NUCLEAR
TREE CORES COULD REVEAL RADIOACTIVITY
Anthrax fears fade, nuclear fears loom
Green challenge on UK nuclear plant reaches Court
Q&A: Sellafield's Mox plant
British Energy interested in Czech nuclear plants
These photographs require investigation and compensation.
Fifteen thousand German police to guard nuclear convoy
Vulnerability of Castor-type HLW casks
Putin says he's 'flexible' on U.S. missile defense
U.S., Russia Seek to Cut Nuke Arms
U.S., IAEA see risks from disused Russian subs
Bush won't save ABM Treaty
EBRD head backs loan for Ukraine nuclear plants
Radioactive memories
real video containment test
Nuclear Plant's Test Sirens Not Heard in Surrounding Calvert
Constellation Energy Group purchase of Nine Mile Point
DOE to extend Battelle's PNNL contract
Abraham orders cleanup review
Bush Decides on Nuclear Weapons
Adviser: Bush to Scrap Some Nukes
Rice Downplays Hope for Russia Pact
Today in Congress
Nuclear Solutions and Washington Nuclear Sign Contract
MILITARY
Coalition Maintenance
Army unit wages propaganda war
Opposition claims to advance on Mazar-e-Sharif
Afghan opposition claims major advances
US sends in special forces as offensive in north fades
Cave Redoubts Are Formidable, Rebel Leader Says
Taleban retreat could take war across border
Decades-old smallpox vaccinations may still protect
FBI: Anthrax did not come from known U.S. lab
New Tools Emerging to Speed Anthrax Detection
3 Smaller Companies Say Their Vaccines Are Cheaper
Excerpts From Postal Worker's 911 Call
Supreme Court to decide on school drug testing
DEA resources are stretched thin
US could turn attention to Iraq after Afghanistan: Powell
Japan commits ships to support war on terror
Pakistan orders Taliban to close consulate
Pakistani leader pushes for 'short' war
Musharaff Urges Bombing Halt for Ramadan
Russian forces kill Chechen rebel leader
UN fears 'disaster' over strikes near huge dam
Text of President Bush's Speech
General: Capturing bin Laden is not part of mission
Sailor falls overboard from carrier in Arabian Sea
Lawmakers: Bad time to close bases
A Month in a Difficult Battlefield
ENERGY AND OTHER
Solar power wins big in San Francisco
British Energy in UK onshore wind power projects
Alaskans shocked by Exxon Valdez ruling
Negotiations continue at climate conference
Down-to-earth plans for CO²
Court Overturns Jury Award in '89 Exxon Valdez Spill
Cancer Regimen Is Backed
SMALLPOX VACCINATION COULD COST BILLIONS
POLICE / PRISONERS
Safety Becomes Prime Concern at Ground Zero
In Desperate Times, Talking of Torture
Sedition Law Used to Hold Suspects
Commission to propose restructuring of agencies
Senate approves intelligence bill
Using truth serum an option in probes
U.S. raids offices of "terror-supporting" networks
U.S. Explores Indicting a Possible Member of the Hijackers' Squad
Police and the Economy
Prince: Saudis Monitored Weapon Claims
Defectors Cite Iraqi Training for Terrorism
Spending War With White House Focuses on Countering Terrorism
ACTIVISTS
Woman slaps Prince Charles with rose
Greenpeace in muted globalisation protest in Qatar
Letters to Editor
Oden--and IMF protest only a week away, across the Canadian border
Action Alert! We need letters!
-------- NUCLEAR
TREE CORES COULD REVEAL RADIOACTIVITY
Environmental News Service(ENS)
November 7, 2001
http://www.ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-07-09.html
CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina, Monitoring uranium contamination by drilling wells costs a lot, but a new study suggests it may be possible to do the same monitoring far more cheaply by coring trees on potentially radioactive sites.
Dr. Drew Coleman, assistant professor of geologic sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his graduate student Michael Bulleri conducted the study. They presented their results Monday at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Boston.
"Based on work I did earlier, we set out to determine if we could monitor near surface water contamination around a depleted uranium weapons manufacturing site outside Concord, Massachusetts, by measuring uranium concentrations in the living parts of trees growing nearby," Coleman said.
Bulleri took all their samples on public and private lands surrounding the facility, which used to be owned by Nuclear Metals Inc. and has been owned by the Starmet Corp. since 1997.
Trees suck up water beneath the ground and store the radioactivity it contains for many years, said Bulleri. Comparing isotopes allows researchers to pinpoint the radioactive contamination's source and level.
"We found there's not much contamination outside the Concord site, and there's never been very much, which we know from looking at earlier water samples," Bulleri said. "What's interesting and potentially very important is that we don't have to drill wells, which are extremely expensive, to determine what the uranium concentrations are in the ground."
"Mike's results have been fantastic," added Coleman. "By testing the sapwood - the living parts of oak trees he cored close to the site - he has found a definite bull's eye pattern around the site where the concentration goes up the closer one gets to it."
----
Anthrax fears fade, nuclear fears loom
Agence France Presse,
November 8, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011108/1/1pxwy.html
As fears of widespread anthrax deaths faded this week fears of an imminent nuclear terrorist attack mounted, fed by a chilling warning from US President George W. Bush and reports of missing uranium.
But experts were divided over just how possible it would be for a radical like Osama bin Laden to get his hands on nuclear weapons and to use them. "They're seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and eventually, to civilisation itself," Bush said Tuesday.
American experts warned that since the break-up of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War export controls have become increasingly lax and nuclear scientists have become free to sell their expertise.
And Pakistan's arms race with India has left a potentially deadly nuclear arsenal in the hands of a military regime some of whose personnel have close links to bin Laden's Taliban allies.
"In the extreme case, should extremists take over the Pakistani government -- control over Pakistan's nuclear explosive materials and weapons could be lots irrestrevably," warns David Albright, head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).
This doomsday scenario -- a nuclear armed rogue state -- has long worried US military planners and generated calls for the controversial missile defence shield that Bush has vowed to build.
Perhaps even more worrying is the idea, raised in numerous press reports, that Pakistani nuclear weapons could be handed to bin Laden's al-Qaeda network of Islamic radicals for future bomb attacks on US cities or interests abroad.
Pakistani analysts dismiss this scenario.
"It is accurate to say that there are a number of individuals within the establishment, both civilian and military, who are sympathetic to the Taliban, said defence expert Mohammad Afzal Niazi.
"But whether this could ever translate into the sort of action being proposed in these doomsday scenarios is at best extremely doubtful.
"It is one one to protest that there in not enough evidence to bomb bin Laden, but quite another to hand over the nuclear keys to al-Qaeda."
Other analysts argue that Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf as purged radical generals from the army and reinforced his grip on power.
But even if al-Qaeda can not get access to a complete nuclear bomb, two other threats remain.
Terrorists could attack a nuclear installation such as a power station a create an explosion that would release radioactive contamination -- a threat that has seen France, for one, deploy troops and anti-aircraft missiles around its nuclear sites.
Otherwise, the gangs could create a so-called "dirty bomb" in which conventional explosives are used along with nuclear materials to spread a cloud of dangerous radioactive debris.
Fears that criminals or political extremists could get their hands on nuclear material were increased further on Thursday by a report that Italian police were attempting to trace seven missing bars of enriched uranium.
-------- britain
Green challenge on UK nuclear plant reaches Court
8/11/2001,
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13189
LONDON - Environmental groups today will begin legal arguments against the British government's decision to give the go-ahead for a plant to begin manufacturing nuclear fuel, Greenpeace said yesterday.
"A High Court Judge will judicially review the decision allowing BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels) to start up the MOX plant," a Greenpeace spokesman told Reuters, adding the legal action was a joint effort between Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.
A month ago the government decided to give the go-ahead to allow state-owned BNFL to start up the 472 million pound ($691.1 million) mixed oxide (MOX) fuel plant which mixes plutonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons, recycled from the THORP reprocessing complex with uranium.
The plant has lain idle since 1996 because regulatory approval was witheld over fears of insufficient customers for the mixed oxide fuel.
Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace will argue on Thursday the government decision is unlawful because the 472 million pounds spent so far on SMP were discounted from the decision-making which declared the plant could be economically viable.
BNFL yesterday said the plant had not yet started operations because the group was awaiting the results of the judicial review.
The environmental groups say MOX does not have a real market since it is more expensive than uraninium - the fuel most reactors burn - and requires modifications to most reactors before it can be used.
Both groups also said there were genuine safety and security concerns about allowing MOX production to start.
"The decision to go-ahead with the manufacture of MOX is highly controversial because it will perpetuate the production of plutonium at the Sellafield site with all the attendant problems of pollution, security and nuclear proliferation," Greenpeace said in a statement.
They say that many nuclear experts believe it is relatively easy to extract plutonium from MOX rods which raises security issues post the September 11 attacks in the U.S.
BNFL says the MOX plant can be profitable and that it already boasts a healthy order book from overseas customers. The group dismisses suggestions it would be easy to extract plutonium from MOX to make a nuclear device.
--------
Q&A: Sellafield's Mox plant
BBC News Online: UK
Thursday, 8 November, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/uk/newsid_1643000/1643435.stm
One legal challenge has been lost to block the UK's decision to allow the Mox plant at Sellafield to open, but with others outstanding, BBC News Online looks at the issues at stake.
What is Mox?
Mox (mixed oxide) is a way of re-using otherwise useless plutonium - a small part of what is left over when waste nuclear fuel is reprocessed.
The plutonium can be combined with uranium and turned into a new fuel source.
And it is an extremely powerful source of electricity. Each six-gram pellet holds the same energy as a tonne of coal.
British Nuclear Fuel (BNFL) - the government-controlled firm that runs the Sellafield plant - says three pellets can provide a family's needs for an entire year, and the process also reduces the amount of highly toxic radioactive waste that must be stored.
Where is Mox produced?
Not at Sellafield - yet. The Mox plant there was completed in 1996, but has yet to start work, mired as it is in controversy.
The first consultation process began in February 1997. Another was launched in 1998 and it was not until the following year that the government announced the £470m plant could start work.
But BNFL was then caught up in controversy over its safety culture and the embarrassing falsification of documents for a shipment to Japan.
Fresh doubts over the reputation and economic potential of Sellafield put Mox back on hold.
In October 2001, Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett finally gave the go-ahead for the plant, a decision which was immediately subject to calls for a judicial review.
Who is against the plant?
Environmental groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth joined forces to challenge the government's decision in the High Court.
But Mr Justice Collins, sitting in London's High Court, ruled the Government had made "no error of law" in granting approval.
The campaigners claimed the plant was unnecessary, not economically viable, and could make it easier for terrorists to obtain nuclear materials.
They are against the increase in nuclear power, arguing for sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives.
The Irish Government is also against the plant, arguing that building it in Cumbria on the Irish Sea coast broke international laws on sea pollution.
Ireland has begun a challenge to ask the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to order an immediate suspension of the plant's authorisation.
Norway is also reported to be considering legal action, again citing water pollution.
Could terrorists get hold of Mox fuel?
Mox fuel would be transported all over the world, but theft or sabotage is almost impossible, says BNFL. The guards used to escort Mox shipments are heavily armed with rifles, gas masks and grenades.
The ships have double hulls to guard against being rammed or running aground, and there are even naval cannons on the deck.
But the fear, heightened by the recent terror attacks in the US, is that terrorists could get hold of Mox and extract the plutonium - though there are conflicting opinions about the ease with which this could be done.
The plutonium could be used in nuclear weapons or in "dirty bombs" - conventional devices containing the substance. These do not explode like a nuclear bomb, but can spread radiation over a large area.
Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth, says: "The decision makes the world an even more dangerous place."
Would the Mox plant make money?
Greenpeace argues there is insufficient evidence the plant will attract enough customers, and the plant will never pay for itself.
Consultants say the plant's operation will be worth £150m to the UK over its lifetime, but Greenpeace says this profit is distorted because the huge cost of building the plant has already been written off.
Also, it says, BNFL claims that economic powers such as Japan - a BNFL customer since the 1960s - will play a major role in making the plant a success do not stand up to examination. Greenpeace says Japan has an effective moratorium on orders from Sellafield following last year's falsification incident.
BNFL counters by saying it has customers who already use its reprocessing facilities that want Mox fuel. It says it has a bulging order book.
It also says the plant will directly support more than 300 jobs and indirectly benefit hundreds more in a part of west Cumbria highly dependant on BNFL for jobs. Local unions have already given their backing to the plant.
-------- czech republic
British Energy interested in Czech nuclear plants
8/11/2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13174
LONDON - Nuclear power group British Energy said yesterday it is interested in the nuclear assets of Czech state-owned power producer CEZ, which is up for privatisation.
"We are interested in the CEZ nuclear plants," British Energy's executive chairman Robin Jeffrey told a news briefing in London after the release of interim results.
But he said the Czech government so far had reacted negatively to British Energy's interest, which covers the CEZ nuclear plants but not the other assets the government wants to sell.
The Czech government is selling off CEZ in a package of generation, transmission and distribution assets.
CEZ owns the 2,000 megawatt Temelin nuclear power station and the 1,600 megawatt Dukovany nuclear plant.
Electricite de France (EdF) is widely viewed as the front runner in the tender.
"EdF is the head and shoulders front runner for CEZ," said Jeffrey.
Other shortlisted bidders are a tie-up of Italy's Enel and Spain's Iberdrola; and a group combining U.S.-based NRG Energy and Britain's International Power.
Belgium's Electrabel last month pulled out of the tender citing a lack of transparency in the sale process.
-------- depleted uranium
These photographs require investigation and compensation.
http://www.answering-christianity.com/iraqi_torture.htm
Be sure to support U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney's legislation against depleted uranium: HR 3155 - http://prop1.org/nucnews/2001nn/0110nn/011017nn.htm#135
You can easily contact Congressional leaders at the Proposition One Lobby Center, http://prop1.org/prop1/letter.htm.
-------- germany
Fifteen thousand German police to guard nuclear convoy
Thursday November 8, 9:11 AM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-70878.html
BERLIN - German police said on Wednesday they will provide 15,000 officers to ensure the safe transport next week of nuclear waste from France to a storage site in northern Germany.
A shipment of six containers carrying German nuclear waste reprocessed in France is due to return by rail to the site in the northern town of Gorleben.
Earlier this year, anti-nuclear activists briefly held up shipments of waste from reprocessing in France by chaining themselves to the tracks.
Activists have already vowed to disturb the passage of the rail convoy, which is due to leave La Hague in northern France on Monday and will reach an unloading station in Germany on Tuesday evening.
From there, the cargo is to be taken by road for the final 20 kilometres (12 miles) to Gorleben.
Two weeks ago, a fire in trailers under an iron bridge on the transport route damaged parts of the rails. The fire, believed to have been caused by anti-nuclear activists, caused a million marks ($460,000) worth of damage.
The waste shipments were stopped for several years due to safety concerns but were resumed after a deal was reached gradually to phase out nuclear power in Germany over the next two decades.
--------
Vulnerability of Castor-type HLW casks
Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2001
From: "Peter Diehl" <uranium@t-online.de>
Verwundbarkeit von CASTOR-Behältern bei
Transport und Lagerung gegenüber terroristischen und kriegerischen Einwirkungen sowie zivilisatorischen Katastrophen
Verfasser: Dr. Helmut Hirsch Wolfgang Neumann Unter Mitarbeit von Oda Becker
Hannover, im November 2001
Summary:
The main subject of this study are possible consequences of terror attacks or other external events directed against casks for transport and storage of spent fuel and high activity waste, in particular against CASTOR casks.
A review of possible threats shows a large number of hazards: Attack with an armour-piercing weapon; collision with a tanker during transport, followed by a long fire; crash of a commercial aircraft onto an intermediate storage facility as well as shelling or aerial bombardment of a storage facility. On the other hand, there is a large number of potential targets.
Transports are occurring frequently, some of them over large distances. In addition to three central intermediate storage facilities, stores for spent fuel are to be erected at almost all nuclear power plant sites. The storage buildings' design against external events is absolutely inadequate. The proof of safety for the casks themselves is insufficient. It is not even guaranteed that they can withstand the loads assumed hitherto.
There is even less safety in case of terror attacks as they have to be assumed as plausible today. Two possible scenarios of terrorist attacks are investigated in detail. If a cask is shot at with a modern armour-piercing weapon during transport, the cask wall will be penetrated. The radioactive releases lead to radioactive contamination of a zone around the place of the attack; this contamination is so severe that entering this zone will be virtually impossible. Furthermore, a cloud of radioactive aerosols is released, possibly necessitating countermeasures at distances as far away as several kilometres.
If a large commercial aircraft crashes on an intermediate storage facility, a fire lasting several hours can result. In this case, a considerable number of casks will lose their leak tightness. Releases of the nuclide Cesium-137, which is of high importance radiologically, can be more than one percent of the amount released during the Chernobyl catastrophe. Thousands of square kilometres of land can become contaminated to a degree, which renders agricultural use impossible.
A special section deals with the problems arising from the public availability and discussions of sensitive information. All data, which have been used for the present study, are publicly available without prohibitive effort. The problem lies just in the fact that a wealth of information, which can be 'useful' to terrorists, has been publicly available for decades - in the last years, increasingly via the internet.
That all this data can be used by terrorists does not imply that a more restrictive policy towards information is required. Rather, it should be regarded as an argument against the use of a technology which is, at the same time, hazardous and complex to a large degree, creating a conflict between the necessary societal discussion on the one hand and the protection of society from terrorist attacks on the other.
The possibilities to reduce the hazards through engineering measures are limited. As an immediate counter measure, transports should be stopped, and the further production of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel limited as much as possible, in order not to further increase the vulnerable inventories in intermediate storage facilities. The advantages and disadvantages of intermediate storage below ground should be investigated.
Download full text of the report (160k in German): http://www.bund.net/themen/energiepolitik/Studie_CASTORTerror.rtf
View related news release of BUND (FOE Germany): (in German) http://www.bund.net/presse/msg00474.html
-------- missile defense
Putin says he's 'flexible' on U.S. missile defense
USA Today
11/08/2001
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/08/putin-usat.htm
WASHINGTON -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview aired Wednesday that he's "quite flexible" in his stance on allowing President Bush to proceed with development of a national missile defense.
Putin's comments, in an interview on ABC's 20/20, were another signal that Bush and Putin are likely to close the deal when they meet next week in Washington and at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Senior administration officials said Wednesday that they are optimistic an agreement allowing the United States to develop and test a missile shield will be reached. They expect the two presidents to reach that agreement without moving to amend or nullify the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. Politically, Putin can't afford to agree to amend or abolish the treaty, which bars testing and deployment of national defense systems. But the agreement he and Bush are expected to reach would in effect set it aside.
"We have a negotiating platform starting from which we could reach agreements," Putin said in the interview. "At least I hope so."
If Putin has "some interesting suggestions on how to make the ABM Treaty not outdated and not outmoded, I'm more than willing to listen," Bush said Wednesday. "But ... this terrorist war says to me more than ever that we need to develop defenses to protect ourselves against weapons of mass destruction that might fall in the hands of terrorist nations."
The deal may include pledges by both nations to reduce their offensive nuclear arsenals, although administration officials said those details may not be finalized next week. As of July, the United States had 7,013 nuclear warheads and Russia had 5,858.
Bush said he'll tell Putin next week how many nuclear weapons he's willing to dismantle. "We don't need an arms-control agreement to convince us to reduce our nuclear weapons down substantially, and I'm going to do it," he said.
Next week's summit will be the fourth Bush-Putin meeting. They hit it off in their first meeting, in June in Slovenia, and administration officials say their personal connection is a key factor in progress toward the agreement.
Some critics called Bush naive after he said he had looked into Putin's soul in their first meeting and decided that he could trust his Russian counterpart. Asked about those remarks, Putin said of Bush, "I believe it's not accidental that he became the president of the United States. He sees better and deeper and understands the problems more accurately."
The deal would enhance Putin's warmer relationship with NATO members. Russia would also benefit from increased trade with the United States and more foreign investments in Russia's struggling economy.
The administration officials, who once feared that Russia would form a strategic partnership with China, said they are encouraged by Putin's growing alliance with the West. "This is a choice that Russia made for itself quite a long time ago," Putin told ABC.
In the interview, Putin also said:
• He had a feeling of "guilt" after the terrorist attacks Sept. 11. "It was a pity that our special services didn't get the information on time and warn the American people ... about the tragedy that came to pass," he said.
• The United States is losing the war of words with Osama bin Laden. The terrorists, he said, "are acting more aggressively and more offensively, and they're presenting opposition in terms of emotions."
• No portable nuclear weapons have been stolen from Russia's arsenal, despite reports that bin Laden and other terrorists may be trying to acquire such weapons from renegade Russian scientists or military personnel. "These are just legends," Putin said.
-------- russia
U.S., Russia Seek to Cut Nuke Arms
By Barry Schweid AP Diplomatic Writer
Thursday, November 8, 2001; 10:05 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64658-2001Nov8?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- Less than a week before their summit, President Bush and President Vladimir Putin are moving closer to an understanding that would meet Russia's desires for deep cuts in nuclear arsenals and give the United States more leeway to test missile defenses.
Two-thirds of the American nuclear arsenal would be consigned to the scrap heap, a senior U.S. official said Thursday. Russia has said it wants to do the same, as well, with its storehouse of long-range warheads.
Even if there is no formal accord, Bush intends to get rid of hundreds of weapons the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff have concluded are superfluous, said Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser.
Seizing on a post-Cold War relationship in which the United States and Russia do not eye each other warily as adversaries, Bush is approaching his talks with Putin with a strategy that bypasses the formal and tedious negotiations of the past.
Based on the Pentagon review, Bush has concluded how many warheads the United States should retain, and Putin has taken a more agreeable stance on a U.S. anti-missile defense.
Even if the Russian leader backtracks on a shield against missile attack, Bush intends to go ahead without letting a 1972 ban on nationwide defenses get in his way, senior U.S. officials said this week.
The cuts in offensive arms on both sides could be as deep as two-thirds. The United States and Russian now have about 6,000 warheads each in their arsenals.
Rice played down prospects for an accord calling for mutual cutbacks and a green light for Bush's anti-missile defense program. "Not every meeting has to be accompanied like the old summits were with the Soviet Union by arms control agreements," she said.
"This is a normal relationship that's moving forward progressively," Rice said.
It is not a question whether the level of warheads Bush has decided upon is acceptable to the Russians, Rice said.
"His desire to cut offensive nuclear forces comes from his belief, which has now been confirmed by a study by the Joint Chiefs of Staff ... that the number of weapons in the U.S. arsenal exceeds the number of nuclear weapons needed for America's deterrent needs in this particular time," she said.
A senior Bush administration official said the president was willing to agree with Putin to reduce both the U.S. and Russian stockpiles to fewer than 2,000 - a reduction of two-thirds of the current level of 6,000 warheads apiece. For his part, the Russian leader is flexible about Bush's plan for a defense against missile attack, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Russia has suggested a level as low as 1,500.
"We could reach quite quickly mutual agreements," Putin said in an ABC interview Monday at the Kremlin. He also said the Russian position on a missile shield "is quite flexible." But he also cautioned that a settlement "can only be found as a result of very intense negotiations."
Last winter, Putin warned that the entire fabric of arms control could unravel if Bush went ahead with a nationwide anti-missile shield in violation of a 1972 U.S.-Soviet treaty. Putin has since muted his opposition, leading to speculation he could be agreeable to a limited defense not banned by the treaty.
But senior administration officials said this week at the White House that Bush inevitably would have to exercise a right to withdraw from the accord in order to go ahead with its testing program.
"He is not prepared to permit the treaty to get in the way of doing that robust testing," Rice said.
Her admonition that expectations for an agreement were too high is traditional before U.S.-Russian summits, even during the Cold War. But Rice was emphatic about it.
"One should not expect one defining moment," she said.
She said the two leaders would work on a new strategic framework for a number of years.
Bush said Wednesday he was prepared to make a substantial cut in the American arsenal whatever happens in the talks in Washington on Tuesday and at his Texas ranch on Wednesday and Thursday.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov planned to meet Saturday in New York, on the sidelines of a U.N. General Assembly session, to help prepare for the talks, the Russian Mission to the United Nations said.
----
U.S., IAEA see risks from disused Russian subs
Thursday, November 08, 2001
By Eva Sohlman,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11082001/reu_45517.asp
STOCKHOLM -- The United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Wednesday that a floating cemetery of nuclear submarines off Russia could be a target for terrorists seeking parts for nuclear bombs.
Moscow played down the risks, saying it had stepped up security around the submarines off the northwestern Kola peninsula. And it said the nuclear waste could be cleaned up within a decade with about $200 million.
"Of course it's possible that a terrorist could make a 'dirty nuclear bomb' from the nuclear fuel on board the submarines," said Michael Bell, head of the IAEA's waste technology section, at a conference in the southwestern Swedish city of Oskarshamn.
Dieter Rudolph from the U.S. Defense Department, who was also attending the conference, agreed there were risks but said they were small. "In theory it is possible, but it would be a tough and heavy task to handle the radioactive fuel," he said.
The three-day conference, ending Thursday, is about Russia's problems with treating nuclear fuel waste and missiles aboard a fleet of some 150 disused submarines around the Kola peninsula.
Rudolph said that there were easier ways to find nuclear material to build a 'dirty bomb' from radioactive material. Such a crude bomb could cause serious damage -- although not as extensive as a properly built atomic bomb.
Last week, the IAEA warned the world that the threat of attacks on nuclear power plants had increased and urged countries with such stations to boost security. It said the risk of airplane attacks and theft of nuclear material had increased in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 suicide hijacker attacks on the United States.
RUSSIA CRACKS DOWN
"Russia has taken emergency security measures because we know there is a real threat from international terrorism,'' Russia's deputy Atomic Energy Minister Valery Lebedev said.
He also played down fears of leaks from the aging submarines. "At the moment there's not much leakage going on. What we are looking for is help to handle and reprocess the solid radioactive waste and spent fuel from the atomic submarines," he said. "It will take about 10 years and cost about $200 million to remove and secure the waste," he said.
Rudolph said that Washington was most concerned about the nuclear missiles aboard the submarines. "The U.S. focus is to pay the Russians to dismantle weapons of mass destruction but also to help remove, store, and reprocess the radioactive nuclear fuel on the peninsula," he said.
The United States is planning to assist Russia in improving the capacity at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the city of Mayak and to clean up buildings around the plant which are believed to be radioactive. It will also assist in removing weapons and fuel from several submarines at a former military base in Andrejeva Bay.
But Rudolph and Bell agreed that, although the submarines posed a threat to the environment, should they sink and leak, the worst case scenario could never compare with that of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.
-------- treaties
Bush won't save ABM Treaty
November 8, 2001
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011108-13705276.htm
In the most specific language to date, the Bush administration said yesterday it is not considering any amendments that would keep the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in place when Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the United States next week.
During a series of recent meetings in both capitals, a "stark" change in Moscow's view of the 1972 accord has crystallized, a senior administration official said. The pact, which Russia had called the cornerstone of strategic stability, prevents both parties from building comprehensive nationwide missile defenses.
"I don't know that the amendment route is one we would consider," the official said, calling the ABM Treaty "dangerous" and "an impediment to better relations with Russia."
In February, Mr. Putin was predicting the "unraveling of arms control" if Washington went ahead with tests that conflicted with the accord, but now he acknowledges that "the United States has a right" to withdraw from it and "that won't be the end of the world," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Although the two sides have made progress over the past several months, an agreement lowering the limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles, which Moscow has linked with any deal on missile defense, may not be completed during Mr. Putin's Tuesday-through-Thursday summit with President Bush, another senior official said.
The leaders are unlikely to impose either equal or precise limits on U.S. and Russian long-range warheads, he said, but they could set ranges far below the current totals of about 6,000 each, "possibly but not certainly" with different ranges for the Cold War foes.
Russia has proposed levels as low as 1,500 warheads on each side, while the Bush administration is reportedly considering 1,750 to 2,250 warheads apiece.
A final decision will be made by the presidents, but talks on weapons cutbacks could go on for some time, the officials said.
Mr. Putin is scheduled to arrive in Washington late Monday and meet with Mr. Bush on Tuesday at the White House. He will travel to Mr. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, the next day.
This will be the two presidents' fourth meeting.
Even though the White House has played up the comfort and chemistry the two men share, that's not enough to build a solid relationship between the two countries, the U.S. official said.
The relationship, he added, "was moving in a positive direction" from the beginning, but that trend has accelerated with Russia's cooperation in the U.S. campaign against terrorism.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin also will discuss what the White House called "particularly difficult issues": freedom of the media, the breakaway republic of Chechnya and Russia's relations with some of its neighbors.
Mr. Bush will also take up with Mr. Putin the technological assistance that the administration is convinced Russia has provided to Iran's nuclear weapons program, the official said.
"Russian transfers of sensitive nuclear technology concerns us very much" and it will be addressed, he said, noting that Mr. Bush will make the point that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose serious dangers.
Mr. Putin insisted in an American television interview taped Monday in the Kremlin that Russia was not providing dangerous weapons technology to Iran, calling such allegations a "legend."
But Ephraim Sneh, a former Israeli general and now transportation minister, said yesterday that he was certain "the central support for the Iranian nuclear project is provided by Russia."
-------- ukraine
EBRD head backs loan for Ukraine nuclear plants
Reuters:
8/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13173
KIEV - Ukraine edged closer yesterday to securing vital funding for its troubled nuclear power industry after the head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development backed proposals for a $215 million loan.
"Today the president of the EBRD (Jean Lemierre) recommended to the board to confirm its decision to give a credit to complete two nuclear reactors as all four conditions for the loan had been met," the EBRD said in a statement.
The EBRD said that if the board confirmed Lemierre's recommendation, the credit agreement could be signed next month.
The EBRD last year approved the loan in principle to finance completion of two new reactors in western Ukraine being built to replace the ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear power plant, closed last December.
But the bank attached tough conditions to the loan, including a resumption of aid from the International Monetary Fund - approved two months ago - and improving safety at the ex-Soviet state's nuclear stations.
The project stirred controversy as environmentalists insisted the two plants were the wrong option for the country which suffered from the world's worst civil nuclear disaster in 1986 after a reactor exploded at Chernobyl.
But officials said completion of the two reactors was vital for the country's ailing energy sector, which lost about four percent of its generating capacity after the Chernobyl closure.
Power outages are common in the country of 49 million people, which does not have sufficient energy resources to fully meet demand and depends heavily on energy imports.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Radioactive memories
World War II shaped America's most controversial scientist
Christian Science Monitor
November 08, 2001
By Robert C. Cowen
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1108/p19s1-bogn.html
<http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1108/csmimg/1108p19a.jpg>
MEMOIRS: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics
By Edward Teller with Judith Shoolery
Perseus Publishing 628 pp., $35
Edward Teller - widely known as the "father" of the American hydrogen bomb - has been a controversial guy. To his detractors, he represents the archetypal Dr. Strangelove, with an unnatural passion for nuclear weapons and "star wars" antimissile systems. His fans see a champion of US national defense who punctures arms-control hype.
Forget those stereotypes. Dr. Teller's best critic is Teller himself. He long ago warned us to take his defense policy advocacy with a grain of salt. Its wisdom has been colored by a passionate determination to ensure that what Nazis and Communists did to his native Hungary will not happen to America. Now, he has given us the whole salt shaker in this fascinating, introspective memoir.
Teller's account of growing up in a culture that was rough on Jews, of surviving hardships after the arbitrary partition of Hungary after World War I, and of losing friends and family to Nazi and Communist oppression explains his passion to protect the freedom he found in the United States. Those challenges stiffened his backbone when his vision of an adequate defense clashed with what many arms-control-oriented colleagues considered appropriate. Add to that his self-confessed penchant for speaking bluntly, and it's understandable that the heated policy debates that ensued turned even some of his friends into adversaries.
Teller regrets the acrimony, but makes no apology for his convictions. Cherished colleagues felt the destructiveness of a hydrogen bomb made it "an evil thing considered in any light," to quote a report of atomic scientists who opposed the weapon. How would you answer Teller's counter-question: Would it have been better for humanity if the United States had held back while the Soviet Union proceeded?
The case of J. Robert Oppenheimer is different. Oppenheimer, the brilliant World War II leader of the Los Alamos atomic bomb lab, was challenged as a security risk in the mid-1950s. Old communist associations were revisited, even though the government had overlooked them during the war. More important, opponents to Oppenheimer's positions on weapons policy claimed that he gave dangerously bad advice.
Hearings were held to decide whether to continue Oppenheimer's security clearance. Teller was a key witness. He testified that he had no doubt about Oppenheimer's loyalty, but was ambivalent as to the trustworthiness of Oppenheimer's advice. When Oppenheimer's clearance was revoked, many American physicists blamed Teller. He felt ostracized for a time by his own scientific community, and some of his colleagues from those days may have yet to fully forgive him. It's obvious from Teller's retrospective account that he still feels the pain of that episode and has yet to make peace with it himself.
There's much more to this memoir than policy battles. In the 1930s, Teller studied at the feet of the creators of modern quantum mechanics. His vignettes of those scientists are delightful. He worked under Heisenberg, one of the greatest physicists. The question of whether Heisenberg supported the Nazi atom bomb project or just gave lip service and dragged his feet lingers. Teller says that, given his knowledge of the man, he can't believe Heisenberg would have willingly served Hitler. But he admits that is speculation.
The memoir also gives vignettes of Teller the family man, Teller the musician - never far from his piano - and Teller the wannabe academic research scientist. He shares some of the enthusiasm of being caught up in the creation of quantum physics - his "most satisfying years." He laments that he couldn't get back into the game after the war. Whenever he tried to settle down to an academic career, he was pulled back into the world of weapons-making and research administration. While he became an outstanding scientist, he never achieved scientific greatness.
Teller has done posterity an invaluable service in publishing his memoirs. Objective historians and living participants in the recorded events may pick bones with them. But there is one assertion I think we can take at face value. Teller says that, while he could sometimes have been more gracious, he always tried to speak his mind honestly even when it made him unpopular with friends. It's hard to hate a guy like that.
• Robert C. Cowen writes about science for the Monitor
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Subject: real video containment test
From: "Scott D. Portzline" <sportzline@home.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 19:35:46 -0500
impact by fighter jet video clip attached
The block moves more than 1 foot
http://us.f139.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter/containment%5ftest.rm?box=Inbox&MsgId=9910_1954782_39501_1860_286773_0_0&bodyPart=2&filename=containment%5ftest.rm&download=1&YY=35935&order=down&sort=date&pos=0
-------- maryland
Nuclear Plant's Test Sirens Not Heard in Surrounding Calvert
By Raymond McCaffrey and Steven Gray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 8, 2001; Page SM02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51853-2001Nov6?language=printer
Monday's regularly scheduled annual test of the emergency sirens within 10 miles of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant did not get a passing mark -- at least not in the facility's home county.
At noon, each siren was to sound for three minutes. However, of the 72 sirens within the 10-mile radius, the 49 in Calvert County failed to sound. The remaining ones -- 17 in St. Mary's County, as well as 6 in Dorchester County across the Chesapeake Bay -- worked as planned, according to Karl Neddenien, a plant spokesman.
"The sirens in St. Mary's and Dorchester County were fully operational, but the sirens in Calvert County did not sound," Neddenien said. "And we have been working with Calvert County to diagnose the problems."
Calvert County Commissioners President David F. Hale (R-Owings) reported at a meeting Tuesday that the sirens failed because of a computer problem at the county's Emergency Operations Center.
"That's why we run tests," Hale said.
The county and the plant will schedule a retest.
Neddenien also said, "We're going to take a look at what could have caused the computer malfunction. As is our custom, we're going to look at the problem a level or two deeper as to the root cause."
The plant conducts weekly and quarterly testing of different degrees to discover individual sirens that might need maintenance, according to Neddenien. The majority of them have been working properly, he said.
The last full activation was one year ago on the first Monday of November 2000, and it was a success, he added.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which mandates the tests, was informed of Monday's problem, officials reported.
The sirens are intended to alert the public in an emergency to tune to a particular radio station for information.
Reassurance From Schools
St. Mary's County education officials sent a letter home with students this week intended to reassure parents that the system is prepared to maintain the safety and security of schools in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The letter, signed by Superintendent Patricia M. Richardson, details the school system's communication with emergency agencies as well as various in-school measures to keep children safe and to deal with their concerns about the ongoing threat of further attacks.
"We are committed to maintaining the safety and security of our children," Richardson says. "This is an ongoing task. In the end, it is our school community who will keep our children safe. We invite you to work with us on this task."
Also in the letter is a warning that the situation is no joking matter.
"We ask that you be very clear with your children," Richardson says to parents, "that jokes or pranks about bombs or bioterrorism are not acceptable and will not be tolerated."
She says students attempting such pranks should expect "severe disciplinary measures" and possible referral to law enforcement agencies.
-------- new york
Constellation Energy Group has completed its purchase of the Nine Mile Point
Washington Post
November 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59066-2001Nov7?language=printer
Constellation Energy Group has completed its purchase of the Nine Mile Point nuclear power plant outside Syracuse, N.Y., including the plant's nuclear fuel, for $762 million. Most of the plant's electricity output will go to upstate New York customers. The Baltimore-based company also owns the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant.
-------- washington
DOE to extend Battelle's PNNL contract
Hanford News
Thu, Nov 8, 2001
By Annette Cary Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1108-2.html
The Department of Energy will extend Battelle's contract to operate Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for another five years, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced Wednesday after getting a look at some of the research there.
"Battelle has done an extraordinary job operating PNNL over the years," Abraham said.
More than 40 percent of the work at the Richland lab is related to national security. It's work that's critical to the nation since Sept. 11, Abraham said.
Technology being developed at the lab includes an automated system to isolate bacteria from soil, water and air samples, which the lab demonstrated to the Energy secretary during his tour of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory there.
Biodetection Enabling Analyte Delivery System, or BEADS, can clean samples so micro-organisms can be identified in places such as food processing lines and water treatment plants. It also can be coupled with a detector to identify agents of biological warfare without requiring samples to be manually purified for identification.
Battelle Memorial Institute has held the contract to operate the laboratory since 1965. The lab now employs about 3,500 people and has an annual budget of about $540 million.
Abraham could have requested proposals from other corporations to operate the lab. However, citing three years of "outstanding" ratings of the national laboratory, Abraham authorized DOE's Richland office to start contract negotiations with Battelle.
In addition, the Richland lab was the first DOE Office of Science to win Gold Star status in DOE's voluntary Protection Program, lab Director Lura Powell pointed out.
The laboratory also has signed three major partnerships to collaborate with universities. That included an alliance formed in September with researchers at public and private universities across Washington.
Powell said she was pleased with the strides the laboratory has made in three initiatives, she said. Those include computational science and engineering, nanoscience and technology and biomolecular networks, which include research of cell behavior that advanced knowledge gained from the mapping of the human genome.
Abraham also used his visit to Hanford to announce DOE grants of $8.4 million for another research focus of the laboratory, cleanup of nuclear sites such as Hanford.
DOE is awarding $39.6 million over three years to universities, national laboratories and other research institutions for 45 research projects to solve complex environmental cleanup challenges.
The Richland lab won grants to lead 11 of the projects and collaborate on five others.
Projects include developing technology to remove plutonium from steel and concrete surfaces and to better predict consequences of various scenarios in handling high-level waste in Hanford's tanks.
Such research could help the nation speed up cleanup of its nuclear sites, possibly at less cost, Abraham said.
---
Abraham orders cleanup review
Hanford News
Thu, Nov 8, 2001
By John Stang and Annette Cary Herald staff writers
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1108-1.html
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham plans to overhaul the Department of Energy's nationwide nuclear cleanup program to make it faster and cheaper.
How?
The answer to that question has not been figured out yet, Abraham indicated on his first trip to Hanford on Wednesday.
That unanswered question also covers Hanford's future cleanup efforts.
During his 412-hour visit to Hanford and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Abraham repeatedly said that when he took over DOE last January, he was shocked to find that the agency expected to take 70 years and $300 billion to clean up all of DOE's Cold War contaminated production sites.
Consequently, he ordered a review of all of DOE's cleanup programs to see how they could become faster and more efficient.
Also Wednesday, Abraham was noncommittal about whether the dormant Fast Flux Test Facility should be revived or shut down. However, FFTF supporters became more optimistic after listening to Abraham.
Abraham toured the FFTF, a tank farm and PNNL's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, where he also held a news conference. He also gave a 25-minute speech in the Federal Building on DOE refocusing its defense, science and energy missions. The speech included five minutes of generic support for nuclear cleanup with no new details.
Abraham's statements Wednesday about faster and cheaper cleanup were not new.
He first publicly voiced shock at the 70-year, $300 billion estimate April 9 -- the same day he ordered the review to see how to speed up cleanup nationwide.
However, on that same day, DOE also told Congress that it wanted less nationwide cleanup money in 2002 than it spent in 2001, that it wanted to trim Hanford's funding for 2002 and that it wanted to allocate $500 million to Hanford's top-priority tank waste glassification project in 2002 even though DOE's calculations said $690 million would be needed to keep it on schedule.
On Wednesday, Abraham contended that the original $500 million glassification request did not translate to slowing the project enough that it would miss its 2007 legal deadline to begin converting wastes into glass.
He declined to say specifically how cutting $190 million from a project trying to meet a 2007 deadline would help trim DOE's 70-year master cleanup schedule.
Instead, Abraham addressed the topic in general terms. He said he inherited a nationwide nuclear cleanup program from the Clinton administration and did not want to lock irreversibly into any major project before all of DOE's cleanup programs are reviewed.
Harry Boston, manager of DOE's Office of River Protection said 2002's trimmed $190 million could have been added on top of the glassification project's 2003 budget to catch up.
But the state of Washington has disagreed strongly with Abraham's contention that $500 million in 2002 would not further slow down construction of the glassification plants, which already are 16 months behind schedule. So since last spring, the state has threatened to sue DOE if the 2002 glassification budget ends up underfunded.
Despite that threat, Abraham and the Bush administration in May and June opposed increasing the $500 million to $690 million.
However, Congress ignored those objections and recently increased DOE's nationwide cleanup budget above the administration's request. That included bumping Hanford's overall budget from DOE's original request of $1.4 billion to slightly more than $1.8 billion, which fills all the site's legal 2002 obligations including $690 million for glassification.
That congressional action appears likely to eliminate the state's lawsuit threat.
Meanwhile, DOE expects to finish its nuclear cleanup review by Dec. 31.
Abraham said it is unknown whether the review will lead to changes in Hanford's cleanup efforts or funding plans.
And he declined to comment on the possibility that DOE's review's conclusions might not fit with the Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact that governs Hanford's cleanup, or if DOE might use the review to seek changes in the Tri-Party Agreement.
Instead, Abraham emphasized that DOE wants to work closely with the state and the Environmental Protection Agency to hammer out speedier and cheaper cleanup plans for Hanford.
The review's conclusions are due two months before the Bush administration is scheduled to send its fiscal 2003 federal budget request to Congress in late February. That request will include a proposed 2003 DOE budget. Until last year, that request also included a detailed breakdown of Hanford's spending plans for the upcoming year.
Last year's switch in presidents led to DOE's overall figures for fiscal 2002 going to Congress last February with details on Hanford being unveiled last April.
Abraham's press aide Joe Davis said some, but unlikely all, of the review's recommendations might make it into next February's DOE fiscal 2003 budget request to Congress.
Also Wednesday, Abraham toured the FFTF with former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., but said he would not be rushed on making a decision on the reactor's future.
However, supporters of restarting the reactor liked what Abraham had to say about DOE's overall goals, saying the Hanford reactor could play a role.
Last January the Clinton administration ordered the reactor permanently shut down. But the Bush administration is considering a proposal to lease the reactor for commercial production of isotopes for medicine.
"Obviously, a huge investment has been made in FFTF -- a long-term one that's already expended," Abraham said. Before dismantling the FFTF, it's prudent for DOE to look at any possible uses for it, he said.
Gorton said before the tour that the nation's new security issues since Sept. 11 may make a restart of the reactor more likely.
The reactor could be used to make isotopes able to kill anthrax or other bioterrorism agents in mail or food. It also would make the nation less dependent on foreign sources of isotopes for nuclear medicine.
"What's more important to national security than making sure there is no shortage of medical isotopes?" asked Bob Schenter, a regional officer of the National Association for Cancer Patients.
Abraham also discussed the Bush administration's energy policy, which includes a push for more nuclear energy.
"In the national energy policy, all roads lead to FFTF," said Benton County Commissioner Claude Oliver. The reactor could be used for research on the next generation of nuclear power reactors in addition to producing medical isotopes.
-------- us nuc politics
Bush Decides on Nuclear Weapons
By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Thursday, November 8, 2001; 5:57 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60196-2001Nov8?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- President Bush says he has decided on a new, lower level of nuclear armaments for the United States and will take up his decision next week with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Bush said he could make a substantial cut in the American arsenal whatever happens in the talks in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
"We don't need an arms control agreement to convince us to reduce our nuclear weapons down substantially, and I'm going to do it," Bush said at a joint news conference with visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The president said he could not reveal the new and lower ceiling before meeting with Putin. Other U.S. officials have said the Bush administration anticipates a range of 1,750 to 2,250 warheads - a deep cutback from the current level of about 6,000 warheads on each side.
"I am not going to tell you until I tell him," Bush said.
U.S. officials earlier played down the probability of signing a major agreement during Putin's stay in the United States. Three officials said the United States and Russia were making progress, but an agreement may not be completed when the leaders meet.
"I have reached a decision, and I spent time thinking about the issue," Bush said. "The United States will move to reduce our offensive weapons to a level commensurate with being able to keep the peace."
On his quest for a missile defense system, Bush said he was going into the talks with Putin still convinced that a 1972 treaty banning national defenses is outdated.
The war on terrorism underscores the need for a defense, Bush said. If Putin has "interesting suggestions" on how to go ahead despite the treaty, he said was willing to listen.
The U.S. officials, who held a news briefing on condition of anonymity, said the two leaders were unlikely to impose either equal or precise limits on U.S. and Russian warheads.
They are more inclined to set ranges far below the current totals, possibly with different ranges for the United States and Russia, the officials said.
High-level meetings in Washington and Moscow already have produced substantial progress toward an agreement, they said. Parts of the 1991 Strategic Arms Limitation treaty that set up verification procedures to guard against cheating may be adapted to any new pact.
Putin has shifted his position on Bush's plan for an anti-missile shield, they said. They described his change as a startling turnabout.
Last winter, Putin was predicting the unraveling of arms control accords with the United States if Bush went ahead with tests that conflicted with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Now the Russian leader acknowledges that the United States has a right to withdraw from the treaty, and Bush will have to do it to proceed with his program, the official said.
The meeting will be the fourth held by Bush and Putin. Their relationship was on the upswing before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. That trend accelerated with Russia's cooperation in the U.S. campaign against terrorism, the officials said.
On a sensitive subject, Bush will take up with Putin the Russian technological assistance that the administration is convinced Iran has used in its nuclear weapons program, the official said.
Putin insisted in an American television interview taped Monday in the Kremlin that Russia was not providing dangerous weapons technology to Iran.
But Ephraim Sneh, a former Israeli general now that country's transportation minister, said Wednesday he was certain "the central support for the Iranian nuclear project is provided by Russia."
On the Net: State Department's arms control desk: http://www.state.gov/t/
----
Adviser: Bush to Scrap Some Nukes
By Barry Schweid AP Diplomatic Writer
Thursday, November 8, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62835-2001Nov8?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's national security adviser said Thursday that Bush intends to scrap unneeded U.S. nuclear weapons whatever the outcome of his meetings next week with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The cuts could be as deep as two-thirds, a senior official said.
Condoleezza Rice played down prospects for an accord calling for mutual cutbacks and a green light for Bush's anti-missile defense program. "Not every meeting has to be accompanied like the old summits were with the Soviet Union by arms control agreements," she said.
"This is a normal relationship that's moving forward progressively," Rice said.
It is not a question whether the level of warheads Bush has decided upon is acceptable to the Russians, Rice said.
"His desire to cut offensive nuclear forces comes from his belief, which has now been confirmed by a study by the Joint Chiefs of Staff ... that the number of weapons in the U.S. arsenal exceeds the number of nuclear weapons needed for America's deterrent needs in this particular time," she said.
A senior Bush administration official said the president was willing to agree with Putin to reduce both the U.S. and Russian stockpiles to fewer than 2,000 - a reduction of two-thirds of the current level of 6,000 warheads apiece. For his part, the Russian leader is flexible about Bush's plan for a defense against missile attack, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Russia has suggested a level as low as 1,500.
"We could reach quite quickly mutual agreements," Putin said in an ABC interview Monday at the Kremlin. He also said the Russian position on a missile shield "is quite flexible." But he also cautioned that a settlement "can only be found as a result of very intense negotiations."
A longtime Russia analyst, Dimitri Simes, said he did not think there would be a formal agreement next week.
"There is a good chance that essentially will allow the United States to proceed with whatever the administration wants and is feasible and also provides Russia with some specifics of the nature of offensive cuts," said Simes, president of the Nixon Center, in an interview.
Rice said relations with Russia have advanced to a point that a major arms control agreement is not expected at every summit, as was the case during the Cold War.
On anti-missile defenses, Rice said she would not expect "any particular arrangement to come out of any particular meeting."
Last winter, Putin warned that the entire fabric of arms control could unravel if Bush went ahead with a nationwide anti-missile shield in violation of a 1972 U.S.-Soviet treaty. Putin has since muted his opposition, leading to speculation he could be agreeable to a limited defense not banned by the treaty.
But senior administration officials said this week at the White House that Bush inevitably would have to exercise a right to withdraw from the accord in order to go ahead with its testing program.
"He is not prepared to permit the treaty to get in the way of doing that robust testing," Rice said.
Her admonition that expectations for an agreement were too high is traditional before U.S.-Russian summits, even during the Cold War. But Rice was emphatic about it.
"One should not expect one defining moment," she said.
She said the two leaders would work on a new strategic framework for a number of years.
Bush said Wednesday he was prepared to make a substantial cut in the American arsenal whatever happens in the talks in Washington on Tuesday and at his Texas ranch on Wednesday and Thursday.
"We don't need an arms control agreement to convince us to reduce our nuclear weapons down substantially, and I'm going to do it," Bush said at a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Ivan Ivanov planned to meet Saturday in New York, on the sidelines of a U.N. General Assembly session, to help prepare for next week's talks, the Russian Mission to the United Nations said.
----
Rice Downplays Hope for Russia Pact
By Barry Schweid AP Diplomatic Writer
Thursday, November 8, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62186-2001Nov8?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's national security adviser, playing down prospects of a new arms control agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Thursday that Bush would move independently to reduce the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal and to clear the way for an anti-missile shield.
It is not a question of whether the level of warheads Bush has decided upon is acceptable to the Russians, Condoleezza Rice said.
"His desire to cut offensive nuclear forces comes from his belief, which has now been confirmed by a study by the Joint Chiefs of Staff ... that the number of weapons in the U.S. arsenal exceeds the number of nuclear weapons needed for America's deterrent needs in this particular time."
A senior Bush administration official said the President was willing to agree with Putin to reduce both the U.S. and Russian stockpiles to fewer than 2,000 - a reduction of two-thirds of the current level of 6,000 warheads apiece. For his part, the Russian leader is flexible about Bush's plan for a defense against missile attack, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Rice told reporters at the White House that relations with Russia have advanced to a point that a major agreement is not expected from every summit, as occurred during the Cold War.
"Not every meeting has to be accompanied by arms-control agreements," she said.
On plans to erect a missile defense system, Rice also said she would not expect "any particular arrangement to come out of any particular meeting."
"One should not expect one defining moment," the White House official said.
She said the two leaders would work on a new strategic framework for a number of years, and "we all have to get out of a particular frame of mind" that the two sides match weapons cutbacks exactly.
Bush said Wednesday he could make a substantial cut in the American arsenal regardless of what happens in the talks in Washington on Tuesday and at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas on Wednesday and Thursday.
"We don't need an arms-control agreement to convince us to reduce our nuclear weapons down substantially, and I'm going to do it," Bush said at a joint news conference with visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The president said he could not reveal the new and lower ceiling before meeting with Putin. Other U.S. officials have said the Bush administration anticipates a range of 1,750 to 2,250 warheads - a deep cut from the current level of about 6,000 warheads on each side.
"I have reached a decision, and I spent time thinking about the issue," Bush said. "The United States will move to reduce our offensive weapons to a level commensurate with being able to keep the peace."
Regarding his quest for the missile defense system, Bush said he was going into the talks with Putin still convinced that a 1972 treaty banning national defenses is outdated.
The war on terrorism underscores the need for a defense, Bush said. If Putin has "interesting suggestions" on how to go ahead despite the treaty, Bush said, he is willing to listen.
The U.S. officials, who held a news briefing on condition of anonymity, said the two leaders were unlikely to impose either equal or precise limits on U.S. and Russian warheads.
They are more inclined to set ranges far below the current totals, possibly with different ranges for the United States and Russia, the officials said.
High-level meetings in Washington and Moscow already have produced substantial progress toward an agreement, they said. Parts of the 1991 Strategic Arms Limitation treaty that set up verification procedures to guard against cheating may be adapted to any new pact.
Putin has shifted his position on Bush's plan for an anti-missile shield, they said. They described his change as a startling turnabout.
Last winter, Putin was predicting the unraveling of arms control accords with the United States if Bush went ahead with tests that conflicted with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Now the Russian leader acknowledges that the United States has a right to withdraw from the treaty, and Bush will have to do it to proceed with his program, the official said.
The meeting will be the fourth held by Bush and Putin. Their relationship was on the upswing before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. That trend accelerated with Russia's cooperation in the U.S. campaign against terrorism, the officials said.
On a sensitive subject, Bush will take up with Putin the Russian technological assistance that the administration is convinced Iran has used in its nuclear weapons program, the official said.
Putin insisted in an American television interview taped Monday in the Kremlin that Russia was not providing dangerous weapons technology to Iran.
But Ephraim Sneh, a former Israeli general now that country's transportation minister, said Wednesday he was certain "the central support for the Iranian nuclear project is provided by Russia."
----
Today in Congress
Thursday, November 8, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59106-2001Nov7?language=printer
SENATE
Meets at 10 a.m.
Committees:
Armed Services -- 9:30 a.m. Nominations of R.L. Brownlee as undersecretary of the Army; Dale Klein as assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical & biological defense programs; and Peter Teets as undersecretary of the Air Force. 222 Russell Office Building....
HOUSE
Meets at 10 a.m.
Committees:
Transportation and Infrastructure -- 10 a.m. Water resources & environment subc. Requirements that facilities and community emergency planning officials publicly disclose information about chemical inventories & emergency plans, & the need to keep such information out of the hands of potential terrorists. 2167 RHOB.
Ways and Means -- 9:30 a.m. Oversight subc. Hearing on charitable organizations' distribution of funds after terrorist attacks. 1100 LHOB.
-------- us nuc waste
Nuclear Solutions and Washington Nuclear Sign Contract
Nov. 8 2001
E-WIRE PRESS RELEASE
http://www.ens-news.com/e-wire/Nov01/08Nov0108.html
MERIDIAN, ID, Nuclear Solutions, Inc. (OTCBB:NSOL) and Washington Nuclear Corporation (WNC) have signed a contract under which WNC will provide consulting services and identify market opportunities leading to demonstration, financing, and commercial deployment of NSOL's HYPERCONTM ADS process for transmutation of nuclear materials and generation of electricity.
WNC is an international consulting and information services company. Based in suburban Washington, D.C., the company provides services to all segments of the commercial nuclear power industry and the international political arena and has clients in the United States, Asia, Australia, Canada, and Europe.
"We are excited to have WNC on board as we look to the possibilities for our technology," said Nuclear Solutions President Dr. Paul M. Brown. "We are confident that WNC's international experience in the nuclear arena will position us well."
WNC Director Eric Lindeman added, "We believe the Nuclear Solutions technology holds tremendous promise for the safe handling of nuclear materials-particularly radioactive waste- while at the same time generating electric power."
This press release may be deemed to contain forward-looking statements that could affect the financial condition and results of operations of the company and its subsidiaries. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial condition, results of operations, and expansion projects of the company are included in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
NOTES TO THE EDITORS:
1. The Nuclear Solutions technology is an electron accelerator-based photodisintegration process that reduces the atomic mass of radioactive materials, thereby rendering them non-radioactive or radioactive with a short half-life. These processes involve accelerator-driven technology and photo-nuclear reactions, incorporating the most recent advances in the photo-nuclear industry.
2. The technology could be developed into new applications for remediation of nuclear waste. Industrially, it would operate at a sub-critical level, so the heat produced by the process could also be used to generate electricity in a safe and environmentally benign manner.
SOURCE: Nuclear Solutions, Inc.
CONTACT: Dr. Paul M. Brown, 208/846-7868/
Web site: www.nuclearsolutions.com/
-------- MILITARY
Coalition Maintenance
New York Times
November 8, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/opinion/08THU2.html
By welcoming French, German, Italian and Turkish troops to the war against terrorism, the United States is shoring up international support for its campaign against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The addition of these forces, some of which may be involved in combat operations, will render military decision-making more cumbersome. That is an acceptable price for ensuring the diplomatic solidarity needed to sustain an extended and difficult armed campaign.
After barely a month of bombing in Afghanistan, signs of public unease have already appeared in several European countries. Involving European NATO members directly in the conflict will make it harder to portray it as a purely American war.
Germany has agreed to contribute nearly 4,000 soldiers, the first German military units to operate outside Europe since World War II. Italy is offering 1,000 ground troops and an aircraft carrier. France has 2,000 commandos in the region whom it is willing to make available. Poland and the Czech Republic are ready to send military units, and Turkish special forces are already on the way. These European contingents will join the American, British, Canadian and Australian forces already operating in or near Afghanistan. This Saturday at the United Nations, President Bush is planning to exhort more countries to contribute directly to the military effort.
Some American strategists, recalling the restraints placed on NATO targeting in Kosovo by the political concerns of participating governments, would have preferred relying almost entirely on American and British forces in Afghanistan. That approach might prove militarily adequate. Yet if the world came to see this conflict as pitting a narrow set of English-speaking allies against a Muslim Central Asian foe, battlefield successes could be undermined by growing diplomatic isolation. A wider coalition mitigates these dangers, particularly when it includes countries like Turkey, NATO's only Muslim member. There will be some politically sensitive missions in which only American and British forces are likely to participate. That does not require excluding other countries from broader military operations.
Washington also sensibly looks to NATO to supplement food deliveries to Afghanistan, beyond the current system of American air drops. Ideally, food distribution would be left to independent humanitarian organizations, not armies. Current conditions in Afghanistan do not allow this, and six million Afghans near starvation from the effects of more than two decades of warfare urgently need relief as winter approaches.
After the frustrations of Kosovo and the fiasco of Somalia, Washington is understandably wary of waging war by international committee and of entangling military tasks and famine relief. Yet there can be no lasting military victory in Afghanistan without corresponding successes on the diplomatic and humanitarian fronts.
-------- afghanistan
Army unit wages propaganda war
'Psyops' group opens a new front: the Afghan mind, heart
By Greg Jaffe
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
http://www.msnbc.com/news/654592.asp?cp1=1
FORT BRAGG, N.C., Nov. 8 -- How do you explain the World Trade Center, the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and U.S. bombs falling from the sky to millions of Afghans -- many of whom have never seen a city, much less a skyscraper?
WITH THE TRADE towers still smoldering, three members of the Army's psychological-warfare unit gathered here to search for an answer. Each had spent big chunks of his life in Afghanistan. Two were native speakers.
All three, though, were initially dumbfounded.
"We were just trying to find a word for terrorist or terrorism in Dari or Pashto. But there was no such word," says David Champagne, an Army civilian analyst and former Peace Corps worker in Afghanistan who has been a critical player in crafting a campaign.
Says another of his colleagues: "The entire campaign has been a tough nut to crack."
The 4th Psychological Operations (Psyops) group is the only active-duty unit in the U.S. military dedicated to psychological operations, an Orwellian-sounding term for a strategy almost as old as war itself. Using leaflets, loudspeakers and four airborne radio stations, their job is to persuade enemy fighters to quit and to convince civilians that U.S. bombs raining down on their country will result in a better future for their families. In Afghanistan, where the population is spread out, largely illiterate and lacking even basics such as batteries for transistor radios, the unit's job is particularly daunting.
Housed in a complex of squat cinder-block buildings with leaky roofs, rusty window casings and fraying carpet, the group consists of about 35 civilian analysts and some 1,200 Army soldiers. The civilians are some of the most eclectic in the Defense Department. Two-thirds have doctoral degrees in anthropology or history, and a quarter are Peace Corps veterans. The active-duty soldiers are among the Army's brightest, all testing in the top 10 percent on Army intelligence tests.
'SOMEWHAT MISUNDERSTOOD'
"Psyops soldiers are somewhat misunderstood by the rest of the military," says Sgt. Maj. Dana Jumper, the unit's top enlisted officer. "They are much more likely to ask, 'Why, Sergeant Major?' than they are to salute and say, 'Yes, sir.'"
In Afghanistan, their role is critical. Reluctant to commit large numbers of ground troops to the fight, U.S. military planners are counting on Taliban soldiers to defect to the U.S., and on ordinary Afghans to take up arms to back American troops. To help make that happen, the 4th Psyops Group already has dropped more than 16 million leaflets on Afghanistan. The most recent shows a Taliban soldier using a metal rod to beat several women, covered head to toe in their Islamic robes, called burkhas. "Is this the future you want for your women and children?" it asks in both Dari and Pashto, the two most common Afghan languages.
Four EC-130 Commando Solo aircraft, lumbering planes that carry sophisticated broadcasting equipment, have been circling the country for 10 hours a day, beaming radio broadcasts. In the first U.S. commando raids in Afghanistan, psyops soldiers parachuted in with Special Forces troops to broadcast messages over loudspeakers.
Behind virtually every pamphlet and broadcast are three members of the unit, who have met almost every day since the Sept. 11 attack. Dr. Champagne, a civilian analyst with the group, spent three years in a village 100 miles from Kandahar as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching at a coeducational high school before writing his doctoral dissertation on Afghan/Iranian relations. "Afghanistan changed my life," he says. "I went to work for the Army in 1982 because I wanted to help kick the Russians out of Afghanistan," says Dr. Champagne, now middle-aged with a receding hairline and wire-rim spectacles.
His assistant, an Army civilian who favors immaculately tailored pinstripe suits, taught at Kabul University before moving to the U.S. in the 1980s. The third member of the group is a 29-year-old Army sergeant who fled Afghanistan with his parents, both civil servants, just before his 12th birthday. Both are fluent in Dari and Pashto, Afghanistan's main languages, as well as many of its 70 dialects. The college professor and the sergeant asked not to be named out of fear that their lives or their families' lives could be endangered.
"We don't have an intellectual understanding of Afghanistan," the professor says. "Afghanistan is a part of us."
Based on their time spent in the country, the three have often provided technical advice. Because they had been involved in mine and ordnance awareness campaigns in Afghanistan, they realized that humanitarian food rations being dropped by the U.S. were colored the same shade of yellow as cluster bombs and the markers used in mine fields. In the future, the humanitarian rations' packaging will be light blue.
Past psyops campaigns in Kosovo and Somalia frequently quoted the Quran. This time, the three-member team lobbied hard to ensure that none of the radio scripts or leaflets mentioned the Muslim holy book. "It would sort of be like a Christian lecturing a Jew on the Old Testament," the professor says.
Afghanistan's tumultuous history
None of the three team members have set foot in Afghanistan since the mid-1980s. At times they have been haunted by the worry that they have lost touch with their native country. And they have wondered if their message is even getting through to Afghanistan's shellshocked and hungry populace.
'FREE PASSAGE'
History has shown that psyops campaigns have mixed success. In the Gulf War tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers surrendered to U.S. forces clutching "free passage" leaflets, dropped from the sky, promising them food and shelter. The North Vietnamese sapped the spirit of U.S. troops with leaflets that featured antiwar protests.
But psyops efforts were disappointing in Kosovo, where leaflet campaigns did little to drive a wedge between Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and his people. "We tried telling the Serbian people this wasn't about them, it was about stopping Milosevic," says retired Col. Charles Borchini, who led the campaign. "But the minute we started dropping bombs on Belgrade, we had a hard time getting that message through to people. Everyone knew Milosevic was a bum. But he was their bum."
Afghanistan presents plenty of unique problems. Because the illiteracy rate is so high there, the 4th Psyops Group members quickly concluded that any leaflets they produced would have to convey their message through pictures. But explaining the terrorist attacks without any words proved impossible. One early leaflet that the group prepared and then rejected showed a picture of wreckage from the World Trade Center next to wreckage from a building in Kabul.
The intent was to show the damage the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist organization had done in the U.S. and in Afghanistan. But the team members worried that few people in Afghanistan would recognize the World Trade Center. An even greater concern: Those who recognized the photo wouldn't understand the text and would think the U.S. was trying to exact retribution for its loss by destroying Afghanistan's capital.
To explain the Sept. 11 attacks, team members decided they would have to rely on radio. One early radio message that sought to explain the attacks began with an Afghan poem. "Just as the blood stains the apron of the butcher, unjustly shed blood remains on the hands of the murderer," begins the script, broadcast dozens of times from an EC-130 aircraft.
Asked where he found the poem, the professor explains, "It was in my head. It is not as good in English. You should hear it in Farsi. You would love it." The script never mentions skyscrapers, the Pentagon or even New York City. Instead it explains, "Thousands of people were killed in the U.S. on Sept. 11, among them a 2-year-old girl, barely able to stand or dress herself. Did she deserve to die? Was she a thief? She was merely on a trip with her family to visit her grandparents." It goes on to say that she was killed by "deluded fighters that prey upon the unsuspecting and the innocent."
Initially, senior military officers at the U.S. Central Command, who are overseeing the war in Afghanistan, wanted the radio broadcasts to consist of nothing but propaganda explaining why the U.S. was bombing and urging defections. The team from the 4th Psyops Group, however, was convinced that using music, which has been banned by the Taliban, would send a stronger message than words.
When their bosses at Central Command headquarters balked, their group commander intervened. "I told them I could fight that battle for them," says Col. David Treadwell.
Today, about three-quarters of the radio broadcasts consist of Afghan music with the remaining one-quarter devoted to tips for surviving the bombing campaign, basic news and propaganda. "We started with a few personal things," says the 29-year-old sergeant, who mined his own CD and tape collection. One early broadcast included a song by Ustad Awalmir, written in the early days of the Soviet invasion. As a 9-year-old boy in Afghanistan, the Army sergeant remembers, he heard it playing on the radio in his home. "Ustad sings about our national pride, our unity, our history and our monuments," the sergeant says. There is even a reference to the massive Buddha statues the Taliban destroyed.
A second song that has received heavy play was recorded six months ago by an Afghan expatriate in the U.S. Set to the tune of an Afghan lullaby, the song describes how with the onset of winter the children of Afghanistan are feeling the first pangs of hunger. The sergeant, whose voice is included on many broadcasts, often follows the song with a radio script that asks, "Do you enjoy being ruled by the Taliban? Are you proud to live a life of fear? ... The Taliban are not concerned with leaving your families fatherless and your mothers begging in the streets in order to feed their children."
Since Sept. 11, the sergeant, who normally favors Phil Collins ("He's really my absolute favorite") over Afghan pop star Khalid Nasiri, has listened to dozens of compact discs. He has downloaded hundreds more tunes from Internet sites that specialize in Afghan music. Some he picks for their message, others just because they are upbeat. "Sometimes I pick a song because it is good to dance to," he says.
In Afghanistan, even those songs carry a powerful message. "Music gives the Afghans a chance to capture their culture again," says Dr. Champagne. "It gives them hope for the future."
The psyops team also has lost some battles in the information war to headquarters officers in Washington, D.C., and Tampa, Fla., where the U.S. Central Command is based. Senior defense officials wanted them to produce a radio broadcast and a leaflet urging Taliban and al-Qaida fighters to surrender or face certain death. Because any sign of cowardice is so scorned in Afghan culture -- "you cannot tell an Afghan to desert or surrender," says the professor -- the group initially balked.
Asking the Taliban fighters to surrender to Northern Alliance troops, with whom they have been locked in a bitter civil war involving ethnic grudges that go back thousands of years, made even less sense. "We can't give people choices that seem totally unreasonable or impossible," the college professor argued.
----
Opposition claims to advance on Mazar-e-Sharif
USA Today
11/08/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/08/afghan-attacks.htm
JABAL SARAJ, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan opposition forces said Thursday they were advancing steadily toward the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif with the help of round-the-clock U.S. bombing. The ruling Taliban, however, said they pushed back several opposition attacks. Both sides said fighting was intense south of Mazar-e-Sharif, which the Taliban seized from the opposition Northern Alliance in 1998. An opposition victory would allow it to open a supply corridor from Uzbekistan, and direct troops toward Taliban strongholds further south.
Also Thursday, witnesses said U.S. jets and at least one B-52 bomber dropped dozens of bombs on Taliban lines at the front north of the capital, Kabul. Opposition spokesman Bismillah Khan said, however, there were no immediate plans to launch an offensive in that area.
Huge plumes of smoke billowed from Taliban positions, which did not fire anti-aircraft guns as they have done on past bombing runs. It was unclear whether the guns had been knocked out or whether the Taliban were saving their ammunition.
Most of the military activity, however, has now shifted to the far north of the country around Mazar-e-Sharif and northeastern Takhar province on the border with Tajikistan.
Pentagon officials reported Wednesday that the opposition Northern Alliance appeared to be making gains south of Mazar-e-Sharif in fluid and chaotic fighting, in which anti-Taliban troops charged tanks and armored personnel carriers on horseback.
Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. special forces troops are with opposition units coordinating airstrikes, which alliance commanders said helped them breach some Taliban defenses south of Mazar-e-Sharif.
Speaking Thursday by satellite telephone, opposition spokesman Ashraf Nadem said his forces had captured another district, Sayyat, southwest of Mazar-e-Sharif.
The Taliban denied losing the district and told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press that three opposition attacks south of Mazar-e-Sharif had failed.
The Taliban's Bakhtar news agency said the Northern Alliance was still 15 miles south of Mazar-e-Sharif and that opposition claims that they were within four miles were false.
U.S. jets also bombed in eastern Kunar province Wednesday, killing three civilians and injuring six, Bakhtar claimed. An empty school was also flattened, it said.
The reports could not be independently verified. The Pentagon has denied Taliban claims that more than five weeks of bombing have inflicted widespread civilian casualties.
Along the Kabul front, Khan, an opposition commander, said U.S. bombing there overnight had been "very effective" and that two Taliban tanks and an anti-aircraft position were destroyed.
Most front line Taliban installations have been destroyed and Taliban troops were moving around to evade U.S. bombs, Khan said.
Meanwhile, the Afghan Islamic Press also reported that the Taliban have arrested 15 Afghans on suspicion they were spying for the United States. An unidentified Taliban intelligence official told the agency that the suspects included Abdul Manaf, a former Afghan army colonel.
Investigations were underway and any punishment will be carried out according to Islamic Sharia law, the official said. The system does not include such institutionalized forms as arraignment, indictment and other procedures traditional under Western law.
President Bush launched airstrikes against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the ruling Taliban militia refused to hand over Osama bin Laden for his alleged role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was in France Thursday on his first international trip since Sept. 11. Musharraf, who planned to also travel to Britain and the United States, supports the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign despite opposition from Muslim groups at home.
---
Afghan opposition claims major advances
USA Today
11/08/2001
By Tim Friend, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/06/attacks.htm
KHOJA BAHAUDDIN, Afghanistan -- Commanders of forces battling the ruling Taliban in northern Afghanistan claimed progress in the ground war Tuesday. They said they had captured three districts near the key city of Mazar-e Sharif. They also claimed that hundreds of Taliban troops had surrendered and that half a dozen Taliban commanders had been captured.
None of the claims by commanders of the Northern Alliance forces could be verified independently. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't comment on the reports.
"You know, there are so many reports about this village or that village. I like to let the dust settle and see where it is at the end of some period of time after there has been a pause," he said.
Abdullah, the Northern Alliance's foreign minister, said the reported victories are an "important beginning" for what is likely to be a long and difficult campaign over the next weeks and months in northern Afghanistan.
Anti-Taliban forces appear to be preparing for major ground offensives across a 100-mile swath of front lines stretching from Mazar-e Sharif to Kalakata, about 20 miles from the Northern Alliance's military headquarters here. But Abdullah stressed that an all-out assault cannot be made without more intensive U.S. airstrikes and better coordination between the United States and the alliance.
Abdullah said one example of how coordination could be improved is better communication of the timing and intensity of airstrikes to facilitate follow-up action by rebel ground troops.
Despite more than a week of bombing in this part of northeast Afghanistan, Taliban troops have not retreated from their strongholds. Abdullah said the hard-line Islamic militia's front lines near Kalakata are among the strongest in Afghanistan. He said he came to the military headquarters here to assess the Taliban's stronghold and the rebels' ability to recapture the region.
Hashmattullah Moslih, a military analyst and member of the Northern Alliance, said he met here Monday night with key officials, including alliance President Burhanuddin Rabbani, to discuss military strategies. He said Rabbani echoed Abdullah's desire for more intensive airstrikes and better coordination from the United States.
Moslih said the goal here is to retake the Taloqan district before winter sets in. He said Taloqan is crucial to creating a direct supply pipeline from the front lines in the far north to the capital, Kabul.
Now, supplies to Northern Alliance ground forces near Kabul must be routed far to the east through Afghanistan's highest mountains. Taloqan is near a mountain pass. Control of that city and the pass would make it far easier to move supplies of arms and aid from Tajikistan and Northern Alliance territory in the northeast to troops near Kabul.
Mazar-e Sharif, which is now controlled by Taliban forces, is also an important battleground. The largest airfield in northern Afghanistan is there. Control of that airfield could give U.S. and Northern Alliance forces a key staging point for bringing in troops, equipment and supplies.
Control of the city and roads leading in and out could also encourage neighboring Uzbekistan to open its border at Termiz, allowing easier movement of humanitarian aid and military supplies into Afghanistan from Uzbekistan.
Questions have been raised here about whether the rebel forces are equipped well enough for a sustained battle against Taliban positions on the front lines. But Monday afternoon, 20 truckloads of munitions provided by the Russians were transported across the Tajik border to northern Afghanistan and taken to the front lines near Kalakata, sources said.
The shipments reinforce the likelihood that a ground attack on Kalakata could begin in the next week.
---
US sends in special forces as offensive in north fades
The Scotsman
Chris Stephen In Jabal u Saraj
Thursday, 8th November 2001
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/text_only.cfm?id=121565
UNITED STATES special forces are to go into action on the ground near the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, according to a senior defence official in Tajikistan, where the units are based.
The move, the first overt combat role for US ground forces, comes amid mounting frustration in Washington about the failure of Northern Alliance troops to make progress.
Tajikistan agreed last weekend to open three bases to the United States, and also to British, Turkish and French special forces. Italy meanwhile became the latest nation to offer troops, with 3,000 men pledged.
Yesterday saw the most intense raids so far by US planes against Taleban units on the Shamali plain north of Kabul. From just before dawn until dusk, the plain echoed to the sounds of US jets and the explosions of bombs. A total of five strikes by B-52s were made.
US planes dropped tens of thousands of propaganda leaflets urging ordinary people to rise up against the Taleban. The leaflets showed a photograph of one of the Taleban's notorious "religious police" beating a crowd of women, with the slogan: "Do you want in the future such a bad life for your wife and children?"
On the back of the leaflet, playing on Afghanistan's extreme xenophobia, was a picture of an Arab member of the Taleban forces, with the slogan "Get these foreigners out of Afghanistan" superimposed.
"Don't worry, they don't mean you," said a soldier on the Northern Alliance front line yesterday. "We love the Americans."
They certainly love the US bombs. Yesterday's strikes made use of specially hardened "bunker buster" bombs, designed to delay their explosion while they pass through the topsoil to detonate in underground bunker complexes. But despite a big increase in US bombing raids, with 120 daily sorties, there is no sign of the Northern Alliance making a breakthrough against the Taleban.
For several days Northern Alliance officials have been assuring news agencies that a series of towns and villages have fallen to their troops. The truth is that the Alliance force nine miles from Mazar has not budged an inch in two weeks, despite US air strikes directed by forward air controllers.
The Alliance has failed to find a way to ship in artillery and shells to smash through the front line, and is still fighting skirmishes with Taleban units in the rear. At least one unit which had defected to the Alliance has now defected back again and there is no sign yet of the inspired generalship needed to bring off a victory either In Mazar or on the Kabul front.
And, like the Serbs in Kosovo two years ago, the Taleban troops have withstood the hammering they are getting from the air without cracking. Yesterday they opened fire on Russian army troops guarding the Afghan border with Tajikistan at Kupletin.
Nevertheless, the coalition keeps growing. Italy is to supply paratroopers and support troops, plus the aircraft carrier Garibaldi, with eight jump jets and four helicopters aboard and one or two escort frigates capable of carrying helicopters.
Britain's envoy to Afghanistan, retired diplomat Paul Bergne, was spotted by The Scotsman in Northern Alliance territory north of Kabul, meeting senior Afghan officials.
While Washington's special forces fly in and out of the forward airfield of Golbahar in choppers and a light plane, Mr Bergne has retired to a Northern Alliance guest house buried in the mountains of the Hindu Kush.
Steeped in the history of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan where he was ambassador in the mid-90s, Mr Bergne, 63 - who declined to speak to this correspondent - speaks fluent Tajik and Russian, along with passable Uzbek. Now an Oxford don, he is regarded as unorthodox, a skill that will come in handy as he gets to grips with the various warlords who make up the Northern Alliance.
----
BATTLEFIELDS
Cave Redoubts Are Formidable, Rebel Leader Says
November 8, 2001
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/international/asia/08TUNN.html?searchpv=nytToday
PARAKH, Afghanistan, Nov. 7 -- Talking about the tunnels and caves that line the walls of the Panjshir Valley, Gen. Abdul Hafiz of the Northern Alliance sounds like a proud father. "They are resistant to bomb attack," he said today. "No bomb or missile can destroy these caves."
He referred to four man-made caves on the military depot he runs here and to dozens of others that line the valley, the mountain stronghold of the anti-Taliban forces. Built to store ammunition, the caves here are similar to those in southern Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leadership are believed to be hiding.
While the general went out of his way to say that American bombing had been effective in destroying, by his estimate, 40 percent of the Taliban's ammunition stock, he was less sanguine about caves and tunnels.
There is only one way to be sure they are eliminated, the general said: "The best solution is ground troops."
The cave in back of General Hafiz's command post is nearly undetectable from a distance. From just 50 feet away, the entrance, a small 8- feet by six-feet doorway in a wall of solid granite, is barely visible. A nondescript mud brick wall hides it from view on the ground. An outcropping of rock above the door hides it from the air.
Caves and tunnels are a military tradition in Afghanistan. The ones here were built by mujahedeen forces fighting the Soviets in the 1980's.
Ahmad Shah Massoud, the former leader of the alliance, expanded them after alliance forces retreated here in 1996.
General Hafiz said that the mujahedeen built an extensive network of tunnels around the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the 1980's and that the Taliban have likely expanded them. All that was needed, he said, was heavy equipment, explosives and cash. "It's easy for the Taliban," he said. "They can bring in equipment from Pakistan and Osama bin Laden has many dollars."
The United States has used 5,000- pound bunker-busting bombs, for instance, and other precision-guided ordnance. But even with advanced satellite intelligence, it is difficult to pinpoint cave locations and have bombs and missiles strike them at exactly the right angle.
The cave entrance, protected by a padlocked gate with iron bars, is slightly larger than the front door of an American home.
A rack holding dozens of small cases of ammunition for Kalashnikov assault rifles stood outside. Inside, long, narrow wooden boxes holding tank ammunition and rockets lay on the floor.
General Hafiz, whose immaculate office is filled with empty mortar ammunition boxes turned into flower pots, said that the cave was 50 yards deep. He refused to open the gate or describe the location of the three other caves, saying he would be arrested by his superiors for revealing military secrets.
A Taliban jet last tried to bomb the cave three months ago, but missed, he said. The bomb hit the ridge high above it. General Hafiz ordered his soldiers to build a mud brick wall in front of the entrance to protect the ammunition from bomb shrapnel. In other raids, Taliban forces have bombed the top of the mountain in an effort to get the cave to collapse. Those failed too, he said, because the tunnel is "very deep" and strong.
He said electrical and water lines could easily be installed in a cave to make it habitable.
----
Taleban retreat could take war across border
FROM OLIVER AUGUST IN BEIJING
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 08 2001
UK Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001380018-2001385494,00.html
EMBATTLED Taleban forces in northern Afghanistan are trying to cross into Tajikistan, threatening to spread armed conflict in Central Asia.
Russian guards along the Tajik border have been involved in intense fighting with retreating Taleban units after recent US bombing raids.
A group of armed men approached one border point at midnight on Sunday and opened fire in an attempt to cross into Tajikistan. They retreated 30 minutes later when Russian guards called in reinforcements, but an eventual mass exodus could endanger US bases in the region.
Taleban commanders are said to have held regular talks with their Tajik counterparts over possible escape routes. The remote Afghan-Tajik border is practically impossible to seal, even with almost 20,000 Russian soldiers deployed.
Taleban forces in northern Afghanistan are led by Juma Namangani, a notorious Central Asian guerrilla, who maintains a fiercely defended base on Tajik territory and enjoys considerable support in parts of the country. Namangani, an Uzbek national and fundamentalist Muslim, fought for five years in the mid-90s Tajik civil war. He is Central Asia's most wanted man after Osama bin Laden having carried out several failed assassination attempts against President Karimov of Uzbekistan.
Namangani commands about 10,000 non-Afghan fighters, including Tajiks, Pakistanis and Chechens, near the city of Taloqan in northern Afghanistan. He is said to be part of the Taleban high command, but his troops have recently been cut off from supply routes, making defeat and a hasty exodus more likely.
The departure of thousands of Taleban troops from Afghanistan to Tajikistan would signal a momentary victory for the Northern Alliance but could destabilise neighbouring countries with large Muslim populations.
Encouraged by the influx of Taleban fighters, extremists in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are likely to oppose American use of local air bases. It is also feared that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), led by Namangani and listed by the White House as a terror group, would trigger violent clashes and undermine the safety of US servicemen in the region.
The BBC Monitoring Service reported from local sources this week: "Representatives of the IMU are holding talks with Tajik field commanders on the possibility of returning to their detachments in Tajikistan. It looks as if the darkest predictions of the Central Asian special services on how the situation could develop are coming true."
Tajikistan is fast emerging as one of the hottest military prizes in the region. The Northern Alliance has long received supplies from the former Soviet republic. Now, Taleban forces are keen to use the country as a possible escape route.
Simultaneously, the US is seeking to base fighter aircraft at three Tajik air bases. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, visited the country last week as Washington seemed to lean towards the eventual deployment of ground troops in Afghanistan.
Land-based airstrikes would be easier than using carrier-based warplanes and long-range bombers, the Pentagon said this week.
-------- biological weapons
Decades-old smallpox vaccinations may still protect
USA Today
11/08/2001
By Rita Rubin, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/08/smallpox-usat.htm
While many Americans worry that bioterrorists will strike with smallpox before the USA has enough vaccine, studies suggest that people immunized 50 years ago or more still have some protection. Researchers also say mass immunization probably wouldn't be necessary because smallpox is not as contagious as other bugs such as measles or the flu. "It's not going to be the Armageddon that some would have you believe," says smallpox expert James LeDuc of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In some countries, smallpox was eradicated after less than two-thirds of people were immunized, LeDuc says.
When it comes to smallpox vaccine, the immune system appears to have a long memory. "Even if you're over 50 years old and saw the vaccine when you were a child, the risk of dying from infection is much less than if you've never seen the vaccine," LeDuc says.
The United States stopped giving smallpox vaccinations in 1972, but the government wants to stockpile doses in case of an attack.
LeDuc says the CDC this month will rewrite a section of its Web site to better explain the issue of residual immunity. Currently, the Web site states that smallpox vaccine protects for only three to five years.
A 1913 report about a 1902-03 outbreak in Liverpool, England, provides the earliest clues about the vaccine's legs. The study analyzed the severity of disease in 1,163 people.
There were 55 cases among people 50 and older who had been vaccinated in their childhood. Only four were severe, and only three died, says Frank Fenner, co-author of Smallpox and Its Eradication and researcher at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra, Australia. By comparison, Fenner says, the disease killed six of the 12 victims 50 and older who had never been vaccinated.
In 1996, scientists from the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester reported that immune cells from healthy volunteers recognized the vaccinia virus -- used to immunize against smallpox -- as a foe. Yet up to 50 years had passed since the volunteers' smallpox vaccinations.
It's not clear how the immune response seen in the lab would translate into real life, says study co-author Francis Ennis. While immunity persists for decades, Ennis says, it most likely does wane over time.
---
FBI: Anthrax did not come from known U.S. lab
USA Today
11/06/2001
By Laura Parker and Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/07/anthrax.htm
WASHINGTON -- None of the anthrax mailed to government and media offices recently was stolen or misplaced from a registered American lab, a top FBI official told a Senate panel Tuesday.
That assessment by James Caruso, deputy assistant director of the FBI, was the most definitive public statement yet about the source of the anthrax that has killed four people, infected 14 others and forced the closure of key government buildings here.
But Caruso cautioned against concluding that if the anthrax wasn't missing or stolen, then it must have been privately cultivated in an unknown location somewhere in the USA.
"There is insufficient information" to support that, Caruso said of an investigation that has involved 7,000 federal agents and so far not identified any suspects.
Caruso was questioned sharply by senators who clearly were impatient with the lack of results so far.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the panel, said she was "very surprised that the FBI has not made more progress."
But Caruso said that many people had worked in US labs over the past several decades who could have learned about anthrax or had access to it.
"It's a very big population and universe to look at," he said.
The most perplexing part of the investigation is tracking how a New York City hospital worker was exposed. Kathy Nguyen, who died of inhalation anthrax on Oct. 21, did not fit the profile of previous victims, who were associated either with the media or the mail system. On Tuesday, investigators were using Nguyen's subway fare card to try to trace her steps around the city during the 2 weeks before her death.
As the investigation grinds on, the frenzy that accompanied the beginning weeks of the attacks has largely subsided:
- The Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, where Nguyen worked, reopened 6 days after it was closed.
- Post offices in Princeton and West Trenton, N.J., where traces of anthrax were found, reopened Tuesday after they were cleaned.
- No new spores were found at the government buildings being tested, although a small number of spores were detected on a diplomatic mailbag sent from Washington to the U.S. Consulate in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.
- No new cases of infections were reported. A New Jersey postal worker hospitalized for inhalation anthrax was discharged from a hospital after a 3-week stay.
Meanwhile, the Postal Service announced that it has hired a second private contractor to speed up efforts to decontaminate mail that was quarantined after the anthrax attacks. Postal officials warned that they will ask Congress to finance the entire cost of their agency's response to the anthrax attacks, now estimated to be several billion dollars.
"We strongly believe these costs should not be borne by our customers through increased rates," said Robert Rider, chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors.
The Postal Service's revenue was down $300 million from Sept. 5 to Oct. 8, spokesman Azeezaly Jaffer said. Now the agency faces the expensive new chore of sanitizing the mail before it is delivered.
The Postal Service says it spent $2.4 million to hire a Chicago firm, Ion Beam Applications, to sterilize mail that had been quarantined when Washington's Brentwood mail-processing center was closed Oct. 21.
Two postal workers there died of inhalation anthrax. The company will supplement the work of a Lima, Ohio, company that has been cleansing the mail.
Jaffer said the backlog of mail quarantined after the closure of the Brentwood facility, which handles nearly all of the capital city's mail, will last 2 or 3 more weeks. He said the delivery of cleansed mail from that facility should begin within 2 days.
---
THE DIAGNOSTIC TESTS
New Tools Emerging to Speed Anthrax Detection
New York Times
November 8, 2001
By KENNETH CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/national/08DETE.html?searchpv=nytToday
An ideal test for anthrax -- fast, sensitive, infallible and cheap -- does not yet exist. But drug companies say they have developed new tools that will greatly speed detection and diagnosis.
The Roche Diagnostics Corporation of Indianapolis announced on Monday that it would begin shipping test kits to laboratories this week for use in buildings and the mail, and that it would seek government approval for use of the kits to diagnose anthrax in humans. A competitor, Cepheid of Sunnyvale, Calif., said it had been offering a similar product for a year and a half.
Because early treatment of anthrax greatly increases the chances of survival, prompt detection of spores and diagnostic tests that pick up the earliest signs of the disease would blunt its lethal potential.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., developed the Roche test, which multiplies any genetic material in a sample and then looks for snippets of DNA that are unique to Bacillus anthracis, the germ that causes anthrax.
"We had been looking at anthrax in the past, but it was definitely on the back burner," said Dr. Franklin R. Cockerill III, who led the team.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Dr. Cockerill said, "we jumped right into the fire here, and all our research time was devoted to the ramping up of this test."
Dr. Cockerill said the test, which gives results in about 35 minutes, as compared with several hours for most current genetic tests, was highly accurate and had not generated any false positives. It can also detect hard anthrax spores, not just the germinated bacteria.
The results of the Roche test, like other quick anthrax tests, need to be verified by biochemical tests on bacterial cultures, which are considered to be the most reliable but take a couple of days.
Initially, the Roche test is to be used to determine the presence of anthrax in a letter or a building. Roche said it would provide the kits free of charge until the test received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for analyzing blood and tissue samples.
Cepheid, meanwhile, seemed unimpressed by the attention given the Roche announcement. Thomas Gutshall, the company's chief executive, called it "a nice press release," but added, "It doesn't really bring anything unusual."
Cepheid has sold a similar quick genetic test for anthrax since May 2000, and other companies will soon offer similar products.
"A lot of us have the same chemistry," Mr. Gutshall said.
Cepheid is also looking for F.D.A. approval for the test to be used as a diagnostic tool for disease.
Another test, which looks for signs of the body's counteroffensive against the attacking bacteria, is to be tested at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
The hospital will examine up to 500 people who may have been exposed to anthrax recently. Researchers will inject an antibody designed to hook up to certain infection-fighting white blood cells. This study will probably be less a clinical study than a trial run for testing in a possible future outbreak, since many of the participants are already taking antibiotics that would have killed off the infections.
Dennis Earle, director of clinical affairs at Palatin Technologies Inc. of Princeton, N.J., the maker of the test, said the antibody "attaches to white cells that are circulating and also white cells that are already at the site of the infection." The antibodies are labeled with radioactive atoms, which shoot out easily detectable gamma rays as they decay.
If anthrax bacteria are multiplying, the white blood cells should start clustering around the infection days before outward symptoms appear.
-------
THE TREATMENTS
3 Smaller Companies Say Their Vaccines Are Cheaper
New York Times
November 8, 2001
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/business/08VACC.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 -- Three small vaccine manufacturers that lost out in the first round of bidding for a government contract for smallpox vaccines complained today that they could supply the vaccines for a price that large drug makers still in the running say they cannot meet.
The dispute over vaccine pricing reflects a split in the pharmaceutical industry. Some small biological research companies that have done considerable work on smallpox vaccines over the last two years say that they have the viral seed stock to produce the vaccines and could do so quickly and cheaply by renting space at larger laboratories.
Two of the three finalists in the bidding for the vaccine contract, Merck (news/quote) and GlaxoSmithKline (news/quote ), have done little work in recent decades on smallpox vaccines, but have their own big laboratories. The third finalist is a partnership between Acambis (news/quote), a small British biological research company, and Baxter International (news/quote), a large pharmaceutical company with many labs.
Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, told reporters on Tuesday evening that the three finalists' bids were "much higher than I had anticipated." He added that he had just warned the Office of Management and Budget that the contract could cost more than the $509 million he had previously predicted.
Mr. Thompson said this evening that the government was not just looking for the lowest bidder, but for the company or companies that could provide the safest, most effective vaccine earliest. "As far as the price is going, I hope it's going to go down," he said.
Louis Potash, the director of vaccine technologies at Novavax (news/quote), one of seven companies that sought the vaccine contract and were eliminated in a first round of bidding a week ago, said his company could have met the government's target price of about $2 a dose for 250 million doses. "Our price was around $2 a dose, and when I look at this, I'm sick," he said.
An official at Dynport, a company developing a smallpox vaccine under an Army contract, was equally critical. "We've already produced some, so we know how to do it, we can do it under the budget, under the $509 million," said the official, who insisted on anonymity.
The big drug companies "are going to have to spend a couple months figuring out what to do," the official said, adding that Dynport had just been told by the Army to hand over to Merck the viral seed stock it had developed.
Bavarian Nordic, based in Copenhagen, said that it could have provided a different, European kind of smallpox vaccine for $2 or less a dose. But Peter Wulff, the company's chief executive, said that he thought it was "reasonable that the U.S. would like to take one of the larger pharmaceutical companies."
The controversy over the price coincides with a partisan rift in Congress over drug makers' liability for the smallpox vaccines. The vaccines had a high rate of side effects before their civilian use ended in 1972. Doctors predict that inoculating every American now would kill hundreds of people and leave another 1,000 or more with brain damage. Drug makers want complete immunity from liability, with any lawsuits directed at the federal government instead. Representative Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican who is the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, endorsed the drug makers' position in an interview today. Shifting any and all liability to the federal government is the fastest and simplest approach, at least in the short term, he said.
Two Congressional Democrats who have played a leading role for decades in vaccine legislation, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, are drafting bills to create a federal fund to compensate victims of bioterrorism vaccines. The fund would be modeled on an existing fund to help children hurt by childhood vaccines. As is the case with the childhood vaccines fund, people harmed by bioterrorism vaccines could still sue vaccine makers, but only in cases of gross negligence or fraud.
But Mr. Tauzin said he doubted "whether in the middle of a bioterrorism crisis we can have a tort reform debate."
---
Excerpts From Postal Worker's 911 Call
New York Times
November 8, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/national/08ATEX.html
Following are excerpts from a 911 call on Oct. 21 by Thomas Morris Jr., a postal worker who died hours after the call, as recorded by The New York Times from CNN:
911 OPERATOR What's the problem?
MR. MORRIS My breathing is very, very labored.
Q. How old are you?
A. I'm 55. Ah, I don't know if I have been, but I suspect that I might have been exposed to anthrax.
Q. You know when or what --
A. Ah, it was last what, last Saturday, a week ago last Saturday [Oct. 13] morning at work. I work for the Postal Service. I've been to the doctor. I went to the doctor Thursday. He took a culture but he never got back to me with the results. I guess there was some hangup over the weekend. I'm not sure. But in the meantime, I went through achiness and headachiness. This started Tuesday. Now I'm having difficulty breathing. And just to move any distance I feel like I'm going to pass out. . . .
It was -- a woman found the envelope and I was in the vicinity. It had powder in it. They never let us know whether the thing had -- was anthrax or not. They never treated the people who were around this particular individual and the supervisor who handled the envelope. So I don't know if it is or not. I'm just -- I've never been able to find out. I've been calling. But the symptoms that I've had are what was described to me in a letter that they put out, almost to the T except I haven't had any vomiting until just a few minutes ago. I'm not bleeding and I don't have diarrhea. The doctor thought that it was just a virus or something. . . . So we went with that and I was taking Tylenol for the achiness. But the shortness of breath, now, I don't know. That's consistent with the -- with the anthrax.
Q. But you weren't the one that handled the envelope? It was somebody else?
A. No, I didn't handle it. But I was in the vicinity.
Q. O.K. And do you know what they did with the envelope at work?
A. I don't know anything. I don't know anything. I couldn't even find out if it -- if the stuff was or wasn't. I was told that it wasn't, but I have a tendency not to believe these people.
------- drug war
Supreme Court to decide on school drug testing
USA Today
11/08/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/court/2001-11-08-drugtesting.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court agreed Thursday to decide if leaders of untroubled schools should have the same authority to test students for drugs as do schools with serious narcotics problems.
The high court will reconsider the subject of student drug screening in response to conflicting rulings over how far educators can go in keeping classrooms drug-free.
Justices upheld testing of athletes in 1995 in an Oregon school district, where drug-using jocks were blamed for discipline problems. The court stopped short, however, of endorsing blanket drug testing.
In the case accepted for review by the Supreme Court Thursday, an appeals court said a rural Oklahoma district violated the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches by requiring random tests of students involved in extracurricular activities, such as the chorus.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the district had no justification for drug testing because it had few problems. Among the more serious incidents was a choir member caught with alcohol in a cough syrup bottle on a trip. The court struck down the district's policy, and school officials appealed to the Supreme Court.
"The issue presented is of major importance ... to all public schools in the nation which are responsible for the safety of the students under their supervision on a daily basis and must address drug use which threatens their safety," the school told the court in urging it to accept the appeal.
Lawyers for the school said the Supreme Court determined in the 1995 case that public schools are a special environment and students have a lower expectation of privacy.
"The mere entrance through the schoolhouse gates does not include the blanket invitation to subject students in America's public schools to drug tests," American Civil Liberties attorneys, representing three students, told the court.
The Fourth Amendment case turns on whether schools have to prove narcotics problems before testing children and if testing is appropriate only for students who are involved in potentially dangerous activities, such as sports.
"This issue is obviously a difficult one with which courts will continue to grapple," the appeals court had said.
Tecumseh school officials tested about 500 students from 1998 to 2000. Four tested positive for drugs. Officials in the community 40 miles from Oklahoma City said they use multiple methods to deter drug use, including surveillance cameras, drug education, drug dogs and the testing program.
Students who test positive must be counseled and quit using drugs to remain involved in the extracurricular activities.
The Supreme Court in 1989 upheld drug testing of railroad employees involved in accidents and U.S. Customs agents who enforce anti-drug laws or carry guns. In both decisions, the court cited public health and safety as justification.
The high court in 1997 struck down a Georgia law that required political candidates to take drug tests, partly because there was no evidence of a drug-abuse problem among the state's elected officials.
In the case accepted Thursday, the appeals court said there was no evidence of drug use among the Oklahoma students required to take tests -- members of the academic team, choir, Future Farmers of America and Future Homemakers of America.
The Oregon case involved testing only of athletes, who officials said encouraged drug use by peers.
"Deterring drug use by our nation's schoolchildren is at least as important as enhancing efficient enforcement of the nation's laws against the importation of drugs," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the 6-3 Oregon decision.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in dissent that the ruling means millions of student athletes, "an overwhelming majority of whom have given school officials no reason whatsoever to suspect they use drugs at school, are open to an intrusive bodily search."
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted with the majority but said the ruling leaves undecided whether public schools can require all students to undergo drug tests.
The Oklahoma case is Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 01-332.
---
DEA resources are stretched thin
USA Today
11/07/2001
By Toni Locy, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/07/dea.htm
WASHINGTON -- Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, federal law enforcement agencies have been locked in a "battle of resources" between fighting terrorism and continuing to investigate crime, the nation's top drug enforcer says.
Asa Hutchinson, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Tuesday that he is concerned that efforts to stop drug trafficking will be hindered by two recent moves: the FBI's pullout from several DEA-FBI drug task forces, and a reassignment of Coast Guard resources that has left the USA vulnerable to drug smuggling from Caribbean routes.
Hutchinson said FBI agents have been pulled off drug investigations from Boca Raton, Fla., to Boston to Detroit to work on the massive terrorism investigation, and the transfer has forced his agency to "pick up the slack."
"When the dust settles" in the inquiries into the anthrax attacks and the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Hutchinson said, he expects officials to determine what role, if any, the FBI will have in large-scale drug investigations in the future.
In the 1980s, the FBI lobbied for and was given joint jurisdiction with the DEA to investigate drug offenses.
But in the past 2 decades, Congress has piled more responsibilities on the FBI, from tracking down deadbeat dads who owe child support to patrolling Indian reservations.
Now, terrorism has given the FBI dual roles: Root out terrorists and their associates here, and thwart future attacks rather than wait for them to occur.
"They (the FBI) are clearly spread thin," Hutchinson said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. "It remains to be seen whether there's going to be a functional shift or whether it's followed by a formal reworking" of the relationship between the FBI and DEA.
FBI officials declined to comment on Hutchinson's remarks.
The Coast Guard also has shifted its resources to combat terrorism. To increase its ability to guard U.S. ports, it has taken most of its resources away from drug interdiction, particularly in the Caribbean, Hutchinson said.
Acknowledging that the "war on drugs" has taken a back seat to the "war on terrorism," he said, "I think we are holding our own."
But, he added, "We don't want the Caribbean to go back to the way it was in the '80s. We don't want to give a window of opportunity for the traffickers."
He said he has raised these concerns with Congress, but "it's a battle of resources right now."
"For the long term," he said, "we need to balance this out and devote the resources we need" to terrorism and drug enforcement.
-------- iraq
US could turn attention to Iraq after Afghanistan: Powell
Thursday November 8, 9:47 PM
Agence France Presse
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011108/1/1puwx.html
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has warned the United States could turn its attention to Iraq after achieving the goals of its military campaign in Afghanistan.
"We must end Osama bin Laden's terrorist threat to the world, and deal with the Taliban regime, who has given them haven," Powell told reporters Wednesday, after talks with Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Shaykh Sabah al-Hamad Al Sabah.
He said that after the goals of Operation Enduring Freedom are achieved, the United States will turn its attention to terrorism throughout the world.
"And nations such as Iraq, which have tried to pursue weapons of mass destruction, should not think that we will not be concerned about these activities, and will not turn our attention to them," Powell pointed out.
An opinion poll by Zogby International revealed Wednesday that 80 percent of Americans believed that launching military strikes against Iraq and removing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power would be an effective move in the war against terrorism declared by President George W. Bush.
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz was quoted Sunday by a Lebanese newspaper as saying that Kuwait had always been a part of Iraq.
But Powell dismissed the remarks as inconsequential.
"Well, Mr. Tareq Aziz has been making these rather ridiculous and threatening statements for many years, so I take them all with a grain of salt," the secretary of state said.
The Bush administration has been under increased pressure from Republicans in Congress to move against Iraq in the wake of the September 11 attacks, even though administration officials have repeatedly said there is no credible evidence implicating Baghdad in the terrorist act.
Late last month, Aziz told The Sunday Telegraph of London that the United States and Britain planned to launch 1,000 missiles at 300 Iraqi targets in a bid to topple Saddam Hussein under the pretext of waging war against terrorism.
British officials have denied the charge.
--- japsn
Japan commits ships to support war on terror
USA Today
11/08/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/08/japan-ships.htm
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's Cabinet voted Thursday to dispatch three warships to provide non-combat support in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, despite opposition to any Japanese attempt to expand its military role. The two destroyers and a supply vessel will leave the southern port of Sasebo on Friday morning and head for the Indian Ocean to gather intelligence for the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, said Tsutomu Himeno, deputy spokesman for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
The move comes after parliament last month passed laws allowing Japan's military to transport supplies and provide other non-combat support to the coalition fighting against the terrorist network suspected in the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
Tokyo had also reportedly planned to dispatch a destroyer equipped with a high-tech Aegis combat radar system, but decided against it amid concern that deploying the ship would weaken the country's ability to defend itself.
Koizumi is eager to show that Japan is doing more than just sending money to assist in the war in Afghanistan, hoping to avoid the harsh criticism of the "dollar diplomacy" it used in the Gulf War a decade ago.
But the prime minister must strike a balance between U.S. demands for military support and opposition at home and in the rest of Asia toward any sign of revived militarism.
Asian countries have bitter memories of atrocities committed by Japanese troops in their rampage through the region in the first half of the 1900s, and react sharply against any sign that Japan is expanding its military role.
The three ships are based at Sasebo in Nagasaki prefecture, about 614 miles southwest of Tokyo. It will take them about two weeks to reach the Indian Ocean, Himeno said.
Koizumi's administration wants to complete a plan for Japan's military to help with refueling and reconnaissance missions by mid-November, according to Japanese media reports.
Japan's constitution -- written by the U.S. occupation authorities after World War II -- bans the nation from using force to settle international disputes.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan orders Taliban to close consulate
USA Today
11/08/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/08/pakistan-consulate.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- In a diplomatic crackdown on its former allies, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said Thursday that it had ordered the Taliban to close its consulate in the port city of Karachi. Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said his military government has "no intention" of breaking diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime, which is harboring Osama bin Laden, the top suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. He said it was "essential" these ties be maintained.
The ties provide "a useful diplomatic window," Musharraf said in Paris, where he met French President Jacques Chirac to discuss the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.
Staff at the Afghan consulate in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, have been asked to return to Afghanistan immediately, said Aziz Ahmad Khan, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.
Taliban Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef told The Associated Press that the Pakistanis ordered operations at the Karachi consulate to cease by the end of this week. Pakistani officials said the government informed the Taliban of the order Tuesday.
The Taliban also maintain an embassy in Islamabad and consulates in Quetta and Peshawar. "They're functioning," Khan said.
Zaeef was also told to stop his regular press conferences, in which he condemned the United States and its coalition partners for the bombing campaign.
Pakistan supports the U.S. campaign, which was launched Oct. 7 after the ruling militia refused to hand over bin Laden.
Because of the press conferences, which were broadcast live by CNN, Zaeef became the most visible spokesman for the Islamic fundamentalist militia.
Pakistan took the moves ahead of a nationwide strike called for Friday by Islamic activists to protest Musharraf's support of the bombing campaign.
Officials said the government has told Zaeef to make sure Afghan diplomatic staff here do not take part in any rallies. After Europe, the next stop on Musharraf's trip is the United States, where he will meet President Bush during a session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
Karachi is the major Pakistani commercial and banking center. It is also a center of Islamic fundamentalist activity and scene of the largest protests against the bombing campaign.
Pakistan is the only country that maintains diplomatic relations with the Taliban. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates severed their ties after the September terrorist attacks.
---
Pakistani leader pushes for 'short' war
USA Today
11/08/2001
By Ellen Hale, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/nphoto.htm
LONDON -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, stopping in Europe on his way to the USA, warned Thursday that bombing Afghanistan during the holy month of Ramadan would create hostility in the Muslim world.
Musharraf also told leaders of Britain's House of Commons that it is in "everyone's interest" for the military campaign to be "short and targeted." Musharraf is due to meet with President Bush on Saturday in New York as part of a five-country trip to key coalition countries. The trip culminates at the United Nations in New York.
British and U.S. officials have said the military campaign will not stop for Ramadan, and have noted that throughout history Muslims have carried on wars through the holy month.
Musharraf, despite his warnings, has turned his country into a staunch ally of the U.S.-led effort to rout Osama bin Laden and his Afghan-based terrorist network.
Ramadan, despite its austere requirement that every able person fast from dawn to sunset, is an essentially joyous holiday. It marks the revelation of the Koran to Mohammed and concludes with the feast of Eid ul-Fitr (eed al-fitter). Muslims gather for special daily prayers in mosques and break their fast among family and friends in homes.
The holy month officially begins with the sighting of the crescent moon of Ramadan, which this year is expected to be visible as early as Nov. 16 in some parts of the world -- but more generally on Nov. 17.
Continuing the bombing through Ramadan, which begins in about 10 days, "will have an adverse effect in Muslim countries," Musharraf said, speaking in English. "It will have a negative fallout in the entire Muslim world."
Musharraf also said Pakistan has "no intention" of breaking diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime, which is harboring Osama bin Laden, the top suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. He said it was "essential" these ties be maintained.
The ties provide "a useful diplomatic window," he said. "Diplomatic interaction is useful and fruitful and accepted by the coalition."
Asked whether Pakistan knows bin Laden's whereabouts, Musharraf said: "No. We would like to find that out."
Musharraf spoke after talks with Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Meeting Wednesday evening with President Jacques Chirac, he pressed the French leader for debt relief and an unspecified amount of financial aid, according to Chirac's spokeswoman, Catherine Colonna.
Pakistan quickly sided with the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks, despite its ties to neighboring Afghanistan.
Musharraf said his nation would remain actively involved in the coalition, and pledged "total cooperation" in sharing intelligence, considered critical to the U.S.-led military effort.
Pakistan has already won the lifting of U.S. economic sanctions and various pledges of debt relief as part of a series of measures aimed at propping up its sluggish economy.
---
MUSLIM ALLY
Musharaff Urges Bombing Halt for Ramadan
New York Times
November 8, 2001
By SUZANNE DALEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/international/asia/08MUSH.html
PARIS, Nov. 7 -- The president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, made another plea today for a stop to the American-led military strikes in Afghanistan during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as he made his way to Europe and the United States.
Speaking at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul during the second stopover of a six-day diplomatic shuttle that brought him to Paris this evening, General Musharraf said he would discuss a pause in the bombing with President Bush later in the week during his visit to the United States.
"One would certainly wish it would not go on during Ramadan because it will definitely have negative effects around the Islamic world," the general said.
But General Musharraf stopped short of categorically calling for a halt to the bombing during the holy days beginning later this month, and in a news conference with President Jacques Chirac of France the subject did not come up.
The general is on his first trip outside of Pakistan since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington and is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday.
At Élysée Palace here, General Musharraf and Mr. Chirac said their evening together would be spent over a "working dinner," discussing the difficulties Pakistan is facing and the economic aid it needs.
"Pakistan has chosen to fight against terrorism," Mr. Chirac said. "France understands the difficulties involved in this courageous decision and wants to give it its support."
Once given a cool reception in the West, General Musharraf has already won pledges of debt relief and the lifting of United States economic sanctions as part of a number of measures intended to prop up Pakistan's stalled economy in exchange for his support of the American-led antiterrorism coalition.
But the six-day trip is another occasion for General Musharraf to enhance his stature in Pakistan by talking with world leaders as well as pursuing even more concrete promises of aid.
General Musharraf made two stopovers in Iran and Turkey -- both predominantly Muslim countries -- before arriving in Paris. He is to meet with Prime Minister Lionel Jospin on Thursday before traveling on to London and New York.
Few details were made available about his stopover in Tehran, although a local news agency said that he met with the first vice president, Muhammad Reza Aref, on the crisis in Afghanistan.
Iran disagrees with Pakistan and Turkey over the war in Afghanistan, with Tehran condemning the strikes against the Taliban.
During a 40-minute stopover in Turkey, General Musharraf said news reports on civilian deaths in Afghanistan were exaggerated, though he did not offer his own assessment of the number killed.
He dismissed accounts of divisions within Pakistan's military over his assistance to the United States, saying that Pakistan is a moderate Muslim country where a minority has given the world a false impression.
"Pakistan has one of the strongest and best-disciplined armies in the world, which would follow only its leader," he said. "Just as there is no possibility of another coup in Turkey, there is none in Pakistan, either."
-------- russia
Russian forces kill Chechen rebel leader
USA Today
11/08/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/08/chechen.htm
VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia (AP) -- Russia claimed its forces killed a rebel commander in Chechnya, and said Thursday a leader in the breakaway republic's pro-Moscow administration survived an attempt on his life.
Shamil Iriskhanov was killed during a security sweep by federal forces in Chechnya's southern mountains, Russia's Federal Security Service told the ITAR-Tass news agency. It did not say when he was killed.
Iriskhanov has been a primary foe of Russian law enforcement agencies since taking a leading role in a 1995 rebel raid on the Russian city of Budyonnovsk, ITAR-Tass reported. The attack and efforts by Russian forces to drive the rebels out of a hospital where they held hundreds of hostages left more than 100 people dead.
Federal troops killed Iriskhanov's elder brother, Hizir, earlier this year. Both were close allies of Shamil Basayev, one of Chechnya's most prominent rebel leaders.
On Wednesday, guerrillas attacked the motorcade of Chechnya's Russian-appointed administrator, Akhmad Kadyrov, but he escaped unharmed, Russian officials said. they said four bodyguards were wounded, one of them seriously.
Officials said federal forces have sealed off Argun, the city where the attacks took place, to search for the assailants in what Russian news reports said was the 13th attempt on Kadyrov's life.
In all, five federal troops were killed and 14 wounded while two rebels were killed and two wounded Wednesday, Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration said.
Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya after a 1994-96 war that left separatists in control. They returned to the region two years ago after guerrillas raided a neighboring Russian region and apartment-house bombings that Russia blamed on the rebels killed more than 300 people in Moscow and other cities.
As the death toll continued to rise, a Russian activist group accused authorities of abusing the rights of the director of a camp for Chechen refugees in neighboring province of Ingushetia. Authorities arrested Imran Ezheyev and kept him in prison for nearly a month without filing charges, said Lipkhan Bazayeva, an official with the rights group Memorial.
Ezheyev, who also worked for Russian-Chechen friendship society, was arrested Oct. 13 on a mistaken warrant outstanding from Soviet times. When the mistake was discovered, police continued to hold him on suspicion of aiding terrorist acts in Chechnya and moved him to a prison in the Chechen capital Grozny. Rights activists have called for his immediate release.
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UN fears 'disaster' over strikes near huge dam
By Richard lloyd Parry in Quetta
08 November 2001
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=103784
The United Nations is warning of a "disaster of tremendous proportions" after US planes bombed a hydro-electric power station close to a vast dam in southern Afghanistan.
UN officials say that the loss of electricity will increase the suffering of civilians in southern Afghanistan, which has already suffered massive damage from American air raids. They fear that further air raids risk destroying the dam itself, with catastrophic consequences for the region.
The Taliban city of Kandahar lost all its electricity a week ago, after bombs knocked out transmission from the hydro-electric power station at the Kajaki Dam in the remote reaches of Afghanistan's Helmand Province. According to diplomatic sources in Pakistan, the raids also struck a military post which has in the past been used by Arab militants of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network.
The UN has sent Afghan employees to the isolated site to report on the extent of the damage. Initial reports suggest that the dam itself was not directly hit by the raids but, according to the office of the UN regional co-ordinator for Southern Afghanistan, even the failure of the electricity creates the risk of massive flooding and crop failures.
"In case the dam and/or the three tunnels (with regulators) leading the water out of the dam also has been damaged it may result in a disaster of tremendous proportions," says an internal report prepared by the regional co-ordinator in the Pakistani city of Quetta and made available to The Independent. "If the dam collapses the whole Helmand valley would be flooded, risking the life of tens of thousands of people in addition to destroying the lands benefiting around 500,000 people (and feeding around 1,000,000 people) ... It is crucial to have the situation at the Kajaki dam/power plant assessed."
The 48-year-old dam on the Helmand River is 300ft high, 900ft long, and holds back 1.85 million cubic metres of water in a 32-mile long reservoir. Ironically, the dam's engineering and the manufacture of the two turbines are American. The connection of the power plant with the city of Kandahar, 60 miles south-east, was one of the few development projects successfully completed by the Taliban earlier this year.
The power station provides electricity to about half a million people and to several hospitals and industries, including a large textile factory. But it also powers the machinery which controls the crucial flow of the Helmand River through the dam itself. Downstream of the dam, the population survives off fields created out of the desert by irrigation. If this water supply is disrupted, there will be severe damage to the harvest in a region already threatened by drought and food shortages.
Too little water would make it impossible to plant the winter wheat. Too much water too soon would exhaust the reservoir, causing the wheat crop to shrivel in the spring. "In addition, in the case of the long-awaited rain arriving, the dam risks bursting without a proper functioning control/regulatory mechanism in place," says the UN report. "Needless to say, the regulatory mechanism is powered by electricity."
Kandahar lost much of its electricity supply three weeks ago, when a distribution plant in the city was damaged by US bombs. Water pumps were put out of action, forcing the population to rely on wells which had already been depleted by the continuing drought. The bombing of the Kajaki hydro-electric plant has cut off power, at its source, to the entire region, including the capital of Helmand Province, Lashkar Gah.
Kandahar's central Mirwais Hospital continues to operate on a generator supplied by the Red Cross, but fuel shortages and a lack of spare parts mean that it is unlikely to run for much longer. "In view of the ongoing war and increasingly cold winter temperatures, unless international support is provided to keep the central hospital functioning it will have to close with disastrous consequences for the suffering population," the UN regional co-ordinator reports.
Diplomatic sources in Pakistan say that a contingent of Arab troops of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida group had in the past been based at a military post close to the Kajaki dam. It is not clear whether they were present when the bombing took place, or whether the damage to the hydro-electric plant was inflicted deliberately or whether it was an accidental consequence of inaccurate targeting.
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Text of President Bush's Speech
New York Times
November 8, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/politics/08CND-BTXT.html
Following is a transcript of President Bush's speech in Atlanta on Thursday night, as recorded by The New York Times:
Mr. Bush: We meet tonight after two of the most difficult and most inspiring months in our nation's history. We have endured the shock of watching so many innocent lives ended in acts of unimaginable horror. We have endured the sadness of so many funerals. We have faced unprecedented bioterrorist attack delivered in our mail.
Tonight many thousands of children are tragically learning to live without one of their parents. And the rest of us are learning to live in a world that seems very different than it was on September the 10th.
The moment the second plane hit the second building, when we knew it was a terrorist attack, many felt that our lives would never be the same. What we couldn't be sure of then and what the terrorists never expected was that America would emerge stronger with a renewed spirit of pride and patriotism.
I said in my speech to a joint session of Congress that we are a nation awakened to danger. We're also a nation awakened to service and citizenship and compassion. None of us would ever wish the evil that has been done to our country. Yet we have learned that out of evil can come great good.
During the last two months we have shown the world America is a great nation. Americans have responded magnificently with courage and caring. We've seen it in our children, who have sent in more than $1 million for the children of Afghanistan. We have seen it in the compassion of Jewish and Christian Americans, who have reached out to their Muslim neighbors. We have seen it as Americans have reassessed priorities: parents spending more time with their children and many people spending more time in prayer and in houses of worship.
We have gained new heroes. Those who ran into burning buildings to save others: our police and our firefighters. Those who battle their own fears to keep children calm and safe, America's teachers. Those who voluntarily place themselves in harm's way to defend our freedom, the men and women of the armed forces.
And tonight we join in thanking a whole new group of public servants who never enlisted to fight a war, but find themselves on the front lines of a battle nonetheless, those who deliver the mail, America's postal workers. We also thank those whose quick response provided preventative treatment that has no doubt saved thousands of lives, our health care workers.
We are a different country than we were on September the 10th, sadder and less innocent, stronger and more united and in the face of ongoing threats, determined and courageous. Our nation faces a threat to our freedoms and the stakes could not be higher. We are the target of enemies who boast they want to kill, kill all Americans, kill all Jews and kill all Christians. We've seen that type of hate before. And the only possible response is to confront it and to defeat it.
This new enemy seeks to destroy our freedom and impose its views. We value life. The terrorists ruthlessly destroy it. We value education. The terrorists do not believe women should be educated or should have health care or should leave their homes. We value the right to speak our minds. For the terrorists free expression can be grounds for execution. We respect people of all faiths and welcome the free practice of religion. Our enemy wants to dictate how to think and how to worship even to their fellow Muslims. This enemy tries to hide behind a peaceful faith. But those who celebrate the murder of innocent men, women and children have no religion, have no conscience and have no mercy.
We wage a war to save civilization itself. We did not seek it. But we will fight it. And we will prevail.
This is a different war from any our nation has ever faced. A war on many fronts against terrorists who operate in more than 60 different countries. And this is a war that must be fought not only overseas but also here at home.
I recently spoke to high school students in Maryland and realized that for the first time ever these seniors will graduate in the midst of a war in our own country.
We have entered a new era and this new era requires new responsibilities both for the government and for our people. The government has a responsibility to protect our citizens, and that starts with homeland security. The first attack against America came by plane and we are now making our airports and airplanes safer. We have posted the National Guard in America's airports and placed undercover air marshals on many flights.
I call on Congress to quickly send me legislation that makes cockpits more secure, baggage screening more thorough and puts the federal government in charge of all airport screening and security.
The second attack against America came in the mail. We do not know whether this attack came from the same terrorists. We don't know the origin of the anthrax. But whoever did this unprecedented and uncivilized act is a terrorist. Four Americans have now died from anthrax out of a total of 17 people who have been infected. The Postal Service has processed more than 30 billion pieces of mail since September the 11th and so far we've identified three different letters that contained anthrax. We can trace the source of infection for all but one of the individuals. And we are still trying to learn how a woman who died in New York was exposed.
I'm proud of the way our health care and postal workers and the American people are responding with calm in the face of this deadly new threat. Public health officials have acted quickly to distribute preventative antibiotics to thousands of people who may have been exposed. The government is purchasing and storing medicines and vaccines as a precaution against future attacks. We are cleaning facilities where anthrax has been detected and purchasing equipment to sanitize the mail.
Thousands of law enforcement officials are aggressively investigating this bioterrorism attack. And public health officials are distributing the most accurate, up-to-date information we have to medical professionals and to the public.
To coordinate our efforts we've created the new office of homeland security. It's director, my good friend and former governor, Tom Ridge, reports directly to me and works with all our federal agencies, state and local governments and the private sector, on a national strategy to strengthen our homeland protections.
For example, the Coast Guard has taken on expanded duties to protect our shores and our ports. The National Guard has increased -- an increased role in surveillance at our border. We're imposing new licensing requirements for safer transportation of hazardous material. We've passed a new antiterrorism law which gives our law enforcement officers the necessary tools to track terrorists before they harm Americans.
A new terrorism task force is tightening immigration controls to make sure no one enters or stays in our country who would harm us.
We are a welcoming country. We will always value freedom. Yet we will not allow those who plot against our country to abuse our freedoms and our protections.
Our enemies have threatened other acts of terror. We take each threat seriously. And when we have evidence of credible threats we will issue appropriate alerts. A terrorism alert is not a signal to stop your life. It is a call to be vigilant, to know that your government is on high alert and to add your eyes and ears to our efforts to find and stop those who want to do us harm. A lot of people are working really hard to protect America. But in the long run the best way to defend our homeland, the best way to make sure our children can live in peace, is to take the battle to the enemy and to stop them.
I have called our military into action to hunt down the members of the al Qaeda organization who murdered innocent Americans. I gave fair warning to the government that harbors them in Afghanistan. The Taliban made a choice to continue hiding terrorists. And now they are paying a price.
I'm so proud of our military. Our military is pursuing its mission. We are destroying training camps, disrupting communications and dismantling air defenses. We are now bombing Taliban front lines. We are deliberately and systematically hunting down these murderers. And we will bring them to justice.
Throughout this battle we adhere to our values. Unlike our enemy, we respect life. We do not target innocent civilians. We care for the innocent people of Afghanistan. So we continue to provide humanitarian aid even while their government tries to steal the food we send. When the terrorists and their supporters are gone, the people of Afghanistan will say with the rest of the world, good riddance.
We are at the beginning of our efforts in Afghanistan. And Afghanistan is only the beginning of our efforts in the world. No group or nation should mistake Americans' intentions. Where terrorist groups exist of global reach, the United States and our friends and allies will seek it out and we will destroy it.
After September the 11th our government assumed new responsibilities to strengthen security at home and track down our enemies abroad. And the American people are accept -- accepting new responsibilities as well.
I recently received a letter from a fourth grade girl that seemed to say it all: "I don't know how to feel," she said. "Sad? Mad? Angry? It has been different lately. I know the people in New York are scared because of the World Trade Center and all. But if we're scared, we are giving the terrorists all the power."
In the face of this great tragedy Americans are refusing to give terrorists the power. Our people have responded with courage and compassion, calm and reason, resolve and fierce determination. We have refused to live in a state of panic or a state of denial. There is a difference between being alert and being intimidated and this great nation will never be intimidated.
People are going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshiping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games. Life in America is going forward. And as the fourth grader who wrote me knew, that is the ultimate repudiation of terrorism.
And something even more profound is happening across our country. The enormity of this tragedy has caused many Americans to focus on the things that have not changed. The things that matter most in life, our faith, our love for family and friends, our commitment to our country and to our freedoms and to our principles.
In my inaugural address I asked our citizens to serve their nation beginning with their neighbors. This fall I had planned a new initiative called Communities of Character, designed to spark a rebirth of citizenship and character and service. The events of September the 11th have caused that initiative to happen on its own, in ways we could never have imagined. Flags are flying everywhere, on houses and store windows, on cars and lapels. Financial donations to the victims' families have reached more than a billion dollars. Countless Americans gave blood in the aftermath of the attacks. New Yorkers opened their homes to evacuated neighbors. We are waiting patiently in long security lines. Children across America have organized lemonade and cookie sales for children in Afghanistan. And we can do more.
Since September the 11th many Americans, especially young Americans, are rethinking their career choices. They're being drawn to careers of service, as police or firemen, emergency health workers, teachers, counselors or in the military. And this is good for America.
Many ask, what can I do to help in our fight? The answer is simple. All of us can become a September the 11th volunteer, by making a commitment to service in our own communities. So you can serve your country by tutoring or mentoring a child, comforting the afflicted, housing those in need of shelter and a home. You can participate in your neighborhood watch or Crimestoppers. You can become a volunteer in a hospital, emergency medical, fire or rescue unit. You can support our troops in the field and, just as importantly, support their families here at home, by becoming active in the U.S.O. or groups in communities near our military installations.
We also will encourage service to country by creating new opportunities within the Americorps and Seniorcorps, programs for public safety and public health efforts. We will ask state and local officials to create a new, modern civil defense service similar to local volunteer fire departments to respond to local emergencies when the manpower of governments is stretched thin. We will find ways to train and mobilize more volunteers to help when rescue and health emergencies arise.
Americans have a lot to offer. So I've created a task force to develop additional ways people can get directly involved in this war effort by making our homes and neighborhoods and schools and workplaces safer.
And I call on all Americans to serve by bettering our communities. And thereby defy and defeat the terrorists. Our great nation -- national challenge is to hunt down the terrorists and strengthen our protection against future attacks. Our great national opportunity is to preserve forever the good that has resulted. Through this tragedy we are renewing and reclaiming our strong American values.
Both Laura and I were touched by a recent newspaper article that quoted a little 4-year-old girl who asked a telling and innocent question. Wondering how terrorists could hate a whole nation of people they don't even know, she asked: Why don't we just tell them our names?
Well, we can't tell them all our names but together we can show them our values. Too many have the wrong idea of Americans as shallow, materialistic consumers who care only about getting rich or getting ahead. But this isn't the America I know. Ours is a wonderful nation full of kind and loving people, people of faith who want freedom and opportunity for people everywhere.
One way to defeat terrorism is to show the world the true values of America through the gathering momentum of a million acts of responsibility and decency and service. I am encouraging school children to write letters of friendship to Muslim children in different countries. Our college students and those who travel abroad for business or vacation can all be ambassadors of American values. Ours is a great story and we must tell it through our words and through our deeds.
I came to Atlanta today to talk about an all-important question: How should we live in the light of what has happened? We all have new responsibilities. Our government has a responsibility to hunt down our enemies, and we will. Our government has a responsibility to put needless partisanship behind us and meet new challenges: better security for our people and help for those who've lost jobs and livelihoods in the attacks that claimed so many lives.
I've made some proposals to stimulate economic growth, which will create new jobs, and make America less dependent on foreign oil. And I ask Congress -- and I ask Congress to work hard and put a stimulus plan into law to help the American people.
Our citizens have new responsibilities. Obviously we must inspect our mail, stay informed on public health matters. We will not give in to exaggerated fears or passing rumors. We will rely on good judgment and good old common sense. We will care for those who have lost loved ones and comfort those who might at times feel afraid. We will not judge fellow Americans by appearance, ethnic background or religious faith. We will defend the values of our country and we will live by them. We will persevere in this struggle no matter how long it takes to prevail.
Above all, we will live in a spirit of courage and optimism. Our nation was born in that spirit, as immigrants yearning for freedom courageously risked their lives in search of greater opportunity. That spirit of optimism and courage still beckons people across the world who want to come here. And that spirit of optimism and courage must guide those of us fortunate enough to live here.
Courage and optimism led the passengers on Flight 93 to rush their murderers to save lives on the ground. Led by a young man whose last known words were the Lord's Prayer and "Let's roll." He didn't know he'd signed on for heroism when he boarded the plane that day. Some of our greatest moments have been acts of courage for which no one could have ever prepared. We will always remember the words of that brave man expressing the spirit of a great country.
We will never forget all we have lost and all we are fighting for. Ours is the cause of freedom. We've defeated freedom enemies before. And we will defeat them again. We cannot know every turn this battle will take. Yet we know our cause is just and our ultimate victory is assured. We will no doubt face new challenges, but we have our marching orders. My fellow Americans, let's roll.
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General: Capturing bin Laden is not part of mission
USA Today
11/08/2001
By John Omicinski,
Gannett News Service
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/08/pentagon-toll.htm
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. combat commander in Afghanistan said Thursday that apprehending Osama bin Laden isn't one of the missions of Operation Enduring Storm. But Gen. Tommy Franks' remarks may come back to haunt him Friday morning when he meets with President Bush to brief him on the war's progress. Bush has said from the beginning of the operation that he wants bin Laden "dead or alive."
"We have not said that Osama bin Laden is a target of this effort," Franks told reporters at his first Pentagon briefing since the war began a month ago. Usually, Franks, the commander in chief of Central Command and third in the war's chain of command after Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is headquartered in Tampa.
"What we are about," he said, "is the destruction of the al-Qa'eda network, as well as the ... Taliban that provide harbor to bin Laden and al-Qa'eda."
Marine Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, Central Command liaison at the Pentagon, said Franks was trying to reflect the broader nature of the goals in Afghanistan. "If tomorrow morning someone told us Osama's dead, that doesn't mean we're through in Afghanistan," Lapan said.
Rumsfeld appeared with Franks at the briefing and described a strategy aimed at destroying support for the Taliban and bin Laden's al-Qa'eda. "What you're going to see is ultimately the effect of all the pressure that's being put on, through law enforcement, for intelligence gathering, through financial freezing of accounts, as well as the air war and the work that's being done on the ground," Rumsfeld said.
"Life will become so difficult for the al-Qa'eda and the Taliban that people will decide they'd prefer not to have them in their country at some point."
Franks, an Army general, is in charge of the same region commanded by the booming, blustering Gen. "Stormin" Norman Schwarzkopf of 1990-'91 fame in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. His quiet, self-effacing demeanor in public contrasts sharply with Schwarzkopf, who ran press briefings like frontal assaults on entrenched enemy positions.
Inevitably, one reporter suggested, he may suffer by comparison.
"Tommy Franks is no Norman Schwarzkopf," Franks acknowledged, but he added with some prodding from Rumsfeld, "nor vice versa."
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Sailor falls overboard from carrier in Arabian Sea
USA Today
11/08/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/08/sailor.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A search was under way Wednesday night for a U.S. sailor who fell overboard from an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea.
The sailor fell from the USS Kitty Hawk at 7:22 a.m. ET and a search and rescue operation was begun immediately, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Don Sewell, a Pentagon spokesman. Repeated helicopter searches and several dives found no sign of the sailor.
"We don't know how long the search is going to continue at this point," Sewell said late Wednesday night. "But we are still proceeding as though the sailor is alive."
It was not known how the sailor fell overboard, Sewell said.
The sailor was not identified because his family had not yet been notified.
The Kitty Hawk is supporting the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. The ship is part of a three ship battle group being used as a helicopter base for special operations troops.
Before Wednesday, three American servicemen had been reported killed since the U.S.-led airstrikes against the Taliban and terrorist groups in Afghanistan began on Oct. 7.
Two Army Rangers were killed when their Black Hawk crashed in Pakistan on Oct. 19 during support for a special forces raid in Afghanistan -- the first combat-related deaths in the campaign. Military officials have not released details of the Black Hawk's mission, but some believed it was preparing to cross into Afghanistan in the event any Army Rangers had to be rescued.
Master Sgt. Evander Earl Andrews was killed Oct. 10 in a heavy equipment accident Qatar.
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Lawmakers: Bad time to close bases
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 8, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011108-22020096.htm
Congressional opposition to a new round of military base closings, one of President Bush's top national security goals, is growing, with opponents citing the war on terrorism as a reason not to shrink the armed forces.
"It's politically unpopular to close bases when fighting a war," said a senior congressional defense staffer, noting that the president's proposal was submitted before the September 11 attack and his declared war on terrorism. "We could be in a protracted war."
A conference of the Senate and House Armed Services committees has kicked the volatile issue to the "big four" -- the chairmen and ranking minority members of the House and Senate armed services committees. The senior lawmakers met yesterday but have not yet settled the issue, two staffers said.
"A vast majority of House members oppose another round," said Bill Johnson, an aide to Rep. James V. Hansen, Utah Republican. "There are three reasons: the uncertainty of the war, two, the uncertainty of the economy, and, three, lawmakers are still not satisfied the Defense Department has made decisions on future force structure."
Mr. Johnson said virtually all House defense conferees oppose another round of a Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC).
Congressional sources said that of the "big four," Arizona Rep. Bob Stump, House Armed Services Committee chairman, is adamantly opposed to base closings. The committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, is at best cool toward the idea.
Mr. Skelton's spokeswoman said yesterday he has asked the Bush administration to document past budget savings from base closings. She said as of yesterday he had not received a report.
The two Senate members of the "big four" -- Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, and John W. Warner, Virginia Republican -- voted for a fifth, and possibly final, BRAC.
But Senate leaders say their bargaining power is weak since a small majority in the 53-47 vote backed their position. Some Republican senators are having second thoughts after hearing complaints back home, the sources said.
Plus, some big guns in the Senate are fighting another round of base closings. They include Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, and Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii Democrat and chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defense, which controls Pentagon spending.
The House never voted on the issue. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not send over the proposed legislation until after the committee had approved its version of the fiscal 2002 defense authorization act.
Mr. Rumsfeld told Congress the armed forces has about 25 percent excess base capacity. He said the Pentagon can save $2.5 billion annually later this decade by shutting them down. It would use the money to buy new equipment and improve quality of life.
But the prospect of shutdowns -- especially in a wartime economy -- sends political shock waves through communities that face the loss of thousands of steady government jobs.
Gary Hoitsma, spokesman for Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and Armed Services committee member, said the senator does not believe Congress should consider another BRAC until Mr. Rumsfeld completes various force-structure reviews.
"Now is not the time to do that when we are fighting a war and we have all these modernization and readiness needs," Mr. Hoitsma said.
Oklahoma is home to five military bases, including Fort Sill, the Army's artillery training school. "We feel strongly in Oklahoma about all our bases," he said. "They survived the last round in very good shape and all of them have important missions that need to continue."
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MONTH 1 - A Month in a Difficult Battlefield:
Assessing U.S. War Strategy
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
November 8, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/international/asia/08STRA.html?searchpv=nytToday&pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 -- There is a saying at the Pentagon that no plan survives contact with the enemy. With the war in Afghanistan now a month old, the United States military has been forced to adjust its strategy.
The Bush administration initially hoped that it could destroy the Qaeda terrorists and topple the Taliban regime that protects them through a combination of day and night airstrikes, commando raids and support of anti-Taliban groups in Afghanistan. It hoped for large defections from the Taliban that have not occurred, and it underestimated the Taliban's resilience.
With its caves, tunnels and urban hiding places, Afghanistan has proved to be an especially difficult battlefield. The United States has been compelled to adapt its approach in several ways, including accepting help this week that it had initially shunned from NATO allies including Germany, France and Italy.
Those allies are not expected to play a decisive military role or to shape strategy, but they do provide political support. As public opinion in major European countries has begun to drift away from supporting the daily bombing of an already ravaged country, the administration has embraced European offers of military support to demonstrate that the campaign against terrorism is a broad one.
On the military front, the first surprise came when the Americans discovered they lacked the intelligence information to carry out the flurry of Special Operations raids they had projected.
The Pentagon's hope was that the bombing attacks would force Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders to leave their sanctuaries, exposing them to attack. The image the Pentagon conjured up was of helicopter gunships packed with commandos in "hot pursuit" of Osama bin Laden and his key lieutenants, to use President Bush's description.
The whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden, whom Mr. Bush has vowed to take dead or alive, appear to be as much of a mystery now as when the bombing began.
Given the dearth of intelligence information and the risk of ground operations, there has been only one commando attack, an Oct. 19 assault whose targets were a compound of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban's leader, and an airport southwest of Kandahar. The intelligence gathered on the raid was not of great value.
The United States has already suffered little-publicized casualties. During the Oct. 19 raid, five commandos were wounded when the explosives they used to break into a Taliban compound sent pieces of concrete flying.
More than two dozen Americans were injured in their low-level parachute jump onto a darkened airfield. And two Army soldiers were killed when their search-and- rescue helicopter, set aloft for the commando raid, crashed when it tried to land in Pakistan. Last Friday, four Army soldiers were wounded when their helicopter crashed on a misson to rescue a soldier who was sick.
The slow, almost methodical pace of the war has now spurred an important debate about American ground forces and whether there is a role for them in Afghanistan. Some conservative lawmakers are urging the administration to prepare for a ground war, a view that is seconded by some Army officials, who insist that the United States will not win any other way.
For now, the front lines remain largely where they were a month ago, with about 15,000 forces of the Northern Alliance, the main opposition group, arrayed against Taliban forces estimated at 40,000 throughout the country.
Operating without the benefit of an active resistance in the south, the Pentagon has sought to make the best of what friendly forces it can use on the ground: the Northern Alliance, a loose coalition of ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks who have been fighting the Taliban in the northern part of the country.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has never ruled out sending substantial numbers of ground forces, but the Pentagon seems content to let the Northern Alliance do the dirty work on the ground in the winter.
The Pentagon has been obliged to take this course largely because an effective anti-Taliban resistance movement failed to materialize in southern Afghanistan.
Abdul Haq, a legendary mujahedeen commander, was captured and executed by the Taliban when he entered Afghanistan without the Central Intelligence Agency's support. And Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun tribal leader was on the verge of being captured by the Taliban when he was plucked from deep inside Afghanistan by an American military helicopter. He has since been ferried back to Afghanistan.
In the north, the fighting abilities of the Northern Alliance are limited. A Pentagon briefer said today that some of the alliance's attacks involve cavalry charges against Taliban tanks. He said the United States was air-dropping horse feed to the alliance.
Still, the administration clearly hopes that the Northern Alliance succeeds in capturing Mazar-i-Sharif, a strategically important city in northern Afghanistan, before winter sets in. That is now the chief immediate military target, Pentagon officials say.
At the front line about 35 miles north of Kabul, there are no signs of movement as yet, while the Northern Alliance has reported a limited advance in the north.
To aid the Northern Alliance, the United States has sent teams of Special Operations forces into Afghanistan to call in airstrikes and to determine what weapons the alliance needs. American warplanes, in turn, have dropped an ever expanding tonnage of bombs, including two "daisy cutters," which are 15,000 pound bombs.
Seizing Mazar-i-Sharif would enable the Northern Alliance to open a vital supply line to Uzbekistan to the north. It would also enable the Pentagon to claim that its proxies have taken an important piece of terrain that the Americans might use to use to set up temporary bases inside Afghanistan.
Even with a breakthrough on the northern front, however, the Northern Alliance's campaign is unlikely to be decisive. The movement is not acceptable to the Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan.
In the end, the crucial war theater is not the north but the south, especially near Kandahar, the Taliban's political stronghold and an important base for Al Qaeda operatives.
At home, Mr. Rumsfeld has told the American people to prepare for a conflict that would drag on for years. But the projected duration of the war appears to vary, depending on the venue.
In South Asia, he predicted the war would end in a matter of months, an important assurance for Pakistan, which would like to see a short war and an early departure for American forces in the region.
The long and uncertain nature of the war has not only led Washington to adjust its military strategy; it is adjusting its political strategy as well. For weeks, the only assistance embraced came from Britain, America's closest ally, which has very able commandos, and Turkey, a Muslim nation whose forces are very much in demand by the United States, and Canada and Australia.
In essence, the Defense Department had concluded that including forces from other nations was not worth the trouble of getting a broad coalition to agree on what to do. That has now changed.
The German, Italian and French forces now joining the war effort are unlikely to play a vital military role, nor are those nations likely to have a major influence on the American and British war strategy. But their role is a politically important statement and an indication that the tougher the war gets, the more company America is likely to seek.
The Troops: 50,000 Americans Across a Vast Region
Quietly, in the month of war, the United States has nearly doubled the number of American military forces involved, underscoring the deepening commitment to a conflict that is already costing tens of millions of dollars a day, with those costs rising daily.
Today, more than 50,000 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are deployed across a region stretching from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, Pentagon officials said. Thousands more are expected to join the effort along with still more warplanes and other matériel in still more countries surrounding Afghanistan.
Roughly half of the total American forces -- about 25,000 -- are aboard naval vessels operating in the northern Arabian Sea, but significantly higher numbers than the Pentagon has previously disclosed are flowing into bases around the region, including several hundred soldiers and marines in Pakistan.
There are also nearly 3,000 Americans in Oman, including Special Operations soldiers from the Third Battalion of the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, officials said for the first time today. An additional 1,500 to 2,000 Americans, including soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, as well as Special Operations forces, are based in a former Soviet air base in Uzbekistan.
More than 400 American aircraft -- including sea- and land-based fighter jets and long- range bombers -- are already flying scores of combat missions a day, supported by reconnaissance aircraft, cargo jets and aerial refuelers in elaborately choreographed operations. That includes aircraft continuing to patrol the "no flight" zones over southern and northern Iraq, some of which have been diverted to the war.
In addition, nearly two dozen American ships are operating in the North Arabian Sea, including nuclear-powered submarines, an amphibious assault group carrying the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit and two aircraft carriers, the Theodore Roosevelt and the Carl Vinson. A third carrier, the Kitty Hawk, is also in the area, carrying an undisclosed number of Special Operations helicopters and soldiers.
That fleet, supplemented by warships from other allies including Canada, Australia and Britain, is also expected to grow. The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, composed of 2,200 marines aboard three ships, led by the Bataan, have also been ordered to join the campaign, a Pentagon official said.
The American forces are spread out in a way that reflects diplomatic sensitivities in several countries about accepting large numbers of American troops and aircraft.
Problems of acquiring permission to base combat aircraft have sorely complicated the operation, limiting the intensity of bombing raids, officials said. American B-52 and B-1 bombers are based in Diego Garcia, the British island in the Indian Ocean, and must fly several hours before they enter Afghan air space, refueling at least once on the way. This limits their ability to bomb.
Hoping to intensify air strikes on Taliban forces fighting rebel groups in the north, the United States has begun surveying additional bases in Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. American commanders hope to use at least some of those bases to stage raids with F-15E's and A-10's, both attack jets that could more rapidly attack targets that emerge unexpectedly during battles on the ground.
So far, the war has been almost entirely an American campaign, with the exception of two instances in which a British submarine fired Tomahawk cruise missiles. Soon, however, the effort will involve a broader coalition of allies, though still mostly in support roles.
France, which already has 2,000 troops in the region, plus Japan, Germany, Italy and New Zealand have all pledged to send additional ships and troops to the area if needed. Turkey and Australia have both announced that their own special operations forces would join the effort.
Italy said today that it would contribute 3,000 troops to the effort, including ships and aircraft.
The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, said the 3,900 Germans planning on taking part would include some 100 special operations troops who could be used on reconnaissance missions. While German forces flew reconnaissance and other support missions during NATO's air war in Serbia in 1999 and later sent ground forces to the peacekeeping operations, the use of special operations troops would be the first German combat operation overseas since World War II.
With allied aircraft, including reconnaissance and other support aircraft from Britain, Canada, Australia and France, the total number of allied warplanes involved in the war reaches nearly 500.
Here in the United States, the deployments are also being keenly felt. On Tuesday, the number of national guardsmen and reservists mobilized since Sept. 11 for the first time exceeded 50,000 -- the loose figure Secretary Rumsfeld initially told Mr. Bush would be enough. An additional 415 naval reservists were mobilized today, bringing the total to 52,907.
A senior Pentagon official said that as the campaign progresses and as the administration turns to the Guard and Reserves for missions in the United States, including guarding airports, bridges and nuclear power plans, the total number of reservists mobilized could swell as high as 150,000.
That is still below the number -- 265,000 -- mobilized for the Persian Gulf war in 1990 and 1991, but it would amount to more than 1 in 10 of the total number of reservists in the military today.
The Battlefield: North and South: 2 Different Theaters
The north and south of Afghanistan present different climates and terrains that increasingly compel different military approaches. In the north, the mountains are already snow-capped and winter is setting in; any military results will have to be achieved soon. In the south, where citrus groves can be found, the constraints imposed by the weather are less severe.
Time will certainly be needed in the south to engineer a coherent strategy and conjure a force to execute it. One month into the American bombardment, a vacuum exists in the Pastun-dominated south, where resistance to the radical Islamic Taliban government seems fragmented or nonexistent.
As Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, an officer on the Joint Chief of Staff, put it the other day, "There are individuals who would try to put together what we -- at least, I have heard in one occasion -- called a Southern Alliance."
But Roseanne Klass, an Afghan scholar for 40 years, said flatly, "There is no Southern Alliance."
She continued: "The major figures who could form such an alliance are dead or in exile. People with a sense of government, not a sense of fighting, are scattered all over the world. The others keep getting killed. The United States, which washed its hands of Afghanistan 10 years ago, wants an instant result. But they don't know the people or the situation."
The C.I.A. has been working hard to identify potential leaders of a force that could become a Southern Alliance, without visible success. One potential leader, Mr. Haq, who did not have C.I.A. support, was killed last month by the Taliban.
United States officials say a southern force could include former military commanders or political leaders or the exiled king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who has not set foot in Afghanistan in 28 years. It could even include Taliban turncoats. Anyone could be part of that alliance who might command respect in a loya jirga, an Afghan grand council, that might someday be convened to form a new Afghan government.
But it would have to be controlled by Pashtuns, who also dominate the Taliban. The Pashtuns are the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan and its traditional rulers. The Northern Alliance is dominated by Tajiks and Uzbeks.
A Western diplomat who closely follows Afghanistan said the concept of a Southern Alliance was little more than a wish for a silver bullet to speed the Afghan war to a close. "There are still these unrealistic hopes that the Taliban will somehow crumble or that Zahir Shah will convene a loya jirga and somehow set things straight," he said.
A second Western diplomat who also follows Afghanistan said: "These ideas of trying to create government, institutions, policies out of nothing -- they can't be done. There's going to be a messy give and take."
For now, with few resources to exploit in the south, American planners are concentrating on the north, and particularly Mazar-i-Sharif. If it falls, the administration will have a tangible victory in hand that might allay concerns in Europe and elsewhere about the bombing strategy.
But the Northern Alliance remains a largely untested force, and the difficulties of marshaling it, or any faction, were clear enough at the Pentagon today. "There is not one `the' Northern Alliance," the Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, said. "There are different factions. And there are tribes in the south. And there are people within the Taliban itself that oppose the Taliban regime."
To see what she meant, consider the resistance forces in the north who, with the support of American bombing and American advisers, are pressing to attack Mazar- i-Sharif.
The city, which lies along the Silk Road through Central Asia, is widely seen as the battleground where the control of northern Afghanistan will be decided. As Mazar goes, Northern Alliance leaders say, so goes the rest of the north.
The city sits on a highway that touches many of the main pockets of anti-Taliban activity, from Herat in the west to Taliqan in the east. It also controls a highway that runs from Kabul to Uzbekistan. Its capture by the Northern Alliance could open up the area to greatly increased assistance from the United States, which has established an important base in Uzbekistan.
The campaign for Mazar-I-Sharif brings together two colorful Northern Alliance commanders: Ostad Atta Muhammad, who was a mujahedeen commander at age 18, and Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord long known for his healthy appetites and fickle loyalties. Until recently, they were making little progress, gaining ground one day and losing it another.
According to an aide to General Muhammad, who is in charge of the Mazar campaign, that began to change when Americans on the ground pinpointed Taliban positions for the bombers, helped plan the ground attack and gave orders to commanders and soldiers alike.
The Americans, who apparently wear no uniforms, are said to have set up a camp in Dara-i-Suf, a remote village in the mountains south of Mazar-i-Sharif.
But along the 50-mile front that stretches from the Tajik border to the outskirts of Taliqan, the military campaign seems uneven. For two weeks, American B-52's and fighter-bombers have been pounding Taliban positions along a five-mile area just south of the border with Tajikistan. The Taliban positions sit dangerously close to an important supply route for the Northern Alliance.
The commander of rebel forces there, Mamoor Hassan, says his units are ready to attack, and at the same time he complains that his food and ammunition will last only four days.
In that way he differs little from his comrades in the Northern Alliance. American helicopters have been spotted in the air along Afghanistan's northern borders, but the presence of American advisers here and nearer to Kabul has been kept quiet.
The Weapons: Change in Air Forces May Be in Works
For the Pentagon, every war becomes a laboratory for new weapons and tactics. In the Persian Gulf war, the military sent the Joint Stars aircraft, a surveillance plane that tracks troop movements on the ground, while it was still in development. The plane helped track armored columns of Iraqi Republican Guard.
In this campaign, a high-flying, long-range drone called Global Hawk has been pulled out of development and sent to the front, to expand the military's reconnaissance abilities.
The air campaign, now entering its fifth week, has seen a role reversal in combat flights. Unlike the case in the gulf war, in which Air Force warplanes dominated the skies, the lion's share of the bombing missions in this war have been flown by Navy F- 14's and FA-18's off carriers in the Arabian Sea.
That may change soon. The Pentagon is assessing airfields in Tajikistan and other Central Asian countries that would allow Air Force fighters now flying long missions from the Middle East to operate from bases much closer to Afghanistan.
Not all the American technology has worked perfectly; it never does. Errant American bombs have strayed into residential neighborhoods, reportedly owing to malfunctions or human target-selection mistakes. Many Afghan civilians have been killed.
B-52's and FA-18's mistakenly attacked warehouses used by the Red Cross for relief supplies when military officials forgot to take the buildings in Kabul, the Afghan capital, off a target list.
Although the American military is famous for its high-technology precision weapons, the Pentagon has relied on some of its oldest arms to attack Taliban ground forces and try to shatter their will to fight.
B-52 bombers, upgraded since the Vietnam War, are dropping dozens of 500-pound unguided bombs on Taliban troops dug in along the front lines. Lumbering AC-130 Spectre gunships rain heavy caliber machine-gun and cannon fire down on enemy positions as they did in Southeast Asia more than three decades ago.
There are certain places on the battlefield where commanders want the maximum punishment, not precision. Last weekend, for instance, the Air Force hit front-line Taliban forces with two of the 15,000-pound BLU-82 "daisy cutter" bombs -- one of the most powerful conventional weapons in the American arsenal that also dates from Vietnam. The bombs can obliterate an area hundreds of yards in diameter.
"They explode about three feet above the ground, and as you would expect, they make a heck of a bang when they go off," Gen. Peter Pace, the deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this week, describing the daisy cutter. "The intent is to kill people."
Of course, the Pentagon has also thrown its most advanced weaponry into the fight against an elusive enemy that hides in caves and tunnels, and tries to elude electronic surveillance by using couriers to pass orders between commanders.
Most of the bombs dropped over Afghanistan have been guided to their targets by satellites or laser beams. In some cases, Special Operations forces on the ground have called in airstrikes using laser pointers. In the gulf war, only about 10 percent of the bombs dropped were precision munitions.
Air Force F-15E fighter-bombers can carry a 2,000-pound AGM-130 missile that is guided by a video camera, and can fly horizontally into caves carved into mountainsides, although it is not known if they have yet done so in Afghanistan.
Warplanes have dropped 5,000-pound bunker-busting bombs that are designed to burrow more than four stories down before detonating in subterranean Taliban command compounds.
The Pentagon is using new and improved technological eyes and ears in the war in Afghanistan. One unmanned surveillance aircraft, known as the RQ-1 Predator, has been praised by commanders as an effective, inexpensive and risk-free means of spying on enemies and pinpointing targets. The C.I.A. has armed some of its Predators with missiles, and fired at convoys believed to be carrying Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. But Mullah Omar has apparently escaped unscathed.
The Logistics: Rebel Forces Need More Supplies
If the loose alliance of Afghan rebel armies opposing the Taliban is to go on the move and fight through the formidable military perils, natural obstacles and remorseless winter that face them, they will need a steady flow of supplies of all kinds.
So as they strive to break out of their stalemate, the most important thing they need may not be more aerial firepower or ingenious American tactical advice. As veteran commanders never tire of saying, amateurs discuss tactics, but professionals understand logistics.
"We are providing equipment, food, ammunition, weapons, water, food for their horses," said General Pace of the Joint Chiefs. This, it seems, is the first war of the 21st century to be fought on horseback.
Only in the last week or two have supplies from outside started to flow to the rebels in significant amounts. But there are signs that the flow is about to increase markedly.
In a rear area behind the Northern Alliance lines outside Kabul, for instance, an airstrip is being completed and expanded, some supplies are being ferried in by Soviet- designed helicopters, and a team recently arrived to help prepare the short runway for deliveries by cargo planes. American Special Forces have been seen arriving by helicopter at the airfield.
Air Force C-130's, their rear doors opened so that parachutes can yank pallets out of the plane in flight, could glide in close and drop tons of supplies onto the airfield, without their wheels ever touching Afghan soil. A smaller C-17, designed for short, rough runways, can land and take off from just 3,000 feet of hardpack.
What will they deliver? Weapons, of course, mostly of Russian design. Medicine, as disease is as likely to thin their ranks as anything fired off by the enemy.
But as Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday, a crucial advantage will come from being able to move in the desperate cold and survive.
"We are resupplying the opposition with ammunition, with food, with blankets," he said, "we hope in the not-too-distant future with cold weather gear. The fighting forces on the side of the opposition on our side will be much better prepared for winter than will the Taliban."
"If you remember, the first part of our campaign against the Taliban was going against the warehouses," he continued. "and their ammunition supplies, and we've done a pretty good job of taking those things out, so what's left for the Taliban is what they have on their back and what they have stored in caves and other places around Afghanistan, which we don't think is very much."
Of course, will is an intangible thing, and it is not clear yet that even a better-equipped, warmly clothed Northern Alliance has the resolution to take on a Taliban army that is far larger and fortified by large numbers of Arab volunteers.
Some rebel commanders say that their trigger fingers are itching but that their bellies and their bandoliers are still too light.
Atiqullah Baryalai, the Northern Alliance's deputy defense minister, said this week that some of his men did not have shoes.
Flying supplies in by helicopter is risky, especially in mountainous terrain. Dropping it by parachute from up high is not accurate enough on a fluid and ragged front line. Roads, if not cut off by the enemy, are on the verge of being snowed in by the yards-high drifts that are common in the Hindu Kush. Some supplies can be hauled overland by donkeys, but as in World War I, when moving fodder for draft animals was half the logistical effort, supplying feed is itself difficult.
As the military supplies flow in, so will some supplies for civilians, and not just the packets of ready-to-eat meals scattered from high above. Yesterday and today, Air Force C-17 cargo planes are to operate airlifts from Pisa, Italy, to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, to be forwarded to northern Afghanistan, where most of the hungry refugees are.
The first flight carried 6,000 wool blankets and two forklifts. The second flight carried another 16,000 blankets and about 2,000 cases of high-calorie biscuits. The third carried 4,000 more cases of biscuits. Three more flights will follow this week, according to the United States Agency for International Development.
From Turkmenistan, the United Nations World Food Program delivers food to the Western city of Herat and eastward to Mazar-i-Sharif, where the agency bakes bread for 120,000 people and says many people have run out of food and are surviving by begging and by boiling grass to eat.
"We need to bring about 12,000 tons of food to internally displaced people in various provinces in northern Afghanistan to sustain them for six months," said Khaled Mansour, the Food Program's spokesman in Pakistan. "This effort should start in the coming couple of weeks."
The group is using two Russian-designed cargo planes to fly flour to Turkmenistan. It has 2,000 tons in Quetta, Pakistan. Each plane can carry about 45 tons and can make a few round trips each day.
This article was reported and written by John H. Cushman Jr., Dexter Filkins, Steven Lee Myers, Eric Schmitt and Tim Weiner, with Mr. Gordon.
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-------- alternative energy
Solar power wins big in San Francisco
by Andrew Quinn,
Reuters:
8/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13172
SAN FRANCISCO - In a major overhaul of their power system, San Francisco voters have approved a $100 million bond to fund the nation's biggest solar power project in one of the country's most famously foggy cities.
A separate initiative to establish a new public agency to take over the functions of embattled utility Pacific Gas & Electric appeared headed for victory by a narrow 51-to-49 percent margin - although several thousand absentee ballots yet to be counted Wednesday could still tip the decision.
The measures follow a year of turmoil in California as the state's botched energy deregulation scheme unexpectedly resulted in rocketing wholesale and retail power costs, utility bankruptcy and rolling blackouts.
The main solar power initiative - which had widespread popular and political backing in this traditionally liberal city - won by a landslide 73-to-26 percent margin.
Under its provisions, the city will move ahead with plans to issue a $100 million revenue bond to install 10 megawatts of solar and 30 megawatts of wind power generation on city property, moves which should supply about one quarter of all the power consumed by city government.
A second solar initiative, passed by a somewhat narrower margin, allows the city's Board of Supervisors to issue more solar revenue bonds without seeking voter approval, allowing the city government gradually to expand the solar power program to individual houses and businesses.
Tuesday's landslide vote does not mean construction will begin tomorrow.
Under the structure of the revenue bond, final approval for the project will come from bond investors who will decide whether or not the plan is economically feasible.
But officials are optimistic that within four years San Francisco will have 10 megawatts of solar power in place - eclipsing Sacramento, California, as the largest single solar power producer in the country.
The city's solar power plan has been hailed as a big step forward for the solar power industry because it will establish a steady and growing market for photovoltaic cells - creating the economies of scale that will allow producers to ramp up production and bring the cost down.
"We have just created an enormous market for solar energy in the United States," said Danny Kennedy, local campaign coordinator for the environmental group Greenpeace, which mobilized behind the solar power initiative.
"What we need, the market transformation for a massive growth in solar demand and solar production, will come about due to incremental steps like this. If other cities follow San Francisco model we can bring the price down sharply."
PUBLIC POWER MAY GET QUALIFIED OK
On another closely watched initiative, however, voters were more evenly split - although they appeared to give qualified approval to moves to set up a new public power agency to take over from bankrupt utility Pacific Gas & Electric.
Voters backed Proposition F, which calls for San Francisco to establish a Municipal Water and Power Agency, by 56,008 to 53,760 votes. But with several thousand absentee ballots yet to be counted, opponents of the measure said there was still a chance it could go down in defeat.
A separate initiative, which would have set up a Municipal Utility District (MUD) in San Francisco and neighboring Brisbane, was trailing by a similarly narrow margin.
Public power advocates, which include consumer groups and environmentalists, said Prop. F would effectively set San Francisco on track to take over management of the generation, distribution and purchase of power in the city - roles played by PG&E until now.
"It means public power in San Francisco," said Ross Mirkarimi, campaign manager for both proposals. "San Francisco makes history by telling the corporate world of PG&E you can't continue to abuse San Francisco ratepayers any longer."
Pacific Gas & Electric, forced into bankruptcy in April after amassing billions of dollars in debt during California's power crisis, fought hard against the public power initiatives, spending more than $1 million in an effort to persuade city voters that it was still best positioned to serve as San Francisco's power provider.
The giant utility unit of San Francisco-based PG&E Corp. has vowed to fight any moves by the city to take over its power infrastructure - a central plank of the public power plan - and said it would await the final vote count before conceding defeat at the ballot box.
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British Energy in UK onshore wind power projects
by Stuart Penson,
8/11/2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13177
LONDON - Nuclear power group British Energy is moving into onshore wind generation in the UK as part of a strategy to boost its green energy production, the company's executive chairman told Reuters yesterday.
"We are in discussions with a number of potential developers for renewable energy opportunities," said Robin Jeffrey on the sidelines of a news briefing in London. "They are onshore wind projects," he said.
Jeffrey said the company expected to go public with details of the projects in two to three months.
He said the onshore windfarms would not be bigger than existing projects in the UK. "They will be fairly modest, we want to build up our confidence in this area first." he said.
Britain has around 400 megwatts of wind power in operation, most of it onshore. The largest onshore project so far is a planned 80 megawatt development in Kielder, Northumberland.
But developers Ecogen are fighting a government decision to block the project because of objections from the Ministry of Defence.
British Energy is already developing an offshore wind project off Skegness, eastern England, in a joint venture with green energy company Renewable Energy Systems.
The project will consist of 30 turbines with total capacity will be between 60 and 90 megawatts, sufficient to supply over 60,000 homes with pollution-free power.
But Jeffrey said it would be three to four years before the project came into operation.
Terry Brookshaw, director of power and energy trading, said wind was British Energy's preferred route into the renewable energy market.
"Wind is offering the greatest volume potential and the most competitive economic potential," he told Reuters.
The UK government sees the expansion of wind power as crucial to its aim of boosting the use of green energy and cutting greenhouse gas emissions, cited by many scientists as a key contributor to global warming.
Jeffrey said British Energy was also developing around 50 megawatts of gas-fired, embedded generation - generation not directly to the National Grid - as part of its renewable energy strategy in the UK.
-------- environment
Alaskans shocked by Exxon Valdez ruling
USA Today
11/08/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/11/08/valdez.htm
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) -- A federal appeals court's decision to throw out a $5 billion punitive-damage verdict against Exxon stemming from the nation's worst oil spill sparked anger among Alaskan fishermen and prompted the governor to consider intervening.
In its ruling Wednesday, the court said some damages were justified to punish the company for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, but decided the $5 billion was excessive. The panel ordered a lower court to reduce that amount.
"That $5 billion would have at least put a finger in the dike," said Patience Anderson Faulkner, who chronicled the damage from the oil spill for attorneys pursuing a class-action lawsuit against Exxon Mobil.
Her family owned a fishing permit valued at about $210,000 before the spill. She said if she still owned it, the permit would be worth about $50,000 for anyone foolish enough to buy it.
Small numbers of salmon straggle back annually but the herring are long gone and fishermen blame Exxon.
"We all recognize violence doesn't help, but we sure would like to choke them," Faulkner said.
Lee Raymond, chairman of the oil company, said through a statement the company took responsibility for the spill and has already paid more than $3 billion in cleanup costs and compensation.
Raymond said the spill "was a tragic accident that the company deeply regrets."
David Oesting, a lawyer representing fishermen in the case, said he might ask the court to reconsider or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review it.
Gov. Tony Knowles said Wednesday he will attempt to bring the two sides to a negotiated settlement, saying the case has dragged on too long.
"The Exxon Valdez oil spill has really been a cloud that has hung over those fishing families and communities for more than a decade," Knowles said. "The court decision today didn't bring any resolution to that."
A jury in Anchorage had ordered the oil giant in 1994 to pay the sum to thousands of commercial fishermen, Alaska natives, property owners and others harmed by the spill.
Exxon, which has since merged with Mobil to form Exxon Mobil Corp., had argued the verdict was "completely unwarranted, unfair and is excessive by any legal or practical measure."
The amount -- the biggest punitive damage award in history at the time -- was equal to a year's worth of Exxon's profits.
The jury also awarded commercial fishermen $287 million to compensate them for economic losses suffered as a result of the spill. The appeals court left that part of the verdict intact.
The state was not part of the lawsuit but reached a negotiated agreement with the federal government and Exxon in 1991.
The spill polluted Alaska's Prince William Sound with 11 million gallons of crude oil and smeared black goo across roughly 1,500 miles of coastline.
The jury found recklessness by Exxon and the captain of the Valdez, Joseph Hazelwood, who caused the tanker to run aground on a charted reef.
The plaintiffs had alleged that Hazelwood ran the ship aground while drunk and that Exxon knew he had a drinking problem. Hazelwood, however, was acquitted in 1990 of operating the tanker while drunk.
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Negotiations continue at climate conference
USA Today
11/08/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/healthscience/science/climate/2001-11-07-morocco-conf.htm
MARRAKECH, Morocco (AP) -- After agreeing on mandatory penalties for violators of an international climate treaty, negotiators worked Wednesday on how countries can meet targets to reduce the pollution that causes global warming.
Negotiators, meeting at Marrakech, are trying to work out formulas for meeting goals of set by the Kyoto climate treaty, signed by nearly 180 nations in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997.
The accord requires industrial countries to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases -- chiefly carbon dioxide from factories and vehicles -- by an average 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012.
On Tuesday night, negotiators agreed that countries that don't comply with targets under the pact will face mandatory consequences.
Countries that miss their targets in one period will have to make up the loss in the next period by cutting emissions an extra 30%.
Olivier Deleuze, the environment minister of Belgium, speaking for the European Union, called the compliance agreement "very positive."
On Wednesday, negotiators tried to fine-tune the mechanisms allowing countries to partially achieve targets without reducing real emissions: by counting air-cleansing forces as credits, buying or trading "carbon credits" in the international marketplace.
President Bush renounced the treaty in March, saying it was unfair and too costly for American business.
The United States has stayed largely on the sidelines of the debate, offering technical expertise and making sure its interests are not compromised.
Chief U.S. delegate Paula Dobriansky, the undersecretary of state for global affairs, said Washington will formulate its own policies to reduce carbon emissions, even though "scientific uncertainties remain" over the theory of global warming.
She said the United States would work with other countries, "even though in some cases we will pursue different paths toward the same destination."
The United States emits nearly one-fourth of the world's human-generated carbon dioxide.
The two-week conference ends Friday when the legal text for implementing the Kyoto treaty should be finished and ready for governments and parliaments to consider for ratification. Delegates said the agreement -- the first compulsory treaty on the environment -- may become international law by mid-2002.
Without Washington's backing, the treaty will need the approval of virtually every other industrial country to be ratified and enter into force. It must be endorsed by 55 countries, including those emitting 55% of greenhouse gases in 1990.
Delegates exchanged hugs and handshakes Tuesday night after producing the breakthrough on compliance. More than any issue, compliance had threatened to sabotage an agreement in Marrakech.
Scientists say the accumulation of carbon dioxide is causing average global temperatures to rise, glaciers to melt and rain patterns to shift in ways that will disrupt agriculture and the world economy over the next century.
The United Nations Environment Program cited a new study indicating a sharp fall in agricultural output in the Tropics, which are predicted to receive less rainfall.
"Initial results indicate that yields in the Tropics might fall as much as 30% over the next 50 years," the U.N. agency said.
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Down-to-earth plans for CO²
Scientists are developing technologies to trap and store carbon dioxide - but there are risks
Financial Times
Vanessa Houlder
November 8 2001 20:30
http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3MP6B0TTC&live=true
As ministers argue over the finer points of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in Marrakech this week, some researchers are considering a radically different solution to the problem.
They are seeking methods of trapping and storing the carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels, as a means of postponing fundamental changes in the way energy is generated and used.
Some of the more futuristic proposals have included injecting dust into the stratosphere, "greening" the deserts, creating artificial reefs of genetically engineered algae and building giant insulated balls of dry ice.
Other suggestions are less eye-catching but not much less ambitious. Interest in the topic has been stimulated by the US administration's search for alternative methods of tackling climate change, following its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol. "We all believe technology offers great promise significantly to reduce emissions - especially carbon capture, storage and sequestration technologies," said President George W. Bush in May.
In 1999, a US Department of Energy report listed potential benefits from carbon sequestration, ranging from new materials to improved agricultural practices. The approach was "truly radical in a technology context", it said.
In July, the DoE announced plans to spend $25m (£17m) on studying methods of capturing carbon gases and storing them in underground geological formations or in terrestrial vegetation such as forests. Its goal is to develop sequestration that costs $10 or less per tonne of carbon, about 30 times less than many current options.
Forests gradually absorb carbon from the air. But for most carbon storage techniques, the carbon dioxide must be captured immediately after combustion. Techniques are already available: carbon dioxide can be absorbed from gas streams by contact with solvents and activated materials or by being passed through special membranes.
Other techniques are under development. One proposal involves an "oxy-fuel" boiler developed by Praxair, in New York. The boiler uses a membrane to separate oxygen from other gases in air. When this burns it produces a concentrated carbon dioxide exhaust, which is relatively easy to capture.
Some researchers think the carbon dioxide removed in this way could be recovered and transformed into commercial products, such as plastics and rubbers, that are inert and long-lived. A 1999 Department of Energy report speculated carbon could find a new market in ultra-light vehicles made from advanced composite materials.
But most approaches simply involve storing carbon dioxide. One popular line of research involves injecting carbon dioxide into oilfields. Work commissioned by the International Energy Agency estimates that depleted oilfields could store 126bn tonnes of carbon dioxide. Because injecting carbon dioxide enhances the recovery of oil - about 70 oilfields worldwide already use the technique - this may even become a source of profit.
Another possibility is locking up carbon dioxide permanently by making it react with naturally occuring mineral oxides to form carbonates, thereby avoiding the need for underground reservoirs. But according to the IEA, this approach would cost at least $62 per tonne of carbon dioxide.
Another avenue of research concerns the ability of carbon dioxide, under certain conditions, to form stable hydrate molecules. These are similar to the methane hydrates thought to occur in large quantities under the sea and in permafrost regions. But estimated costs exceed $500 per tonne of carbon dioxide, the IEA says.
Storing carbon in trees and agricultural land is a cheaper and better-understood approach to sequestration. Attempts to improve the storage of these land sinks - which currently store about 40 per cent of man-made carbon dioxide emissions - are encouraged under the Kyoto Protocol.
But the issue is controversial, not least because much of the carbon stored by growing trees will later be released. In a cautious report issued this year, the Royal Society warned that planting new forests could even prove counter-productive. Rising temperatures could kill off the forests, releasing their carbon to the atmosphere over a relatively short period.
The uncertainties concerning land sinks were underlined in this Thursday's edition of Nature, the scientific journal. Researchers in Germany found that, despite absorbing carbon in the 1990s, land sinks had a largely neutral effect on carbon emissions in the 1980s. These variations probably arise from changes in foliage, plant litter and soil microbes. "Nonetheless, there remain considerable uncertainties as to the magnitude of the sink in different regions and the contribution of different processes," it said.
Many of the concerns about storing carbon on land also apply to proposals for storing carbon dioxide in the deep oceans. In principle, the deep oceans have an enormous capacity to store carbon dioxide, because the high alkalinity of seawater means it is largely stored as carbonate ions. Currently, the oceans remove about 30 per cent of the annual carbon dioxide emissions produced by man, according to Csiro, the Australian research organisation.
Researchers seeking to increase the storage capacity of oceans are examining two main options: injecting carbon dioxide into the deep sea; and increasing the uptake of carbon by marine phytoplankton by adding iron and other nutrients to the ocean.
But there may be risks. Last month in Science, the international science journal, US researchers called for more research on the possible biological effects of deep-sea carbon dioxide sequestration. Deep-sea animals may be highly sensitive to environmental changes in carbon dioxide concentration and acidity, they said.
Another concern stems from the possibility that stored carbon may suddenly be released. The danger was illustrated in 1986. More than 1,700 people living near the shores of Lake Nyos in Cameroon were asphyxiated after a plume of carbon dioxide bubbled up from the bottom of the lake.
Even if stored carbon dioxide leaked from the ground or ocean without causing immediate damage, its impact on the climate could be highly damaging. "Unless the prospect of uncontrolled release of carbon dioxide can be demonstrated to be unrealistic, sequestration may prove unacceptable," according to research by the IEA reporting that after 50 or more years, leakage of only 1 per cent a year could amount to more than 1bn tonnes of carbon released to the atmosphere annually.
Many environmental campaigners oppose research of this sort. "The global climate is a highly non-linear system determined by complex feedback processes and we still have a poor understanding of how it works. Any attempt deliberately to tinker with this system could backfire very badly," says Ben Matthews, an environmental activist.
For many environmental campaigners, a technological "fix" to allow continued consumption of fossil fuels is anathema. It is analogous, they say, to running down our kidneys to the state where we have to be permanently attached to a dialysis machine. At the least, the possibility of dealing with carbon emissions could distract politicians from the need to improve energy efficiency and renewable technologies.
There is, indeed, a risk that advanced carbon sequestration techniques could lull the world into a false sense of security. But if the climate change problem becomes overwhelming, we shall need all the help we can get.
---
Court Overturns Jury Award in '89 Exxon Valdez Spill
By EVELYN NIEVES
November 8, 2001
New York Times NATIONAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/national/08VALD.html
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 7 -- A federal appeals court ruled today that the $5.3 billion in punitive damages the Exxon Corporation was ordered to pay for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, the worst in the nation's history, was excessive, and told a judge to set a lower amount.
The decision vacates the award a jury in Anchorage ordered Exxon to pay in 1994 to 33,000 commercial fishermen, Alaska Natives, property owners and others harmed when the Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound.
Exxon, which has since merged with Mobil to become the Exxon Mobil Corporation, had repeatedly appealed the jury award, arguing that it should not have to pay the punitive damages because it had already paid damages as ordered by Congress. A district court in Alaska rejected the company's appeal in 1995, and the United States Supreme Court rejected its request for a new trial last year.
But today, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, ruling on oral arguments made in 1999, said that while punitive damages could be awarded for the spill, which devastated 3,000 square miles and severely damaged one of the world's most sensitive ecosystems, the $5.3 billion was excessive in light of recent Supreme Court rulings on damage awards. Under those rulings, Exxon Mobil might be ordered to pay up to about $1.6 billion, or less than one- third of the original award.
Exxon Mobil had no immediate reaction to the decision, a company spokeswoman said.
In Alaska, the organization representing the Prince William Sound fishermen affected by the spill said there was "shock and surprise" at the ruling.
"There's some disappointment around here," said Sue Aspelund, executive director of the Cordova District Fishermen United. "People's lives have been on hold a long time, since 1989, trying to get this thing resolved."
Environmental groups said they were dismayed by the ruling.
"We feel that Exxon is getting let off the hook," said Gary Skulnik, a spokesman for Greenpeace. "They have committed environmental atrocities, and they are not being made to pay the price for it."
The Ninth Circuit panel, in what sounded like an effort to deflect such a reaction, wrote, "This is not a case about befouling the environment."
"The verdict in this case," it said, "was for damage to economic expectations for commercial fishermen."
The panel noted that the Supreme Court in 1996 set forth for the first time factors that should be considered in reviewing whether punitive damages were excessive, including the reprehensibility of the defendant's conduct, the ratio of the award to the harm inflicted on the plaintiff, and the difference between the award and the civil or criminal penalties in comparable cases.
Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld, in writing the unanimous decision, noted that Exxon mitigated its reprehensibility by spending more than $2 billion to remove the oil from the water and adjacent shores, "and even from the individual birds and other wildlife dirtied by the oil." Exxon also "began settling with property owners, fishermen and others whose economic interests were harmed by the spill," Judge Kleinfeld wrote, spending $300 million on voluntary settlements "prior to any judgments being entered against it."
Finally, he noted, the ratio of the $5.3 billion in punitive damages and the $287 million in compensatory damages the jury awarded was more than 17 to 1, a figure that would not get by the Supreme Court.
While the appeals panel did not set an amount for the Alaska district court to order, it noted that the Supreme Court set a ratio of about four to one in punitive awards to actual harm to the plaintiffs. The panel noted that the district court had determined the actual monetary damage to the plaintiffs as $288.7 million to $418.7 million, which would bring the punitive damages to, at most, about $1.65 billion.
The Exxon Valdez spill occurred shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989, when the tanker ran aground on a reef while trying to steer away from icy waters. The Anchorage jury found that the tanker's captain, Joseph Hazelwood, was reckless for leaving the bridge as the vessel neared the reef, which was shown on navigation charts.
The jury also found recklessness by Exxon for allowing Mr. Hazelwood to be in charge of the ship when the company knew that he was an alcoholic, that he had begun drinking again and that he was drinking on board their ships.
The oil spill disrupted entire fishing communities, forcing shops to close, fishermen to declare bankruptcy and people to move from their hometowns. (While many people did receive settlements from Exxon, many others did not.) The spill also killed 250,000 birds and thousands of marine mammals, affecting 20 animal species. Ten years later, only two species, the bald eagle and the river otter, had fully recovered, while 10 had shown no significant recovery.
While public outrage over the spill forced President George Bush to abandon his drive to allow drilling in the coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the plan has been renewed this year under the administration of his son.
-------- health
Cancer Regimen Is Backed
November 8, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/health/08BREA.html?searchpv=nytToday
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59045-2001Nov7?language=printer
An extra dose of radiation aimed squarely at the spot where a tumor was removed can substantially improve the outlook for younger women with breast cancer, a European study has found.
The study showed that the treatment, which is already routine at many hospitals in the United States, cut the risk of a recurrence of cancer nearly in half over five years for women under 40.
The study, being published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, was led by Dr. Harry Bartelink of the Netherlands Cancer Institute.
----
SMALLPOX VACCINATION COULD COST BILLIONS
November 7, 2001
ENS
http://www.ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-07-09.html
WASHINGTON, DC, The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is seeking funds to purchase enough smallpox vaccine to innoculate every American citizen.
HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson told reporters on Tuesday that he expects to finalize a contract this week to buy 246 million doses of smallpox vaccine - at an estimated cost of up to $8 per dose. Thompson said he told the Office of Management and Budget that costs for the vaccination program could be four times the $509 million that the HHS first estimated.
Smallpox is one of the most feared biological agents that experts fear could be used in terrorist attacks against the U.S. The HHS's current budget for fighting bioterrorism is now $1.9 billion.
"There's no question the requests for proposal, the bids, came in higher than I had anticipated," Thompson said. "The proposals are all below $8 [per dose], but they are much higher than I had anticipated."
Thompson said the government had hoped to pay no more than $2 per dose.
Negotiations with three companies able to provide the smallpox vaccine are expected to conclude on Friday. Thompson said he hopes to negotiate a lower price in the final round of talks, as the government managed to do in purchasing mass quantities of the antibiotic Cipro, now the primary tool being used against anthrax.
The U.S. stopped routine vaccinations against anthrax in the late 1970s, after the disease was eradicated from the nation. But health experts now warn that scientists from the former USSR may have helped several other nations create a weapons ready form of the virus.
Smallpox could be far more dangerous than anthrax, as it is easily transmitted from person to person. The disease kills about 30 percent of those infected.
The U.S. now has about 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine in stock, and health experts think the vaccine could be diluted to allow the inoculation of about 50 to 60 million people.
--------
THE SITE
Safety Becomes Prime Concern at Ground Zero
New York Times
November 8, 2001
By ERIC LIPTON and KIRK JOHNSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/nyregion/08SITE.html
Ground zero at the World Trade Center is a landscape like no other. It is jagged and angular on the surface, with shards of steel piled upon steel. It is caustic beneath from the smoke of subterranean fires. And it is emotional always and everywhere, from the reminders of the lives that were lost.
Those same things also make it a work site like no other in America, and in that it is a dangerous workplace, first and foremost.
Ironworkers, armed with torches and fuel tanks, are held aloft in so-called man-baskets by the site's more than 20 cranes. Steel beams pulled from the debris pile emerge sometimes red hot or with gashes that leave them unstable and prone to snap, sending them toward the ground and anyone standing underneath.
Goggles, respirators, safety boots and helmets are mandatory for workers on the debris field. But the protection they provide, if they are worn and worn properly, can still be inadequate, as there have been 34 broken bones, 441 lacerations, more than 1,000 eye injuries and hundreds more burns, sprains and smashed fingers through Sunday.
Danger and disorder here are not surprising things to find, of course. The two-million- ton pile of debris exists only after a murderous attack. From the beginning there was an overriding emphasis on speed, to search out survivors, and more recently, to scour the debris field for human remains.
But increasingly, city officials and cleanup contractors say, there is also a push for greater regularity and safety at ground zero. The urgency of the early days has passed, they say. The search for the dead will continue. But the dangers must now be reduced as the long, grinding cleanup extends into the winter.
"The risks that were taken early on have to be scaled back," Francis X. Gribbon, a spokesman for the Fire Department said. "We can't justify someone else getting killed down there."
That transition, from a state of emergency to one of order, is still full of tension. The city's decision last week, for example, to reduce the number of firefighters searching for remains in the ruins sparked an angry protest at the site.
Workers have also been caught up in the change. The men, and they are mostly men, are in many cases assigned to 10- or 12-hour shifts, sometimes seven days a week. Now, as progress has been made in clearing several of the buildings -- almost all the remains of the Marriott World Trade Hotel, on the southwestern end, and 7 World Trade Center, on the northern edge, are already gone -- the number of ironworkers needed at the site is also on the decline.
As much as can be imagined at a place that is beyond anyone's experience, workaday rhythms rule. Buddies call each other from corners of the pile on their cellphones to check in; they stop after work for a beer.
But there is also no escaping the danger, or the strangeness, of working here.
Ironworkers operate with a "buddy system" on the pile so that one worker can watch out for another. But the respirators and noise mostly mandate hand signals even close at hand.
"You can't do much talking all day with a respirator on, so you do a lot of thinking," said Robert Strohschein, a 35-year- old ironworker from Neptune, N.J. "I work with a guy every day. I don't even know his name."
Mr. Strohschein, one of 183 workers burned so far at the site, was hurt about two weeks ago when a piece of steel he was cutting jumped and burned through his pants.
The true extent of the danger at the site or the threats to workers at ground zero could not be determined independently. The Giuliani administration denied repeated requests by The New York Times to enter the site and observe the work during the last week.
The site is still extremely hazardous, but inspectors are finding fewer problems as the weeks progress, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
From Sept. 21 to Oct. 7, for example, OSHA observed an average of 43 hazards on the site each day, ranging from workers not wearing proper protective gear, to dangers caused by improperly stored fuel tanks, to cranes that were dangerously assembled. By late October, the number had fallen to 33 a day.
Rates for some specific injuries have fallen even more sharply, according to the New York City Department of Health.
In the first three weeks after the attack, firefighters, construction workers and others sought medical assistance 6,342 times, for problems like broken bones, burns or more modest issues, like blisters or sprains. In the last three weeks, that number was 1,297, with 384 visits last week, the records show.
The most immediate threat is from the countless physical hazards at the site: the hot steel, the gas cylinders, the unstable debris piles, the cranes swinging back and forth.
The other primary threat is not as visible: the toxins that have been measured in the dusty air, or the smoke that rises from the fires still burning deep underground.
A small army of safety inspectors -- from the federal government, the city and a private contractor -- monitor the work around the clock. So far, federal regulators have imposed no fines for worker safety violations because the site is still an emergency zone, and they do not have jurisdiction, said Patricia K. Clark, OSHA's regional administrator.
The work with the cranes is particularly dangerous. The cranes are so tall and long that frequently the operators cannot see the spot where debris is being lifted. A relay worker uses a radio to call in orders to the crane operator. Secure areas have also been set up on the ground along the cranes' paths, so anything falling should hit without injury.
One of the most serious accidents resulted when a crane cable holding an ironworker in a man-basket became twisted, causing the basket to swing wildly until it rammed into another basket. Neither of the workers was thrown out by the impact, but a gas cylinder in one of the baskets broke lose and fell onto one of the worker's shoulders, and he was taken to an emergency room.
But there has been real progress in improving safety.
Inspections in the middle of last month of the more than 20 cranes at the site found repeated safety flaws, particularly with the steel cables and slings used to lift the debris and the man-baskets. Of the 222 crane riggings and slings inspected between Oct. 17 and Oct. 20, 81 had problems, ranging from defective safety latches to worn-out cables, officials said.
"That is a pretty high rate of problems," Ms. Clark said. "And they are lifting people in baskets with these same riggings."
Inspectors went back last week and found far fewer problems, although Ms. Clark said the number was still too high.
The crews are increasingly moving toward working underground. That opens up a whole new set of safety issues, including ensuring that anytime someone goes below ground, supervisors and emergency personnel know they are there, said Robert C. Adams, the director of environmental, health and safety services at the city's Department of Design and Construction.
Firefighters and police officers still work at the scene. But instead of having large squads of firefighters spread out in the work zone, there are often just small groups of emergency workers assigned to each quadrant. Their job is to serve as spotters, looking for and helping collect any human remains.
The testing and monitoring of the air at ground zero -- and the workers who breathe it -- is more or less constant, health and safety officials say. OSHA has fitted some workers with three-pound kits that attach to their belts with hoses extending up to mouth level; the belt attachment sucks in the same air for sampling that the workers are breathing. Scientists from Johns Hopkins University have also begun monitoring truck drivers who haul debris from the site, checking for everything from asbestos to silica and dioxins.
For the most part, officials at OSHA say, the risks have been localized in parts of the pile where the smoke plume is greatest. Air samples taken within the plume have contained high mixtures, at times, of compounds like benzene, which has been linked -- for long-term exposures -- to anemia and leukemia. But most workers monitored have been found to have little or no exposure to the chemical, OSHA said.
Part of the problem, particularly in the early weeks, was that many workers and firefighters did not wear proper respirators, leaving large numbers with lung irritations, coughs and perhaps even more serious injuries.
Some health experts say that while agencies like OSHA have developed expertise in industrial hygiene about individual compounds and chemicals, the mixture that exists at ground zero has no medical or clinical history to help assess risks.
"We're really working in unknown territory," said David Rosner, a professor of history and public health at Columbia University. "We've never had any experience where that incredible mix of chemicals, lead and heavy metals were all crushed under that weight. The reassurances may be true and to the best of our ability to judge may be accurate, but there are just too many unknowns. The science just isn't very good."
-------- human rights
In Desperate Times, Talking of Torture
New York Times
November 8, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/opinion/L08TORT.html
To the Editor:
Re "Torture Seeps Into Discussion by News Media" (Business Day, Nov. 5):
In my 10 years of documenting medical evidence of torture and caring for survivors, I have come to know well that torture can never be justified.
Never mind that torture is prohibited under international law under any circumstance; that its use undermines the authority and legitimacy of governments; that it is perpetrated in the context of other human rights violations; that it is not an effective method of gathering reliable information; and that attempts to justify its use are, in fact, the psychological tools that enable perpetrators to disconnect their moral conscience from acts of extreme violence.
Torture can never be justified because it impugns the very meaning of our existence and precludes that which we aspire to be: human.
VINCENT IACOPINO, M.D. Boston, Nov. 6, 2001 The writer is senior medical consultant, Physicians for Human Rights.
•To the Editor:
As I pondered your discussion of the legitimization of torture (Business Day, Nov. 5), I couldn't help but personalize it.
Would any parent hesitate to torture a miscreant to discover where his or her kidnapped child was being hidden?
Despite the slippery slope that is inevitably confronted, surely we, as a society, have no lesser responsibility to the multitude of children, of every age, under our care.
ISAAC STEVEN HERSCHKOPF, M.D. New York, Nov. 5, 2001
•To the Editor:
One vital element was missing from "Torture Seeps Into Discussion by News Media," your Nov. 5 Business Day article about news commentators' discussion of whether the United States should use torture against terrorist suspects: the simple consideration that it does not work.
On one hand, an innocent person, under torture, will often blurt out anything, implicate anyone, to make the pain stop. On the other, the pilots of the hijacked planes considered themselves martyrs and, braced by faith, were unafraid to die; such people do not crack under torture. Result: Those who know don't tell, and those who don't, fabricate.
Pursuing wild geese, we could lose the war on terrorists, but by then it wouldn't matter; whatever was worth defending would have died, not at the hands of terrorists, but by our own hand.
A. C. WILLMENT Ridgewood, N.J., Nov. 5, 2001
-------- police / prisoners
Sedition Law Used to Hold Suspects
Thursday November 8
By PETE YOST,
Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011108/us/attacks_sedition_1.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - Prosecutors seeking to hold people they suspect were in the early stages of terrorist plots may turn anew to a very old weapon - the Civil War-era law on sedition.
Last week, prosecutors cited the rarely invoked law in the case of a student being detained in New York, and hinted they might make fuller use of it in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
With roots in laws that date back more than 200 years, the statute gives the government great flexibility in assembling prosecutions against people who plan but don't carry out criminal acts against the United States.
Federal prosecutors ``appear to be right on the money'' in using the sedition law to address possible terrorist collaborators, George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg said.
``To the extent a jihad'' or holy war ``is invoked against the United States, it's like an announcement that `I'm putting myself under this statute,''' Saltzburg said.
The government suggested its approach in a perjury indictment last week. The federal grand jury that brought the case against an associate of two of the hijackers is investigating ``seditious conspiracy to levy war against the United States,'' the indictment stated.
Law enforcement officials, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said prosecutors are examining other cases in which they might use the sedition law against people who did not carry out attacks but had been in various stages of planning.
The law imposes up to 20-year prison terms when two or more people ``conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the government of the United States, or to levy war against them.''
While the law is seldom invoked, prosecutors used it to win convictions in two high-profile cases against four Puerto Rican nationalists and against a Muslim cleric and co-defendants who plotted to blow up the United Nations (news - web sites).
In neither case were the violent acts carried out.
The U.S. law on sedition dates back to the 1790s when the Alien and Sedition acts of the John Adams administration targeted people who criticized the government. The acts expired and were not renewed amid a storm of criticism.
A new law passed during the Civil War served as the basis for the current statute.
There were Confederate sympathizers in the North and the law was passed to make it easier to punish people who conspired against the union, said University of Michigan law professor Richard Friedman.
The government used the sedition law after World War I to convict anarchists. In the 1950s, the Supreme Court upheld convictions of communists on sedition charges for teaching doctrines that were held to be subversive.
``These weren't people blowing things up; they were basically basement seminars where people would read Marx,'' said constitutional law professor Richard Primus of the University of Michigan.
``Teaching people that the government is bad in the abstract is a constitutional right, but once you go beyond to an agreement to commit crimes, that becomes clearly punishable,'' said UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.
Chicago attorney Jeremy Margolis successfully prosecuted four Puerto Rican nationalists for seditious conspiracy in the 1980s for planning to bomb a Marine training center and an Army Reserve facility.
The object of the conspiracy was to change the policies of the U.S. government ``as opposed to doing a particular criminal act - blow that up, take that down, shoot that person,'' Margolis recalled.
----
Commission to propose restructuring of agencies
USA Today
11/08/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-08-agencies.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A presidential commission plans to recommend that three major Pentagon intelligence agencies be shifted to the CIA -- a move that would represent the largest shake-up in the intelligence community in decades, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The agencies that would be transferred are the National Reconnaissance Office, which develops intelligence satellite systems, the National Security Agency, which is in charge of electronic intercepts, and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the newspaper said.
Each of those agencies would be taken from the Defense Department and put under the control of the director of central intelligence. The director heads not only the Central Intelligence Agency but also the government's intelligence community, which includes the CIA and 12 other agencies.
The proposal, aimed at reducing rivalries and consolidating programs, will not be delivered to President Bush until next month, said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.
"I think it's premature to comment on anything that the president has not yet received. They've made no findings that the president has received and will not until December," Fleischer said.
The presidential panel making the proposal is chaired by retired Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the new chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Bush created the panel in May, just after asking CIA Director George Tenet to review intelligence systems.
The Bush administration has made sweeping statements about the need to retool intelligence gathering procedures in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
All three Pentagon agencies, are multibillion-dollar bureaucracies that have been traditionally headed by uniformed officers under the direction of the secretary of defense.
The agencies account for half the $30 billion spent by the government on intelligence each year and dwarf the CIA's estimated budget of $3.5 billion, the Post reported, citing congressional intelligence sources.
---
Senate approves intelligence bill
USA Today
11/08/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/08/senate-bill.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate unanimously approved a bill Thursday that would beef up the intelligence services to strengthen America's ability to combat terrorism. "Our legislation authorizes activities that will rebuild the foundation of our intelligence community so that we can meet the terrorism challenge," said Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the committee's top Republican, said, "The war we fight today is an intelligence-driven one to a degree that we have never seen before."
"This war has no front lines, and the field of combat is global," Shelby said. "Wherever terrorists and their supporters can be found, that is the battlefield. Never before have we demanded or have we needed so much from our intelligence services."
Intelligence spending is generally kept secret. But the CIA revealed, after being sued by the Federation of American Scientists, that such spending totaled $26.6 billion in 1997 and $26.7 billion in 1998, said Steven Aftergood of the federation. Since then, it's been estimated at about $30 billion a year.
The House-passed intelligence authorization bill, approved Oct. 5 by voice vote with no dissent, called for a 9% increase in spending, 2% above Bush's request.
The Senate bill, according to a congressional aide, is close to Bush's request, making it about a 7% increase.
The debate came as the Bush administration worked on proposals to restructure the entire intelligence community. A presidential panel is set to recommend next month that the United States give the CIA director operational and budget control over several military intelligence agencies.
Graham said the bill, much of which is classified, reflects certain priorities:
_Revitalizing the National Security Agency that gathers and analyzes information from broadcasts, computers and other electronic means of communication, shifting the focus from intercepting broadcasts to tapping fiber-optic communication lines.
_Correcting deficiencies in human intelligence collection. "We must recruit more effectively to operate in many places around the world where U.S. interests are threatened," Graham said, noting that the decades of focusing on one big target, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, are over.
"In the post-Berlin Wall period, we're dealing with a wide diversity of targets ... and they speak many, many languages," he said. In Afghanistan alone, he said, besides Arabic and English, there are at least six domestic languages.
_Correcting the imbalance between information collection and analysis that turns it into intelligence. "The percentage of this collected information that is analyzed and converted into useful intelligence has been steadily declining since 1990," he said.
_Funding for a robust research and development initiative, reversing declining investment in this area.
Graham also looked to future development of what he called "the newest form of intelligence," measurements and signatures intelligence. Through such intelligence, a satellite that detects the heat and trajectory of an object, for example, could tell if it is carrying a weapon of mass destruction and where it's headed.
Given the unpredictability of the current global situation, the Senate agreed to an amendment that would let the Senate and House conferees -- who will meet to resolve differences between the two bills -- make whatever changes are needed to respond to events that occur between now and final passage of the bill.
The Senate bill includes an amendment by Sen. Robert Smith, R-N.H., to make it easier for the Justice Department to use the Alien Terrorist Removal Court to keep people out of the country. It would do so by letting the government share classified information about the alien only with the judge, excluding defense attorneys.
The Senate approved it after agreeing to a Graham amendment that would prevent it from taking effect for at least three months as the attorney general conducts a study on why the court has not been used.
---
Using truth serum an option in probes
By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 8, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011108-388089.htm
Investigators considering the use of truth serum to sweat information out of suspected al Qaeda terrorists likely would find federal courts on their side because public safety is at imminent risk.
In cases involving the whereabouts of bombs or weapons, or in the hunt for kidnap victims, courts have been flexible, even to the point of admitting evidence that was obtained by officers who failed to give the "Miranda warning," which says suspects have a right to remain silent and obtain a lawyer.
One guiding light for that philosophy is the quotation cited in several Supreme Court national-security opinions from a 1963 opinion for the court by Justice Arthur Goldberg: "While the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact."
FBI officials yesterday said that, despite the frustration investigators face in tough cases, the bureau had no plans to use truth serum or other coercive interrogation techniques on people detained in the investigation of the September 11 attacks, as press reports here and abroad claimed were under consideration to break down stubborn suspects.
"As the nation's lead agency for counterterrorism and the enforcement of civil rights law, the FBI works both to prevent and investigate acts of terrorism and to protect individual rights," the FBI said in a statement that mentioned four recent convictions in the embassy bombing cases as proof that the constitutional system works against terrorism.
"While large and difficult investigations often bring moments of frustration for investigators, none would advocate what is being suggested," the FBI statement said.
The CIA finessed the question by saying federal law bars its involvement in domestic operations.
Truth serums were used on World War II spy suspects by agents of the Office of Strategic Services, Chief Justice Earl Warren endorsed them during the Kennedy assassination probe he headed, and a House committee proposed to test a Hanoi mortician who testified in 1979 that he prepared 400 bodies of U.S. prisoners of war for storage.
The key legal question would be whether the information a witness was hiding was deemed more important than using his confession to prosecute him later.
Except for rare cases involving imminent risk to "public safety," federal courts always bar a defendant's involuntary statements under the Fifth Amendment's protection against forced self-incrimination. Should such cases come to light, prosecutors would have discretion on whether to charge an investigator criminally with assault or civil rights violations, and the person under investigation could try to take his chances in civil court by suing the interrogator.
Analysts in and out of government say some answers in the al Qaeda investigation are worth trying chemical truth serums even if prosecution will fail because of the tactic.
"It's just an injection, a doctor gives it. That one doesn't seem so hard," said a federal official who requested anonymity.
"We already allow the threat of imprisonment to force people to speak to a grand jury. Once certain legal processes have been gone through we place no value on your right not to speak," he said.
Testimony coerced by fines or indefinite jail terms is common in grand jury probes such as the one under way over the terrorist attacks. That practice puts aside Fifth Amendment self-incrimination rights so that reluctant witnesses can be forced to testify against others.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz proposes reviving the historic English system in which top officials and the high court authorized what he calls warrants for torture.
"I'm not in favor of torture, but if you're going to have it, it should damn well have court approval," said Mr. Dershowitz.
A 1984 Supreme Court decision in a New York rape case gives authorities latitude to protect public safety, declaring a "public safety exception" to the Miranda rule.
"We conclude that the need for answers to questions in a situation posing a threat to the public safety outweighs the need for the prophylactic rule protecting the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination," the court said in an opinion by Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist.
"The actual constitutional violation occurs not with the shocking conduct itself, but with the admission of the evidence," Los Angeles lawyer Jessica Pae said in a law-review analysis of coerced testimony.
"Hence there would be no constitutional violation against the coerced party in using the compelled testimony to develop leads against a third party regarding, for example, a hostage crisis or bomb-threat situation to prevent deadly harm to innocent parties," said Miss Pae.
"That was Miranda, but who knows what exceptions the courts might recognize in other cases to obtain intelligence as opposed to prosecuting someone," said a University of Southern California law professor who asked not to be identified.
"This is the biggest murder case ever investigated, so someone could be perfectly consistent as a matter of principle even if he opposed using a truth serum or other coerced interrogation for regular murderers," he said.
Kent S. Scheidegger, of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said investigators could risk criminal civil rights charges for coercing confessions.
"If the circumstances are exigent enough, even though it was a violation, it wouldn't be prosecuted," Mr. Scheidegger said of situations where the answer is more important than a conviction.
Although the CIA experimented with truth serums, as did its World War II predecessor, the OSS, the agency has no public position on the issue now.
"The same people who beat you up for perhaps being in contact with unsavory people, or for being too close to people who had techniques to get information, now want to know why you don't have greater sources in terrorist organizations," said one CIA official.
The truth serum issue arose during the Warren Commission probe of Lee Harvey Oswald's murder after President Kennedy's 1963 assassination, when Jack Ruby volunteered for a truth-serum test to prove that he had no co-conspirators.
"Now Mr. Warren, I don't know if you got any confidence in the lie detector test and the truth serum, and so on?" Ruby said.
"I can't tell you just now much confidence I have in it, because it depends so much on who is taking it, and so forth. But I will say this to you, that if you and your counsel want any kind of test, I will arrange it for you. I would be glad to do that, if you want it," Chief Justice Warren replied.
"I do want it. Will you agree to that, Joe?" Ruby asked his lawyer, Joe H. Tonahill.
"I sure do, Jack," Mr. Tonahill said.
In 1996, Defense Secretary William J. Perry officially banished training manuals used for Latin American intelligence trainees from 1982 to 1991 at the U.S. Army School of the Americas.
Practices in the manuals included extrajudicial execution and use of truth serums.
An al Qaeda training manual in evidence at the embassy bombing trials mentions chemical invasion in its chapter on interrogation, but it warns "Jihad brothers" that torture is more likely in the jails of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
"Placing drugs and narcotics in the brother's food to weaken his will power" is item 23 among 26 torture methods listed, followed by nine "methods of psychological torture."
In an article chronicling truth serum from the 1940s to the 1990s, California Institute of Technology student Alison Winter pointed out the historic use of alcohol to loosen tongues, documented by Pliny the Elder's A.D. 77 aphorism, "In vino veritas."
More sophisticated truth serums have included scopolamine and the barbiturates sodium pentothal and sodium amytal. There also was experimentation with LSD, psilocybin and amanita mascara mushrooms.
Although the fictional image portrays a single hypodermic injection, Miss Pae said it was more common to have a doctor administer truth serums intravenously over sessions lasting two to 11 hours.
"The depth of anesthesia is controlled by the anesthesiologist in response to requests from the principal interrogator, who may call for rapid fluctuations in depth of anesthesia in order to further the purposes of the interrogation," she said.
A psychiatrist in a landmark rape-sodomy case testified that such drugs "remove certain inhibitions so the individual will spontaneously say what the individual would have said without trying to exercise control over not saying it."
Other expert witnesses call such testimony unreliable because persons submitted to chemicals often repeat interrogators words or fantasize.
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U.S. raids offices of "terror-supporting" networks
By Arshad Mohammed
Thursday November 8,
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-70951.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. agents on Wednesday raided offices and froze assets of two "terrorist-supporting" financial networks that officials said provided money, weapons and communications for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group.
In raids from Minnesota to Massachusetts, the U.S. Treasury blocked the assets of 62 people and groups suspected of funding the Saudi-born militant, who is believed to have masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
U.S. officials identified the two networks as Al Taqwa, an association of offshore banks and money management firms that have moved al Qaeda cash around the world, and Al Barakaat, a group of money-wiring and communications companies owned by a friend and supporter of bin Laden.
Authorities also gave an alternative spelling, Barakat, for the latter financial group.
While the most visible face of the war on terrorism has been the bombing campaign launched a month ago on Afghanistan, which has long sheltered bin Laden, U.S. President George W. Bush said the financial crackdown was equally important.
"Ours is not a war just of soldiers and aircraft. It is a war fought with diplomacy, by the investigations of law enforcement, by gathering intelligence, and by cutting off the terrorists' money," Bush said in a speech at the U.S. Treasury's financial crimes center in suburban Virginia.
"The entry point to these networks may be a small storefront operation, but follow the network to its center and you discover wealthy banks and sophisticated technology, all at the service of mass murderers," Bush said. "By shutting these networks down, we disrupt the murderer's work."
As part of a global crackdown, U.S. agents closed offices connected to Al Taqwa and Al Barakaat in four U.S. states, in one case posting guards outside a Minnesota money transfer firm used by African immigrants to send money home.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said U.S. agents had shut down eight Al Barakaat offices in United States. The Treasury Department later put the number of offices shut down at nine.
EFFORT INTERNATIONAL
Although few details were available, the White House said the United Arab Emirates had seized assets and records of Al Barakaat, while Italy and Lichtenstein had taken "enforcement action" against al Taqwa as part of the global crackdown.
Bush said the Group of Eight leading industrial nations and Russia joined the effort, although he offered no details.
In recent weeks, U.S. officials stepped up their efforts to examine the informal "hawala" networks common in the Middle East and South Asia that allow for unregulated and largely invisible financial transfers around the world.
The White House said that U.S. Treasury and Customs agents began executing orders to freeze assets and to collect evidence at sites around the country on Wednesday morning for possible prosecutions.
"Acting on solid and credible evidence, the Treasury Department of the United States today blocked the U.S. assets of 62 individuals and organizations connected with two terrorist-supporting financial networks," Bush said.
The 46 groups and 16 individuals whose assets were frozen have addresses from Columbus, Ohio, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Dorchester, Massachusetts, in the United States to the Bahamas, Dubai, Lichtenstein, Somalia and Switzerland overseas.
In Minneapolis, U.S. customs agents swooped down on an office of Aaran Money Wire Service Inc. and posted guards at the entrance to keep out some of the bewildered African immigrants who use the facility to send and receive money.
Abdirashid Mohamoud came to the office to wire $100 to his mother-in-law in Kenya for food and rent. "There's no way today that she will be able to survive," he told Reuters. "We don't know anything about organized terrorists."
Federal agents later pulled up a rental truck and began emptying the office of desks, chairs and boxes of material.
CHARGES FILED IN BOSTON
In Boston, U.S. agents arrested Mohammed M. Hussein, an illegal alien, and charged him with running an outlaw foreign money transmittal business that regularly wired funds from the United States to the United Arab Emirates.
Federal agents arrested Hussein, the treasurer of Barakaat North America, at the unlicensed money transferring operation in the working-class Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, and were searching for his colleague Liban M. Hussein, who was listed as the firm's president and who also faces charges.
As part of its financial crackdown on Wednesday, U.S. officials said they have blocked more than $26 million in assets held by al Qaeda and by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers while foreign nations have frozen at least $17 million more.
A White House document named Al Barakaat's founder as Shaykh Ahmed Nur Jimale, saying he was closely linked to bin Laden and had used his group's 60 offices in Somalia and 127 offices elsewhere around the world to "transmit funds, intelligence and instructions to terrorist cells."
It said Al Taqwa was a network of companies in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Bahamas and Italy controlled by Youssef Nada, a naturalized Italian citizen. It said Al Taqwa provided investment advice and money transfers for Al Qaeda "and other radical Islamic groups."
In his speech at the Treasury Department's financial crimes nerve center, Bush noted he has warned foreign banks that the United States will take action against them if they refuse to freeze al Qaeda-related assets.
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THE DETAINEE
U.S. Explores Indicting a Possible Member of the Hijackers' Squad
November 8, 2001
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/national/08SUSP.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 -- Federal prosecutors are weighing whether to seek a conspiracy indictment against a man in custody in New York who the authorities suspect was the 20th suicide hijacker in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, senior law enforcement officials said today.
The man, Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent, was arrested in Minneapolis on Aug. 17 on immigration charges after he sought lessons on how to fly Boeing jets, but expressed no interest in learning how to take off or land.
Since shortly after Sept. 11, Mr. Moussaoui has been held in New York as a material witness, but he has repeatedly refused to answer investigators' questions.
"We still have questions about him, but so far we don't have a direct connection" to the attacks, one senior law enforcement official said today. The official said it was unclear what specific charges might be brought against Mr. Moussaoui, but added that various charges were being considered.
Another senior government official said tonight that one possible charge against Mr. Moussaoui was "seditious conspiracy to levy war against the United States." The possibility of an indictment against Mr. Moussaoui was first reported today in The Boston Globe.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have said in court documents that that charge is among the offenses being investigated by the grand jury looking into the attacks. The potential charge in this case was also mentioned in a perjury indictment on Nov. 1 of a Jordanian student who was living in San Diego and was charged with lying about his relationship with the suspected hijacker Khalid al-Midhar. It was also a charge used in terrorism cases in the 1990's, including the case against Sheik Abdel Rahman, who was convicted of conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.
Some senior law enforcement officials want to make Mr. Moussaoui the first person to be indicted on charges of taking part in the conspiracy that led to the Sept. 11 attacks. One senior law enforcement official said tonight that he believed a grand jury would charge Mr. Moussaoui with being involved.
But other senior law enforcement officials said today that there was not much more than circumstantial evidence linking Mr. Moussaoui to the plot.
A review of Mr. Moussaoui's telephone records has not revealed a hard link to the 19 suspected hijackers or their associates, officials have said. But the German authorities have said that Mr. Moussaoui had at least one telephone conversation with the landlord of an apartment rented by Mohamed Atta, who is considered by investigators to be the ringleader of the hijacking plot.
Although no important evidence has emerged about Mr. Moussaoui's role, investigators say he fits the profile of most of the 19 hijackers: a well-educated immigrant with deep ties to Muslim extremists who had sought flight training in the United States.
Some officials have said they suspect Mr. Moussaoui was meant to be aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Stony Township, Pa., after the passengers apparently stormed the cockpit and attacked the hijackers. Federal authorities have said that of the four hijacked airliners, only Flight 93 had four hijackers aboard instead of the five-man teams on the other three flights.
The authorities have also noted some important differences between Mr. Moussaoui and the other hijackers. He enrolled in flight school this spring, while the others had trained on large aircraft simulators for a year or more before the hijackings.
Mr. Moussaoui came to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Minneapolis in August after an instructor at the Pan Am Flying Academy in Eagan, Minn., called the authorities to report that a new foreign student had behaved suspiciously.
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Police and the Economy
New York Times
November 8, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/opinion/L08CRIM.html
To the Editor:
The report that overtime earnings as a result of the World Trade Center attack will lead to a record number of police retirements (front page, Nov. 2) could be turned into a blessing by the new mayor. In the 1990's the size of the Police Department was greatly increased, and crime decreased.
But crime decreased everywhere in the 1990's, even where the number of police officers stayed the same. Although politicians and the police took credit, the crime drop was probably due mostly to the Supreme Court. Twelve years after the court decided that abortion was legal, crime started dropping and kept dropping for a decade.
Crime has leveled off. But the economic boom is over, and the city is left with a police department that is bloated and wasteful, as can be seen from the daily activity records of individual officers. A wave of resignations might be perfect for a city that needs to re-examine its expenditures.
ROBERT PANZARELLA New York, Nov. 5, 2001 The writer is a professor of police science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY.
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Prince: Saudis Monitored Weapon Claims
By Susan Sevareid
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, November 8, 2001; 4:19 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63003-2001Nov8?language=printer
MANAMA, Bahrain -- Saudi intelligence heard reports, but never had evidence, that Osama bin Laden may have acquired weapons of mass destruction, the kingdom's former intelligence chief said in remarks published Thursday.
Prince Turki, head of the Saudi secret service from 1977 until last August, ruled out the possibility bin Laden's al-Qaida organization might have amassed such weapons, according to the English-language Arab News.
"We monitored all these claims - not only those related to al-Qaida, but regarding other organizations as well," Prince Turki was quoted as saying. "There were reports that several individuals and organizations had acquired or (were) about to acquire such weapons, but we have not received strong evidence to back that up."
Bin Laden, who is bitterly critical of the Saudi royal family, was stripped of his Saudi citizenship and disowned by his family in the early 1990s. He is the main suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.
Prince Turki's comments came in an unusual in-depth interview conducted last week with two Saudi-based media, the Arab News and MBC television. The newspaper has been publishing a series of articles this week based on the interview.
What sort of weapons the prince referred to wasn't clear. However, President Bush said this week that bin Laden is trying to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
U.S. officials say they believe bin Laden's al-Qaida network has access to crude chemical weapons such as chlorine and phosgene poison gases, but not more complex weapons such as Sarin nerve gas. They say evidence exists al-Qaida sought nuclear material.
Witnesses in the New York trial of suspects in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania testified bin Laden had sent people to Sudan to buy uranium. The trial transcript is unclear on whether the purchase was made.
Counter-terrorism officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press in Amman, Jordan, on Thursday that they were reviewing reports that bin Laden agents tried to acquire non-conventional weapons from sources in former Soviet republics.
But the officials said they had no confirmation that bin Laden had managed to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Jean Pascal Zanders of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said it took Iraq, with the advantages of state support, 10 to 15 years to mass produce biological and chemical agents.
Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki said in the Arab News interview, also monitored bin Laden's efforts to build Islamic militias in Sudan in the mid-1990s.
The prince said Saudi intelligence monitored bin Laden "recruiting persons from different parts of the Islamic world, from Algeria to Egypt, from East Asia to Somalia, to get them trained at these camps."
Bin Laden left Sudan in 1996. He returned to Afghanistan, where he was welcomed because of his years there battling Soviet forces in the 1980s.
Prince Turki also was quoted as saying Saudi intelligence estimated bin Laden's wealth at between "$40 million and $50 million at most." Other estimates have run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
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THE SCHOOL
Defectors Cite Iraqi Training for Terrorism
By CHRIS HEDGES
New York Times
November 8, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/international/middleeast/08IRAQ.html
Two defectors from Iraqi intelligence said yesterday that they had worked for several years at a secret Iraqi government camp that had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995.
They said the training in the camp, south of Baghdad, was aimed at carrying out attacks against neighboring countries and possibly Europe and the United States.
The defectors, one of whom was a lieutenant general and once one of the most senior officers in the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, said they did not know if the Islamic militants being trained at the camp, known as Salman Pak, were linked to Osama bin Laden.
They also said they had no knowledge of specific attacks carried out by the militants. But they insisted that those being trained as recently as last year were Islamic radicals from across the Middle East. An interview of the two men was set up by an Iraqi group that seeks the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein.
The defectors said they knew of a highly guarded compound within the camp where Iraqi scientists, led by a German, produced biological agents.
"There is a lot we do not know," the former general, who spoke on condition that his name not be printed, admitted. "We were forbidden to speak about our activities among each other, even off duty. But over the years you see and hear things. These Islamic radicals were a scruffy lot. They needed a lot of training, especially physical training. But from speaking with them it was clear they came from a variety of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco. We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States. The gulf war never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States. We were repeatedly told this."
The reports mesh with statements by Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami, a captain in the Iraqi Army who emigrated to Texas in May after working as an instructor for eight years at Salman Pak, located at a bend in the Tigris.
United Nations arms inspectors suspected that such activities, including simulated hijackings carried out in a Boeing 707 fuselage set up in the camp, were going on at Salman Pak before they were expelled from Iraq in 1998. But this is the first look at the workings of the camp from those who took part in its administration.
Dr. Richard Sperzel, former chief of United Nations biological weapons inspection teams in Iraq, said the Iraqis had always told the inspectors that Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces.
"But many of us had our own private suspicions," he said. "We had nothing specific as evidence. Yet among ourselves we always referred to it as the terrorist training camp."
The former lieutenant general, who acknowledged his involvement in some of the worst excesses of President Hussein's government, including direct involvement in the execution of thousands of Shiite Muslim rebels after an uprising that followed the 1991 gulf war, spent three days in Ankara being interviewed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
He said the decision by the C.I.A. to include Turkish intelligence officials in the interview led him to fear for his safety. He has since fled Turkey, where he sought asylum, and was interviewed in another Middle Eastern country.
The assertions of terrorism training by the Iraqi defectors is likely to fuel one side of an intense debate in Washington over whether to extend the war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban government of Afghanistan to include Iraq.
The Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group headed by Ahmed Chalabi in London, helped arrange the meeting and interview with the defectors and supports that side of the Washington debate. The group was involved in an abortive C.I.A. attempt to build an alliance in northern Iraq to oust Mr. Hussein. The collapse of the effort soured relations between the Iraqi National Congress and some senior officials in the State Department and the C.I.A.
American officials confirmed that they had met with the former general in Turkey but said they had not learned all that much from him. They said it was unlikely that the training on the fuselage was linked to the Sept. 11 hijackings in the United States.
The camp is overseen by the highest levels of Iraqi intelligence, and those who worked there were compartmentalized into distinct sections. On one side of the camp, these men said, young Iraqis who were members of Fedayeen Saddam, or Saddam's Fighters, were trained in espionage, assassination techniques and sabotage.
The other side of the camp, separated by a small lake, trees and barbed wire, was where the Islamic militants were trained. The militants spent a great deal of time training, usually in groups of five or six, around the fuselage of the 707. There were rarely more than 40 or 50 Islamic radicals in the camp at one time.
"We could see them train around the fuselage," said one of the defectors, a former Iraqi sergeant in the intelligence service who spent nearly five years at the camp. "We could see them practice taking over the plane."
The former general, wearing a black suit and sporting a gold ring on each index finger, said the terrorist teams were trained to take over a plane without using weapons.
Although the Islamic militants were carefully segregated from the Iraqi units, there was haphazard contact, he said.
"One day after work my car broke down as I was leaving the camp," the general said, "and a Toyota van filled with these Islamic fighters came out behind me. The driver was a man I knew, and he got out to help push the car. There were various nationalities on the van, including an Egyptian who, unlike the rest, was clean shaven. Six of them came out to help. They finally towed my car to a gas station."
The general gave a wry smile and answered what he knew would be the next question.
"No," he said of the Egyptian, "he was not Mohamed Atta." Mr. Atta is thought to have been the leader of the September hijackers.
The general said that one day when he questioned Lt. Gen. Jassim Rashid al-Dulaimy, who he said was overseeing the terrorist training, about the lanky German who worked in the biological unit, he was told that he was "the man who caused all our problems in 1991."
The section where biological agents are said to have been produced was bombed by coalition warplanes during the gulf war, the general said.
The report of Iraqi ties with Islamic radicals comes on the heels of an announcement by the Czech interior minister, Stanislav Gross, who said Mr. Atta had met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat identified by the Czech authorities as an intelligence officer, in April.
There are unexplained gaps and absences, some as long as 15 months, during Mr. Atta's stay in Hamburg, Germany, suggesting that he may have been training abroad.
Many of the trainers in the Salman Pak camp are notorious figures in their own right. The chief trainer, Abdel Hussein, nicknamed "The Ghost," was involved in several assassinations outside Iraq, as was General Dulaimy, who has been implicated in the assassination in Beirut of an Iraqi opposition leader, Sheik Taleb al-Suhail, in 1994.
The general, who said he does not stay in the same place for more than one night because of a fear of retaliation by Iraqi agents, said General Dulaimy had boasted of his assassinations, including the one in Lebanon.
"He heads a special assassination unit called the School of the Lion's Den," he said. "It is supposedly only for those who have hearts of lions. He is a very skilled and brave man, and he is trusted by the regime."
The interviews for this article were obtained by The New York Times and the PBS series "Frontline." Sections will be broadcast Thursday in a "Frontline" documentary about Iraq made in association with The Times.
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ECONOMIC LEGISLATION
Spending War With White House Focuses on Countering Terrorism
New York Times
November 8, 2001
By ROBERT PEAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/national/08CONG.html?searchpv=nytToday
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 -- Democrats in Congress headed today toward a major confrontation with President Bush over tax and spending policy, vowing to defy his threat to veto legislation that provides additional money to counter terrorism in the United States.
The Senate Republican leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, and the speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, sided with the president, who told lawmakers on Tuesday that they should wait until next year to review whether more money was needed beyond the $40 billion Congress had already provided. The leaders put pressure on their colleagues, winning support from top Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee who had favored added spending.
But Democrats said they welcomed the coming confrontation with Mr. Bush as an opportunity to highlight differences between his domestic priorities and theirs.
Democrats brushed aside Mr. Bush's threat to veto emergency spending that exceeded the $40 billion approved by both houses of Congress on Sept. 14, three days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and before the outbreak of anthrax threats and other security concerns.
Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House Democratic leader, said: "The $40 billion has all been spoken for. Additional money for homeland security and bioterrorism is urgently needed. If there's anything that is important to people right now, it's their personal safety and security and their economic safety and security."
On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee is expected to approve a $67 billion package of tax cuts and new spending intended to stimulate the economy, which has been teetering for months on the edge of recession.
Democrats plan to take the bill to the Senate floor next week after adding $10 billion to $20 billion -- to hire agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Customs Service and the Border Patrol; to upgrade the public health system; to purchase smallpox vaccine and antibiotics, and to pay for new food safety and airport security measures. The money could also be used to increase security at nuclear power plants and to inspect ships arriving at American seaports.
In addition to that spending, Democrats relished the opportunity to contrast their economic stimulus bill -- which provides jobless benefits and health insurance for the unemployed and immediate tax rebates for low- wage workers -- with a Republican bill passed by the House, which would cut taxes for many large corporations.
"The Democratic caucus sides with the people," said Senator Mark Dayton, Democrat of Minnesota. "The Republican caucus sides with the privileged, so they can give tax relief to millionaires and billionaires."
Senators of both parties predicted today that the economic stimulus bill would be approved by a party-line vote in the Finance Committee. Senator James M. Jeffords, independent of Vermont, said he planned to vote with the Democrats. To win his support, the Democrats agreed to pump $6 billion into agriculture programs, not normally viewed as a means of providing quick stimulus to the economy.
Mr. Lott said the proposals for new spending had proliferated so fast that "it's hard to keep up with all the different suggestions." He circulated a critique of the Democratic bill deriding it as a "special interest grab bag." In the end, Mr. Lott said, the president's veto threat will avert the need for a veto. "There won't have to be a veto" because Congress will rein in its impulse to spend more and more, Mr. Lott predicted.
Under one provision of the Senate Democratic bill, the government would help farmers by buying certain commodities that have been selling at low prices in the last two years. Crops eligible for this program include apples, asparagus, blueberries, cauliflower, cranberries, peaches, potatoes, pumpkins and watermelons.
Dick Armey of Texas, the House Republican leader, rallied to the president's side, saying: "This country is in the middle of a war. Now is not the time to provoke spending confrontations with our commander in chief."
The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, C. W. Bill Young, Republican of Florida, had wanted to increase spending on antiterrorism programs. Today, under pressure from House Republican leaders, Mr. Young said he would support Mr. Bush's call to limit such spending to $40 billion. But he said other members of his committee would insist on additional money, and Mr. Young said he might not have the votes to block those efforts.
Mr. Hastert said Congress could always provide more money next year. "If there are new needs," Mr. Hastert said, "we would move legislation as soon as the need arises."
Despite Mr. Lott's prediction that no veto would be needed, the president's threat was somewhat risky. Many Republican lawmakers would like to vote for more money for popular antiterrorism efforts.
The administration supported the stimulus bill approved by the House, saying that corporate tax cuts would help avert further layoffs and would stimulate an economic recovery by encouraging companies to invest in new equipment and factories.
But Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the House bill would provide a windfall to big companies. Specifically, he said, by retroactively repealing a provision of the tax code known as the alternative minimum tax, the bill would provide $1.4 billion to I.B.M., $1 billion to Ford, $833 million to General Motors and $671 million to General Electric.
Moderates like Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, expressed despair at the resurgence of political infighting.
"Two months after Sept. 11, one of the most cataclysmic events in our nation's history, we're dithering," Ms. Snowe said. "There does not seem to be any genuine good-faith interest in negotiating on a bipartisan basis."
The bill expected to emerge from the Finance Committee has several provisions to help New York, including tax credits for employers in Lower Manhattan and tax incentives for developers to rebuild the area devastated by the terrorist attacks. Aides to Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said that 10,000 companies with 300,000 employees would qualify for the tax credits.
In the past, such tax credits were offered to employers to encourage the hiring of welfare recipients and low-wage workers. But Republicans said the Democratic bill included no such requirements. Thus, Mr. Lott's critique of the bill says it would provide companies with a $4,800 tax credit for each investment banker employed in Lower Manhattan.
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Woman slaps Prince Charles with rose
USA Today
11/08/2001
By John Stillwell, AP
http://www.usatoday.com/news/near.htm
Britain's Prince Charles is slapped around the face with a flower by an anti-war protester in Latvia Thursday Nov. 8, 2001. The incident happened at the Freedom Monument in the Latvian capital of Riga.
RIGA, Latvia (AP) -- A young woman slapped Prince Charles with a rose Thursday to protest Britain's role in the U.S.-led bombings in Afghanistan.
Charles, walking near a monument to Latvian independence, had just stopped to talked to a group of children when the woman, who appeared to be around 20, stepped forward and hit the prince across the face with the flower.
The heir to the British throne flinched and appeared startled, while police grabbed his assailant. Charles didn't appear hurt and kept moving along the street speaking to bystanders.
As the woman was led away by two armed police, she said the action was to protest Britain's role in Afghanistan. She refused to give her name or age. It was not clear if she would be charged with any crime.
All three Baltic governments have been strong supporters of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan, backing that generally reflected widespread sympathy for the United States in the wake of Sept. 11 airborne terrorist attacks.
Prince Charles arrived Thursday in Latvia from Lithuania during a tour to commemorate Britain's recognition of the Baltic independence from Moscow a decade ago. He started the week in Estonia, and leaves the region Friday.
The Baltic states, with combined populations of just over 7 million people, had close economic ties with Britain before World War II. British investment now lags far behind that of the nearby Nordic nations.
---
Greenpeace in muted globalisation protest in Qatar
Yahoo News
By Rawhi Abeidoh
Reuters
Thursday November 8,
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-71087.html
DOHA - Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of the environmental group Greenpeace, docked on Thursday within view of a key trade ministers' meeting in Qatar to lead what were likely to be muted anti-globalisation protests.
The last such attempt to launch global trade talks, in Seattle two years ago, was almost brought to a halt by protests that became a clarion call to the anti-globalisation movement.
But Qatari authorities hosting their biggest international event are taking no chances, their nerves already frayed by a shooting near a local U.S. airbase, as well as fears surrounding the war in Afghanistan and recent protests at other international meetings.
On Wednesday there was a first security scare when guards shot dead a Qatari who had opened fire near a base used by U.S. warplanes south of the capital Doha.
Authorities imposed a tight security cordon around the seafront luxury hotel as trade ministers and delegates from 142 countries gathered in the oil-rich Gulf state for the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting, starting on Friday.
ARMED PATROLS
Boats patrolled the waters off Doha, soldiers in full battle gear manned key intersections, and plainclothes security officers closed all roads leading to the conference centre on the outskirts of the city.
Greenpeace officials accused Qatar of reneging on its promise to allow access by the public and activists from other non-government organisations (NGOs) to Rainbow Warrior, which set sail from Philadelphia in the United States four days after the September 11 attacks by suspected Muslim militants.
"We tell the Qataris to focus on their real security concerns and let the NGOs do their work," Greenpeace political director Remi Parmentier said by telephone.
"NGOs, the press and the public are having difficulty in accessing the Rainbow Warrior."
Qatar has said it will allow only peaceful demonstrations at the November 9-13 meeting, which big powers hope will launch a new round of global trade talks after a similar project failed at the WTO's last ministerial conference in Seattle in 1999.
Qatari officials dismissed Wednesday's attack as the work of a lone gunman, but some said security had since been tightened.
Udeid airbase is one of the largest U.S. military hardware storage facilities outside the United States.
PROXIMITY TO AFGHANISTAN
Many of the WTO's currently 142 member countries have been concerned about security in Qatar because of its proximity to U.S. military action in Afghanistan, which has caused resentment among many ordinary Muslims across the Arab world.
A senior Qatari source told Reuters the attacker, Abdullah Mubarak Tashal al-Hajiri, 35, was known for Islamic militant views and had visited Afghanistan, which is sheltering Osama bin Laden, Washington's main suspect in the September 11 carnage.
State media quoted a medical source at a national hospital as saying the man had had a history of psychological problems dating back to 1984.
Qatar's efforts to ensure security have involved restricting visas to groups and individuals accredited by the WTO and limiting the number of NGO participants to below 600.
But Parmentier complained that more than half of the accredited NGOs were business lobbies, and that many groups critical of the WTO had received only one visa each.
"That is why we brought Rainbow Warrior -- to ensure that the voices of those directly affected by the WTO, and who are often ignored, are heard."
Demonstrations are rare in Qatar, an affluent state which sits on the world's third largest natural gas reserves. Qataris make up 25 percent of the total population of 600,000.
--------
Letters to Editor
From: "Integrity Research Institute, Thomas Valone" <iri@erols.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001
Dear Ellen,
Now that some Congressmen are sponsoring Star Wars expert, Dr. Robert Bowman as a speaker on Capitol Hill, isn't it time for NucNews to announce his work uncovering the purpose of the Bush Missile Defense Program? His recent lecture is summarized below. We believe that Mr. Putin also deserves to know the truth.
Sincerely, Thomas Valone President Integrity Research Institute
==
"Bush's Missile Defense: Defensive Shield or Aggressive Weapon?"
On March 31, 2001, in Madison Wisconsin, The Madison Institute sponsored a forum to explore the Bush administration's proposal for an expanded missile defense system. The implications for American security and world peace were discussed. The keynote speaker was Robert M. Bowman, with additional remarks by Joseph Elder and Matthew Rothschild. Order an audio tape using the form below; for more information, visit www.themadisoninstitiute.org , write TMI, P.O. Box 5304, Madison, WI 53705, or call 608.232.9945.
Lt. Col. (Ret.) Robert Bowman served as director of the U.S. Missile Defense Program under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. In this speech Robert Bowman points out the critical dangers to the United States in President George Bush's Missile Defense Plan.
Robert Bowman: "... these weapons are offensive weapons ... they will do nothing to protect the people of this country ..."
They will "enormously increase the fear and hatred in the developing nations against the United States government, and, therefore, vastly increase the nuclear terrorist threat to our people."
Robert Bowman: "[George W.] Bush has reverted to the ... concept of a multi-layered Star Wars system concentrating on the destruction of boosters shortly after lift-off [rather than the destruction of ballistic missiles soaring through space]. This requires ... weapons ... at sea, in the air, and in space ... that have to get within 300 miles of the booster being launched [in order] to shoot at it ... This system ... violates almost every paragraph of the ABM treaty ... The ABM treaty was an attempt to outlaw a class of weapons which would reward an aggressor and, therefore, promote nuclear war ... The weapons [George W. Bush is] planning to build [are offensive weapons designed] to destroy any target on the surface of the earth without warning ... Star Wars has nothing to do with defense ... It will vastly increase the nuclear terrorist threat to our people."
Matthew Rothschild (Editor and Publisher of The Progressive): " The logical response of Chinese military leaders will be to build 200 ICBMs. Then India is going to increase its nuclear missiles. If nuclear missiles in India go up, nuclear missiles in Pakistan go up. So does the risk of a catastrophic nuclear war on the subcontinent of Asia ... Joe Elder (Professor of Sociology, the University of Wisconsin-Madison): " With his plans to build offensive weapons, George W. Bush is telling the nations of the ex-colonial world, "We are going to become an even more aggressive nation than we have been in the past, and if you don't like it, tremble!" In the ex-colonial world, such arrogance calls for retaliation".
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Oden--and IMF protest only a week away, across the Canadian border
From: "Paul" <webmaster@globalcircle.net>
Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2001
http://globalcircle.net
networking for ecology, justice, and all our relations
A - INFOS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.ainfos.ca/
N16 OTTAWA: ANARCHIST CALL TO ACTION AGAINST THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND, WORLD BANK AND G20 MEETINGS
NOVEMBER 16 12:30 PM RALLY AND SNAKE MARCH SPEAKERS: TBA
Anarchist Call to Action by the Anti-Capitalist Task Force (ACTF), Ottawa Endorsed by the Black Touta and the Black Overalls
Ottawa activists have been busily preparing since the surprise announcement made by Canadian Finance Minister, Paul Martin, that Ottawa will "host" the Group of 20 (G20) International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) meetings beginning with an opening-ceremony on Friday, November 16. According to the Ottawa Sun Newspaper, the "G20 Seeks Safe Haven" in Ottawa.
Ottawa's Anti-Capitalist Task Force (ACTF) is calling on all anarchists to take part in the 12:30 PM, November 16th Rally and Snake March in downtown Ottawa to yet another predictably undemocratic, fascist, capitalist wall of shame, blood and destruction. The IMF/WB/G20 meetings must be stopped before complete global disaster occurs through war, U$A foreign policy, Western imperialism, and economic hi-jacking. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are directly responsible for mass suffering and death. It is our responsibility to take action against these institutions of greed!
The Ottawa Coalition Against the Tories (OCAT) is organizing a "STOP THE IMF/WB!" rally and snake march on Friday, 12:30 PM, November 16. Converge at the park on the corner of Somerset and Lyon (across from the beer store).
Nb. OCAT's call is based on a respect for a diversity of tactics.
Be prepared, travel in large groups, know your rights and fight to win!
for more info contact: ocat@tao.ca ph 613-244-0122
STOP THE IMF AND WORLD BANK MEETINGS!! NO JUSTICE NO PEACE!!
In Strength and Solidarity, Anti-Capitalist Task Force email: actf_ott@yahoo.ca
Info on N16-19 Housing, Welcome Centre, Actions, Medical, Legal, Housing, Volunteering, etc. go to: http://www.flora.org/gdo/ email: N17@flora.org
More Info Sites:
The Black Touta
http://www.site-lines.com/touta/callout.htm
Infoshop: Anarchist, Activist, and Alternative News and Events
http://www.infoshop.org/
Info on crowd-control agents
http://www.cma.ca/cmaj/vol-164/issue-13/1889.asp
The masquerade Project (gas masks)
http://www.masqueradeproject.org
Queen's Coalition Against Corporate Globalization
http://www.web.net/%7Eopirgkin/qcacg/main.html
Info on the IMFC and Development Committee Meetings To Be Held in Ottawa. www.imf.org/external/np/sec/nb/2001/nb01103.htm
A CSIS report entitled "PERSPECTIVES ON ANTI-GLOBALIZATION"
http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=51187&group=webcast
Independent Media Centre
http://www.ontario.indymedia.org
Globalize This!
http://www.globalizethis.org/
--------
Action Alert! We need letters!
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001
From: "L.V. Citizen Alert" <lvcitizenalert@earthlink.net>
This is from todays paper. The RJ is entirely missing the point here. This is a problem Citizen has been working on for a while now and it will be more in the public light in the next few weeks.
We need as many people as possible to send in letters to the editor of the Las Vegas Review Journal in response to this. We need them from a "technical" perspective and from a "civilian" perspective. I have included a few talking points below the article. If you would like a copy of Congresswoman Berkley's letters that are referred to, I can send those as well. Just e-mail me and request them. Please cc: me a copy of whatever you send to the paper.
FAX --702-383-4676
Mail -- P.O. Box 70,
Las Vegas, Nev. 89125
e-mail -- letters@lvrj.com
Thank you, Kalynda Tilges Nuclear Issues Coordinator Citizen Alert - Las Vegas P.O. Box 17173 Las Vegas, NV 89114 702-796-5662 702-796-4886 Fax lvcitizenalert@earthlink.net http://www.citizenalert.org
==
Cleaning up the test site?
Thursday, November 08, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-08-Thu-2001/opinion/17391852.html
Rep. Berkley's suggestion simply isn't feasible
In the never-ending search for ways to block or stall the final siting of the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., has come up with what appears to be a new twist.
You can't put a nuclear waste dump there ... because the area is already contaminated with nuclear waste, Rep. Berkley now argues. The congresswoman fired off letters to EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Monday, asking that the Nevada Test Site (where more than 800 nuclear weapons were tested after World War II) be designated a "Superfund" environmental cleanup area.
If that status were to be awarded, the contamination levels at the site -- north and east of Yucca Mountain, and 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- would immediately move it to the top of the federal "cleanup" list.
And that's precisely why it's not likely to happen.
Joe Davis, a spokesman for Secretary Abraham, sounded as if he were taking the congresswoman's request with a grain of salt Monday, replying the department had received her letter "and will be considering it and getting back to the congresswoman in some way, shape or form."
Now, on one level, Rep. Berkley's objection is not as silly as it might sound. There is still a case to be made that any proposed "repository" for spent commercial fuel rods should never be permanently sealed -- that future developments in reprocessing technology might make that spent fuel a valuable resource, to which some kind of access should be maintained.
If the repository is looked at in that light -- as a potential future work site -- then radioactive contamination of area groundwater from another, nearby source could indeed be of concern ... and might even "violate the EPA radiation safety standard," as Ms. Berkley contends.
However, her proposed remedy -- "cleaning up" the desolate wastelands chosen for the nation's atomic tests, rather than merely allowing them to sit and "cool" until the tritium degrades, a thousand years hence -- would be laughable, were it not so potentially deadly.
A 1997 analysis by the National Nuclear Security Administration found the most effective way to achieve that would be through open-pit mining of the test cavities -- a $7.2 trillion project in which workers would receive in just one hour the maximum radioactive exposure which safety regulations permit for an entire year.
The existing program to monitor contamination of the Test Site's water table -- contamination which has not yet migrated to Yucca Mountain -- is certainly called for and must be done aggressively.
And realistically, right now, that's about all that can be done.
==
The contamination in the groundwater from approximately 260 shots that were detonated in or near the groundwater has never been characterized. That means that no one knows the present whereabouts of the over 130 million Curies of radiation that could be migrating (as contaminant plumes of radiation) off the NTS at any time. Furthermore, no one knows the plumes' constituents (which radionuclides are in them), migration speeds, directions, physical dimensions, or their transport mode in the groundwater.
Considering the large number of shots that were detonated in the groundwater (about 260) and their immense sizes, it would seem that detection and characterization of contamination would be a relatively easy task for an agency determined to do so. That is to say, the design of a system to find such abundant and huge targets should not be difficult, even by using a tiny fraction of the money spent so far by DOE. Another worrisome fact is that since DOE's Underground Test Area Program (UGTA) began in 1989, it has produced a massive Regional Groundwater flow model and a modeling study for Frenchmen Flat at a cost to taxpayers of about $160 million. Both products were peer reviewed by external panels of high quality experts, and both were found to be flawed: Both are being patched up or redone.
The present DOE plan (called the UGTA Strategy) includes a long-term monitoring system to provide an early warning to citizens in locations off site, such as Oasis Valley and Amargosa Valley. However, its strategy calls for predicting the level of contamination around five test areas on the NTS for up to 1,000 years. It plans to do that without first understanding the locations, constituents, concentrations, direction of migration, speed of migration, or groundwater transport parameters. Groundwater experts claim that such prediction is fantasy, a claim that is supported by DOE's failed attempt at Frenchman Flat.
Most distressing, however, is the recent news (July 2001) that DOE/NV has announced that its new budget for executing its UGTA strategy, which is not to be completed until the year 2030, will exceed $2 billion dollars. This budget funds a program that already has spent about $300 million and has achieved very little, and, furthermore, for a strategy that seems unachievable and pointless.
Two separate studies predicted that radioactive contamination from Pahute Mesa could already have migrated to Oasis Valley. One study, performed in 1993 (Pilot Study Risk Assessment for Selected Problems at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), J.I. Daniels, Editor, June 1993, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), predicted that plumes from bombs detonated beneath Pahute Mesa could start arriving in Oasis Valley about 15 years after detonation. Some bombs were detonated over 40 years ago.
DOE's own study of contaminant transport from Pahute Mesa to Oasis Valley (part of the UGTA's flawed Regional Model study, reported in 1996 in Regional Groundwater Flow and Tritium Transport Modeling and Risk Assessment of the Underground Test Area, Nevada Test Site, Nevada) also predicted that the same contamination could take as little as 12 years.
A recent study, (The travel times of non-local dispersion and their geoelectric approximation in Nevada's fractured welded tuffs, David T. Purvance, Submitted to Water Resources Research, 2001 - found geophysical evidence that migration speeds in the same aquifer could be much faster (5 - 25 times faster in some cases!) than some previous estimates.
All together, the picture tells us that waiting for another 30 years to place a monitoring system may not "protect the public." Contamination could be in Oasis Valley right now, and because the wells there have not found it doesn't mean it's not somewhere in the valley.
And, there are other issues. As mentioned above, the Bush Administration has confirmed that the Nevada Test Site is to be kept ready to test nuclear weapons. Shouldn't there be political pressure to understand the contamination that underground testing has already created before more testing is even contemplated? What kind of "forward thinking" is that?
The other issue is Yucca Mountain. DOE says that the NTS groundwater contamination has been accounted for in Yucca Mountain risk calculations. That is impossible without knowing anything about the NTS 130 million Curies other than where and where they were created. We do not know anything about what is migrating in the groundwater, hence, we cannot account for it. Another reason to characterize the NTS contamination and to "protect the public."
The DOE does not have an early warning system that can be shown to be effective - for the reasons above, that is, they can't calculate its efficiency because they don't know what the plume is all about. The DOE's on-site monitoring is almost ridiculously pathetic because of the poor locations of their monitoring wells. In addition, DOE's 20 years of "studying" the source terms has been haphazard, poorly designed, and has yielded very little information about them.
A goal of DOE's Environmental Monitoring Program for the Nevada Test Site (NTS) is to protect NTS workers and the public from radiation created by nuclear testing at the NTS where 928 nuclear bombs were detonated between the years 1951 and 1992. However, a question has arisen as to whether citizens living within a few miles of the NTS are being protected from radioactive groundwater contamination that is migrating towards them from the 828 nuclear tests detonated beneath the surface of the NTS. Because technology does not exist in the year 2001 to clean-up contaminated groundwater, protection' means timely detection of contamination that could produce risk to off-site citizens, and subsequently, supplying an alternate source of water for them.
The DOE repeatedly has implied that since no contamination had been detected off the NTS, none existed off site: Absence of proof is NOT proof of absence. The DOE's previous groundwater monitoring in the area most likely first to be contaminated, that is, the area between Pahute Mesa and Oasis Valley, contained almost no monitoring wells, which means that there was almost zero chance of detecting groundwater contamination. Recently installed wells in that area will increase the chance of detection, but those wells were not designed to be an early warning system: they were designed to obtain hydrological data to support the new regional model. There are other disturbing observations about DOE's job of "learning about the contamination."
Kalynda Tilges Nuclear Issues Coordinator
Citizen Alert - Las Vegas
P.O. Box 17173 Las Vegas, NV 89114
702-796-5662 702-796-4886 Fax
lvcitizenalert@earthlink.net
http://www.citizenalert.org
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