NUCLEAR
ALP pledges to block uranium mine
UK generator wants no-fly zones over its N-plants
Sellafield safety boss seeks to calm Irish fears
Test soldiers for depleted uranium, widow urges
Austria demands Czechs yield on N-plant
India to build Russian-aided nuclear power plant
Peres confirms France gave Israel nuclear capacity
Testing Mishaps Cloud Missile Defense Plans
US ready for shoot-out if Pak nukes fall into extremists hands
Undetonated explosives found aboard Kursk
Russia boosts steps to thwart "nuclear terrorism"
Spent nuclear fuel pools seen vulnerable to attack
Meltdown In One Hour If Passenger Jet Hits Nuclear Power Plant
Our Nuclear Plants
TEST SITE RADIOACTIVITY
Raising the Stakes
Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee Public meeting
MILITARY
US Accepts Italian Military Support
Bombing the Red Cross
Cruel reality of life in land of minefields
Jails fill amid rising paranoia, says freed reporter
Foreigners Swell Ranks of Taliban
Pakistanis Tone Down Call to Halt Airstrikes
Weapons laws alter acquisition patterns
Firm hopes to restart production of anthrax vaccine
Indian government office tests negative for anthrax
Anthrax found in Pentagon; users assessed
Two Pakistanis held in anthrax case
D.C.
Musharraf, the Indispensable Ally, Grows More Confident
Bin Laden condemns U.N.
Defense budget meets needs
Defense plan doesn't adapt to new face of war
All talk, no action from enlistment calls
U.S. Campaign on Schedule, Generals Say
Doctrine must be updated to fit new war on terrorism
U.S. Makes Amends to Japan for Sinking of Ship
B-52s hit Taliban lines hard in the north
War in Aghanistan could cost U.S. $1 billion a month
ENERGY AND OTHER
South Dakota
S.1333 - Renewable Energy Bill In Senate
Oil Industry Seeks Federal Help Against Terror
Japan set to ratify Kyoto climate pact without US
Mosquito Adapting to Global Warming, Study Finds
Cancer-Stricken Chinese Village Tries to Pierce a Wall of Silence
POLICE / PRISONERS
Wanted - global authority to tame big business
Torture Seeps Into Discussion by News Media
White House, Dept. of Justice at Odds Over Arrests
Delaware
Ex-Air Force Sgt. Pleads Innocent to Spying
Conneticut
NEW YORK DRAFTS BIOTERRORISM RESPONSE PLAN
Saudi: Bin Laden extradition botched
Apocalyptic cult methods explain bin Laden
Loopholes for terrorists
How Afghanistan Went Unlisted as Terrorist Sponsor
Hijackers Depicted as Elite Group
Publishers Joust Over Merit of Terrorist Leader's Words
A Timely Summons
ACTIVISTS
Canaries in a cage
STOP US BIOWARFARE PROJECTS!
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- australia
ALP pledges to block uranium mine
The ALP says it is committed to blocking the Honeymoon uranium mine, north-west of Broken Hill.
Mon, Nov 5 2001
http://www.abc.net.au/news/business/2001/11/item20011105152352_1.htm
The proposed mine intends to use the acid in-situ leaching method of uranium extraction and could mean up to 70 jobs based in Broken Hill.
Its owners, Southern Cross Resources, were only a few steps away from gaining a mining licence from the Coalition Government when the election was called.
The Opposition's environment spokesman Nick Bolkus says the Labor Party has never made secret its distaste for the nuclear industry.
"The major point for the proponents of that mine to keep in mind is, and the public generally, we've had this existing mine policy, the two mine policy for quite a few years, and in essence everyone's been on notice that if there's an existing mine we would have to live with it, but factor into your risk assessment the chance of Labor winning government," he said.
-------- britain
UK generator wants no-fly zones over its N-plants
Story by Matthew Jones,
Reuters:
5/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13109/story.htm
LONDON - British Energy, the UK's largest nuclear power generator, last week urged the government to put in place no-fly zones over the company's power stations.
"We have been telling the government we want no-fly zones over our power stations," group spokesman Bob Fenton told Reuters.
The issue of nuclear safety has been thrust into the limelight after the September 11 attacks in the U.S. and calls on Thursday by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency for governments to improve security around installations.
Fenton said there was a lot of interest in nuclear safety especially after several media organistions overflew on Thursday British Energy power stations with small aircraft and helicopters.
"There are media stunts going on at the moment, but I am not sure what they prove. We could have told them there are not any no-fly zones," he said.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said some nuclear sites such as military installations and several power stations operated by state-run British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) did have no-fly zones.
"The CAA can put in place no-fly zones, but the request has to come from the government," a spokeswoman at the authority said.
BNFL said it could not comment on security at its plants.
A spokesman from the Office for Civil Nuclear Security, the body that oversees issues relating to the security of civilian nuclear sites, said no-fly zones were a safety rather than security issue.
"No-fly zones are not there for security purposes, they are there for safety purposes," he said, adding that security at all nuclear installations was under review.
The Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions, which handles aviation matters was not immediately available for comment.
Putting in place no-fly zones to cover Britain's 35 reactors is a long way off what other nations with nuclear power stations have done.
Last month France put in place ground-to-air missiles at its La Hague reprocessing site and said it will use warplanes to shoot down any hijacked aircraft threatening nuclear installations.
The DTI said last week no military equipment had been installed at the country's nuclear plants, although this did not mean the possibility was not being looked at.
----
Sellafield safety boss seeks to calm Irish fears
5/11/2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13110/story.htm
DUBLIN - A safety boss at Britain's Sellafield nuclear plant last week sought to soothe Irish concerns about the facility amid fears it could be the target of a terrorist attack.
Ireland last month launched a legal challenge to the expansion of Sellafield, and its longstanding objections to the plant just 180 km (110 miles) across across the Irish Sea on England's northwest coast have been fanned by the September 11 hijack attacks on the U.S.
"Whether it's a potential target or not I really don't know," said John Clarke, head of health and safety at Sellafield, in an interview with Irish broadcaster RTE.
"In terms of how safe it is, I believe it is a safe plant. I believe it's safe under normal conditions, I believe it's as safe as we can reasonably make it under accident conditions."
On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said an act of nuclear terrorism was for more likely than previously thought.
A report commissioned by the European Union and leaked to the media two weeks ago said an accident at Sellafield could cause greater damage than the Chernobyl explosion in the Ukraine in 1986.
Irish commentators have voiced fears that a plane attack similar to those carried out against New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington could result in a devastating release of radioactive material off Ireland's east coast.
"There would be potential for a quantity of radioactive material to be released, but I don't think we should overestimate what we are talking about here," said Clarke.
"Undoubtedly there would be significant damage, but what I have said is we believe the extent of any radiation released would be bounded by our existing emergency arrangements."
The Irish government reacted with fury last month to Britain's decision to allow the commissioning of a mixed oxide (MOX) plant at the Sellafield site, and vowed to pursue "every legal avenue" to stop it.
Norway also expressed concerns over Sellafield recently, calling in Britain to halt emissions from the plant.
Britain first established nuclear facilities at Sellafield - formerly called Windscale - in the 1940s, and the world's first commercial nuclear power station opened there in 1956.
-------- depleted uranium
Test soldiers for depleted uranium, widow urges
Monday, November 5, 2001
The Halifax Herald Limited
By Murray Brewster / The Canadian Press
http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2001/11/05/f160.raw.html
Any of Canada's military personnel who end up in combat zones during the war on terrorism should be tested for exposure to depleted uranium, says the widow of a Gulf War veteran.
"I am begging that this country and the United States take care of these people and their families," said Sue Riordon, whose husband died with a high level of the heavy metal in his bones.
"Immediately upon touching home soil, all of them should be tested. That would be the smart and prudent thing to do."
Riordon has been fighting a running battle with the federal government to acknowledge the apparent health risks of low-level exposure to the radioactive substance that some believe is linked to the Gulf War Syndrome.
She proposes a basic urine test.
"For our people in uniform, it would be an act of good faith," she said. "It's wonderful to support and stand together in a crisis, but there will be a crisis when they come home."
Depleted uranium is used to coat artillery shells and other munitions, making them harder and more likely to penetrate the thick skin of armoured vehicles.
Canada doesn't use the weapons, but the U.S. employed them in the Gulf War and Kosovo. It's not clear whether they're being used in Afghanistan.
The weapons became an issue in Canada a couple of years ago after an independent autopsy on Capt. Terry Riordon showed he died with a high level of the radioactive substance in his body.
Despite the public attention to the issue, the Canadian Forces said it's not interested in a specific testing program for returning veterans.
"When our soldiers go overseas they're not at risk, on a large scale, to depleted uranium exposure," said Lieut. Hollie Ryan, a spokeswoman for the Defence Department in Ottawa.
Canada has committed warships and aircraft to the fight, but the biggest risk of exposure would be for combat infantry.
If Canadian personnel came in contact with the depleted uranium, Ryan said, they would know what to do. They've been issued gas masks, for example, and the means to register radiation.
"We do not anticipate having to treat depleted-uranium casualties."
During the 1991 Gulf War, several American vehicles were hit by their own fire and soldiers ended up with pieces of depleted uranium embedded in them.
Those casualties are thought to be at the greatest risk for long-term health problems.
Another school of thought suggests just being in areas where depleted uranium shells have exploded could be a health hazard.
-------- europe
Austria demands Czechs yield on N-plant
5/11/2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13105/story.htm
VIENNA - Austria's vice-chancellor said on the weekend that the Czech Republic would have to change its position on the controversial Temelin nuclear power plant if it is to join the European Union.
Vice-chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer was speaking one week after Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel rejected the idea of a veto of Czech EU entry for putting the Temelin plant - which lies only 60 km (about 40 miles) from the Austrian border - on line.
"If the Czech Republic wants to become an EU member, the government had better change its stance on the Temelin issue," Riess-Passer said in an interview on Austrian state radio.
Even though Schuessel is against a Czech EU veto, his conservative People's Party opposes putting the plant into operation and would like to see it decommissioned.
But Riess-Passer's far-right Freedom Party, which governs in coalition with Schuessel's party, refuses to budge on Temelin and wants to keep the Czechs out of the EU if they open the plant.
"We will not yield on this," former Freedom Party leader Joerg Haider, who still dominates the populist grouping and sits on the policy-making coalition committee, told Reuters in September.
The Czech government, which hopes to join the EU in 2004, has adamantly rejected Austria's calls to keep Temelin out of operation.
The plant's first reactor was shut down on Wednesday after a leak was discovered in a pump, the CTK news agency reported. It quoted a Temelin spokesman as saying the problem would force the plant to go off line for about three weeks.
He did not say whether there had been any radioactive fluid associated with the leak.
Last month, the Soviet-designed plant boosted output at its first reactor to 75 percent of total capacity.
-------- india / pakistan
India to build Russian-aided nuclear power plant
5/11/2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13104/story.htm
NEW DELHI - India will build a 2,000-megawatt nuclear power plant with technical and financial assistance from Russia, a government statement said late on the weekend.
The plant was approved by a cabinet panel a day before Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee begins a trip to Russia, the United States and Britain to promote New Delhi's interests in a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Vajpayee is due to meet President Vladimir Putin during his November 4 to 7 visit in Russia.
"The project will open a new window for the country in the high technology area of advanced Light Water Reactor technology and wide-ranging scientific and technological cooperation...in the vital field of atomic energy," the statement said.
The Cabinet Committee for Economic Affairs approved spending of 131.7 billion rupees ($2.7 billion) for the power project.
India would spend 67.55 billion rupees ($1.4 billion) and rest would be funded by soft credit from Russia, India's friend during the Cold War era.
Construction would begin next May on the nuclear power station, to be built at Kudankulam in the Tirunelvelli district of the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
The first unit of 1,000 MW will start generating power in 2007 and the second unit will begin a year later, it said.
-------- israel
INTERNATIONAL ISRAEL-NUCLEAR
Peres confirms France gave Israel nuclear capacity
Outlook India
NOV 5 AFP
http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=21116
Jerusalem, Nov 5 (AFP) Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres confirmed that France gave Israel nuclear capacity in 1956, as the two countries, along with Britain, prepared to invade the Suez Canal.
"France agreed to furnish us with a nuclear reactor and uranium," Peres told a documentary on Israel's Channel Two yesterday.
Peres was director at Israel's defence ministry at the time.
Israel operates a nuclear plant in Dimona in the Negev desert, but denies that it possesses nuclear warheads.
-------- missile defense
Testing Mishaps Cloud Missile Defense Plans
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 5, 2001; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39569-2001Nov4?language=printer
By mid-August, the prototype interceptor for the Pentagon's national missile defense system had been packed up in a box and was ready for shipment to a test site in the central Pacific. All signs were pointing to an on-schedule flight test in October -- an important objective for a program long plagued by delays.
Then, trouble struck. A computer-run simulation of the system failed to score an intercept. The Pentagon put the October test on hold and spent weeks looking for what had gone wrong.
The culprit turned out to be nothing more than an aging capacitor in a software evaluation station. The interceptor itself had checked out fine. Still, as a result of the glitch, the next flight test slipped a month and a half and is now set for late this month.
The episode, recounted last week by program officials, underscores the challenge faced by the Bush administration as it tries to step up the pace of missile defense testing with a goal of having a rudimentary system in place in Alaska by 2004. It is a cautionary reminder, as President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin seek to reach an understanding at their Nov. 12-14 summit on missile defense testing, that the test process itself remains prone to setbacks.
Indeed, even if Bush and Putin make progress on avoiding a confrontation over the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, such persistent testing difficulties suggest that the creation of a workable defense system could still be some years away.
The administration's aggressive new development program, announced this summer, involves not only more frequent and more varied testing of land-based interceptors, like those pursued by President Bill Clinton, but also sea-based interceptors and airborne lasers that have yet to undergo their first flight trials. Key to finding out which of those weapons will work -- and therefore constitute the core of a nationwide anti-missile shield -- will be establishing a steady rate of flight tests.
In submitting its request in July for a $3 billion increase in missile defense spending to $8.3 billion in 2002, the administration published a test schedule that showed flights of land-based interceptors averaging about one every three months and flights of sea-based interceptors occurring with about the same frequency.
The plan represented a dramatic surge in activity over the lulls that had beset the program since the first intercept test of the land-based system in October 1999. In that test, an interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific chased after a mock warhead fired from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base and hit it.
Program officials moved quickly to a second test in January 2000. But that intercept attempt failed, and six months lapsed until the test was tried again in July. When that experiment also ended in a miss, officials ordered a review of the interceptor program.
A year went by before another test was run in July. It resulted in an intercept. But program officials made clear that the pace of testing would have to be accelerated to preserve any chance of deploying even a bare-bones system by 2004.
Officials with the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the Pentagon group overseeing the development effort, play down the significance of the latest delay. They say it pales in comparison with past delays and expect to make up the lost time by February, when the test after the next one is scheduled.
"We're still within a month and a half of our original time frame," said Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, the organization's director. "That's a big improvement. We're narrowing the length of the delays. We're also looking at much more minor technical problems than we did in the past."
Two other senior defense officials noted that the administration has purposefully avoided setting firm deadlines. Unlike the Clinton administration's plan, which proposed a specific Alaska-based architecture by 2005, the Bush plan commits to no particular system and no certain date. It simply outlines a broad research and testing effort, with flexibility to use whatever anti-missile weapon proves most workable.
At the same time, the whole premise of the program is that the United States needs a nationwide defense against ballistic missile attack as soon as possible. Critics have questioned the urgency, noting that the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington could not have been prevented by a missile defense system. But administration officials have argued that the assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon only underscored U.S. vulnerability to a number of threats, including a missile attack, that could have even worse consequences than the carnage Sept. 11.
"If these delays persist, the administration will find itself facing two choices," said Philip Coyle, the Pentagon official responsible for assessing weapons testing during the Clinton years. "Either they will have to push back the date for realizing any operational system, or they will say they don't really need to do as much testing."
Having scored two intercepts in four tries with land-based interceptors, defense officials maintain they have demonstrated the principle of using a missile to hit a missile. But the proposed land-based system is complex, requiring many moving parts and exacting coordination among interceptors, radars and battle management computers. And testing the system requires still more equipment to collect data and ensure safety, adding yet another layer of complexity.
Even with all the redundant measures built into the system to prevent the failure of a single element from denying success, the things that went wrong in two of the first four tests had no fallback. The incident in August highlighted the ability of a seemingly minor anomaly to drive the program behind schedule.
The land-based system is not the only one experiencing testing delays. The first flight of a potential sea-launched interceptor -- the Standard Missile III -- had been due earlier this fall but now is slated for January after postponement of some pre-flight ground testing.
After last year's flight test failures, senior officials in the missile defense group had expressed dissatisfaction with the quality control and production discipline being exercised by Boeing Co. and other contractors. Many of those concerns have since been addressed, officials now say, citing improved trends in the building and assembling of equipment.
But the Pentagon is exercising great caution in preparing for the next test. The simulation that failed in August did not involve the interceptor earmarked for the next test but a "sibling" unit being readied for the following test. Nonetheless, the next test was stalled while investigators, fearing a major software flaw in the interceptor, ran the glitch to ground.
"We found the problem, implemented the fix, then ran nearly 1,000 runs with the fix," an official said. "Then we went back and induced the problem in the test system and again saw the failure. Then we fixed the software again and ran another set of 1,000 runs.
"Here's a case of caution, I will say that," the official added.
The conservatism extends to the structuring of the next test. Despite criticism that the first tests have been too simplistic to provide meaningful proof that the system would work under real-world conditions, defense officials plan to make the next test a virtual carbon copy of the last before moving to more complicated scenarios next year.
-------- pakistan
INTERNATIONAL TERROR-PAK-US
US ready for shoot-out if Pak nukes fall into extremists hands
Outlook India
T V PARASURAM
NOV 5 (PTI)
http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=21126
Washington, Nov 5 (PTI) The United States will be prepared for a shoot-out between its Marines and Pakistani troops if President Pervez Musharraf is removed from power and the country's nuclear weapons are in danger of falling into the hands of fundamentalists or Osama bin Laden.
"In case of an uprising in Pakistan or if Musharraf is overthrown by forces friendly to Taliban or bin Laden, the 2,200 troops of the 15th Marine Expeditonary unit cooped up on the assault ship USS Peleliu, presumably itching for action, could be sent to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear weapons and materials to keep them away from Laden or other terrorists, a media report said here today quoting sources.
Even unassembled nuclear bomb parts could be dangerous, "A radiological weapon," a conventional explosive device used to scatter radioactive material, would be nearly as devastating as an actual nuclear bomb, producing fallout that could render an American city uninhabitable for years, Newsweek said.
The material, said Newsweek, could come from a weapons programme or a civilian facility, such as a nuclear power plant. Pakistan's nuclear weapons are dispersed across several secret locations, and some elements of the armed forces surely would resist attempt by foreigners to take control of them.
"But if it comes to that," said Newsweek, "a shootout with Pakistan might be preferable to nuclear terrorism in the United States." Whether US Marines would actually be needed for such a task, and whether they could pull it off, remains unclear, the weekly added.
-------- russia
Undetonated explosives found aboard Kursk
USA Today
11/05/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/05/kursk.htm
MOSCOW (AP) - Investigators rummaging through the gutted carcass of the Kursk nuclear submarine were forced to retreat after they found undetonated explosives scattered around its forward part, a top prosecutor said Monday.
More than 330 pounds of explosives from torpedo warheads were blown into the Kursk's second and third compartments by the powerful blasts that sank the submarine, chief prosecutor of the Northern Fleet Vladimir Mulov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
The explosives were found Sunday night and safely removed by Monday morning, and prosecutors resumed their work, Mulov said.
The submarine was lifted from the Barents Sea floor and brought to dry dock last month - more than a year after it sank during a naval exercise, killing all 118 men aboard.
Investigators have pulled 56 bodies from the Kursk since it was raised, and 49 of them have been identified, Mulov said. Another 12 bodies were removed by divers during an operation last year.
Funeral services were being held around the country for the sailors whose bodies were recovered.
Navy specialists have also removed 16 out of the Kursk's 22 Granit cruise missiles, but had to suspend the work because deformations in the hull didn't allow taking the remaining weapons out by crane in a normal fashion. The navy will cut them out of the Kursk hull along with their containers when the submarine is dismantled.
Investigators hope that a close study of the wreck would help determine the cause of the Kursk's sinking on Aug. 12, 2000. The disaster was triggered by a practice torpedo which exploded, causing a detonation of combat torpedoes in the bow. Officials said the initial explosion could have been caused by an internal flaw, a collision with another vessel or a World War II mine.
Next year, the navy plans to raise fragments of the Kursk's bow, which was sawed off and left on the seabed because of fears it could break off and destabilize the lifting.
---
Russia boosts steps to thwart "nuclear terrorism"
by Clara Ferreira-Marques
5/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13108/story.htm
MOSCOW - Russia is stepping up training of personnel at its nuclear facilities to combat possible nuclear terrorist attacks amid Europe-wide fears that such installations could be targeted, a Defence Ministry official said last week.
"(We are taking) measures for the preparation of our staff so that they will be able to understand and identify the threats," Viktor Kholstov, head of the Radiation, Chemical and Bacteriological Defence Forces, told a news conference.
"There are detective stories about transporting nuclear substances. But we should take into consideration the possibility of such a situation in real life," he said.
Kholstov's statement follows a warning by the global nuclear security watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose director said on Thursday that an act of nuclear terrorism was "far more likely" than previously thought.
Kholstov did not elaborate on the measures, but other officials have said security has also been stepped up at the country's nuclear facilities.
The 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in then Soviet Ukraine killed dozens in the immediate aftermath of the disaster and exposed more than five million Europeans to increased levels of radiation.
NUCLEAR MATERIAL
Since the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991, there have been a number of cases of nuclear material being stolen from poorly-guarded former Soviet nuclear facilities, sparking grave concern in the West.
In 1994, three men were arrested at Munich airport carrying 363 grams (12.8 ounces) of weapons-grade plutonium from Moscow.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei called on countries to take an inventory of security risks at their nuclear power plants, given concern that al Qaeda - the militant group blamed for the September 11 attacks in the United States - had tried to acquire nuclear material.
A former aide to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, testified to a U.S. court in February that he had been asked to obtain uranium for the organisation.
Kholstov said Defence Ministry staff were being trained to deal with chemical and biological weapons along with the threat of "nuclear terrorism".
Russia inherited the world's largest chemical stockpile from the Soviet Union and is aiming to destroy its 40,000 tonnes of toxic agents by 2012.
But Kholstov said there were no biological weapons in the country, categorically excluding any link between the U.S. cases of anthrax and Russia or the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of 12 former Soviet republics.
Russia's chief medical officer Gennady Onishchenko told the news conference that the CIS had only had enough anthrax for medical purposes, and that trade in the bacteria was impossible.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Spent nuclear fuel pools seen vulnerable to attack
November 5, 2001
Reuters
Vibeke Laroi
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13103
SAN FRANCISCO - While the United States steps up security at its nuclear power plants, energy experts warn the plants' fuel dumps are far more vulnerable than reactors to attack by anyone trying to spread radioactivity.
"Spent fuel has never gotten the same attention as the reactor ... as a result you don't have the same level of security and safety as exists for the reactor," David Lochbaum, a former nuclear plant engineer now with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Reuters.
"Because it's a softer target and has greater consequences, terrorists may elect to go after the spent fuel," he said.
Security has been tightened at the 103 nuclear power plants in the United States, the source of 20 percent of the country's electricity, since the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks that killed about 4,800 people in New York and the Pentagon.
Amid U.S. calls for increased vigilance at strategic sites worldwide, the head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency warned on Thursday that an act of nuclear terrorism was "far more likely" than previously thought.
Since Sept. 11, much of discussion in the nuclear industry has focused on whether an aircraft could penetrate the steel and concrete containment building surrounding a plant's reactor.
But nuclear experts are warning that guarding on-site storage facilities for these same reactors' highly radioactive spent fuel is also a critical issue that must be addressed.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the U.S. nuclear industry, needs to devote more attention to this issue, agency spokesman Victor Dricks said.
DE FACTO WASTE DUMPS
When most of the energy is wrung from the radioactive pellets used to run the power plants, the spent fuel is tightly sealed in water-filled, on-site pools. Water is needed to cool the fuel, which gives off heat and radiation for many years after it is removed from the reactor.
Over the years, the pile of spent fuel from U.S. reactors has grown to more than 40,000 metric tonnes, enough to bury a football field under 15 feet (4.6 metres) of waste material, the Washington-based industry group Nuclear Energy Institute said.
About two-thirds of this fuel is kept in underground pools, which provide far better containment than for the third stored in above-ground buildings.
But most of these pools are housed in far less robust structures than the reactor containment vessels, which are designed to contain the equivalent of a small nuclear explosion should things go badly wrong in the reactor core.
Though the walls of waste storage pools are thick, reinforced concrete lined with steel, the roofs are made of "pretty insubstantial material" like sheet metal, Lynnette Hendricks, director of licensing at Nuclear Energy Institute, told Reuters.
And while the pools lie within high security areas, there are fewer locked doors and safety barriers between spent fuel and the atmosphere than surrounds the fuel in the reactor.
Another concern is the vulnerability of the pools' cooling systems. "If you knock out that system, there are no automatic back-up systems," Lochbaum said.
If the water boils or drains away, the discarded fuel would overheat, either melting or catching fire, threatening to release a radioactive cloud.
POTENTIAL CONCERNS
The pools, initially designed as temporary containers, can withstand earthquakes, tornadoes and other natural calamities, but were not built to withstand acts of sabotage.
"The pools are not designed to withstand the impact of a jetliner, but they are relatively small ... it would be extremely difficult for an aircraft, even if deliberately targeting one, to hit one," said Dricks of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
When most of the country's nuclear reactors were designed in the 1960s and 1970s, it was assumed their radioactive waste would be shipped off to a central repository or reprocessing facility.
But commercial reprocessing was never successfully developed in the United States, and plans to open a permanent disposal site in Nevada have already been delayed 12 years until around 2010 - if it opens at all.
While legislators, power companies and environmentalists squabble over what to do with the spent fuel, storage space in the temporary facilities gets ever more crowded.
"Now (pools) hold considerably more (spent fuel) than in a reactor," said Gordon Thompson, a nuclear scientist and executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, an independent think tank based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
It only takes about five to six years of operation for a power plant to produce more nuclear waste than it holds in its reactor, and the biggest of these pools now holds seven to eight times as much fuel as in a reactor, said Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
---------
Meltdown In One Hour If Passenger Jet Hits Nuclear Power Plant
Rense.com
11-5-1
http://rense.com/general16/if.htm
VIENNA - A reactor meltdown could occur within one hour if a commercial passenger jet hits a nuclear power plant, according to a new Greenpeace report which examines the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to plane crashes in Germany.
Nuclear expert, Dr Helmut Hirsch, says in the report that in a worse case scenario of a commercial passenger jet hitting a nuclear plant, the reactor's containment would be breached, the cooling systems would fail, and within a very short period of time less than one hour - the reactor core would begin to meltdown. A catastrophic release of radioactivity on the scale of Chernobyl would follow. Dr Hirsch's report was released as International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General, Dr Mohamed El Baradei, acknowledged that the world's nuclear reactors and other facilities are vulnerable to a September 11th type attack. An IAEA conference in Vienna today will discuss the threat of nuclear terrorism.
The GP report also states that, even if the reactor building remains largely intact, there is a high probability that as a result of the damage caused by the aircraft, a core meltdown could still occur. Such an event would be less catastrophic in the short term due to the containment structure, however, this would eventually fail - either through explosions caused by the meltdown (within ten hours) or within a matter of days due to excessive internal pressure. Dr Hirsch states that in the oldest German nuclear plants the reactor buildings had walls 60 cm (two feet) thick which could withstand a sports plane, weighing 10 tonnes and flying slowly (300 kmph) while others were designed to withstand a crash by a Starfighter warplane and the newest to withstand a crash by a Phantom fighter jet.
However the report points that the mass of commercial passenger jets and the amount of fuel they carry far exceed those of jet fighters. The F4E Phantom II jet has a take off weight of 26,309 kg with maximum estimated fuel reserves of 6,000 litres while a Boeing 747-400 has a take-off weight of 396,890 kg and maximum fuel reserve of 216,840 litres. "In general it can, given the current state of knowledge, be assumed that even in an accidental crash by a big passenger plane the reactor building will probably be broken into - if a 'direct hit' occurs - even if the facility involved is protected against the impact of a Phantom jet fighter.
This possibility cannot be ruled out even with a medium sized passenger plane (eg Airbus A-320). The probability is greater still in the case of a deliberately aimed crash at higher speeds," the report states.
Dr Hirsch questioned the safety of deploying air defence systems at nuclear sites saying the most effective safety measure would be to close down the nuclear plants as soon as possible. "Stationing military units at nuclear power plants for the purpose of air defence, a measure already implemented in France and the Czech republic, must be regarded as extremely problematic," the report said. "Apart from the obvious danger of shooting down aircraft which have no interest in the plants - planes whose radio and navigation systems have failed, for example - new risks are created as a result."
While the IAEA Director General stated that reactors were vulnerable to aircraft attack, he downplayed the threat posed by fissile materials - the ingredients needed for nuclear weapons - being used by terrorists to make weapons. However Greenpeace International spokesperson Shaun Burnie said nuclear weapons experts have stated the contrary, that the design and manufacture of a nuclear weapon is relatively straightforward once fissile materials, such as plutonium, have been obtained. During the last ten years global stocks of plutonium in commercial nuclear programs have grown to over 200,000kg. As little as 5kg of this plutonium would be sufficient for a nuclear weapon.
"The IAEA has two functions: to promote nuclear technology and to safeguard nuclear material. The two are in direct contradiction. Proliferation of nuclear power, the job of the IAEA, increases the threats of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism," Burnie said. "Instead of seeking to reassure the world that it can be protected from nuclear terrorism it would be more effective for the IAEA to admit that the risk is so high that reactors have to be shut down and that the trade in plutonium should be halted," Burnie said. "Future energy requirements must come from energy efficiency measures and renewable energy ."
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
- Shaun Burnie +31 629 0011 33 (London). Franko Petri +43 676 514 7246 (Vienna). - Dr Helmut Hirsch +49 5116063028
The English version of Dr Hirsch's report can be found here: www.greenpeace.org/~nuclear/germannucplantsafety.pdf
http://www.greenpeace.org/pressreleases/nuclear/2001nov2.html
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Our Nuclear Plants
New York Times
November 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/05/opinion/L05NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday
To the Editor:
While emergency response teams prepare for additional terrorist threats ("San Jose Emergency Plans Set Example," news article, Oct. 29), the nuclear industry and federal regulators are twiddling their thumbs. In tests by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 1992 to evaluate nuclear plant antiterrorism measures, 47 percent of reactors failed to thwart mock terrorist ground attacks.
President Bush's energy plan calls for dozens of new nuclear reactors that would create more dangerous terrorist targets. But we will never be prepared until we phase out existing reactors, establish a fast-track program to exploit the potential of energy efficiency and step up power production from renewable energy sources like wind, biomass and geothermal power.
SCOTT DENMAN BRENT BLACKWELDER Washington, Oct. 29, 2001 The writers are, respectively, executive director, Safe Energy Communication Council; and president of Friends of the Earth.
-------- nevada
TEST SITE RADIOACTIVITY:
Berkley requests cleanup
Letters say nuke dump would add to problem
By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Tuesday, November 06, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-06-Tue-2001/news/17384293.html
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., wants the Environmental Protection Agency to list the Nevada Test Site as a Superfund cleanup site and has said in letters to officials Monday that contamination from below-ground nuclear weapons tests could affect plans to bury radioactive waste inside Yucca Mountain.
But government scientists argue cleaning up groundwater layers tainted by hundreds of underground atomic bomb detonations at the test site would cost trillions of dollars and put workers at risk.
The result, an Energy Department environmental manager said, would be enormous amounts of contaminated material stored as low-level nuclear waste at the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
In a letter to EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, Berkley asked whether the Yucca Mountain Project would be halted if contamination from the test site and a high-level nuclear waste repository in the mountain would violate the EPA radiation safety standard.
Berkley also wrote Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and said the test site's existing contamination "has significant repercussions for the Yucca Mountain Project."
She asked Abraham to have his staff start studying how and when contamination from some 260 nuclear tests detonated below or near the water table will affect the groundwater system at Yucca Mountain, which straddles the southwest corner of the test site.
Government scientists estimate that roughly 130 million curies, units of radioactivity, were in the test site's groundwater layers in 1994, mostly as tritium, an isotope that will decay to insignificant levels after 1,000 years.
Earlier this year, the EPA set a 4 millirem per year standard for radiation measured in groundwater around Yucca Mountain that would be tapped for crops and dairy cattle over a 10,000-year regulatory period. A chest X-ray exposes a person to about 5 millirems of radiation.
"What has been overlooked in those standards is the possibility that the groundwater radiation from the Nevada Test Site might contaminate the Yucca Mountain groundwater system," Berkley said in her letter to Abraham.
Abraham spokesman Joe Davis said the department received Berkley's letter "and will be considering it and getting back to the congresswoman in some way shape or form."
A 1997 analysis by researchers for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the test site, said an attempt to clean up remnants from past nuclear weapons tests would be impractical. The cleanup would cost $7.2 trillion for open pit mining of the test cavities, the most effective method, while posing great health risk to the workers involved, the analysis said.
Bob Bangerter, the administration's project manager, said the 1997 study showed a cleanup worker would receive in just one hour the maximum exposure level that safety regulations allow for a whole year.
Monitoring the test site's contamination, he said, is projected to cost $1.5 billion from 2030 to 2130. The monitoring effort, which began in 1989, will cost more than $700 million through 2030.
Berkley said the projected high costs for cleanup and monitoring makes her case stronger for dealing with the problem now.
"Their numbers demonstrate to me that we have a potential environmental catastrophe on our hands. Couple that with the proposal to store 77,000 tons of toxic nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, and you now have a potential monumental environmental disaster," she said in a telephone interview.
"What you have is a site that does not comply with EPA standards. Consequently, Yucca Mountain should not be the site for the nation's nuclear waste," she said.
Designation as a Superfund site would place the test site among the most contaminated locations in the nation and would make its cleanup a higher priority.
Map at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-06-Tue-2001/photos/site.jpg
-------- us nuc politics
Raising the Stakes
Bush Warns That Bin Laden Seeks Nuclear, Chemical, Biological Weapons
Nov. 6 2001
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/STRIKE_MAIN.html
- President Bush warned Central and Eastern European leaders today that indicted terrorist Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization was a threat to all nations and "civilization itself" as U.S. warplanes used a 15,000-pound "daisy cutter" fuel bomb on Taliban positions.
"Al Qaeda operates in more than 60 nations, including some in Central and Eastern Europe," Bush said in his speech this morning, referring to bin Laden's terrorist network.
"These terrorist groups seek to destabilize entire nations and regions. They're seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation; and, eventually, to civilization itself."
He compared the Taliban, the hard-line regime that rules much of Afghanistan and bin Laden's vision for the world to the fascist and totalitarian regimes that dominated Central and Eastern Europe for much of the 20th Century.
Bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban "try to impose their radical views through threats and violence," Bush said via satellite to a 20-nation gathering in Poland. "We see the same intolerance of dissent, the same mad global ambitions, the same brutal determination to control every life and all of life."
As Bush brought his message to the European leaders, in Germany Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder received approval from lawmakers to offer the United States 3,900 troops to join the anti-terrorism fight in Afghanistan, though no final decision has yet been made on whether they would be combat, medical, support or transport personnel.
At the same time, the U.S. military has stepped up the intensity of its campaign against the Taliban.
Warplanes continued to target the regime's front-line troops, and dropped the 15,000-pound "daisy cutter," a weapon not used since the Vietnam War. The bomb, the world's largest conventional weapon, ignites in a ball of flame that incinerates everything within a 600-yard radius.
The bombardment of Taliban troops, targeted by U.S. personnel coordinating with Northern Alliance troops, helped the rebel forces capture several villages around Mazar-e-Sharif, a key northern city that the opposition has claimed it is close to taking for two weeks.
The U.S. presence on the ground in Afghanistan has more than doubled over the last few days, as the Pentagon tries to boost the outnumbered rebel troops' chances against the Taliban with more accurate bombardment.
After a meeting with Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes in New Delhi on Monday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that U.S. personnel directing strikes in Afghanistan had vastly improved the efficiency of the bombing campaign.
'We Are Watching'
A new phase has been opened in the propaganda war within Afghanistan as well. New leaflets being dropped in the country tell the Afghan people, "We are watching," and back it up with a photograph of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and the license plate of car he drives.
The Taliban are claiming a victory of their own, though. According to a report in the Afghan Islamic Press, an American helicopter was shot down near Kandahar, the southern Afghan city that is the stronghold of the Taliban.
According to the report, the four servicemen on the aircraft were killed.
A source in the Defense Department Central Command Center denied the report and said no U.S. helicopter had been fired at in the region.
Getting Closer to the Target
U.S. military personnel are in Tajikistan studying three airfields to determine whether they could be used as bases of operation in Afghanistan, as bombing continued near the Afghan capital of Kabul, U.S. officials said on Monday. Despite denials from an official in the Tajik defense ministry, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem said there is a U.S. team looking at air bases in the former Soviet republic whose borders are still guarded by Russian troops.
"In terms of the airfields in Tajikistan ... there is an assessment team in the country to do just that," Stufflebeem said in a briefing at the Pentagon. He added that there were also teams in "all of the countries that have offered assistance," studying whether bases would be suitable as staging areas for U.S. operations.
"Certainly airfields closer to Afghanistan would give us an advantage in being able to generate sorties," Stufflebeem said.
The U.S. assessment team in Tajikistan is examining bases at Kulyab, Khojand and Kurgan-Tyube, all of which are within 50 miles of the Afghan border.
Opposition Leader Rescued
In one military operation Sunday, the U.S. military and CIA helped to rescue a leading opposition figure from southern Afghanistan, just as the Taliban was moving in to capture and kill him, sources told ABCNEWS.
Hamid Karzai, a minister in the pre-Taliban government, was reportedly having success in urging tribal leaders in southern Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. But several of those he had met with were reportedly caught and hanged.
Officials said Karzai was flown to safety by a U.S. helicopter. More than a week ago, another opposition leader on a similar mission, Abdul Haq, was captured and killed by the Taliban.
The rescue mission comes as the United States has stepped up its presence on the ground in Afghanistan, with five U.S. military personnel reportedly joining a group of Northern Alliance fighters 40 miles from Kabul, to examine an airfield.
U.N. Says Taliban Shares Blame for Aid Problems
In other developments:
President Bush received a further endorsement of the U.S. military campaign Monday from President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria during a White House meeting. "We share the same suffering," Bouteflika told reporters afterward, referring to his country's struggles with terrorists and Muslim fundamentalists.
A spokesman for the Taliban regime said Monday that the world can expect a drawn-out campaign. "We are preparing for a long war," Education Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said at a news conference. "This power that the world calls a mighty force will face fiasco."
The Taliban Monday urged the United Nations to bring aid into the war-ravaged country before winter sets in, but a U.N. spokeswoman said that the regime itself is one of the main obstacles to getting help to the Afghan people. U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told Reuters that until the Taliban guarantees the safety of U.N. personnel, no international aid workers will be sent in to Afghanistan.
The latest numbers of victims from the attacks on the World Trade Center, according to New York City officials are: 3,897 are missing and 499 identified dead.
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Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee Public meeting
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011105-672568.htm
The Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee (NERAC) holds a public meeting. Topics include Generation IV technology, use of fisson reactors in space, the role of nuclear energy in implementing President Bush's national energy policy and future NERAC activities. Location: Doubletree Hotel, 300 Army Navy Drive, Arlington. Contact: 202/586-5806.
-------- MILITARY
US Accepts Italian Military Support
The Associated Press
Sunday, Nov. 4, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011104/aponline174059_001.htm
ROME -- The United States has accepted Italy's offer of military support in the campaign against terrorism, officials said Sunday.
Italy has offered an armored regiment, attack helicopters and fighter jets, and is also expected to make four warships available.
In all, some 1,000 Italian servicemen could be deployed, Defense Minister Antonio Martino told parliament last month.
Italy has also offered the use of specialists in nuclear, chemical and bacteriological warfare.
The United States formally accepted the offer over the weekend, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
The Italian Defense Ministry said Sunday that Italian forces are an "integral part" of Operation Enduring Freedom but gave no deployment dates.
The ministry said the government will seek approval from parliament, where it has a comfortable majority in both houses.
-------- afghanistan
Bombing the Red Cross
By William M. Arkin Special to Washingtonpost.com
Sunday, November 4, 2001; 8:17 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39407-2001Nov4?language=printer
At one o'clock in the afternoon on Oct. 16, an F/A-18 Hornet fighter attacked a warehouse of the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, injuring a security guard and destroying foodstuffs, blankets, and plastic sheeting. The Pentagon quickly explained that the warehouses "were among a series of warehouses targeted ... because the Taliban used them for storage of military equipment." The U.S. did not know that the ICRC was using the warehouses, the Defense Department said.
"We felt horrible when we learned that the Red Cross ... warehouse had been struck," White House chief of staff Andrew Card told Meet the Press.
So horrible that at 8 o'clock on the evening of Oct. 25, two more Hornets dropped two 2,000 lb. guided weapons on the warehouses. The next morning a B-52 bomber delivered three more 2,000 lb. smart bombs. A third Hornet dropped another bomb that missed the warehouses and hit a residential area 700 feet to the south.
"The U.S. sincerely regrets this inadvertent strike on the ICRC warehouses and the residential area," the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) stated on Oct. 26. The Florida based command blamed "human error in the targeting process"--a euphemism, I guess, for the United States hasn't got a clue.
A week later, with reports of increasing numbers of civilian casualties and worsening conditions for the civilian population as winter approaches, we still don't have a good explanation of what happened in the bombing of the Red Cross facilities.
To many, the attacks symbolize American arrogance and lack of concern for civilian life. To me, the attacks more reveal a bankruptcy in strategy. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may stress that Enduring Freedom is a marathon and not a sprint, but it seems that this kind of bombing cuts our Achilles heel before we've even run a few miles. High-level military sources tell me that the bombing of the Red Cross facility was both deliberate and justified and that the Pentagon and government are dissembling to protect fragile coalition partners. But both the air warriors and the Pentagon just don't get it. The road to success in toppling the Taliban or getting Osama bin Laden does not go through some obscure warehouse complex two kilometers south of the Kabul airport.
He Said, She Said
Why, you might ask, didn't U.S. officials responsible for selecting and approving targets know where Red Cross warehouses were? The Red Cross says that the facility was "clearly distinguishable from the air by the large red cross painted against a white background on the roof of each building." The ICRC says it "informed" the United States government of the location of its facilities in Afghanistan. It calls the attacks on a building with a Red Cross emblem "a violation of international humanitarian law."
U.S. military sources see the situation somewhat differently. They point out that the ICRC did not include a Kabul warehouse on a map of its operations in Afghanistan that was published on Sept. 21. They also claim that even if the Red Cross provided information about the Kabul facility to someone, the warehouses were never placed on any "no strike" target list by the State Department or CENTCOM.
Regardless of the Red Cross on the roof, U.S. targeters also say they watched Taliban military vehicles go in and out of the facility, and that there was growing general intelligence of how the Taliban was stealing supplies of non-governmental organizations for their own forces. What is more, sources say, the second attack was completely justified because the Taliban plundered the facility after the initial attack.
"We are not sorry for taking supplies away from the Taliban, and if the Red Cross thought those supplies were going to anywhere else than the Taliban murderers they are just plain foolish," says a senior U.S. officer directly involved in the bombing.
A senior Air Force lawyer further explains that it is conceivable that the ICRC did report to the U.S. where its facilities were in Afghanistan, but he says "it would not surprise me if certain things are not on the `no strike' list." The reason, he says, is that such a list "isn't intended to cover every conceivable thing that cannot be lawfully hit. Thus, for example, it would not necessarily list every school, hospital, mosque, etc. If a marked ICRC compound wasn't on it, the explanation may well be that it was assumed to be inconceivable to even think about striking it."
Nonetheless he says, "simply because something is not on the no-strike list, doesn't mean that it can be struck." There are "several filters" for selecting and approving targets, he says. In the case of dual-use civilian and military targets, there may be reasons, some purely political, not to strike them. In other words, there should be no assumptions that a target can be hit just because military activity is detected.
That is why the U.S. has officially apologized and why the British government calls the attack "regrettable." A senior Navy officer told me even if the targeters are correct on all points, "it was bad judgment to think that they [the warehouses] were targets."
The Weakest Link
I'll leave the legal black and white to the lawyers. But nothing is black and white when it comes to warfare. When it comes to air warfare, the troika of doctrine, strategy and targeting are key. Doctrine and strategy have become ever more sophisticated since the Gulf War, and weapons have continued to advance in accuracy while cost has declined. Targeting is the weakest link. At the Defense Intelligence Agency, gigantic databases of objects of prospective military value are created. For some countries, such as North Korea, the most militarily significant are finely understood. But most of the time, the U.S. finds itself with the unanticipated cases-the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait or the war in Afghanistan--where it really doesn't have a textured understanding of its opponent, or much information about the very things that the United States needs to know to prosecute precision guided air war. In the lingo of war planners, targeting is done "on the fly," with generic airfields and barracks from the databases targeted first while more significant targets are "developed" that "support" political and military objectives.
In the Afghanistan strategy, the bombing itself is intended not just to destroy the enemy's capacity but to generate new targets. By watching the Taliban's response to attacks and how its reduced operational security functions, the U.S. finds new places to attack.
In fact, the United States is not following a single bombing strategy in toppling the Taliban or finding bin Laden in Enduring Freedom. There is one effort to synchronize bombing of fixed targets with intelligence collection and special operations to go after the Taliban and al-Qaeda command structures directly. Then there is a separate effort to bomb Taliban forces in the north and around Kandahar to weaken Taliban ground forces.
Bombing thus has to be seen on two tracks. The primary effort, even if it is not the main effort in terms of sorties and strikes, goes into finding and hitting the "critical nodes" and exotic places. This has been the leading strategy in all recent air wars - going after Saddam's palaces, the factories of Slobodan Milosevic's cronies in Yugoslavia, and now al Qaeda's caves in Afghanistan. This is a hypnotic and highly secretive enterprise, where the best intelligence, the best minds, and the best weapons are combined in hopes of delivering the silver bullet that will clinch victory.
Academics love to debate whether "strategic bombing" in this form is effective. But there is a much more immediate question in Afghanistan: Should the U.S. refrain from hitting food and blankets in the course of pursuing its overall war strategy, particularly when its very ability to run the quiet and true marathon depends on coalition support rooted in the credibility that precision war is sparing civilians? Since the United States is trying to build a future for an impoverished and angry Afghanistan, the answer is clearly yes. The U.S. should clearly refrain from hitting targets that cannot be explained in any way other than its marginal importance. The Red Cross warehouse should not have been bombed because such a mistake - even the perception of mistake - undermines an otherwise just and necessary war.
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Cruel reality of life in land of minefields
War against terror: Children
By Patrick Cockburn in Faizabad
05 November 2001
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=103216
We had just driven through the village of Jorm, a huddle of mud-brick houses surrounded by trees in an upland valley in northern Afghanistan, when we saw about fifty people running towards us in a sort of bewildered panic.
As they grew closer we saw that two of them were carrying children, their faces covered in blood, on their backs. We stopped and asked a man beside the road what had happened and he said a mine had exploded - one of the thousands of devices that litter this land after two decades of war.
Just outside the village people, almost all men, were milling about in ineffective confusion. Even in this emergency Afghan women did not leave their houses, apart from one old woman who was cradling a boy's head in her lap. She was wailing and rocking to and fro, but she had not even wiped the blood off his face.
We found that three small boys, not just the two we had originally seen, were injured. One of them, Barot Mohammed, aged 10, lay on the stony ground, bleeding heavily from wounds in his right leg where pieces of flesh had been torn away by the blast. His left hand was wrapped in a sodden brown bandage, but whatever it covered looked too small to be a fist. The boys were so drenched in blood that I could not see how badly they were wounded. One of them was half sitting up, clutching his stomach. None of the men, some armed with sub-machine-guns, seemed to know what to do.
Through our driver, Daoud, whose knowledge of English is limited to about twenty words, we asked where was the nearest hospital. They replied that it was in Baharak, a market town about an hour's drive away, but they had no car or truck.
I was with two other correspondents, one from France and the other from Spain, with whom I had driven in a sturdy Russian-made jeep through the mountains from the Panjshir valley north of Kabul. None of us knew much about first aid, or had any bandages, but it seemed possible that, unless the boys received help soon, they would bleed to death.
My two colleagues volunteered to stay behind in Jorm to make room for the children in the small jeep. We lifted them in, wrapped in blankets. None of the three cried out or made any sound other than a whimper, either because they were in shock or because Afghan boys are expected to endure pain without complaint.
Two older men also crammed themselves into the jeep. One, with a grey beard, was the boy's uncle. He said the boys were brothers. Barot Mohammed was the oldest and the other two were called Rajab Mohammed, 7, whom I had seen clasping his stomach, and Najmaddin, 5, who did not seem quite so badly hurt.
It was a horribly bumpy ride to Baharak. Daoud is a highly skilful driver and the dirt road, by Afghan standards, not too bad. But even so the boys were jolted up and down as he nursed the jeep across deep gullies where streams cut across the road. Rajab's eyes, deep-set and very dark those of like most Afghans, kept closing and his head falling sideways, so I thought he was dying.
The hospital in Baharak, a typical dusty market town, represented the best hope of safety for the boys. There were no lights inside. I walked through several rooms shouting for a doctor. I saw two women in the distance and explained about the mine explosion. They clucked sympathetically, but did nothing, presumably because they were not wearing veils. Finally a man appeared who said he was an assistant doctor. In a cluttered room with two operating tables he began to treat Najmaddin.
Another doctor called Dr Suleiman arrived and a German nurse called Mathias, an energetic looking man with long brown hair, offered to come and help.
With three doctors and nurses treating the boys I became more hopeful. When I asked the assistant doctor how they were he said "good, good" in an absent way. He and Mathias were working on Barot's right arm, which had deep cuts in it. But when they gently removed the blood-sodden bandage on his left hand, I saw that only the little finger was left.
Barot must have been holding the mine or shell in this hand when it exploded. It had ripped away four fingers, leaving white tips of bone sticking out of the flesh. "I'm afraid we'll have to cut away the whole hand," said Mathias, sadly shaking his head.
A little later Dr Suleiman revealed that Rajab had a puncture wound in the abdomen. He said both boys would have to go for surgery to a proper hospital two hours' drive away in the large town of Faizabad. As we left, Dr Suleiman was saying he would look in the bazaar for somebody with a car.
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Jails fill amid rising paranoia, says freed reporter
By Pierre Lhuillery in Peshawar, Pakistan,
Agence France-Presse
Monday, November 5, 2001
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0111/05/world/world6.html
The Taliban are filling their jails with political prisoners as they round up anyone suspected of favouring their downfall, says a French journalist released from the Islamic militia's custody.
Michel Peyrard, of Paris Match, who was detained on October 9 with two Pakistani journalists, was released on Saturday and handed over to Pakistani and French officials at the Torkham crossing point.
Peyrard, who had been held in the eastern city of Jalalabad, said he was able to interview numerous fellow detainees and build a dossier on the security situation there. He was arrested after sneaking into Afghanistan dressed in a burqa, the traditional head-to-toe garment worn by Afghan women in public, and was held in one of an estimated six detention centres in Jalalabad.
"These centres are for political detainees whose numbers were growing all the time. There were clearly organised roundups taking place," Peyrard said in Peshawar, north-western Pakistan.
"The main prison in Jalalabad is full. I think there are now around 400 prisoners, compared to 150 on September 11."
Many had supported the Taliban when they came to power in 1996 but were now suspected of plotting against the Islamic militia, he said.
"Anyone suspected of putting forward a possible alternative [to the Taliban] has been rounded up and put in prison."
Among them Peyrard saw a significant number of supporters of the exiled Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Mr Hekmatyar earned notoriety for his non-stop rocketing of Kabul after the collapse of the Moscow-backed regime in 1992 until the Taliban pushed him out of the mountains south of the capital in 1995. The ethnic Pashtun and Sunni Muslim militant is living in exile in Iran.
Peyrard also said his Taliban captors seemed to be holding up well in the face of the United States-led air strikes.
Despite obvious fears during the initial days of the bombardment, the Taliban were now "totally calm", he said. While many had expected heavy blanket bombing, the feeling was that, in the case of Jalalabad at least, the US strikes had been "extremely limited".
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Foreigners Swell Ranks of Taliban
Thousands Crossing Into Afghanistan, Witnesses Report
By Keith B. Richburg and William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 5, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39557-2001Nov4?language=printer
AINGARI, Afghanistan, Nov. 4 -- Thousands of armed Pakistanis and other foreigners are pouring into Kabul and fanning out toward the front lines to help the Taliban fight any U.S. ground offensive or advance by the opposition Northern Alliance, according to Afghans arriving here in alliance territory from Taliban-held areas.
The accounts of refugees, some of whom are fleeing the U.S. bombing campaign and the Taliban tactic of taking cover in civilian areas, appear to confirm claims by Northern Alliance commanders that the Taliban was reinforcing its front lines with thousands of foreign "volunteers," mostly from Pakistan but also from Arab countries.
The reports are difficult to verify independently. But Afghans reaching here offered consistent accounts. They reported seeing truckloads of Pakistanis crossing the border into Afghanistan in the last two weeks, and Pakistanis and Arabic-speaking foreigners milling about on the streets of Kabul, the Afghan capital, and moving north and northeast in large groups.
"Every night, I saw lots of Pakistani fighters enter Afghanistan," said Said Maqsood, 37, who recently arrived from Peshawar to this village in opposition territory about 45 miles northeast of Kabul. "I saw it with my own eyes," he said. "Ten days ago. They were dressed like Taliban." He said he spoke to them in Urdu, the main Pakistani language, and they told him, "We are going to Afghanistan."
Maqsood said he saw as many as 30 truckloads of fighters crossing the border, some carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles. Later, in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, he said he saw another six truckloads of Pakistani fighters.
While the current influx of foreign volunteers appears to be in answer to the Taliban's call and to have no direct connection to Osama bin Laden, thousands of other Arab and Pakistani members of the Taliban are known to have trained in al Qaeda camps.
Mohammad Zahir, 22, and Najibullah, 18, who work in a rock quarry in Peshawar, also said they saw truckloads of armed Pakistanis crossing into Afghanistan at the Towr Kham border post. The two were traveling in the back of a crowded blue minibus to their home village of Jabal Saraj.
"Nobody stopped those trucks," Zahir said. "We saw the Kalashnikovs. Maybe the bigger guns were inside."
Pakistan has consistently said that its border with Afghanistan was closed except to the most needy refugees, and that it was preventing the so-called volunteers from crossing the border to heed the Taliban's call for jihad (holy war) against U.S. troops.
But as they prepare for what could be their own military offensive in the coming days -- timed to take advantage of a week of intensified U.S. bombing of front-line positions -- Northern Alliance commanders and political leaders rejected Pakistan's assertions. They cited their own intelligence reports -- including monitoring of radio traffic and conversations with refugees -- in accusing the Taliban of swelling its ranks with up to 3,000 foreigners, mostly Pakistanis.
They also accused Pakistan of playing a double-sided diplomatic game, with President Pervez Musharraf supporting the U.S. anti-terrorism coalition while his intelligence services covertly undermine that policy by supporting the Taliban.
"A lot of Pakistanis are coming into Kabul and the Nejrab district, across this mountain," said Nader Shah, 45, the commander of the Dernama district at the front line here across a mountain range. "They came to Kabul two or three days ago. They are crossing the border in groups every day. There is not any prevention for Pakistanis to cross the border. They are going to the front lines. They are mixed -- Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens. But mostly Pakistanis."
"They have weapons when they cross," the commander said. "A lot of weapons enter Afghanistan in trucks loaded with food. We send some men to buy rice. They told the story of how they put weapons on the bottom and rice, wheat or oil on top."
Another refugee who arrived here Saturday from Kabul, 48-year-old Sediqi, confirmed the commander's account, saying, "I saw them in Kabul. I saw them in their cars, going north, going to the east. Some were going to Mazar-e Sharif," a strategically important city in northern Afghanistan.
Sediqi, who like many Afghans uses only one name, also provided a rare glimpse of life inside Kabul after nearly a month of U.S. bombardment. "It's causing all the houses to shake," he said. "It's breaking the windows. People are running out to buy plastic, because it's cheaper than glass. Glass is too expensive."
He said that for the most part, the United States appears to be careful in its targeting, hitting mostly military installations. But he said he has seen a few bombs go astray -- including one that hit a residential district near the airport and caused eight houses to collapse. There were few casualties, he said, because most people had already fled that neighborhood.
----
Pakistanis Tone Down Call to Halt Airstrikes
Rumsfeld Is Cautioned About Muslim Reaction
By Vernon Loeb and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 5, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39750-2001Nov4?language=printer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 4 -- Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, today backed away from calls to halt the bombing of Afghanistan during Ramadan, but cautioned visiting Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that continued airstrikes during the holy month could cause negative political fallout throughout the Muslim world, senior U.S. and Pakistani officials said.
Rumsfeld and Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar later told reporters that while they were sensitive to Islamic concerns, military objectives took precedence in the war on terrorism.
"I'm certainly aware of the views of the president of Pakistan and interested in the views of any number of countries in the Muslim world," Rumsfeld said. But he said Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network still pose a threat to Americans, and "it is important that the terrorists be stopped."
Sattar said that "the military campaign should be reduced to a time as short as possible, consistent with the realization of objectives."
In the United States, top military leaders said the Afghan campaign was on schedule and making "great progress" toward its goal of destroying al Qaeda and the Taliban. But Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who heads the U.S. Central Command and is the commander of U.S. forces in the war, warned in separate television interviews that the United States and its allies still face a long and difficult task.
Neither suggested that the United States was close to locating bin Laden, the Saudi-born exile suspected of being behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
As the U.S. bombing entered its fifth week, Rumsfeld said in Islamabad that the Taliban militia was no longer functioning as a government and was not providing for the basic necessities of the country's population.
"There really is not a government to speak of in Afghanistan today," he said. "As a military force, they [the Taliban] have concentrations of power; they exist. They have capabilities that remain, tanks and antiaircraft and some Stinger" missiles.
But Taliban forces "are not making major military moves," he said. "They are pretty much in a static position. They are using mosques for ammunition storage."
However, Afghans arriving in territory held by the opposition Northern Alliance reported that thousands of armed Pakistanis and other foreigners were pouring into Kabul, the capital, and fanning out toward the front lines to help the Taliban fight any U.S. ground offensive or advance by the Northern Alliance.
Their accounts appeared to confirm claims by Northern Alliance commanders that the Taliban was reinforcing its front lines with thousands of foreign "volunteers," mostly from Pakistan but also from Arab countries.
Rumsfeld accused the Taliban today of "lying about civilian casualties" from the U.S. bombing. Sattar also made reference to Taliban propaganda, saying that Musharraf was particularly disturbed by uncritical media reports that simply repeated the Taliban's inaccurate claims about civilian casualties.
Musharraf raised this issue during his meeting with Rumsfeld today, when several of his aides said they believed the United States and its allies were losing the information war against the Taliban and al Qaeda, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.
Rumsfeld agreed that the United States needed to do a better job countering Taliban propaganda, a U.S. official said.
But Sattar publicly applauded the U.S. military for its attempts to avoid civilian casualties, saying Musharraf found it particularly gratifying that Rumsfeld had stressed this point.
"I don't think there has ever been a bombing campaign in the history of the world done with more care and precision," Rumsfeld said.
Despite those efforts, the Pentagon has acknowledged a string of mistaken bombings, including attacks on a U.N. land mine removal office that killed four people, a residential neighborhood near Kabul and a warehouse complex there run by the Red Cross.
The Taliban claims that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed since the bombing began Oct. 7, but has offered little evidence to substantiate more than several dozen casualties. The Pentagon has taken responsibility for a handful of civilian deaths, calling the Taliban's estimate wildly exaggerated.
In keeping with Sattar's conciliatory public tone, Musharraf privately offered Rumsfeld the use of three additional air bases in western Pakistan to support the bombing campaign, Pakistani officials said. Pakistan already has opened four air bases and airfields to U.S. forces for logistical operations, search-and-rescue missions, medical facilities and other ground support efforts.
A senior U.S. official involved in the talks said the offer did not come up during the formal session between Rumsfeld and Musharraf, but that the two leaders, or some of their aides, could have discussed it separately.
Musharraf attempted to assuage concerns that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal could be in danger of falling into the hands of radical Islamic factions if the country's political situation deteriorates and destabilizes Musharraf's military government, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
Musharraf, who was flanked by four of his most senior military and intelligence officers -- all wearing civilian suits -- noted that the reorganization of those services on the night the U.S. bombing began sidelined some of the most recalcitrant and hard-line officers.
The Pakistani president and Rumsfeld also discussed the continuing, but so far largely unsuccessful, efforts to encourage defections and dissension among tribal leaders and commanders in Taliban-controlled southern Afghanistan. Rumsfeld asked for as much intelligence assistance as Pakistan could provide, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.
Pakistani intelligence officials claim to have lost much credibility within the Taliban, and the Pashtun ethnic group that accounts for most of its members, when Musharraf reversed Pakistan's long-standing support for the Taliban and agreed to assist the United States in ousting the movement.
Rumsfeld flew through Afghan airspace on his way to Pakistan from Uzbekistan at the end of a four-day, five-country trip, crossing the snow-covered northern tip of the country this afternoon at 37,000 feet aboard a giant C-17 transport plane.
"It's tough terrain. You wouldn't want to march around there too long," Rumsfeld said, peering down at the peaks. Before landing in Pakistan, the plane's pilot flew a "tactical descent," dropping thousands of feet in seconds to make the plane harder to track by potential adversaries.
Rumsfeld's entourage switched from the secretary's regular Boeing 757 to the transport for security reasons after the first leg of his trip in Moscow. The C-17 is equipped with various countermeasures in the event of attack by a surface-to-air missile.
Correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
-------- arms sales
Weapons laws alter acquisition patterns
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 5, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011105-91316327.htm
More gun-carrying criminals are turning to friends and family for their weapons rather than buying them at stores, gun shows or flea markets, the Justice Department reported yesterday.
Nearly 40 percent of state prison inmates in 1997 who used or possessed a firearm during a crime got the weapon from a friend or relative, compared with 34 percent in 1991.
Over the same period, the percentage of those inmates who bought or traded for their gun at a pawn shop, flea market, or retail outlet fell from 21 percent to 14 percent.
That shift is due in part to the passage of tougher gun-control laws during the 1990s, including the 1993 Brady Law that imposed nationwide background checks on buyers, said the report's author, Caroline Wolf Harlow.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics survey also showed that the number of state prisoners who used guns to commit their crimes rose from 16 percent to 18 percent between 1991 and 1997. Federal prisoners followed the same trend, increasing their gun possession from 12 percent to 15 percent over the same period.
Researchers on both sides of the gun-control issue interpreted the statistics differently.
"What this shows is that making it harder for stores to sell guns does nothing to deter criminals from getting weapons," said Jeffrey Wendell, a criminal justice professor at the University of Texas. "They just turn to other sources. No one is walking into a store, finding they can't buy a gun and then deciding not to commit a crime."
Paul Stevens, a lawyer and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says tougher laws are needed on all fronts. "We need less guns in society in general," Mr. Stevens said. The data came from interviews of 18,000 state and federal prisoners.
The survey found that about 10 percent of federal and state prisoners carried a military-style, semiautomatic weapon when committing a crime. These weapons included the Uzi, Tec-9, AK-47 rifle and several varieties of shotgun. The firearm most favored by inmates was the handgun, carried by more than 80 percent of the inmates who said they used a gun.
Of the prisoners convicted of a violent crime - murder, rape, robbery and assault - 30 percent of state inmates and 35 percent of federal inmates said they had a gun when they committed their crime. Young, minority men were the most likely to have been carrying a firearm. The use or possession of weapons resulted in tougher sentences for many inmates - 40 percent of state inmates and 56 percent of federal inmates reported getting longer sentences because they were armed.
-------- biological weapons
Firm hopes to restart production of anthrax vaccine
USA Today
11/05/2001
By Anita Manning, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/05/anthrax-vaccine.htm
The lone producer of anthrax vaccine in the USA, sidelined for 2 years by manufacturing problems, is gearing up for a federal inspection that may have it back in business soon. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to begin inspections at BioPort Corp.'s plant in Lansing, Mich., within a couple of weeks, says Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. If the company's manufacturing processes meet FDA standards and extensive remodeling of the facilities checks out, he says, the company could, and should, be making new vaccine by Nov. 22.
Thompson has been negotiating with the Department of Defense to extend the use of the vaccine from the military to civilians, and to transfer some vaccine, once it has been judged safe by the FDA, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials are discussing whether to order a supply large enough to vaccinate all those potentially at risk, including postal workers.
BioPort spokeswoman Kim Brennan Root says she can't say when the FDA's review will be complete. The process "can take several months, (but) we recognize that there's very high visibility of this product, in terms of public health interest in this vaccine," she says.
BioPort submitted documents to the FDA on Oct. 12 that "we believe fully satisfy all the issues the FDA had in its 1999 and 2000 inspections," Root says.
Those inspections, part of the FDA's routine scrutiny to ensure drugmakers use good manufacturing practices, turned up design and construction problems that could've affected the sterility of products. Also cited: inadequate monitoring procedures and incomplete record-keeping.
BioPort was forbidden to distribute vaccine, though it has continued to manufacture it. The U.S. military, which plans to immunize 2.4 million service members, has been relying on vaccine manufactured by a BioPort predecessor.
The Defense Department holds an exclusive contract to buy about 5 million doses of vaccine, Thompson says. Before agreeing to transfer any of it for civilian use, he says, the Pentagon "wants to make sure that what we're asking for is a supply that they can afford to give up."
The vaccine was developed during the 1950s and '60s and was licensed by the FDA in 1970. It is given as a series of six injections over 18 months. Though some military personnel have been concerned about chronic fatigue, memory loss and other health problems they say are side effects of the vaccine, the Pentagon says severe reactions are rare and 18 human studies have shown the vaccine to be safe.
---
Indian government office tests negative for anthrax
USA Today
11/05/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/05/anthrax-india.htm
BOMBAY, India (AP) - Tests conducted at a military laboratory showed that a white powdery substance found in an envelope mailed to an Indian state government office last week does not contain anthrax spores, officials said Monday. The letter arrived on Oct. 24 at the office of the second highest ranking official in the western state of Maharashtra, deputy chief minister Chagan Bhujbal.
One of two previous tests on the substance came back positive. But the latest examination, conducted by the national Defense Research and Development Organization, was negative, Maharashtra state health secretary Subhash Salunke said.
He said the results should put an end to anthrax fears that have gripped the state.
Six members of Bhujbal's staff who were exposed to the powder were healthy and showed no symptoms, he said.
The suspicious envelope was one more than 200 that have been tested in India since anthrax spores were discovered in the mail in the United States. None of the others have tested positive for anthrax.
Also Monday, a laboratory in Lithuania said traces of anthrax apparently were limited to one mailbag received at the U.S. Embassy in the former Soviet republic on the Baltic Sea. Tests on four other bags from the embassy showed no signs of the potentially deadly bacteria.
---
Anthrax found in Pentagon; users assessed
USA Today
11/05/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/05/anthrax-pentagon.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two postal boxes at a post office inside the Pentagon have tested positive for anthrax and individuals renting other boxes are being screened at a Pentagon health clinic, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday. A Navy sailor who had rented one of the two boxes has been seen at Bethesda Naval Hospital, a Pentagon spokesman said, but no further information about his identity or condition was available. The second box was unassigned, Pentagon officials said Monday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took samples from the office on Tuesday, and the test results were returned Saturday. Two of 17 samples taken tested positive, the Pentagon said.
The office was decontaminated Sunday and "retesting results were all negative," said a Pentagon statement.
Pentagon spokesman Glen Flood said he had no information about the quality of the anthrax found during the testing.
There are 214 post boxes at the office, which is located in a concourse inside the Pentagon.
All those renting the boxes are being contacted and offered the chance to come to the Pentagon's clinic for screening, Flood said. He said he had no information on the number of renters who might have accepted the offer.
The post office was closed Monday. Yellow police tape covered the alcoves housing the boxes, which are located outside the post office itself in a far corner of the concourse.
The concourse is a commercial section of the Pentagon and contains a bank, several shops and food kiosks that serve the thousands of workers in the building.
It is separate from the Defense Department's own mailroom, which has been tested twice with negative results, Flood said.
The facility had been scheduled for random testing because it gets its mail from the Brentwood post office in the District of Columbia, which was closed Oct. 15 after anthrax was discovered inside.
Six employees in the concourse post office had been put on medication as a precaution shortly after the discovery of anthrax at Brentwood, the Pentagon said.
---
Two Pakistanis held in anthrax case
11/05/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/03/anthrax-pakistan.htm
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - Police in Pakistan have detained two men in connection with a letter that was believed to contain anthrax. Mohammed Salim, detained Sunday, is suspected of putting powder in an envelope along with a news release that was sent to Pakistan's largest newspaper, the Daily Jang. Another man, Mohammad Yousaf, was detained Saturday.
Yousaf, who works for a non-government organization that runs education projects in Karachi, told authorities he suspected his friend, Salim, had mailed the letter. Salim had earlier taken some letterhead stationery from Yousaf's organization, which apparently was mailed along with the powder.
It wasn't clear when Yousaf became aware the letter had been sent.
The editorial offices of the newspaper reopened Saturday, one day after they were sealed for decontamination because of the letter.
The Daily Jang has set up a special room for handling mail and provided masks and gloves to workers who open it, said Zahid Hussain, a reporter.
At a news conference in Islamabad, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said two people at the newspaper had been exposed to anthrax but had not been infected.
Dozens of staffers, including the reporter who opened the letter, were taking antibiotics as a precaution.
On Friday, workers in protective suits sealed the newsroom after tests at a private laboratory showed the presence of anthrax in powder on the press release, which arrived Oct. 23.
However, Health Minister Abdul Malik Kasi questioned the accuracy of the test and said the Pakistan National Institute of Health would conduct its own test on the powder.
Officials feared the incident might be in retaliation for the war in neighboring Afghanistan.
The Urdu-language Jang newspaper has generally been supportive of Musharraf, who has sided with the United States in its war against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement and terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden.
---
D.C.
USA Today
01/11/05
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Concerns over anthrax have stalled the district's efforts to boost tourism, said Bill Hanbury, president of the Washington Convention and Tourism Corporation. A campaign started after the Sept. 11 attacks was sidetracked by the bioterrorism threat, Hanbury said. The agency asked pro basketball star Michael Jordan to help lure more visitors to the city.
------- pakistan
THE MAINSTAY
Musharraf, the Indispensable Ally, Grows More Confident
New York Times
November 5, 2001
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/05/international/asia/05ALLY.html?searchpv=nytToday
<http://graphics.nytimes.com/images/2001/11/05/international/05stan.1,0.jpg>
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 4 - For a man ruling a nation of 140 million Muslims, who is torn between a reluctant military alliance with the United States and Islamic militants who almost daily urge his overthrow for siding with "infidels," Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is radiating an impressive calm.
After a taut, nervous start in mid-September, when he took the hazardous gamble of switching Pakistan's allegiance from the Taliban to the United States, General Musharraf has seemed to grow in confidence, to the point where he plans to leave Pakistan this week for the first time since the start of the war.
He will visit New York to address the United Nations General Assembly, and to see at first hand the destruction the terrorists wrought at the World Trade Center.
On Saturday, in a sign of his crucial importance to America's war, he will have his first meeting with President Bush. American forces rely on Pakistan's airspace, remote air bases in its western desert as staging posts for commandos, and intelligence gathered by Pakistani agents.
The 58-year-old general will leave behind a country where Friday Prayers have become a prelude to protests by thousands of Islamic militants who march from the mosques to burn effigies of President Musharraf beside those of President Bush, while photographs of Osama bin Laden are hoisted high.
"Death to Musharraf!" they cry. "Musharraf, traitor to Islam!" Militant leaders have called for his overthrow by the army, and even hinted that God would reward his assassin.
The possibility that he could be unseated haunts Western officials, for it could leave Pakistan's fate, and that of America's war, in the hands of generals less resolute in their support of the United States. Or, in a nightmare scenario that American officials hardly dare to contemplate, it could pave the way for a militant Islamic leadership to take over Pakistan and the nuclear devices it successfully tested in 1998.
So General Musharraf now has America's clear support, even though he was condemned by the United States for his military coup on Oct. 12, 1999, and so disparaged by President Clinton that Mr. Clinton was reluctant to be photographed shaking his hand during a stopover in Pakistan last year. He was still deeply distrusted by Washington right up to Sept. 11, because he led a military government with close ties to the Taliban and even, clandestinely, with Al Qaeda.
"Men either grow or diminish in crisis, and General Musharraf is one who has grown," said one high-ranking American official who has talked to the Pakistani ruler frequently since he metamorphosed, almost overnight, from an embarrassment to a man who is central to America's hopes for victory. "He's been straight, he's delivered what he's promised and he hasn't faltered. The only question now is whether he can carry all the other generals with him. Does he really have their loyalties? Does he really know what they are doing, especially the ones who have links to the Taliban? These are things we don't know yet, and we don't know if he really knows them either."
Entire echelons of the army officer corps, a power in Pakistan since it was founded in 1947 and the provider of military rulers for exactly half the years since, are believed to have sympathies for the Taliban, and some even for Al Qaeda. Last week, as Pakistan arrested three top nuclear scientists for questioning about their links to the organizations, those fears seemed less fanciful than ever.
Only this summer, General Musharraf was regarded in Washington as a man entrapped by his past. Above all, he was seen as fixated on the rivalry with India - bruised by two lost wars in 1965 and in 1971 - and by harsh memories as the son of a "mohajir" family that fled to Pakistan from New Delhi, losing all it possessed, in the great migration of Muslims and Hindus that accompanied the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.
America and Pakistan have had an on-again, off-again relationship for years, mostly off in the decade since the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan and Washington lost the need for Pakistan as a base for supplying the Muslim guerrillas who were its allies then.
None of that has been forgotten by General Musharraf, who has coupled his pledge of "full support" with a shrewd understanding of how that commitment can be used to benefit Pakistan. American sanctions imposed because of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, then broadened and stiffened after the nuclear tests of 1998 and the military coup, have been lifted in haste.
Some of Pakistan's crushing $37 billion in foreign debt is being hastily rescheduled through international financial institutions and new loans extended, despite Pakistan's record of failing to repay or to use the money to help the impoverished.
Whether the new money will be sufficient to distribute tangible benefits to the legions of dispossessed here, and thus cut into the constituency on which Islamic militancy feeds, is another open question.
The United States has said it will hold General Musharraf to his pledge to restore civilian rule by October 2002. But if he does, many Pakistanis fear that it will start another slide into the politics of "loot and plunder," in the general's phrase.
In the 1990's the corrupt governments of two civilian prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, emptied the country's treasury of billions of dollars.
For the moment, though, the Americans are confident that the general has matters firmly in hand, or as firmly as any Pakistani ruler could, and his own demeanor seems to support that view. Far from the edgy, almost apologetic figure he cut in the televised announcement of his "full support" for the United States, he has seemed almost bouncy, as if the crisis were something he had been waiting for all his life.
Aides say that is the reflection of a deep-seated belief, rooted in a moderate but devout form of Islam, that all matters are decided by God.
"He's a man who believes in destiny, and that all we do is ultimately in the hands of God," said Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, General Musharraf's military spokesman, who has known him since they were junior officers. "He's never been a particularly ambitious person, only a man who believes in letting fate decide where he's going.
"And now, he believes that fate has put him where he is, with the responsibility of saving Pakistan."
Before Sept. 11 he had a reputation for mingling only rarely with civilians. The only moments when he really relaxed, his friends said then, were when he bantered with fellow officers over an evening drink or the evening games of tennis he favors.
At his official army chief's residence in Rawalpindi, he plays with his dogs, telephones his son Bilal, who is an actuary in Boston, and until the present crisis played the occasional round of golf.
Meeting journalists was not something he did often, and interviews brought out a certain stiffness.
But he positively bounded into his first news conference after Sept. 11, crisply saluting hundreds of reporters as if there were few greater pleasures.
In the weeks since, he has become something of a media hound, allowing few days to pass without appearances on Western television and even switching dress to match the occasion: British-style dress uniform for the BBC, business suit for CNN, the uniform again for fellow general Colin Powell, the suit for the visiting Tony Blair.
In a meeting with foreign reporters 10 days ago, he seemed to relish the toughest questions.
What did it feel like to have gone so abruptly from being a shunned military dictator to a member-on-probation of the international establishment?
"I don't think I was an unwanted military ruler," he said, almost winking.
Wasn't he afraid of assassination?
"I am stepping on the toes of some people who may not want me around," he said, adding, "So therefore one has to be careful."
And what of the dangers of a generals' coup?
"There is no fallout whatsoever in the army," he said.
But behind the amiable demeanor and the rimless spectacles, there has been a cut of steel.
Under pressure from the street protests, he has placed several of the most powerful Islamic militant leaders under house arrest.
In early October he moved swiftly against military commanders who resisted his support for the United States, retiring or sidelining many. Now all the top army posts are filled by men who owe their jobs to him personally. Pakistani military analysts say it has been a coup within a coup, and the most important change in 20 years.
General Musharraf, a former special forces commando with combat experience, renewed his own mandate as army chief of staff for an "indefinite" period. Next, late at night, he unseated three generals who played crucial roles in securing his power in 1999.
Most strikingly, he fired the chief of the powerful military intelligence directorate, Inter-Services Intelligence, Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, an old friend who had riled the Bush administration with his pro-Taliban views when he found himself in Washington, by chance, on Sept. 11.
Associates of General Ahmed said it was he who brought back the White House's message that Pakistan would either support the war against the terrorists or be considered their ally and treated accordingly. Associates say General Musharraf interpreted that later as a threat that the United States and India, and possibly even Israel, might somehow try to seize Pakistan's nuclear armory, believed to comprise about 20 bombs.
In his address announcing his decision to side with the United States, he said archly that Pakistan's "strategic assets," meaning the nuclear weapons, and its foothold in Kashmir could have come "under threat" if he had refused America's demand for support.
"If these come under threat, it could be a worse situation for us," he said. "The negative consequences can endanger Pakistan's integrity and solidarity."
Against that, he set the advantages of siding with the United States - in effect, the terms of the gamble he was taking. By supporting America, and trusting that Washington would keep its side of the bargain, he said, "we can re-emerge politically as a responsible and dignified nation, and all our difficulties can be minimized."
Seven weeks later, that remains his charter, as do the words with which he concluded his speech. "May Allah be with us," he said.
------- u.n.
Bin Laden condemns U.N.
USA Today
11/05/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/03/bin-laden.htm
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Osama bin Laden condemned Arab leaders who turn to the United Nations for peace negotiations, saying in a videotape broadcast Saturday that this amounts to a renunciation of Islam. "They are infidels," said bin Laden, whom the United States believes was behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington that killed thousands of people.
"Those who claim they are the leaders of Arabs and are still in the United Nations have renounced the message of Muhammad. Those who resort to international legitimacy are renouncing the legitimacy of the holy book and the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad," he said.
"Today, without any evidence, the United Nations issues decisions supporting the oppressive, tyrannical and arrogant America against those oppressed who have emerged from a ferocious war at the hands of the Soviet Union," he said, referring to the Afghan struggle against the Soviet occupation of 1979-89.
Al-Jazeera television, based in the Gulf emirate of Qatar, said the video was delivered to its office in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.
Al-Jazeera news coordinator Ali al-Kaabi, in Qatar, said the tape was made in the past week, but he did not know exactly when. If that is the case it would be the first bin Laden tape that was recorded after the U.S. air strikes began Oct. 7.
Bin Laden's statement appeared to be aimed at Arab leaders who have called for international efforts to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Bin Laden made only brief references to Afghanistan in the 20-minute videotape, and asked: "Who was responsible for the partition of Palestine in 1947?"
On Nov. 29, 1947, the U.N. General Assembly approved the partition of Palestine, which allowed the creation of the state of Israel.
"The whole West is supporting this unjust, ferocious campaign" against Afghanistan, bin Laden said. "No evidence proves that what happened in America (is related to) the people of Afghanistan, and the people of Afghanistan have nothing to do with this, but the campaign is going on, exterminating civilians including children, women and innocents."
The United States is attacking Afghanistan in an attempt to dislodge the Taliban regime, which is providing bin Laden and his al-Qa'eda network a safe haven.
While American officials have stressed their campaign is aimed at terrorists, not at Muslims, bin Laden tried to argue just the opposite.
"Muslims should understand the nature of this struggle, and the truth about this struggle, so they can decide in which ranks they stand.
"In essence, this war is a religious war," he said.
"This is a matter of belief and ideology, not like (President) Bush and (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair paint it as a war against terrorism."
Bin Laden wore a white turban and scarf with a black-and-green camouflage jacket. An automatic rifle stood at his left side as he gestured with his right hand in front of a plain brown backdrop.
He spoke calmly, pointing a finger at the camera as he made his points. However, he sometimes appeared to be breathing heavily. He interrupted his speech to take two sips from a cup.
In Washington, White House spokeswoman Anne Womack dismissed bin Laden's remarks, saying: "This is more propaganda that shows how isolated he is from the world."
In London, Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain described bin Laden's criticism of the United Nations as "contemptible."
"Coming only weeks after the United Nations was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work for a more peaceful world, this claim is based on fantasy."
In a statement that would appeal to his supporters in Pakistan, bin Laden referred to Muslims fighting against India in the border province of Kashmir.
"Our brothers in Kashmir, since more than 50 years have been subjected to the worst tortures - slaughtered, murdered, their honor, blood and houses have been transgressed, and the United Nations doesn't lift a finger," he said.
The video shown Saturday was the fifth communique from bin Laden or his al-Qa'eda organization that Al-Jazeera has broadcast since the U.S.-led airstrikes against Afghanistan began Oct. 7. Four were videos of bin Laden or his spokesmen. The other, shown Thursday, was a handwritten letter bearing what Al-Jazeera said was bin Laden's signature
------- u.s.
Defense budget meets needs
USA Today
11/05/2001
By Donald H. Rumsfeld
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-05-ncoppf.htm
The Sept. 11 attacks awakened our nation to new dangers and the reality that to secure freedom, we must adequately invest in our armed forces. America has the best-trained, best-equipped armed forces in the world - and they are doing us proud today. But for too many years, we have underfunded and overused that force, neglect that has now caught up with us.
With the end of the Cold War, the United States began a defense drawdown that went too far, even as our forces were asked to undertake a plethora of new missions. Those in uniform saluted and did their best, but to keep up, they had to put off critical investments in people, procurement, maintenance, modernization and transformation.
Digging ourselves out of that hole will not happen in 1 year. It will take sustained investment over a long period. That's why the president has requested the largest increase in defense spending since the mid-1980s, funds critically needed to repair aging planes, tanks and ships, fix collapsing roofs, improve military quality of life and pay for long-delayed modernization and transformational research and development.
We need Congress to approve the president's request for increases in military pay, housing and health care. We need funds for procurement, modernization, building maintenance and research and development to prepare for a range of new, asymmetric threats. We need Congress to approve the request of $8.3 billion for missile defense research, development and testing.
As the president has made clear, we must prepare to defend the American people against all emerging asymmetric threats - the threats from cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, cyberattacks and terrorism.
Many of the countries that today harbor and sponsor terrorist networks are the same countries that have weaponized chemical and biological agents, are working to acquire nuclear weapons and are developing ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States and its friends and allies.
On Sept. 11 terrorists took civilian airliners and turned them into missiles, killing thousands. Does anyone doubt for a moment that if they had real missiles and weapons of mass destruction, capable of killing not just thousands but hundreds of thousands, they wouldn't hesitate to use them?
We need every nickel of the defense budget - and we need it soon.
Donald H. Rumsfeld is secretary of defense.
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Defense plan doesn't adapt to new face of war
USA Today
11/05/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-05-nceditf.htm
From the opening salvo of airliners assaulting buildings to anthrax attacks that come in the mail, the war on terrorism has proved to be one of unexpected turns.
Yet, judging from the $329-billion defense budget for 2002 that's now before Congress, the Pentagon leadership has done little new to prepare for surprise scenarios, whether they arise in a few months or a few years.
That's despite Sept. 11's wake-up call and the fact that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last spring asked his uniform and civilian staffs to transform the military to fight wars of the future. They instead remained largely on their current path, coming up with a budget that keeps the military oriented toward Cold War threats - tank battles across Europe, confrontations between U.S. and enemy fighter aircraft, and the like.
As a result, the military isn't transforming as much as possible to meet threats exposed by this crisis, much less those that lie beyond the horizon. Among the needs:
Rapid deployment: If Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's regime were threatened with a popular uprising of the type seen in Iran in 1979, as many now fear, the U.S. Army might be forced to invade the country to protect the government, save U.S. soldiers and keep Pakistan's nuclear weapons out of the radicals' hands. This could require the immediate deployment of troops. Yet, the Army is slower than that, taking 6 months to deploy for the Gulf War in 1991. And its 2002 budget commits money to such heavy equipment as the 80-ton Crusader artillery system, robbing funds from the research and production of faster vehicles.
Ability to fight from remote bases: If Taliban sympathizers gained control of Pakistani air defenses or nuclear weapons, U.S. ability to fly carrier-based and non-stealthy aircraft there could be at risk. Yet, the 2002 budget does not follow the widespread recommendation from defense experts - some of whom now serve Rumsfeld - to buy more stealthy, long-range B-2 bombers that have been flying to Afghanistan from safe bases in the USA.
Means to prevail in urban combat: If the Taliban and terrorists hid out in Afghan cities or the U.S. had to fight in Pakistan's densely populated urban areas, the adversaries would have the advantage of blending in and knowing their surroundings. With a technological edge, the U.S. might prevail in such urban warfare. Yet, the 2002 budget doesn't direct much research and development to promising futuristic technologies such as robots, see-through-wall sensors or special "exoskeleton" suits that give soldiers the strength to kick down doors and carry massive firepower and equipment. Instead, new research-and-development funds in 2002 are overwhelmingly concentrated on missile defense.
The 2002 budget is chock-full of expensive, old-style programs that individual members of Congress protect because they represent jobs in their districts, or that the services protect for similar reasons. Among the most egregious examples: continued funding for three different short-range fighters for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, whose total cost is $340 billion, and billions more to keep open military bases the Pentagon wants to close.
None of this is to say the U.S. military is incapable of meeting the surprises that are bound to arise in this war on terrorism. Indeed, if the surprises come tomorrow, the 2002 budget won't help anyway.
But judging from that document, the Pentagon is hedging its bets against a surprising future far less than is prudent.
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All talk, no action from enlistment calls
November 5, 2001
By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011105-487192.htm
The surge of patriotism that triggered a flood of inquiries about military service after September 11 produced no spike in enlistments, but thousands of young men who had failed to register for a potential draft seized the chance to sign up late.
"On September 11, that particular Tuesday, we had 6,400 men register via the Internet where, over the previous 52 weeks, we were averaging 1,600 online registrations per day," said Lew Brodsky, director of public and congressional affairs for Selective Service.
"For the next two or three weeks we had 2,500 to 3,500 online registrations per day and it's tapered off now," Mr. Brodsky said. In addition, the mailed-in registrations sent by teen-agers getting cards at the post offices or when getting driver's licenses "at least doubled for a time."
While Selective Service declares that draft registration is "what every man's gotta do," military recruiters seek volunteers one at a time through "Uncle Sam Wants You" ads like the Air Force television ad campaign that premiered yesterday during National Football League timeouts on CBS and Fox.
"The new ads are not overtly patriotic and don't seek to take advantage of any sentiments heightened by the attacks," ad executive Eric Webber, of the GSD&M Agency in Austin, Texas, said of the first recruitment campaign begun since Muslim terrorists attacked the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
Mr. Webber said the TV spots seek to market long-term Air Force careers, not the battle of the moment.
"You don't want to get people who come to the military on the four-week plan just because they're angry and seek revenge," he said.
Other young men apparently seek only to avoid legal trouble for failure to obey draft-registration laws.
The draft was put on standby 28 years ago, but since 1980 all U.S. men - including illegal immigrants - must register on the ready list within 30 days before or after their 18th birthday and remain registered until they turn 26. That roll provides more than 13 million names should Congress order a draft.
Almost two decades have passed since the last man was prosecuted for failure to comply with that registration law.
Gillam Kerley, now a civil rights lawyer in Madison, Wis., was indicted in 1982 for failing to register after President Carter ordered the present system in 1980 when world tensions came to a boil over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Mr. Kerley, then 19, fought through the courts for six years and eventually served four months in prison.
"I had made my point," Mr. Kerley said. "Selective Service wants [registration] to be seen as a rite of manhood. They don't want people to think about it."
"Our philosophy here is registration, not prosecution," Mr. Brodsky said.
For the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, since 1973 the philosophy of an all-volunteer military has required inducements including signing bonuses of $3,000 to $20,000, guaranteed job training and up to $20,000 more for college later. The military also is paying out $350 million a year in re-enlistment bonuses.
Local school-board policies still bar Pentagon recruiters from some 2,000 public high schools, but military leaders hope that task will be eased by the education bill expected to pass Congress soon, which ensures military recruiters the same access to schools as colleges and private employers.
Pentagon figures show all four services topped recruiting goals in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, with the Air Force signing up 102.3 percent of its goal, the Navy drawing 100.3 percent, and the Marine Corps and Army each receiving 100.1 percent.
"The Army achieved its recruiting mission in September prior to the September 11 attacks, so there was no direct effect," said Douglas Smith, spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky.
He said recruiters were swamped with visits and calls, but most came from teen-agers too young or veterans too old to enlist, and from medically ineligible people who thought the rules would change in a crisis.
"If there's been any uptick, it's been minimal," Mr. Smith said.
Air Force recruiters got plenty of visits, "but we haven't had an actual increase in recruits," said Senior Airman Marti Ribeiro, of the recruiting headquarters at Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio.
"There's an awful lot of patriotism going on right now and some people think they might run off and join the Air Force," she said. "It's really too early too tell."
Lt. Ingrid Mueller, of the Navy Recruiting Command in Millington, Tenn., said increased interest may pay dividends later, and the Navy is confident it would absorb all qualified people who apply even if goals were exceeded.
"Sure we could, but that's not a problem that we have right now," Lt. Mueller said.
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U.S. Campaign on Schedule, Generals Say
Commanders Deny Report That Taliban Inflicted Serious Injuries on Army Unit in Raid
By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 5, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39616-2001Nov4?language=printer
The nation's top military commander and the general who is directing the U.S. assault in Afghanistan said yesterday that the military campaign is on schedule and making "great progress" toward the goal of destroying the al Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban regime that harbors it.
Appearing on separate television interview programs, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who heads the U.S. Central Command, gave decidedly positive assessments of a war effort that some critics have characterized as bogged down in recent days.
But both generals also warned that the United States and its anti-Taliban rebel allies still face a long and difficult task. Neither suggested that the United States is close to locating Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile and suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Myers and Franks denied a report in the New Yorker magazine that a raid last month on a Taliban stronghold by members of the top-secret Delta Force encountered stiff resistance and that 12 U.S. soldiers were injured. They said there were some injuries during the operation, but that none resulted from enemy fire.
Interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press," Myers said that over the weekend the United States inserted additional Special Forces teams into Afghanistan to help coordinate U.S. air attacks with ground operations by the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban forces. As he spoke, the Pentagon announced that U.S. bombing over the weekend focused on targets close to four key cities near the Taliban front lines with Northern Alliance rebels: Bagram, Taloqan, Konduz and Mazar-e Sharif.
Declaring that "we're going to fight right through the winter," Myers suggested that the harsh Afghan winter could work to the advantage of the United States and its allies in the region.
"We are resupplying the opposition with ammunition, with food, with blankets, we hope in the not-too-distant future with cold weather gear," he said. "The fighting forces on the side of the opposition, on our side, will be much better prepared for winter than the Taliban."
But while describing the war effort as "going exactly according to our plan," Myers said that a Pentagon spokesman misspoke two weeks ago when he said the Taliban's combat power had been "eviscerated" by U.S. airstrikes.
"I think we do have a substantial fight ahead of us," he said. "In some ways they have been eviscerated, but not in all ways. So we are pretty much where I think I said we are. We have the initiative, the Taliban do not."
Myers described bin Laden as "somebody that is quite sick mentally." He added that the war against terrorism that President Bush declared after the Sept. 11 attacks "is the most important assignment we've had in the military since World War II."
Franks, whose Central Command is in charge of the Afghanistan operation, said on ABC's "This Week" that "great progress" was being made in the war effort "because we're doing our work on our timeline. We're doing our work on the basis of our initiative, an initiative which we have and we intend to keep."
Franks said the U.S. objective in Afghanistan was not the occupation of key strategic points or other territory but the application of constant pressure on the Taliban and the al Qaeda network. He said the United States was coordinating its attacks with the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban rebels, "and the purpose is pressure."
"If we think what this campaign is all about, that being the destruction of a terrorist network inside Afghanistan and the support architecture around it, which is provided by this abusive government of the Taliban, then what I think you see is that we want to keep pressure on this all the time," he said.
Franks said he would not rule out the introduction of large numbers of U.S. ground troops in Afghanistan, although he did not suggest that such a step is imminent. "I think at this point we'd be foolish to take anything off the table," he said.
Asked about calls by some Muslim leaders, including Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, that the United States halt its military operations during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins in a few days, Myers appeared to rule out that possibility. He said those who are responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks "chose the time that this war was going to start."
Franks said that "we'd be awfully foolish to not listen to people who have joined with us in this campaign" and that after considering their views, "we'll make a decision on whether to move ahead or not."
The New Yorker article, written by Seymour Hersh, said that three members of the Delta Force unit that raided the Taliban stronghold were seriously injured and that nine others were also hurt during a Taliban counterattack. Myers said that it was "simply not true" that the unit encountered stiff resistance. He said there were "a couple of parachute injuries" and "some other wounds from some of the action and some of the activity that they were undergoing, but none of it was inflicted by the enemy."
Franks said there were injuries during the operation, but that "we had no one wounded by enemy fire."
Hersh, who appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation," said the Delta Force unit "got hit very heavily, a big counterattack, and it was a mess." He said most of the injuries were from shrapnel from Taliban-fired grenades.
In another development yesterday, New York officials said a package mailed from NBC headquarters to an aide to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) contained traces of anthrax spores, but that it appeared to be a case of cross-contamination from an anthrax-laced letter that was sent to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw and not a new incident of anthrax poisoning.
"There is no reason to be concerned," said Giuliani, who returned briefly to New York from Phoenix, where he attended the sixth and seventh games of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks. "One of the reasons I came back was to make sure this was handled properly."
Officials said the package contained a videotape sent from Brokaw's office to Giuliani's chief of staff, Anthony Carbonetti. They said the package was sent to a laboratory for testing on Oct. 23 and that the positive result for anthrax contamination was confirmed Saturday night.
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Doctrine must be updated to fit new war on terrorism
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 5, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011105-94650506.htm
The Weinberger-Powell doctrine that influenced presidents on when and how to use American military power for nearly two decades has given way to the unchartered war on terrorism.
Named after former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the doctrine's major tenet is to use decisive, or overwhelming, force to achieve a clear objective.
That convention is out the window in the ongoing campaign in Afghanistan and the broader war against global terrorism. Targeted action, not decisive force, is what is needed to uproot shadowy terror networks, U.S. officials say.
President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are trying to achieve with limited arms (air assaults, special operations and CIA covert action) what overwhelming force is designed to attain - namely, the destruction of an enemy, Osama bin Laden, and ousting of a belligerent government, Afghanistan's Taliban.
But the exact "Bush-Rumsfeld" doctrine that would stand alongside the Weinberger-Powell principles is still to be written, military analysts say. It takes a significant military event, such as the Vietnam War or the nascent war on terrorism, to spur strategists to starting thinking about what it all means.
"All you've got right now are a series of disconnected policy musings that are the most immediate response to the challenge we are currently facing," says retired Army Col. Kenneth Allard, a TV military analyst who has written books on military strategy.
Analysts predict this century's first war against so-called asymmetrical threats - in this case terrorism - will produce a military doctrine like no other.
"We need a new vocabulary," Mr. Rumsfeld said shortly after the air war began Oct. 7. "We need to get rid of 'old think' and start thinking about this thing the way it really is."
"New think" is actually what Mr. Weinberger aimed to do in 1984. Then, in the early days of the Reagan military buildup, the defense secretary wanted to set down principles for deploying forces that would prevent another Vietnam. Mr. Powell, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, later amended the Weinberger doctrine to also call for using "decisive force."
In a Nov. 28, 1984, speech to the National Press Club, Mr. Weinberger said U.S. armed force would be used only to protect "vital interests of the U.S. or its allies." He said the action must have "clearly defined political and military objectives" and come with "reasonable assurance we will have the support of the American people and their representatives in Congress."
Analysts say Mr. Bush is meeting those criteria. Congress and the American people are overwhelmingly backing military action. Mr. Rumsfeld has stated the objective: ousting the ruling Taliban, and eliminating bin Laden and his al Qaeda terror network. The United States holds bin Laden responsible for the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
But Mr. Powell himself agrees his principle of decisive force does not fit in Afghanistan.
"I've always talked about decisive force, meaning you go to the point of decision and that's where you apply decisive force," Mr. Powell told NBC shortly before the air assault began Oct. 7. "In the Persian Gulf war 10 years ago, you had an army sitting out there easily identifiable ... and we applied decisive force against the Iraqi army. It's different this time. ... I can assure you that our military will have plans that will go against their weaknesses and not get trapped in ways that previous armies have gotten trapped in Afghanistan."
One major objective in Afghanistan is not only to destroy the enemy but to simultaneously befriend the Afghan people as the United States works to form a post-Taliban democracy.
Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, says that if Mr. Bush's current strategy is successful, then local politics may be part of a new doctrine.
"Things that were an anathema to Powell and Weinberger and were partly a reaction to Vietnam are now correctly recommended as necessary to this kind of war," Mr. O'Hanlon said. "In cases where you really have to worry about the hearts and minds, and not just battlefield success, politics are an inherent part of the operations, especially when you are trying to convince people not to fight you and to change sides. So the concept of overwhelming force is not really applicable."
James Webb, a decorated Marine Corps officer in Vietnam and former secretary of the Navy, says the Powell doctrine never fit every conflict anyway.
"There are times when a nation must fight even though it is unable to amass overwhelming force. Think of the early battles of World War II," Mr. Webb said.
"And there are times when overwhelming force is irrelevant, because its application does not meet the threat, which is where we are today. What is important here - to use the phrase I used in my speech at the Naval Institute - is 'specific lethality.' That means finding the 'point targets' in this kind of war and then obliterating them."
If the new war on terrorism gives birth to a Bush-Rumsfeld doctrine, clues to its content might be found in a series of policy pronouncements.
Mr. Bush's most significant new policy is his edict that governments that host and protect international terrorists will be treated as if they are the perpetrators themselves. In another stark marker, the president has said that foreign governments are either "with us or against us" in this war.
Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, repeatedly say, "it's a different kind of conflict" - making it hard to pin down any new doctrine.
"If you try to quantify what we're doing today in terms of previous conventional wars, you're making a huge mistake," Gen. Myers told reporters. "That is 'old think' and that will not help you analyze what we're doing."
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U.S. Makes Amends to Japan for Sinking of Ship
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Cory Lum
The New York Times
November 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/05/international/asia/05JAPA.html?searchpv=nytToday
HONOLULU, Nov. 3 - When United States Navy divers recovered the body of Yusuke Terata aboard a sunken Japanese fishing school boat here the other day, they bowed in its presence and joined their hands together in front of them solemnly in the manner of the 17-year-old student's countrymen.
There was much the same attention to detail and dignity at the memorial service for Mr. Terata, the eighth of nine victims to be retrieved from the sea bottom after the Japanese boat was sunk by an American nuclear submarine in February.
With Mr. Terata's mother wailing as her son's body was placed in a hearse, Rear Adm. William R. Klemm bowed in his full Navy whites and remained in that position until the funeral procession departed in the gently failing Hawaiian light.
These gestures by the Navy were merely the latest in a recent series of extraordinary displays of respect after the tragedy. It not only killed nine people, most of them teenagers, but also shocked the Japanese nation as a whole, stoking some of the most powerful resentment of the United States in recent memory.
For the Japanese public, and for the families of the victims, these gentle final touches in the $60 million undersea recovery effort of the Japanese boat, the Ehime Maru - one of the most costly and technologically difficult salvage operations ever undertaken - went a long way toward restoring good will.
But it is also clear that the deaths and the Navy's early handling of the crash, which occurred during a demonstration of emergency surfacing procedures for civilian passengers, have left their scars.
The day before viewing her son's body, Mr. Terata's mother, Masumi, expressed her grief in a handwritten letter to supporters in her hometown, Uwajima in southwestern Japan. She had been given some of her son's recovered clothing, which despite repeated cleaning still smelled of heavy oil from the crash.
"Our son is finally coming back to us from the dark and cold bottom of the ocean," she wrote. "However, the Yusuke we really wanted to see was the healthy Yusuke. It is very hard for us to think about life without him." Then, in another passage, she added, "When we think about that, we still cannot forgive this incident."
The Teratas, according to Japanese press reports, never expected their son to be found, because he had been on the deck when the Japanese vessel was struck violently by the submarine Greeneville.
They were reported to be the first family to consider legal action against the United States.
Civil damage lawsuits are much rarer in Japan than in the United States. But in a reflection of the anger the sinking has provoked, the victims' families have joined together with their county government to demand damages from the Navy.
"What one must understand is that this wasn't just an accident," said Charles E. Morrison, president of the East-West Center, a Hawaii-based Pacific Basin research institution, "it was an unjustifiable accident, and the American captain didn't take responsibility for what appeared to the Japanese to be a joy ride.
"The initial handling of the accident clearly made things a lot worse than it ever needed to be."
Questions of responsibility and acknowledgment of malfeasance have long been at the center of the Ehime Maru tragedy, with the deep cultural differences between the two countries hobbling efforts at understanding and resolution.
In Japan everyone from the public and editorial writers to senior government officials has complained bitterly about the decision of the submarine's skipper, Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, to defend himself before a Navy court of inquiry rather than bow deeply and accept responsibility, with all the legal and career consequences, as might have been expected under Japanese customs.
Instead of displaying Japanese- style contrition, Commander Waddle showed up for his hearings in his brilliant white uniform, hand in hand with his wife - an image immediately relayed to Japan, setting off another howling round of bitterness toward the United States.
In the end, the submarine commander was reprimanded but was allowed to resign and retire with full pension, which to many Japanese amounted to an unforgivable mere slap on the wrist.
George J. Tanabe Jr., a professor of religion at the University of Hawaii, said: "You couldn't have constructed a better scenario for the uncorking of the darker side of Japan's love-hate relationship with the United States: a nuclear submarine sinks a school boat, not a freighter; Waddle appearing on TV, a big, physical guy strutting out there with his wife, as if in confirmation of American insensitivity; and then the court of inquiry.
"It was one humiliation after another for Japan, a reinforcement of deeply resented stereotypes of the relationship between the two countries as tough guys versus wimps."
Mr. Tanabe served as a consultant to the Navy in its efforts to undo some of the damage, and it was he who briefed Admiral Klemm and the divers on Japanese cultural sensitivities throughout the recovery.
The Ehime Maru was moved from 2,003 feet undersea into much shallower water, and the families were flown to Hawaii and put up in hotels to be nearby during the difficult search for their loved ones.
Admiral Klemm has personally spoken to the family members to keep them abreast of the effort's progress, and as the recovery has wound down he has escorted them one by one to the airport for the return home with the ashes of their sons and husbands.
There have been other unusual measures. Every step of the undersea operation has been filmed, and Japanese military divers have been invited to watch the proceedings on monitors as they occur.
It is now said to be highly unlikely that the ninth victim will ever be found. But before the sunken ship is hoisted and towed to a final resting spot in very deep waters off Hawaii, the Navy has invited the Japanese divers to conduct a final inspection of the Ehime Maru to reinforce confidence back home that no effort was spared.
"It is impossible to be involved in a project like this and not feel a lot of powerful emotions," Admiral Klemm said in an interview. "But most of all, this has been about a relationship between two peoples. You could spend $1 billion to recover this ship, but you cannot buy close relations.
"We not only killed some people, but we messed up their families, and we owed them something. It meant respecting their dignity, and that requires a lot more than just dredging up some scraps of metal and delivering some clothing."
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B-52s hit Taliban lines hard in the north
USA Today
11/05/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/05/attacks.htm
JABAL SARAJ, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. warplanes bombarded Taliban front lines, while the opposition pressed its attack Monday on three fronts near Mazar-e-Sharif - but the rebel fighters conceded they were facing stiff Taiban resistance around the key northern city. At the other main front, north of Kabul, deposed Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani and other opposition leaders reviewed their troops at this dusty outpost and declared they would soon march on the capital, 45 miles away.
"You are bravely defending your country against the evil triangle of Pakistan, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden," a senior commander, Bismillah Khan, told the fighters. The Afghan opposition has long been hostile to Pakistan, which - though now supporting the air campaign - was the Taliban's staunchest ally until Sept. 11.
President Bush launched airstrikes against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the ruling Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his alleged role in the September terrorist attacks in the United States.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, B-52 bombers and other U.S. warplanes hammered away at Taliban positions Monday near the southern city of Kandahar and outside the northern city of Taloqan, once the opposition's capital but now held by the Taliban.
In other developments:
- A small group of American military personnel is in Tajikistan assessing the possibility of using at least three bases there to expand the U.S. bombing campaign and strengthen support for Afghan opposition forces, a U.S. official said Monday.
- American planes dropped 34,000 packets of food over Afghanistan overnight, bringing the total number of rations dropped so far to more than 1.2 million.
- Taliban chief spokesman Amir Khan Muttaqi said the Islamic militia was "preparing for a long war" and again challenged the United States to send in ground troops "to fight us face to face."
- About 6,500 Afghans have poured into an Iranian-run camp, doubling the number of refugees crowding the desert outpost just across the border in Afghanistan, officials said Monday.
Despite the U.S. bombardment, fighters of the northern alliance have been unable to advance on the fronts outside Kabul or around Mazar-e-Sharif, where Taliban defenses are well outside the city.
On Monday, U.S. aircraft were heavily pounding Taliban positions around Mazar-e-Sharif, an opposition spokesman said, while the rebel forces were struggling in a three-pronged offensive launched over the weekend in a bid to take the city before winter sets in.
The U.S. jets were flying in waves of four to six planes, spokesman Ashraf Nadeem said. "Every 15 minutes they are bombing," he said. "They drop the bombs and then come back."
Nadeem, speaking by telephone to The Associated Press in Uzbekistan, said one column led by Uzbek leader Rashid Dostum was making no progress. Another column regained several miles of territory lost to the Taliban and had cut the road from Mazar-e-Sharif to Sar-i-Pul, 80 miles to the southwest, he said.
Opposition leaders sought to inspire their troops and raise morale with Monday's parade at Jabal Saraj. Opposition soldiers, decked out in fresh uniforms, shouted "God is great" as at least three U.S. bombs exploded on Taliban positions across the nearby Shomali plain.
Flags fluttered in the brisk wind and old Soviet tanks fired practice rounds into arid hillsides north of Kabul in a display of strength.
"Your jihad (holy war) is right," Rabbani, the titular head of the northern alliance, told the troops. "You can save the world from terrorism."
U.S. officials have confirmed sending more special forces into Afghanistan to help coordinate airstrikes and provide other assistance to the opposition.
As part of that effort, a team of five U.S. military personnel landed at a new airstrip in Golbahar, not far from the front line, "to help coordinate efforts in the war," opposition interior minister Yunis Qanoni said. He said the men arrived Sunday from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, in a twin-engine plane. They were expected to study the new dirt landing strip to see if it's ready to handle supplies.
The supply route for the northern alliance, which snakes through the formidable mountains from Tajikistan to the north, has already been snowed over.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who wrapped up a tour of Central and South Asia on Monday, said the military operation in Afghanistan was becoming more effective and would not take years to complete.
Speaking in India, Rumsfeld said it is impossible to defend every possible target where terrorists may strike, so "the only way to do it is to take the battle to them." With more U.S. military teams on the ground in Afghanistan to direct airstrikes, "the effectiveness of bombing is improving every day."
Other U.S. officials have said the campaign against terrorism is global and could last well after the end of fighting in Afghanistan.
The Taliban-controlled Bakhtar News Agency claimed bombs killed 10 people and injured 15 others in a village outside Mazar-e-Sharif. Five people died and seven were wounded in a raid near the southern city of Kandahar, it said.
The reports could not be independently confirmed. The Pentagon has repeatedly dismissed the Taliban's claims of widespread civilian casualties as lies.
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War in Aghanistan could cost U.S. $1 billion a month
By LISA HOFFMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
November 05, 2001
http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=SIEGE-WARCOST-11-05-01&cat=WW
WASHINGTON - America's war in Afghanistan so far has racked up a bill of at least $400 million, and could rocket up to $1 billion a month for the duration of the conflict, according to defense budget analysts.
The Pentagon has not yet provided even a ballpark accounting of the cost of Operation Enduring Freedom, an air campaign that meets the one-month mark Wednesday.
But the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit Washington think tank with a record of accurate estimations of past military operations, has cobbled together one for the first 25 days of the current conflict, which began Oct. 7 with a barrage of U.S. bombs and cruise missiles against Taliban and al Qaeda targets in the Central Asian country.
Using the sticker price of the 6,000 or so bombs and missiles lobbed, as well as the fuel and other costs associated with flying 1,600 air-strike sorties, the budget analysts calculated the cost of the first three and a half weeks at somewhere between $400 million and $800 million. Sorties are defined as round-trip missions flown by B-2, B-52 and other warplanes.
Those estimates do not include the price tag of Operation Noble Eagle, the Pentagon's assignment of 40,000 National Guard and reserve troops to homeland security duty of guarding U.S. airports and other potential targets, as well as conducting air patrols over several cities. The budget group says this segment of the war on terrorism costs conservatively at least $100 million a month.
One of the most expensive aspects of the Afghanistan campaign is the cost of the ordnance itself. For example, cruise missiles lobbed by ships, warplanes and submarines cost between $1 million and $2 million each. Through October, the Navy alone had launched about 90 of the $1 million Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Other bombs also add to the bottom line. Each GBU-28 "bunker-busting" laser-guided bomb carries a price tag of $125,000. CBU-72 unguided cluster bombs cost about $5,000 each.
Additional expense comes from the cost of warplane fuel. It takes about $5,000 in fuel per hour of flying time for the Navy's F/A 18 fighter-bombers, which are traveling hundreds of miles from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea to Afghanistan, and back.
And the cost for deploying the 1,000 Army ground troops to Uzbekistan adds another $25 million.
"If operations continue at roughly the same tempo and with roughly the same forces, the (Pentagon) is likely to incur additional costs of some $500 million to $1 billion a month for the duration of the operation," the budget report said.
In 1999, Operation Allied Force's air attacks against Serb targets in Kosovo and Yugoslavia rang up a bill of about $3 billion for the United States.
That 78-day air campaign was substantially more intensive, with more than 8,500 strike sorties flown.
(Reach Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com or visit www.shns.com)
-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy
South Dakota
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm 11/05/2001
Chamberlain - Two 200-foot-tall wind turbines were dedicated in the first installment of potentially massive growth in the state's wind power industry. The project will supply electricity to about 300 homes and is a precursor of a $4 billion wind power project in central South Dakota.
-----
S.1333 - Renewable Energy Bill In Senate
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2001
From: "Integrity Research Institute, Thomas Valone" <iri@erols.com>
Good News! Thanks to Paul Sincock, from the recent Institute for New Energy Conference, I am forwarding an easy-to-read, two-page recap of S.1333, the "Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Investment Act of 2001." The full text is available at http://thomas.loc.gov.
This bill paves the way for a Benefits Fund for renewable energy resources and also for research and development of renewable energy resources. Its a good first step. We encourage you to study it and provide specific feedback to Senators on the Subcommittee on Energy (www.senate.gov). The Bill might include a broader definition of renewable energy sources (such as "other renewable resources not specified" or "clean, emission-free energy sources") for example. However, the introductory phrase "alternative, sustainable energy sources" may simply need to be repeated where the Benefits Fund is mentioned.
We believe it's a great stride in the right direction. With your letters of support and suggestion to the Senators, this Bill can make a difference with financial support for new energy generation. Make sure that your area of energy research would be included.
Sincerely,
Thomas Valone, MA, PE, President
Integrity Research Institute, 1220 L St. NW #100-232, Washington, DC 20005
202-452-7674, 800-295-7674; FAX: 301-513-5728
http://www.integrity-research.org
--
S.1333
Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Investment Act of 2001 (Introduced in the Senate)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:s.01333:
S 1333 IS
107th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. 1333
To enhance the benefits of the national electric system by encouraging and supporting State programs for renewable energy sources, universal electric service, affordable electric service, and energy conservation and efficiency, and for other purposes.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
August 2, 2001
Mr. JEFFORDS (for himself, Mr. LIEBERMAN, Ms. SNOWE, Mr. SCHUMER, and Mr. KERRY) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
A BILL
To enhance the benefits of the national electric system by encouraging and supporting State programs for renewable energy sources, universal electric service, affordable electric service, and energy conservation and efficiency, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Investment Act of 2001'.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds that--
(1) the generation of electricity is unique in its combined influence on the security, environmental quality, and economic efficiency of the United States;
(2) the generation and sale of electricity has a direct and profound impact on interstate commerce;
(3) the Federal Government and the States have a joint responsibility for the maintenance of public purpose programs affected by the national electric system;
(4) notwithstanding the public's interest in and enthusiasm for programs that enhance the environment, encourage the efficient use of resources, and provide for affordable and universal service, the investments in those public purposes by existing means continues to decline;
(5) the dependence of the United States on foreign sources of fossil fuels is contrary to our national security;
(6) alternative, sustainable energy sources must be pursued;
(7) consumers have a right to certain information in order to make objective choices on their electric service providers; and
(8) net metering of small systems for self-generation of electricity is in the public interest in order to encourage private investment in renewable energy resources, stimulate economic growth, and enhance the continued diversification of the energy resources used in the United States.
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) ADMINISTRATOR- The term `Administrator' means the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
(2) BIOMASS- The term `biomass' means--
(A) organic material from a plant that is planted exclusively for the purpose of being used to produce electricity; and
(B) nonhazardous, cellulosic or agricultural animal waste material that is segregated from other waste materials and is derived from--
(i) a forest-related resource, including--
(I) mill and harvesting residue;
(II) precommercial thinnings;
(III) slash; and
(IV) brush;
(ii) an agricultural resource, including--
(I) orchard tree crops;
(II) vineyards;
(III) grain;
(IV) legumes;
(V) sugar; and
(VI) other crop by-products or residues;
(iii) miscellaneous waste such as--
(I) waste pallet;
(II) crate;
(III) dunnage; and
(IV) landscape or right-of-way tree trimmings, but not including--
(aa) municipal solid waste;
(bb) recyclable postconsumer wastepaper;
(cc) painted, treated, or pressurized wood;
(dd) wood contaminated with plastic or metals; or
(ee) tires; and
(iv) animal waste that is converted to a fuel rather than directly combusted, the residue of which is converted to biological fertilizer, oil, or activated carbon.
(3) BOARD- The term `Board' means the National Electric System Benefits Board established under section 4.
(4) COMMISSION- The term `Commission' means the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
(5) FUND- The term `Fund' means the National Electric System Benefits Fund established by section 5.
(6) LANDFILL GAS- The term `landfill gas' means gas generated from the decomposition of household solid waste, commercial solid waste, and industrial solid waste disposed of in a municipal solid waste landfill unit (as those terms are defined in regulations promulgated under subtitle D of the Solid Waste Disposal Act (42 U.S.C. 6941 et seq.)).
(7) POLLUTANT- The term `pollutant' means--
(A) carbon dioxide, mercury nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, or any other substance that the Administrator identifies by regulation as a substance that, when emitted into the air from a combustion device used in the generation of electricity, endangers public health or welfare
(within the meaning of section 302(h) of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7602(h));
(B) any substance discharged into water that is regulated under a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit issued under section 402 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C. 1342); and
(C) any substance disposed of in a solid or hazardous waste facility that is regulated under the Solid Waste Disposal Act (42 U.S.C. 6901 et seq.).
(8) RENEWABLE ENERGY- The term `renewable energy' means electricity generated from--
(A) a renewable energy source; or
(B) hydrogen that is produced from a renewable energy source.
(9) RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCE- The term `renewable energy source' means--
(A) wind;
(B) biomass;
(C) landfill gas; or
(D) a geothermal, solar thermal, or photovoltaic source.
(10) RETAIL ELECTRIC SUPPLIER-
(A) IN GENERAL- The term `retail electric supplier' means a person or entity that sells retail electricity to consumers.
(B) INCLUSIONS- The term `retail electric supplier' includes--
(i) a regulated utility company (including affiliates or associates of such a company);
(ii) a company that is not affiliated or associated with a regulated utility company;
(iii) a municipal utility;
(iv) a cooperative utility;
(v) a local government; and
(vi) a special district.
(11) SECRETARY- The term `Secretary' means the Secretary of Energy.
SEC. 4. NATIONAL ELECTRIC SYSTEM BENEFITS BOARD.
(a) ESTABLISHMENT- The Secretary shall establish a National Electric System Benefits Board to carry out the functions and responsibilities described in this section.
(b) MEMBERSHIP- The Board shall be composed of--
(1) 1 representative of the Commission appointed by the Commission;
(2) 2 representatives of the Secretary appointed by the Secretary;
(3) 2 persons nominated by the national organization representing State regulatory commissioners and appointed by the Secretary;
(4) 1 person nominated by the national organization representing State utility consumer advocates and appointed by the Secretary;
(5) 1 person nominated by the national organization representing State energy offices and appointed by the Secretary;
(6) 1 person nominated by the national organization representing energy assistance directors and appointed by the Secretary; and
(7) 1 representative of the Environmental Protection Agency appointed by the Administrator.
(c) CHAIRPERSON- The Secretary shall select a member of the Board to serve as Chairperson of the Board.
(d) MANAGER-
(1) APPOINTMENT- The Board shall by contract appoint an electric systems benefits manager for a term of not more than 3 years, which term may be renewed by the Board.
(2) COMPENSATION- The compensation and other terms and conditions of employment of the manager shall be determined by a contract between the Board and the individual or the other entity appointed as manager.
(3) FUNCTIONS- The manager shall--
(A) monitor the amounts in the Fund;
(B) receive, review, and make recommendations to the Board regarding applications from States under section 6(b); and
(C) perform such other functions as the Board may require to assist the Board in carrying out its duties under this Act.
SEC. 5. NATIONAL ELECTRIC SYSTEM BENEFITS FUND.
(a) ESTABLISHMENT-
(1) IN GENERAL- The Board shall establish an account or accounts at 1 or more financial institutions, which account or accounts shall be known as the `National Electric System Benefits Fund', consisting of amounts deposited in the fund under subsection (c).
(2) STATUS OF FUND- The wires charges collected under subsection (c) and deposited in the Fund--
(A) shall constitute electric system revenues and shall not constitute funds of the United States;
(B) shall be held in trust by the manager of the Fund solely for the purposes stated in subsection (b); and
(C) shall not be available to meet any obligations of the United States.
(b) USE OF FUND-
(1) FUNDING OF SYSTEM BENEFIT PROGRAMS- Amounts in the Fund shall be used by the Board to provide matching funds to States for the support of State system benefit programs relating to--
(A) renewable energy sources;
(B) assisting low-income households in meeting home energy needs;
(C) energy conservation and efficiency; or
(D) research and development in areas described in subparagraphs (A) through (C).
(2) DISTRIBUTION-
(A) IN GENERAL- Except for amounts needed to pay costs of the Board in carrying out its duties under this section, the Board shall instruct the manager of the Fund to distribute all amounts in the Fund to States to fund system benefit programs under paragraph (1).
(B) FUND SHARE-
(i) IN GENERAL- Subject to clause (iii), the Fund share of a system benefit program funded under paragraph (1) shall be 50 percent.
(ii) PROPORTIONATE REDUCTION- To the extent that the amount of matching funds requested by States exceeds the maximum projected revenues of the Fund, the matching funds distributed to the States shall be reduced by an amount that is proportionate to each State's annual consumption of electricity compared to the aggregate annual consumption of electricity in the United States.
(iii) ADDITIONAL STATE FUNDING- A State may apply funds to system benefit programs in addition to the amount of funds applied for the purpose of matching the Fund share.
(3) PROGRAM CRITERIA- The Board shall recommend eligibility criteria for system benefits programs funded under this section for approval by the Secretary.
(4) APPLICATION- Not later than August 1 of each year, a State seeking matching funds for the following year shall file with the Board, in such form as the Board may require, an application--
(A) certifying that the funds will be used for an eligible system benefit program;
(B) stating the amount of State funds earmarked for the program; and
(C) summarizing the manner in which amounts from the Fund were used in the State during the previous calendar year.
(c) WIRES CHARGE-
(1) DETERMINATION OF NEEDED FUNDING- Not later than September 1 of each year, the Board shall determine and inform the Commission of the aggregate amount of wires charges that it will be required to be paid into the Fund to pay matching funds to States and the operating costs of the Board in the following year.
(2) IMPOSITION OF WIRES CHARGE-
(A) IN GENERAL- Not later than December 15 of each year, the Commission shall impose a nonbypassable, competitively neutral wires charge to be paid directly into the Fund by the operator of the wire on the amount of electricity carried through the wire in interstate commerce.
(B) MEASUREMENT- For the purposes of subparagraph (A)--
(i) electricity generated in the United States shall be measured as the electricity exits the busbar at a generation facility; and
(ii) electricity generated outside the United States shall be measured at the point of delivery to the system of the wire operator.
(C) AMOUNT OF WIRES CHARGE- The wires charge shall be set at a rate equal to the lesser of--
(i) 2 mills per kilowatt-hour; or
(ii) a rate that is estimated to result in the collection of an amount of wires charges that is as nearly as possible equal to the amount of needed funding determined under paragraph (1).
(3) DEPOSIT IN THE FUND- The wires charge shall be paid by the operator of the wire directly into the Fund at the end of each month during the calendar year for distribution by the electric systems benefits manager under section 5.
(4) STATE WIRES CHARGE-
(A) IN GENERAL- A State that imposes a wires charge may pay into the Fund some or all of the wires charge imposed under this subsection on behalf of wire operators serving that State.
(B) PAYMENT- Payments by the State into the Fund under subparagraph (A) shall be applied towards the wires charge imposed under this subsection.
(5) PENALTIES- The Commission may assess against a wire operator that fails to pay a wires charge as required by this subsection a civil penalty in an amount equal to not more than the amount of the unpaid wires charge.
(d) AUDITING-
(1) IN GENERAL- The Fund shall be audited annually by a firm of independent certified public accountants in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards.
(2) ACCESS TO RECORDS- Representatives of the Secretary and the Commission shall have access
to all books, accounts, reports, files, and other records pertaining to the Fund as necessary to facilitate and verify the audit.
(3) REPORTS-
(A) IN GENERAL- A report on each audit shall be submitted to the Secretary, the Commission, and the Secretary of the Treasury, who shall submit the report to the President and Congress not later than 180 days after the close of the fiscal year.
(B) REQUIREMENTS- An audit report shall--
(i) set forth the scope of the audit; and
(ii) include--
(I) a statement of assets and liabilities, capital, and surplus or deficit;
(II) a statement of surplus or deficit analysis;
(III) a statement of income and expenses;
(IV) any other information that may be considered necessary to keep the President and Congress informed of the operations and financial condition of the Fund; and
(V) any recommendations with respect to the Fund that the Secretary or the Commission may have.
SEC. 6. RENEWABLE ENERGY GENERATION STANDARDS.
(a) RENEWABLE ENERGY CREDITS-
(1) IN GENERAL- Not later than April 1 of each year, each retail electric supplier shall submit to the Secretary renewable energy credits in an amount equal to the required annual percentage of the retail electric supplier's total amount of kilowatt-hours of electricity sold to consumers during the previous calendar year.
(2) RATE- The rates charged to each class of consumers by a retail electric supplier shall reflect an equal percentage of the cost of generating or acquiring the required annual percentage of renewable energy under subsection (b).
(3) ELIGIBLE RESOURCES- A retail electric supplier shall not represent to any customer or prospective customer that any product contains more than the percentage of eligible resources if the additional amount of eligible resources is being used to satisfy the renewable generation requirement under subsection (b).
(4) STATE RENEWABLE ENERGY PROGRAM-
(A) IN GENERAL- Nothing in this section precludes any State from requiring additional renewable energy generation in the State under any renewable energy program conducted by the State.
(B) LIMITATION- A State may limit the benefits of any State renewable energy program to renewable energy generators located within the boundaries of the State or other boundaries (as determined by the State).
(b) REQUIRED RENEWABLE ENERGY- Of the total amount of electricity sold by each retail electric supplier during a calendar year, the amount generated by renewable energy sources shall be not less than the percentage specified in the following table:
Calendar year: Percentage reduction: 2002
-------- energy
Oil Industry Seeks Federal Help Against Terror
New York Times
November 5, 2001
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/05/politics/05ENER.html?searchpv=nytToday
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - It was not a terrorist act, just a drunken hunter with a rifle who shot a hole in the Alaska pipeline last month. Nonetheless, he disrupted the flow of 286,000 gallons of oil for three days and raised doubts about the ability to both protect the 800-mile pipeline from attack and maintain its flow of oil.
Energy companies are aware of the threat terrorists pose and they are seeking help from the government to make themselves less vulnerable.
Bracewell & Patterson, a Washington law firm that represents several energy companies, set out to explore the extent of security that existed for such companies and what needed to be done to improve it. A result is a 42-page overview of the state of energy security in America and how various facilities are vulnerable to terrorist attack. Marc Racicot, the former governor of Montana and a partner in the firm, plans to give the report to Tom Ridge, director of homeland security, on Monday.
"The more we studied this, the more important in our minds it became to present what is out there," said Rob Housman, a lawyer at the firm and the report's principal author.
The report makes several recommendations to the government. It calls for tax credits and low-cost financing to help the industry improve security. It says the government should eliminate the "regulatory impediments" that it says preclude the industry from building plants that could withstand a terrorist attack, and it calls for the withholding of safety information that the government now requires companies to make available on the Internet.
Like the airline industry, the energy companies also want some liability and insurance protections. And they want to be able to file "security impact statements," which can presumably override the "environmental impact statements" that often result in expensive pollution controls they did not want in the first place.
They also expect protection that only the government can provide, like the National Guard patrolling their airspace, specially trained Guard units protecting them on the ground, the government sharing its intelligence to try to prevent attacks and the Coast Guard helping to protect ports and off-shore rigs.
Already, the government has moved to protect airspace over nuclear power plants.
"Obviously, when we look at targets nationally that are potentially vulnerable, one of the first places you would be looking would be to your nuclear facilities owned by both the Defense Department and the public in general," Mr. Ridge said on Friday.
"There is a universe of potentials that we have to deal with," he added. "Unfortunately, in the business we're in, we have to deal with the `What if?' "
The new report will give him even more to ponder.
The nation has about 19,000 miles of interstate natural gas pipelines, and 200,000 miles of transmission lines. Terrorist attacks on any of these lines could cause power failures, environmental and economic damage, and threats to human life.
"Depending on the nature of the attack," the report says, "an energy infrastructure attack in an urban area could expose from hundreds to even hundreds of thousands of people to serious harms, ranging from radiation to toxic clouds to massive explosions."
The report notes that the Alaska pipeline has been perceived for years as an especially vulnerable target. It carries 20 percent of the nation's crude oil, and half of the pipeline - about 400 miles - lies above ground in unpopulated areas.
A report in 1997 by the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection found pipelines like this one "a huge, attractive and largely unprotected target array for saboteurs." But, the Bracewell & Patterson report notes, "little has been done to address this risk."
The report explores other potential threats, like those posed to oil tankers, oil refineries and power grids from the ground, the air and cyberspace.
Mr. Housman said that "not every inch" of pipeline or transmission line needed protection but that the current level of security was inadequate.
"No private-sector company has the wherewithal to defeat a terrorist threat on the order of a hijacked airplane turned missile or a weapon of mass destruction," the report says. "Moreover, the types of governmental assistance required to combat such threats go far beyond the current levels of support now being provided."
As to concerns that the energy industry could use security to ride roughshod over current regulations, Mr. Housman said that industry had to be careful "not to cry wolf."
-------- environment
Japan set to ratify Kyoto climate pact without US
by Teruaki Ueno,
5/11/2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13123
TOKYO - In a rare and bold move that will keep the United States isolated, Tokyo is preparing to ratify the Kyoto global warming pact even without the world's biggest economy and polluter, government sources said yesterday.
Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi would unveil Tokyo's decision when she visited Washington on Monday for talks with U.S. officials, the sources said.
"Environment Minister Kawaguchi will try again to persuade the United States to return to the Kyoto Protocol," a Japanese government source told Reuters. "But regardless of a U.S. response, the minister will tell them Japan is preparing to ratify the treaty."
After conveying Japan's plan to the United States, Kawaguchi will fly to Marrakesh, Morocco, to attend a U.N.-sponsored ministerial meeting on climate change which opens on Wednesday.
Japan would try to formally ratify the Kyoto treaty by mid-2002 after securing parliamentary approval, the source said.
Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka said on the weekend that Japan would make a final decision "on its own" while trying to "push" Washington to come back on board.
JAPAN IN DELICATE POSITION
Japan has found itself caught between Brussels and Washington over Kyoto, but with its overarching priority on good ties with the United States, it has been stalling for time before making a final decision on what to do if the Americans stay out of the pact.
The United States, the world's top carbon dioxide producer, had signed up to Kyoto. But President George W. Bush abandoned Washington's commitments, saying the pact was "fatally flawed" and the goal of cutting emissions would hurt the U.S. economy.
Under the 1997 Kyoto deal, industrialised nations agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by an average 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.
Greenhouse gases, which come mainly from burning fossil fuels, are thought to cause rising temperatures. To come into force, Kyoto must be ratified by 55 countries, or by countries accounting for 55 percent of 1990 greenhouse gas emissions.
If Japan, Russia, the European Union (EU) and a number of Eastern European nations join hands, they would make up the needed 55 percent even without Washington. The EU nations produce some 24.4 percent, Russia 17.4 and Japan 8.5 percent.
Japan, the world's second-largest economy which holds a swing vote, had been under persistent pressure from Europe to ratify the Kyoto climate change pact without Washington.
JAPANESE BUSINESS CAUTIOUS
Fearing that they could lose their competitive edge in the global markets, Japanese business circles have cautioned against ratifying the Kyoto Protocol without the United States.
Another Japanese government source said, however, that Tokyo was concerned that if Japan failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, Japanese products could be boycotted in Europe and in other areas that support the climate treaty.
"Consumer boycotting. That is one of the factors Japan has been considering before making a final decision on the Kyoto Protocol," the source said.
The source also said Kawaguchi had no plans to make any new proposal on a thorny issue involving the rules of the treaty being discussed at the talks in Marrakesh, Morocco.
Agreeing how to ensure countries meet their targets to reduce the greenhouse gases blamed for causing climate change has become one of the main stumbling blocks to progress at the Marrakesh talks.
Officials from some 160 countries are trying to translate into legal language an agreement their environment ministers reached in July on the rules of the treaty that will require developed countries to reduce their "greenhouse gas emissions".
-------
Mosquito Adapting to Global Warming, Study Finds
National Geographic
Bijal P. Trivedi
National Geographic Today
November 5, 2001
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1105_TVmozzie.html
Scientists have found a mosquito that appears to have evolved and adapted to climatic changes induced by global warming- the first documented case of a genetic change in response to the apparent heating up of the planet.
Even more surprising, said evolutionary biologist William Bradshaw, of the University of Oregon, in Eugene, who led the study, is that this evolutionary change can occur in as little as five years.
Mosquitoes use the length of day to anticipate the oncoming winter and to plan hibernation. But with the onset of warmer winters mosquitoes are reproducing later in the year and postponing dormancy; instead of beginning hibernation in late summer when the days are still long, these mosquitoes are using fewer hours of daylight later in the year as their cue to go to sleep.
Bradshaw and colleague Christina Holzapfel found that compared with 30 years ago northern populations of the mosquito Wyeomyia smithii have adapted to milder winters and become dormant later in the annual cycle.
The mosquito, which lives at the base of the carnivorous pitcher plant, is found in North America. It is not a mosquito that sucks the blood of mammals but rather one that lives off its host plant.
In 1972 W. smithii mosquitoes from locations 50 degrees north (close to Sioux in western Ontario) began hibernation when the length of daylight was 15.79 hours. In 1996 W. smithii would have entered dormancy when the day length was 15.19 hours-this corresponds to about nine days later in the fall.
These results are published in the November 6 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This is not the type of experiment you can plan for," explained Bradshaw.
Bradshaw and Holzapfel have been collecting mosquitoes from 31 locations in North America for about 30 years.
Their original intention was to understand how the hours of daylight affect the length of the mosquitoes breeding season.
In Manitoba, Canada, for example, cool weather arrives early in August and mosquitoes begin hibernating in July when the days are still long. By contrast, mosquitoes in Florida don't begin hibernation until November when the days are short, as cooler weather does not strike till December.
The two populations of mosquitoes are genetically distinct; Manitoba mosquitoes, if brought to Florida, will not become dormant later in response to the warmer weather.
Response to day-length, or photoperiod, is a gene-based trait that affects the mosquitoes seasonal life cycle. Bradshaw and Holzapfel find that these northern mosquitoes are becoming more like their southern cousins suggesting that a genetic change has occurred.
Other populations also seem to be adapting to the longer growing season brought on by global warming. British birds began egg laying nearly nine days earlier in 1995 than in 1971. British frogs began spawning almost ten days earlier in 1994 than 1978.
The greatest consequence of altering the breeding seasons of insects such as W. smithii is a "discordance between predator and prey" says Bradshaw. Altering the breeding season affects all the creatures that rely on W. smithii as a source of food.
The great tit, for example, feeds on the mosquito larvae. However, if the mosquitoes have already hatched the chicks will go hungry.
Bradshaw anticipates that other species are also evolving and adapting to the extended growing season. Bradshaw and Holzapfel hope to identify the gene associated with response to daylight and the genetic changes responsible for delaying dormancy.
If there is some good news, it is that W. smithii doesn't bite.
• Watch continued television coverage of this event on National Geographic Today, only on the National Geographic Channel, 7 p.m. ET/PT in the United States.
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Cancer-Stricken Chinese Village Tries to Pierce a Wall of Silence
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 5, 2001; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39969-2001Nov4?language=printer
DRAGON RANGE, China -- The first to die was the carpenter, Li Yanfu. His neighbor, a middle-aged mother named Kong Qianhua, succumbed next, just before the autumn harvest. The wheat farmer, Feng Chentian, passed away three months later.
Those cancer deaths in 1974 hardly seemed suspicious at the time. But over the next 27 years, almost every family in this tiny hamlet high in the mountains of central China would lose someone to cancer. Tumors developed in young and old, in livers, lungs, throats and stomachs. The disease struck some households more than once, killing couples, siblings and, in one case, father, mother and son.
With each death, the people of Dragon Range asked why their village suffered so much while others nearby appeared unaffected. Some residents whispered about an ancient curse. Others fled homes that had been in their families for centuries. Parents urged children to leave and never come back.
Only recently did the villagers begin to suspect their woes might be linked to the plumes of smoke billowing from factories in the valley below, that they might be victims of environmental damage done by China's headlong drive for economic growth. And then they tried to do something about it.
What happened next highlights the vitality of an emerging civil society in China -- individuals and groups trying to operate outside the control of the Communist Party-run state. But it also illustrates the limits to what Chinese citizens can achieve in a political system that remains rigidly authoritarian.
An elected village chief distributed a petition. A young reporter defied an editor. An environmentalist volunteered to collect soil samples. An independent-minded scientist found carcinogens in the samples. Finally, a member of the all-powerful Politburo took notice and ordered an investigation.
But then, nothing changed. The factories outside Dragon Range continue to operate. The villagers continue to die.
"So many people have passed away. They were all so healthy, and they all died so quickly," lamented Wan Haichao, 63, whose wife died of lung cancer five years ago and whose children have moved away. "So of course, we are angry. But what can we do? We are helpless because we have no power."
At first glance, the residents of Dragon Range seem unlikely victims of industrial pollution. Here in the Qin Mountains, about 600 miles southwest of Beijing, people cultivate lush fields of corn and wheat carved into the mountainside like stairs. Walnuts and orange-red persimmons dangle from the trees, and wild pigs scamper around at night.
But at the edge of town, villagers can see four factories in the valley to the north: two fertilizer plants, a radio plant and a steel mill. The radio plant is owned by the military, and the three others are owned by local governments. Villagers welcomed these factories when they opened, the first in the late 1960s and the last in the 1980s. To them, the factories meant workers. And workers meant customers to buy their crops.
But now, people here have a different view. They talk about the smokestacks and what poisons they might be spewing into the air. They debate wind patterns and whether Dragon Range's position on the mountain, higher than the other villages, puts it more directly in pollution's path. And they ask: Where else could the high levels of arsenic and lead found in their soil be coming from?
"In the mornings, you can smell it in the air and you can sometimes see the fields covered with ashes," said Li Anglao, 40, whose parents both died of cancer. "It's frightening. If you get sick now, you know it's going to be cancer."
According to village records, 59 of the 154 people who lived in Dragon Range in 1974 have died. Thirty-six of those deaths, or more than 60 percent, were caused by cancer. By comparison, in one village adjacent to Dragon Range, only two people have died of cancer in the past 30 years, residents said. Nationally, cancer accounts for 15 percent to 19 percent of deaths in rural China.
Chinese researchers say Dragon Range's problems are not unique. Rapid economic growth over the past two decades has lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty, extending life expectancy and reducing infant mortality, but it has also resulted in a monumental environmental crisis. China suffers from some of the world's most polluted air and water, and it is only beginning to understand the impact on public health.
In scattered cities and villages across the country, researchers have linked pollution to higher rates of cancer, lung disease, intestinal ailments, miscarriages and birth defects. A 1999 government report estimated the total health costs of air and water pollution in China to be more than $46 billion annually, or nearly 7 percent of gross domestic product.
These environmental problems have led to a surge of grass-roots activism, in the form of petitions, lawsuits, demonstrations and even blockades of factories. Such activity would have led to swift jail terms as recently as the 1970s, but Beijing is more tolerant of environmental protests now, as long as they are not too disruptive.
In effect, the Communist Party wants to use these protests to pressure local officials who violate environmental laws. But the party also tries to limit the scope of independent citizen action to ensure its grip on power cannot be challenged.
In Dragon Range, the environmental activism began with a village election. Candidates in these elections are often picked by party officials, but the villagers here elected someone on their own: a 44-year-old farmer named Wan Yinggong, whose father had recently died of cancer.
Wan took office in 1994 and began digging new wells for the village. But people kept dying of cancer, and the new patients were getting younger. When two villagers were diagnosed with tumors in January 2000, one of them a woman in her thirties, Wan called a community meeting. All 30 families in the village attended, and they agreed unanimously to draft a petition demanding an investigation and relocation of the village if necessary.
Wan found a lawyer to help him write the petition. Three months later he sent it to the county government and several local newspapers. That led to the first of several visits to Dragon Range by government officials who collected water and food samples, promised action, then never returned.
The government-controlled media were not much help either. But one small newspaper in the nearby city of Xian did publish a report about Dragon Range. The writer then called a friend in Beijing, another reporter named Zhang Yi.
Unlike many Chinese journalists, Zhang, 28, is committed to the notion that reporters should help the weak and expose government wrongdoing. Dragon Range was just the kind of story he became a journalist to pursue.
Although he worked for the Beijing Youth Daily, a newspaper with a reputation for daring to print articles critical of the government, Zhang knew his editor would be nervous about a story such as Dragon Range. So he made plans to travel there independently. When he proposed the story, his editor said no. But Zhang insisted and said he would cover the cost of the trip himself. The editor backed down.
"He was worried the subject was too sensitive. But I think if a story isn't sensitive, it's not worth writing," Zhang said. "And when I wrote the story, he said he liked it."
Indeed, the article was a sensation. Suddenly Dragon Range became known as "Cancer Village," and reporters from around the country followed Zhang's lead.
Readers, meanwhile, flooded Zhang with calls. Among them was a young environmental activist named Lin Yi. Zhang put him in touch with another concerned caller, a scientist named Lin Jinxing. The two men talked, and Lin Yi agreed to bring back water, soil and food samples from Dragon Range for the scientist to analyze.
"I was moved by the situation, and I wanted to do something to help," said Lin Yi, 28, a freelance writer who volunteers with one of Beijing's largest environmental groups, Friends of Nature. "Our government says it is the people's government. I think that means ordinary people can have responsibilities too."
Lin Yi traveled to Dragon Range on a holiday, braving a storm that nearly washed out the winding mountain road to the village. He returned three days later with samples of water, flour, beans, potatoes, persimmons and soil.
Lin Jinxing, a scholar with the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, examined the samples and discovered levels of lead and arsenic in the flour and soil far exceeding safety standards. When he called Dragon Range with the results, it was the first time anyone had provided the village with solid information about what might be causing the cancer. Beijing Youth Daily reported his findings, the first time results of any of the many tests conducted in Dragon Range were made public.
Then, in May this year, a writer for the official New China News Agency filed a report on Dragon Range for internal circulation among the Chinese leadership. Deputy Prime Minister and Politburo member Wen Jiabao read the article and ordered the State Environmental Protection Agency to investigate, according to two central government sources.
The investigators visited in June. Like others before them, they collected soil and food samples. And like others before them, they have not shared the results of their tests with the villagers.
There has been no word about whether the factories near Dragon Range have been tested or required to clean up their operations. Nor has there been any real response to the village's demand for relocation. Residents here suspect county officials could be ignoring orders from above and misusing funds intended to provide them with new homes and fields.
"If the county wants to solve the problem, it can solve the problem," said Wan, the village chief. "If there's pollution, can it be cleaned up? If not, can we move? All of this should be simple. But they make it so hard."
-------- imf / world bank / wto
Wanted - global authority to tame big business
Reuters:
5/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13121/story.htm
LONDON - British charity Christian Aid last week urged delegations heading for next week's World Trade Organisation conference in Qatar to consider the need for a new global regulator to bring corporations under legally binding control.
"Ministers from all over the world are about to converge on Doha to discuss global trade and the regulation of global corporations is not even on their agenda. It's like holding a summit on malaria and not talking about the mosquito," said Christian aid spokesman Mark Curtis.
Christian Aid made its call as it launched a new book "Trade for Life", highlighting the lack of legally binding regulation of transnational companies and proposing the setting up of a new global regulator to enforce a code of conduct of human rights and environmental standards.
Ministers from the 142 WTO member states of gather in Doha from November 9-13 to try to hammer out a deal to further liberalise international markets for both goods and services.
U.S. and European leaders argue that a fully-fledged liberalisation round would boost the world economy and help fight the poverty that breeds extremism and terrorism.
But anti-globalisation groups and many developing countries say they see few advantages and a slew of drawbacks.
Christian Aid said any further opening of trade in poor countries, especially in public services and procurement, was likely to benefit corporations and shareholders.
"But it could be harmful to millions of poor people unless tight regulation is supported by a new Global Regulation Authority with powers under international law," it added.
Trade liberalisation talks have been the focus of protests by a broad range of non-governmental organisations and ant-globalisation groups since the last WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in December 1999 failed to launch a trade round and collapsed amid violent riots. UK: Wanted - global authority to tame big business.
LONDON - British charity Christian Aid last week urged delegations heading for next week's World Trade Organisation conference in Qatar to consider the need for a new global regulator to bring corporations under legally binding control.
"Ministers from all over the world are about to converge on Doha to discuss global trade and the regulation of global corporations is not even on their agenda. It's like holding a summit on malaria and not talking about the mosquito," said Christian aid spokesman Mark Curtis.
Christian Aid made its call as it launched a new book "Trade for Life", highlighting the lack of legally binding regulation of transnational companies and proposing the setting up of a new global regulator to enforce a code of conduct of human rights and environmental standards.
Ministers from the 142 WTO member states of gather in Doha from November 9-13 to try to hammer out a deal to further liberalise international markets for both goods and services.
U.S. and European leaders argue that a fully-fledged liberalisation round would boost the world economy and help fight the poverty that breeds extremism and terrorism.
But anti-globalisation groups and many developing countries say they see few advantages and a slew of drawbacks.
Christian Aid said any further opening of trade in poor countries, especially in public services and procurement, was likely to benefit corporations and shareholders.
"But it could be harmful to millions of poor people unless tight regulation is supported by a new Global Regulation Authority with powers under international law," it added.
Trade liberalisation talks have been the focus of protests by a broad range of non-governmental organisations and ant-globalisation groups since the last WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in December 1999 failed to launch a trade round and collapsed amid violent riots. UK: Wanted - global authority to tame big business.
LONDON - British charity Christian Aid last week urged delegations heading for next week's World Trade Organisation conference in Qatar to consider the need for a new global regulator to bring corporations under legally binding control.
"Ministers from all over the world are about to converge on Doha to discuss global trade and the regulation of global corporations is not even on their agenda. It's like holding a summit on malaria and not talking about the mosquito," said Christian aid spokesman Mark Curtis.
Christian Aid made its call as it launched a new book "Trade for Life", highlighting the lack of legally binding regulation of transnational companies and proposing the setting up of a new global regulator to enforce a code of conduct of human rights and environmental standards.
Ministers from the 142 WTO member states of gather in Doha from November 9-13 to try to hammer out a deal to further liberalise international markets for both goods and services.
U.S. and European leaders argue that a fully-fledged liberalisation round would boost the world economy and help fight the poverty that breeds extremism and terrorism.
But anti-globalisation groups and many developing countries say they see few advantages and a slew of drawbacks.
Christian Aid said any further opening of trade in poor countries, especially in public services and procurement, was likely to benefit corporations and shareholders.
"But it could be harmful to millions of poor people unless tight regulation is supported by a new Global Regulation Authority with powers under international law," it added.
Trade liberalisation talks have been the focus of protests by a broad range of non-governmental organisations and ant-globalisation groups since the last WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in December 1999 failed to launch a trade round and collapsed amid violent riots.
-------- media
Torture Seeps Into Discussion by News Media
By JIM RUTENBERG
November 5, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/05/business/media/05TORT.html?searchpv=nytToday
In many quarters, the Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter is considered a liberal. Yet there he was last week, raising this question:
"In this autumn of anger," he wrote, "even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to . . . torture." He added that he was not necessarily advocating the use of "cattle prods or rubber hoses" on men detained in the investigation into the terrorist attacks. Only, "something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history."
The column - which ran under the headline "Time to Think About Torture" - set off alarm bells at human rights organizations. The sense of alarm was heightened because Mr. Alter is just one of a growing number of voices in the mainstream news media raising, if not necessarily agreeing with, the idea of torturing terrorism suspects or detainees who refuse to talk.
On Thursday night, on the Fox News Channel, the anchor Shepard Smith introduced a segment asking, "Should law enforcement be allowed to do anything, even terrible things, to make suspects spill the beans? Jon DuPre reports. You decide."
One week earlier, on CNN's "Crossfire," the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said: "Torture is bad." But he added: "Keep in mind, some things are worse. And under certain circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils. Because some evils are pretty evil."
The legitimacy of torture as an investigative tool is the latest in a progression of disturbing and horrific topics the news media is now presenting to its audience, like the potential of an Ebola attack on an American city or a terrorist nuclear strike, the kind that, as an article in The Economist put it in its latest issue, could cause the disappearance of everything below Gramercy Park in Manhattan.
Some human rights advocates say they do not mind theoretical discussions about torture, as long as disapproval is expressed at the end. But they say that weighing the issue as a real possible course of action could begin the process of legitimizing a barbaric form of interrogation.
Journalists are approaching the subject cautiously. But some said last week they were duty-bound to address it when suspects and detainees who have refused to talk could have information that could save thousands of lives. Plus, they added, torture is already a topic of discussion in bars, on commuter trains, and at dinner tables. And lastly, they said, well, this is war.
The historian Jay Winik, in an opinion article on Oct. 23 in The Wall Street Journal, detailed the reported torture in 1995 of the convicted terrorist plotter Abdul Hakim Murad by Philippine authorities that led to the foiling of a plot to crash nearly a dozen United States commercial airplanes into the Pacific and another into C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia. Mr. Winik went on to write, "One wonders, of course, what would have happened if Murad had been in American custody?" He did not, however, endorse the use of torture but suggested the United States may have to significantly curtail civil liberties, as it had done in past wars.
In Slate, the online magazine, Dahlia Lithwick wrote, "There's no doubt that torturing terrorists and their associates for information works." But the Oct. 19 article, "Tortured Justice," primarily raised a host of moral and legal problems associated with torture.
Mr. Alter said he was surprised that his column did not provoke a significant flood of e-mail messages or letters. And perhaps even more surprising, he said, was that he had been approached by "people who might be described as being on the left whispering, `I agree with you.'"
The problem with those comments, he said, was that they presumed that by writing about torture, Mr. Alter was advocating it, which he said he was not doing, as evident in his point about torture producing false information. ("I'm in favor of court-sanctioned sodium pentothal," he said in an interview. "I'm against court-sanctioned, physical torture.")
The Fox News Channel was less apologetic about its report on Thursday night, in which advocates for torture said desperate times called for desperate measures and critics said that by abusing suspects the United States would lose its moral standing in pressuring other governments on human rights violations.
"They're sitting around and not talking and may have information that could save American lives here and abroad," Bill Shine, the executive producer of the Fox News Channel, said of current government detainees. "And people are starting to say how can we get information out of them," he added, "while respecting their constitutional rights."
Mr. Shine, however, said he was amazed that it was a subject for a news report at all. "It shows you where we are now," he said. But where Fox News Channel was willing to run a traditional, network-news style segment on the pros and cons of torture and "suspending writ of habeas corpus," the broadcast news divisions have shied away from doing the same.
Jim Murphy, the executive producer of "Evening News with Dan Rather" on CBS, said he would address the topic only if a CBS News correspondent found that law enforcement was seriously considering using torture. He said that speculation about torture and discussion of its merits were, for now, best left to talk shows and columnists.
"At this point, for me, it is being covered where it belongs to be covered," he said. Until his network is presented with real evidence that torture is being used or being considered, he added, "It's like the conversation you or I would have at dinner: `I wonder if we should torture?' "
Of course, even that level of discourse is considerably disturbing to groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which criticize the use of torture by regimes around the world. And yet, even their leaders said they understood the source of the sentiments.
"It reflects people's fear, and the somewhat unexamined instinct to do whatever it takes to meet the threat," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "And when people step back for a moment, they understand there are reasons why you don't want to open the door."
Mr. Roth said he had appeared on CNN and Fox News Channel to discuss those reasons, chief among them that torture often produces false information and that various international laws forbid it.
Mr. Roth and the deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA, Curt Goering, said they believed that if the discussion of torture grew, they would be able to counter it on television or in print.
Mr. Roth said he was heartened by one thing. "To the government's credit," he said, "it's not the government proposing this. It's various commentators."
-------- police / prisoners
White House, Dept. of Justice at Odds Over Arrests
Monday November 5
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011105/pl/attack_investigation_arrests_dc_1.html
WASHINGTON - The White House on Monday said the ''lion's share'' of the more than 1,100 people detained in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States have been released -- sharply contradicting the Justice Department (news - web sites) which says most are still being held.
As rights groups grow more vocal in their questions about the arrests, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) on Monday claimed that there were not many people still being held by the U.S. government.
``In fact the lion's share of the people are not still in custody,'' he told reporters at the White House. ``Most of the people, the overwhelming number of the people were detained; they were questioned and then they've been released.''
Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker, whose office has provided a running tally of the steadily growing number of people arrested or detained in connection with the investigation, has said the majority were still being held.
Tucker said she was not sure why Fleischer had different information and was trying to figure out which was correct.
As of Monday, she said 1,182 people had been arrested or detained in connection with the investigation. She did not have a specific number for those detained on immigration charges, but as of last Friday 185 of those arrested were being held by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Tucker said on Friday that the INS detainees were arrested for allegedly violating immigration law and for having connections to terrorist grounds or activities.
``The Department will seek to hold these people until the adjudication of their violation of immigration law,'' Tucker said.
Last week a group of 21 civil liberties, human rights and electronic privacy groups filed a request under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act seeking information about individuals arrested in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
The request asks the Justice Department to release the names of all those arrested and any charges filed against them.
Although Justice Department officials have given reporters a tally of the arrests -- which have been rising steadily over the past few weeks -- they will not be specific as to the identities of those who have been arrested and who has been questioned and released.
Asked about concerns raised by legal experts and by some of the members of the Arab American community about the nature of the detention for some people, Fleischer said: ``The president is fully satisfied that anybody who is continuing to be held is being held for a wise reason.''
----
Delaware
USA Today
01/11/05
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Dover - The former superintendent of the Delaware State Police has asked to remain on the state payroll until August to use up 1,700 hours of vacation and compensatory time. Col. Gerard Pepper, whose last day in office was Sept. 30, resigned amid civil rights investigations into the agency. It's accused of discriminating against black troopers.
-------- spying
Ex-Air Force Sgt. Pleads Innocent to Spying
The Associated Press
Monday, November 5, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41851-2001Nov5?language=printer
ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A retired Air Force sergeant accused of attempted espionage pleaded innocent Monday in federal court.
Brian P. Regan, of Bowie, Md., could receive life in prison if convicted of the attempted spying. U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee set a trial date for March.
The indictment against Regan alleges that he improperly used a classified government computer network called Intelink to obtain secret images of missile facilities in two unidentified countries.
The indictment does not specify the countries for which Regan allegedly attempted to spy. Intelligence sources had previously identified Libya as the potential beneficiary of Regan's alleged activities.
But when he was arrested in August at Dulles International Airport as he attempted to board a flight for Germany he carried in his wallet the addresses of the Chinese and Iraqi embassies in Switzerland and Austria. He also had the addresses hidden under the sole of his shoe, according to the indictment.
Regan worked at the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Va., a military intelligence agency that designs, builds and operates the U.S. network of spy satellites. He worked at N.R.O. from 1995 until his arrest - first as an airman, then as a contractor for TRW Inc. beginning in October 2000.
---
Conneticut
USA Today
01/11/05
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
New Haven - The Central Intelligence Agency is increasing recruiting efforts at Yale University and other Ivy League schools. CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilisher said the agency has been receiving 500-600 resumes a day since the Sept. 11. Before the attacks, the CIA received about 500-600 resumes a week.
-------- terrorism
NEW YORK DRAFTS BIOTERRORISM RESPONSE PLAN
November 5, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-05-09.html
ALBANY, New York, New York Governor George Pataki has announced a seven point plan that will be implemented by the State Health Department to assist hospitals, physicians and other health professionals in their efforts to protect the public from bioterrorism.
The governor made the announcement on Friday at a special educational forum, "Bioterrorism & New York's Health Care Industry." He noted that the death of a New York City hospital worker has lent new urgency to efforts to inform and protect the general public regarding anthrax attacks.
"With the death of Kathy Nguyen, it's critical that we respond quickly to give health care workers the information they need to protect themselves, answer their questions, and let them know we stand with them," said Pataki. "At the same time, we must put in place smart plans to address this new attempt to terrorize all New Yorkers. This comprehensive plan, which builds on our efforts to counter bio-terror, makes clear that we will never allow cowardly terrorists to win."
The governor's bioterrorism plan requires the state Health Department to hold six regional bioterrorism preparedness and planning training sessions. The Department will also hold weekly medical information update conference calls with the hospital associations, the state Medical Society, the New York State Nursing Association and health insurer organizations, as well as other provider groups to report on recent developments.
The Department will continue to provide real time information from state and federal officials on the state's Health Information Network (HIN), which provides information to New York City and county health departments.
Plans have been developed to deploy Health Department epidemiologic and environmental health staff to hospitals or county health departments after a bioterrorism attack.
The Department will provide a poster titled "Ten Critical Steps for Handling Possible Bioterrorist Events" to every hospital and physician across the state. The poster includes a list of steps that should be taken to protect patients and workers, as well as to help with diagnosis of a patient and epidemiological investigation. The poster is available online at: http://www.health.state.ny.us
The state will continue to reinforce the use of mail protocols prepared by the Health Department and the New York State Police, available online at: http://www.gov.ny.us
"We have been working very closely with hospitals across the state on bioterrorism issues since September 11," said state health commissioner Antonia Novello. "Prior to that horrific day, the Department held 50 bio-terrorism training sessions for local health departments and hospitals across New York. Since then, we have continued to provide physicians and hospitals with information and training to ensure that they are doing everything possible to protect the public."
---
Saudi: Bin Laden extradition botched
USA Today
11/05/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/03/extradite.htm
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - The leader of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia agreed to extradite Osama bin Laden to Saudi Arabia in 1998 but reneged following U.S. strikes on Afghanistan that year, a former head of Saudi intelligence said Saturday. Prince Turki al-Faisal, who left his post a few days before Sept. 11, also said he is convinced bin Laden and his al-Qa'eda network were behind the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.
He said he discussed bin Laden's handover with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar in a meeting in Kandahar, Afghanistan, two months before the August 1998 terrorist attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa.
"I briefed him on what (bin Laden) had done against the kingdom's interests and asked him to stop him and hand him over to us," the Saudi royal family member said in an interview with the Saudi-owned satellite TV channel MBC.
Bin Laden - named by the United States as the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks - was then wanted in his native Saudi Arabia for anti-government agitation and opposition to the presence of U.S. troops.
Prince Turki said Omar's response to the extradition request was favorable.
"First he agreed, but he said: 'Let us set up a joint (Saudi-Afghan) committee to probe the ways and means to do that,"' Prince Turki said.
Then the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown up by truck bombs, killing 231 people, including 12 Americans. Blaming bin Laden, the United States fired cruise missiles at a bin Laden camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan thought to be linked to the Saudi exile.
Prince Turki said that when he returned to Afghanistan later that year, he found Mullah Omar had changed his mind. In a stormy meeting, Mullah Omar flatly rejected the request to extradite bin Laden, he said.
"I told him: 'You will regret it and the Afghan people will pay a high price for that,"' Prince Turki said.
In his first television interview since he left his post as intelligence chief in September, Prince Turki said Mullah Omar and bin Laden share the same ideology.
"At any rate, the evil in them is the same," said Prince Turki, the first prominent Saudi to say publicly that he is convinced bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
Saudi officials are balancing their alliance with Washington and their own fear of Islamic militancy with their citizens' anger at the United States and admiration for bin Laden.
A son of the late King Faisal, Prince Turki served as head of the kingdom's secret service for more than twenty years.
He was reportedly the official who supervised Saudi financial assistance to guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan of 1979-89. He is also thought to have been a friend of bin Laden before bin Laden joined the guerrillas.
------
Apocalyptic cult methods explain bin Laden
USA Today
11/05/2001
By Patricia Pearson
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-05-ncguest1.htm
At the Pentagon memorial service last month, President Bush called the al-Qa'eda network "a cult of evil," and for the first time, I thought: "Yes, that sounds right." It is a kind of cult, and Osama bin Laden - far from being the Muslim world's Che Guevara, is its evil and manipulative guru.
There has been a great deal of semantic confusion about who, precisely, our enemy is. Bin Laden has succeeded in linking his lunatic cause with a broader sense of anger and frustration that persists in the Muslim world. We cannot allow him to maintain that link.
The enemy of this particular war is not Islam, and it isn't the Muslim world, for very few Muslims, regardless of their policy grievances, would die for the sake of killing our children.
Two years ago, the eminent American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton wrote a book about cults called Destroying the World to Save It, documenting what he called a "loosely connected, still-developing global subculture of apocalyptic violence."
Lifton, who has also written about Nazi doctors and the psychology of totalitarianism, focused his analysis on the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, which released sarin gas into the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing a dozen people.
Why? Why indeed. Aum Shinrikyo built a rationale for mass murder on a "global stew" of New Age religion, ancient rituals and science fiction. Lifton was fascinated by how ordinary people could be persuaded to engage in extraordinary horrors.
In Aum Shinrikyo's ranks one found doctors, research scientists and other members of the Japanese professional classes - not unlike the demographics of the Rajneeshee cult in Oregon, whose members laced salad bars with salmonella bacteria in 1984, or the members of Jonestown who committed mass suicide in 1978.
People do not need to be impoverished or brutalized to transform themselves into apocalyptic warriors. In Aum Shinrikyo, members appear to have come together out of vague spiritual or social malaise and then fallen under the charismatic spell of Aum's guru, Shoko Asahara. Over time, and a great deal of brainwashing, they developed a "collective megalomania" that culminated in the subway attack.
Reading profiles of the Sept. 11 hijackers, one glimpses a similarly disturbing ordinariness. The hijackers were not traumatized victims of American foreign policy; nor did they spring from deeply orthodox Muslim families. Some drank; some had Western girlfriends; Mohamed Atta's sisters are a doctor and a zoology professor.
Understanding al-Qa'eda purely in the context of Islamic fundamentalism is unsatisfactory. It leaves something out, some process of psychological transformation for the individual members.
Consider, by contrast, the suicide bomber who assassinated Indian President Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 - a Tamil woman who reportedly had been raped by Indian soldiers during the Sri Lankan occupation. Her quest for justice took a terrible route, but one can at least discern a connection between personal trauma and revenge.
Curious about the cult analogy, I called Steve Hassan, formerly a high-ranking member of the Unification Church, also known as the "Moonies," and now a leading expert on mind control. We talked about the fact that many of these hijackers were reportedly leading a normal life when, after coming into contact with certain Islamic groups - on a university campus in Hamburg, Germany, for instance - they suddenly turned inward, becoming secretive and aloof. That rang very loud bells for Hassan, who fell in with the Moonies on a New England college campus in 1974 after befriending three "attractive young women" who encouraged him to come to meetings.
"There's a big difference between a personality change as a result of religious epiphany and a personality change as a result of a systematic social influence," he says. "I did not realize that I was being manipulated. (But) by the end of 3 days, I was blown away. My parents said I looked like I was on drugs.
"I had been taught that the world was facing Armageddon and that God had chosen me, and that Satan would work through the people I loved to try to talk me out of it. I was indoctrinated into distrusting my own thought processes and into believing that killing people was for their own good."
Hassan observes that many of the techniques that he encountered with the Moonies are evident in bin Laden's camps: "social isolation, controlling their sleep, showing them non-stop videos of Muslims dying, being buddied up, so that they're never alone. ... Destructive mind control strips away their ability to think for themselves."
The cult framework goes a little way to explaining the dissonance between who these hijackers were and what they eventually did on behalf of al-Qa'eda.
My sense of this was confirmed by John R. Hall, the co-author of Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe and Japan.
"There are two kinds of apocalyptic sects," he told me. "One kind engages in a withdrawal from society at large to another world, which they establish as a utopian heaven on earth." Most American cults fall into this category, Hall says, although they resort to violence if they feel threatened.
"The other kind of apocalyptic group," he says, "is the warring sect. It seeks to bring on the final battle of Armageddon by launching a holy war against the existing social order. Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda is definitely of the latter type; indeed, it is a classic case."
Many pundits are saying that the eradication of bin Laden will be fruitless unless certain "underlying causes" in the friction between East and West are addressed. But that presumes a rational stance in modern terrorism, and there is none.
America needs to get across to the Muslim world this absolutely essential fact: Bin Laden is not championing their cause or proposing to lead them to a better future. He wants to destroy the world, and that can be no sane man's cause.
Patricia Pearson, a freelance writer and author living in Toronto, is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
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Loopholes for terrorists
USA Today
11/05/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-05-edtwof2.htm
Won't talk. For all of the talk about how the world has changed since Sept. 11, certain small but telling actions show that message hasn't entirely sunk in.
Take for instance, the normal procedure for planes arriving in the United States from overseas. In theory, U.S. customs and immigration officials know hours in advance who's on the way because almost every airline sends passenger information ahead. The simple, voluntary system in place since 1988 allows a little extra time to screen out unsavory types before they get in the country.
But a handful of foreign airlines refuse to participate, even in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Worse, among the biggest offenders are the national airlines of countries that claim to be U.S. allies in the war on terrorism. Among them: Air China, Saudi Arabian and Royal Jordanian. Egypt and Kuwait signed on after Sept. 11. Pakistan gives U.S. officials only partial information.
It may be a small slight, but it's an important reminder that not all U.S. allies are fully on board. And it shows how tensions that might be papered over in peacetime can't be so easily overlooked now.
Can't talk. Of course, security precautions can be undercut without any help from a foreign government. U.S. agencies and laws sometimes do so effectively on their own.
Fifteen of the 19 terrorists blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks applied for visas at U.S. consulates in Saudi Arabia, claiming to be Saudi citizens. Since the U.S. State Department doesn't consider Saudis much of an illegal-immigration problem, the visas were granted with minimal checks.
As it turned out, though, half the 15 terrorists may have used false identities and forged passports to get visas.
Because U.S. law considers visa applications confidential, State Department employees are forbidden from communicating with foreign governments about their citizens' applications to visit the USA. Instead, the State Department must assume applicants are telling the truth.
A sensible solution would be to change the law. So far, though, it's business as usual.
Which just goes to show that not only must the war on terrorism be fought on many fronts, it also must include a wider array of details than many people imagine.
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How Afghanistan Went Unlisted as Terrorist Sponsor
By Mary Pat Flaherty, David B. Ottaway and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 5, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39681-2001Nov4?language=printer
Each year, the U.S. State Department formally rebukes and imposes penalties on governments that protect and promote terrorists. But since 1996, when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, the nation harboring Osama bin Laden has never made the department's list of terrorist-sponsoring countries.
The omission reflects more than a decade of vexing relations between the United States and Afghanistan, a period that found the State Department more focused on U.S. oil interests and women's rights than on the growing terrorist threat, according to experts and current and former officials.
Even as its cables and reports showed growing anxiety, the department vacillated between engaging and isolating the Taliban. It was not until 1998, when two U.S. embassy bombings were linked to bin Laden, that officials knew they must directly address Afghanistan's protection of the terrorist's organization.
U.S. diplomats held out hope that the threat of adding Afghanistan to the terrorism list was "one card we had to play" in pressing the Taliban to turn over bin Laden, according to a former Clinton administration adviser.
The lack of a coherent policy toward Afghanistan was part of a broader miscalculation by the U.S. government, experts now realize. By allowing terrorism fueled by anti-American rage to take root in Afghanistan, officials underestimated the potential for danger.
"This is hard to say and I haven't found a way to say it that doesn't sound crass," said former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright. "But it is the truth that those [attacks before Sept. 11] were happening overseas and while there were Americans who died, there were not thousands and it did not happen on U.S. soil."
Taliban Not 'Objectionable'
The day after the Taliban seized Kabul in September 1996, State Department spokesman Glyn Davies encountered tough questions from U.S. reporters.
Victorious in a brutal fight against rival factions, the Taliban claimed power after castrating and killing former president Najibullah and hanging the corpses of him and his brother from a post at the entrance to the Presidential Palace.
Davies reported the events matter-of-factly and told reporters the United States saw "nothing objectionable" about the Taliban imposing its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
"So let me get this straight," a reporter asked. "This group, this Islamic fundamentalist group that has taken Afghanistan by force and summarily executed the former president, the United States is holding out possibility of relations?"
"I'm not going to prejudge where we're going to go with Afghanistan," Davies said.
For seven years, the State Department had loosely monitored Afghanistan's civil warfare after defeated Soviet troops pulled out of the country in 1989. Prolonged fighting had left Afghanistan devastated, with tides of refugees, a largely illiterate population and a ravaged agricultural economy based heavily on opium production.
Promising to restore law and order, the Taliban said that refugees could return "without fear." The United States hoped the regime would restore stability.
Davies' comments reflected years of U.S. support for Afghan rebels during the war with the Soviets. The U.S. government had covertly supplied aid to religious fighters known as mujaheddin who wanted to restore an Islamic state.
In those ranks was bin Laden, a scion of a wealthy Saudi Arabian family. Bin Laden had arrived in Afghanistan in 1982 to fight the Soviets, and stayed through 1990, forming alliances with fundamentalist leaders, including Mohammad Omar, the Taliban supreme commander.
None of this seemed particularly threatening to most of the diplomatic corps at the State Department, which was consumed with events in Iran and Iraq and the brewing nuclear arms race between Pakistan and India.
In fact, when the Clinton administration took over in 1993, Warren Christopher mentioned bringing peace to Afghanistan in his confirmation hearings for secretary of state, then never made a significant speech about the country again. Christopher declined requests for an interview.
But there were warnings. Peter Tomsen, a longtime State Department official who was a special envoy to Afghanistan, and a few others insisted that the United States should help rebuild the country to protect it from extremists. By disengaging, the United States risked "throwing away the assets we have built up in Afghanistan over the last 10 years, at great expense," he argued in a confidential 1993 memo to top State Department officials.
"The U.S. mistake was to ignore Afghanistan," Tomsen says today. "We walked away."
After the Cold War, the United States was "weary of Afghanistan," said Robin L. Raphel, the assistant secretary for South Asian affairs at the State Department from 1993 to 1997. "It was really a struggle to get attention and resources."
Yet to a large extent, the United States deferred to Pakistan, its ally against the Soviet Union, as Afghanistan's turbulence dragged on, according to other former officials.
"The U.S. had what I call a derivative policy toward Afghanistan," said Elie D. Krakowski, a former special assistant to the secretary of defense, who has written extensively on Afghanistan. "That is, it had no policy on Afghanistan on its own, and whatever Pakistan said, we bought."
The United States was reluctant to criticize Pakistan as it further aligned itself with the Taliban after Kabul's fall.
With U.S. officials paying more attention to Afghanistan's neighbors, bin Laden returned to the country. The United States had pressed Sudan to evict him for suspected terrorist activities but did not sustain the pressure when Omar welcomed him in as a guest.
Activities at bin Laden's training camps increased. A State Department report in August 1996 labeled him one of the "most significant sponsors of terrorism today."
The Pipeline Connection
Throughout the mid-1990s, a U.S. oil company was tracking the outcome of the Afghan conflict. Unocal, a California-based energy giant, was seeking rights to build a massive pipeline system across Afghanistan, connecting the vast oil and natural gas reserves of Turkmenistan to a plant and ports in Pakistan.
State Department officials promoted Unocal's pipeline project in their role of helping U.S. companies find investments in the region, Raphel said.
Raphel, who shuttled to Kandahar to meet with Taliban leaders and met at other points with different groups, said the agency also thought the project might help rally them around a common goal. "We worked hard to make all the Afghan factions understand the potential, because the Unocal pipeline offered development opportunities that no aid program nor any Afghan government could," she said.
But Unocal faced fierce competition. Because it was unclear which of Afghanistan's factions would ultimately take control, international oil companies jockeyed to build alliances.
Unocal appealed to the Taliban and received assurances that it would support a $4.5 billion project rivaling the trans-Alaska pipeline. The deal promised to be a boon for the Taliban, which could realize $100 million a year in transit fees.
But Unocal also needed U.S. backing. To secure critical financing from agencies such as the World Bank, it needed the State Department to formally recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's government.
Unocal hired former State Department insiders: former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, former special U.S. ambassador John J. Maresca and Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.
Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-born former Reagan State Department adviser on Afghanistan, entered the picture as a consultant for a Boston group hired by Unocal. Khalilzad and Oakley had dual roles during this period because the State Department also sought their advice. Khalilzad is now one of President Bush's top advisers on Afghanistan.
Officially, Unocal refused to take sides in the Afghan conflict. But its favors to the Taliban sent a clear signal to rivals. Unocal gave the Taliban a fax machine to speed its communications and funded a job training program affiliated with the University of Nebraska that was set up in Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in southeast Afghanistan.
Before Unocal, the Taliban "were just a bunch of wild jihadists running around. They came out of nowhere," said Richard Dekmejian, a University of Southern California terrorism specialist, using the Islamic term for holy warriors.
In a late 1997 public relations move, Unocal flew Taliban officials to tour the company's U.S. offices. They took a side trip to the beach, then flew to Washington for meetings in the Capitol and at the State Department to press their case for U.S. recognition.
But the visit only fueled the outrage of women's rights groups who were incensed by Unocal's coziness with the regime.
The State Department's human rights division had been chronicling the Taliban's increasingly repressive treatment of women. Women were barred from schools and jobs and required to wear head-to-toe shrouds known as burqas. Secluded inside homes with darkened windows, they could be seen in public only in the company of male relatives.
But reports of these and other human rights violations -- including stonings, amputations and executions -- had little effect until Secretary of State Albright took over in Clinton's second term. She elevated the Afghanistan focus, naming her close colleague Karl F. "Rick" Inderfurth to head the South Asia Bureau.
She also planned a November 1997 trip to meet with Afghan women huddled in refugee camps.
Albright's trip was a sign that the Taliban treatment of women, more than any other issue, "finally sparked their interest on the seventh floor," the State Department's executive suite, said Lee O. Coldren, who directed the little-noticed office on Afghanistan from 1994 to 1997.
Crucial Albright Visit
"Despicable."
Albright emerged from a mud-brick camp in Nasir Bagh sheltering 80,000 Afghans, and with that single word, she ratcheted up the U.S. rhetoric.
She had listened as women and girls described deplorable treatment, including a 13-year-old who told of watching her older sister jump to her death out a window rather than live under the regime.
The visit "was one of those watershed events for me," Albright said recently.
Women's groups had been agitating at the State Department since the Taliban's 1996 takeover but believed they were not taken seriously. In meetings, Afghan American women described life before the Taliban, when well-educated, professional women moved freely in some Afghan cities.
But among the State Department's old hands, "there was a lot of putting down, like these women didn't know what they were talking about," said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.
The women's effort had an important ally at the White House, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. And at the United Nations, the two women who headed the food and children's care programs linked their Afghanistan aid to improved treatment of women.
The issue of international terrorism had no such constituency. A bin Laden fatwa in early 1998 urged followers to target the United States and its citizens, but the notice was largely ignored by U.S. groups and businesses concentrating on Afghanistan.
That July, U.S. women's groups organized protests of Unocal's plans to go ahead with its project despite what Smeal called the Taliban's "horrific gender apartheid."
The pressure from women's groups began to have an impact domestically. It became increasingly clear that U.S. recognition of the Taliban -- the seal of approval needed so desperately by Unocal -- would be politically implausible.
Why Not on List?
Shortly after Inderfurth took over the State Department office dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1997, he posed a question: Why isn't Afghanistan on the list of terrorist-sponsoring nations?
Inclusion would have meant a ban on arms sales, constraints on business and a cutoff of economic aid. The same seven countries had been on the list since 1993 -- Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
With Afghanistan, there was a catch. If the Taliban was branded a "state sponsor" of terrorism, that meant the United States would inadvertently be acknowledging the Taliban as the official government. And the State Department had resisted doing so.
Instead, the United States was using other methods to press its case. It leaned on Pakistan to persuade the Taliban to stop harboring bin Laden. Pakistan had developed a close relationship with the Taliban, supplying arms and using camps in Taliban-controlled territory to train its own guerrillas.
Consequently, if Afghanistan made the list, the procedure for designating terrorist sponsors would have argued for also sanctioning Pakistan. "We weren't prepared to totally isolate Pakistan," an official said.
"The whole approach was so absurd," said Phil Smith, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Northern Alliance faction, a Taliban rival. "It ignored the reality that it was the Pakistani military that had helped to create and maintain the Taliban regime."
The 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, altered the landscape. The attacks were quickly linked to bin Laden, and President Bill Clinton froze bin Laden's assets and prohibited U.S. firms from doing business with him. Thirteen days after the attacks, the United States directed missile strikes on terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Sudan.
Doing more, Albright said, would have been a challenge "since we did not have the kind of support we have now for our actions on terrorism. Back then, we were being criticized both for doing too much and for not doing enough."
The bombings abruptly ended Unocal's hopes of a pipeline project. The company backed out on Dec. 4, 1998, citing business reasons. News reports at the time speculated that Unocal feared it could face sanctions for doing business with the Taliban.
At the White House, debate resurfaced about adding Afghanistan to the terrorist list. Officials reasoned that they could use the threat of listing to bargain with the Taliban, according to one former adviser.
By 1999, the United Nations imposed the first of two sets of sanctions that cut off Taliban funds and arms.
In that same year, the State Department formally named bin Laden's al Qaeda group as a "foreign terrorist organization," which froze its U.S. assets, barred visas for its members and made it a crime to support the group. Still it did not formally single out Afghanistan or the Taliban as terrorist sponsors.
Inderfurth and others believed that step was unnecessary because Clinton's order and the United Nations sanctions were the "functional equivalent" of declaring the Taliban as a state sponsor.
To some analysts, the actions were too little, too late.
"Right up until the embassy bombings, we were willing to believe their assurances," said Julie Sirrs, a former analyst on Iran for the Defense Intelligence Agency who also monitored the Taliban.
"We were not serious about this whole thing, not only this administration, but the previous one," and that holds true until the Sept. 11 attacks, said Middle East specialist Dekmejian.
Albright disagrees. She said terrorism "was not a back burner issue at all. We kept pushing it and pushing intelligence agencies -- the FBI, CIA -- to work on it."
The State Department, she said, "consumed all the intelligence. . . . Given the intelligence we had, we followed through as best we could.
"So the question comes up of how do you fight terrorism," Albright said. "The tragedy of this, and it's horrible, is that it took this kind of event to generate the support we need to do more."
Staff writers Joe Stephens and Gilbert M. Gaul and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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Hijackers Depicted as Elite Group
European Officials See Greater Sophistication
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 5, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39762-2001Nov4?language=printer
PARIS -- European investigators say they increasingly believe that the Sept. 11 hijackers and their support network in Europe made up a carefully chosen and tightly insulated group that had little if any contact with other al Qaeda terror cells in Europe and learned from past terrorist failures while planning the attacks.
Better educated, less visible because of their comfort in the West, and firmly committed to a goal over years, the hijackers were a group apart from the young, poorly educated men who nurtured their anger in European slums but repeatedly failed to pull off plans for atrocities in Paris, Rome, Los Angeles and Strasbourg, France.
Mohamed Atta, suspected as a leader of the hijacking plot, was a city planner, fluent in German, English and Arabic, who held advanced degrees. During the years he lived in Hamburg, Germany, he supported himself with a variety of legitimate jobs. Members of a terrorist cell broken up in Milan, Italy, typically supported themselves through such crimes as drug dealing, Italian authorities say.
For investigators, the hijackers' isolation, even within the world of al Qaeda, makes the Sept. 11 plot more difficult to deconstruct and potential attacks more difficult to avert. "It's like a ghost in front of you," said a senior French official.
While Western investigators say they believe the Sept. 11 plot was approved by al Qaeda, they continue to struggle to piece together its internal organization. Who specifically conceived the plot? How did the group of 19, coming from different parts of the world, with some already in the United States, coalesce? What was the internal command structure among the 19 members and between them and Afghanistan? How many people offered logistical support and in how many countries, including the United States?
"Clearly, there was a very good analysis of the United States and what can be achieved" there, said Roland Jacquard, a French terrorism expert with close ties to his country's intelligence services. He said the sophistication of the attacks suggests there is an undiscovered al Qaeda logistical base in the United States and Europe.
One of the most telling details about the attacks on the United States, officials said, is the nationality of the hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudis. None was North African, the group that makes up the backbone of other Islamic terrorist groups in Europe. North Africans were also the vanguard of one of the most recent failed attacks on the United States, the planned bombing of Los Angeles International Airport during millennium celebrations.
But so far, there is no known evidence of links between the Sept. 11 group and the North African cells. To officials here, that suggests al Qaeda has developed a multi-tiered hierarchy.
Using its training camps in Afghanistan, al Qaeda has absorbed people of many nationalities. Many are North African extremists, particularly Algerians and Tunisians who returned to Europe to plan attacks. French intelligence officials say they believe as many as 10,000 Islamic extremists from many continents have gone to camps in Afghanistan.
Because of this global reach, officials do not dispute the boast of a member of a Milan cell, secretly recorded by Italian police, that al Qaeda is "everywhere."
But while Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants welcomed all comers to Afghanistan, and were happy to have them return to their homelands or move to Europe, primed for terror, they have entrusted only a select few with signature operations, such as the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole last year in Yemen, and the suicide mission against New York and Washington, European officials said.
Of the Sept. 11 hijackers, 15 were from bin Laden's homeland, Saudi Arabia, two hijackers were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Lebanon and one from Egypt, U.S. officials have concluded.
"Why Saudis?" asked a French official, who has interviewed dozens of veterans of the Afghan camps who were taken into custody in France. "It's more difficult for [North Africans] to get visas," he said. "They can't move as easily in America. They don't have the language. And they don't control themselves as well. Bin Laden only trusts people from his own region."
When al Qaeda sent an Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, to bomb the Los Angeles airport in 1999, he drew attention to himself at a U.S.-Canada border crossing partly because he didn't speak English.
And so, the official said, bin Laden turned to well-educated, English-speaking operatives from Egypt and the Persian Gulf who were more likely to get U.S. visas and could be trusted to not draw attention during the long planning period leading up to Sept. 11.
Meanwhile, the official said, the North Africans' plots were nothing more than a bonus to al Qaeda's primary goals. If they failed, as they did with plans to bomb a market in Strasbourg, the Los Angeles airport and U.S. embassies in Paris and Rome, they at least generated fear.
But, the official warned, with the counter-terrorism focus shifting to young Persian Gulf radicals, the profile of al Qaeda operatives could change yet again. "There is no model," he said, noting that al Qaeda can draw on cells from more than 50 countries.
"You can't forecast the threat . . . maybe from Malaysia but maybe even from Australia or California," the official said, noting that young Western adventurers have also traveled to Afghan terror camps.
Moreover, the plots have become more sophisticated with each failure.
When Algerian terrorists planned to fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower in 1994, none of the hijackers was a trained pilot; they hoped to force the Air France pilot to execute the plan by putting a gun to his head. They didn't get their opportunity -- the plane landed in Marseille to refuel and was stormed by anti-terrorist police.
Within a year, a young Pakistani with a newly obtained commercial pilot's license was tasked to crash a small plane filled with explosives into CIA headquarters in Virginia, according to testimony in federal court in New York during the trial of one of the bombers of the World Trade Center in 1993. But the plot was broken up by police in the Philippines, alerted by suspicious neighbors who smelled chemicals cooking in an apartment used by the terrorists.
By 2001, however, a cadre of trained pilots was ready to strike with U.S. commercial planes as powerful weapons.
According to Italian and French officials, those who have wanted to join al Qaeda have undergone rigorous screening. Selected by bin Laden emissaries, they traveled to Pakistan where they handed over their passports, cash and other papers. They then waited up to two weeks in Pakistan while undergoing background checks to prevent Western agents from slipping into the camps. Once inside Afghanistan, they moved through a series of facilities specializing in different forms of training, including light weapons and undercover operations.
All the while, officials said, al Qaeda was watching and selecting the best and the brightest, with those from the Persian Gulf particularly prized. There is still no firm evidence of how many of the Sept. 11 hijackers visited Afghanistan, although U.S. intelligence officials have said Atta, the suspected ringleader, made the trip, probably in 1997 or 1998.
European officials say they believe it is likely that all of the hijackers were either trained in Afghanistan or vouched for by one of a small group of al Qaeda veterans.
Atta, who traveled extensively within Europe and between the United States and Europe before Sept. 11, is the suspected bridge between the hijackers and al Qaeda's leadership. But little solid information has emerged on who Atta met on his trips to Spain this past January and July. And a trip to Prague in April remains equally mysterious. Atta met an Iraqi intelligence official, according to Czech officials, but the purpose of the meeting remains unclear.
"You have to have control," said Jacquard, the French terrorism expert. "Who gives the order? Probably it's Atta. But Atta also received instructions. And there is someone between Atta and the mountain" in Afghanistan.
"Nobody has an idea how they worked," he said.
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Publishers Joust Over Merit of Terrorist Leader's Words
New York Times
November 5, 2001
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/05/business/media/05BOOK.html
A series of proposals to publish the words and ideas of Osama bin Laden are testing the willingness of book publishers to handle indisputably important but highly objectionable material, reviving a debate that has simmered since Houghton Mifflin (news/quote) published an English-language edition of "Mein Kampf" in 1933.
Projects based on Mr. bin Laden's speeches and writing already in the works include a book based on a terrorist manual from his Al Qaeda organization and a Web site showing an Al Qaeda recruitment film along with scholarly commentary. And in Pakistan, Hamid Mir, editor of the Urdu newspaper Ausaf, says an unnamed British publisher will release his authorized biography of Mr. bin Laden in December.
Last week, a proposal for a book of Mr. bin Laden's public statements began turning up at publishing houses in New York. World Book Publishing, a 75-year-old publisher based in Beirut, Lebanon, sent letters seeking to sell the English rights to a book of Mr. bin Laden's statements to the Al Jazeera TV network from 1998 and 2001.
"Al Jazeera TV has obtained some of the most current, exclusive and content-rich interviews with Osama bin Laden to date," Rafic el-Zein, general manager of World Book Publishing, wrote in the letter. "The content of these interviews will provide readers with insights of bin Laden's beliefs and objectives."
In a telephone interview, Mr. Zein said an Arabic edition now in production was about 80 pages, including 10 pages of pictures.
Several publishing executives responded with a mixture of disgust and apprehension. Some asked not to be named, for reasons that included the safety of the company's employees. A few said the book should be published, but by someone else.
John Sterling, publisher of Henry Holt, said Holt had seen several similar proposals for biographies of Mr. bin Laden, but none for his own words. "Are we going to make money off of the words of someone whom we consider our sworn enemy?" he said. "I would have a problem with that. I don't want to publish propaganda of any kind - no matter which side it is coming from."
Peter Osnos, publisher of PublicAffairs, which issued paperback editions of both the Starr report on President Clinton and a Senate committee report on Senator Bob Packwood, said he did not think it would sell. "The words of bin Laden are obviously of interest but would you dig into your pocket to buy that?" he said. PublicAffairs also declined a proposal to publish the Al Qaeda terrorist handbook, he said.
But John Donatich, publisher of Basic Books, said he would consider publishing the bin Laden interviews in the right context. He recalled a debate at a recent Jerusalem Book Fair over the decision to publish "Mein Kampf," which is banned in Germany and other European countries. Last year, under criticism for profiting from its sales in the United States, Houghton Mifflin said it would give the proceeds to charities.
"Are you helping to spread the word?" Mr. Donatich said. "Or is it freedom of speech and by not censoring something you are making it less powerful, less mythical?" He said he might publish the bin Laden interviews along with a scholarly critique.
Some publisher will almost certainly take on the project. Lyle Stuart, president of Barricade Books, a small publisher dedicated to testing the limits of free speech, said he was ready to do it. Barricade's Web site already includes the transcript of an interview with Mr. bin Laden shown on CNN in 1997. "Several of our readers were alarmed and shocked," Mr. Stuart said. "I felt we should understand the mind of the enemy."
He said Barricade Books, based in Fort Lee, N.J., had recently started publishing an Al Qaeda training manual, but had turned the project over to Paladin Press, a small publisher in Boulder, Colo., that often produces unorthodox how-to books. Executives of Paladin were unavailable.
What is more, it is not clear that Al Jazeera or World Book Publishing own the rights offered for sale. Martin Garbus, a well-known First Amendment lawyer, said Mr. bin Laden himself controlled the rights to print his comments in book form, just as the estate of Martin Luther King Jr. owned the civil rights leader's speeches. As a result, Mr. bin Laden could seek to block publication, if he came forward.
Several publishers were equally cool toward Mr. Mir's planned biography. Mr. Mir, though, said in a telephone interview that Mr. bin Laden was ready for objective criticism. "For me, bin Laden is not a culprit and not a hero," Mr. Mir said. "He is a controversial man, that is all.
Some executives at commercial publishers said the right place for a book of Mr. bin Laden's words was a university press, dedicated to learning rather than profit. But several university press editors were unenthusiastic. Bill Strachan, director of Columbia University Press, said Mr. bin Laden's words were certainly historical documents but publishing them on their own would not qualify as scholarship.
On the other hand, Columbia University Press is helping to release an Al Qaeda terrorist-recruiting video. Short clips of the video have appeared on some television news programs, but the Web site for Columbia International Affairs Online, www.ciaonet.org, will make the entire two- hour Arabic-language video available for viewing, unedited. A series of translated excerpts accompanied by scholarly commentary will appear as well.
Richard Bulliet, a history professor at Columbia who started the project, said Mr. bin Laden gives speeches throughout the video as "the leader who does not even have to be named." Incorporating poems, music and recitations from the Koran, the video begins by describing abuses suffered by Muslims around the world and ends with a call to arms that celebrates acts of violence against the United States. "It is a very effective piece of propaganda," Professor Bulliet said.
Making the uncut video available, he added, would enable other scholars to make their own assessments, and the additional commentaries critically dissected its contents. "This doesn't come out as some sort of presentation that he gets to make for free," he said.
Kate Wittenberg, director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia, said the decision to display the video was difficult. "I struggled with this from the beginning, about whether this is an appropriate role for a scholarly organization," she said, "I concluded that it is precisely because we are a scholarly organization that we have to do this - this very much makes it clear what we are fighting."
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A Timely Summons
By Fred Hiatt
Monday, November 5, 2001; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39898-2001Nov4?language=printer
The secretary of state's address, had it been delivered last week or last month, would not have been surprising. It identified terrorism as a threat to all democracies and called for stronger action to deter and punish terrorist acts.
But the speech of Secretary of State George Shultz was delivered 17 years ago. The reaction to his eloquent and prescient address, delivered before the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York on Oct. 25, 1984, was largely one of scorn and dismissal.
The Post described the speech in its news story as "harshly worded" and, I'm pained to say, mocked Secretary Shultz in an editorial as "a man preoccupied by international terrorism." Shultz "has gone too far," The Post chided. The New York Times condescendingly allowed that "Mr. Shultz is right to express his frustration" but warned against any measures stronger than international sanctions. ("Nor should terrorism loom up large only when Americans are the victims," the Times piously intoned.)
Columnists were even more critical. But no one undermined the message more than Shultz's own administration. Then-President Reagan said he didn't think the speech was "a statement of policy" (though the president's spokesman later said it was). And then-Vice President George H. W. Bush, after being told of Shultz's views, said flatly, "I don't agree with that."
What was the message that caused such consternation? Speaking not long after Irish terrorists had nearly blown up British Prime Minister Thatcher and Arab terrorists had attacked the U.S. Embassy annex and Marine barracks in Beirut, Shultz called for a clear-eyed view of the methods and the stakes.
Terrorists did not engage in random violence, he said. "They are depraved opponents of civilization itself, aided by the technology of modern weaponry." In a fundamental sense, he said, terrorism would always be aimed at democracy -- "against our most basic values and often our fundamental strategic interests." And, he said, "if the modern world cannot face up to the challenge, then terrorism, and the lawlessness and inhumanity that come with it, will gradually undermine all that the modern world has achieved."
Democracies were not only targets, Shultz said, they were vulnerable targets, because of their openness, their respect for individual rights and their difficulty understanding "the fanaticism and apparent irrationality of many terrorists, especially those who kill and commit suicide in the belief that they will be rewarded in the afterlife."
The secretary warned against the "moral confusion" of those who would seek to explain terrorism by finding fault with U.S. policies. He called for better intelligence and partnership with allies. He cautioned that terrorists would "strike from areas where no governmental authority exists" or would seek sanctuary behind international borders, and that often the authors of an attack would not be precisely known.
And yet, Shultz said -- and this is where official Washington began to tut-tut -- the country must offer "firm resistance . . . [must] consider means of active prevention, preemption and retaliation . . . must be willing to use military force."
In the speech's most frequently quoted passage, Shultz concluded: "We cannot allow ourselves to become the Hamlet of nations, worrying endlessly over whether and how to respond. . . . Fighting terrorism will not be a clean or pleasant contest, but we have no choice."
You can't read those lines without thinking over the 17 years that followed. A Sept. 10 accounting of the period doesn't look bad for America: The Soviet Union collapsed. Democracy advanced through Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia. Hundreds of millions of people moved up a notch from the basest poverty. We won a war in Kuwait, or thought we did. We felt safe enough to cut our defense budget and stop paying our U.N. dues. We thought lawlessness in Somalia or Sierra Leone was of no concern.
On Sept. 12, the report card suddenly looked bleaker. Shultz's warnings had been not entirely ignored, but neither had they been honestly embraced, and here were some results: The terrorists who chased America out of Lebanon remained unpunished. Saddam Hussein was accumulating weapons of mass destruction with little interference. The ayatollahs of Iran were recruiting nuclear and bioterror expertise and equipment from Russia, with even less interference. The allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, were sanctioning anti-Semitism and repressing democracy, with hardly a complaint from the United States.
The results, in other words, that we face today: a Muslim world where any U.S. action could make things worse, but where not acting is guaranteed to be dangerous. A world in which the terrorists are far stronger than they were in October 1984; in which it is at least imaginable that America's enemies could take possession of the world's richest oil fields (in Arabia) and a working nuclear arsenal (in Pakistan), and combine those with an anti-American ideology of considerable appeal.
Democracies, as Shultz warned, aren't good at imagining the worst of their adversaries. They also cannot well prepare for terrible dangers that seem highly improbable.
Now the impression of improbability has been erased, at least for the moment. It's important not to overreact, not to overestimate our enemies or the threat they pose. But it's also important not to underestimate them. We tried that already.
-------- activists
Canaries in a cage
Is our government so paranoid it harrasses citizens for peace efforts?
Mon, 5 Nov 2001
From: "wtinker" <wtinker@metrocast.net>
http://www.newhampshirehomeless.org
"Coal miners would carry canaries into the mines with them to warn them of poisonous gas. If the canary dropped to the bottom of the cage, the miners left in a hurry."
From: "Ellen Thomas" <prop1@prop1.org>, November 5, 2001
Wanted to let you know the vigil is under siege again, from a pair of rogue cops.
Rudy, who does the night shift, decided to take a stand against the war by drumming every day, and by spending about 20 hours a day in Lafayette (Peace) Park. Now he's having to take a stand against police harassment. This morning I found him wrapped in a blanket, head bowed, sitting up; a sergeant had threatened him with arrest three times during the night. The sergeant's lieutenant had threatened him several times last week.
These two first started warning Rudy (who has done the night shift much of the last three years) at 6 a.m. several mornings in a row a couple of weeks ago. So I started getting to the park at 5:55 a.m. to make sure they wouldn't be caught with their eyes closed when the Park Police shift changed. Now the sergeant's on the night shift, the lieutenant still on mornings, and both Rudy and Concepcion are under constant surveillance and threats during the wee hours. This is a new development, since the bombing started in Afghanistan. We haven't had this kind of harassment since the Gulf War.
The night vigilers need people's help. Those who can, please come drum for disarmament every afternoon, 4-6 pm. Stop by to give them bathroom, coffee, food breaks. Call the White House (202-456-1414 or -1111) and ask them to instruct these rogue cops to leave the vigilers alone. Call the media and ask them to cover the story. Call the U.S. Park Police and complain to the Captain about the behavior of these officers. Don't let freedom wither and die. Keep the canaries alive. If the vigil disappears, look out. We've said this before, but maybe now it will make a little more sense.
Love,
Ellen (et in dc) workin' on the Peace House and NucNews and peace on earth etc. outside the White House
--------
STOP US BIOWARFARE PROJECTS!
From: "Boyle, Francis" <FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU>
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2001
CALL FOR A BAN ON THE GENETIC ALTERATION OF PATHOGENS FOR DESTRUCTIVE PURPOSES
The recent use of the US Postal Service to disseminate anthrax-contaminated mail underscores a more general threat to people worldwide brought about by the perversion of the biological sciences to cause harm through the deliberate spread of disease.* This is the moment to outlaw all destructive applications of genetic engineering.
We call on the United States to immediately halt all projects designed to genetically modify naturally occurring organisms for military purposes.
We call on the States Parties to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention to extend the Convention's ban to cover all genetic modification of biological agents for military purposes. Since the line between offense and defense in this context is thin to non-existent, there should be no loopholes for "defense." Genetic modification of pathogens for development of vaccines or other medical purposes should be carried out in civilian laboratories and under strict international controls.
Finally, we call on the United States to support a Protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention to assure strict compliance with the terms of the Convention both by states and by individuals and sub-state organizations.
Signed,
Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law at University of Illinois College of Law, author of U.S. implementing legislation for 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
Jonathan King, PhD, Professor Molecular Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the Biology Electron Microscope Facility.
Martin Teitel, PhD, President of the Council for Responsible Genetics.
Susan Wright, PhD, Associate Research Scientist at the University of Michigan.
Several developed countries, including the United States, have initiated projects aimed at genetically engineering pathogenic and other microbes for military purposes. Military-sponsored projects include:
1) developing "superbug" capable of digesting materials such as plastics, fuel, rubber, and asphalt;
2) developing a strain of anthrax that overcomes the protection provided by vaccines in the name of "defense" against such genetically altered strains.
These projects are being justified under the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention as necessary for "defense." Far from providing defense, these projects open up the possibility of more dangerous forms of biological warfare against which there is no defense. They also undermine the Convention both because the actual motives for these projects are highly ambiguous (if a country were to withdraw from the Biological Weapons Convention, their projects would have direct offensive applications) and because they will stimulate similar projects elsewhere in the world.
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