NUCLEAR
The following appendices then follow: ------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
Bin Laden's nuclear secrets found
Bush's lead in arms cuts irks Russia
British Energy wants to stop N-fuel reprocessing
Good website for DU info
US used depleted uranium munitions against Taliban
German police mass to see nuclear convoy home
History of nuclear power controversy in Germany
GERMANY: HEAVY GUARD FOR NUCLEAR WASTE
Bush, Putin Differ on Missile Defense
Debt Forgiveness for Moscow
Russia to build 10 nuclear reactors in next decade
Russia's inner chaos a threat to the West
United Nations presses test ban ratification
NTS training proposal to be discussed
NCRP report on terrorist events with rad matl
Ariz. PV Unit 3 nuke suffering turbine vibrations
Idaho
USEC, union contract on table
Calvert to Retest Sirens Near Nuclear Plant Today
Baltimore Prepares Fallout Shelter
Additional Budget Cuts as States and Cities Address Safety Issues
Nuclear Plant Plans to Add Gas Power
DOE seeks progress on contractor's safety plan
Bechtel taxes could pay for services
Yucca guideline unveiled
Bill orders terror plan for Yucca
We Can Only Guess What Secrets Bush Is Keeping
MILITARY
Taliban brass talk of handing over terrorist
U.S. jets zero in on pockets of Taliban resistance
Southern tribes help fight Taliban
Alliance 'has broken' Geneva code of war
Alliance Force, in Charge, Tries to Ease Fears
U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors
McDonnell Douglas to Pay $2.1 Million Fine in Export Case
Antibiotic overuse can silence medicine's big guns
Mayor criticizes FBI handling of anthrax scare
Britain Proposes Anti-Terrorism Measures
Consider a new Mideast option
Israel raids Gaza as Palestinians mark national day
Palestinian Authority Arrests Jihad Leader, Causing a Riot
Taliban Troops Move Across Border Into Pakistan
White House fires at critics
Bush Names Budget Expert as Administrator of NASA
SUDAN: BUSH ENVOY ON PEACE MISSION
EAST TIMOR: MORE SECURITY MEANS FEWER TROOPS
'With or against us' war irks many UN nations
Rapid Changes on the Ground
Special Forces Hunt Al Qaeda on the Ground
Deployment of National Guard at Capitol to begin
FAA: Navy jet crashes on Olympic Peninsula
Seizing Dictatorial Power
Cheating History
ENERGY AND OTHER
Nebraska
Oil Prices in Flux as OPEC Decides Against Cut in Output
A Trade Deal in Doha
U.S. Industries Largely Favor Decision on Global Trade
POLICE / PRISONERS
FBI not sharing info, Florida says
War is Hell (On Your Civil Liberties)
Military tribunals: Swift judgments in dire times
States: New Hampshire, Wisconsin
Senior Administration Officials Defend Military Tribunals
Ashcroft Says I.N.S. Will Be Split
White House Push on Security Steps Bypasses Congress
Closer Look at New Plan for Trying Terrorists
YUGOSLAVIA: RESIGNATIONS IN WAR-CRIMES DISPUTE
States React to Terror
Militants charged with plotting terrorist acts in Egypt
ACTIVISTS
New Murder Trial Granted for Fugitive
Protect Liberties
-------- NUCLEAR
Bin Laden's nuclear secrets found
Times reporter finds blueprint for 'Nagasaki bomb' Singed files left by fleeing terrorists
The Times
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 15 2001
FROM ANTHONY LOYD IN KABUL
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001390014-2001395995,00.html
OSAMA BIN LADEN'S al-Qaeda network held detailed plans for nuclear devices and other terrorist bombs in one of its Kabul headquarters.
The Times discovered the partly burnt documents in a hastily abandoned safe house in the Karta Parwan quarter of the city. Written in Arabic, German, Urdu and English, the notes give detailed designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons. There are descriptions of how the detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass, sparking a chain reaction, and ultimately a thermonuclear reaction.
Both President Bush and British ministers are convinced that bin Laden has access to nuclear material and Mr Bush said earlier this month that al-Qaeda was "seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons".
The discovery of the detailed bomb-making instructions, along with studies into chemical and nuclear devices, confirms the West's worst fears and raises the spectre of plans for an attack that would far exceed the September 11 atrocities in scale and gravity.
Nuclear experts say the design suggests that bin Laden may be working on a fission device, similar to Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. However, they emphasised that it was extremely difficult to build a viable warhead.
While the terrorists may not yet have the capability to build such weapons, their hopes of doing so are clear. One set of notes, written on headed notepaper from the Hotel Grand in Peshawar and dated April 26, 1998, says: "Naturally the explosive liquid has a very high mechanical energy which is translated into destructive force. But it can be tamed, controlled and can be used as a useful propulsive fuel if certain methods are applied to it. A supersonic moving missile has a shock wave. That shock wave can be used to contain an external combustion behind the missile . . ."
The document was one of many found in two of four al-Qaeda houses which had been used by Arabs and Pakistanis and even reportedly by bin Laden himself. The houses - two in the Karta Parwan district and the others further to the east - were abandoned on Monday as Taleban units and their allies fled the city.
Attempts had been made to burn the evidence, but many documents still remained. They included studies into the development of a kinetic energy supergun capable of firing chemical or nuclear warheads, external propulsion missiles, preliminary research on the creation of a thermonuclear device, as well as a multitude of instructions for making smaller bombs.
There were also studies into Western special forces' hostage rescue techniques, phone numbers for industrial chemical and synthetic producers, flight manuals, aerodynamic research, and advanced physics and chemistry manuals.
The houses were identified by local people. Looters had concentrated on more appetising objects, ignoring foreign language documents that were of no use to them.
Bin Laden sees it as his "religious duty" to obtain a nuclear bomb. In an interview with a Pakistani journalist last week, he threatened: "If America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons as deterrent."
Intelligence agencies already have indirect evidence from defectors, middlemen and scientists of bin Laden's obsession with obtaining or producing a nuclear device.
Al-Qaeda agents are known to have spent more than £1 million trying to obtain enough fissile material to make a "dirty bomb" that, if detonated with TNT in a populous area, could kill thousands and contaminate it for decades.
Intelligence sources told The Times last month that bin Laden and al-Qaeda had acquired nuclear materials illegally from Pakistan. And at least ten Pakistani nuclear scientists have been contacted by agents for the Taleban and al-Qaeda in the past two years, according to reports.
Fears that bin Laden has components for a nuclear weapon is believed to lie behind the warnings from President Bush and Tony Blair that he would commit worse atrocities than the suicide assaults in America if he could.The Prime Minister's spokesman said: "Bin Laden would have killed 600,000 people on September 11 if he could have done. This underlines again why he has to be stopped."
------
Bush's lead in arms cuts irks Russia
By Dmitry Zaks
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
November 15, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011115-85238009.htm
MOSCOW - Russia's army rumbled with discontent yesterday over President Bush's go-it-alone approach to nuclear disarmament, seen here as undercutting Moscow's leverage in future negotiations over missile defense.
Frowns surfaced in Russia's Defense Ministry building after President Vladimir Putin was unable Tuesday to get Mr. Bush to sign up to a bilateral long-range nuclear arms reduction agreement during their Washington talks.
As promised in advance, Mr. Bush announced a cut of 1,700 to 2,000 warheads from Washington's current arsenal of nearly 7,000 over the next 10 years. But he did so without reaching prior agreement with Mr. Putin.
Mr. Bush stressed that he was not in favor of "endless hours of arms control discussions. I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand. But if we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do it."
The announcement meant that Mr. Putin had to play catchup later in the day by saying that Russia also would make cuts from 6,000 to 2,000 warheads or less.
But he gave no time frame for Moscow's cutbacks while stressing that discussion over "offensive and defensive" weapons would continue when the two leaders retreated to Mr. Bush's Texas ranch yesterday.
Mr. Bush's firm unilateral approach puts in flux the status of previous disarmament agreements between Moscow and Washington - which have been recognized under international law - and Russia's future bargaining position in strategic affairs.
The cut lays to waste Russia's repeated efforts to cast the United States as a military aggressor that is trying to "militarize space" by developing a futuristic missile defense program that one day may have attack capabilities.
It also leaves Moscow in the unenviable position of grumbling over a U.S. decision to eliminate a large chunk of some of the deadliest weapons on earth.
Representing the military hawks, one top Russia Defense Ministry general flatly called Mr. Bush's announcement "wrong."
Gen. Valentin Kuznetsov, who heads the Defense Ministry's international cooperation division, argued that only bilateral agreements could guarantee full control over nonproliferation and disarmament issues.
"Russia and the United States have gained great expertise in the area of verification and control over nuclear cuts, and it would be wrong to abandon" this process, Russian information agency Novosti quoted Gen. Kuznetsov as saying.
"The whole world should benefit from this," noted Varfolomei Korobushin, deputy head of Russia's Academy of Military Science.
"But the cuts must be made in a manner that does not leave the United States with an advantage" on the strategic defense front, Mr. Korobushin told ORT television.
The reductions announced by Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin are below the levels of the START II Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed by Moscow and Washington in 1993.
They mark the first time in the nuclear era that a military power has volunteered such radical cuts on its own - and leaves in doubt the validity of a host of other agreements to which Moscow has clung to for leverage in negotiating international affairs.
Most importantly, the announcement adds fuel to U.S. threats that it could unilaterally withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, and start developing a missile shield even if no compromise agreement with Moscow on the issue is reached.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin signed a joint declaration Tuesday, stating only that "on strategic defenses and the ABM treaty, we have agreed, in light of the changing global security environment, to continue consultations within the broad framework of the new strategic relationship."
-------- britain
British Energy wants to stop N-fuel reprocessing
by Matthew Jones,
Reuters:
15/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13322
LONDON - British Energy , the UK's largest power generator, told a parliamentary committee this week that reprocessing nuclear fuel from its AGR power stations was uneconomic and should end.
"British Energy is calling for an immediate moratorium on the reprocessing of AGR (Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor) fuel. It is uneconomic and adds to the stockpile of plutonium," a company spokesman told Reuters.
British Energy wants the spent uranium fuel to be stored instead of sending it to state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) for reprocessing at a cost of 300 million pounds a year under contracts set up prior to British Energy's privatisation in 1996.
British Energy argues that storing the spent uranium, a policy favoured by some experts, would not only save it about 250 million pounds a year but also stop the growth of Britain's stockpile of plutonium which results from reprocessing.
British Energy's submission will raise fresh questions about the viability of BNFL which generates around 50 percent of its revenue from reprocessing - the extraction of plutonium from spent uranium fuel rods.
The government says it still intends a partial sell-off of BNFL although no dates have been set.
The first attempt to privatise BNFL was shelved in 2000 following a scandal over falsified nuclear fuel data.
British Energy, which has capacity to supply about 20 percent of the UK's electricity, made the submission to the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
The committee is conducting a review of Britain's radioactive waste policy.
A Parliamentary select committee in 1999 recommended burying radioactive waste in deep underground vaults after a 250 million pound project to do just that failed in 1997 when planning permission from a local council was denied.
-------- depleted uranium
Good website for DU info
From: "Tara Thornton" <Tara@miltoxproj.org>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001
Here's a good site for info on DU
http://www.mint.gov.my/policy/nuc_disarm/issue_duweapons.htm
Tara Thornton Executive Director
Military Toxics Project
P.O. Box 558
Lewiston, ME 04243
(207) 783-5091 phone
(207) 783-5096 fax
--------
US used depleted uranium munitions against Taliban
UPI
From the International Desk,
UPI Hears . . .
11/15/2001
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=15112001-113529-9575r
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2001 (UPI) -- Insider notes from United Press International for Nov. 15 ...
Ever since it opened its bombing strikes on Oct. 7, the United States has been using depleted uranium munitions against Taliban targets, especially in the north of the country. When depleted uranium was found to have been used in U.S.-led air strikes in Kosovo and prior to that in attacks on Iraq it caused a storm of controversy in the U.S. medical world, with many health experts saying that radioactivity was spread when the bombs caused a fire. Some scientists said the bombs can cause lung cancer, leukemia, blood cancer and birth defects among populations where the weapons are used. The uranium is used because of its weight, and its radioactivity is spread when the shells cause a fire. One specialist observed, "DU causes slow death."
-------- germany
German police mass to see nuclear convoy home
by Philip Blenkinsop,
Reuters:
15/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13306/story.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24965-2001Nov13?language=printer
GORLEBEN, Germany - Six containers of nuclear waste finally reached a storage site in northern Germany yesterday after three days of protests and one of the largest peacetime security operations the country has seen.
A force of 15,000 German police sealed off roads in the early hours of Wednesday morning, removing the last few hundred demonstrators from sit-down protests along the planned route.
Police said they had detained around 300 people. A medical tent dealt with 93 injuries, from baton bruises to dog bites.
By first light on a misty morning, the containers had sneaked out of the railhead at Dannenberg. The shipment moved at a snail's pace along the 20 km (12 miles) road to the storage site at Gorleben, the final stop of a 1,500 km (930 mile) trip back from a reprocessing plant in northwestern France.
The containers had arrived in Dannenberg by rail late this week as helicopters circled overhead, police sirens wailed and protesters, held 500 metres (1,600 ft) from the track, blew whistles.
Dannenberg was packed with police vans, armoured personnel carriers and water cannon vehicles.
Previous shipments have been hit by violence and disruption from Germany's anti-nuclear lobby. Police and protesters said fewer people than expected had joined the latest demonstration.
"Look at the way the police have limited people's movement, although I don't blame them. I think many of them would rather be on our side," said protester Detlet Puls, 51.
The shipments to the Gorleben storage site have become a ritual confrontation between police and anti-nuclear activists. They resumed in March after a break of three years. The policing bill to protect the last shipment in March was around 50 million marks ($22.5 million).
"You can imagine it won't be any less this time," said a police spokesman.
Nuclear power is a controversial issue in Germany, where government and industry agreed last year to gradually phase out all reactors by around 2025.
The government has also been re-examining the safety of nuclear convoys and power plants in the wake of the September 11 suicide plane attacks on New York and Washington.
----
CHRONOLOGY - History of nuclear power controversy in Germany
Reuters:
15/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13310/story.htm
LONDON - Germany mounted one of its biggest peacetime security operations this week to foil protesters' efforts to keep a shipment of nuclear waste from reaching a storage site in the north of the country.
Germany relies on nuclear power for around a third of its electricity and has a long history of protest against nuclear plants. Following are some key dates in the history of German nuclear power:
1960 - West Germany's first industrial nuclear power plant opens in Kahl. The plant closes in 1985.
1966 - Rival Communist East Germany begins operation of its first nuclear power plant, a Soviet-designed model.
1975 - Fire at the East German plant at Lubmin on the Baltic Coast almost causes the core to melt down.
1980 - The Greens, who became a nationwide force with their anti-nuclear campaign slogan "Atomkraft? Nein, Danke" (Nuclear Power, No Thanks), form a political party in West Germany. 1984 - West Germany begins first nuclear waste transports to medium-term storage in village of Gorleben - near the then East German border - amid protests.
1989 - Last of West Germany's 19 nuclear power plants begins operation. Germany decides against building its own nuclear waste reprocessing plant, relying instead on plants in La Hague in France and Britain's Sellafield.
1990 - Unified German government finishes closing down last of eight nuclear power plants in the formerly Communist east.
1995 - First nuclear waste transports to Gorleben in "Castor" containers (Casks for Storage and Transport of Radioactive Materials) from La Hague.
1997 - Huge demonstrations meet Castor transports amid biggest-to-date postwar police operation of 30,000 officers.
May 1998 - The government halts nuclear waste transports because of safety fears over Castor containers.
June 2000 - Coalition government including Greens agree with utilities to phase out nuclear power by the mid-2020s.
March 26, 2001 - Castor transport from French reprocessing plant resumes after government says it is safe. Protesters try to block rail line despite massive police mobilisation.
April 10, 2001 - Protesters delay the first transport of nuclear waste to France in four years by chaining themselves to tracks near a Bavarian nuclear power plant.
April 24, 2001 - Germany's first shipments of nuclear waste to Britain in three years commence after police clear away some 100 protesters blocking the road from the plant in Neckarswestheim.
May 9, 2001 - Some 6,500 German police escort a train carrying spent fuel rods from a Soviet-era power plant in Rheinsberg. Only about 20 anti-nuclear activists protest.
Nov 13, 2001 - Police mobilise 15,000 officers in one of Germany's biggest peacetime security operations as protesters try to stop a shipment of nuclear waste from France reaching a storage site at Gorleben.
----
GERMANY: HEAVY GUARD FOR NUCLEAR WASTE
World Briefing
New York Times
Desmond Butler (NYT)
November 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/international/15BRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday
A force of 15,000 police officers escorted a train carrying six nuclear waste containers to a storage site in northern Germany in one of the country's largest postwar security operations. Previous shipments had been disrupted by antinuclear protesters but this time the police encountered fewer demonstrators than expected. Some 300 people were detained and minor injuries were reported.
-------- missile defense
Bush, Putin Differ on Missile Defense
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html?searchpv=aponline
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- After a festive barbecue, intimate breakfast and one-on-one talks in between, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin were wrapping up their three-day summit with differences over missile defense an ``enduring issue.''
The two presidents and their wives were visiting the high school in this one-stoplight hamlet Thursday before Putin and wife Lyudmila head on to New York City.
At Crawford High, students were given the rare opportunity to question the leaders whose talks at Bush's ranch and earlier in Washington left unanswered questions about the fate of Bush's missile defense plans.
Despite the snag over how those plans will proceed, White House officials said U.S.-Russia talks overall remained firmly on track, helped along by the wealth of personal time that the presidents shared on Bush's secluded, 1,600-acre spread.
With Putin riding shotgun, Bush took the wheel of a pickup truck and chauffeured his guests around the ranch for 45 minutes as soon as the Putins arrived Wednesday.
Thunderstorms chased their picnic dinner into one of the protected breezeways of the Bush ranch home, where a country-western swing band accompanied cowboys serving guacamole, mesquite-smoked beef and pecan pie.
Bush toasted Putin, saying, ``Usually you only invite a good friend to your home and that is clearly the case here. I knew that President Putin was a man with whom I could work to transform the relationship between our two countries.''
Putin returned the compliment when he raised his own glass and noted that this was the first time he had been invited into a foreign leader's home.
``It is hugely symbolic to me and my country that it's the home of the president of the United States,'' Putin said.
The party was small for such a summit between nations, just 29 people total, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, pianist Van Cliburn and pro-golfer Ben Crenshaw.
Thursday's breakfast was to be even more intimate: the two presidents, Laura Bush and Lyudmila Putin.
``It is that type of environment that leads to just stronger relations down the road that enable President Putin and President Bush to deal constructively with any other issues that come up,'' White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said. ``One of those enduring issues will be a new strategic framework between the United States and Russia.''
Bush and Putin are under pressure to reach accord on missile defense. The Pentagon is anxious to conduct tests, even though they would violate the current interpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and Bush has told Putin he will seek to scrap the pact early next year if they can't reach agreement.
On the other hand, aides said Bush is considering visiting Russia in the first few months of 2002 -- a sign, perhaps, that the president may be willing to wait that long to strike a deal.
``This is one stop along the road. We'll make other stops after Crawford, but each stop is built on the positive results of the earlier meetings,'' Fleischer said.
The unusual ranch visit took place one day after Bush and Putin agreed at the White House to shrink their nations' strategic nuclear arsenals by two-thirds.
``If we act together, we will make the world a much safer place than today,'' Putin said during a stop in Houston en route to Crawford.
Bush had hoped that the cuts, promised during the presidential campaign, would entice Putin to accept the U.S. proposal on missile defense. Under Bush's plan, the United States would remain in the 1972 ABM treaty a while longer if Russia agreed to allow the Pentagon to conduct tests and research barred by current readings of the pact.
That proposal was a concession of sorts for Bush. He repeatedly has denounced the accord as a Cold War relic, and his conservative allies want him to scrap it.
Putin's public statements before coming to America suggested an openness to finding flexibility on the ABM issue.
Bush promised Putin on Tuesday that Russia would be informed of the tests, but Putin asked for more. U.S. officials said he suggested at one time that Russia approve the tests beforehand, a concession Bush refused to make.
Some Bush advisers played down the exchange, saying it was mentioned only briefly in the talks and was not a major factor. Indeed, one senior administration official said Bush and Putin seemed to reach an understanding -- if not a formal agreement -- that the United States would conduct anti-missile tests under the ABM, perhaps not long after Putin returns to Russia.
Other aides, generally more pessimistic of the talks, said they knew of no such accommodation. And yet, even these aides said it was more likely than not that Putin and Bush would come to terms -- but not necessarily here.
-------- russia
Debt Forgiveness for Moscow
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Thursday, November 15, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31715-2001Nov14?language=printer
A Senate panel approved yesterday a proposal that would forgive portions of Russia's debt to the United States in return for concrete steps by Moscow toward the nonproliferation of weapons.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, meeting the day after President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to cut their nuclear weapons stockpiles by two-thirds, voted unanimously for a plan to reimburse Moscow for the costs of selected nonproliferation programs by forgiving an equal amount of debt to the United States.
"This is something that is very fertile ground and of considerable interest to the Russians," said committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), who developed the proposal along with Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.).
Biden said Moscow has about $3.5 billion in debt to Washington and about $30 billion to European nations and is interested in eliminating those debts to raise its standing with international lending institutions.
"I am very hopeful this is an idea whose time has come," he told reporters, describing it as a "slam dunk" even though he said the White House has been noncommittal.
----
Russia to build 10 nuclear reactors in next decade
Reuters:
15/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13305/story.htm
MOSCOW - Russia plans to boost its nuclear power output with the construction of 10 new reactors over the next decade, an Atomic Energy Ministry official told the lower house of parliament yesterday.
"Russia is making a structural shift towards nuclear power," First Deputy Minister Lev Ryabev said.
Russia is moving against the trend in much of Western Europe where many governments are planning to phase out nuclear power rather than boost it.
Germany, Belgium and Sweden have opted to get rid of nuclear power stations, largely on environmental grounds.
But Ryabev said building nuclear reactors made most sense economically and in terms of the environment.
Nuclear plants do not produce carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas targeted by environmental campaigners, but opponents point to the risk of explosions like that at Chernobyl in Soviet Ukraine in 1986.
Nuclear energy will make up 37 percent of Russia's total energy output by 2020, he said, rising from the current levels of between 15-20 percent.
He told deputies electricity output at nuclear installations would grow by five percent a year, twice the growth rate of thermoelectric and hydropower plants.
Ryabev added Russia would also help build six reactors outside its borders in Iran, India and China.
Russia currently has 10 nuclear plants and 30 functioning reactors.
----
Russia's inner chaos a threat to the West
November 15, 2001
David Satter
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20011115-5505081.htm
As President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin work out the framework of a new U.S.-Russian relationship, it is important to bear in mind that the U.S. needs not only cooperation in foreign policy from Russia but also measures to stem the inner lawlessness that has left entire sections of the country under the control of organized crime.
Russia today presents a serious danger to the U.S. because it has huge stores of poorly guarded weapons of mass destruction and powerful criminal syndicates prepared to sell anything to anyone, for a price.
The danger that Russian criminals may sell weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against the United States is the reason why some of the enthusiasm for Mr. Putin's turn to the West is misplaced. Russia's willingness to accept a U.S. military presence in Central Asia is very important but unless Russia also cracks down on its rampant lawlessness, it could join NATO and - by remaining a base area for Islamic terrorism - still represent a threat to the West.
Russia has enough plutonium and uranium to make 33,000 nuclear weapons. These materials are stored at 50 scientific centers guarded by soldiers who, in the past, have gone months without being paid. It also has vast quantities of nuclear waste that can be used to make crude bombs capable of contaminating large areas. It has the world's largest inventory of chemical weapons - 40,000 tons - and a wide variety of biological weapons, including drug-resistant anthrax, smallpox and plague.
At the same time, Russia's organized crime groups have a history of cooperation with terrorist organizations. Russian and Chechen criminal organizations cooperated in the transport and marketing of heroin from Afghanistan and, according to the Russian newspaper Izvestiya, after the Taliban came to power Osama bin Laden used these criminal organizations to launder money for the Taliban, receiving from $133 million to $1 billion a year.
In the sarin nerve gas attack by the Japanese doomsday sect Aum Shinri Kyo on the Tokyo subway in 1993, the only case where terrorists have ever used nerve gas successfully, the production design for the manufacture of sarin was given to the sect by Oleg Lobov, Russia's former first deputy prime minister, for $100,000, according to testimony by cult members at the trial of the group's leaders in Tokyo. There are some reports that Mr. Lobov, a close associate of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, was given $100 million for his many services to Aum Shinri Kyo. The Japanese "businessmen" were allowed to train on Russian military bases and attended lectures at the Institute of Thermodynamics of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow where they studied the circulation of gases.
In recent weeks, it has been reported that bin Laden has bought several suitcase nuclear bombs from Russia which have not been used only because they are protected by Soviet codes that require a signal from Moscow before the bomb can be detonated. Izvestiya has reported that bin Laden has already spent considerable sums on the recruitment of Russian scientists and former KGB agents capable of helping him with the breaking of these codes.
The Russian authorities deny the existence of suitcase nuclear bombs, but organized crime has been involved in nuclear smuggling from Russia since 1992. Recently, smugglers were arrested in Turkey after trying to sell 41/2 kilograms of unprocessed uranium and 6 grams of plutonium. Russian gangsters have sold combat helicopters to Colombian drug dealers and have attempted to sell not only surface-to-air missiles and a Tango-class submarine.
Under these circumstances, it is just as important for the Russian government to crack down on organized crime as it is for the Muslim world and the West to eliminate any network capable of facilitating terror. In the case of Russia, this would be relatively easy. The activities of Russia's criminal syndicates have been exhaustively documented not only by the organs of law enforcement but also by the security services of their commercial competitors. For years, under Mr. Yeltsin, a massive crackdown on Russian organized crime awaited only a signal from the political authorities.
Unfortunately, that signal never came. Under Mr. Putin, the indifference to the role of organized crime continues.
In 1997, then FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, in testimony before the House International Relations Committee, said U.S. law enforcement agencies took very seriously the possibility nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of Russian criminal gangs and that Russian organized crime, by fostering instability in a nuclear power, constituted a direct threat to the national security interests of the United States.
Now, with the entire world under direct threat from Islamic extremists, the United States needs to ask our new ally, Vladimir Putin, to begin to eradicate this danger even at the expense of the system of robber capitalism that has grown up in Russia during the last decade.
David Satter is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His new book on Russia after the fall of communism is upcoming from the Yale University Press.
-------- treaties
United Nations presses test ban ratification
by Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent,
Reuters:
15/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13308/story.htm
UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. conference this week formally exhorted all nations to ratify a global ban on nuclear testing, but a U.S. boycott severely undercut the appeal and its likely success.
Nevertheless, organizers predicted Washington would eventually change its mind and make it possible for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to take effect.
"I think if you keep up the pressure on the United States, they will come round," said Miguel Marin Bosch, a Mexican diplomat and conference president.
In a resolution approved after two days of speeches, the conference expressed concern that the pact, known as CTBT, had not entered into force five years after it was approved.
It urged countries that have not ratified the pact to do so and called on the United States - the leading nuclear weapons state - and other states with lesser nuclear capabilities to continue a voluntary moratorium in the meantime.
Despite a U.S. boycott, support for the treaty demonstrated by the conference was "very significant," insisted Olga Pellicer of Mexico, another conference official.
Participants decreed the treaty an "essential part" of the international non-proliferation regime. And while the voluntary testing moratorium observed by the United States and other nuclear weapons states is important, "it is not enough," she said.
Strong pressure on the United States came from Russia, the other major nuclear power, and the European Union.
Russia challenged U.S. objections and said disrupting the CTBT could lead to crisis and the "uncontained spread of nuclear weapons."
Moscow dismissed U.S. concerns that the pact would threaten the safety of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and offered to work on new verification measures beyond treaty requirements.
The treaty, banning all nuclear blasts in the atmosphere, in space and underground, has been signed by 161 states. Of those, 87 have ratified it.
But the pact has not taken effect because it must be ratified by 44 specific states deemed nuclear arms-capable.
To date, 31 of those 44 countries including nuclear powers France, Russia and Britain have signed and ratified the pact.
Of the rest, India, Pakistan and North Korea have neither signed nor ratified the treaty while the United States, China and eight others have signed but not ratified.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was the first world leader to sign the CTBT. But the Senate, then under Republican control, rejected it during the 2000 election.
Even before taking office, President George W. Bush, a Republican, made clear his strong opposition to the pact.
His administration has not publicly explained its decision to boycott the conference. But the Pentagon, hoping to hasten the treaty's death, for months argued privately in favor of the government sitting out the meeting.
Hard-liners wanted to go even further and have the United States take steps to cancel its signature.
Some administration officials believe the United States may have a need to test nuclear weapons in the future.
But Bosch said he has not given up hope the United States will someday ratify the treaty.
He noted that opinion in both the Bush administration and the U.S. Senate was divided on the CTBT, a dynamic that could eventually shift in the pact's direction.
Bosch said history was full of other seemingly lost causes in arms control, like the initial refusal of China and France to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both are now members.
"These things have a way of weighing on the souls of countries," he said.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
NTS training proposal to be discussed
Las Vegas Sun
November 15, 2001
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-other/2001/nov/15/512624327.html
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., planned to meet with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham today to discuss a proposal to turn the nuclear bomb-scarred Nevada Test Site into a national counter-terrorism training academy.
Abraham has shown growing interest in the proposal, Reid's aides said. Nevada lawmakers touted the plan before the Sept. 11 attacks. But the attacks put the proposal in a new light for federal officials looking for creative ways to battle terrorism, the lawmakers have said.
Nevada lawmakers say the former Cold War testing ground for atomic bombs is a perfect site for modern-day anti-terrorism training programs, ranging from special operation forces training to bioterrorism simulations for emergency workers. Some of the site's usable underground tunnels would offer unique training conditions, Nevada lawmakers say.
The Test Site in recent years has been home to "weapons of mass destruction" training courses held several times a year for local, state and federal law enforcement officers and emergency response teams. Congress this year expanded the training, allocating $10 million.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
NCRP report on terrorist events with rad matl
From: "Peter Diehl" <uranium@t-online.de>
November 15, 2001
www.ncrp.com
NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) Releases NCRP Report No. 138, Management of Terrorist Events Involving Radioactive Material
The possibility that terrorists may try to use radioactive materials against the United States or other countries requires that public officials, emergency services, and medical facilities be prepared to identify and cope with a potentially wide range of problems, a new scientific report from the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP Report No. 138) asserts.
"The new report provides a consensus of existing and proposed recommendations from federal agencies and scientific bodies and is intended as a guide for planning for various kinds of radiation- related events. It was drafted by an expert committee of NCRP scientists, consulting federal and state officials, and academic representatives prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks," said Charles Meinhold, President of the NCRP.
"Having studied the effects of the nuclear blasts in Japan in World War II and having examined the effects of subsequent nuclear weapons testing and the accidental release of radiation from disasters such as Chernobyl, we have a strong body of knowledge about radiation effects and how to minimize them. Our problems, if a terrorist group attempts to spread radioactivity, are to assess the actual extent of the release and to implement immediate and appropriate control activities," he continued.
"This report will be a timely resource for public agencies and should be helpful to the rest of us in understanding what might happen if some amount of radiation is released deliberately," Professor Meinhold said. "Short of the use of a nuclear weapon, the spread, or threat of a spread, of some amount of radioactive material probably will cause public concern far in excess of the actual or potential damage to a community or its people."
The most immediate problem for federal agencies relative to a possible radiation incident is to upgrade plans for prevention and response, train emergency personnel in detecting radiation, and to obtain necessary equipment for measuring the level of radiation exposure, the report declares. The report offers concrete suggestions about how to plan for these tasks. Various sections of the report cover: Considerations impacting response, Characteristics and consequences of terrorist incidents that involve radioactive materials, Medical management of radiation casualties, Psychosocical effects of radiological terrorist incidents, Public communication, Radiological consequence management considerations, Training and qualifications for personnel, and Appendices that provide sources of assistance and guidance.
The report suggests that a terrorist organization is more likely to release a small amount of radioactivity, possibly with an explosion, than it is to obtain and use a nuclear weapon. With the release of small amounts of radioactive material, the necessary containment and cleanup may be well within the capability of public agencies. Such an event could be "catastrophic but manageable," the report warrants.
"When an explosive device is used to disperse radioactive materials, treatment of casualties is more difficult because of the contamination and the complications associated with other trauma. The debris from the event and other normally harmless materials will be contaminated. The affected area may be much larger than the immediate scene of the crime. The radiological hazard, invisible and uncertain in terms of long-term health impacts, will engender public fear and concern."
"At the most basic level is the fact that one of the terrorist's chief aims is to cause psychological effects; to induce fear in a population. Such fear is further compounded when invisible toxins, such as radiation or radioactivity, are involved. People can neither see nor sense the presence of radiation, but they know that it is potentially hazardous," the NCRP report continues.
"It must be noted emphatically that radioactive contamination, whether internal or external, is never immediately life threatening and therefore, a radiological assessment or decontamination should never take precedence over dealing immediately with life- threatening initial injuries such as shock, compound fractures and bleeding wounds," the report stresses.
For limited releases of radioactive material, people in the area can reduce their exposure by taking shelter in homes or other buildings for hours or a few days until the radiation levels fall. Ventilation systems using outside air should be shut off and eating contaminated foods should be avoided. Radioactive dust can be washed off of the skin and contaminated clothing should be abandoned to reduce external exposures.
The report places emphasis on the need for public authorities and for scientists to be attentive to the psychosocial effects of terrorism involving the dispersal of radioactive material. The report also says that the release of a tentative "worst case" assessment may unduly alarm the public. However, delays in releasing such information are likely to create even greater public speculation and alarm. In addition, the public's perception of the radiation risks, radiation levels and areas affected could be worse than the responsible official's worst case assessment.
NCRP recommends that emergency teams and vehicles be equipped with radiation monitors which would allow detection of radiation at an explosion scene. Levels of radiation so detected would govern how public agencies respond in putting out fires, rescuing wounded, defining the area of concern, and informing the public about possibly needed actions, such as taking shelter or even evacuation of the area.
The first people likely to respond to a radiation emergency are the same firemen, hazardous material teams, emergency medical technicians, and law enforcement personnel who respond to other emergencies. They should be trained in coping with radiation and training should be extended to emergency physicians and other hospital personnel, to primary care physicians, to mental health experts, social service and disaster relief agencies, to civil affairs personnel and to local government officials.
The NCRP's committee was led by Professor John W. Poston, Sr., of the Texas A & M University in College Station, Texas. In addition, the other members of the committee were Cheri Abdelnour and Robert W. Brittigan (Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Washington), E. John Ainsworth (AFRRI, Bethesda, MD, Retired) Steven M. Becker (Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham), Ian Scott Hamilton (Texas A& M), Eva E. Hickey (Battelle - Richland, Washington), David A. Kelm (Illinois Dept. of Nuclear Safety), Fred A. Mettler (Univ. of New Mexico), Jay M. Thompson (Westinghouse - S. Carolina), Mark Wrobel (Bolling AFB, Washington) and Eric E. Kearsley (Staff Consultant, NCRP). Contributors to the report included scientists from the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Domestic Preparedness Office, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The draft report was reviewed by the 93 members of the NCRP and by committees of its sponsoring scientific and medical societies. Financial support for NCRP Report No. 138 was provided by the U. S. Department of Energy.
NCRP is a nonprofit corporation chartered by Congress in 1964 to collect, analyze, develop and disseminate in the public interest information and recommendations about (a) protection against radiation and (b) radiation measurements, quantities and units, particularly those concerned with radiation protection.
The NCRP believes that a copy of this report belongs in every hospital and with every emergency response organization at all levels of government in the nation. In addition, in the interest of public awareness, a copy of this report should be in every library in the nation.
Information on NCRP publications can be obtained at http://www.ncrp.com/ncrprpts.html. Also of interest may be NCRP Report No. 65, Management of Persons Accidentally Contaminated with Radionuclides.
-----
NCRP Report No. 138 Management of Terrorist Events Involving Radioactive Material
NCRP Report No. 138 on Management of Terrorist Events Involving Radioactive Material is 232 pages with 13 sections, eight appendices, a glossary, list of acronyms, conversions of conventional and International System of dosimetric quantities, and references. The Report's main emphasis is on guidance to "first responders" and "emergency medicine personnel" that would be involved in the management of terrorist events involving radioactive material.
The sections of the report are:
1. Introduction (4 pages),
2. Considerations Impacting Response (7 pages),
3. Characteristics and Consequences of Terrorist Incidents that Involve Radioactive Material (15 pages),
4. Medical Management of Radiation Casualties (26 pages),
7. Public Communication (12 pages),
8. Dose Limitations and Guidance (16 pages),
9. Radiological Consequence Management Considerations (15 pages),
10. Planning and Critical Resources (6 pages),
11. Training and Qualifications for Personnel Providing Support in a Radiological Disaster (11 pages),
12. Research and Development Needs (3 pages), and
13. Summary and Recommendations (4 pages).
A. Medical Aspects of Radiation Injury (5 pages),
B. Current Command and Control Policies and Structures (9 pages),
C. Current Federal Communications Policy and Plans (4 pages),
D. Sample Joint Information Center Checklist (2 pages),
E. Sample Pre-Prepared Public Information Statements (16 pages),
F. Federal and State Resources for Emergency Response and Planning Assistance (7 pages),
G. Examples of Tables of Contents for a City Plan for Emergency Response (2 pages), and
H. Training Under the Domestic Preparedness Program (7 pages).
Note: The NCRP believes that a copy of this report belongs in every hospital and with every emergency response organization at all levels of government in the nation. In addition, in the interest of public awareness, a copy of this report should be in every library in the nation.
-------- arizona
Ariz. PV Unit 3 nuke suffering turbine vibrations
November 15, 2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13304/story.htm
LOS ANGELES - Utility Arizona Public Service said yesterday it was experiencing problems with vibrations of the turbines on the 1,270-megawatt Unit 3 at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant.
"We're monitoring the situation," a spokeswoman said, noting no decision has yet been taken on what action, if any, needed to be taken.
The unit returned to service last week after a 37-day maintenance and refueling outage.
APS, a unit of Pinnacle West Capital Corp., has a 29.1 percent stake in the plant.
The other owners are the Salt River Project (17.5 percent), Edison International's Southern California Edison (15.8), El Paso Electric (15.8), Public Service Co of New Mexico (10.2), Southern California Public Power Authority (5.9) and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (5.7).
-------- idaho
Idaho
States
01/11/15
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Idaho Falls - The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory began laying off more than 100 employees as a result of less federal support. Waste cleanup commitments kept the layoffs from being even larger. The layoffs shrink the work force to about 7,500. A decade ago, nearly 13,000 people worked at the high desert installation.
-------- kentucky
USEC, union contract on table
The temporary agreement expires Thursday, but the union has given plant operators until Monday before it strikes.
The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky
Wednesday, November 14, 2001
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/nn11466.htm
Negotiators will resume talks Monday trying to resolve issues that have left nearly half the 1,500 employees at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant working under a temporary agreement for 2-1/2 months.
Although the union could strike after the agreement ends Thursday, its officials have agreed to at least a four-day continuance, said Donna Steele, president of Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE) Local 5-550.
"We've given (company officials) an extension until Monday at midnight. They called us and wanted to meet with us," she said. "I'm going to do that before we go out on the street. I'm hoping this is a positive sign and I've told the company that."
The union represents about 700 workers at the plant, operated by USEC Inc. to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel.
"I think there's a more positive feeling with the work force," Steele said. "We want a contract and we want it badly."
Joe Bock, a facilitator with extensive experience representing both union and management in contract issues, will attend Monday's meeting as a USEC consultant, said USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle.
The seven-point pact set to expire Thursday was reached Aug. 29. It provided a 4 percent hourly wage increase retroactive from July 31 when the old five-year contract expired, and no strike or layoffs of hourly workers. If a contract was not reached, the union had the right to strike and wages reverted to the old contract.
When the agreement was announced, union officials said USEC agreed to return in 30 days with an outline on how to make the plant self-sustaining.
"We gave the outline for the viability plan back about the time it was due and we've continued negotiations with the union about the plan since then," Stuckle said Tuesday.
The company also pledged to have a contract proposal between Oct. 1 and Nov. 15 for the union to accept or reject, union officials said earlier.
Asked if USEC has provided a new proposal, Stuckle said, "Not as such. We're in discussions about the contract. Our discussions continue to try to arrive at a contract that's suitable for all of us."
The two sides deadlocked Aug. 2 when the union soundly rejected the last contract offer. Calling wage and benefit provisions substandard, union leaders said they staunchly opposed language that the contract would expire after a year if USEC did not achieve any of three major goals related to buying Russian uranium.
USEC says blending the cheaper Russian material with the more expensive plant-enriched uranium holds down costs and preserves the life of the plant, which has expensive, outdated technology. Controlling the flow of the Russian material helps stabilize market prices, the company says.
Although the Russian issue was not a part of the temporary agreement, union and management officials had hoped the extension would buy enough time for the Bush administration to make decisions about the Russian deal and the overall U.S. uranium enrichment business.
No decision has been formally announced, but recent union memos indicate the primary White House plan would give USEC the option to remain exclusive agent for the Russian uranium in return for specific commitments to keep the plant running for 10 years at minimum production levels while deploying replacement gas centrifuge technology.
If USEC is unable to run the Department of Energy-owned Paducah plant for the balance of the 10 years, the government would assume operation, contingent on support from Congress and the Office of Management and Budget, memos show.
Stuckle declined comment on whether the Russian deal will remain on the bargaining table. "USEC is in almost daily conversation with the administration regarding the Russian issues, seeking a resolution soon," she said.
-------- maryland
Calvert to Retest Sirens Near Nuclear Plant Today
By Raymond McCaffrey and Michael Amon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 15, 2001; Page SM02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25022-2001Nov13?language=printer
At noon today, county officials will retest the emergency sirens within 10 miles of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant.
The plan is for each siren to sound for three minutes.
Testing is being repeated because during a Nov. 5 check of the 72 sirens within the radius, the 49 in Calvert County failed to sound. The remaining sirens -- 17 in St. Mary's County and six in Dorchester County across the Chesapeake Bay -- worked as planned, according to Karl Neddenien, a plant spokesman.
"The ones in St. Mary's County and Dorchester County will not be sounded because they passed the test," Neddenien said of today's drill.
Calvert County Commissioners President David F. Hale (R-Owings) said last week that the sirens failed because of a computer problem at the county's Emergency Operations Center.
The plant conducts weekly and quarterly testing to identify individual sirens that might need maintenance, according to Neddenien. The full siren system is tested annually on the first Monday in November. In the test a year ago, all the devices worked properly, he reported.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission mandates testing of the sirens, which are designed to alert the public in an emergency to tune to a particular radio station for information.
----
Baltimore Prepares Fallout Shelter
By John Biemer
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, November 15, 2001; 5:40 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32911-2001Nov15?language=printer
BALTIMORE -- A poster on the wall of the underground bunker reads: "Are you ready for the next disaster? Civil Defense for you, your family and America."
What's old is becoming new again as Baltimore rapidly modernizes a relic of the Cold War days - a fallout shelter 5 miles north of downtown that will serve as the city government's emergency operations center. Other cities are doing the same in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the threat of bioterrorism.
"During a potential attack, we need a center of command with redundant modes of communication and a secure flow of information," Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley said. "The bunker is a perfect fit."
The fallout shelters, built under federal guidance during the Cold War, became the responsibility of state and local officials when the Federal Emergency Management Agency was formed in 1979 with an eye toward natural disasters.
A FEMA spokesman said the agency does not know how many cities are converting old fallout shelters, but many may be reviewing their plans after considering New York's experience. Its emergency control center, located on 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center, was destroyed on Sept. 11.
"There are a bunch of bunkers that are just there, many of which can be resurrected," said Milton Copulos, president of the National Defense Council Foundation, an Alexandria, Va.-based think tank. "I know an awful lot of (cities) are looking at what they have in place and looking at what the next level of preparedness needs to be."
Several cities and states already have subterranean centers.
Los Angeles' Emergency Operations Center is located four floors underground. New York's State Emergency Management Office operates from a bunker below state police headquarters in Albany.
If there were a disaster in Iowa, state agencies would operate out of the STARC (State Area Command) Armory at Camp Dodge in Johnston, an underground bunker with a high-tech communications system and reinforced concrete walls a foot thick.
Massachusetts is giving consideration to modernizing its Emergency Operations Center in Framingham, an underground bunker commissioned by President Kennedy.
Renovating the nuclear-bomb-proof shelter will cost Baltimore about $400,000, part of $17.6 million in security enhancements ordered since Sept. 11 that are stretching out an already strained city budget.
The underground bunker, located beneath a fire station, was first built in 1952 as a Civil Defense Control Center. The 22-inch thick concrete walls were intended to withstand the blast from a nuclear explosion.
With food reserves and an air recirculating system, those inside could survive for two weeks.
William C. Codd II, a former city emergency management director, said the only time he recalls the center being used was during the 1968 riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Fourteen new fiber optic telephone lines and three computers have since been added. Antennas were erected on the roof so that pagers and cell phones will work underground.
There's now room for about 50 people in the shelter - with 18 able to sit at small cubicles facing each other in the main room, which is equipped with city maps stretching from the floor to the ceiling.
The nonperishable food stash has to be restocked and there's no room for those inside to sleep, save a few old canvas cots, said Richard McKoy, the city's Director of Emergency Management.
"They'd have to find a spot where they can," Codd said. "But it's a lot better being in here than being out there."
-------- minnesota
SECURITY COSTS
Additional Budget Cuts as States and Cities Address Safety Issues
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/national/15COST.html?searchpv=nytToday
DENVER, Nov. 14 - The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are leaving a hefty financial bill with state and local governments, forcing them to pay for immediate security needs that were once only vaguely contemplated.
From small towns like Red Wing, Minn., which is sharing weekly costs of $160 for a full-time guard at the local nuclear plant, to cities like Baltimore, where new security costs have reached $3.97 million since the attacks, government officials are taking a hard look at their budgets to figure out how to pay for efforts now deemed essential to homeland defense without layoffs and program cuts.
The National Governors' Association estimates that over the next six months, the post-Sept. 11 expenses could total as much as $10 billion in the 50 states. This is in addition to earlier projections of budget shortfalls totaling $15 billion due to the flagging economy and rising Medicaid costs.
The total impact represents as much as 3 percent of a given state budget.
"This makes a very bad situation catastrophic," Raymond C. Scheppach, executive director of the governors association, said of costs related to homeland security. "Most states have already done two to three rounds of budget cuts. Now they're preparing to do more and praying that the economy turns around."
For more than two months now, states and local governments have taken on the additional responsibilities to guard important buildings, improve airport security, protect water supplies, test for anthrax and pay the soaring overtime costs of police, firefighters and other emergency workers.
"So far as I can see, everybody is reprioritizing and refocusing," said Larry Kallenberger, executive director of Colorado Counties Inc., a public policy group.
No state has been immune to new security needs since the attacks. Acting Gov. Jane M. Swift of Massachusetts authorized spending $26 million for terrorism-related efforts, including overtime for state police. The Ohio State Highway Patrol needs $800,000 over the next six months for increased security and inspections. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has approved spending $12 million for personnel and programs to handle biological and chemical attacks.
In Missouri, Gov. Bob Holden protected education and law enforcement programs when he cut $400 million from the budget earlier this year. Now, costs related to the terrorist attacks have raised the possibility of more cuts, "and in the next round," said Mr. Holden's spokesman, Jerry Nachtigal, "those areas may not escape unscathed."
While New York City, in particular, faces costs in the billions of dollars, other cities and counties, whose fire and police departments and emergency medical personnel are often the first line of defense, have their own problems.
A recent survey by the National League of Cities found that the impact of the attacks on local employment and tourism could lead to a 4 percent decline in revenues for cities, the equivalent loss of $11.4 billion. More than half the 214 cities surveyed in late October said they increased spending on security after Sept. 11 and they would offset the spending by dipping into surpluses and cutting other programs.
"We are hurting," said Mayor Marc Morial of New Orleans, president of the United States Conference of Mayors. "Against the backdrop of seven to eight years of prosperity, low crime rates and low unemployment, all of a sudden - bam - Sept. 11 hits, and our revenues have been affected."
In New Orleans, Mayor Morial said, sales tax revenues plummeted 11 percent in September, which has forced a hiring freeze in city government and cutbacks in a variety of programs. Security costs for the city and the New Orleans airport, he said, have dug a $10 million budget gap.
In Baltimore, Mayor Martin O'Malley said city budget officials estimated that security costs could reach $15.8 million for the fiscal year.
"I've told all my agencies to sharpen their pencils and make recommendations of how to close the gap," Mayor O'Malley said. "But we could still face layoffs in January unless the economy turns around and the federal government acts quickly to help us."
Security costs in Dallas have passed $2 million and could reach $6 million by the end of the year, said Lois Finkelman, a City Council member. City officials have already begun inspecting budgets and searching for security companies to help ease police overtime costs.
Other big cities have similar concerns, but most cities have a wide enough tax base to provide local leaders with room to spread the budget-cutting pain. That is not necessarily the case in rural areas, where many of the emergency services are performed by volunteers and where local leaders have to find clever ways to meet security needs.
In Red Wing, a town 50 miles south of Minneapolis, the need to post a guard at the road leading to the Prairie Island nuclear plant was solved by the plant management company assuming most of the costs, leaving the remainder to the city and to Goodhue County.
The solution - city and county each contributing $80 a week - seems reasonable, but the need to post a guard occupies one of Sheriff Dean Albers's 42 deputies for half a day, every day, at a time when the department has been told to step up its vigilance by "watching for suspicious low-flying planes and strange- looking people in the wrong place," as Sheriff Albers said.
"The whole thing adds more and more to our daily workload," he said. "Now, if we get a call that someone's mailbox has been damaged by vandals, it's not going to get handled."
The governors association and the mayors conference have lobbied Washington for help, asking for immediate reimbursements as well as access to long-term assistance through federal grants. At least one version of the economic stimulus package that Congress is now debating, a proposal from Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, would provide $6.3 billion for state and local efforts.
But some places are not waiting for the federal government to act. Colorado and Illinois are debating the idea of using revenue from the state lottery to offset defense costs. And as a sign that virtually no area has escaped the impact of the terrorist attacks, officials in Catron County, N.M., who normally provide annual flu shots for local senior citizens at no cost, have been told that the sudden demand for flu shots amid the anthrax scare around the country means that the county will now have to pay $8.95 a shot.
With at least 150 people in need of the shots, said Jan Porter, the county treasurer, the cost could approach $1,500. But rather than use county money, Ms. Porter said, local residents are prepared act on their own.
"We hold a lot of fund-raisers when we have to," she said. "I suppose this time, we'll raise the money with an arts and crafts fair or maybe a bake sale."
-------- new york
Nuclear Plant Plans to Add Gas Power
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By DAVID W. CHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/nyregion/15NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday
Arguing that gas and nuclear power can co-exist peacefully, Entergy Corporation, the owner of the Indian Point nuclear power plants, has announced its intention to build eight gas-fired power plants at the nuclear site in Westchester County.
The eight plants would produce electricity only during the summer and other peak periods to complement the two nuclear generators already at the site in Buchanan, 35 miles north of New York City. The $250 million project would probably be completed in the spring of 2004, said Jim Steets, an Entergy spokesman.
But the prospect of housing sizable gas and nuclear facilities less than a quarter-mile apart is already worrying some elected officials, environmental groups and local residents. And the proposal offers a vivid reminder of how so many critical and interlocking issues revolve around energy and environment in New York's northern suburbs. Indian Point's reactors are in the most densely populated area around any nuclear plant in the country.
Some officials and environmental groups are concerned that the rare combination of combustible gas and radioactive waste could create a major safety risk in the event of an accident. According to Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the only other plant that has ever accommodated gas and nuclear power simultaneously is Oyster Creek, in rural Lacey Township, in southern New Jersey.
The plans for the gas plants, while not unexpected, also come at an awkward time for Indian Point. Some local officials have called for the temporary closing of the plants, fearful that they could become terrorist targets. Last week, the Westchester County Legislature ordered a feasibility study on converting the nuclear operation to gas. And last night, some legislators began to circulate petitions demanding that the gas plants be blocked unless Indian Point abandons or converts its nuclear operations.
But the nuclear-to-gas conversion is fraught with complications, too. Indian Point would require a bigger supply of gas than is now possible through an existing pipeline running through the site. And that supply, presumably, would have to come from another source: in all likelihood, the highly controversial Millennium Pipeline, a proposed 422-mile high-pressure natural gas line from Lake Erie to Mount Vernon.
"What we do not want to end up with is natural gas-fired plants, plus nuclear plants, plus a gas pipeline," said Dani Glaser of Croton-on-Hudson, a member of a civic group called Not Under My Backyard. "And that, right now, is entirely possible. And we'll fight that with everything."
Entergy has not filed a formal application for the gas plants with the New York State Public Service Commission, Mr. Steets said. Instead, what it did on Tuesday was announce its intention to file, setting off the start of the public hearing process. A formal filing is expected by May.
Entergy wants to build eight 45- megawatt gas plants to provide a total of 360 megawatts whenever its two nuclear generators, which produce 1,000 megawatts each, are pushed to capacity. The gas plants would be housed in a single structure on a site, now a gravel parking lot, about 1,500 feet from the generators, and at a higher elevation.
"What's important is making sure that we have enough energy to power up the energy needs for now and the future," said Representative Sue W. Kelly, a Republican who represents the Buchanan area. She called the gas-fired plant a promising idea that needed to be studied thoroughly.
Fred Zalcman, executive director of the Pace Law School Energy Project, which studies energy issues, said that the fears of a possible gas explosion at Indian Point could be dealt with during the required feasibility study, and should not be a cause for alarm. "In general," he said, echoing Ms. Kelly, "I think it's prudent to start looking at alternatives in Indian Point."
Since the advent of electricity deregulation, Entergy, which is based in Jackson, Miss., has focused much of its efforts on acquiring nuclear power plants in the northeastern United States, including Indian Point 3 in March 2000 and the troubled Indian Point 2 reactor in September.
But because of the prospect of surging energy demand in New York City and its suburbs, Entergy first floated the idea of building gas plants at Indian Point this spring. "It's important for people to understand that safety is our primary consideration before we would go forward with this," Mr. Steets said.
-------- tennessee
DOE seeks progress on contractor's safety plan
Thursday, November 15, 2001
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/111501/new_1115010018.html
The Department of Energy has revoked validation of a key safety process implemented by Bechtel Jacobs Co., but the decision isn't expected to impact the work the company is doing in Oak Ridge.
Bechtel Jacobs is in charge of nuclear cleanup activities at facilities under the jurisdiction of DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office, including the Oak Ridge K-25 site. The process under scrutiny is known as the Integrated Safety Management System.
Rod Nelson, assistant manager for DOE's Oak Ridge Environmental Management program, briefly addressed DOE's decision during the Oak Ridge Site-Specific Advisory Board meeting Wednesday night at the Garden Plaza Hotel. He says it stems from a letter the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board sent last month to Robert Gordon Card, undersecretary of Energy, Science and Environment.
The board pointed out that several Integrated Safety Management System-related deficiencies have yet to be remedied despite the fact that DOE pointed them out to Bechtel Jacobs Co. over a year ago.
The system is a process that incorporates safety into management and work practices at all levels, addressing all types of work and all types of hazards, to ensure safety for the workers, the public and the environment.
"DOE felt that maybe there had not been enough progress," Nelson said.
Dennis Hill, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs, said this morning that the company will have to go through the process of being validated, adding that DOE's decision should not affect its work in Oak Ridge.
"Neither DOE nor the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board have indicated that they think there are any imminent hazards to workers, the public, or the environment associated with our work performance," Hill said.
"We all recognize that Integrated Safety Management System implementation is never finished," he said. "It is a framework for continuous improvement as we strive to attain our goal of zero accidents. We believe that Bechtel Jacobs and our subcontractors have made great strides in implementing the Integrated Safety Management System."
Hill did say that there are some areas where Bechtel Jacobs needs to make improvements.
"We already have initiated several self-assessments of our authorization basis program, and we will be utilizing the services of several outside independent experts to review our efforts and provide advice," Hill said. "These efforts are in preparation for a DOE Headquarters assessment of our facility authorization basis and hazard classifications, which has yet to be scheduled."
He also pointed out that Bechtel Jacobs and its subcontractor teams have celebrated some recent significant safety achievements.
"The National Safety Council, in an independent survey report, cited Integrated Safety Management System implementation as a strong characteristic of our safety culture," Hill said. "Our recordable injury/illness rate continues to be lower than the DOE average."
DOE's decision concerning Bechtel Jacobs is just one of several issues that have recently arisen concerning safety issues at the local federal facilities.
Jessie Roberson, assistant secretary for DOE headquarters' Environmental Management Program, recently revoked the Oak Ridge Operations office's authority to approve safety plans and, last week, DOE halted cleanup activities involving uranium at K-25 because of deficiencies in several key safety documents. DOE is reportedly working on remedying its safety issues. The Oak Ridger requested an update on these efforts Tuesday, but as of this morning, the federal agency has yet to provide that information.
On the brighter side, a 12-person team representing DOE headquarters determined this week that BWXT Y-12 has successfully implemented its Integrated Safety Management System at the Y-12 National Security Complex. The team noted that it had found significant improvements in the Y-12 safety system after spending a week and a half looking at a broad range of management activities and work practices including fire protection, chemical safety, project management, environmental management and hazard identification.
In June, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board had urged DOE to make safety improvements at Y-12. The independent federal agency indicated inadequate attention had been paid to the storage of hazardous materials, maintenance needs and fire prevention.
-------- washington
Bechtel taxes could pay for services
Thu, Nov 15, 2001
By John Stang Herald staff writer
Tri-City Herald
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1115-2.html
Future Bechtel tax money being rerouted to Benton County could pay for some of the extra school and government services needed because of Hanford's growing tank waste glassification project.
Earlier this week it was announced a new state tax law will result in about $8 million in Bechtel National's taxes being shifted to Benton County. But it's not clear how much money will go to which government or school service and when.
On Aug. 1 a new state law went into effect that says a business can petition Washington's Department of Revenue for permission to pay "use" taxes instead of sales taxes -- if the company spends at least $10 million a year on items subject to taxes.
Under a use tax, the company buying taxable items pays taxes to the county where the items will be used rather than the counties where the items are purchased.
Bechtel National is the first -- and so far only -- company in Washington to get permission to reroute its taxes this way. The company is in charge of designing, building and testing Hanford's top-priority $4 billion tank waste glassification complex through 2011.
Bechtel expects to buy about $1 billion in taxable items for the project. That means about $7 million in sales taxes collected in the Mid-Columbia plus a predicted $8 million covered by the use tax.
In all, about $15 million is expected to go to local government and school coffers. Most of that money is expected to materialize in the next three to four years, the period of the project's heaviest construction, said Ron Naventi, head of Bechtel's glassification team.
That also will be the period when the glassification project's work force will zoom from about 1,500 people to 4,000. Those workers are expected to translate to about 7,000 new Mid-Columbia residents. And local governments and schools expect those new residents to require more classrooms, additional police and firefighters and other services.
A ballpark estimate is that the local governments and three school districts will need $20 million to cope with these extra demands, said John Darrington, Richland's city manager. He's also a representative of the Hanford Communities, a coalition of local governments cooperating on Hanford issues.
But it's difficult to figure out how much of the predicted $15 million in taxes will actually be applied to that speculated need of $20 million, Darrington said.
Because Hanford is in Benton County, that county will likely collect the use taxes and receive a good portion of the sales taxes. The county would then distribute the money to the appropriate cities, counties and school districts.
-------- us nuc waste
Yucca guideline unveiled
NRC has doubts about plan to bury nuke waste here
Las Vegas Sun
November 15, 2001
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
and Benjamin Grove <grove@lasvegassun.com>
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-other/2001/nov/15/512624511.html
Department of Energy officials on Wednesday unveiled what they think are the essential criteria for licensing a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain -- an important milestone in the 14-year-old plan to bury the nation's high-level nuclear waste in the Nevada desert.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would be responsible for licensing the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository, promptly stressed that it still has many concerns about the site.
The NRC is "not drawing any conclusions concerning the actual site suitability," commission officials said in a prepared statement. The DOE published its report in the Federal Register, saying a repository at the Yucca Mountain site, based on 15 years' worth of scientific studies, is capable of containing radiation from 77,000 tons of nuclear waste for 10,000 years. The Federal Register is the official legal repository for agency regulations, rules, notices and presidential documents.
Nevada officials said they are reviewing the DOE's 40 pages of guidelines. They object to numerous provisions that suggest the site is a safe waste site.
Nevada officials, including Gov. Kenny Guinn and Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, said the state may sue the government to stop the project based on the DOE document.
State officials have opposed the repository project since it was listed as one of nine possible sites for waste burial in 1982. Congress in 1987 designated Yucca as the best site, and scientists have been analyzing it ever since.
The criteria have addressed: how fast ground water travels through Yucca Mountain; earthquake potential because the mountain is in a seismically active area; and the possible failure of containers filled with nuclear waste that would release radiation before the 10,000-year legal timeline for a repository.
Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said the DOE report does not contain key studies, including an assessment of terrorism threats and the transportation risks of shipping nuclear waste cross-country to Nevada.
"The report is flawed, just as all the other reports have been flawed," Gibbons said. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., agreed.
"We have said all along that the DOE had its mind made up about Yucca 10 years ago," Ensign said. "They have always said, 'Here is the safest site. Now let's go out and try to prove it.' "
Although the DOE has had established safety criteria for a repository since 1984, Guinn said the department has refused to adequately compare them with Yucca Mountain, because the site would have been disqualified.
"The department's response is the issuance of new regulations in an attempt to ensure that the site would pass," Guinn said. "Changing the rules to fit the site has been the hallmark of this entire program."
Del Papa said her office will soon file a formal challenge to the DOE's guidelines. The legal action would be filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. within weeks.
While the DOE has now published its safety criteria for the waste site, the DOE has not published its final results of scientific studies on the mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But at a meeting in Washington this week, DOE Yucca chief Lake Barrett said the DOE has gathered enough scientific evidence to begin briefing Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
"Everybody at this point is anxious for a decision to be made one way or the other," Barrett said. "We're not learning as much per dollar per day as we did in the past."
Abraham has said he plans to issue a decision on Yucca Mountain at the end of this year or early next year to President Bush.
Then, if Bush and Congress approve Yucca Mountain, and the plan withstands opposition by the state of Nevada, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must review and approve it before any waste is shipped to Nevada on trucks and trains.
NRC Chairman Richard Meserve issued a 25-page report to the DOE on Wednesday that outlined 47 areas of concern about Yucca. The concerns ranged from ongoing research on how fast water flows through the mountain to what could happen if a volcano erupts through the buried waste containers.
The DOE has promised to deliver more information to the NRC before asking the commission for a license by 2003 to build Yucca Mountain.
Meserve's report also contains a critical area of concern, one that has been watched by the NRC throughout the DOE's studies of Yucca Mountain: "Among the areas warranting management's attention is improving the safety conscious work environment in the Yucca Mountain Project."
The National Academy of Sciences and Engineering, an organization of independent scientists, issued a statement Wednesday that said it has "not taken a position on whether the Yucca Mountain site should be recommended for a mined geological repository."
The academy has concluded that geologic disposal is scientifically and technically sound, a Sept. 21 letter to the DOE said.
---
Bill orders terror plan for Yucca
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Thursday, November 15, 2001
By STEVE TETREAULT DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-15-Thu-2001/news/17454790.html
WASHINGTON -- A bill introduced in the U.S. House on Wednesday directs Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to develop a terrorism protection plan for Yucca Mountain and for nuclear waste shipments to the proposed repository site.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., sponsored the legislation, which she had announced in early October.
The bill requires Ridge to solicit federal, state and local agencies to identify the potential for terrorist attacks on a spent fuel repository if it were to be built at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
It further directs the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop response and evacuation plans if terrorists attack waste shipments along transportation routes from nuclear power plants.
Berkley said her aim was to place obstacles in the way of Yucca Mountain development by demonstrating the lengths the government would have to go and the costs it would incur to ensure security.
"The (Bush administration) and the Energy Department have not demonstrated to me in any way they can protect the transportation routes or Yucca Mountain," Berkley said. "We know there are targets of terrorist attack and I don't want to add another one 90 miles out of Las Vegas."
The bill contains no deadline for studies to be finished.
"The longer it takes the better," Berkley said.
A White House spokesman referred queries on the bill to the Energy Department, where Yucca Mountain managers had no immediate comment.
Earlier this week, acting nuclear waste program director Lake Barrett expressed confidence a repository can be made safe from attack.
Berkley conceded the legislation might not become law by the time Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected to make a decision this winter on Yucca Mountain's suitability as a repository, although it could affect licensing that will be considered in the coming years by the Nuclear Regulatory Committee.
The Energy Department projects a repository could be opened by 2010.
Berkley has begun seeking support from other Democrats, and she said she may try to attach the legislation to a Homeland Security bill being developed by a party task force.
-------- us nuc politics
We Can Only Guess What Secrets Bush Is Keeping
November 15, 2001
Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-vpcoc152464413nov150.column
BLACK SMOKE rises up from terrorism and war, perfect concealment for a Bush administration assault of a different kind. This other attack is on history itself.
The White House has delayed nearly a year the scheduled release of thousands of presidential documents from the Reagan administration. The stall has now, in a way, ended. The records remain secret. They will, most likely, forevermore.
President George W. Bush signed an executive order that promises to scrub the truth out of presidential history after Jimmy Carter. It is, even in this White House with a penchant for secrecy, an extravagant indulgence of the habit.
Under Bush's order, any incumbent president - that is, Bush himself - can block release of presidential documents of a predecessor. He can do this even if the past president wants the records disclosed. A former president who wants to keep secrets could do so, too, with or without agreement of the incumbent.
The Bush order effectively works like this: A Republican like Bush - say, one whose top advisers did their first tour of duty in a previous Republican administration and could be embarrassed by old White House files - could just keep them locked up. This proves especially convenient if the incumbent president's father, in fact, served as vice president under a previous Republican administration and has his own papers in the vault.
A Democrat - say Al Gore, who served as vice president under Bill Clinton - could come into office and decide unilaterally to keep boxes of old Democratic papers off-limits.
The Bush order also gives family members of a deceased or disabled former president these privileges. Bush would enable Nancy Reagan to one day claim authority to keep her husband's papers secret; so, too, might Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Bush's own mother could out-do them both. She could sift through papers of two presidents and decide what is, or is not, to be seen by history. Thanks, Mom.
Private control over public papers is what the Presidential Records Act of 1978 was to end. The post-Watergate law made White House records property of the people, not the presidents. It set a 12-year timetable after a president leaves office for release of sensitive material. This made the Reagan papers eligible for release in January.
And this is the law Bush now shreds. The administration, as is its custom, does little to explain. It talks of need for an "orderly process" for releasing records. White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales claims, as well, the desire to protect "records that could impact national security."
This is how they cover up the cover-up.
Classified national security material isn't covered by the act at all. It isn't even reviewed for release for 25 years, according to the National Archives.
And there was nothing disorderly about the release of Carter's White House documents, nor those of former President Gerald R. Ford. That is because these presidents disclosed about everything. Ford, instinctively decent, followed the emerging outlines of the records law, though as he left office it hadn't yet passed.
No one has come forward to declare this Bush restriction welcome, or necessary. Historians are apoplectic. Reagan's librarians already were preparing a big release when the White House called it to a halt.
Congress grumbles. Its members - notably Republicans in the House - grouse about their own curtailed right to have a look. Clinton, through his longtime aide Bruce Lindsey, has publicly opposed the strictures as unneeded and contrary to the law's intent.
Just this week, Lindsey said in an interview, he searched papers relating to presidential gifts that had been requested by Rep. Douglas Ose (R-Calif.). The memos from White House lawyers were clearly eligible for disclosure before now. They could just as clearly be withheld under Bush's new order.
"We could have unilaterally withheld them, but we didn't," Lindsey said.
None desires this secrecy, save the current occupant of the White House. We are left only to guess at why. And to shiver at all the possibilities, now and in the future.
Email: cocco@newsday.com
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Taliban brass talk of handing over terrorist
USA Today
11/15/2001
By Barbara Slavin, Jonathan Weisman and Jack Kelley, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/15/hunt-usatlede.htm
U.S. commandos are hunting Osama bin Laden with high-tech surveillance traps, heat-seeking spy planes and suitcases full of cash. As his Taliban protectors collapse throughout Afghanistan, the alleged mastermind of the attacks Sept. 11 on New York and Washington has fewer places to run, U.S. intelligence officials said Wednesday. In a late development, U.S. officials in Islamabad, Pakistan, said a number of Taliban commanders in southern Afghanistan have offered to deliver bin Laden to the United States.
The commanders are not among the Taliban top leadership, but intelligence officials believe they have knowledge of bin Laden's whereabouts. Some are asking about the reward of $5 million while others, surrounded by opposition forces, are looking for a way out, the officials said.
Meanwhile, officials disclosed that military jets on Tuesday bombed and destroyed a building where top al-Qa'eda leaders were hiding. Several people were reportedly killed. U.S. officials had not determined who was among the dead.
On the war front, Taliban forces continued to retreat toward the southern city of Kandahar and its surroundings. U.S. jets moved in to target the fleeing forces. There were reports of uprisings against Taliban forces in the south. The Pentagon reacted with caution.
"We don't have enough factual information to assume that this war in Afghanistan is about to end," said Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
U.S. officials and leaders of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance said they believe bin Laden retreated from Kandahar, the Taliban spiritual center, to the remote mountains of Afghanistan's central Oruzgan province, home to Taliban leader Mohammed Omar.
Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdullah said bin Laden and Omar are in Afghanistan "and, thanks be to God, no harm has come upon them." Some bin Laden lieutenants may have slipped into Pakistan, a U.S. official said.
Intelligence sources said bin Laden could shave his beard, cut his hair and try to slip into Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province.
To prevent his escape, several hundred Army commandos are in Afghanistan interviewing captured Taliban commanders and setting up surveillance gear, such as radar, heat detectors and cameras, U.S. officials said. Many are posted at roadblocks outside Kandahar.
Asked whether the troops would engage in battle, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "If they're the kind you want to shoot, you shoot them."
Teams of two to 12 men are searching abandoned caves, tunnels and buildings for maps, documents or computer disks that could lead to bin Laden, officials said. From the skies, pilots are using heat detectors to locate warm bodies in cold Afghan caves. CIA agents are using cash to bribe sources for information about bin Laden's whereabouts, officials said.
Bin Laden has trimmed his once-large entourage to about 100 security troops and supporters, and he is separated from Omar, U.S. officials said.
Afghan expert Rahimullah Yusufzai, who has interviewed bin Laden, said, "They will not let themselves be taken alive."
Slavin and Weisman reported from Washington, Kelley from Islamabad, Pakistan; wire reports.
------
U.S. jets zero in on pockets of Taliban resistance
USA Today
11/15/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/15/attack.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. warplanes zeroed in near the town of Kunduz on Thursday, where Taliban fighters and followers of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network were apparently set to make a stand at one of their last pockets of resistance in northern Afghanistan. Elsewhere in Afghanistan, U.S. airstrikes on two buildings killed some senior Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, the Pentagon said Thursday. Victoria Clarke, spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, told reporters that she had no numbers or identities of those killed in the strikes on buildings near the capital Kabul on Tuesday and the southern city of Kandahar on Wednesday. But she said there was no evidence that bin Laden was among them.
Meanwhile, ending a three-month drama that has overlapped with the standoff between the United States and bin Laden, eight international aid workers who had been accused of preaching Christianity in Afghanistan arrived in neighboring Pakistan after being plucked to safety by U.S. special forces helicopters early Thursday.
Despite a series of stunning setbacks that cost the Islamic militia its grip on the capital and deprived it of huge swaths of territory, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was defiant in a BBC interview broadcast Thursday, saying he'd rather die than "join an evil government" with the country's former leader.
The Taliban pullback from urban centers, he also said, was part of a larger strategy that aims to destroy America.
"If God's help is with us, this will happen within a short period of time - keep in mind this prediction," he said. "The real matter is the extinction of America, and God willing, it will fall to the ground."
Omar also ruled out taking part in a multiethnic government like the one the United Nations has proposed for Afghanistan.
"The struggle for a broad-based government has been going on for the last 20 years, but nothing came of it," he said. "We will not accept a government of wrongdoers. We prefer death than to be a part of an evil government."
The BBC asked the questions through an intermediary over a satellite phone, who passed them on to the Taliban leader through a hand-held radio. Earlier Thursday, the private Afghan Islamic Press agency reported that Omar was in a safe place and in charge of his troops.
In northern Afghanistan, anti-Taliban forces said they were preparing to launch an offensive against the front line outside Kunduz, the region's only town of significant size remaining under Taliban control. It lies between the northern alliance-held cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Taloqan.
U.S. warplanes launched dozens of strikes against Taliban tank and troop positions in the area, refugees and witnesses said. According to refugees, thousands of foreign fighters - Arabs and Chechens - are concentrated near Kunduz.
Northern alliance commanders said they were trying by radio to get the Taliban to surrender, but Sayaf Baick, a northern alliance commander, said the foreign fighters had killed several local Taliban officials in Kunduz who wanted to give up the town.
Just who was in control of particular areas was difficult to pin down. The Taliban were reported to have left the eastern town of Jalalabad, but one Shiite Muslim northern alliance leader, Saeed Hussein Anwari, told The Associated Press in Kabul on Thursday that the city's status was unclear.
Francesc Vendrell, the deputy U.N. special representative for Afghanistan, told Associated Press Television News that Jalalabad "is clearly not in Taliban hands, but it's a little confusing to know in whose hands it is."
At the Pakistan-Afghanistan border post of Torkham - the border crossing nearest to Jalalabad - Taliban guards have left.
Gul Wali, who described himself as the new security chief at the border post, said alliance faction leader Yunus Khalis and his supporters also had control of Jalalabad and surrounding Nangarhar province, and that there was no fighting.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said American warplanes hammered areas around the Taliban's stronghold of Kandahar, killing eight civilians and injuring 22. That claim could not be confirmed.
Vendrell said he had been told that there were northern alliance forces in Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace and spiritual home.
On the eastern border, Pashtun tribesmen once loyal to the Taliban were said to be rising up against them, and Taliban fighters were reportedly taking shelter in the mountains. Anwari said the border provinces of Paktika, Paktia and part of Logar were all in control of anti-Taliban Pashtun forces.
With the Taliban having fled Kabul, speculation has grown that Burhanuddin Rabbani, Afghanistan's president from 1992-96 and titular head of the northern alliance, will return to the capital.
Anwari, the Shiite Muslim northern alliance commander, said Rabbani was remaining for the time being in the Panjshir Valley, a staging ground for the alliance during its long anti-Taliban campaign in the north, because of the alliance's promise not to take power in the capital.
He warned, however, that if the United Nations and the world community fail to act soon to fill the power vacuum, the alliance would have to establish a government.
Meanwhile, U.S. special forces were watching key roads in southern Afghanistan, hunting for Taliban leaders, Rumsfeld said Wednesday. At the Pentagon, senior defense officials speaking on condition of anonymity said a new military plan was being prepared to hunt down bin Laden and other leaders of al-Qa'eda and the Taliban.
"One of our primary objectives over the last few days has been to go after command and control - Taliban and al-Qa'eda leadership," Clarke, Rumsfeld's spokeswoman, said Thursday.
President Bush launched airstrikes against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to surrender bin Laden, sought in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
As the Islamic holy month of Ramadan approached, authorities said there would be limited U.S. bombing of the caves and mountain redoubts where the Taliban and al-Qa'eda leaders were believed to be hiding.
------
Southern tribes help fight Taliban
USA Today
11/15/2001
By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/15/warnews.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - For the first time, southern Afghan tribes joined the fight against the Taliban on Wednesday, and there were reports of these ethnic forces advancing on Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual center. Also, anti-Taliban forces seized the eastern city of Jalalabad, and Northern Alliance troops consolidated their hold on the capital, Kabul. The victory at Jalalabad was scored by local leaders unaffiliated with the Northern Alliance, including ethnic Pashtuns, long the backbone of Taliban support.
The U.S. effort to foster anti-Taliban sentiment among Pashtun leaders reportedly helped persuade some of the groups to rise up, though tribes also acted on their own, a U.S. official said.
Two hundred anti-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen reportedly took control of Kandahar's airport Wednesday, but it was unclear exactly where they came from or who was commanding them, a senior U.S. official said. There were reports that fighting was still going on at the airport.
Separately, as many as 1,000 men under the command of anti-Taliban Pashtun leader Gul Agha Sherzai, governor of Kandahar Province before the Taliban era, crossed into Afghanistan from the area of Quetta, Pakistan, Tuesday night. They were armed with semiautomatic weapons, some supplied by the United States, the official said.
Some observers in Islamabad doubted that Pashtun tribesmen were rising en masse against the Taliban. "This is not a Pashtun uprising," said Abdul Jabbar Naeemi, spokesman for the Pakistan-based National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, a predominantly Pashtun group that has tried to help form a post-Taliban government.
In some places, Taliban officials are ceding power to local Pashtun commanders and fleeing to the hills, leaving territory in relatively friendly hands instead of letting the Northern Alliance move in.
Taliban officials were engaged in furious negotiations with local Pashtun leaders Wednesday, trying to form a united Pashtun front against the Northern Alliance.
In other news Wednesday:
- A number of U.S. military analysts declared the Taliban all but beaten with its leaders hiding in caves or attempting to flee the country. "They're panicked," said Bill Taylor, senior adviser of international security affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "As a governing entity, the Taliban is finished."
- U.S. military officials are retooling the war campaign after the Taliban's surprisingly quick retreat. They predicted that the bombing campaign, entering its 40th day, will likely be dramatically scaled back, perhaps coinciding with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins this weekend. Bombing might be limited to cave complexes and pockets of Taliban resistance.
- The United Arab Emirates has agreed to a United Nations request to host talks among Afghan factions on a political future for their country after the fall of the Taliban, a UAE official said.
- The British government said "there is evidence of a very specific nature" linking bin Laden and his associates to the suicide attack Sept. 11 on the USA. But as before, that evidence is too sensitive to release, officials said.
Contributing: Tim Friend and Thor Valdmanis in Taloqan, Afghanistan; Elliot Blair Smith in London; and Barbara Slavin and Gregg Zoroya in Washington
---
Alliance 'has broken' Geneva code of war
BY HELEN RUMBELOW
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 15 2001
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001390014-2001395711,00.html
THE Northern Alliance is obliged to treat prisoners of war under the terms of the Geneva Convention, which was ratified by Afghanistan in 1951. Under its terms, it is the country, not the regime in power, that agrees to abide by its rules.
The convention gives protection to captured soldiers once they lay down their arms and the civilian population in times of war.
In broad terms this states that "all those who are detained must be spared and protected against abuse, whatever the circumstances and regardless of their affiliation". It bans torture, reprisals and hostage taking, with the emphasis "that women and children must be treated with special respect and protected against any form of indecent assault". Amnesty International claimed that early indications showed that the Alliance had violated the convention.
A spokesman said: "We have heard through a UN spokesman that the Northern Alliance killed a few hundred people hiding in a school in Mazar-i Sharif and there have been pictures from Kabul showing some executions."
-------
Alliance Force, in Charge, Tries to Ease Fears
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/international/asia/15KABU.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 14 - Serving alongside Pakistani, Chechen and Arab volunteers, Atiqurahman manned a post on the second line of Taliban forces in the village of Kalai Nasro near the Bagram air base 35 miles north of Kabul.
Now, after abandoning his position and trudging toward the capital as Northern Alliance forces burst through his line, the 23- year-old soldier from Kandahar is a prisoner, and fearful of his future.
"What should I do?" Atiqurahman whispered at one point during a meeting in his temporary jail, a shipping container in Kabul. "Will they kill us or not?"
The Northern Alliance tried to calm such fears as they tightened their control over Kabul today and as rebellion against the Taliban spread to the eastern city of Jalalabad and to the mullahs' southern stronghold of Kandahar.
As American jets continued to bomb targets south of Jalalabad - an area thought to contain hideouts of Osama bin Laden's Qaeda terrorists - Gen. Fazil Ahmed Azimi, commander of alliance forces in eastern Afghanistan, said his troops hoped to secure firm control of the eastern city within days. They would count on more defections from the Taliban rather than a military attack, he said.
"We don't want more fighting," he said. "We don't want more victims."
That seemed to be a message the Northern Alliance was eager to spread today, perhaps to counter reports from United Nations aid workers of massacres, executions, looting and other crimes committed by alliance soldiers as half of Afghanistan fell suddenly into their hands in recent days.
Foreign governments pondering Afghanistan's governance are also pressing the alliance to show restraint and to reach out to all Afghans.
General Azimi said alliance representatives were in Jalalabad negotiating with local commanders, who would hold a council to reach a decision about linking up with the alliance. "We should know the result in a day or two," the general said.
But Yunus Khalis, a Pashtun mullah in Jalalabad and a leader of some influence there, was quoted in Afghan media as rejecting any deal and saying Northern Alliance forces should not try to enter the city.
Alberto Cairo, who has worked for the International Red Cross in Afghanistan for 12 years, said the shift in power was the most peaceful he had seen in a country ruined by 22 years of almost continual fighting and fast-shifting alliances among rival clans and warlords.
He said his organization had collected the bodies of 10 Afghan and Pakistani fighters in the capital, but could not say whether they had died in fighting or in reprisals as the Northern Alliance forces entered Kabul on Tuesday.
He praised the general lack of violence and looting in the city and the work so far of the roughly 2,000 alliance policemen and soldiers securing it.
"I am surprised that things have gone so well," he said. "Bad things could still happen, but for now I'm very optimistic."
For a second day, Kabul's streets hummed with activities barred by the Taliban. Restaurants blared music, men skipped the call to prayer and some cast off their burkas, the head-to-toe veil required by the Taliban.
Workers clambered on to the building of Radio Afghanistan, proudly restoring its lettering, and a broadcaster who had run a radio station for the Northern Alliance, Muhammad Alam Ezdediar, took control, hiring three women as news readers and airing music and statements from the alliance defense ministry urging people to remain calm and to go to work.
Alliance leaders like Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the foreign minister, moved into cavernous, empty ministry buildings. Alliance officials also said their president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, would head an interim government and enter the city soon, a move likely to bring protests from Pakistan, which had insisted that one price for its new allegiance to Washington was that the alliance not take power.
But Yunus Qanooni, an alliance leader, reiterated that the alliance favored what he called a broad- based, multiethnic interim government.
In what they called a precautionary step, alliance officials imposed an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew. They also said carrying firearms would be banned as of Saturday. Truckloads of alliance soldiers continued to move through the city, but the bulk of them appeared to be headed for the front lines east and south of Kabul, which were off limits to reporters.
Atiqurahman, the Taliban soldier, who has only one name, was not convinced by the alliance's message of control and tolerance. A wiry, bearded young man with piercing light-brown eyes, dressed in soiled clothes, he anxiously protested his innocence, insisting that the Taliban had forced him to fight against his will.
When American planes began bombing their positions in October, he said, neither he nor his fellow fighters were much impressed. Then, in the last two weeks, heavy bombing runs, particularly by B-52's, intensified, and Taliban soldiers were getting killed. "Our morale was getting lower and lower," he recalled.
Atiqurahman and his remaining comrades abandoned their positions on Monday, after alliance soldiers suddenly appeared behind Taliban lines because Taliban units on his flanks had defected. "We realized we couldn't fight," he said, and he spent the next 14 hours walking toward Kabul with three other soldiers.
Atiqurahman said he had surrendered without resistance. Alliance soldiers said he was captured after a fire fight in which he killed an alliance soldier.
But his captors, apparently eager to impress Western reporters with their lack of desire to take murderous revenge, said Atiqurahman and his fellow prisoner, a 45-year-old man named Khyali who said he was a cook, would be sent to a regular prison.
The picture painted by the captured Taliban soldier of heavy bombing, defections in the ranks and general unpopularity of the Taliban was reflected in the accounts of Kabul residents today.
Zabihullah, a 21-year-old welder, reported that two weeks ago, a B-52 dropped six enormous bombs on the Badam Bagh tank base a mile from his home.
The strikes blew the windows out of his house and reduced the base to rubble. Twisted bits of the tin roof landed more than 100 yards away on a hillside. Two tanks were flipped upside down in the yard. Hours after the bombing, he said, three pickup trucks full of bodies left the smoldering base.
But the Taliban had hidden eight tanks in the mountains and residential areas nearby, he said, and they survived the bombing unscathed.
The exact number of civilians killed in the bombing may never be known. Hospitals betrayed almost no signs of treating patients wounded in bombings. Many of the dead are transported directly to cemeteries for burial, and their deaths are never recorded. The International Red Cross had an estimate of 300 to 400 people treated for various wounds during two months of bombing, but Mr. Cairo, the aid worker, could not say how reliable that count was.
One Afghan who works for an international aid group and who was able to move around the city said the bombing had forced the Taliban to constantly change position. "They moved every day, every hour," said the worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This wore their morale down completely."
An undercurrent of hostility from the city's population also added to the pressure, according to the aid worker. For years, Kabul residents had chafed under what they saw as the heavy hand of Pakistani and Arab Taliban supporters. "They came to our country just to rule us," said Yahya, a 22-year-old carpet weaver. "We were like hens."
Zabihullah, the welder, said the Taliban eventually grew to fear the population. "They really did wrong to the Afghan people," he said. "They were afraid the people would start attacking them."
There were reports that Taliban leaders were seeking refuge in Kandahar. But Atiqurahman, the captive soldier, predicted that they would fare no better there, his native city.
"I think they have very low morale," he said. "There will be more defections."
--------
U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors
World - OneWorld.net
Thursday November 15 01:21 PM EST
By Julio Godoy, Inter Press Service
PARIS, Nov 15 (IPS) - Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.
In the book ''Bin Laden, la verite interdite'' (''Bin Laden, the forbidden truth''), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.
Brisard claim O'Neill told them that ''the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it''.
The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.
They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime ''as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia'', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.
Until now, says the book, ''the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that''.
But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, ''this rationale of energy security changed into a military one'', the authors claim.
''At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs','' Brisard said in an interview in Paris.
According to the book, the government of Bush began to negotiate with the Taliban immediately after coming into power in February. U.S. and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad.
To polish their image in the United States, the Taliban even employed a U.S. expert on public relations, Laila Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of U.S. secret services, for her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The last meeting between U.S. and Taliban representatives took place in August, five weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington, the analysts maintain.
On that occasion, Christina Rocca, in charge of Central Asian affairs for the U.S. government, met the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan in Islamabad.
Brisard and Dasquie have long experience in intelligence analysis. Brisard was until the late 1990s director of economic analysis and strategy for Vivendi, a French company. He also worked for French secret services, and wrote for them in 1997 a report on the now famous Al Qaeda network, headed by bin Laden.
Dasquie is an investigative journalist and publisher of Intelligence Online, a respected newsletter on diplomacy, economic analysis and strategy, available through the Internet.
Brisard and Dasquie draw a portrait of closest aides to President Bush, linking them to oil business.
Bush's family has a strong oil background. So are some of his top aides. From the U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, through the director of the National Security Council Condoleeza Rice, to the Ministers of Commerce and Energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham, all have for long worked for U.S. oil companies.
Cheney was until the end of last year president of Halliburton, a company that provides services for oil industry; Rice was between 1991 and 2000 manager for Chevron; Evans and Abraham worked for Tom Brown, another oil giant.
Besides the secret negotiations held between Washington and Kabul and the importance of the oil industry, the book takes issue with the role played by Saudi Arabia in fostering Islamic fundamentalism, in the personality of bin Laden, and with the networks that the Saudi dissident built to finance his activities.
Brisard and Dasquie contend the U.S. government's claim that it had been prosecuting bin Laden since 1998. ''Actually,'' Dasquie says, ''the first state to officially prosecute bin Laden was Libya, on the charges of terrorism.''
''Bin Laden wanted settle in Libya in the early 1990s, but was hindered by the government of Muammar Qaddafi,'' Dasquie claims. ''Enraged by Libya's refusal, bin Laden organised attacks inside Libya, including assassination attempts against Qaddafi.''
Dasquie singles out one group, the Islamic Fighting Group (IFG), reputedly the most powerful Libyan dissident organisation, based in London, and directly linked with bin Laden.
''Qaddafi even demanded Western police institutions, such as Interpol, to pursue the IFG and bin Laden, but never obtained co-operation,'' Dasquie says. ''Until today, members of IFG openly live in London.''
The book confirms earlier reports that the U.S. government worked closely with the United Nations during the negotiations with the Taliban.
''Several meetings took place this year, under the arbitration of Francesc Vendrell, personal representative of UN secretary general Kofi Annan, to discuss the situation in Afghanistan,'' says the book.
''Representatives of the U.S. government and Russia, and the six countries that border with Afghanistan were present at these meetings,'' it says. ''Sometimes, representatives of the Taliban also sat around the table.''
These meetings, also called ''6+2'' because of the number of states (six neighbours plus U.S. and Russia) involved, have been confirmed by Naif Naik, former Pakistani Minister for Foreign Affairs.
In a French television news programme two weeks ago, Naik said during a ''6+2'' meeting in Berlin in July, the discussions turned around ''the formation of a government of national unity. If the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid.''
''And the pipe lines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come,'' he added.
Naik also claimed that Tom Simons, the U.S. representative at these meetings, openly threatened the Taliban and Pakistan. ''Simons said, 'either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option'. The words Simons used were 'a military operation','' Naik claimed.
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-------- arms sales
McDonnell Douglas to Pay $2.1 Million Fine in Export Case
By Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 15, 2001; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31714-2001Nov14?language=printer
McDonnell Douglas agreed yesterday to pay a civil penalty of $2.1 million to settle charges that it violated U.S. export laws by selling to a Chinese-run company aerospace machine tools that ultimately wound up in a Chinese military plant.
McDonnell Douglas, a subsidiary of Chicago-based Boeing Co., said it admitted no wrongdoing by settling a complex, six-year investigation. As part of the settlement, federal prosecutors in Washington agreed to drop criminal charges filed against the firm in 1999. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman dismissed the criminal case yesterday.
Commerce Department officials, who also brought administrative proceedings against the company, said the fine resolves that civil matter and is the second-largest penalty ever levied in an export control case. In 1995, Halliburton Co. agreed to pay $2.6 million in civil penalties for violating a U.S. trade embargo in its dealings with Libya. The McDonnell Douglas case had generated widespread attention because it came amid allegations that Chinese firms were engaged in industrial espionage. The penalty against McDonnell Douglas is the maximum fine possible, Commerce officials said.
The settlement preserves the right of McDonnell Douglas to conduct business overseas. Under the terms of the agreement, the company has 30 days to pay the fine.
The controversy stemmed from McDonnell Douglas's 1994 sale of $5.4 million in sophisticated machining equipment used to build aircraft parts. The equipment went to the China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corp., known as CATIC, a Chinese government-run defense firm that is the Chinese military's main purchasing arm.
In export licensing applications submitted to the Commerce Department, McDonnell Douglas and CATIC stated that the equipment would be used in a joint venture to produce commercial aircraft parts and would be stored in Beijing. But six machine tools, instead, wound up in a military facility in Nanchang that makes Silkworm missiles.
McDonnell Douglas officials said they relied upon their Chinese business partners in preparing the license applications and did not intentionally misrepresent the terms of the deal. It wasn't until 1995, they said, that they discovered where the equipment had gone. Officials said they promptly notified the Commerce Department. The equipment was not in use and was later moved to a civilian manufacturing location in China.
TAL Industries Inc., a California-based subsidiary of CATIC, entered a plea of no contest last spring to a criminal charge of felony violation of U.S. export laws. The firm agreed to pay $1 million to settle the criminal case and $1.3 million in penalties to settle administrative proceedings before the Commerce Department.
Michael J. Garcia of the Commerce Department said McDonnell Douglas had a duty to ensure that the information on its export applications was correct and that the equipment was used as intended.
Larry McCracken, a company spokesman, said McDonnell Douglas committed no crimes and was being held civilly liable for statements made by others.
-------- biological weapons
Antibiotic overuse can silence medicine's big guns
11/15/2001
By Ivan Oransky
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-15-ncguest1.htm
When Bayer agreed recently to slash the price of its antibiotic, Cipro, approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of anthrax, the company portrayed its action as patriotic and charitable.
But Bayer didn't have much of a choice when it dropped the price of a pill from $1.77 to 95 cents. The U.S. government was threatening to break the company's patent, which runs until December 2003.
Hundreds of thousands of people are stockpiling the antibiotic. Across the country, prescriptions for Cipro jumped 50% in the month after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In New York City, prescriptions have nearly tripled. And Internet profiteers have made it possible for people to order the drug illegally online without a prescription, which has forced the FDA to issue warning letters this month to 11 foreign pharmacies to stop their illicit sales.
The widespread hoarding of Cipro, and the way many people are taking it, means that whether the patent expires or not, one of the most powerful antibiotics in our arsenal is now very likely to become essentially useless in the next few years.
Why? Antibiotic resistance.
Cipro is just one of several drugs approved by the FDA to fight anthrax. Although none of the drugs has been scientifically proven to fight the disease in humans, Cipro seems to have helped some patients, so far. But having lots of people take the drug - in some cases, twice a day for up to 60 days - will only select out strains that are resistant to it, and it will become useless.
What's worse is that other bacteria that Cipro usually does a terrific job of killing - those that cause urinary-tract infections or pneumonia - also will be exposed to the drug, and they will develop their own resistance. Some of those bugs are very hard to kill and can cause life-threatening infections that put people on ventilators in intensive-care units. Right now, Cipro stops them. But it won't if resistant bacteria are allowed to grow.
Even before the current run on Cipro, experts found resistance to the fluoroquinolones - the family of drugs of which Cipro is a member - among diarrhea-causing bacteria in Minnesota; in 60% of the E. coli that cause urinary-tract infections and other diseases in China; and among a kind of bacteria that causes lung infections. Cipro-resistant strains of the bacteria that cause gonorrhea also have been found.
All of this resistance is in areas where Cipro and her sisters are overused, either in animals or humans. Some experts have called for an end to the practice of lacing animal feed with antibiotics, which promotes growth but has been shown to increase drug-resistant bacteria.
And the problem is worse when the drug is used in what the American Medical Association calls "a sporadic pattern of on-again, off-again dosing." Many doctors have said patients are doing just that to avoid the side effects of Cipro, which include dizziness, diarrhea and, in some rare cases, ruptured tendons.
Between 7% and 9% of people who take Cipro have significant side effects, and that number may be larger among people who take it long-term. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported last week that one in five people at American Media, the Florida company where the first anthrax victim worked, had experienced side effects attributed to the antibiotics they were taking. Most of those people were taking Cipro, although about one in seven were taking doxycycline or other antibiotics.
The combination of stockpiling and erratic misuse of the drug will only accelerate the creation of resistance.
There are safety issues in addition to concerns about resistance. When Cipro was originally approved, it was to be taken for 7 to 10 days only. Last year, the FDA made the 60-day recommendation on the use of Cipro against anthrax, based on how long it might take for anthrax spores to incubate in the body before lethal toxins developed. But many medical experts agree that no one knows for sure whether that level of long-term usage is safe.
William J. Hall, president of the American College of Physicians, recently told the Los Angeles Times: "We need to really understand what's the implication of putting thousands of people on an antibiotic for 2 months. There's never been an experience like this in the world. We have no idea what to expect from this."
So what's the answer?
We should be using other drugs. In fact, the CDC recently recommended the use of doxycycline and penicillin against inhalation anthrax. And we should be saving our "big gun" - Cipro - for when we really need it. That also goes for drugs in the fluoroquinolone family that other drugmakers - Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Pharmacia Corp. - have offered to make available.
Doctors can still do the right thing by not prescribing the drug to everyone who asks for it, using rational criteria instead.
Similarly, the government should think twice about giving out the drug willy-nilly.
Ivan Oransky is a medical doctor and editor of Praxis Post, an online magazine of medicine and culture.
---
Mayor criticizes FBI handling of anthrax scare
USA Today
11/15/2001
By Debbie Howlett and Toni Locy, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/16/fbi-cooperation.htm
The FBI knew about a possible anthrax contamination at Microsoft offices in Reno for 48 hours before local authorities were alerted - by a television reporter.
The threat ultimately turned out to be bogus. The suspicious letter mailed in mid-October from Indonesia tested negative for anthrax spores. Even so, Mayor Jeff Griffin says, it was irresponsible for the FBI not to inform him so he could act to protect his city. And, he says, local police might have assisted the investigation.
"God almighty, I don't want to pick a fight with the FBI," Griffin says, "but we've got to figure this out."
Griffin's frustration is shared by other local authorities, who since the attacks Sept. 11 have become increasingly upset over what they say is a lack of communication and cooperation by federal law enforcement.
The frustration began boiling over into the public arena when local officials complained that Attorney General John Ashcroft issued two nationwide terrorism alerts in recent weeks without warning them in advance.
Tuesday, Ashcroft moved to ease tensions by ordering federal prosecutors to devise a system for sharing information with local and state law enforcement "24 hours a day, 7 days a week" by Dec. 1.
Ashcroft also said $9.3 million would be made available to help state and local officials in the anti-terrorism effort. He said the money could be spent hiring information analysts or buying communication equipment.
Local officials say enlisting their help can do more than ease their concerns that the FBI's lack of cooperation has left them in the dark and their constituents possibly vulnerable.
It can add 600,000 local law officials to the domestic war on terrorism, they say. Already, the 12,000 federal agents assigned to the biggest case in history have served 4,000 warrants and interviewed more than 1,000 people detained during the past 8 weeks. But they also are swamped with tens of thousands of phone tips that need to be checked out.
"To a man, my guys are ready to jump in," says Mike Berkow, police chief in Irvine, Calif., Ashcroft's steps toward fostering cooperation aren't all that need to be done to overcome barriers, local officials say.
Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, agree and have crafted legislation that would permit federal agents to share information with local law enforcement agencies.
Their bill would bridge a gap that critics say exists even with the recent passage of sweeping anti-terrorism legislation. The new law, the USA Patriot Act, eliminated barriers between federal agencies in sharing secret intelligence and criminal evidence among themselves, but not local and state police.
Ashcroft supports the Schumer-Hatch legislation, and in recent weeks, FBI Director Robert Mueller has publicly pledged three times to improve cooperation.
"I learned in some cases, the FBI was turning away your offers of help," Mueller told the nation's police chiefs at a convention last week. "This is unacceptable."
Even so, many wonder whether the gulf that exists between feds and locals can be easily overcome even in a time of national crisis. Many of the difficulties that stand in the way of cooperation, local and state law enforcement leaders say, are endemic.
A culture among federal agents leads to disdain for local police and their work, many say.
Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a former FBI agent, says he remembers being taught during training that "local law enforcement is undereducated and frequently corrupt. ... That culture needs to be addressed."
Other barriers are more recent and mundane. A secure communication system doesn't allow local law enforcement to e-mail FBI agents at the 56 field offices or headquarters.
Whatever it takes to overcome the gulf, it should happen quickly, officials warn.
"We're in a new world, and we have to cooperate with each other," New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told a House terrorism subcommittee hearing last week.
-------- britain
Britain Proposes Anti-Terrorism Measures
T.R. Reid
WORLD In Brief
Wednesday, November 14, 2001; Page A29
The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24965-2001Nov13?language=printer
LONDON -- Britain's government has proposed tough new police powers to crack down on terrorism, including authority to jail non-British suspects indefinitely without trial and new powers to track telephone calls, e-mail traffic and Internet browsing.
The plan prompted strong criticism from civil libertarians, but it is almost certain to become law, probably within a month. Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party has such a heavy majority in Parliament that any government proposal passes routinely. In this case, the Conservative Party, the chief opposition, also backs the measure.
Invoking the authority to detain suspects without trial means Britain must opt out of the European Convention on Human Rights. Blair incorporated that European "bill of rights" into British law with great fanfare last year. But David Blunkett, Blair's home secretary, roughly equivalent to the attorney general in the United States, asked Parliament to declare a state of emergency so that Britain need not honor the European rules on speedy trials.
-------- israel / palestine
Consider a new Mideast option
USA Today
11/15/2001
By Amitai Etzioni
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-15-ncguest2.htm
President Bush, in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly this past weekend, said for the first time that the USA was "working toward the day when two states - Israel and Palestine - live peacefully together within secure and recognized borders."
Until now, U.S. officials have been careful to refer only to the possibility of a "Palestinian state." But Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the use of the word "Palestine" was deliberate.
The president's quite-open intention is to incur favor with Arab states as a reward for their support of the war against terrorism. But Arab leaders may notice the lack of essential details in Bush's speech, above all about the thorny issue of Jerusalem, which both sides want. And Arab leaders are not apt to be satisfied even if Israel disappeared from the face of the earth. They also want the sanctions against Iraq to be lifted, U.S. troops removed from the holy land of Saudi Arabia and the spread of our secular and materialistic culture stopped.
Bush's vision of a Palestinian state avoided discussing what happens once it is established. There is little reason to believe that such a state, whatever its borders, will satisfy most Palestinians. Unlike Israel, where roughly half the public is still willing to accept a resolution of the conflict along the lines former prime minister Ehud Barak laid out, there never has been a significant segment of the Arab population willing to accept half a loaf.
Indeed, as Palestine Liberation Organization leader Faisal Husseini said candidly in Beirut last April, "Our eyes will continue to aspire to the strategic goal: namely, Palestine from the river to the sea." Nor is he alone. Abdullah Shami of Islamic Jihad told The New Yorker in July, "We must fight Israel until it is gone."
No turning the other cheek
What would U.S. policymakers expect Israel to do if a Palestinian state were created and terrorists launched attacks across its new international border? What would stop Israel from declaring war - as America just did after it was attacked - and marching into Palestine, taking us right back to the races?
Worst, there is the unexplored matter of the newly independent Palestinian state admitting heavy weapons and shiploads of Hezbollah terrorists and Iraqi tanks. Could Israel be expected to sit still and wait until these forces were ready to strike? The Oslo agreements provided a convoluted system for border inspections - but it was one only diplomats desperate to reach an agreement could dream up. If a Palestinian independent state were recognized, there would be very little support for its awkward arrangement.
But there is a possible solution to this maddening situation: an Israeli-Palestinian confederation with Jerusalem as its joint capital.
Together, but apart
In such a confederation, borders would be openly controlled and patrolled by both parties. There would be no borders between the two confederated parts, and free movement of labor and goods would be allowed. Where necessary, anti-terrorist patrols would be conducted jointly by Israeli and Palestinian security forces, as they already have been in some parts - and quite effectively.
By agreement, certain territories would be governed by one of the confederates in all matters not concerning international relations, in line with their local laws, enforced by local authorities. In effect, this would mean that Jewish settlers would be unlikely to move into areas assigned to Palestinian governance. Some settlements would fold as part of the deal.
Getting agreement to such a confederation would not be easy. But it is a concept that recognizes basic realities and does not set traps for itself from the day it is introduced. And it takes into account that international public opinion glorifies independence, which makes a Palestinian state a dangerous illusion.
Amitai Etzioni served in the Israeli commando unit, PalMach, from 1947 to 1949. He is author, most recently, of The Monochrome Society.
---
Israel raids Gaza as Palestinians mark national day
USA Today
11/15/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/15/peres-binladen.htm
JERUSALEM (AP) - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Thursday he remains committed to peace with Israel but that the Jewish state must withdraw from the entire West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.
Arafat's speech, during a somber national holiday marking 13 years since a never-implemented declaration of Palestinian independence, comes amid U.S. efforts to re-establish a peace process - and continued violence on the ground.
Israeli troops raided the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza early Thursday, triggering a firefight that left a 23-year-old Palestinian dead and 13 wounded. Troops also raided the village of Shawawreh near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, arresting eight suspected militants; troops withdrew after several hours.
The incursions came despite repeated U.S. demands that Israel stay out of Palestinian-controlled territory. The Israeli military said the raids were in response to persistent Palestinian shooting attacks on Israelis.
In Gaza, Palestinian authorities released two men said to be members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the group that claimed responsibility for the Oct. 17 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.
Lawyer Yunis al-Jarru said he and labor union leader Rabah Muhanna were freed following a campaign by human rights groups and a ruling last week by the Palestinian Supreme Court, which said there was insufficient evidence on which to hold them.
In a speech broadcast on radio and television, Arafat said peace with Israel remained his strategic choice - and spelled out the price.
"We reiterate our readiness for a just peace on the basis of a full withdrawal from the Palestinian and Arab territories to the June 4, 1967, borders," he said. "We also reiterate our commitment to peace ... between the two states, Palestine and Israel."
President Bush last week told the U.N. General Assembly he was seeking a peace deal that would set up a Palestinian state. He did not define the borders of the new state or adopt the Palestinian position that its capital must be Jerusalem, but his explicit naming of "Palestine" was seen as a step forward by the Palestinians.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was expected to flesh out the U.S. ideas in a speech on Monday. Unconfirmed reports say Powell or a lower-ranking envoy might be headed toward the region.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday that although it was not formal Israeli government policy, "there is support for a Palestinian independence, support for a Palestinian state."
Many Israelis have lost faith in peacemaking after the Palestinians rejected an offer last year for what Israeli negotiators said was a state in more than 90% of the West Bank, all of Gaza and parts of disputed east Jerusalem.
Arafat's insistence on a "right of return" to Israel for some 4 million refugees and descendants - and the outbreak of fighting 14 months ago - convinced many Israelis that the Palestinians' real goal was to take over Israel.
Some Palestinians have been saying their side should be more active in seeking a way out of the deadlock. "Why are we waiting and not presenting a proposal which (Israel will) accept or reject or ask for changes?" asked the Al Ayyam daily this week.
Sari Nusseibeh, a philosophy professor Arafat recently appointed as his representative in Jerusalem, has been particularly outspoken. He said this week the Palestinians needed to understand that their demand for a right of return was a "deal breaker" that the Israelis would never accept for fear of undermining the Jewish identity of their state.
In return, Nusseibeh said, Israelis must understand that the Palestinians are demanding not just most but "the entirety" of the land that Israel occupied in 1967, including all of east Jerusalem and the Old City with its Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites - and the dismantling of settlements and neighborhoods there.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he accepts the concept of a limited Palestinian state but has opposed any dismantling of settlements.
In his address Thursday, Arafat refrained from demanding a "return" of the refugees, saying only that there needed to be "a solution" - which could leave the door open to their resettlement in a Palestinian state or monetary compensation.
Palestinians observe Nov. 15 - the day in 1988 when Arafat declared a state from his exile in Tunis - as a national holiday, even though they don't have a state. Celebrations were low-key and the mood was subdued.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, several hundred Palestinians attended an independence day rally, with speakers saying the uprising against Israel must continue.
The fighting has killed 754 people on the Palestinian side and 197 people on the Israeli side.
---
Palestinian Authority Arrests Jihad Leader, Causing a Riot
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/international/middleeast/15ISRA.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 14 - Palestinians rioted against Yasir Arafat's security forces today in the West Bank after officers in Jenin arrested a man accused by Israel of orchestrating suicide attacks against Israelis.
The violence underscored the dilemma facing Mr. Arafat as he seeks American support in a renewed push toward peace negotiations.
He is under pressure from the United States, Russia and European countries to arrest militants accused by Israel of plotting terrorist attacks. But any such move is deeply unpopular with most Palestinians, who insist that no arrests should be made while the peace talks are stalled and Israel maintains a virtual blockade of the West Bank.
On a Jenin street this afternoon, Palestinian security officers arrested Mahmoud Nurasi Tawalbi, 23, a leader of the violent group Islamic Jihad. After sunset prayers, some 3,000 Palestinian gathered to demonstrate against the arrest.
Then a crowd of hundreds surrounded the headquarters of the security forces in Jenin, throwing explosives and stones and firing guns, witnesses said. No one was reported injured.
It was the worst Palestinian-on- Palestinian violence since Oct. 8, when Mr. Arafat's forces opened fire on demonstrators in the Gaza Strip, killing two, to stop a protest in support of Osama bin Laden and against the war in Afghanistan. Then as now, Mr. Arafat was seeking to comply with what he perceived to be American desires.
Witnesses said members of all major Palestinian factions, including Mr. Arafat's own organization, Al Fatah, took part in tonight's demonstration, if not in the attack on the security headquarters.
"We reject political arrests," Qadoura Fares Musa, a Fatah leader in Jenin, said by telephone. Mr. Musa, who also condemned this evening's violence, said Mr. Tawalbi, a resident of Jenin's large refugee camp, was very popular in the city. "Everybody loved him," he said.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders are maneuvering for favorable position as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell prepares to give a speech on Monday outlining American policy in the Middle East. As the United States has tried to put pressure on each side, Israelis and Palestinians have remained locked in a standoff in which each accuses the other of ignoring treaty obligations. After more than a year of conflict, neither side wants to blink first.
Israel has occupied positions in Jenin - on what by treaty is supposed to be Palestinian-controlled territory - because, it says, Mr. Arafat has failed to comply with his obligations to arrest extremists who threaten Israel. Israel says it has restricted Palestinian travel and commerce in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for the same reason.
In the meantime Mr. Arafat's own standing has steadily weakened, as radical groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas have gained adherents. Israeli officials insist that Mr. Arafat, by sheer force of arms, retains enough raw power if not political support to crack down on militants if he chooses to.
Tonight's confrontation lasted about four hours and ended only after officials on the scene promised to work out some compromise, witnesses said.
Israel recently tried and failed to kill Mr. Tawalbi, who is on its list of 10 most wanted men, Israeli officials said.
Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, cautioned that Mr. Tawalbi had been arrested and released before. "The real question is whether this time he will be incarcerated or whether it will be just back to the old revolving door," he said.
An official with Mr. Arafat's preventive security confirmed tonight that Mr. Tawalbi had been arrested "for interrogation regarding activities that harmed the national security."
A spokesman for the Islamic Jihad in Jenin, Abdul Hailin Izaddin, accused the Palestinian security forces of kidnapping Mr. Tawalbi. He said security forces had been seeking at least 10 members of the group in Jenin but had "failed in arresting them because people are protecting them." He called for Mr. Tawalbi's immediate release.
Israeli officials said tonight that if today's action heralded a crackdown by Mr. Arafat, the forces could withdraw soon.
-------- pakistan
Taliban Troops Move Across Border Into Pakistan
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/international/asia/15BORD.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 14 - About 3,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters have crossed into Pakistan along its western frontier since Sunday, when Taliban troops began retreating in strength from some of Afghanistan's major cities, Pakistani intelligence officials said today.
The timing appeared to coincide with an order issued on Sunday by Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, for his forces to stage an orderly withdrawal.
The intelligence officials' accounts could not be independently verified, because the areas involved - autonomous tribal lands known as tribal agencies - are closed to all non- Pakistanis without permits. This puts the areas effectively beyond the reach of Pakistan's armed forces, and of Pakistani law.
Pakistani military officials, however, told the Associated Press tonight that hundreds of heavily armed Pakistani troops had been sent to the border to prevent Taliban and Al Quaeda fighters crossing into Pakistan. The defense ministry declined to comment on the report.
The autonomy of the rugged, mountainous tribal agencies dates to the era of British rule in India, when Britain, like Pakistan after its founding in 1947, found it wiser not to challenge the region's fiercely guarded independence. The result is an area that for at least 200 years has offered nearly impregnable hideouts for fugitives, renegades, drug runners, arms dealers and insurgents. This would be particularly helpful to Taliban fighters, who like most of the region's inhabitants, are ethnic Pashtuns, indistinguishable in culture and history from those who call the region home.
If the Pakistani reports are accurate, an influx of Taliban in the border area could signal a strategy for guerrilla war, as their leaders have warned repeatedly in messages and interviews after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
The Pakistani intelligence officials cautioned, however, that their reports did not necessarily mean that Taliban or Al Quaeda fighters were preparing for guerrilla war, much less that they had the arms, ammunition and local support to do so. For the moment, the officials said, the fighters could simply be seeking a refuge from attack by American fighter-bombers.
Another reason for caution in assessing the reports was that the Pakistani military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, has a history of spreading disinformation in support of its objectives. As troops of the Northern Alliance continue to push the Taliban out of the major cities, Western diplomats cautioned, the intelligence service could be seeking to spread alarm in Washington over the consequences of allowing the alliance to consolidate its power. Pakistan, a crucial American ally, is opposed to a takeover by the Northern Alliance, whose forces are dominated by non-Pashtun, minority ethnic groups.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters were said to have been observed in North Waziristan, Kurram, Khyber, Orakzai, Mohmand and Bajaur. Many of the soldiers would be familiar with the region from the 1979-1989 war against Soviet forces that occupied Afghanistan. At that time, the Afghan fighters' use of the tribal areas as a haven from which to mount operations in Afghanistan was encouraged by the Central Intelligence Agency, which was a partner with the Pakistani intelligence agency in equipping and training the Muslim guerrilla groups that ultimately defeated the Soviet forces.
The Pakistani intelligence officials said that the largest concentrations of Taliban fighters had been seen entering Pakistan by the Nawa and Kunar passes, north of Peshawar, and on the Terah Valley, southwest of Peshawar, all established crossing points during the anti-Soviet struggle.
The routes have also been used by many of the 80,000 Afghan refugees who are said by United Nations relief agencies to have crossed into Pakistan since Sept. 11.
-------- propaganda wars
White House fires at critics
November 15, 2001
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011115-56778200.htm
CRAWFORD, Texas - The White House, buoyed by advances against the Taliban in Afghanistan, yesterday took some measure of satisfaction in proving wrong the naysayers who had been criticizing the administration's prosecution of the war.
Vice President Richard B. Cheney derided "the hand-wringers who, a week or two ago, were saying: 'It's not going to work; you're not doing enough; you've been at it now for three or four weeks, and my gosh, the war is not over yet.'"
During a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, Mr. Cheney said he "can't help but" indulge in a bit of crowing over the folly of his critics.
"When you read the Washington press and see what all of the pundits have to offer and some of the talking heads on Washington have to offer, it's nice, at a moment like this, to be able to remind them that a lot of what they put out over the course of the last few weeks was just dead wrong," he said. "The results are there for all to see."
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said President Bush was shrugging off the potshots he took when the war appeared to be dragging last week.
"He knows that it doesn't matter what a president does; the president will always have critics," Mr. Fleischer said in response to questions from The Washington Times.
"But the president's focus is on winning this war and bringing those terrorists to justice who attacked our country, regardless of what any of the positive-sayers say or the naysayers say," he added. "He's, of course, always cheered to have more positive-sayers than naysayers."
Mr. Cheney said the naysayers can learn "a couple of lessons" from the administration's progress in recent days.
"Things have changed so dramatically," he said. "We see the Taliban in retreat virtually all over the country.
"They lost their control over a major part of Afghanistan," he said. "They've lost control of most of the cities. Many of their forces have been killed, captured or fled to the hills."
The vice president said this should serve as a warning that nations who continue to harbor terrorists will be punished under "what is increasingly known as the Bush doctrine."
He added: "If anybody has any questions about whether or not we're determined to carry through on that threat, all they have to do is go visit Afghanistan today and interview members of the Taliban - if they can find any."
Still, both Mr. Fleischer and Mr. Cheney cautioned against being overconfident since control of Kabul and other Afghan territory was wrested from the Taliban.
Mr. Cheney said recent progress in the war "does not by any means indicate that this operation is over yet. We've got a long way to go."
Noting that al Qaeda is a global terrorist network, he added: "A far more appropriate way to look at it is, this is a very good beginning to what's likely to be a long struggle."
As that struggle continued yesterday, Mr. Bush welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin to his ranch here for further discussions on missile defense and the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Although Mr. Bush failed to convince Mr. Putin to withdraw from the treaty during talks Tuesday at the White House, the president was determined to discuss the issue "in greater length here in Crawford," Mr. Fleischer said.
Yet the White House is downplaying expectations for a breakthrough on the ABM Treaty by the time Mr. Putin leaves Crawford this afternoon.
"Don't look for anything of that nature," Mr. Fleischer said. "This is one stop along the road. There will be many other stops after Crawford."
Those stops might have to be completed by the end of the year, however, because the ABM Treaty prevents the United States from conducting certain tests that would precede deployment of a missile-defense shield.
Republican senators are urging Mr. Bush to fulfill his long-standing pledge to withdraw from the ABM Treaty altogether, although Mr. Putin favors merely amending the agreement in such a way that would allow the tests to proceed.
Yesterday, the White House seemed open to either scenario.
"The president has always been open to the modalities with which it would take place," Mr. Fleischer said. "The president has never ruled out what the best process would be."
While the White House was shying away from talk of a breakthrough on the ABM Treaty, it said history was made Tuesday when the president announced he would unilaterally slash America's nuclear arsenal by two-thirds. "That's a singular change and a breakthrough," Mr. Fleischer said. "No one has done this. President Bush is the first."
-------- space
Bush Names Budget Expert as Administrator of NASA
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By WARREN E. LEARY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/politics/15NASA.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - President Bush nominated Sean O'Keefe, a White House budget expert, today to be the new head of NASA, signaling a desire for tighter management and fiscal control for the space agency.
The appointment of Mr. O'Keefe, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, is subject to the approval of the Senate. But authorities on the space program said Mr. O'Keefe should have little difficulty being confirmed as the new administrator of the space agency.
Mr. O'Keefe, an expert in management and public administration who has been at his White House budget job only since March, is a former secretary of the Navy and a Department of Defense financial official. He has close ties to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Mr. O'Keefe's duties at the Office of Management and Budget include scrutinizing the expenditures of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and examining causes of cost overruns in its International Space Station program.
Testifying last week before the House Science Committee on a recent report critical of NASA's management of the space station program, Mr. O'Keefe said the agency had done a good job of putting the first part of the station into space, but had performed poorly in managing the costs, estimated to be about $4.8 billion over budget.
Mr. O'Keefe said the agency had been well served by the departing administrator, Daniel S. Goldin, but that it needed new leadership and tighter fiscal management.
"The administration recognizes the importance of getting the right leaders in place as soon as possible," he testified, "and I am personally engaged in making sure that happens."
Anne Womack, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. O'Keefe, who was a comptroller of the Department of Defense in the early 1990's when Mr. Cheney was defense secretary, had the solid management background that the president was looking for.
"He is a key adviser to the president, has a strong relationship with the White House staff and his appointment signals the importance the president places on the leadership of NASA into the 21st century," Ms. Womack said.
Mr. Goldin, who has served as NASA administrator for almost 10 years, longer than anyone else in the agency's history, said he wished Mr. O'Keefe well and would assist in the transition. "The president has nominated a man of intelligence, energy and deep integrity," said Mr. Goldin, whose last day is Saturday.
The Bush administration had reportedly offered the space agency job to at least a half dozen people, including a former congressman and an Air Force general, but all declined. Experts following the space program said some of those people did not want to take on the agency in a time of declining budgets and possible program cuts, while others did not want to give up more lucrative jobs for the $145,100-a-year post.
The biggest immediate challenge for a new administrator is the space station program, a joint effort by 16-nations led by NASA to build a giant research outpost in orbit. Estimates of the costs to the United States for the program have grown to about $30 billion from $17.4 billion in 1993.
Mr. O'Keefe said in his testimony last week that the agency's cost estimate for the project was "not credible," and he called for major changes in the management of the space station and NASA's human space flight program.
"While unpleasant in the near-term," he said, "these reforms are the medicine that will restore NASA's health and produce great benefits to the nation in the long run."
Mr. O'Keefe, 45, is a 1977 graduate of Loyola University in New Orleans and holds a master's degree in public administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Dr. Howard E. McCurdy, a professor of public administration at American University, who has studied the agency's management, said Mr. O'Keefe was a good choice even though he did not have "the classical industrial engineer background" of most previous NASA chiefs.
"The White House is sending NASA a full-time manager who, as a former comptroller, will understand the intricacies of budgets and how they are put together," Dr. McCurdy said, "It's a very strong message that the administration wants the space agency to get its costs under control."
Dr. John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said there was logic in the White House's nomination of someone with a stronger management background than a technical one.
-------- sudan
AFRICA
SUDAN: BUSH ENVOY ON PEACE MISSION
World Briefing
New York Times
November 15, 2001
Marc Lacey (NYT)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/international/15BRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday
President Bush's special envoy for Sudan, former Senator John C. Danforth, said in Khartoum that he would spend the next year trying to end the country's 18-year civil war but would pass the task on to someone else if the government and rebel groups failed to compromise soon. Mr. Danforth toured a refugee camp outside the capital and held meetings with Sudanese leaders and church representatives. Pledging not to "choose sides," he heads to the rebel-held south today.
-------- timor
ASIA
EAST TIMOR: MORE SECURITY MEANS FEWER TROOPS
World Briefing
New York Times
November 15, 2001
Seth Mydans (NYT)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/international/15BRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday
The United Nations began a six-month reduction in its peacekeeping force from its current level of 8,000 to 5,000. At a ceremony for the departure of the first group - 264 Kenyan soldiers - the force commander, Lt. Gen. Winai Phattiyakul, said, "This is indicative of the great improvement in the security situation in East Timor." The former Portuguese colony, which was annexed by Indonesia in 1976, was ravaged by pro-Indonesia militias after voting for independence in 1999.
-------- u.n.
'With or against us' war irks many UN nations
Bush's intention to broaden the war beyond Afghanistan fails to galvanize UN.
By Michael J. Jordan
The Christian Science Monitor
November 14, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1114/p7s1-wogi.html
UNITED NATIONS - Until now, supporting the United States in its war against terrorists has been relatively easy for many members of the United Nations. But faultlines deepened in the international coalition this week when President Bush informed the UN General Assembly that he intends to take the antiterror campaign beyond Afghanistan.
In comments before the assembly of more than 1,000 delegates, the president warned that some states, "while pledging to uphold the principles of the UN, have cast their lot with the terrorists," alluding to Iraq. There will be "a price to be paid," Bush said.
That message has some diplomats and UN-watchers wondering how Washington will simultaneously hold together its coalition while broadening its war aims. Meanwhile, a growing number of UN members are signaling a waning appetite for Bush's "with-us-or-against-us" campaign.
To some, the with-us-or-against-us smacks of Stalinism. They say it muzzles domestic critics and squelches dissent from those abroad who fear repercussions from the world's economic and military superpower.
The president's good-versus-evil rhetoric also denies shades of gray, says Richard Falk, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. Such language "implies too much clarity in a world that's much messier than that," he says. "It shows a lack of respect for the sovereignty of other countries and may place them between contradictory pressures."
President Bush's with-us-or-against-us slogan was an effective rallying tool following the Sept. 11 suicide attacks. But the power of those words is fading with every civilian casualty in Afghanistan, and could even be polarizing opposition to the US course.
By contrast, says one analyst, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is making a convincing case. "Blair is not boxing leaders in, but saying, 'This is the moral imperative, this is the task at hand, will you help us?' " says Scott Lasensky, a Mideast expert with the Council on Foreign Relations.
"If you ask whether we condemn the Sept. 11 attack, we're with you," says one South American diplomat. "But is more violence the best answer? The Americans don't leave room for alternative opinions. When will countries speak out: after 1,000, 100,000, or 1 million more are killed?"
Yesterday, UN officials were rushing to put together an interim government in Kabul. And US Secretary of State Colin Powell earlier indicated he thought a UN peacekeeping force in Afghanistan should be led by Muslim states such as Turkey, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.
To encourage the coalition support of all of America's key partners in the campaign - from Russia to China, from the Middle East to Africa - Washington will pay them off in one way or another, says a diplomat from a NATO country.
Each country, he says, expects the US "to offer economic or military assistance, debt relief, or at least that Washington will turn a blind eye to human-rights abuses or political repression."
They would be happy to have Mr. bin Laden out of the picture, the European diplomat says, but "it's not that there's genuine anger against terrorism. They're looking to benefit somehow, to promote their own interests."
Pakistan, for one, was rewarded by Bush this week with a $1 billion aid package and the likelihood that assorted sanctions will be lifted.
Important Arab and Muslim coalition partners also need something to soothe their restive publics: a renewed American push to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and greater "balance" toward the Palestinian side.
So they praised Bush for his vow Saturday to pursue a "just peace" and then for becoming the first US president ever to utter publicly the name "Palestine." However, the Arab world seemed to overlook that Bush also rejected "national aspiration" as justification for "the deliberate murder of the innocent" - an implicit reference to Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis.
A quick test of coalition support came last week when Lebanon refused to freeze the assets of Hizbullah, which is supported by both Syria and Iran. Syria is expected to follow Lebanon's example. Under a new UN Security Council resolution, sanctions of some sort may be in the offing. But would the US pursue a military option as well? Furthermore, will the hawks at the Pentagon prevail and win approval for attacks on Iraq?
European public support for the Afghan war is dwindling, so a move on Iraq may cause coalition defections on the Continent. If nothing else, it would further inflame Arab-Muslim public opinion and perhaps apply enough pressure on the regimes to cause "diminishing returns" in coalition partnership, Lasensky said.
Out of self-preservation, then, they would presumably withdraw, regardless of the with-us-or-against-us ultimatum. "I can see some in the Middle East associating that phrase with American policy writ large," he said. "And there are a lot of US policies they oppose."
And that might spell the end of the coalition itself. If that happens, even countries that steadfastly support the war in Afghanistan say America would have only itself to blame.
While much of the world views America as a mostly benevolent power, diplomats say, there was sufficient anti-American resentment pre-Sept. 11 that it won't take much more than the passage of time for remaining sympathy to dissipate altogether.
Which is why so many diplomats say they hope the events of Sept. 11 will spur Washington to reflect on the sources of terrorism and anti-American enmity - and reassess its policies abroad.
"As long as the great socio-economic disparities are there, the problems will remain," said a diplomat from a developing Asian nation. "If you act as if other countries don't exist, as if other people don't exist, they will find the means to bring attention to themselves."
-------- u.s.
Rapid Changes on the Ground Lead the Pentagon to Focus on Counterguerrilla Tactics
November 15, 2001
By THOM SHANKER and STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/international/asia/15MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - The pell-mell advances of rebel forces in Afghanistan have so outpaced expectations that American commanders are considering a new war plan that would scale back bombing raids and intensify counterguerrilla operations, senior officials said today.
The new plan would include a greater concentration on gathering intelligence and hunting leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in diminishing pockets of resistance, the officials said. It could also make use of coalition troops, either Americans or others, to secure key points wrested from the Taliban, the officials said, though the Pentagon's preference is have those tasks done by local anti- Taliban forces.
The commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, is expected to arrive in Washington on Thursday to brief Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on the details.
The immediate effect of the evolution of the Pentagon's campaign could well be an easing of American strikes in Afghanistan that coincides with the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which it to begin Friday night. "You're going to see a lot more flying, but a lot less dropping" of bombs and missiles, a senior officer said.
Another senior Pentagon official said there would be no declaration of the reduction in the air campaign, and certainly no formal suspension of the attacks, as some leaders in the region had sought in view of the imminence of Ramadan.
American warplanes will still hunt for targets, with the goal of denying the Taliban and Al Qaeda any opportunity to regroup after their retreat from cities they held earlier this week. But the gunners would pull their triggers more selectively. "Success has a way of reducing your target set," one officer said.
The proposal includes several new elements, and is a significant reshaping of the campaign.
General Franks, who has led the troops from his headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, is also drafting plans to deploy allied forces, including Americans, to conduct a broader spectrum of operations, from striking at the Taliban and Al Qaeda in mountain redoubts, to securing routes for food and medical convoys, to seizing airfields.
Pentagon officials said they were receiving more detailed intelligence on the movements of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban's leader, as the swath of territory in which he can safely operate has shrunk.
They added that several strikes had been ordered in recent days on buildings and vehicles thought to contain Taliban leaders or members of Al Qaeda.
An attack was ordered on Kabul Tuesday after the United States received "compelling evidence of Al Qaeda personnel" inside, a Defense Department official said today. Officials presume that all those inside were killed. But the official dismissed reports that Osama bin Laden had been spotted during the recent days of confusion.
As commander of the United States Central Command, overseeing forces from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, General Franks is contemplating the formation of special task forces to deal with missions like aid, counterterrorism and reconnaissance, officials said.
Central Command planners are also deciding how to assign troops from other countries, working through a military office in Qatar.
Even as the rebels advance and the Taliban appear to have collapsed, the Pentagon continues to build up its forces, and senior officials continue to assert that their mission is far from over.
A senior officer said today that Secretary Rumsfeld had ordered three more AC-130 Special Forces gunships, which bring a withering rapid-fire, high-caliber attack to ground forces, for a total of nine - almost half the Air Force's fleet.
General Franks is also reviewing growing offers of troops from other nations, Pentagon officials said. He is working on new arrangements for providing relief on a grand scale, including the use of NATO airlifts and the need to put troops at airports to protect the planes as supplies are flown in. Officials said Turkey is willing to play a role similar to Australia's in East Timor - leading an international force to secure Kabul - but has not been asked yet.
The Pentagon's first choice for securing relief routes is the Northern Alliance itself; the second choice is coalition members, especially from Islamic states. American troops are a final option, the officials said. Finally, General Franks is reviewing plans for concentrating his forces, in the air and on the ground, in the narrowing sections of the country where the conflict is still hot and where Mr. bin Laden and the top Taliban leaders are thought to be hiding.
"This has moved so fast, we have to step back and review where we go next," one Defense Department official said. Another senior Pentagon official said, "Given the developments, it's time to take stock."
The narrowing of Taliban operations presents opportunities and difficulties.
The United States can now focus both its surveillance and its direct action on smaller portions of Afghanistan.
At the same time, the job of identifying Taliban and Al Qaeda targets, as separate from Northern Alliance troops, soldiers loyal to a southern Pashtun tribes and even Afghan civilians, has become increasingly difficult, given the turmoil in the region. In the south, dispersing Taliban fighters are moving in small units and are mixed up with emerging resistance forces.
Once again, fighter jets operating from two American carriers in the Arabian Sea were reported to be returning with most of their bombs still fixed beneath their wings. Pentagon officials also said that as the Taliban's fortunes appear to wane rapidly, offers of rewards for information might be more likely to be accepted. Officially, the Pentagon cautioned against an early declaration of success, saying it could be days before it is clear whether the Taliban and Al Qaeda are on the run or simply in tactical retreat to more defensible positions.
At a Pentagon briefing today, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States is prepared, if conditions dictate, to shift to a counterguerrilla strategy. In this, he suggested, the anti-Taliban forces might well take part.
"We should also presume that Northern Alliance opposition groups, or for that matter all opposition groups, are familiar with this kind of guerrilla warfare," he said, "especially since it happens in a country that they are experienced in."
---
Special Forces Hunt Al Qaeda on the Ground
November 15, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/international/asia/15SOUT.html
More than 100 American commandos are in southern Afghanistan, driving around in special vehicles and carrying out covert operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders, senior American officials said today.
They have blocked roads to try to trap Taliban and Al Qaeda commanders. They have marked potential landing strips for American forces and conducted reconnaissance missions. And they have searched for traces of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leaders.
The aim of the operations is also to step up the pressure on the Taliban by demonstrating that the American military can operate on the adversary's turf.
But Mr. bin Laden has proved elusive and American commandos have not been close to capturing him.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in an interview with The New York Times that Mr. bin Laden might even have access to a helicopter and might try to sneak out of Afghanistan to rendezvous with a waiting jet in a nearby country. "My guess is what he'd probably do is take a helicopter down one of those valleys that we couldn't pick up and pop over to some part of the country where there is an airfield and have a plane waiting for him," he said.
As the American military campaign shifts to the south, the operation has entered a far more complex phase. Mr. Rumsfeld sent a double-barreled message today.
He indicated that the American military would keep up the pressure during Ramadan by continuing airstrikes. At the same time, he counseled patience for a strategy that depends on proxy forces, air power and commandos but not substantial numbers of American ground troops.
His remarks came as the emphasis of the American-led military campaign was changing from the bombing of Taliban troops to the hunt for enemy leaders.
In the north, Washington had an ally on the ground to work with: the Northern Alliance. The objective was to take the fight to Taliban troops and seize territory. United States Special Operations forces were used to call in airstrikes and organize arms shipments to the alliance.
But the war in the south is far less predictable. American Special Forces and British Special Air Service commandos are mounting covert operations in an increasingly chaotic setting in which the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces have splintered, with some crossing the border into Pakistan, some heading into the mountains and others making an effort to defend Kandahar, the Taliban's political base.
"I suspect you'll find people just fading into the countryside within Afghanistan," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "There's no question that the people will be moving out. They've been doing this for centuries."
In recent weeks, some critics have said that the Bush administration has been fighting with one hand behind its back by refraining from sending in substantial numbers of American ground troops. That, they assert, has minimized the risk of American casualties while increasing the chances that Mr. bin Laden might escape.
In his interview, Mr. Rumsfeld seemed to be at pains to rebut this argument by pointing to the role of United States Special Operations forces in the south.
"I guess the answer is that from Day One there has been no road map for this," he said."This has not been done before."
Mr. Rumsfeld indicated today that one of the missions was setting up checkpoints along roads in the south in the hope of catching Taliban and Al Qaeda commanders. He did not say if any had been killed but indicated later that none had been captured.
"They are letting the population know that everyone best be careful what they do, where they go, how they behave, and that there's a presence in the south that had not been there previously," Mr. Rumsfeld added.
American officials said the missions in the south began after the Oct. 19 operation in which United States Army Rangers and Delta Force commanders raided a compound used by Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, and briefly seized an airfield southwest of Kandahar. Pentagon officials said later that the intelligence seized in the raid was of little value.
But the fact that covert commando missions had continued after then and the extent of the operations had not been known.
From the start, President Bush has indicated that the United States wants Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive," and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain has been explicit in saying that bringing the Al Qaeda leadership to justice is one of the main purposes of the military campaign.
But the Pentagon is concerned that its operation may be judged a failure if Mr. bin Laden slips through its grasp. American intelligence officials have said that Mr. bin Laden is in Taliban-controlled territory in the south and that they have not detected any efforts by him to flee the country.
Mr. Rumsfeld said today, however, that it might be possible for Mr. bin Laden to flee Afghanistan.
"He's got the wherewithal to do pretty much what he wants, at least to try to," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Mr. Rumsfeld said that three- quarters of the Taliban's fleet of helicopters has been destroyed. But he said some may have been hidden and available to Mr. bin Laden. Detecting helicopters after they are aloft, he said, could be difficult if they hugged the ground and operated in bad weather.
"I've heard reports that helicopters have been observed in and around the Pakistani border in weeks past that we were not able to detect," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Still, he voiced hope that Afghans would help the United States find Mr. bin Laden and his men, motivated in part by the huge reward the administration is offering.
"We're actively trying to make it hard for him to do anything," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "And we spend a lot of time looking for the leadership cells of Al Qaeda and Taliban, and when we find them we try to destroy them."'
-------
Deployment of National Guard at Capitol to begin
11/15/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/15/national-guard-capitol.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The first deployment of National Guard troops outside the Capitol in 33 years was to begin Friday, part of an effort to relieve police who have been working long shifts since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Capitol Police spokesman Lt. Dan Nichols said about 10 troops would initially take posts on streets around the perimeter of the Capitol complex, helping to direct traffic and inspect trucks. Eventually, about 100 will be working, divided among three shifts around the clock.
Guard troops were originally to begin protecting the Capitol Thursday evening. But a last-minute problem arose when District of Columbia officials pulled back from an earlier plan to deputize the troops so they could arrest people violating local laws, according to Nichols.
But capping a back-and-forth evening, Nichols said minutes later that district officials decided to deputize the troops for a 10-day period, during which the two sides would try to resolve the issue.
Nichols had said city officials had "some liability issues" about deputizing the Guard, but he provided no detail.
Nichols said the problem arose despite agreement to proceed with the Army, Defense Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft, District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams and House and Senate leaders.
District police officials did not return calls seeking comment.
The Guard's presence would mark the first time troops have protected the Capitol since the city's riots of 1968. They have also guarded the building during World War II, 1932 riots by World War I veterans, the Civil War and the War of 1812, Nichols said.
"We feel it will be in the best interests of the U.S. Capitol Police and the security of the U.S. Capitol to give our officers some much-needed rest," Nichols said.
The soldiers, from the District of Columbia National Guard, will be experienced military police, said Guard Capt. Sheldon Smith. They will wear fatigue uniforms and carry 9 mm handguns.
The troops will work at the Capitol for up to 90 days, Nichols said. During that time, police officers will probably continue working 12-hour days but will be more likely to get two-day weekends.
After that period, the police might return to their current schedules, Nichols said, unless more officers are hired or other changes are made.
Congressional leaders have been reluctant to post troops in or near the Capitol and its office buildings. They have worried that it would create a perception that the government is under assault, and could produce some uncomfortable situations when soldiers not used to handling constituents and tourists confront such visitors.
But the Capitol Police's 1,295 officers have been working six-day weeks for more than two months. All their leave has been canceled, and plans to give them training in anti-terrorism tactics have been postponed indefinitely.
Meanwhile, crews have begun working at night to disinfect four lawmakers' offices in the Longworth House office building where traces of anthrax were discovered, Nichols said.
The workers are using a liquid solution of chlorine dioxide, which kills bacteria, and a special vacuum cleaner designed to remove tiny particles. Paper in those offices will be treated with chlorine dioxide gas.
Nichols said he did not know when those offices will reopen. Other offices in the Longworth building have already reopened.
Still closed is the Hart Senate office building, where an anthrax-laden letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., was opened Oct. 15.
Daschle's office and the adjacent suite of Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., are expected to be sealed off and treated with chlorine dioxide gas. Other places in the building where traces of anthrax were found, including in 10 other senators' offices, will also have to be cleaned.
---
FAA: Navy jet crashes on Olympic Peninsula
USA Today
11/15/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/11/15/navy-jet-crash.htm
FORKS, Wash. (AP) - A Navy jet from the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station crashed Thursday near Forks on the Olympic Peninsula, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
There was no immediate word on the fate of the crew. Coast Guard Petty Officer Robert Linier said three people were reported on board.
FAA spokesman Alan Kinetzer said the plane, an EA6-B Prowler electronic warfare jet, went down shortly before 2 p.m. PT.
The jet, an electronic jamming plane used aboard all U.S. aircraft carriers, is a version of the A6 attack bomber.
---
Seizing Dictatorial Power
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/opinion/15SAFI.html
WASHINGTON -- Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens. Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice, we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts.
In his infamous emergency order, Bush admits to dismissing "the principles of law and the rules of evidence" that undergird America's system of justice. He seizes the power to circumvent the courts and set up his own drumhead tribunals - panels of officers who will sit in judgment of non-citizens who the president need only claim "reason to believe" are members of terrorist organizations.
Not content with his previous decision to permit police to eavesdrop on a suspect's conversations with an attorney, Bush now strips the alien accused of even the limited rights afforded by a court-martial.
His kangaroo court can conceal evidence by citing national security, make up its own rules, find a defendant guilty even if a third of the officers disagree, and execute the alien with no review by any civilian court.
No longer does the judicial branch and an independent jury stand between the government and the accused. In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination "a full and fair trial."
On what legal meat does this our Caesar feed? One precedent the White House cites is a military court after Lincoln's assassination. (During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus; does our war on terror require illegal imprisonment next?) Another is a military court's hanging, approved by the Supreme Court, of German saboteurs landed by submarine in World War II.
Proponents of Bush's kangaroo court say: Don't you soft-on-terror, due-process types know there's a war on? Have you forgotten our 5,000 civilian dead? In an emergency like this, aren't extraordinary security measures needed to save citizens' lives? If we step on a few toes, we can apologize to the civil libertarians later.
Those are the arguments of the phony-tough. At a time when even liberals are debating the ethics of torture of suspects - weighing the distaste for barbarism against the need to save innocent lives - it's time for conservative iconoclasts and card-carrying hard-liners to stand up for American values.
To meet a terrorist emergency, of course some rules should be stretched and new laws passed. An ethnic dragnet rounding up visa-skippers or questioning foreign students, if short-term, is borderline tolerable. Congress's new law permitting warranted roving wiretaps is understandable.
But let's get to the target that this blunderbuss order is intended to hit. Here's the big worry in Washington now: What do we do if Osama bin Laden gives himself up? A proper trial like that Israel afforded Adolf Eichmann, it is feared, would give the terrorist a global propaganda platform. Worse, it would be likely to result in widespread hostage-taking by his followers to protect him from the punishment he deserves.
The solution is not to corrupt our judicial tradition by making bin Laden the star of a new Star Chamber. The solution is to turn his cave into his crypt. When fleeing Taliban reveal his whereabouts, our bombers should promptly bid him farewell with 15,000-pound daisy-cutters and 5,000-pound rock-penetrators.
But what if he broadcasts his intent to surrender, and walks toward us under a white flag? It is not in our tradition to shoot prisoners. Rather, President Bush should now set forth a policy of "universal surrender": all of Al Qaeda or none. Selective surrender of one or a dozen leaders - which would leave cells in Afghanistan and elsewhere free to fight on - is unacceptable. We should continue our bombardment of bin Laden's hideouts until he agrees to identify and surrender his entire terrorist force.
If he does, our criminal courts can handle them expeditiously. If, as more likely, the primary terrorist prefers what he thinks of as martyrdom, that suicidal choice would be his - and Americans would have no need of kangaroo courts to betray our principles of justice.
--------
Cheating History
New York Times
November 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/opinion/15THU4.html
The records a president amasses during his tenure do not become his personal property when he leaves office. As the Presidential Records Act of 1978 makes clear, this treasure trove of historical material belongs to the American people. Unfortunately, neither that law, nor the public's right to be informed about the workings of its government, dissuaded President Bush from signing an executive order earlier this month creating new barriers to obtaining a former president's papers.
At immediate issue are 68,000 pages of records from the Reagan years. The records were eligible to be made public last January. The White House has repeatedly postponed their release on the grounds that it needed time to develop new procedures for handling requests because Mr. Reagan is the first former president whose papers are subject to the 1978 act. Now comes Mr. Bush's executive order, which raises the threat of a new era of needless secrecy regarding presidential papers.
The Presidential Records Act, enacted in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals, was designed to make sure that the papers and tapes of future presidents could not be permanently sequestered from public view. While the act grants access to some papers five years after a president leaves office, former presidents may withhold sensitive records, including those revealing advice given them by aides, for up to 12 years. Mr. Bush's rules establish a more cumbersome process. When a request is made, both the sitting president and the president whose papers have been requested can review the documents before they are released - with no time limit on that review. If either objects to releasing the records, the person requesting the documents must then bring a court action.
Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel who drafted the five-page executive order, says it "simply implemented an orderly process" to deal with requests for records of former presidents once the 12-year period has passed. That is disingenuous. The Bush order essentially ditches the law's presumption of public access in favor of a process that grants either an incumbent president or a former president the right to withhold the former president's papers from the public. Nor is this, as some in the White House have suggested, a matter of protecting national security. Classified presidential documents are already exempt from public disclosure.
Critics have suggested that Mr. Bush is mainly interested in withholding documents that might be embarrassing not only to his father, George Bush, who was Mr. Reagan's vice president, but also to other administration officials who also served Mr. Reagan. Motives aside, historians as well as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed concern that the inevitable result of the order will be to deprive scholars and even members of Congress of material that poses no threat to national security but could do much to help Americans make sense of their nation's past and to hold government accountable for its actions. Since Mr. Bush is unlikely to rescind his own order, Congress must pass a law doing so.
-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Nebraska
States
01/11/15
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Curtis - The Eustis Chamber of Commerce challenged the Medicine Creek Chamber of Commerce to see who could sell the most ethanol gasoline by the end of the year. The idea was to boost sales of the agricultural product. Eustis, Maywood and Curtis reported increases of 3% to 15% since the contest began Sept. 1. The loser serves the annual chamber banquet for the winner next year.
-------- energy
Oil Prices in Flux as OPEC Decides Against Cut in Output
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By NEELA BANERJEE with SABRINA TAVERNISE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/business/15OIL.html
VIENNA, Nov. 14 - Creating the prospect of a devastating price war, OPEC said today that it would not cut production further unless major producers outside the group also decreased their output sizably by Jan. 1.
OPEC had been widely expected to announce a reduction in output to bolster sagging oil prices. But at a meeting here today, officials said the group would be willing to pare daily production by 1.5 million barrels by the beginning of next year only if non-OPEC nations, including Norway, Mexico and Russia, also trimmed output by a total of 500,000 barrels a day. For the time being, that seems unlikely.
The cartel, formally the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has had to make a difficult choice between shoring up oil prices and protecting its share of global markets. Until today, it had opted to support prices, reducing production three times this year by a total of 3.5 million barrels a day. But after Sept. 11, prices fell sharply, as the global economy weakened and demand for oil evaporated. Meantime, non-OPEC exporters continued to increase production. The increased output from competitors and OPEC's decreases in production led to a steady erosion of the group's market share, a situation that OPEC indicated it would no longer tolerate.
Officials at OPEC are gambling that the excess oil on the market will lead to lower prices and cause the revenues of non- OPEC countries to fall to unacceptable levels. The competitors might then agree to the group's demands. The risk, of course, is that outside producers, especially Russia, will remain unbowed and that the economies of OPEC countries will suffer worse damage in a price war.
"We are not trying to put anyone on their knees," Chekib Khelil, the president of OPEC, said in an interview. "We just want other producers to be responsible. We should all be sharing the benefits, but the same ones of us keep sharing the pain."
The price of oil fell precipitously on the news of OPEC's new, hardball stance. Crude oil for December delivery closed at $19.74 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a decrease of 9 percent from the previous day's price of $21.67.
"The market is interpreting this as a de facto price war, if not an announced one," said John Kilduff, a senior energy analyst with Fimat, the commodities trading arm of Société Générale. "OPEC has effectively ceded control of the oil market to non-OPEC. There's almost total disarray in the market, as people wait to see who comes around and with how much."
Few are willing to guess how far oil prices will fall. Mr. Kilduff and several others said some outside producers would probably go along with OPEC if the price stayed below $18 a barrel for a significant time. But most experts said prices could slide much lower, as long as OPEC stuck to its plan.
In fact, OPEC may be pegging its fate on too high a price. The cartel has said repeatedly that it considers $25 a barrel a fair price, but most experts say that level is not sustainable over the long run and certainly not when the global economy is so weak. OPEC has been unwilling, at least publicly, to set more modest targets, largely because the budgets of OPEC members rely almost exclusively on high oil prices.
"There is no real diversification in the economies of those countries," said Mehdi Varzi, an independent consultant and head of the London- based Varzi Energy. "As long as that doesn't change, OPEC will be a hostage to fortune."
Non-OPEC nations have cooperated with the cartel before. Mexico, for example, brokered an agreement between OPEC and several outside countries to scale back production sharply in 1998 and 1999, after prices plummeted to less than $10 a barrel in the wake of the Asian economic crisis. But the price of oil today is double what it was in 1998. Moreover, OPEC's own members have been producing more than their official quotas, also taking advantage of oil sold for $21 a barrel.
Yet in the last few weeks, OPEC has grown increasingly adamant about the need for outside cooperation. Oman, a small producer, has agreed to help. It remains unclear what Mexico will do, though OPEC officials said, without elaborating, that it planned to cooperate. Norway rebuffed OPEC. And Russia, the second-largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia, offered to cut production by a mere 30,000 barrels a day.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in an interview with American journalists on Saturday, indicated that his country would not offer further cuts. Moreover, Russia's oil companies have been privatized, unlike those of other outside producers, making it difficult for the government to control production.
Privately, Russian companies said they would not agree to deeper cuts. They are producing at the quickest rate since the fall of the Soviet Union, after a currency devaluation and three years of high oil prices brought them more cash for modernization. Most of Russia's biggest companies have set production increases for next year.
"The oil industry will not comply if the government proposes new cuts," said one Russian oil company representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "If they make any public moves to impose any new reduction, there will be a concerted effort by the industry to prevent that from happening."
-------- imf / world bank
A Trade Deal in Doha
New York Times
November 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/opinion/15THU1.html
The 144 nations of the World Trade Organization defied expectations and their own protectionist instincts yesterday by approving an agenda that over the next three years could produce an invaluable array of market-opening reforms. The road map endorsed at a meeting in Doha, Qatar, points the way to freer trade in goods and services while promising to protect the interests of poor countries. Though late objections by France and India threatened to scuttle the talks, and perhaps the W.T.O. as well, the meeting ended with an exhausted but deserved sense of success.
Delegates came to Doha last week acutely aware of the compromises needed to launch a new round of trade liberalization. Similar talks in Seattle two years ago collapsed in acrimony, throwing the future of free trade into doubt. In the end, everyone in Doha gave something, and everyone - especially developing countries - got something. Up to $700 billion in tariffs and trade-distorting subsidies may eventually disappear, possibly generating $2.8 trillion in global economic activity by 2015.
In an important concession, the United States and Switzerland agreed to permit greater access to generic versions of patent-protected drugs for poor countries facing epidemics. Despite opposition from the House, the American delegation also agreed that the coming trade negotiations would cover protectionist measures that shield struggling American industries like steel manufacturing from foreign imports. The European Union agreed to consider ending subsidies that artificially enhance its farmers' competitiveness in world markets. Developing countries, for their part, promised to open markets for services like banking and insurance. They pledged to participate in future talks on promoting competition domestically and linking environmental concerns to trading rules.
The meeting was also notable because China and Taiwan joined the W.T.O. after 15 years of negotiations. There were no mass protests like those in Seattle, and more recently in Genoa, because Qatar tightly limited the number of visitors.
The talks were a victory for Robert Zoellick, the chief of American trade policy, whose diplomacy contributed to a last-minute compromise between the European Union and developing countries. Mr. Zoellick again showed the value of his strong relationship with Pascal Lamy, the European Union's trade commissioner.
The two men, both committed free-traders, will have three years to goad their colleagues into transforming the Doha agenda into actual reforms. Speed matters, since regional trading blocs in the Americas, Africa and Asia could expand rapidly over the next several years. By completing a pact soon, the W.T.O. can confirm its role as the world's main forum for trade liberalization.
------
U.S. Industries Largely Favor Decision on Global Trade
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/business/worldbusiness/15TRAD.html
With some notable caveats, many American companies yesterday endorsed the World Trade Organization's new rules for negotiating a trade agreement, arguing that the potential for increased exports outweighs the damage a few industries might suffer.
"We view the new round of negotiations authorized at the W.T.O. meeting as a hunting license for bringing down tariffs," said Franklin J. Vargo, an international trade expert with the National Association of Manufacturers.
The agreement reached yesterday by more than 140 trade ministers gathered in Doha, Qatar, sets the rules for a new round of tariff-lowering trade negotiations.
There were dangers for some industries. Pharmaceutical companies objected to provisions that might weaken patent protection for drugs. Steel producers saw a risk that America's antidumping laws could be diluted. The textile industry worried that too much ground might have been given to foreign competitors.
Tariffs worldwide average 12 percent, down from 15 percent as a result of the Uruguay trade agreement in 1994. And now there is the promise of fresh tariff reductions.
"We will seek free trade in everything from digital cameras to black-and-white film," the Eastman Kodak Company said, "with the aim of cutting our tariff costs of nearly $200 million a year."
Agreement on Medicines
The agreement on medicines brokered in Qatar makes it clear that poor countries can make generic versions of expensive brand name drugs for the treatment of AIDS and other serious epidemics - a situation that the big drug companies have long sought to avoid.
Some analysts and activists say that the new trade declaration could apply to almost any medicine that a country needs, including those that treat diseases like asthma, diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
But yesterday, the drug companies played down the significance of the declaration, which is intended to clarify an existing global agreement on patents. Gwen Fisher, a spokeswoman for Merck, said, "This does not change the way we sell our medicines."
Alan F. Holmer, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the brand name industry's Washington trade group, said: "We do not believe that our intellectual property rights are in any way diminished. We're satisfied with the language." He said he believed that the agreement applied only to highly contagious and devastating diseases and not to chronic illnesses.
Earlier, however, on Monday, Mr. Holmer had sent a letter to Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, warning that any compromise should not weaken the drug industry's patent rights.
James Love, the director of the Consumer Project on Technology, an organization that works to improve access to medicines, argued that the new declaration could be used to help lower the price of drugs and other health care products in all countries.
"This goes beyond AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis," Mr. Love said. "Any health care item could be included. We want to use this in the United States, in Germany and in Switzerland."
Even before the declaration, poor countries had the right to make copycat versions of a brand name medicine in the event of a health emergency by issuing what is called a compulsory license. But no country has done so, in part because of fears about trade sanctions. Yesterday's declaration makes it clear that each country has a right to grant compulsory licenses and to determine what constitutes a health emergency.
Richard T. Evans, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said that the declaration would help to legitimize the business of making copycat versions of brand name drugs in many developing countries, and some companies will probably never be able to make money in those countries. "We can write off the developing countries," he said, "as a long-term source of profits." MELODY PETERSEN
Antidumping Rules
American business expects the World Trade Organization's pronouncements on antidumping rules to ease the restrictions on steel imports - a prospect pleasing to companies like Caterpillar, a steel user, and not very pleasing to domestic steel producers like the Sandmeyer Steel Company of Philadelphia.
"Antidumping laws are becoming the trade protection law of choice around the world," said William Lane, Caterpillar's director in Washington for governmental affairs. "We are opposed to the efforts to restrict the flow of fairly traded steel."
Under American law, endorsed by the W.T.O.'s present rules, dumping occurs when a foreign company sells a product here for less than the cost of producing it, and American companies are injured as a result. Hundreds of antidumping cases are filed in the United States annually, and roughly half involve steel shipped from Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Russia and Ukraine.
The W.T.O.'s declaration said that current antidumping provisions "would benefit from clarification." The ministers instructed a committee to make recommendations.
For Willard A. Workman, senior vice president for international affairs at the United States Chamber of Commerce, "clarification" means changing the rules to ease the restrictions on imports. While furniture makers and steel users are pleased, steel makers are upset, and so are lumber companies, which have filed an antidumping action against Canada.
Ronald P. Sandmeyer Jr., chief executive of Sandmeyer Steel, said: "If you look at some Southeast Asian countries and certain European countries, they can consume nowhere near what they produce. So where do they try to sell their excess production? The United States, of course." LOUIS UCHITELLE
Agricultural Trade
American agriculture officials said they were pleased with the outcome of W.T.O. meetings because it meant members of the group were prepared to move toward reductions of tariffs and other barriers to agricultural trade.
The United States, the largest exporter of agricultural goods, has long been frustrated by high tariffs and other trade barriers in Europe, the Pacific Rim and elsewhere. While American farmers are highly subsidized for production at home, they get less export assistance than farmers in many other countries and the United States does not impose high duties on agricultural imports. "This will give American farmers greater access to world markets," said Tim Hume, head of the National Corn Growers Association. "It's important because agriculture products face an average of 60 percent tariffs abroad."
The talks in Qatar do not signal a clear victory for United States agriculture because they are only the beginning of a process. They do, however, indicate that member countries would like to move toward a more liberal and open marketplace for food. Some companies are likely to be particularly big beneficiaries of trade liberalization in agriculture: Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, the grain exporters, and Tyson Foods and Smithfield Foods, meat producers and processors. And farmers could see some higher prices. DAVID BARBOZA
Textile Regulations
As a low-cost, labor-intensive process, textile manufacturing is one of the few industries in which developing countries are equipped to excel. Their regular aim is to reduce steep tariffs and quotas imposed by the United States on their goods, but their ambitions are often frustrated by the American textile lobby.
In this round of trade talks, developing nations wanted the United States to use a less restrictive method of calculating growth rates for quotas on imports until 2005, and they wanted to make this method apply retroactively to 2000. The United States declined to adopt the measure, but agreed to consider it again before July 2002. "It is a disappointment that there was not a more powerful commitment to eliminate protection in the textile and apparel industry and look out for the interest of consumers," said Julia K. Hughes, vice president for international trade for the United States Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel.
-------- police / prisoners
FBI not sharing info, Florida says
USA Today
11/15/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/15/fla-fbi.htm
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - In the state where terrorists lived and plotted the attacks in New York and Washington, the top law enforcement officer is complaining that the FBI is not sharing information needed to fight terrorism. Florida is spending millions of dollars to train officers, set up a terrorist data base and create regional terrorism task forces as a response to the Sept. 11 attacks, but without the FBI's help some of the state's efforts will be weakened, Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Tim Moore said.
"We have received limited information and few requests for assistance since the initial terrorism leads were developed," Moore said in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller III and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge.
"Unless appropriate federal information can be shared with us, the database capacity we are currently developing will never meet its full potential, and the capacity of our 40,000 law enforcement officers will not be used to the fullest," Moore said in the letter sent last week.
At least 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the terrorist attacks had Florida ties, many of them taking flight classes. Florida is also where the first case of anthrax was detected last month.
Mohamed Atta, considered to be the mastermind of the hijackings and believed to be at the controls of one of the planes that toppled the World Trade Center, was stopped twice for traffic violations in South Florida and caught the attention of the Federal Aviation Authority when he abandoned a stalled plane at Miami International Airport.
Florida is spending about $17 million to increase security following the attacks and created a new position, chief of domestic security.
"In order for this to be effective and to work to reach its full capabilities, we need everyone to be on board," FDLE spokeswoman Jennifer McCord said Thursday. "Information sharing is vital to the success of this issue ... We want it to be a two-way communication."
State Rep. Dan Gelber, vice chairman of the state House Select Committee on Security, applauded Moore for pushing the issue.
"The FBI has often been a one-way street to local and state agencies, who give information in, but they don't get any information back," said Gelber, D-Miami Beach.
"There's a great deal of frustration among state and local police because they don't see the network working because one of the critical players isn't playing," he said. "Our database in theory will work, but until the FBI and other agencies escape that notion we're going to be very limited in what we can do."
FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela in Miami said the special agent in charge of the office, Hector Pesquera, plans to speak to Moore about the letter, but did not want to comment until doing so.
"We choose to look forward rather than backward," she said.
Moore is not the first to complain about the FBI's lack of sharing.
New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told a U.S. House terrorism subcommittee that Congress should pass a law requiring the FBI and other federal authorities to share their intelligence with local police and government officials, especially in a crisis.
Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both D-N.Y., are proposing a bill to remove legal barriers preventing the FBI from cooperating with other law enforcement agencies. It also admonishes the FBI to cooperate fully with local law enforcement.
FBI Director Robert Mueller last month urged greater cooperation with local law enforcement agencies following complaints by police chiefs that the bureau wasn't sharing information. After a meeting with police chiefs in Washington, Mueller said the fight against terrorism must be "a joint effort."
"State and local law enforcement are playing a critical role collecting information, running down leads and providing the kind of expertise critical to an effort of this magnitude," said Mueller. "Information sharing between us all is as important now as it ever has been."
------
War is Hell (On Your Civil Liberties)
The President issues a decree allowing suspected terrorists to be tried and sentenced in secret military trials. Is this the way to run a democracy?
BY JESSICA REAVES
Thursday, Nov. 15, 2001
Time
http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,184706,00.html
This is wartime, the President reminds us. The usual rules do not apply. Fair enough. But what worries some people, ranging from Bush's persistent critics at the ACLU to conservative New York Times columnist William Safire to uber-conservative U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, is this administration's propensity for overstepping centuries-old legislative procedures in the name of national security.
In the days immediately after September 11th, for example, Ashcroft issued a decree permitting federal officers to wiretap pretty much anyone for almost any reason, and to detain people for extended periods of time without filing charges. This Tuesday, the Bush administration went to a whole new level when the President signed an emergency order allowing non-citizens suspected of terrorism to be tried in military tribunals.
The decree, urged on the President by Attorney General John Ashcroft, allows the government to circumvent the legal requirements of a civilian trial (i.e. all that "innocent until proven guilty" stuff) in favor of brisk, clandestine proceedings behind closed doors. No jury, no public hearing. Just swift "justice."
There is a precedent for such an order (http://www.time.com/time/columnist/novak/article/0,9565,184594,00.html): In 1942, eight Nazi saboteurs sneaked onto U.S. soil armed with explosives to be directed against military and civilian installations. Their plan was thwarted, and all were tried and convicted in a secret military trial ordered by President Roosevelt. Of the eight, six were electrocuted.
Upsetting liberals and libertarians
This week's order not only prompted a visceral "this doesn't seem right" reaction from a variety of public figures, it also brought many constitutional law experts up short. Is this military tribunal order actually legal? Shouldn't we just be planning to kill bin Laden on sight? What does the President's order mean for the 1,100 people detained or arrested since September 11th?
So is this really something we want to be doing?
Christopher Pyle, professor of politics and constitutional law at Mount Holyoke College, is not convinced the President is acting within the rights of his office. "Where does the President get the right to do this? He claims the right to do this as President, as commander in chief, pursuant to the resolution passed in Congress after the September 11th attacks and pursuant to several statutes in U.S. code. But there's nothing in either the congressional resolution or federal law that allows the President to override the legislative process."
The worst-case scenario
How might this order affect legal aliens living in the U.S.? Professor Pyle offers a grim example. Let's say there's a Pakistani man who's living here legally, he says. He owns a chain of motels, and one day, all of a sudden, he's arrested. When he asks why, officials tell him it's because he "harbored" a suspected terrorist, a man who once stayed in the motel for a while and took the owner out for a beer. Instead of being held at the local police station, the Pakistani man is taken to a military jail, perhaps in a boat off the U.S. coast, where he can't easily access counsel and can't see his family. He's tried in the military court, and if two-thirds of the officers find him guilty, he's sentenced - possibly to death.
The standards of guilt, explains Pyle, are far different in a military tribunal than they are in a civilian court or even in a traditional military trial. "They don't need to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, or even a preponderance of evidence pointing to guilt," he says. "The court just needs to convince the majority of the military officers present - all of whom see themselves as being 'at war' with this prisoner - that the Pakistani man had something to do with a terrorist act."
Some legal experts question the necessity of creating a whole new court system. "It's not clear to me why we're doing this now," says Professor Jonathan Entin, who teaches constitutional law at Case Western Reserve University. "We tried the people who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 in civilian court. Since we figured out a way to handle that trial, I guess my question is why this administration now sees civilian courts as inadequate."
The White House defends its position
Responding to widespread criticism, the White House has remained resolute. The order exists, the White House asserts, only to provide a legal framework for trying Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda associates. A brief, secret trial, the theory goes, means the defendants have no chance to use the international legal stage to broadcast their philosophies; and excluding a jury from the trial means no one will have to fear retribution for handing down a guilty verdict.
Professor Entin also questions the message sent by the President's decision. "My concern about this order, not having reviewed every detail, is that it kind of undercuts the efforts we've been making as a nation to distinguish ourselves from regimes like the Taliban," he says. "It sort of suggests that when the going gets tough, we don't really believe in our ideals either."
For his part, Christopher Pyle wonders if the President's order would survive a legal challenge, but doubts we'll ever find out. "This will probably stand unless Congress or the courts strike it down. And as we all know, the courts and Congress are not exactly thrilled to override the President during moments of heightened national security."
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Military tribunals: Swift judgments in dire times
USA Today
11/15/2001
By Joan Biskupic and Richard Willing, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/acovthu.htm
WASHINGTON - President Bush's order allowing military tribunals to try accused terrorists sets the stage for something not seen since World War II: an emergency legal system designed to bring swift judgment, using rules that make convictions easier but deeply worry civil libertarians.
With the Taliban on the run in Afghanistan and investigators here continuing to seek possible associates of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Bush's order is a signal that the next battlefield in the war on terrorism will be the courtroom.
The Bush administration defended its extraordinary order Wednesday, saying that the shadowy nature of al-Qa'eda terrorists, who dress as civilians and attack a nation from within, demands a special system of justice that recognizes the needs of national security and the unusual threats that terrorists pose. Unlike federal courts, military tribunals allow evidence from wiretaps and other secret sources, secret testimony from informants and hearsay evidence.
The foreign terrorists who could be subjected to such tribunals "don't deserve to be treated as prisoners of war," Vice President Cheney said. "They don't deserve the same guarantees and safeguards we use for an American citizen."
It was unclear Wednesday when, or even if, the Bush administration plans to empanel a military court, or specifically whom it might try. Military panels could be created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to try suspected terrorists wherever they are captured, whether in Afghanistan, the United States or elsewhere.
They also could be used to try suspects already in custody, including at least two Muslim extremists who authorities say had contact with the 19 hijackers in the months leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Any tribunal could face a legal challenge from defendants demanding a jury trial in a public court. But legal precedent is on Bush's side.
White House counsel Alberto Gonzales says that Bush's decision to permit the panels was driven by two considerations:
- The need to conduct trials where terrorists are captured, especially when returning them to the United States could pose security risks.
- The need for special trial rules to allow confidential information gathered by U.S. intelligence to be used against terrorists without having the information revealed in open court.
Because they permit secret testimony, military tribunals or commissions, as they also are called, allow prosecutors to withhold sensitive information that they would be required to disclose during an ordinary criminal trial.
Muslim extremists charged with trying to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 were tried in federal criminal court. Trial records included structural details of the twin towers, which prosecutors say may have been used by the Sept. 11 hijackers to determine the type of jet needed to knock down the twin towers.
"The best evidence against a person might be classified, and to get a conviction we might need to disclose it," Gonzales says.
Military tribunals are rarely used but are deeply rooted in U.S. history. They have withstood federal court challenges in the 19th and 20th centuries, and were approved unanimously by the Supreme Court when they last were used during World War II.
Besides protecting U.S. intelligence networks, the military tribunals' advantages include speed. Six German saboteurs who sneaked into the USA during World War II were caught, tried and executed, with time out for a Supreme Court appeal, during a 7-week period in 1942.
Another advantage, as Cheney indicated, is that trying terrorists in military court sends a clear signal that they are international outlaws, not entitled to even the rudimentary rights afforded ordinary prisoners of war. "This is the answer for what we're dealing with: unlawful belligerents who do not come within our constitutional structure," says Catholic University law dean Douglas Kmiec, who supports the use of military tribunals. "The president's order is not extraordinary when one places it in the context of historic military campaigns."
But even proponents of military panels find the prospect of trying foreigners, even accused terrorists, before military officers to be unsettling. They say the idea of secret trials in which military officers potentially render death sentences without the usual judicial review conflicts with constitutional standards.
U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is critical of Bush's move. He says military commissions are based on the "thinnest legal precedents" and would "antagonize our allies and alienate the many legal immigrants in this country."
Added another critic, Harvard University law professor Anne-Marie Slaughter: "President Bush has said this is a war to bring terrorists to justice. So the real question is, what's justice? That requires a fair trial and proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and that is not the aim of a military tribunal." A better option, she says, would be convening an international war crimes tribunal.
Bush's order Tuesday was the latest in a series of administration moves that have infuriated civil libertarians. It came on the same day the Justice Department announced it would try to question more than 5,000 men who have entered the country since January 2000 from nations linked to al-Qa'eda.
A week ago, the administration made clear that it would wiretap prisoners' conversations with their lawyers if officials believe the prisoners might be passing on terrorist information.
"There is a natural temptation to hunker down whenever we are in crisis," says New York University law professor Joshua Rosenkranz. "But there is a danger that this hysteria-driven effort to protect to ourselves is weakening the foundations of our democracy."
Military as judge and jury
Under Bush's order, the tribunals could sit at any time and any place. Military officers would serve as judge and jury, deciding both the law to be applied and resolving disputes over facts that usually are the domain of a jury.
Instead of a unanimous verdict, the votes of only two-thirds of the members of a military panel would be needed to convict and sentence a defendant, and even impose the death penalty.
Bush would decide who would be subject to the tribunal, based on his belief that an individual is a member of al-Qa'eda or has committed or helped commit international terrorism.
The order gives Rumsfeld the power to detain anyone Bush targets, but also requires that the suspect be "treated humanely, without any adverse distinction based on race, color, religion," and be "allowed the free exercise of religion."
The president would have the option to review a verdict and make any final decision in the case. But any death sentence would lead to calls for a Supreme Court review.
Bush dodged one potential legal obstacle by declaring that the tribunals would not be used to try U.S. citizens. Two of the Nazi saboteurs tried during World War II held American citizenship, and their trials were complicated by their claims that their cases should have been handled by a standard federal court.
The case involving the Nazi saboteurs had some parallels with the hijackings. Eight Germans were dropped off by U-boats on beaches near Amagansett, N.Y., and Jacksonville, Fla. The men, all of whom previously had lived and worked in the United States, spoke fluent English, wore American-style clothes and carried blasting caps and other sabotage tools. Their instructions, written in invisible ink on pocket handkerchiefs, identified industrial targets in Chicago, Detroit and New York as well as a network of backers in the United States.
But the plan began to unravel immediately, when a Coast Guardsman on beach patrol encountered some of the terrorists and heard them speaking German. The men escaped to New York City. Fearful that they would be caught, two of the Germans contacted the FBI and betrayed the other six.
A week after the arrests, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing a military commission to try the men. The men turned to the Supreme Court, citing an 1866 case that forbade the military trial of any American civilian while ordinary courts were open. But the court said the Germans were "unlawful belligerents" who had entered the country clandestinely and thus had no rights to a public trial or a trial by jury.
The men were tried in secret before a military panel and convicted. The two who cooperated received prison sentences and the other six were executed, 7 weeks after they were captured.
Military trials were common during the Civil War, when 13,000 soldiers and civilians were tried before about 5,000 commissions. The most memorable occurred at the war's end, when eight civilians with Confederate ties were tried in May and June 1865 for helping John Wilkes Booth carry out the assassination of President Lincoln.
Military tribunals have been used during three wars to try terrorists and others outside the traditional U.S. court system:
Mexican-American War (1846-48) Army Gen. Winfield Scott formed a military commission to try 42 Irish-born deserters from the U.S. military who had gone to fight with fellow Roman Catholics in the Mexican army. Result: The commission convicted all 42 deserters. One eventually was pardoned, 27 were sentenced to death, and the other 14 were flogged and branded on their cheeks with a "D" for deserter.
Civil War (1861-65) Some 13,000 soldiers and civilians were tried before 5,000 commissions. Among them: Eight civilians with Confederate ties who were convicted in 1865 as co-conspirators in the assassination of President Lincoln. After a 50-day trial, a panel of seven generals and two colonels found all the defendants guilty. Result: Four were sentenced to death by hanging. The four others received long prison sentences. The hangings took place less than 3 months after Lincoln was killed.
World War II (1941-45) A military commission established by President Franklin Roosevelt tried eight Germans who had planned to attack industrial targets in Chicago, Detroit and New York. Result: Two of the defendants cooperated with investigators and received prison sentences; the other six were executed less than 2 months after they were captured.
That panel was created by President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor, who like President Bush signed an order based on his law department's recommendation. Johnson's attorney general, James Speed, argued that the assassination was an act of war because under the Constitution. Lincoln was commander-in-chief.
Edward Steers Jr., author of Blood on the Moon, a history of the assassination, believes Johnson had a more pragmatic reason for a military trial: avoiding a jury of Confederate sympathizers who lived in Washington, which despite being the U.S. capital essentially was a southern city.
After a 50-day trial, all eight were found guilty by a panel of seven generals and two colonels. By a two-thirds vote, four defendants were sentenced to hang, and four others received long prison sentences. It took less than 3 months from the time of the assassination for the sentences to be carried out.
"That's the beauty of the thing ... from the government's perspective," says James Hall, co-author of Come Retribution, a study of Civil War terrorism. "Things move quickly, and from a legal standpoint it's all self-contained."
The Lincoln case also is similar in several respects to the current situation. Historians note that Booth and his co-conspirators intended to kill not just Lincoln but Vice President Johnson and secretary of state William Seward, who was next in line for the presidency. Had Johnson and Seward also been killed, the Constitution as then written made no provision for choosing a new president.
"It was a formula for civic chaos or confusion with parallels" to the Sept. 11 attacks, says Michael Maione, historian at Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was shot.
As the U.S. government has done in the hijacking probe, authorities rounded up and detained large numbers of potential suspects. About 200 were arrested and held, author Michael Kauffman estimates, in a nation whose population was about one-ninth what it is now. Federal investigators have detained and questioned more than 1,200 in the investigation of the terrorist attacks.
Little dissent in Congress
To this point, Congress has been largely mute in response to Bush's plan. Many members want more details about the tribunals. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he had concerns about the order, especially the extent to which the trials can be kept secret. But the influential Democrats stopped short of criticizing the president.
In Washington, investigators pursuing the hijack investigation said the possibility of military trials gives them one more tool to persuade persons with knowledge of how the hijackings were done to talk. The possibility that a potential defendant may have to face a military panel, said one veteran investigator, could be a potential "mind-focuser."
Investigators believe at least two men currently in custody were linked to the Sept. 11 hijackings but that their involvement would be difficult to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt," the standard of an ordinary criminal court.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen with ties to radical Muslim groups, was arrested on immigration charges nearly a month before the Sept. 11 attacks. He has been linked to some of the hijackers through phone intercepts.
A second suspect, pilot Lotfi Raissi, is believed to have coached the hijackers on flying techniques before the attacks. He is being held in London and is fighting extradition to the United States.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday that Bush's plan recognizes the potential difficulty in trying terrorism suspects. "The United States is in a state of war," he said. "It's important to give the president of the United States the maximum flexibility consistent with his authority."
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States: New Hampshire, Wisconsin
01/11/15
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
New Hampshire
Berlin - A week after voters said they didn't want the city to pursue construction of a federal prison, some people are circulating petitions to revive the idea. Mayor Robert Danderson said the new attempt by businessmen and unemployed mill workers gives it more credibility. Voters narrowly rejected the federal prison on a non-binding ballot question.
Wisconsin
Madison - The Department of Corrections said it would make several changes at the state's ultra-security prison in Boscobel, including allowing all inmates to keep TV sets in their cells and increasing the maximum exercise time. The state hopes the changes will resolve some inmate complaints about too-harsh treatment.
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THE PRESIDENTIAL ORDER
Senior Administration Officials Defend Military Tribunals for Terrorist Suspects
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/politics/15TRIB.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - Top administration officials today defended a presidential order allowing military tribunals to try foreigners charged with terrorism as the Pentagon prepared for the potential transfer of immigrants detained by the Justice Department into military custody.
A senior administration official said that it was possible that immigrants held in the United States by the Justice Department in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks would be tried by military tribunal. Those trials could take place outside the United States or even on ships, the official said.
The order, signed by President Bush on Tuesday, gives the government sweeping powers to secretly and aggressively prosecute suspected foreign terrorists both here and abroad.
Justice Department officials have repeatedly refused to disclose the identities of those immigrants held or the charges against them. Justice officials said late last month that the total number of people detained - including many who have since been released - had surpassed 1,000, but this month officials said that they would no longer release a running tally.
"I had no idea they were going to try to use it for domestically detained people," said Kevin Ernst, a Detroit lawyer representing Farouk Ali-Hamoud, who was arrested for fraudulent immigration documents and held for 25 days in the Wayne County Jail before his case was dismissed last month. "It scares the hell out of me, I'll tell you that."
Vice President Dick Cheney defended Mr. Bush's order today, saying that terrorists were not lawful combatants and did not deserve the safeguards of traditional American jurisprudence.
"The basic proposition here is that somebody who comes into the United States of America illegally, who conducts a terrorist operation killing thousands of innocent Americans - men, women and children - is not a lawful combatant," Mr. Cheney said.
"They don't deserve to be treated as a prisoner of war," he added. "They don't deserve the same guarantees and safeguards that would be used for an American citizen going through the normal judicial process."
While the vice president assured his audience that the terrorist suspects would have "a fair trial," he suggested that they did not deserve one with the same protections afforded American citizens. A military tribunal, he said, "guarantees that we'll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve."
He spoke favorably of World War II saboteurs being "executed in relatively rapid order" under military tribunals set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And he cited an earlier precedent, noting, "This is the way we dealt with the people who assassinated Abraham Lincoln and tried to assassinate part of the Cabinet back in 1865." Mr. Cheney, who was responding to a question after a speech at the United States Chamber of Commerce, was the most senior White House official to explain the rationale behind the president's order. Mr. Bush, who was at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, has not spoken publicly about it.
The order continued to prompt an outcry from civil libertarians, who noted that military tribunals have not been used in this country since World War II. Laura W. Murphy, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Office, said that the organization was "deeply disturbed" by the order and called on Congress to exercise oversight powers before the "Bill of Rights in America is distorted beyond recognition."
Bush administration officials said today that they first considered the idea of military tribunals about a week after the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials said that a debate then ensued between the Pentagon and Justice Department over who should determine who is a suspected terrorist and therefore subject to trial by tribunal.
Finally, officials said, it was Mr. Bush who insisted that he, not Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld or Attorney General John Ashcroft, be given that power.
Administration officials said that the Pentagon and Justice Department were preparing today for the possibility of moving some detainees to military custody, examining such details as where the detainees might be held and how many judges would sit on any tribunal.
"They are researching, preparing and looking at the administrative procedures that would have to be followed to take into custody a suspected terrorist held by justice," an administration official said.
The idea of military tribunals came to the attention of the White House via William P. Barr, a former attorney general in the first Bush administration, who first conceived of them as a way to try the two men charged with blowing up a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
In the preparations for that trial, Mr. Barr was the chief of the Justice Department's office of legal counsel. In an odd twist, that office also happened to occupy the same suite where the World War II saboteurs were secretly tried under Roosevelt - memorialized today by a plaque on the wall.
"It's part of the lore of that office," Mr. Barr said.
Scotland, which does not have the death penalty, was not interested in joining with the United States in military tribunals, Mr. Barr said, so the idea was dropped. But shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Barr contacted senior officials at both the White House and the Justice Department, suggesting they might take a look at the old files.
"All I did was remind them about it," Mr. Barr said. "The idea sells itself."
This time people were very interested, particularly as they faced the prospect of what to do should Osama bin Laden or his associates in Al Qaeda be captured. Administration officials have said they did not want a long, public American trial of Mr. bin Laden that could turn him into a martyr or cause further terrorism in his name.
In the weeks after Sept. 11, officials at the Pentagon and Justice and State Departments worked on a draft of the president's order. Late last week, officials said, the draft began circulating. On Tuesday, the president signed it.
Experts in military law say the tribunals would severely limit the rights of a defendant even beyond those in military trials, and said that the tribunals did not provide for proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
But White House officials said the tribunals were necessary to protect potential American jurors from the danger of passing judgment on terrorists. They also said the tribunals would prevent the disclosure of government intelligence methods, which normally would be public in civilian courts.
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IMMIGRATION
Ashcroft Says I.N.S. Will Be Split to Refocus Responsibilities
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/national/15IMMI.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - Attorney General John Ashcroft said today that the Immigration and Naturalization Service would be split into two bureaus to streamline its border enforcement and service responsibilities.
"Our objective is to build a leaner and more efficient, mission-focused department capable of meeting the threat of international terrorism, while at the same time fulfilling our traditional justice function of upholding the rule of law and protecting the freedom of all Americans," Mr. Ashcroft said at a news conference.
The reorganization reflects President Bush's campaign promise to streamline an agency that has long been criticized by lawmakers as chronically mismanaged with huge backlogs in processing petitions by legal immigrants and a poor record in accounting for foreigners in the United States.
The plan announced today has been under discussion for years. But it gained impetus after the Sept. 11 attacks when the investigation showed that several hijackers had lived in the United States beyond the time their visas allowed.
Immigration records showed that 13 of the 19 hijackers entered the country legally on student or business visas. Records for the other six men could not be found or did not exist. Mr. Ashcroft said people who entered the United States to engage in terrorism should be deported.
Over all, the new plan would change the geographic structure of the agency. Right now, most of the operating arms of the immigration service report to senior officials through layers of regional and district offices run by powerful managers in the field who sometimes operate independently from Washington.
Under the plan, which is to be completed by Sept. 30, 2003, a new Bureau of Immigration Enforcement will manage intelligence gathering, investigations and operations to counter illegal immigration. These units, which include more than half of the agency's 33,000 employees, will report directly to Washington, bypassing regional offices.
The new Bureau of Immigration Services will process applications for naturalization, asylum, work permits and green card renewals and deal with other immigrant benefits issues. These units will also report to a new service chief in Washington.
The reorganization does not require Congressional approval, but officials said today that they would keep lawmakers advised of their actions. The reorganization comes as lawmakers are offering their own plans for reshaping the agency.
One plan proposed by two Republicans, Representatives George W. Gekas of Pennsylvania and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, would abolish the immigration service and create two agencies for enforcement and service. Each would have its own managers, budget and employees, unlike the Justice Department plan, which would retain a single commissioner in charge. Mr. Sensenbrenner said today that he continued to believe that a legislative reorganization was required.
The Justice Department plan would not go as far as some Bush administration officials have suggested. Tom Ridge, head of homeland defense, said in an interview today in The Washington Post that administration officials were considering merging the Border Patrol; the Customs Service, a unit of the Treasury Department; and the Coast Guard, a Transportation Department agency.
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CIVIL LIBERTIES
White House Push on Security Steps Bypasses Congress
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By ROBIN TONER and NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/national/15CIVI.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - The Bush administration has moved swiftly in the last few weeks to expand its national security authority and law enforcement powers in ways that are intended to bypass Congress and the courts, officials and outside analysts say.
Administration officials say the recent executive branch orders - which allow the government to use military tribunals to try foreigners charged with terrorism, permit the questioning of thousands of mostly Middle Eastern men who have recently entered the United States, slow down the process for granting visas to Muslim men and monitor communications between some people in federal custody and their lawyers - are necessary legal weapons in the war against terrorism.
"Foreign terrorists who commit war crimes against the United States, in my judgment, are not entitled to and do not deserve the protections of the American Constitution, particularly when there could be very serious and important reasons related to not bringing them back to the United States for justice," Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news conference today, alluding to the use of military tribunals. "I think it's important to understand that we are at war now."
And speed is of the essence, administration officials say, arguing that even a wartime Congress would not move fast enough to help the authorities counter new terrorism threats.
But some lawmakers say they are increasingly concerned about such a unilateral approach to issues fraught with constitutional implications. They note that Congress has offered little resistance to most of the administration's security-related requests since the attacks, producing an antiterrorism law that Mr. Ashcroft demanded in the unusually short period of six weeks.
Now, said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, lawmakers are learning about major policy shifts in the newspapers. "We're really not being consulted at all," he said, "and it's hard to understand why."
It is not only Democrats who have qualms about the administration's approach. Representative Bob Barr, Republican of Georgia and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said, "I'm not aware that they're consulting at all."
Mr. Leahy added in an interview tonight: "We have tried to bend over backwards to give bipartisan support, because most of us have been here for some period of time, and we know that kind of unity gives credibility to what we're doing, and also makes a very concerned American population less concerned. They've got to realize that simply going it alone like this isn't making people feel more secure, it's making them feel more concerned."
Mr. Leahy expressed particular concerns about setting up a military tribunal to try suspected terrorists, suggesting that it could send "a message to the world that it is acceptable to hold secret trials and summary executions without the possibility of judicial review, at least when the defendant is a foreign national."
Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, also said today that he had constitutional concerns over the administration's decision to allow special military tribunals to try foreigners charged with terrorism. Mr. Daschle said he supported the goal of swift justice for terrorists, but wanted to ensure that it was done without undermining constitutional protections.
But the administration is clearly convinced that it has public opinion on its side. And even the six weeks Congress took to produce the antiterrorism bill was too protracted in the view of White House officials and administration lawyers.
One senior Justice Department official, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks in explaining why the administration is reluctant to expose new policies to time-consuming Congressional debate, said, "People here are imbued with the idea that this shouldn't be allowed to happen again, and that has made us impatient."
Another Justice Department official said the approach was to strengthen as many policies as possible that did not require Congressional approval.
"We have a top-to-bottom review going on right now on our policies, all our guidelines and directives," this official said. "We're moving full speed ahead to effect the formal shift in direction of the department and the executive branch to be aimed at prevention of future terrorist acts."
Justice Department lawyers are reviewing and recommending changes in directives on how to deal with undercover operations, foreign intelligence and confidential informants, the official said.
Administration officials today insisted that all of the changes they had instituted over the last few weeks were not only constitutional but merely a revival of powers that had been used in past times of crisis.
The policy changes, like the creation of military tribunals for terrorist offenses also reflected immediate, pragmatic concerns over how to prosecute the fight against terrorism, the officials said.
One administration official said today that people in the government were keenly aware of the deeply unsatisfying outcome in the trial this year of two Libyans charged in the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which one low-level operative was convicted and another acquitted. "This was not an outcome we would want here," one of the Justice Department officials said.
George J. Terwilliger III, a former deputy attorney general in the first Bush administration, said today that he believed the government was not expanding its legal authority as much as dusting off little-used powers.
"All of these actions are well within the boundaries of the Constitution, but it's just officials acting more aggressively," Mr. Terwilliger said. "There is a range of permissible activities, and we're using more of that range than we do in times of peace."
Prof. Phillip B. Heymann of Harvard Law School, a former deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton, said he believed that the government wanted the military tribunal because of a fear that it might not be able to convict Osama bin Laden or other suspected terrorists in civilian courts.
Administration officials said military tribunals would be better able to protect confidential information.
But Mr. Heymann said that some terrorists, notably those charged in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had been successfully prosecuted in civilian courts with a law that allows classified information to be used in a trial without being disclosed to the public. Similarly, the administration said the tribunals would allow for the protection of witnesses and jurors, but Mr. Heymann said that countless Mafia and drug cartel trials had been conducted where both witnesses and jurors were protected.
"I understand that if we got bin Laden and he were acquitted it would be a staggering event," Mr. Heymann said. "But the tribunal idea looks to me like a way of dealing with a fear that we lack the evidence to convict these people."
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THE TRIBUNALS
Closer Look at New Plan for Trying Terrorists
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/national/15LEGA.html
A day after President Bush signed an order allowing special military tribunals to try foreigners charged with terrorism, a more detailed picture of what government planners envision began to emerge.
Witnesses would be sworn to tell the truth, just as they are in American courtrooms. But they might testify behind closed doors, a Bush administration official said yesterday.
A defendant would not necessarily get his choice of a lawyer. Instead of jurors, military officers - perhaps five of them on a panel - would render verdicts in places far from home, like Afghanistan or Pakistan.
It was an unfamiliar picture of American justice, with unusual shortcuts and limited appeal rights. Supporters said the war required that the country not allow legal fine points to stand in its way. "The idea is, you need swift justice," said Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at the University of Chicago.
Critics said the trials could seem unfair because they would not provide the protections of American courts and might further inflame Muslim critics here and abroad.
"If we do it through a military trial, people around the world will view the outcome as a foregone conclusion," said David Wippman, a law professor at Cornell University.
A trial before a military tribunal would resemble a traditional trial in that prosecutors would file formal charges against a person for terrorist activities - an Al Qaeda leader captured in Afghanistan, for example.
But the similarities would end there. Commission tribunals will accept evidence that is typically barred from court, like hearsay, which would make it easier for prosecutors to prove their cases. Even a death penalty could be imposed without the unanimity required of civilian juries. A two-thirds vote of the panel of officers would be sufficient.
Legal experts predicted court challenges to the plan. Some said it was unclear whether courts would agree that the current circumstances justified military commissions.
Such tribunals have a long international history. They have been used in this country at least since 1780, when George Washington appointed a board of officers to try Maj. John Andre, a British spy who slipped behind American lines to gather information from Benedict Arnold.
"There certainly are precedents through history for military commissions, but that doesn't mean the president has the constitutional authority to use them whenever he says there's an emergency," said Christopher L. Eisgruber, director of the program in law and public affairs at Princeton University.
But American courts have often been reluctant to second-guess the president about when commissions are justified. After a secret 18-day trial by a military commission in 1942, the Supreme Court approved the conviction of a group of Germans who landed by submarine on the beaches of Florida and Long Island with plans to use explosives for sabotage.
In 1946, the justices approved a commission conviction of the commanding general of the Japanese army in the Philippines, Tomoyuki Yamashita. Both of the World War II trials ended in executions.
Historians say military commissions began as traveling courts when there was a need to impose quick punishments that appeared fair in wartime. Commissions do not enforce any single country's law, but a body of international law that has developed through centuries known as the law of war.
One of the fundamental principles of that body of law is that combatants cannot target civilians.
In its 1946 ruling, the Supreme Court said American commanders had the power "to seize and subject to disciplinary measures those enemies who, in their attempt to thwart or impede our military effort, have violated the law of war."
A Bush administration official with knowledge of the planning said officials had been studying the World War II cases. But the official said the decision to authorize the tribunals had been influenced by factors like the ability of the tribunals to move quickly and to limit intelligence information that might become public.
In civilian trials, a defendant has broad access to prosecution information. But the military tribunals could sharply limit a defendant's access to intelligence reports and could close entire proceedings if classified information were to be discussed.
The trials would shortcut many of the rules that slow trials. Extensive rules, for instance, generally bar the use in civilian trials of illegally seized evidence. But under the president's order, all evidence that would "have probative value to a reasonable person" is to be considered by the tribunals.
The Bush official who described the creation of the tribunals said such choices were made to assure that the process did not get bogged down. But he said many people inside the government were working to assure that the trials remained fair. For example, he said, officials generally favor insisting that prosecutors prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Mr. Bush's order left open the possibility that commission trials could be held in the United States. But the official said the procedure was intended largely for use elsewhere in the world for the trial of Al Qaeda members and other terrorists.
"I would find it very unlikely," the official said, "that we are going to do these trials on the territory of the United States."
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YUGOSLAVIA: RESIGNATIONS IN WAR-CRIMES DISPUTE
World Briefing
New York Times
November 15, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/international/15BRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday
Serbia's top two intelligence officials resigned and the civilian police took command of a rebellious secret service unit in a dispute over cooperation with the United Nations war-crimes tribunal. Members of the unit who staged protests and set up roadblocks demanded the resignation of the interior minister and refused to arrest any war crimes suspects until Yugoslavia passes special laws on extradition to the tribunal. A government decree on extradition was declared unconstitutional last week by the Constitutional Court.
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States
01/11/15
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Alaska
Fairbanks - The annual Alaska Permanent Fund dividend is expected to shrink by 12% because of weaker returns caused in part by the terrorist attacks. Officials predict individual checks will be about $1,628 next year, or $222 below 2001. Dividends from the state oil wealth savings account are paid to anyone who has lived in Alaska at least a year. The record payout was $1,969 in 2000.
D.C.
Metrorail switched to shorter trains during midday hours on all lines. With weekday traffic down 6% in October as a result of the terrorist attacks, it's not cost-effective to run trains with empty seats, a Metro spokesman said. The decision to use four cars instead of six isn't to save electricity but reduces wear and tear on the cars.
Indiana
Indianapolis - Two lawmakers are promoting a package of bills to enhance the state's ability to respond to terrorist attacks. The eight-point plan includes tax credits to companies that increase the production of antibiotics and vaccines effective against bioterrorism. Rep. Mike Murphy, a Republican, and Rep. Dale Grubb, a Democrat, said they expect bipartisan support when the General Assembly meets in January.
Nevada
Carson City - Requests for welfare and food stamps increased by 12% in the month following the terrorist attacks, officials said. A state Welfare Division official said that the increase was unprecedented. The state's welfare caseload had been increasing gradually for about a year before Sept. 11 because of the state's slowing economy and population growth.
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Militants charged with plotting terrorist acts in Egypt
USA Today
11/15/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/15/egypt-militants.htm
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Ninety-four suspected Muslim militants have been charged with plotting to carry out terrorist acts in Egypt and will be tried before a military court, defense officials said Thursday.
The officials said the trial of the group, all suspected members of the previously unknown Al-Wa'ad group, was due to open Sunday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
A charge sheet filed by a military prosecutor included accusations that they planned to assassinate public figures, blow up and sabotage government establishments and possessed explosives and ammunition, the sources said.
They are also accused of setting up an "unconstitutional" group whose goal is to disturb public order.
Of the 94 members of Al-Wa'ad, which means "the promise," 87 have been in police custody since May. The rest are at large.
Among those detained were two mosque preachers from Cairo - Sheiks Fawzi al-Said and Nashaat Ibrahim - and two U.S.-trained pilots. The defendants also include several foreigners: three from Dagestan, one Dutch, an Egyptian-American, an Egyptian-German and a Yemeni, according to the officials.
Police have confiscated documents and explosives manuals from the defendants. A state security prosecutor's report said that they had received training in Afghanistan.
Prosecutors did not say whether the accused were linked to Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, who is believed to have run militant training camps in Afghanistan.
The case involved the largest number of alleged militants detained in Egypt since 1997, when imprisoned leaders of al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, or Islamic Group, called for a truce in their anti-government insurgency following a crackdown by authorities on Muslim extremists.
The last major militant attack in Egypt was in 1997, when 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians were massacred by extremists in the southern tourist city of Luxor.
Military tribunals in Egypt, whose verdicts cannot be appealed, have been condemned by human rights groups. Last month, 170 alleged Muslim militants, some of them in detention since 1994, were referred to the military prosecutor - a step that usually precedes a trial before a military court.
The 170, said to be members of the violent al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, have been in detention on suspicion of being responsible for several attacks against government installations and police posts that left a total of 250 dead in the 1990s.
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New Murder Trial Granted for Fugitive Extradited From France
New York Times
November 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/national/15EINH.html
PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 14 (AP) - A judge granted a new trial today for Ira Einhorn, a longtime fugitive convicted in absentia in the 1977 murder of his girlfriend.
Mr. Einhorn, 61, requested the retrial in September under a state law passed to satisfy French requirements for his extradition.
"We're a step closer to where we want to be," said Joel Rosen, who led Mr. Einhorn's prosecution in 1993 and will do the same at the new trial.
Mr. Einhorn was not in court for today's brief hearing before the judge, D. Webster Keough of Common Pleas Court.
Mr. Einhorn is accused of murdering Holly Maddux, whose mummified remains were found in a steamer trunk in the couple's Philadelphia apartment 18 months after Mr. Einhorn said she went to the store and never returned.
Mr. Einhorn fled the United States in 1981, shortly before he was scheduled for trial in Pennsylvania. He was convicted in absentia in 1993 and sentenced to life in prison.
In 1998, Pennsylvania passed a law providing for a retrial upon his request, a move intended to satisfy a French requirement that foreigners not be extradited based on trials in absentia.
Mr. Einhorn was returned to the United States in July after a European court refused to halt his extradition from France, ending two decades of flight for the former antiwar activist, one-time mayoral candidate and self-described "planetary enzyme."
Mr. Einhorn maintains that he was framed for the murder by the Central Intelligence Agency after he uncovered secret mind-control weapon experiments.
In issuing his decision, the judge said he would wait to address other issues raised in court filings by Mr. Einhorn's lawyers, including the constitutionality of the 1998 law.
If the law were overturned, Mr. Einhorn could argue in federal court that the conditions of extradition were not met and that he was entitled under international law to return to France.
United States officials also had to assure the French authorities that Mr. Einhorn would not be eligible for the death penalty in his new trial because capital punishment was not legal in Pennsylvania when Ms. Maddux was killed. European Union countries generally refuse to extradite fugitives who face the death penalty.
On Friday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court refused to take control of Mr. Einhorn's case, allowing him to get a new trial in municipal court.
On Monday, lawyers are to meet with Judge Keough to determine whether Mr. Einhorn can afford a lawyer. His longtime lawyer, Norris Gelman, said he would no longer represent Mr. Einhorn because his caseload was already heavy and Mr. Einhorn was broke.
"He can't afford me," Mr. Gelman said. "I don't think he can afford anybody."
He pointed to a $907 million wrongful death judgment against Mr. Einhorn from Ms. Maddux's family.
Mr. Rosen said that getting a new lawyer for Mr. Einhorn would delay the start of the retrial for "at least a few months."
In 1981, Mr. Einhorn was free on $40,000 bail, after testimony from prominent Philadelphians about his good character, when he boarded a plane for London with a new girlfriend shortly before he was to stand trial.
He lived in England, Ireland and Sweden under pseudonyms before his capture in France.
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Protect Liberties
From: Zoe Calder zoe@mint.net
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 22:56:55 -0500
A three-fold pamphlet originating from the Phoenix FBI office http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=89617&group=webcast allegedly distributed to help law enforcement officers identify domestic terrorists, defines domestic terrorism as
"Groups or individuals operating entirely inside the US attempting to influence the US government or population to affect political or social change by engaging in criminal activity." -- The Phoenix FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force
As was noted on the above site by someone upset with this brochure, "If that holds fast as the official definition of 'domestic terrorism,' make way for the end of civil disobedience as we know it. By classifying any politically motivated criminal activity (rather than violence or rampant property destruction, specifically) as terrorism, the government gives itself legal justification for oppression against anyone who engages in civil disobedience, demonstrates peacefully without a permit, or happens to violate some unimportant law while engaging in political activity."
By ignoring violence or the intent to terrorize a population as factors, this definition makes Gandhi, Thoreau, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks -- along with millions of other people, including such creative folks as Greenpeace activists -- into terrorists. It is this sort of loose definition that makes otherwise arguably justified civil rights encroachments into the beginning of a steep slope toward tyranny. It's time to (a) shift into first gear, (b) get our brakes checked or (c) take another route.
Interesting background on this flier can be found on a gun-rights site
http://www.keepandbeararms.com/newsarchives/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&article id=2 126 which suggests that this flier was not official Phoenix FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force policy, although it did come from the FBI. However, whether this was the product of unauthorized FBI agents or was created as a "feeler" or "trial balloon" to test what the reaction would be, to see if they can proceed with more serious steps -- it is cause enough for us to make our objections known and (as the FBI says) to raise our level of alertness.
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