in January 2001, he was executive vice president, International Energy Operations. (Photo courtesy Unocal)

Since the Chardzou refinery is already linked to Russia's Western Siberian oil fields, this line could provide a possible alternative export route for regional oil production from the Caspian Sea. The $2.5 billion pipeline is known as the Central Asian Oil Pipeline Project.

Afghanistan also has significant coal reserves, estimated to be in excess of 400 million tons. Most of the coal is located in the region between Herat and Badashkan in the northern part of the country.

While few would suggest that Afghanistan's fossil fuel resources instigated the current war, it is difficult to believe that these facts about Afghanistan's energy potential are not on the minds of our business and political leaders.

Once again, the environment is playing a pivotal role in the shaping of world policy.

It is time for our leaders to stop telling us that the condition of our environment is yet one of many optional factors to be considered in decision making. Let's get them to admit that resource extraction, energy generation, and their subsequent impact on our precious life support systems are really the foundational elements that shape our interactions in the world.

It is time to stop saying one thing, and doing another.

RESOURCES

1. Visit the Alternative Energy Institute for their view on fossil fuel depletion at: http://www.altenergy.org/2/nonrenewables/fossil_fuel/depletion/depletion.html

2. Visit Witness for Peace at: http://www.witnessforpeace.org/

3. See details on the condition of Afghanistan's environment at: http://www.countrywatch.com/files/001/cw_topic.asp?vCOUNTRY=001&TP=ENV

4. Learn more about the Afghan people from The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies at: http://www.ifrc.org/Docs/News/01/100902/

5. More about the peak of oil production can be found at: http://www.hubbertpeak.com/

6. The Peacemakers Speak website has Nobel Peace Prize winners' views on the current crisis at: http://www.thecommunity.com/crisis/

7. See the Rainforest Action Network's case against continued fossil fuel exploration at: http://www.hubbertpeak.com/

8. CARE has been quietly helping the people of Afghanistan for years. Find out how to help them at: http://www.thecommunity.com/afghan.html

9. The International of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is instrumental in getting aid directly to the Afghan people. Visit them at: http://www.ifrc.org/index.asp

10. The Non-Violence Web Page will give you many links to peace organizations at: http://www.nonviolence.org/links.htm

11. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. Tell them that you want them to take acknowledge that the environment affects everything. If you know your Zip code, you can find them at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html

{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at: jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his website at: http://www.healingourworld.com}

-------- environment

CALIFORNIA SCHOOL DISTRICT CONVERTS TO CLEAN FUELED BUSES

October 26, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-26-09.html

LOS ANGELES, California, With support from South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), the Jurupa Unified School District will become the first school system in the nation to convert entirely to clean fueled school buses.

"We are extremely pleased to be able to help Jurupa convert to clean buses," said Jane Carney, the Senate Rules Committee representative to AQMD's governing board. "We'll be helping many more districts thanks to new programs that are funding clean transportation for students throughout our region and state."

AQMD awarded $3.23 million to Jurupa to help purchase a total of 34 full sized compressed natural gas (CNG) school buses and nine smaller gasoline powered buses.

So far, the school district has acquired 24 CNG buses and the nine smaller gasoline powered models. When the remaining 10 CNG buses are purchased next year, the school district will have eliminated all but one diesel bus, which will be retained for long distance trips.

That bus is being retrofitted with a particulate trap to cut its soot emissions.

The total project cost is $5.33 million. Three million dollars of that amounts comes from a $17 million settlement paid by AES Alamitos LLC for excess emissions generated by one of its power plants in 2000.

"Our district is located along a transportation corridor. We recognize the need for our district to provide a healthful environment for our students. This current funding for clean buses makes it possible for us to do our part for cleaner air," said Mary Burns, a member of the Jurupa Unified School District school board. "Funding must be continued so that all students in our region and state can have a healthier start."

The school district lies in western Riverside County, which has the highest levels of particulate pollution in the region and among the highest in the nation. Last year, the area had an annual average level of fine particulate matter of 60.1 micrograms per cubic meter, exceeding the federal health standard of 50 micrograms per cubic meter.

Recent findings by University of Southern California health researchers show that children growing up in the area suffer respiratory impairment.

"We need to do everything possible to reduce levels of soot and particulate matter," said Riverside County Supervisor John Tavaglione. "Air pollution is a leading public health issue."

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

China WTO entry has global impact

Washington Times
October 26, 2001
FROM COMBINED DISPATCHES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011026-86360186.htm

China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), expected next month, will have a far-reaching impact on both the national and global economies, Kyodo News reported from Beijing this week.

Zhou Keren, vice minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, has told an international forum there that after entering the WTO, China will expand its efforts in opening its banking, insurance, trade, tourism, business and service sectors to the outside world. Domestically, he noted, there will be winners and losers.

Qiu Xiaohua, deputy director of the National Bureau of Statistics, told the same forum the biggest challenges were a shortage of talented business-oriented people and monopoly industries facing international market competition for the first time.

Following is an assessment by Kyodo News of some key sectors, based on discussions with industry insiders and government officials:

Telecoms: Upon accession, foreign operators will be permitted to take a 25 percent share in mobile telecom firms, rising to 35 percent after one year and 49 percent after three years. In Internet, paging and other value-added services, foreign firms may immediately take 30 percent stakes in Chinese companies in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, rising to 50 percent in two years, when geographical constraints are lifted.

Tariffs on many high-tech products like telecom equipment will be phased out and eliminated by 2005. A 25 percent stake will be allowed in fixed-line and long-distance services after three years, rising to 49 percent after six years.

• Automobiles: The government is to cut import tariffs to 60 percent to 80 percent in the next two years and to 25 percent by mid-2006. The domestic auto industry is seen as one of the hardest hit with many casualties.

Cheaper imports also could hurt foreign auto joint ventures with better product quality and services, such as Shanghai General Motors and Shanghai Volkswagen. Some Chinese are holding off buying cars, expecting a wave of cheaper imports.

• Banking: Foreign banks will be allowed to conduct domestic yuan currency business with Chinese firms in two years and with Chinese individuals in five years. Geographic restrictions on branch openings go at the same time.

Foreign banks could end up with more than half the domestic market for fee-based banking services, which include trade financing, credit-card transactions and cash management, Chinese bank officials say.

In five to 10 years, foreign banks could capture 15 percent of the market for foreign-exchange deposits, 10 percent of yuan deposits, 20 percent to 30 percent of foreign-exchange loans and 15 percent of yuan loans. Foreign banks would raid their Chinese counterparts for talent and could lure away 20 percent of staff at domestic banks with college degrees.

China has pushed its creaky banking sector into a scramble to expand services, forge cooperative pacts, list stocks, shed bad debts and merge to cope with the threat of foreign competition.

• Securities: The government will let minority foreign-owned joint ventures into fund management on the same terms as Chinese firms. Three years after accession, foreign firms will be allowed 49 percent stakes in joint ventures.

Chinese securities companies are seen as weak in the investment-banking business. Brokering fees and proprietary trading make up the bulk of revenues of domestic brokerages, which have little edge in financial consultancy or fund management.

Fledgling domestic brokerages are seeking partnerships with foreign securities houses to tap their expertise and capital strength.

• Insurance: China will allow "effective management control" in life insurance joint ventures, although it will limit foreign stakes to 50 percent. In the service field, the European Union secured the right in June for foreign firms to choose their Chinese joint venture partners freely.

The government will phase out geographical restrictions in three years, allow foreign insurers into health and pension areas over five years and permit wholly owned nonlife subsidiaries in two years. Foreign insurers are now largely restricted to Shanghai and Guangzhou. Domestic insurers, now enjoying a 99 percent market share, will face stiff competition from foreign firms.

• Agriculture: China agreed in June to cap its future spending on farm subsidies at 8.5 percent of the value of domestic farm production. Duties on agricultural products will fall from 22 percent to 17 percent and on U.S. priority products from an average 31 percent to 14 percent by January 2004.

China will cut import tariffs on products such as rape oil, butter, mandarins and wine to a range of 9 percent to 18 percent from the present 25 percent to 85 percent.

• Textiles: Quotas on Chinese textile imports will end formally in 2005 as mandated under a WTO-wide accord, although a special import "safeguard" system will be in place until the end of 2008.

China's textile and apparel sector is one of the few that should see a clear benefit from WTO entry with the lifting of import quotas abroad. Chinese textile firms focused on exports will be best positioned to capitalize on the agreement.

• Distribution/retail: China will phase out restrictions on distribution services for most products within three years. It agreed to lift joint-venture restrictions on large department stores and virtually all chain stores. It also will scrap space restrictions on foreign-owned stores.

WTO entry will mean foreign firms can cut out distribution intermediaries and have the choice to set up their own networks, reducing the time taken to get their products to market.

The view this week from Shanghai, China's economic capital and largest city, is considerably more cautious, Agence France-Presse reports.

China's economic-reform juggernaut appears to be slowing dramatically, say analysts, with a series of decisions this week seeming to show authorities are losing their appetite for tough policies because of the global economic slowdown.

At the start of the week government pulled back from a sell-off of its stake in companies listed on the stock exchange, the proceeds of which would have gone into a social-welfare fund.

Following this came a report that the government in Beijing may call a halt to bankruptcies of insolvent large state enterprises, reflecting a jittery leadership trying to balance the pressing need for reform with the threat of growing unemployment and social unrest.

"China's economy has weathered the slowdown better than any other Asian economy, but there are signs that cracks are beginning to appear," said Robert Subaraman, regional economist at Lehman Brothers in Tokyo.

Gross domestic product growth slowed from 7.8 percent year-on-year in the June quarter to 7.0 percent in the September quarter.

Foreign direct investment also may be starting to taper off, with contractual foreign investment growth sliding between August and September amid the sickly global economic slowdown.

But now is a poor time for backtracking, observers say.

After a 15-year wait, China's WTO accession appears to be just weeks away, and membership will mean growing competition from foreign firms on China's home turf.

The freeze on selling off state-owned shares, announced late Monday, had an instant impact, triggering a sharp rebound on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets the next day.

The potentially vast sell-off - the government holds a 70 percent stake in most of China's listed firms - had shaved more than 30 percent off the value of China's A-share markets since it was announced in June.

Reversing the policy could help the government fulfill other pressing financial aims, such as reviving the market's ability to channel funds to sickly state-owned enterprises.

However, the freeze on state-share sales also will hamper efforts to raise money to narrow the deficit in the country's social-security accounts, which will need to be drawn upon as hundreds of state firms fold in the wake of WTO entry.

In a related development, the London-based Financial Times reported on Wednesday that China had ordered provincial courts to stop processing bankruptcy claims from state-owned enterprises with assets of more than 50 million yuan (U.S. $6 million) pending supreme court approval.

Provincial courts and the State Economic and Trade Commission's bankruptcy office told AFP on Wednesday they still were processing bankruptcy claims as normal.

However, a halt in culling the weakest state-owned enterprises could lead to greater financial pain as foreign firms gain more access to China's economy, analysts say.

"There is growing incentive to slow down the pace of reform because the unemployment rate is already very high," said Mr. Subaraman of Lehman Brothers.

"The danger is that if reform fatigue should set in, it could compromise China's long-term growth."

-------- police / prisoners

Terror Law: A win for fear, a loss for freedom

October 26
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/

"Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny," British parliamentarian Edmund Burke explained in 1800.

Two centuries have passed, but legislatures continue to reinforce the link between bad law and tyranny. The U.S. Congress did so this week, with the passage of the ambitiously named Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act.

Rare are the moments in American history when a Congress has surrendered so many cherished freedoms in a single trip to the altar of immediate fear.

Crafted in Attorney General John Ashcroft's little shop of legal horrors from the remnants of past assaults on the Constitution, the "USA PATRIOT ACT" is a legislative Frankenstein's monster.

"This bill goes light years beyond what is necessary to combat terrorism," argues Laura Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington National Office. "Included in the bill are provisions that would allow for the mistreatment of immigrants, the suppression of dissent and the investigation and surveillance of wholly innocent Americans."

And the bad legislation is now the law of the land. Signed Friday by President Bush, it was opposed in the Senate only by Russ Feingold, D-Wi. In the House is drew broader opposition from 62 Democrats -- including the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Michigan's John Conyers, and Congressional civil liberties watchdogs such as Massachusetts' Barney Frank and Georgia's John Lewis -- as well as three Republicans and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders.

What freedoms have Americans lost? Civil libertarians worry most that the new legislation:

-- Permits the Attorney General to incarcerate or detain non-citizens based on mere suspicion, and to deny re-admission to the U.S. of non-citizens (including lawful permanent residents) for engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.

-- Minimizes judicial supervision of telephone and Internet surveillance by law enforcement authorities in anti-terrorism investigations AND in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism.

-- Expands the ability of the government to conduct secret searches, again in anti-terrorism investigations AND in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism. This means that law enforcement authorities can enter and search an individual's home without presenting a warrant or in any way informing the subject of the search.

-- Gives the Attorney General and the Secretary of State the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations and to block any non-citizen who belongs to them from entering the country.

-- Makes the payment of membership dues to political organizations a deportable offense.

-- Grants the FBI broad access to sensitive medical, financial, mental health, and educational records about individuals without having to show evidence of a crime and without a court order.

-- Will lead to large-scale investigations of American citizens for "intelligence" purposes and use of intelligence authorities to by-pass probable cause requirements in criminal cases.

-- Puts the CIA and other intelligence agencies back in the business of spying on Americans by giving the Director of Central Intelligence the authority to identify priority targets for intelligence surveillance in the United States.

-- Allows searches of highly personal financial records without notice and without judicial review based on a very low standard that does not require probable cause of a crime or even relevancy to an ongoing terrorism investigation.

-- Allows student records to be searched based on a very low standard of relevancy to an investigation.

-- Creates a broad new definition of "domestic terrorism" that could target people who engage in acts of political protest and subject them to wiretapping and enhanced penalties.

Standing alone in the Senate to oppose the legislation, Feingold recalled past assaults on basic liberties: "The Alien and Sedition Acts, the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the internment of Japanese-Americans, German-Americans, and Italian-Americans during World War II, the blacklisting of supposed communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era, and the surveillance and harassment of antiwar protesters, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., during the Vietnam War."

He then explained to his fellow senators: "Now some may say, indeed we may hope, that we have come a long way since the those days of infringements on civil liberties. But there is ample reason for concern. And I have been troubled in the past six weeks by the potential loss of commitment in the Congress and the country to traditional civil liberties."

In the contemporary legislature where he sits, the Senate of the United States of America, no member would stand with Russ Feingold. But he did not stand alone. Surely, a legislator from another era and another legislature, Edmund Burke, was with him in spirit.

----

Agencies Told to Improve Cooperation on Anthrax
White House Responds to Criticism That Communication Breakdown Slowed District's Response

By Eric Pianin and Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 26, 2001; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53120-2001Oct25.html

The White House yesterday instructed federal agencies to do a better job of sharing information about mail laced with anthrax bacteria, following criticism that a breakdown in communications between the FBI and public health officials slowed the response to the anthrax crisis in Washington.

The effort followed a closed-door meeting Wednesday evening in the Roosevelt Room convened by Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. He was responding to complaints by several government officials that a more prompt response might have saved the lives of two District postal workers.

House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) also said this week that "in my view, the federal government might not have lived up fully to its responsibility in this situation."

The anthrax issue has come to dominate the White House's attention and in some ways has overshadowed concerns about the war on Afghanistan because of the immediate threat to large numbers of Americans. Since taking over as homeland defense director Oct. 8, Ridge has had to referee squabbles among agencies drawn into the high-profile anthrax cases.

Ridge said he summoned FBI investigators, public health officials and scientific advisers to the White House Wednesday evening "to consolidate whatever information we have and to see if we can further accelerate the process of answering the questions that America seeks from the administration."

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer confirmed that "people did talk about information sharing" at the 2 1/2-hour meeting, which included Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson.

"I think you'll see the government continue to make every effort possible to share information among agencies, to continue the cooperation," Fleischer said.

But despite White House efforts to improve interagency relations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI remained at odds yesterday over the government's response to the microbe-laden letter that arrived at the office of Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) on Oct. 15.

Federal officials did not focus on the possibility that the letter might have posed a threat to postal workers at the Brentwood Road processing center, which handles congressional mail, until four days later, when one of the victims was hospitalized for pulmonary anthrax, the most dangerous form of the disease.

Jeffrey P. Koplan, director of the CDC, said yesterday his agency did not immediately suspect that the anthrax spores in the Daschle letter posed a threat to postal workers because federal agents told them the letter had been sealed and taped -- leading them to assume the spores could not escape until the letter was opened.

Without directly blaming the FBI, Koplan indicated CDC investigators were not shown the letter, postmarked in Trenton, N.J., Oct. 9, and had no idea of the condition of the envelope.

"They were described to us as well taped, meaning the seals along the letter were taped in a way that minimized, if not eliminated, the ability of powder to seep out through the openings," Koplan said in an interview. "We were still operating on the assumption that in order for a letter to convey anthrax, it had to be opened or torn or disrupted. That construct obviously changed markedly with the report of inhalation anthrax of mail workers in Brentwood Road."

FBI officials disputed reports that they were slow to share information with the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services about the nature of the anthrax spores found in the letter to Daschle, which were prepared in a sophisticated way that made them easily disperse and hang in the air, where they could be inhaled.

The bureau's chief spokesman, John E. Collingwood, said a scientist from the Army laboratory at Fort Detrick briefed law enforcement and health officials on the "extremely virulent nature of the anthrax" in a conference call late Oct. 15, just hours after the Daschle letter was opened.

Strife between the FBI and other agencies has flared publicly several times since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Last week, Mueller pledged greater cooperation with local law enforcement agencies. He also said the bureau should have been more prompt in telling New York officials about a suspicious letter found at NBC News.

At the same time, some FBI agents have complained recently that they are frustrated by the slowness in getting test results from the CDC and the Army lab at Fort Detrick.

Ridge and Ashcroft yesterday morning defended the government's performance in speeches to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, declaring the administration was casting the biggest dragnet in history to find the bioterrorists as well as any accomplices of the hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. "And we'll beat these guys," Ridge said.

The former Pennsylvania governor outlined the government's steps to defend commercial aviation, waterways, pipelines, energy plants, harbors and borders. He also credited federal authorities with the rapid identification and treatment of many people exposed to anthrax bacteria in New York, Washington and Florida.

"Every day we are looking for more ways to improve our deterrence and rapid response efforts," he said.

Fleischer said Bush has been satisfied with the level of information sharing.

"I can't speak for every single person in the government to say whether every official in every agency is satisfied with every official in every agency," Fleischer said. "I can speak for the president. And in the president's conversations with the attorney general, with the Cabinet secretaries, he is satisfied with the sharing of information."

Ridge suggested he has been frustrated by the pace at which the public wants answers. "We live in a virtual world, but we can't always come up with virtual answers," he said.

In criticizing the government's handling of the anthrax case, Gephardt said the families of the two dead postal workers, Joseph P. Curseen, 47, and Thomas L. Morris Jr., 55, should be included in the federal Victims' Compensation Fund for casualties of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Patricia A. Johnson, president of the local chapter of the American Postal Workers Union, said earlier that "this whole thing could have been avoided" and that, "If I was a family member, I'd sue the Postal Service."

Staff writers Mike Allen and Dan Eggen contributed to this report.

--------

U.S. Tells Cincinnati to Curb Use of Force by Its Police

October 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/national/26CINC.html

CINCINNATI, Oct. 25 (Reuters) - The Justice Department, acting in the wake of shootings by the police and civil disturbances here, has told Cincinnati it should make sweeping policy changes to prevent the unreasonable use of police force.

The recommendations were made in a 23-page preliminary report issued by a Justice Department task force that was formed soon after four days of disturbances in April, set off when a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black man.

Norma Holt Davis, president of the local branch of the N.A.A.C.P., said the Justice Department findings vindicated charges by local residents that the police had used excessive force in many incidents.

Cincinnati, where blacks make up 43 percent of the population of 331,000, could face legal sanctions by the department if the city does not institute the changes.

Mayor Charles Luken said that most of the findings and recommendations were constructive but that he could not agree with a few of them. He did not elaborate.

The police chief, Thomas Streicher, said many of the changes were already being enacted in his 1,025- member department.

Timothy Thomas, 19, the victim in the fatal shooting in April, was the 15th black suspect killed by the police since 1995, a period when no white suspects were killed. In the unrest that followed, more than 800 people were arrested, dozens were hurt and damage was widespread.

Last month, violence resumed after a judge acquitted a police officer, Stephen Roach, 27, of negligent homicide charges in the shooting.

The report came out as another white police officer was on trial, accused of causing a black man's death with a choke hold. Officer Robert Jorg, 30, faced a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Roger Owensby Jr., 29, on Nov. 7.

The police department "should revise its policies to clarify terms and to ensure that force is only used in appropriate circumstances," the report said. It found police regulations on the use of force poorly defined.

The report said that officers should be required to report all uses of force and that training should emphasize tactics to eliminate the use of force whenever possible.

It said information about the citizen complaint process should be disseminated more widely and called for regular meetings with neighborhood groups to gain the broadest possible community participation.

--------

Surveillance Switcheroo - How the anti-terrorism bill got passed

By Sam MacDonald,
October 26, 2001
http://reason.com/hod/sm102601.html

In the days following September 11, it was easy to feel kinda bad for Attorney General John Ashcroft. He really wanted to catch the terrorists, but he just didn't seem up to the job. Whiz-bang encryption and communication technologies had left the cops in the dust, he said, and unless the country acted fast, things would only get worse. That's compelling stuff, but it turns out to be an almost complete inversion of the truth. As the debate over anti-terrorism legislation boiled over late this week, one thing became painfully clear -- in the nasty battle for information in the Internet Age, politicians are still far too slippery for the privacy lobby to pin down.

Take the bill that the House passed Wednesday morning. News accounts summarize the legislation by noting that it increases government surveillance capabilities and has a bunch of "money-laundering" provisions. That's all true, but it's also very general--and when it comes to bills like this, the devil is always in the details. It turns out that even most House members had no idea what they were voting overwhelmingly in favor of.

Indeed, if you happened to know what the House bill actually said, you were one of the lucky few. In a phone interview Thursday afternoon, Wired News technology reporter Declan McCullagh said that he couldn't get his hands on the full text until after it passed. He said he still had not pored over the enormously complex bill when we spoke. "The anti-terrorism legislation was rushed through Congress," McCullagh says. "There was little time for legislators to review the legislation before the vote happened. To their shame, they pretty much went ahead and voted for it anyway."

Although the House passed anti-terrorism legislation earlier this month, it was far removed from a bill that made it through the Senate. Deliberations that normally would have gone on in a conference committee instead happened informally. In the meantime, congressional sources who could have shed some light on the proceedings were almost impossible to track down because of the anthrax-induced frenzy on Capitol Hill. According to McCullagh, rank-and-file House members were still in the dark Tuesday night as leaders tried to hash out a deal with the Senate and the administration: "Members of the House of Representatives were saying, 'Whoa, can I see a copy of this bill? We haven't seen it yet.'"

A House staffer complained that the Senate never held hearings on some of the most important privacy issues: "They sold the privacy community down the river on that one." The source added that there was too much pressure to keep the legislation from going forward; the best privacy fans could do was add provisions like the sunset clause that will force Congress to reconsider at least parts of the legislation in 2004. "The attorney general didn't want to get blamed for terrorist attack number two. He turned to the career bureaucrats who dusted off all these old proposals. It was just thrown in our laps."

Think tanks and reporters around Washington scrambled Thursday afternoon to figure out what the final bill said. When I asked Jim Harper of Privacilla.org what it all meant, he replied, "I don't know if I'm going to be any less confused than you are." The Center for Democracy and Technology had a media conference call at one o'clock. Executive Director Jerry Berman and Deputy Director James Dempsey addressed how some of the bill's provisions might be abused. Berman noted that the FBI could conceivably study all the traffic on news sites that offer a pro-Middle Eastern spin: "You're going to get the news, you're trying to the get all the news. You haven't even joined a political party. You haven't joined anything. But those are now of interest. Why are you going to that site? Are you a member of an organization? Are you a supporter of the terrorists? Why don't we also look at your other records?"

This is not good stuff. One small reason to cheer: The final bill does have the sunset provision (but it doesn't apply to all aspects of the bill). More cautious legislators also managed to kill what was probably the most controversial measure -- the one giving cops the power to detain suspected immigrants indefinitely. (As passed, the bill requires officials to charge people with something or deport them within seven days.) Fortunately, it doesn't even mention encryption. On the other hand, there are real concerns: federal officials can view e-mail subject lines and the addresses of Web sites people visit with near impunity. Perhaps worst of all, there is little in the bill that restricts the new police powers to terrorism investigations. Once the feds stamp out terrorism, there is a very real possibility that they will cast their new net in search of drug dealers, deadbeat dads, and traffic scofflaws.

How much leeway will law enforcement officials have to abuse these new powers? That won't be clear until the technology and privacy organizations get a chance to digest things. That alone constitutes one of the most seismic shifts in politics since September 11. Less than a month ago, the feds were on their heels, scratching for power in a technological world that had left them far behind. Today, the situation is reversed: After four weeks of political intrigue, it's the denizens of the Web who are scrambling for information, wondering what just Mr. Ashcroft has in store.

Sam MacDonald ( smacdonald@reason.com) is REASON's Washington editor.

--------

POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA

Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001
From: The Progressive Review
MORE http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47901,00.html

DECLAN MCCULLUGH, WIRED: Legislators who sent a sweeping anti-terrorism bill to President Bush this week proudly say that the most controversial surveillance sections will expire in 2005 . . . But the Dec. 2005 expiration date embedded in the USA Act ~ applies only to a tiny part of the mammoth bill. After the president signs the measure, police will have the permanent ability to conduct Internet surveillance without a court order in some circumstances, secretly search homes and offices without notifying the owner, and share confidential grand jury information with the CIA. Also exempt from the expiration date are investigations underway by Dec. 2005, and any future investigations of crimes that took place before that date.

Other sections of the USA Act ~ that do not expire include the following:

Police can sneak into someone's house or office, search the contents, and leave without ever telling the owner. This would be supervised by a court, and the notification of the surreptitious search "may be delayed" indefinitely.

Any U.S. attorney or state attorney general can order the installation of the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system and record addresses of Web pages visited and e-mail correspondents - without going to a judge. Previously, there were stiffer legal restrictions on Carnivore and other Internet surveillance techniques.

An accused terrorist who is a foreign citizen and who cannot be deported can be held for an unspecified series of "periods of up to six months" with the attorney general's approval.

Biometric technology, such as fingerprint readers or iris scanners, will become part of an "integrated entry and exit data system" with the identities of visa holders who hope to enter the U.S.

Any Internet provider or telephone company must turn over customer information, including phone numbers called - no court order required - if the FBI claims the "records sought are relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism." The company contacted may not "disclose to any person" that the FBI is doing an investigation.

Credit reporting firms like Equifax must disclose to the FBI any information that agents request in connection with a terrorist investigation - without police needing to seek a court order first. Current law permits this only in espionage cases.

A new crime of "cyber-terrorism" is added, which covers hacking attempts causing damage "aggregating at least $5,000 in value" in one year, any damage to medical equipment or "physical injury to any person." Prison terms range between five and 20 years.

-------- spying

Official: CIA Relaxes Informant Rule

October 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-CIA-Unsavory-Sources.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA has loosened its rules to let field officers recruit informants with violent or criminal backgrounds without prior approval from headquarters, a U.S. official said Friday.

CIA Director George Tenet and other senior agency officials changed the policy so officers can get information about terrorists as quickly as possible, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Under the policy shift, field officers can recruit such sources immediately if they have information on terrorist threats. Within a few days, they must inform the head of the CIA's clandestine service, Deputy Director for Operations James L. Pavitt, who must approve the recruitment.

Since 1995, field officers have had to seek approval from CIA headquarters in Virginia before using someone with a history of human rights abuses as a source, for example.

No such application was ever denied, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow has said, but critics in Congress have said the rule chilled attempts by field officers to recruit sources who may have unsavory pasts.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, senior congressional members with intelligence oversight have called for a relaxing of the rules, likening these relationships to the informant networks street cops have in a city.

Any informant with access to someone like Osama bin Laden is unlikely to have a clean background, critics of the rule say.

The prior-approval rule was put in place in 1995 after congressional and public criticism of the CIA's ties to a Guatemalan colonel linked to two murders in the early 1990s. The CIA also performed an ``asset scrub,'' ridding itself of some sources with similar backgrounds.

Previous to 1995, field officers had no approval process for recruitments, the official said.

A move was afoot in Congress to eliminate the rule. The 2002 intelligence budget passed by the House would do away with it and have Tenet create new guidelines.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the ranking minority member on the House Intelligence committee, said that ``despite repeated assurances from senior CIA officials that these guidelines had not had a negative impact on the quality or quantity of assets, it has become clear'' that case officers believe it has hurt their efforts to gain crucial information on narcotics trafficking, weapons proliferation and terrorism.

-------- terrorism

Tough Anti-Terror Campaign Pledged
Ashcroft Tells Mayors He Will Use New Law to Fullest Extent

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 26, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53129-2001Oct25.html

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday promised an aggressive campaign to detain and prosecute even minor lawbreakers in the Justice Department's fight against terrorism, comparing the effort to Robert F. Kennedy's campaign against organized crime in the 1960s.

In an unusually forceful speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors here, Ashcroft said Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents will use new anti-terrorism legislation to unleash broad surveillance and searches on suspected terrorists and their associates, and will not shrink from using minor crimes or immigration violations to jail or deport them.

"Let the terrorists among us be warned," Ashcroft said. "If you overstay your visas even by one day, we will arrest you. If you violate a local law, we will . . . work to make sure that you are put in jail and . . . kept in custody as long as possible. We will use every available statute. We will seek every prosecutorial advantage. We will use all our weapons within the law and under the Constitution to protect life and enhance security for America."

Though somewhat less far-reaching than the legislation Ashcroft had proposed, the landmark anti-terrorism bill would dramatically expand the FBI's wiretapping and electronic surveillance authority and impose stronger penalties for harboring or financing terrorists. It also redefines some terrorist acts and increases the punishment for them.

The bill, proposed five days after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, was approved by the Senate yesterday, 98 to 1. The House overwhelmingly approved it Wednesday, and President Bush is expected to sign it today.

"These laws will help ensure that Americans will never be violated in the way we were on September 11," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

But Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), the only senator to oppose the bill, and civil liberties advocates said the package infringes on individual rights.

The bill would allow "roving wiretaps" in intelligence investigations covering multiple telephones, expand electronic surveillance powers to allow easier monitoring of e-mail and Internet traffic, and would permit agencies such as the FBI to easily share grand jury and wiretap information with intelligence agencies.

Immigration officials could also hold non-citizens certified by the attorney general as suspected terrorists for as long as seven days before charging them. Ashcroft originally had sought to make the time period indefinite.

"These new and unchecked powers could be used against American citizens who are not under criminal investigation, immigrants who are here within our borders legally, and also against those whose First Amendment activities are deemed to be threats to national security by the attorney general," said Gregory T. Nojeim, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office.

But Ashcroft, in declaring "a new era in America's fight against terrorism," said the bill will allow "airtight surveillance" of terrorist networks and will enable U.S. authorities to disrupt plans for further attacks.

He said he will issue guidelines immediately after the bill's signing to all U.S. attorneys and FBI field offices allowing them to start seeking court orders for wiretaps, nationwide search warrants, Internet monitoring and other surveillance to tighten the net on suspected terrorists.

Department officials yesterday characterized Ashcroft's speech as a change in direction at Justice, which since Sept. 11 has made prosecuting terrorists and preventing additional attacks its top priority. The FBI is considering an internal reorganization to focus more resources on counterterrorism efforts, several officials have said.

The attorney general's hard-edged statements differed markedly in tone from many of his previous comments on detention. Ashcroft has generally spoken about the increasing number of detainees in more measured terms, stressing that they were being treated fairly and were all accused of some wrongdoing.

Nearly 1,000 people have been detained so far, though an unknown number have been released. FBI officials have said that fewer than 10 of the detainees are suspected of having substantive ties to the hijacking plot, and civil liberties advocates have questioned whether prosecutors and the FBI are abusing their authority.

But Ashcroft forcefully defended the tactics yesterday, saying that he -- a conservative Republican -- would take inspiration from Kennedy, a Democrat and a former attorney general who used arcane statutes in pursuit of suspected organized crime figures. Ashcroft noted that in one case, two suspected mobsters -- a father and son -- were charged with lying on a home loan application.

"Some will ask whether a civilized nation, a nation of law and not of men, can use the law to defend itself from barbarians and remain civilized," Ashcroft said. "Our answer unequivocally is yes. Yes, we will defend civilization. And, yes, we will preserve the rule of law, because it is that which makes us civilized."

In a background briefing with reporters yesterday, two Justice Department officials said the legislation, combined with Ashcroft's statements, signals a significant change in attitude and direction for federal prosecutors.

One official said the pursuit of Al Capone, who was prosecuted on tax charges, and other mobsters would provide a template for the department's approach to terrorists and their accomplices.

"If we are dealing with people who are potentially linked to terrorists, we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law," the official said. "We don't care if it's chump change."

--------

THE LEGISLATION
Antiterrorism Bill Passes; U.S. Gets Expanded Powers

New York Times
October 26, 2001
By ADAM CLYMER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/national/26CONG.html

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - The Senate passed sweeping antiterrorism legislation today, sending President Bush a measure that would expand the government's ability to conduct electronic surveillance, detain immigrants without charges and penetrate money-laundering banks.

The measure also permits officials to share grand jury information to thwart terrorism and relaxes the conditions under which judges may authorize intelligence wiretaps.

The president's deputy press secretary, Claire Buchan, said, "The president is pleased that the Congress has acted quickly to provide additional tools in fighting the war on terrorism, and he looks forward to signing the bill into law tomorrow."

Attorney General John Ashcroft said that within hours of President Bush's signature he would distribute new directives to all federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents telling them how to use the law. One step to be taken right away, senior law enforcement officials said, is to seek subpoenas to obtain information on computers used by any terrorist suspects.

The Senate vote was 98 to 1, after a 356-to-66 vote in the House on Wednesday. Only Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, voted against the bill, arguing that it would allow unconstitutional searches and punish individuals for vague associations with possible terrorists.

The bill provides most of the additional powers Mr. Ashcroft sought after the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But it added the money-laundering measures after a push by Senator Paul S. Sarbanes, the Maryland Democrat who is chairman of the Banking Committee. And the bill curtailed some of the tools Mr. Ashcroft sought, reflecting concerns in both parties and houses that the administration proposal went too far.

For example, it denied the administration the power to detain indefinitely and without charges immigrants suspected of involvement in terrorism. The bill does expand the limit to seven days of detention, from two days, though under some circumstances that could be repeatedly extended by six-month periods.

The bill denied the administration the power to use foreign wiretaps that would have been illegal in the United States. It also provides that authority for expanded surveillance of computers and telephones will expire after four years. The administration wanted permanent authority.

Senator Feingold, while praising his colleagues for denying Mr. Ashcroft some of the powers he sought, complained of "relentless" pressure to move quickly, "without deliberation or debate." He attacked the bill for enabling the government to obtain the business or medical records of anyone "who might have sat on an airplane" with a terrorism suspect. He also objected to the bill's liberal approval of intelligence wiretaps even if intelligence gathering is only a minor purpose of the tap. Such wiretaps are often issued in secrecy and under much looser standards than those required for wiretaps in criminal cases.

"Congress will fulfill its duty only when it protects both the American people and the freedoms at the foundation of American society," he said.

But he was the lone dissenter. One senator, Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, did not vote.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the Judiciary Committee, said Mr. Ashcroft had asked that the legislation be passed in two days. Instead, Mr. Leahy said: "We took the time to look at it, and we took the time to read it. And we took time to remove those parts that were unconstitutional and those parts that would have actually hurt the rights of all Americans."

Mr. Leahy praised the addition of provisions to cope with money laundering, saying he had learned as a state prosecutor of the need to "follow the money."

The banking measures include allowing the secretary of the Treasury to impose sanctions - up to cutting off all dealings with United States financial institutions - on banks in a nation whose bank secrecy laws deny information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation or other agencies. Another provision would require foreign banks maintaining correspondent accounts in United States banks to designate someone here to receive subpoenas related to those accounts and their depositors.

If those subpoenas were not answered, the accounts could be ordered closed.

Other major provisions include barring United States banks from doing business with "shell banks" overseas that have no physical facilities and are not part of a regulated banking system, and empowering the Treasury secretary to require United States banks to exercise enhanced "due diligence" to find out who their private banking depositors are if they come from nations that will not assist United States officials.

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who has worked for years on money-laundering legislation, said, "Osama bin Laden has boasted that his modern, new recruits know the, in his words, cracks in Western financial systems like they know the lines in their own hands."

Mr. Levin said the bill would thwart efforts by "terrorists and other criminals to use our own financial systems against us."

Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the Judiciary Committee's senior Republican, singled out as a core provision of the bill the authority it gives law enforcement and intelligence communities "to share information and cooperate fully in protecting our nation against terrorist attacks." Mr. Hatch cited a provision that allows grand jury information to be shared to block terrorist attacks.

Intelligence files, obtained from wiretaps authorized by a special court that oversees wiretaps related to activities of foreign governments and organizations, will be turned over to criminal investigators for possible prosecutions.

"We have intelligence files ready to go," one senior official said. "That will allow us to make cases against some people and put them in jail."

Mr. Ashcroft said the use of national security wiretaps for criminal prosecution would be valuable in breaking up terrorist organizations. He compared the wiretaps to former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's prosecution of organized crime figures for unrelated crimes.

"Attorney General Kennedy made no apologies for using all of the available resources in the law to disrupt and dismantle organized crime networks," he said. "One racketeer and his father were indicted for lying on a federal home loan application."

Mr. Hatch cited another major provision of the bill, allowing roving wiretaps in intelligence cases, as they already are in criminal cases.

A roving wiretap confers blanket authority to tap all phones a suspect uses, instead of requiring separate applications for each telephone. "Terrorists," Mr. Hatch said, "don't pay any attention to those antiquated laws. They just buy 10 cellphones, talk for a while, throw it out the window."

Mr. Hatch added: "We treat terrorism with kid gloves in the current criminal code. This bill stops that."

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Al Qaeda is believed to have given initial funding to the now-independent Abu Sayyaf militant group.

By Dan Murphy
Christian Science Monitor
October 26, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1026/p6s1-woap.html

MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES - There are so many links between the Abu Sayyaf Group of the Philippines, which beheaded an American hostage a few months ago, and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network, that on paper they look like the route map for a Peshawar-based airline.

The links run from that high, bleak border city in Pakistan to terrorist dens in Afghanistan and Yemen; to murders and bombings in the Philippines; to the first attack on the World Trade Center; to a foiled attempt to assassinate the pope during a 1995 visit to Manila.

A captured Abu Sayyaf guerrilla, Edwin Angeles, told Philippines investigators that year that a brother-in-law of Mr. bin Laden, Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, played a crucial role in founding Abu Sayyaf.

In his debriefing, Mr. Angeles, who has since been assassinated, reportedly said Mr. Khalifa channeled bin Laden money to Abu Sayyaf through charities he was running in the Philippines.

These threads, taken together, provide the impetus for the claims of some US officials that the group is an annex of Al Qaeda. And they explain why, over the past week, US military advisers have been arriving in the southern Philippines to open America's first non-Afghan front in its war on terrorism. The US officers will provide intelligence assistance, training, and equipment to a Filipino rapid-reaction force.

But interviews with diplomats, intelligence sources, government officials, and militants show that while the group may have received seed capital from bin Laden, it has long since moved out on its own, making their separate activities all the more difficult to combat.

"The Abu Sayyaf isn't going to go away if bin Laden is captured," says Marithes Vitug, author of "Under the Crescent Moon," a book on radical Islamic politics in the Philippines.

Different motives and methods

Today, Abu Sayyaf has evolved into a self-funding and self-reliant criminal organization that terrorism experts say has radically different methods, means, and motivations from Al Qaeda.

The group favors wrap-around sunglasses and Levis instead of flowing Arab robes. Philippines officials describe Abu Sayyaf as a kidnap-for-ransom racket, more in the tradition of the pirates who have plagued the region for centuries than warriors fighting for bin Laden's dream of a pan-Islamic state.

"The Abu Sayyaf takes hostages for money, and that is not what international terrorists do," says Philippines Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes. "Did you ever hear of bin Laden blowing something up and then demanding $30 million from the US?"

Fighting alongside bin Laden

Abu Sayyaf began with the vision of one man: Abdurajak Janjalani. Investigators and acquaintances of Mr. Janjalani say that as a boy, he was captivated by the puritanical version of Islam that, fueled by Saudi petrodollars, was blowing like a sirocco across the Muslim world in the 1970s. In the mid-'80s, he studied in Libya and Saudi Arabia.

By late 1988, he was in Peshawar, Pakistan, training as a mujahideen, or holy warrior, to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Along with other Filipino militants inspired and led by the Afghan intellectual Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Janjalani fought alongside bin Laden, learning to field-strip a rifle, make bombs, command troops, and win friends in the Islamic world. Janjalani brought those skills home in 1990.

"He was this charismatic, almost magical guy to his troops, and when he came back I think he was sincere in his intentions to found an Islamic state," says Ms. Vitug. Philippines and foreign investigators allege that Khalifa, the bin Laden brother-in-law, funneled money to Abu Sayyaf, and that Muslim mercenaries were brought in from Yemen and Afghanistan to train insurgents.

"The record is pretty firm that Osama and the people who followed his line of thinking were involved in the formation of the Abu Sayyaf," says a Western diplomat in Manila.

Vitug says Janjalani was very close in his thinking to bin Laden, but that his death in 1998 cost Abu Sayyaf "their ideologue. It's more about the money now." The group is now run by Abdurajak's brother, Khadafy, who does not have Afghan ties.

In April 2000, Abu Sayyaf committed its first international crime, seizing 20 Asian and European hostages from a Malaysian resort. It later released them for more than $20 million, in a deal brokered by Libyan officials. Abu Sayyaf used the ransom to recruit new members, swelling its ranks to about 1,000, up from a few hundred.

The money may have other uses. In June, after a 12-hour standoff in which Abu Sayyaf forces were pinned down at a hospital by tanks, helicopters, and 3,000 soldiers, commanding officers called troops away from the rear of the building. The guerrillas melted quietly into the jungle. The senate has launched an inquiry into allegations that the militants bribed their way to freedom, which commanders deny.

Abu Sayyaf took its first American hostages earlier this year and beheaded one of them in June. On Oct. 15, Abu Sabaya, an Abu Sayyaf leader, threatened to execute the other two in retaliation for the US-led bombing of Afghanistan. Mr. Sabaya also bragged about ties to Al Qaeda.

Still, officials in the Philippines insist that these "ties" are in the past. Rigoberto Tiglao, spokesman for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, says the government is "frustrated" by US contentions that there are active Al Qaeda cells in the Philippines and that Abu Sayyaf is a part of that network.

"Of course there are historical ties, but our investigations have yielded no signs that these international terrorists are at work here," he says.

Such signs would not be easy to detect, however. While Abu Sayyaf was growing in the south, an Al Qaeda cell was digging into Manila. Its existence was only uncovered by chance in 1995, when a bomb that cell members were making in their apartment exploded.

Police arrested two men, Ali Murad and Wali Khan, and found a laptop computer and documents that Philippines investigators say showed ties between Khalifa, the cell, and Abu Sayyaf. The laptop reportedly contained plans to blow up 11 US airliners and to assassinate Pope John Paul II. The cell's leader, Ramzi Yousef, was later apprehended in Pakistan. He, Mr. Murad, and Mr. Khan are now serving life sentences in the US for their roles in another plot: the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

"In a way, we're a victim of our success in breaking this cell up," says Mr. Tiglao. "It's created the lasting impression that bin Laden is at work here."


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Attack protesters arrested in Conn.

UPI
October 26, 2001

HARTFORD, Conn., -- At least 16 people faced arraignment Friday in Hartford, Conn., on charges stemming from a protest against U.S. military action in Afghanistan.

Those arrested in the Thursday afternoon clash between protesters and police were held overnight pending appearances in Hartford Superior Court on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to inciting a riot.

The arrests took place as more than 200 mostly college-age students staged an unexpected march in downtown Hartford, blocking late afternoon rush-hour traffic.

Police used pepper spray and batons to break up the demonstration as the marchers massed in front of Constitution Plaza. The protesters had gathered earlier in Bushnell Park, but did not have a permit to march in the streets.

As the protesters marched, a dozen officers in riot-gear arrived in a bus to help clear the streets.

One of those arrested, Sage Radachowski, 28, from the University of Connecticut, said he came to the park to help educate the American public about how the country's foreign policies contributed to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"People in the Middle East don't hate us because we stand for freedom and democracy," he said, according to Friday's Hartford Courant. "They hate us because we have been bombing and killing their people for years."

As the marchers moved past a restaurant, Wesleyan student Jessie Duvall offered a flier to those standing out front.

"You better get away from me with that," one restaurant worker told her. "This is a free country and you can have your point of view. But it offends me to see these people bad-mouthing the country at a time like this."

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Even Conservatives Need the Anti-War Movement

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
October 26, 2001
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/antiwar.html

American citizens who have doubts - any doubts - about the war have been subjected to an amazing barrage of hate and threats in recent days. But if you believe the polls that show 90 percent-plus support for this war, it seems oddly disproportionate to whip up hysteria against a handful of doubters.

Rather than defend the anti-war position itself, I want to make a different argument. If you believe in freedom at all, you should hope that there are at least some doubters and protesters, regardless of the merit of their case. Even if you think this war is a great and necessary thing to teach the terrorists a lesson in American resolve, the preservation of liberty at home is also an important value.

The existence of an opposition movement is evidence that some restraints on government still exist. The government, which is always looking for reasons to increase its power, needs to know that there will always be an opposition.

The view that wartime requires complete unanimity of public opinion is not an American one - it is a position more characteristic of Islamic or other totalitarian states, where differences of opinion are regarded as a threat to public order, and where the leadership demands 100 percent approval from the people. These are also states where the head of government requires that he be treated like a deity, that there be no questioning of his edicts, that he govern with unquestioned power.

This is the very definition of despotism. Unpopular government is dangerous enough, popular government far more so. When public officials believe that there are no limits to their power, no doubters about their pronouncements, no cynics who question their motives, they are capable of gross abuses. This is true both in wartime and peacetime. The most beloved governments are most prone to become the most abusive.

If you think that such despotism is not possible in the United States, you have not understood the American founding. Thomas Jefferson taught that American liberty depends on citizen willingness to be skeptical toward the claims of the central government. "Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism," he wrote in his draft of the Kentucky Resolves. "Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power."

"In questions of power," he concluded, "let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

Wartime means that government is unleashing weapons of mass destruction against other human beings and their property. It is the most terrifying of all the powers of government. The war power, which means the power over life and death, can create in those who use it a feeling of omnipotence, the belief that they have absolute power, which gives rise to absolute corruption, as Lord Acton observed. This is true whether the war actions are popular or not.

Now, add to that reality an additional element: The population that supports the war power with its taxes is consumed in nationalistic fervor - to the point that nobody believes that government is capable of making a bad choice or of abusing its power. That is a sure prescription for abuse, and not only in wartime - the government enjoys this uncritical attitude, and will demand it in peacetime as well. Typically, in these cases, the abuse of peoples' rights is not decried but celebrated.

We have seen this happen in American history. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jay Winik reminds us that wartime abuse of presidential power has a long history. Lincoln imprisoned anti-war activists, including newspaper editors, judges and attorneys, and otherwise suspended all civil liberties. Wilson made it a crime to voice dissent on any aspect of the war, including the way it was financed. The jails were overrun with independent-minded people. Franklin Roosevelt did the same, and even set up internment camps for American citizens of Japanese descent.

Incredibly, even ominously, Winik writes about this in defense of the emergency powers that wartime provides. This is why we need to trade liberty for security, he says, and he implies that the Bush administration needs to go much further to meet the (low) standards set by his predecessors.

Winik's ultimate defense, however, involves a claim that is just plain wrong: "despite these previous and numerous extreme measures," writes Winik, "there was little long-term or corrosive effect on society after the security threat had subsided. When the crisis ended, normalcy returned, and so too did civil liberties, invariably stronger than before."

It's true that the despotism subsided after the wars ended, if only because government has a difficult time trying to maintain the level of public support it enjoys during wartime once peace has arrived. But does government really return to normalcy?

In fact, what changes is our definition of normalcy. In no case after a war did the government return to its prewar size. The postwar government is always bigger, more intrusive, more draconian, more expensive, than the prewar government. It feels smaller because the government is no longer arresting dissidents. But our standard of what constitutes freedom and despotism changes during wartime. Nothing has been as corrosive of American liberty as war.

Wartime tyranny also creates an historical precedent for future violations of liberty. Every president who desires more power cites his predecessors who enjoyed similar power, just as the bloody legacies of FDR, Wilson and Lincoln are being invoked on behalf of Bush today (witness Winik's own article).

Jefferson said in his first inaugural address: "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." That's why, if you hate the anti-war movement and want to see it suppressed, you are no friend to liberty, even in peacetime.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com.

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16 Peace Marchers Arrested, Including Green Organizer

Anti-war protest in CT attacked
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001

I thought people should know that yesterday, a demonstration against the war in Hartford, CT was attacked by police and 16 people were arrested. By all accounts this was unprovoked. Some have been charged with felonies (one with inciting a riot and one with conspiracy to incite a riot) and are being held on up to $25,000 bail. I am including a statement of solidarity and an eyewitness account of what happened.

--

A large march against war and racism was held in Hartford, Connecticut on Thursday, October 25th. The march was attacked by police and many were arrested. Our comrades and friends are being prosecuted for oppossing murder in Afghanistan. The Legal Update is not good. Many of those arrested face outrageous charges of riot, and other felonies. We are calling for Help Right Now. People are being charged with felonies and some bond as high as $50,000. To release them we need 10%. We must rise to the occassion and get them out of jail. The first thing we need is Money and Lawyers. Ideally we need a loan or donation for several thousand dollars. At least $20,000 will be needed now. Checks can be made to: Free Speech Legal Defense Fund 13 Farview Avenue Danbury, CT 06810

Please call 203-744-0763 ask for Ernie to let him know of donation (as mail is slow and we want our people out NOW!) Ideally we need thousands right now. If you can make large donation, your loan will be repayed by fundraising of small donations, but without a large donation or loan, it will take weeks or months to get the money together. That means friends in jail for weeks or months.

To demand the release of CT political prisoners call: Mayor Mike Peters 860-543-8500 City Manager Borgess 860-543-8520 Deputy Mayor Jim Wright 860-543-8524

Solidarity and mutual aid are not just words, but actions. stay posted to www.madhattersimc.org for updates.

The plan was to gather at Bushenell park, march through the streets (at rush hour) to Senator Lieberman's office and implore him not to support the war on Afghan citizens. In meetings to plan the event it was clear; this was to be a peaceful protest. On our side, it was.

After the short rally we made our way through the streets. Were we blocking cars as we walked through the streets? Yes. We took the streets to get a certain level of attention that the mass media has refused to give promoters of peace. However, we were moving. Our intention was never to block an intersection. Our intention was to get to Lieberman's office. We did not make it.

Within minutes of the march police cars screeched around every corner. They ran their sirens and yelled to us to get on the side walk. After about three blocks of this, they had apparently had enough. They forced us on the side walk, splitting us up on either side of the street. Then they would not let us go any further. We went on the sidewalk when they told us too. I have been at rallies and marches where certain people have chosen to instigate the police, push against them, refuse to move they are told to move. I am not against this choice though I don't choose to make it myself. However, there was no one pushing, instigating, throwing anything or even threatening the cops.

One man Vic, a green party organizer in his forties, paced back and forth with a percussion instrument. Remember, at this point everyone was on the sidewalk. I have no idea what made the cops do this but suddenly Vic came flying through the crowd to the ground. Four cops were on him kicking him and using their clubs. He screamed "Wait my glasses. I neeed my glasses!" The others moved toward Vic and the cops pepper sprayed crowd. As Vic was taken to the police car, he was bleeding from the side of his head.

We were watching all of this happening,when the some more cops came to us and said that anyone on the sidewalk would soon be arrested. A woman turned around to look at the cop who made the anouncement and she was immediatly arrested. 15 people were arreseted at that moment.

The rest of us, moved up the block in shock. We gathered at the corner in front of the Old State House to figure out what to do. Two people facilitated the meeting. One of the facilitator's name was Adam. We decided not to go to Liebermans office but to get in our cars and drive to the police station in supoport of our detained brothers and sisters. We ended the meeting and dispersed to our cars. Just then three cops pushed by me and grabbed Adam who was walking a few steps ahead. A woman screamed out "why are you taking him??" One of the cops yelled over his shoulder "Conspiracy to insight a riot." This for the person who faclitated a discussion in which we decided to leave the area.

After about four hours outside the police station we got word that the sixteen arrested would not be out tonight. Adams bail was set at 25,000 dollars and we believe the rest had bail set at 15,000. So far the charges seem to be pretty serious and completely outragous.

We will be at 101 Lafayette st. tomorrow to show courtroom solidarity. We will also hold a press conference tomorrow afternoon.

As the cops were beating, pepper spraying and arresting, we chanted "This is not a police state. We have the right to demonstate." But I am rethinking that.

This undeclared war is being called "Operation Freedom." It is also being called the "War against Terrorism." Yet we bomb Iraq on weekly basis. Unicef estimates that 4,500 Iraqi children die every month due to US enforced sanctions. 7.5 million Afghan people will soon die of disease or starvation if they aren't killed by bombs first. And a group of American citizens are beaten, sprayed and arrested for practicing our right to assemble. Freedom, terror, a free reign of terror...

Peace, Love and Justice, Julia [Rosenblatt]


Phil Gasper Chair, Dept. of Philosophy MS 191 Notre Dame de Namur University Belmont, CA 94002 650-508-3732



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