------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Technique could cut radiation time for breast cancer
Arms breakthrough buried in the fine print
When Power Tipped the Scales
France-bound German nuclear waste found contaminated
Irish advert urges UK - "Close Sellafield"
Nuke Engineer Accepts AECL Offer to Return to Work
Czechs say IAEA approves Temelin nuclear restart
Milton Shaw, Oversaw First Nuclear Submarine Project
Who Pays for Nuclear Power?
Texas
Cheney, Shrinking From View, Still Looms Large

MILITARY
Afghan leaders are under pressure at talks
War before politics
Hundreds of Marines land near Kandahar
U.S. forces on ground in Afghanistan
Delegate Seeks Larger Role for Women
Rebuilding a Ravaged Land
Heavily Fortified 'Ant Farms' Deter bin Laden's Pursuers
Dressed To Kill From Kabul to Kandahar
Use of Nepali Army Urged
Moving Bioterror From Back Burner
Northrop Wins Contract
Mao's Buried Past: A Strange, Subterranean City
States: Kentucky, South Carolina
With Taliban Gone, Opium Farmers Return to Their Only Cash Crop
French general on trial for Algeria crimes
Militant kills himself as Sharon demands quiet
The World's Oppressors
States: Delaware, North Dakota
U.S. Marines battle armored column
On Campuses, Seeing the Military With New Eyes

POLICE / PRISONERS
States
Military tribunals provide streamlined justice
U.S. looks at which tech proposals will fly
U.S. seeks mutual 'security perimeter'
Kangaroo Courts
CIA-Backed Team Used Brutal Means
Witchhunt
Hate groups using Sept. 11 to further causes
U.N. Report
Ashcroft picks lawyer to oversee victims' funds
Heroes inspire Americans to live up to their example
Bin Laden's camps teach curriculum of carnage
Lima Summit Meeting Ends
Amnesty unlikely for prisoners

ENERGY AND OTHER
Pollution Concerns Over Energy Plants
Energy Industry on Alert for Attack
Amazon Plant Proliferates Again in African Lake
Bush: Human cloning experiment 'morally wrong'
Company Says It Produced Human Embryo Clones
Where Thousands of Drought Refugees Wait for Food or Death

ACTIVISTS
World AIDS Day Action Kit available online now



-------- NUCLEAR

Technique could cut radiation time for breast cancer

USA Today
11/26/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/healthscience/health/cancer/2001-11-26-breast-cancer.htm

CHICAGO (AP) - A single, concentrated dose of radiation may be as effective as six straight weeks of treatment for women who have had a cancerous lump removed from a breast, preliminary research suggests.

The experimental treatment could make lumpectomy - a breast-saving type of cancer surgery in which only the lump is removed - available to many more women.

Many women who are diagnosed with early breast cancer decide against a lumpectomy because they cannot spend six weeks receiving daily radiation treatments, said Dr. Jayant Vaidya, a surgeon at University College London in England who led the study.

Mastectomies, or removal of the entire breast, typically do not require radiation. Mastectomies are often the only option for women who live far from cancer treatment centers or find the standard radiation schedule unworkable.

An experimental technique called intra-operative radiotherapy uses a miniature radiation probe right after a lumpectomy. The probe is inserted inside the cavity created by the removal of the tumor, and radiation equivalent to six weeks of doses is emitted for about 25 minutes.

The technique was just as effective as six weeks of radiation in preliminary results from Vaidya's study of 29 women, which was prepared for presentation Monday at a meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

The women all underwent lumpectomies for tumors of less than about 1 1/2 inches. About half got the single dose and half received the standard six weeks of radiation. All have remained cancer-free during 18 months of follow-up.

Since peak time for cancer recurrence is two to four years after treatment, it is too soon to call the technique a success, said Dr. LaMar McGinnis, senior medical consultant for the American Cancer Society.

But "so far, so good," Vaidya said.

Dr. Paula Schomberg, a Mayo Clinic radiologist, said the approach requires more study.

"It would certainly be advantageous if there was some way to replace an extended course of radiation with a shorter course, for patient convenience," she said. "It remains to be seen whether it's safe to do that.

---

Arms breakthrough buried in the fine print

November 26, 2001
Washington Times,
Donald Lambro
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20011126-43984420.htm

It isn't every day that the United States and Russia agree they will reduce their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds. Yet, strangely, the story was greeted with skepticism and subsequently downplayed by the news media.

In another time, and under different circumstances, President Bush's decision just before Vladimir Putin's visit here - and the Russian president's pledge to match that reduction - would have been the story of the year.

But the nation's fixation on the war in Afghanistan undercut the significance of the president's announcement to reduce nuclear stockpiles over 10 years. The network news shows all led with the war story, and then reported the historic nuclear arms cutback later in their broadcasts.

Contributing to the muted media reaction was the fact there was no formal arms-agreement in writing, no elaborate signing ceremony and no substantial negotiations leading to the decision. Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the details would be worked out later.

Work is needed on a lot of the details. At one point in their joint news conference before a group of high school students in Crawford, Texas, Mr. Bush committed himself to destroying U.S. warheads as the stockpile was reduced.

But Miss Rice later corrected that assertion, saying that only "a number of them" would be destroyed and others would be stored. "What the president was referring to is, we will not have these warheads near the places at which they could be deployed," she explained.

Mr. Bush's decision to unilaterally reduce the nation's warhead arsenal was not new. In a major national security policy address during the campaign, he unveiled his plan to gradually cut back U.S. warheads as the Pentagon developed and deployed a reliable anti-ballistic missile system.

The proposed policy change was a bold stroke and won rave reviews at the time. Mr. Bush declared that the days of the Cold War were over, that nuclear deterrence in the future would become defensive, not offensive, making the world a safer place.

Mr. Bush and his advisers believe that defensive anti-missile technology will make offensive nuclear missiles obsolete. By announcing his intentions to unilaterally reduce U.S. warheads as such technology is perfected, he signals that we harbor no secret plan to gain a nuclear advantage over any potential adversary.

The only obstacle against developing and deploying an anti-missile system is the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The Russians have been opposed to scuttling the ABM agreement. But the other big development coming out of the summit - which the news media also downplayed - were statements by Mr. Putin that seemed to suggest he was becoming much more flexible on this issue.

Insiders say Mr. Putin's new flexibility is the result of the rise of Islamic terrorism and his growing fear that the next big terrorist act will be nuclear. Mr. Bush has made this point repeatedly in his private talks with Mr. Putin. And the Russian president is said to be taking it much more seriously now according to his advisers.

"We share the concerns of the president of the United States. that we must think of future threats," Mr. Putin said at the joint Crawford news conference with Mr. Bush. "We differ in the ways and means we perceive that are suitable for reaching the same objective. And given the nature of the relationship between the United States and Russia, one can rest assured that whatever final solution is found, it will not threaten the interests of both our countries and the world."

Later that day, in a telephone call-in show on National Public Radio, Mr. Putin went even further in his willingness to compromise on cutting the ABM knot.

"We also believe that the 1972 treaty that we have now is flexible enough for us to use it for different kinds of efforts towards a greater level of security, both for the United States and Russia," he said.

Mr. Putin's remarks sounded like the makings of a breakthrough on Mr. Bush's missile defense plan. "What President Putin said here is extremely important," Miss Rice said.

There has been a subtle but important change in the way Mr. Putin now sees the anti-ballistic issue and the entire arms' buildup. He clearly wants to reduce his Soviet-era military apparatus because the weak Russian economy cannot finance it. Moreover, he believes U.S. technology will, over time, build an effective anti-missile system and he wants to share in that technology.

Mr. Bush deserves the credit for moving Mr. Putin to this point. This was their fourth round of one-on-one discussions, but the most personal of all their meetings as they dined on Texas barbecue (which Mr. Putin called "a masterpiece of cooking"), toured the ranch and talked about everything from the war in Afghanistan to Russia's wish to join the World Trade Organization.

When Mr. Putin left Crawford to visit New York and Ground Zero, all the news reports said the talks had ended with "little substance." In fact, Mr. Putin has signaled that the two sides may be close to a major breakthrough on ABM. Much more occurred in Crawford than the news media reported.

---

When Power Tipped the Scales

BOOKS OF THE TIMES
'THE TRAGEDY OF GREAT POWER POLITICS'

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By PATRICIA COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/books/26COHE.html?searchpv=nytToday

If the ghastly shock of terrorist attacks has made some people nostalgic for the certainties of old-fashioned enemies and great power struggles, John J. Mearsheimer offers a bracing slap in the face.

Great-power competition is nasty and brutish, he says, and often leads to devastating wars. In "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" Mr. Mearsheimer lays out his theory of how the world works: why nations decide to go to war, cozy up to a former foe, or counter a competitor.

In his grim universe everything boils down to a relentless drive for power. Nations can't help it. The very structure of the international system - no single world government, every nation fearfully glancing over its shoulder - forces everyone into a power grab. "Great powers that have no reason to fight each other - that are merely concerned with their own survival - nevertheless have little choice but to pursue power and to seek to dominate the other states in the system," he writes.

That pessimistic conclusion, backed by an impressive historical review and a refreshingly systematic analysis of power, is sure to provoke debate among scholars. But while Mr. Mearsheimer's book fits more comfortably on a college reading list than on the browser's night table, his goal is not merely academic. As he says, "General theories about how the world works play an important role in how policymakers identify the ends they seek and the means they choose to achieve them." One can just imagine him sadly shaking his head at President Bill Clinton's attempt to create a cooperative world order among open societies and open markets. Convinced that such thinking is foolish and dangerous, Mr. Mearsheimer aims to set the record straight.

It's an ambitious undertaking. Maybe too ambitious. Studying the causes of peace and war has become a growth industry among academics. But can a one-size-fits-all approach really explain conflicts between nations armed with muskets as well as between those outfitted with nuclear warheads? And there are moments when you can't help wondering whether events are interpreted to fit the theory rather than the reverse.

Mr. Mearsheimer calls his theory "offensive realism" and explains that it "tends to treat states like black boxes or billiard balls." He adds, "For example, it does not matter for the theory whether Germany in 1905 was led by Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm or Adolf Hitler, or whether Germany was democratic or autocratic. What matters for the theory is how much relative power Germany possessed at the time."

Such simplification comes at a cost, and Mr. Mearsheimer is upfront about that. Anomalies always exist, he says, but a good theory has few of them; what matters is how much it explains. And offensive realism does explain a lot. Like why Germany egged Europe into World War I or why the Soviet Union and the United States continued to build up their nuclear arsenals during the cold war despite their ability to blow each other up many times over.

But there is also a lot it doesn't explain. The United States and Britain offer the toughest test cases, as Mr. Mearsheimer recognizes. For decades the United States, despite its great wealth and undisputed control over the Western Hemisphere, decided not to build up its military power. And Britain, which dwarfed its competitors in terms of military might and wealth in the second half of the 19th century, wasn't interested in gobbling up chunks of Europe. The reason, Mr. Mearsheimer says, is water. Oceans are like giant pits of quicksand, making it difficult for even the most powerful country to extend its reach.

But then how to explain Japan? This island nation wasn't deterred from trying to dominate Korea, China and Manchuria, invading Russia in 1918 and picking border disputes with the Soviet Union in the late 1930's. Mr. Mearsheimer spends less than half a page on this major inconsistency, saying only that Japan's targets were weaker powers and that the Soviet Union cared more about Europe.

There are other inconsistencies. Fear of an overbearing Germany prompted France, Britain and Russia to form the Triple Entente in 1907, seven years before World War I. Yet none of the three teamed up before March 1939 to oppose Germany until after Hitler stormed through all of Czechoslovakia. Mr. Mearsheimer says it was because Germany was still building its army and had not reached the level of a "potential hegemon." But Hitler's program to strengthen the German military was clear by the mid-30's, and he signaled at least some of his aggressive intentions way before 1938. Why wait till you're outgunned and outmanned?

Mr. Mearsheimer also does something of an intellectual backbend to explain the postwar NATO alliance. Offensive realism dictates that the weaker nations, Western Europe and the Soviet Union, should balance against the strongest, the United States. After all, the United States beat the Soviet Union in wealth, nuclear weapons and air and naval forces hands down at the end of World War II. So why were the Europeans more scared of the Russians than the Americans? Solely because the Soviet Union had a larger land army, Mr. Mearsheimer says. A more convincing explanation, however, lies inside the black box: that democracies are not nearly as likely to fight each other. Mr. Mearsheimer himself says that "certainty bolsters peace," and democracies are more certain of each other's intentions.

When he turns to today's world, land power suddenly fades to black. He declares that nuclear weapons make the United States, Russia and China the only great powers now; Germany and Japan are merely "semi-sovereign" because they depend on the United States for their nuclear guarantee.

Yet he admits Germany and Japan are "capable of protecting themselves from any threat in their own region" and of creating a nuclear deterrent if they want to. Germany's army, for example, is bigger and better than Russia's, and its gross national product is more than six times as large. If anything, Mr. Mearsheimer has it backward: China and Russia are great-power wannabees. The biggest threat isn't always the biggest power.

So long as there are great powers, there will be great power politics. But as Victor Borge said, "Forecasting is difficult, especially about the future." After all, no sooner had Mr. Mearsheimer declared the pre-eminence of military might, territorial control and the balance of power than a handful of terrorists with no state, no army and a few box cutters completely redrew the foreign policy map.

China is now a "strategic partner" instead of a "strategic competitor," while Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, and President Bush look as if they're teaming up for a Hollywood buddy movie. And last week NATO's secretary general proposed making Moscow an equal partner in the alliance's deliberations on terrorism and other issues. There is a new world order. We just don't know what kind yet.

---

France-bound German nuclear waste found contaminated

Reuters:
26/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13430

FRANKFURT - German authorities said late last week they had discovered contamination emanating from a nuclear waste transport container at the Stade nuclear plant.

But an environment ministry official last week said this was an isolated case discovered thanks to stricter safety regulations put in place since last year on lifting of a ban on nuclear waste transport, which had been imposed in 1998.

"The container, which was one of several destined for French reprocessing site La Hague, was screened and radiation levels significantly above the allowed maximum were found," the official in the Berlin ministry's department for nuclear transport told Reuters.

"The shippers of the container are now required to deal with the problem so that they can be given approval to carry out the transport," he added.

The transport, originally planned for December, had been temporarily put on hold, the ministry's statement had said.

"The environment ministry will ensure that the shipment of the container....can only be carried out if there is total proof that it is free of contamination," it said.

The official said the finding showed that strict rules on the necessary screening methods were being applied and working.

Once satisfied that the container had been cleaned, the shipment could be given clearance.

Nuclear transports from German nuclear reactor sites were banned in 1998 after a safety scare over radiation leaks from containers during transport.

It was lifted last year amid commitments by the nuclear industry to gradually phase out atomic energy by the mid-2020s and because stricter safety regulations were agreed.

Germany's 19 nuclear plants have no reprocessing facilities of their own, and must get rid of containers full of spent fuel elements, which they were forced to store on-site during the ban.

Anti-nuclear protestors, citing safety risks, keep disrupting waste transports in order to achieve an earlier withdrawal.

The maximum permissible radition level is four bequerel per square centimetre.

Utility E.ON, operator of the 640 megawatt (MW) Stade plant in the northern German Lower Saxony state, was not immediately available to comment.

-------- britain

Irish advert urges UK - "Close Sellafield"

Reuters:
26/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13434

LONDON - The Irish government has appealed to Britain in a full-page newspaper advertisement to close its controversial Sellafield nuclear fuel plant in northern England.

The advertisement in The Times newspaper, signed by members of Ireland's ruling Fianna Fail party, including Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, said the plant was an environmental and security hazard.

"Sellafield poses an unacceptable and unnecessary risk to our environment," the advertisement said.

"Furthermore, in the aftermath of the September 11 assault... we also believe that Sellafield poses a grave security risk to both our countries."

The plant, which is due to begin production of MOX fuel - a mix of uranium oxides and plutonium - in late December, is in Cumbria, northwest England, on the coast of the Irish Sea.

Ireland has long complained of nuclear pollution from Sellafield.

Earlier this month the Irish government took its case to a United Nations tribunal, claiming the plant breached the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC).

It followed a ruling by Britain's High Court that Tony Blair's government had acted lawfully in giving approval in September for the operator, state-owned British Nuclear Fuels, to begin production of MOX.

The British government has defended its position, saying in a written response to the UN tribunal that the United Kingdom did not plan any action in the near or long term that would damage Ireland's rights under the sea convention "or cause serious harm to the marine environment".

The UN tribunal is expected to rule in early December on whether Ireland should be granted an injunction.

-------- canada

Nuke Engineer Fired After Sept. 11 Accepts AECL Offer to Return to Work

Monday's Canada News Briefs
The Associated Press
Monday, November 26, 2001; 9:48 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19214-2001Nov26?language=printer

OTTAWA (AP) - A Canadian nuclear engineer fired after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has dropped his lawsuit against Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and is returning to work this week.

But while Mohammed Attiah has accepted a full-time job at the Chalk River, Ontario, nuclear facility, he will pursue legal action against the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Attiah and his counsel said Monday. "I am going back to work tentatively Thursday," Attiah said. "I am very satisfied with the way things have turned out. My family is happy."

Attiah was fired Sept. 21, minutes after he was questioned by RCMP and intelligence agents.

The 54-year-old Canadian citizen and Muslim who emigrated from Egypt 27 years ago, was told he was a security threat. He has since been exonerated, said his counsel, Harry Kopyto.

"We settled all outstanding matters now against AECL only," Kopyto said in an interview. "He's going to try to get on with his work life."

As part of Monday's agreement, AECL agreed to award Attiah legal costs as well as benefits and pay for the period he was unemployed, said Kopyto.

-------- czech republic

Czechs say IAEA approves Temelin nuclear restart

Reuters:
26/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13433

PRAGUE - An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection has given the go-ahead for the restart of the controversial Czech Temelin nuclear power station, the plant's director Frantisek Hezoucky said last week.

He said the plant will be ready for a re-launch on Wednesday November 28 after a three-week shutdown. The commercial launch is planned later this year.

"There is no surprise for us in the (IAEA) report," Dana Drabova of the state nuclear power regulator told journalists.

"Everything that remains open can be solved in the longer time horizon and has no impact on the safe operation of the power plant," she added.

IAEA officials declined to comment on the inspection results. The final report will be released later this year.

Temelin has sparked a bitter row with neighbouring Austria which fears an accident at the plant, built just 60 km (37 miles) from its borders.

An Austrian observer took part in the inspection which took one week and checked the way the new Soviet-designed station has tackled objections from fiercely anti-nuclear Austria. He was not available for comment.

Temelin is one of the key assets of power company CEZ, which the government aims to sell to a foreign investor by early 2002. It uses Soviet-designed VVER-1,000 reactors and a modified western control system.

The Czech officials added that seven out of 73 issues listed in IAEA's report from 1996 inspection remain to be solved.

Austria, which opposes the use of nuclear energy, has threatened to block the Czech Republic's entry into the European Union, expected in 2004, if the plant is put into full operation. But the EU has said Temelin is not a European issue but rather a bilateral one.

The Czechs claim the plant is safe. The first of Temelin's two reactors was launched last year but has suffered from a number of minor glitches and has not been fully operational.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Milton Shaw, 80, Who Oversaw First Nuclear Submarine Project

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/obituaries/26SHAW.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 - Milton Shaw, who oversaw the design and construction of the reactors that powered the first nuclear submarine and the first nuclear aircraft carrier, died on Saturday at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. He was 80.

The cause was cancer, his family said.

A protégé of Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, Mr. Shaw was the project leader for the Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, which was launched in 1954, and the Enterprise, the first nuclear aircraft carrier, launched in 1960. The propulsion reactors in those ships became the basis for the design of civilian power plants.

Mr. Shaw was also the director of the division of reactor research and development at the Atomic Energy Commission, from 1964 to 1973. He was a leader of the project to develop a breeder reactor, which makes more nuclear fuel than it consumes. The project became the commission's top priority in the late 1960's, as nuclear experts predicted that a growing number of reactors would exhaust the world's uranium supply.

After a partial meltdown of a breeder reactor owned by a utility company, Fermi, in October 1966, Mr. Shaw became an advocate for closer government control of such research and was a proponent of the Fast Flux Test Facility, which was built in Hanford, Wash., as a precursor to the Liquid Metal Breeder Reactor. But the government eventually abandoned the breeder program as impractical.

After retiring from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1973, Mr. Shaw worked as a consultant in energy, engineering and national security, and was a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie-Mellon University.

He received the Navy's Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1959 and 1964, and the National Civil Service Award in 1968.

Mr. Shaw served in the Pacific in World War II as an engineering officer in the Navy's Amphibious Fleet, and reached the rank of lieutenant junior grade. A graduate of the University of Tennessee, he earned graduate degrees from Pennsylvania State College and the Oak Ridge School of Reactor Technology.

Mr. Shaw is survived by his wife, Natalie; two sons, Eric, of Chevy Chase, and Daniel, of Mars, Pa.; a daughter, Andrea Shaw Reed of Orleans, Mass.; two sisters, Ruth Kahan of Roslyn Heights, N.Y., and Genevieve Kramer of St. Louis; and eight grandchildren.

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

Who Pays for Nuclear Power?

by MATT BIVENS,
The Nation,
November 26, 2001
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=bivens20011126

Congress is pondering ways to shore up security and safety at the nation's nuclear power plants, from stockpiling medicines for radiation poisioning to expanding emergency evacuation plans. But the dark horse coming up fast is something else: an industry-favored piece of legislation that, in the unfortunate event of a nuclear catastrophe, makes damn sure that someone else foots the cost.

When it comes to improving security, the industry's critics are active. Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey has introduced a bill in the House to create potassium iodide stockpiles near nuclear power plants. Potassium iodide was administered in 1986 to Soviet children who were near the Chernobyl disaster, and is credited with preventing thousands of thyroid cancers among them. "Potassium iodide is to radiation exposure what Cipro is to anthrax," Markey said in a statement.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton also has called for potassium iodide stockpiles, along with a plan to evacuate New York City should anything--terrorist-sponsored or otherwise--go wrong at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, just 40 miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan. Clinton and her Democratic colleague from Nevada, Harry Reid, also favor legislation to federalize nuclear plant security, a la the airports.

But talk is cheap, and the action will start Tuesday, November 27, on the House Floor. Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin has scheduled a vote on HR 2983, a bill to renew the Price-Anderson Act, a 1950s-era insurance subsidy for the nuclear power industry that expires next summer. Tauzin's Commerce Committee tentatively approved the bill in a debate-free Halloween-day voice vote; on Tuesday, the bill will come before the full House for an up-down vote, under rules limiting debate and prohibiting amendments.

"Well, now isn't this just like the nuclear industry and its allies, bringing us a real turkey for Thanksgiving?" complains a statement by Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group. "Attaching a controversial piece of legislation to unrelated legislation, just after a major national holiday, without debate, about limiting industry liability on hundreds of nuclear reactors after the September 11th tragedy?"

Insurers are pros at assessing risk; when the federal government started talking up civilian nuclear power plants in the 1950s, insurers assessed the risks and ran for cover. Enter the 1957 Price-Anderson act, which today limits the nuclear industry's collective liability for any mishaps to a ballpark of about $12 billion. For comparison, estimates of the costs of Chernobyl run to about thirty times that; while a 1982 study by the Sandia National Laboratories suggested the cost of a major US nuclear accident would run to more than forty times the industry's current liability cap (in today's dollars). That's to say nothing of the human costs in immediate deaths and long-term cancers.

What happens if HR 2983 is voted down, and Price-Anderson not renewed? Most likely, no new nuclear power plants would be built. As even Vice President Dick Cheney has conceded, without Price-Anderson's security, "Nobody's going to invest in nuclear power." Voting down HR 2983 would in particular drive a stake through the heart of projects like the new-fangled Pebble Bed Modular Reactor--a most terrorist-friendly power plant, because its designs don't include a concrete containment building around the reactor.

But with or without HR 2983, existing nuclear plants keep their insurance breaks--and, no doubt, industry spokespeople will continue to boast that taxpayer-subsidized nuclear power is "cheap." Congress could, of course, revoke those protections, and force the industry to buy its own insurance--i.e., to pay its own way. But no one in Congress is seriouly discussing such radical free-market shock therapy.

-------- texas

Texas

States
USA Today
01/11/26
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Amarillo - Federal energy officials disbanded the Pantex Plant Citizens Advisory Board. The group was created in 1994 to provide community input on the environment and other issues at the nuclear weapons plant. But federal officials said the board was unable to provide effective advice. Board members said infighting and bylaws requiring unanimous agreement impeded their work.

-------- us politics

WHITE HOUSE LETTER
Cheney, Shrinking From View, Still Looms Large

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/politics/26LETT.html

Now comes the strange case of Dick Cheney, the phantom vice president. Did he spend his Thanksgiving in his "secure and undisclosed location" or in the sleekly redecorated Naval Observatory, the vice president's official residence that has taken on the characteristics of an armed camp?

His staff did not want to say. But one thing is certain: In a nation where vice presidents have always complained about being invisible, Mr. Cheney really is.

And yet, he has turned his disappearing act on its head. The more invisible he becomes, the more powerful he seems.

In the days after Sept. 11, Mr. Cheney and President Bush sat down and worked out a deadly serious arrangement: to ensure that one of them would be available to lead if the other was killed in a terrorist attack, they had a responsibility to separate themselves.

"There are some times when the vice president and I will be together and some times we won't be," Mr. Bush said soberly at a news conference last month. "We take very seriously the notion of the continuity of government."

The result has been one of the oddest vice presidencies on record.

Whenever the president is at the White House, Mr. Cheney is usually not. His advisers estimate that he spends close to 80 percent of his time at his secure location, where he conducts meetings with his staff by videoconference. He participates by videophone in the daily national security meeting held in the White House situation room with the president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. He often stays overnight at his secure location, as does his wife, Lynne, and one of his senior advisers, Mary Matalin. And he talks all the time, his staff says, to the president.

But when Mr. Bush leaves town, the phantom emerges - freed to do amusing things like browbeating House Republicans to stay in line.

Representatives James T. Walsh and John E. Sweeney, both upstate New York Republicans on the Appropriations Committee, were summoned to Mr. Cheney's office in the West Wing as President Bush was on his way out of town on Nov. 13 for his meetings with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Tex.

"I hadn't seen much of him at all," Mr. Walsh said yesterday, recalling the meeting with the vice president. "I kind of joked afterward to Sweeney that he really does exist."

Mr. Cheney, perhaps invigorated to be out in the White House light, played his role as the president's Capitol Hill enforcer that day with élan. He calmly threatened a presidential veto if Mr. Walsh and Mr. Sweeney pressed for more money for New York beyond that in the $40 billion package that Mr. Bush wants for all disaster relief and homeland security this fiscal year.

"He was the president's guy that day," Mr. Walsh said.

Mr. Cheney is in fact the president's guy about town whenever he is let out of his cave - the undisclosed location imagined by a "Saturday Night Live" skit that Mr. Cheney himself now uses as a punch line in speeches.

"It's good to see anybody in person these days," the vice president said in remarks to the Federalist Society in Washington while the president was in Texas. "Lynne and I don't get too many visitors at the cave."

During that same furlough, Mr. Cheney made a speech at the United States Chamber of Commerce, gave interviews to the British Broadcasting Company and "60 Minutes II" and stopped by the White House Coalition Information Center war room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

On the weekend in mid-November that Mr. Bush was at the United Nations in New York, Mr. Cheney went to a Saturday night black-tie ball in Washington celebrating the Marine Corps' 226th birthday and then spoke at a Veterans Day service at Arlington National Cemetery.

The vice president's "undisclosed location" has also extended to a preserve near Pierre, S.D., where Mr. Cheney tracked down pheasant on a long-standing hunting date with friends earlier this month. Last month the vice president spent a weekend shooting ducks at Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Only rarely has he been side by side with Mr. Bush. They were in the Oval Office together on the afternoon of Oct. 11, when the president welcomed him back from his secure location and announced at a news conference that evening that Mr. Cheney was "looking swell." Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were also together on Oct. 26, when the president signed an antiterrorism bill at the White House.

But friends and advisers say the relationship between the two men is as crucial as ever, and still refer to Mr. Cheney as the president's consigliere, or the coach to Mr. Bush's quarterback. Clearly the situation doesn't trouble Mr. Bush, who on the Monday before Thanksgiving pardoned not one but two turkeys, one at the White House and another, an alternate, that was not.

That turkey, the president announced, was "in a secure and undisclosed location."


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Afghan leaders are under pressure at talks

USA Today
11/26/2001
By Elliot Blair Smith, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/27/talks.htm

KONIGSWINTER, Germany - Afghan leaders from four rival factions converged Monday on a mountaintop resort in Bavaria to negotiate power sharing at a United Nations-sponsored summit that diplomats say could lead to an interim government in Afghanistan. Facing the prospect of renewed infighting and widespread famine in Afghanistan if an agreement isn't hammered out, U.N. and Western diplomats offered participants the political carrot of diplomatic recognition if they succeed and the stick of withholding financial aid if the talks fail.

U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said, "We need to get a transitional authority in the country as soon as possible. All the parties agree that this imperative, that speed is of the essence." Calling it a "golden opportunity," Fawzi said the United Nations "would be very concerned if this opportunity slips by without an agreement." A senior U.S. official warned, however, that the Afghan factions can expect no aid for rebuilding the country unless the participants agree on a broad-based government.

Early estimates indicate Afghanistan will need at least $20 billion of postwar assistance. The United Nations also wants to install a Muslim-led multinational force in Afghanistan to restore order.

Cloistered in a faux German castle known as Petersburg, which features panoramic views of the Rhine River, delegates begin formal meetings today in individual and group sessions led by Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special representative for Afghanistan. But in Afghanistan's capital Kabul, Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said, "Expectations should not be too high. We are in a transition from war to peace. A war that lasted 23 years, it cannot be done in a day."

Northern Alliance President Burhanuddin Rabbani indicated the meeting in Germany was only the first step. "The main councils and meetings will take place inside Afghanistan," he said, "and senior officials must participate to take the main decisions."

Neither Abdullah nor Rabbani are attending today's talks, which have attracted diplomats from 18 governments including the United States, Britain, Iran, Pakistan and Russia, as well as the United Nations and European Union. The Northern Alliance contingent is led by Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni, who was expected to arrive late Monday aboard a British air force jet from Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, a group of representatives of former Afghan King Mohammad Zahir Shah, who has been living in exile in Rome since he was deposed nearly 30 years ago, has been jockeying for position at the talks. The king's representatives held pre-summit meetings with the United Nations' Brahimi and the U.S. envoy for Afghanistan James Dobbins.

The 87-year-old king wants to form an interim congress of about 125 people representing Afghanistan's diverse ethnic and political groups. The Northern Alliance seems more likely to endorse a 15-member leadership council that would require the approval of tribal elders in Afghanistan.

Also vying for position at the talks are two Afghan exile groups - a Pakistan-backed delegation from Peshawar and an Iranian-backed delegation from Cyprus - each has three delegates.

Three women also are among the representatives.

---

War before politics

USA Today
11/26/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-26-edtwof2.htm

With the dramatic "unsurrender" by hundreds of Taliban fighters in a Mazar-e-Sharif fortress Sunday, one lesson was cast in striking relief: War isn't easily calibrated to suit political ends. The best course is to aim for quick victory and leave the politics for later.

That lesson may need particular attention in coming days. With waves of helicopters reported ferrying U.S. troops into the region around the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar on Sunday, intensified action to hunt down Osama bin Laden appears imminent.

Reports were murky whether Americans were killed in the Mazar-e-Sharif uprising. What is clear is that when the Taliban prisoners revolted, American soldiers and civilians were caught in the crossfire, with some trapped in the fort, as American planes swept in to drop their bombs. The battle appears to have been pre-planned, with some foreign Taliban fighters smuggling guns and grenades into the fortress.

The prisoners' initial surrender briefly eased concerns that Pakistan's government, so helpful to the war effort so far, might be endangered if Pakistanis were killed defending Kunduz. In recent days, Pakistani planes reportedly extracted many foreign troops defending the city, despite demands from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for their unconditional surrender.

But ultimately, those who surrendered were slaughtered in the revolt, making the original fears a reality. Meanwhile, those who escaped by plane are free to sow the seeds of future terrorism.

The events stand out as an exception to the Bush administration's remarkable skill at managing each stage of the war. Yet, all of the success so far - at weaving ground combat, shifting alliances, the bombing campaign, global diplomacy and civilian aid while sidestepping the potential land mines of Ramadan and a deepening winter - can't diminish the bloody reality that war is unpredictable.

In coming days, a clash of military and political demands will make the situation even more challenging. Efforts to build an interim government for Afghanistan will reach a peak at meetings this week. The outcome of decisions made there could greatly ease the transition, but could just as easily spark new fighting. And the hardest task is yet to come. Finding the leaders of al-Qaeda and bringing them to a quick end could be protracted and bloody.

The only reasonable option is to accept the obvious risks but try to win the war as quickly as possible. Politics can wait.

---

Hundreds of Marines land near Kandahar

USA Today
11/26/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/26/attacks.htm

SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN (AP) - U.S. Marines established a foothold Monday within striking distance of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, working through the chilly night to set up a base of operations in country for America's war on terrorism. Helicopters and transport aircraft bringing Marines and equipment came and went from the USS Peleliu in the northern Arabian Sea and from land bases on the coast whose location the military kept secret. The full deployment, to total about 1,000 Marines, was expected to continue at least another day.

The deployment is a major shift in a war that until now had been fought mostly from the air. The Marines' departure from the USS Peleliu also brought a reminder of why the Americans were preparing to fight: The men stenciled their vehicles and weapons systems with black silhouettes of the World Trade Center and the numbers "9/11."

The airstrip chosen for the U.S. deployment in southern Afghanistan is isolated. There were no signs of towns in the distance across the flat desert. The only lights for miles around were the runway lights installed by the Marines and lights they were burning in the airstrip's buildings.

The city of Kandahar is the birthplace and last stronghold of the Taliban militia, which has lost control of most of Afghanistan since a U.S. bombing campaign began Oct. 7.

"The Marines have landed and we now own a piece of Afghanistan," Gen. James Mattis, commander of the attack task force, said Monday. "Everything went without a hitch."

In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said about 500 Marines seized the airstrip and a total of about 1,000 Marines was expected to take part in establishing the initial ground base. The troop movement was expected to take at least another day to complete, she said.

Clarke said the mission was to establish a forward operating base. She declined to elaborate, except to say the forces would pressure Taliban militia forces and Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network. Bin Laden is the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.

President Bush said the troops would assist in hunting down terrorists linked to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Once the desert airfield - built by a wealthy Arab to reach his hunting lodge - was seized, the Americans had landing lights set up in less than 90 minutes so fixed wing transport aircraft, the KC130s, could begin to land in southern Afghanistan with even larger numbers of troops and supplies.

There were more than 4,000 Marines in the expeditionary units taking part in the landing, which began with the helicopter flights. Two Marine Expeditionary Units, the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 15th and the Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based 26th were combined into Task Force 58 based on ships within 12 nautical miles of the Arabian Sea Coast. Such Marine Corps units are trained for combat, evacuations, humanitarian aid and other missions.

The first troops to land - from the 15th in helicopters - were supported by AH-1W Cobra and UN-1N Huey helicopter gunships, Harrier jet fighters and other aircraft. They had to fly as far as 400 miles from their mother ships in what was described as the longest distance amphibious and air deployment in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps.

"We are going to operate at the very extremes of the ability of our machinery," Miller said.

"We would much prefer to be closer in, because it just makes it logistically that much easier for us. But the way this operation is designed, with the intermediate staging bases, we'll be able to pull this off," said the British-born U.S. Marine. The Associated Press was allowed to accompany the troops on security conditions that included not identifying the exact locations of the base or numbers of troops and future mission plans.

Shortly before the raid began Sunday, the steel hull of the Peleliu echoed with the sound of gunfire as the troops tested their weapons by firing them into the sea from a wide doorway. Then they hauled their packs, weapons and protective gear - often pushing 100 pounds of equipment - to transport helicopters waiting on deck.

These first troops, aboard CH-53E Super Stallion heavy lift helicopters, landed at the desolate airstrip, at exactly 9 p.m. local time Sunday and met no resistance, according to their reports.

The operation meant flying often close to the ground and refueling in flight over miles of hostile Afghani territory. The U.S.-led bombing campaign that preceded the landing ensured the Taliban could put up little resistance.

As some of the troops boarded helicopters, beads of sweat on their faces from the heat and the strain of carrying their heavy gear, Marine Chaplain Lt. Cmdr. Donald Troast, 48, of Boston, watched, touching some of them on the shoulder.

When they were aboard, he stood with his head bowed. He said later: "I asked God to bless every one of them, I don't care what their religion is."

------

U.S. forces on ground in Afghanistan

By Ellen Knickmeyer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 26, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011126-7676083.htm

BANGI, Afghanistan - Hundreds of helicopter-borne Marines landed yesterday near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the last remaining stronghold of the ruling Taliban regime, a senior U.S. official said last night, marking a dramatic escalation of the U.S. ground war.

"Several hundred Marines have moved to Kandahar airbase and are setting up a perimeter," one senior defense official said. "More [Marines] will move there in the next several days."

"It will give us a variety of options," the official added.

The deployment, which could reach as many as 1,000 troops within the next few days, came on the day that U.S. fighter planes and anti-Taliban Afghan forces put down a chaotic riot by jailed supporters of the Taliban and Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Hundreds of Taliban sympathizers were killed in the uprising, which also may have claimed the life of a CIA operative who was visiting the jail.

U.S. defense officials, who spoke in Washington last night on condition of anonymity, would not disclose the Marines' mission, but their arrival was the largest deployment of U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led war began Oct. 7. The war thus far has been conducted primarily from the air.

With the entry of the U.S.-allied Northern Alliance into the northern city of Kunduz yesterday, Kandahar is the last major urban center still held by the Taliban. The southern city hs come under fierce bombardment during the war, and the fundamentalist regime has vowed to fight to the death rather than abandon its spiritual home and traditional stronghold.

Most of the top Taliban leadership is believed to be holed up in and around the city. Efforts by tribal leaders over the past 10 days to negotiate a handover of the city failed to yield results.

A spokesman for Gud Fida Mohammed, a commander of one of the anti-Taliban tribes involved in fighting near the Kandahar airport yesterday, reported that huge aircraft circled in the skies after the airport was taken, while a stream of U.S. helicopters flew constantly in and out of the airfield.

Some of the helicopters were described as Chinooks bringing in armored vehicles - the first such U.S. armor to land in Afghanistan since the war began.

Other helicopters unloaded U.S. soldiers heavily loaded with packs and baggage and who appeared to be commandos, Northern Alliance officials said.

The troops, who arrived under cover of darkness, swiftly set up communications antennae.

As dawn approached this morning, U.S. jets could be heard bombarding Taliban positions near Kandahar - apparently to soften Taliban targets for an advance.

The Marines, numbering in the "low hundreds," were to be followed by several hundred more from Navy ships in the Arabian Sea, officials in Washington said.

While the deployment was the largest announced U.S. mission on the ground in Afghanistan since the war began, hundreds of U.S. special forces are believed to have been in the country for some time seeking to undermine bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network blamed for the September 11 attacks.

The fall of Kunduz and the arrival of the Marines in Kandahar come as talks about forming a broad-based post-Taliban government are set to begin tomorrow in Germany.

Thousands of Taliban troops as well as Arab, Chechen, Pakistani and other foreign fighters linked to bin Laden had been holed up in Kunduz, which the alliance said fell almost without a fight.

Pro-Taliban fighters, including large numbers of foreigners, fled yesterday toward the town of Chardara, to the west, Northern Alliance acting Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said by satellite telephone from the north of Afghanistan.

While some chose to make a run for it, thousands of others surrendered as Northern Alliance troops moved in. Under a pact negotiated earlier between the alliance and the Taliban, Afghan Taliban fighters were guaranteed safe passage out of the city, but the foreigners were to be arrested pending investigation for possible ties to bin Laden.

Outside Mazar-e-Sharif, 100 miles to the west, hundreds of foreigners who had been captured earlier in the Kunduz area staged a prison uprising, leading to a daylong battle with Northern Alliance guards. U.S. air strikes helped quash the insurrection.

Hundreds of foreign Taliban prisoners were killed, U.S. and alliance officials said.

Pentagon officials later said all U.S. troops were accounted for and none had died. But ABC News reported last night that a CIA agent had been killed in the uprising, and a Time magazine correspondent on the scene at the jail reported on the magazine's Web site that at least one American had died in the clash.

The fighters had smuggled weapons under their tunics into the Qalai Janghi fortress and tried to fight their way out, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dan Stoneking said. The Pentagon estimated that fighters numbered 300; the Northern Alliance had said previously there were 700 prisoners in the facility.

A spokesman for Northern Alliance commander Mohammed Mohaqik said the prisoners broke down doors, seized weapons and ammunition, and fought a pitched battle with guards that lasted some seven hours.

An Associated Press reporter entering the city last night heard explosions coming from the direction of the fortress. Lt. Col. Stoneking, the Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that U.S. air strikes had helped Gen. Rashid Dostum's forces regain control of the prison.

Over the past several days, many surrendering Afghan Taliban fighters were embraced by former foes and allowed to go free. Many of the foreigners were detained at the fortress outside Mazar-e-Sharif.

The United States had strongly opposed any deal that would have allowed the foreigners to leave Afghanistan. As a surrender accord for Kunduz was being brokered last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he hoped the foreign fighters would be killed or captured, not allowed to go free. The capture of Kunduz was reported hours after alliance troops gained a small foothold inside the besieged city and then overran a town on its eastern flank.

Near the town of Khanabad, about 10 miles east of Kunduz, alliance troops spread across ridgetops held by the Taliban a day earlier and fanned out across fields to check mud buildings for enemy fighters.

On Kunduz's eastern front, wind whipped up huge billows of dust as a long column of troops and tanks waited to move in - first allowing a long column of surrendering Taliban to pass by.

"I feel very happy," said a 16-year-old Northern Alliance fighter, Maraj Adin, who was from Kunduz and hadn't been home in four years.

In other developments:

•In Heart, Northern Alliance commander Mohammed Zaer Azimi said Taliban leaders were discussing the possibility of Kandahar's surrender but offered no details. He also said alliance forces were preparing for a major attack on Helmand, another Taliban stronghold in the south.

•Representatives of three key Afghan groups left for Germany yesterday to attend a U.N.-sponsored meeting aimed at forming a broad-based Afghan government. One delegate, Pakistan-based Pashtun leader Syed Hamid Gailani, expressed doubts the conference would succeed because the factions were not sending their top leaders.

----

U.N. TALKS
Delegate Seeks Larger Role for Women

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/international/26WOMA.html

TEHRAN, Nov. 25 (Reuters) - The sole woman who will represent the Northern Alliance at the United Nations-sponsored talks on Afghanistan said today that she hoped women would be able to play a more prominent role in Afghan society in the post-Taliban era.

"My hope is that Afghan women will become active in all social areas and can show their ability as managers," said Amina Safi Afzali, one of the alliance's 11 delegates to the talks near Bonn that are to start on Tuesday.

Ms. Afzali, 43, speaking by telephone from Iran's northeast city of Mashhad, near the Afghan border, said she saw the meeting as a historic occasion for her war-torn country even though women's issues would not be at the top of the agenda.

"The Bonn conference will discuss the future of the Afghan nation, be they men or women," she said. "Although women's issues may not be covered, this meeting will decide the political future of Afghanistan, of which women are a part.

"I have fought for 20 years for Afghan women's rights, and tried to show the world how oppressed they are. Maybe that is one of the reasons that I was chosen as the only woman to attend the Bonn conference."

Ms. Afzali's husband, a mujahedeen commander, was killed fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan 14 years ago.

After taking control of Kabul in 1996, the Taliban issued edicts in line with their austere vision of Islam, which forbade women to work outside the home, attend school and leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. Women were also forced to wear burkas, head-to- toe veils.

"We respect the Islamic dress code, but what the Taliban imposed on Afghan women, such as wearing the burka, is based only on the Taliban's Islam," she said.

She spoke approvingly of a demonstration on Tuesday in which hundreds of women, shedding their burkas, gathered in the Afghan capital, Kabul, to demand their rights.

"About the demonstration in Kabul, I can say that women are right not to accept a stone-age dress code which the Taliban forced them to follow," she said, speaking hours before leaving for the talks.

------

Rebuilding a Ravaged Land

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By M. ISHAQ NADIRI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/opinion/26NADI.html

Afghanistan has great potential for economic development. For decades investment, principally foreign but also domestic, has gone into either the opium business or politics - that is, into guns. The amounts have been large; the return has been mainly devastation. But Afghanistan can be rebuilt.

The first task is to feed the Afghan people, a critical political as well as humanitarian challenge: the people who control the guns must not become the people who control the food. The other great short-term challenge is resettlement of Afghans from Pakistan and Iran, as well as of those displaced within Afghanistan. Absolutely critical to resettlement is a sound plan for agriculture. Mine clearance and the building or rebuilding of dams, water pipelines, canals and water-purification systems require significant amounts of aid. But the tasks are clear and manageable and lead directly to self-sufficiency.

Within memory, Afghanistan had many orchards producing fruit for domestic use and serving a vigorous demand in neighboring countries and the Persian Gulf states. Afghans have also grown wheat, corn and barley, for both human and animal consumption. All of these activities can be greatly aided by building small dams to provide water for irrigation. Such dams on Afghanistan's many rivers would go a long way toward providing alternatives to raising opium poppies.

Resettlement of the countryside will require new housing, which dovetails with needed reforestation. Years of war left rural Afghans with no other fuel for heat and cooking than the trees around them. Regions once forested have become barren. Wood has always been important both for fuel and building materials, and Afghans have been expert at managing woodlands. Reforestation will renew the countryside and work to prevent erosion when the current drought ends and rains fall on slopes that have lost the protection of their forests.

There is an enormous need - practical and symbolic - to rebuild the larger cities and the roads and airports that connect them and enable trade. Afghanistan's cities have always depended on being crossroads for overland trade, for example between Iran and Pakistan. The country is also positioned to serve as a transit point for moving oil and natural gas from Central Asia to South Asia and the Arabian Sea.

Afghanistan can be more than a crossroads. It once exported natural gas to the Soviet Union. It has large reserves of copper and high-grade iron ore. One longstanding regional dream has been to combine Afghanistan's ore with Pakistan's coal to create a steel industry. It may simply be a dream. Yet European unification got its institutional start with continental cooperation on the exploitation of iron and coal to make steel. Perhaps this is the right time to do a little dreaming for Afghanistan and the region.

Some of the necessary help will come from among Afghan expatriates who have acquired experience and professional skills in their years of exile. Within Afghanistan, human capital has gone nearly untapped for years. Women have been steadily degraded, most recently to the point of effective imprisonment. Children have been educated, at best, in the rudiments of Koranic scholarship; young men have been educated only in war. These people are the greatest of the country's resources. An investment in their education and health will be repaid many times.

The economy should be organized in a decentralized manner, with the emphasis on private-sector initiative. A decentralized system will respond better to local needs, while an emphasis on private effort is consistent with Afghan history and temperament. Developing autonomous economic regions, however, as has been proposed, would threaten the unity of Afghanistan. A mixed local-central system would weaken warlordism and prevent that concentration of resources in the cities that impoverishes the countryside and small towns, and ultimately the cities as well.

International commitment to reconstructing Afghanistan seems to be solid. There remains a need for careful coordination as well as political agreement among Afghanistan's neighbors. An international conference on Afghanistan should be held under the auspices of the United Nations to guarantee Afghanistan's self-determination, to ensure donor countries' commitments and to show that this new war will bring a new peace.

M. Ishaq Nadiri is a professor of economics at New York University.

------

CAVES AND TUNNELS
Heavily Fortified 'Ant Farms' Deter bin Laden's Pursuers

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/international/asia/26HIDE.html?searchpv=nytToday

MOSCOW, Nov. 25 - The Qaeda military base called Zhawar Kili Al- Badr also has a nickname: Wolf's Hole.

Zhawar worms its way deep inside the walls of a gorge in the Sodyaki Ghar mountains of eastern Afghanistan, a half-mile lattice of caves and connecting tunnels barely 4,000 yards from the Pakistan border. The Soviet Army took it in 1986 during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but only after 57 days of aerial bombardment and hand-to-hand combat.

"It was seized, blown up. Everything was blown up," Maj. Gen. Aleksandr Lyakhovsky, an Afghanistan veteran now retired from Russian military service, said in a recent interview. "And then the forces left. And in about six months or a year, they restored the base."

It is in a place like Zhawar, a mountain base called Tora Bora also near the Pakistan border, that the Afghan rumor mill now says Osama bin Laden is hiding with some 1,200 Taliban troops.

But Mr. bin Laden has a lot of options. Afghanistan is a virtual ant farm of thousands of caves, countless miles of tunnels, deeply dug-in bases and heavily fortified bunkers. They are the product of a confluence of ancient history, climate, geology, Mr. bin Laden's own engineering background - and, 15 years back, a hefty dose of American money from the Central Intelligence Agency.

Moreover, Al Qaeda is merely the most visible example of what the Pentagon calls a clear trend among terrorists and rogue states to take their most secret and dangerous operations to earth, removed from missiles and prying satellites.

"A lot of countries have done a lot of digging underground," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news briefing on Oct. 11. "It is perfectly possible to dig into the side of a mountain and put a large ballistic missile in there and erect it and fire it out of the mountain from an underground post."

Indeed, Pentagon documents for 2002 state that the military is already testing tunnel-destroying weapons at American proving grounds in the West, aimed specifically at "proliferant nations or terrorists with access to advanced conventional weapons or weapons of mass destruction."

With the United States' advanced detection devices and high-technology munitions, the network of Afghan caves and tunnels is neither as befuddling nor as impregnable as it was to the Soviets. The Pentagon says American warplanes have been bombing carefully selected caves and tunnels for weeks now, directing 500-pound bombs at their mouths to block the entrances and larger munitions to hit suspected weapons dumps and other strategic sites.

Mr. Rumsfeld said last month that some strikes had produced "enormous secondary explosions," sometimes continuing for hours after American jets first attacked.

But the system remains devilishly complex and easy to hide within. As even the Pentagon admits, the most heavily fortified parts, where Mr. bin Laden may be concealed, could well be invulnerable to the most powerful conventional bombs known.

Were Mr. bin Laden not a particular sort, he would have a bewildering maze of hiding places from which to choose. Afghanistan's mountains are pocked with thousands of natural caves. The mountains and plains alike are also latticed with karezi, an ancient system of irrigation tunnels, some dipping as much as 100 feet below the surface.

The karezi were designed to collect water seeping from beneath stream beds and aquifers, but for centuries - at least since the days of Atilla the Hun, and some say since the invasion of Alexander the Great - Afghans have used them to hide from enemies and to conceal troops for rear-guard ambushes after an invading army has passed.

Russian experts say many have back entrances and ventilation shafts through which Taliban forces might escape. The Soviet army extensively mapped the karezi during the 1980's war, using aerial photography and the help of local villagers, and the Russian defense ministry is said to have passed the maps on to the United States.

If Taliban forces are likely to use karezi for guerrilla warfare, Mr. bin Laden seems unlikely to seek refuge in tunnels rife, by many accounts, with scorpions and cobras. Nor can natural caves offer refuge for long.

That leaves two options: bases like Wolf's Hole (there are said to be a dozen or more), or heavily fortified mountain bunkers built to withstand everything short a nuclear attack.

One expert says Mr. bin Laden has built at least two such facilities, near Jalalabad and Kandahar, "and there could be more."

"They're multi-level, dogleg tunnels. They have air vents and escape hatches out the back," said John F. Shroder Jr., a geologist and geographer at the Universitry of Nebraska at Omaha who prepared the national atlas of Afghanistan in 1970. Mr. Shroder said he was in the region in the 1980's and is familiar with many of its karezi and caves.

Some military experts think such fortresses can be taken only by ground assaults - and that even then, anyone hiding in them may manage to escape through a hidden exit. "You might live to fight another day and leave a lot of dead people behind you," Mr. Shroder said.

Bases like Zhawar and Tora Bora lack the steel doors and other security amenities of bunkers, but they are formidable in their own right. Many were built in the 1980's, when millions of dollars of American aid flowed to Afghan rebel forces fighting the Soviet invasion, and have since been taken over by Al Qaeda.

Tora Bora, where Mr. bin Laden is suspected of hiding, began life as a C.I.A.-financed base for Afghan rebels. Mr. bin Laden took up residence there when he was forced to leave Sudan in the late 1990's.

Zhawar, the biggest of them all, was pummeled by dozens of cruise missiles in 1998 after terrorists linked to Mr. bin Laden killed hundreds of people in bombings of American embassies in Africa. But it was originally built in the mid-1980's as a depot and military base for American-financed supplies streaming to rebels across the Pakistan border two miles away. The rebel who supervised its construction, Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, is now head of the Taliban's armed forces.

Forty-one caves in all, it had everything then: a bakery, a hotel with overstuffed furniture, a hospital with an ultrasound machine, a library, a mosque, weapons of every imaginable stripe; a service bay with a World War II-era Soviet tank inside, in perfect running order.

"The caves were up to 10 meters long, four meters wide and three meters tall," Viktor Kutsenko, who led the Soviet sappers whose job it was to destroy the base, wrote later. "The walls were faced with brick. The cave entrances were covered with powerful iron doors, which were painted in bright colors. How many of our aircraft had worked this site over and the hotel and caves were still intact."

The rebels, learning from the assault, dug 600 yards of connecting tunnels so that a blocked entrance in one cave would not trap its occupants. Mr. bin Laden is reported to have upgraded both it and a nearby camp in the 1990's.

In recent years, it is said to have been used not just by Al Qaeda but also by Egyptian Islamic Jihad and other foreign terrorist organizations.

To the Pentagon, what troubles most about the tunnels may not be how to find terrorists there, but the implications of their use worldwide.

Worried by North Korean and Iraqi efforts to hide their programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, the military has been studying since the late 1990's how to build bombs that can collapse tunnels and penetrate mountainside fortresses.

A 1997 Pentagon report said that weapons used in the Persian Gulf War were of limited use against tunnels built with modern equipment. It said that some tunnels were "nearly invulnerable to direct attack by conventional means," even with earth- penetrating "bunker-busters" like those now used in Afghanistan. And it warned of "a clear worldwide trend in tunneling to protect facilities."

Since 1998, government documents state, the Pentagon and other agencies have tested bombs and explosives at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico against blast- hardened structures above and below ground in a program aimed specifically at terrorist tunnels and other hardened targets.

Among the techniques being tested are "thermobaric" bombs that detonate a mixture of fuel and air to cause a huge shock wave. Such bombs already have devastated Taliban positions in Afghanistan, but early this year, senior Pentagon commanders gave the go-ahead to test a thermobaric weapon customized for attacking tunnels.

The goal was a modified version of a bomb like the GBU-28, a 4,700- pound laser-guided "bunker buster," or the AGM-130, a guided missile with a 2,000-pound warhead, both of which are being used in Afghanistan. Such a weapon could be fired into a tunnel precisely, but would explode with much greater force than current bombs.

At the end of the crash project, in 2004, the military expected to have as many as 20 weapons left over from the tests.

If Mr. bin Laden is still holed up then, they should be ready to use.

-------- arms

Dressed To Kill From Kabul to Kandahar,
It's Not Who You Are That Matters, but What You Shoot

By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 26, 2001; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14195-2001Nov25?language=printer

These days, we Americans fight our wars with weapons that seem to come from Industrial Light & Magic. Our planes are sleek and characterless, our professionals more cleanshaven technicians than warriors, their faces lit by the phosphors of a glowing screen, their language of battle techno-crisp and parsed.

It's all too Tom Clancy to be that interesting. Only a few of our thousands of men in and around Afghanistan even bother to carry rifles; the rest carry cell phones, Berettas and credit cards.

But the guys we are fighting are different.

They don't have night vision or missiles or even air power. Screens? They don't have no stinking screens. They have one thing: guns. And our few hundred Special Forces operators on the ground -- they're gunmen too. And that's why the front page of this or any other newspaper, or the richly detailed color sections of the newsmags, all look like photo spreads in Shooting Times. Guns are everywhere: knobby, wooden, all pipes and welded joints, ugly, oily, ungainly, battered, dusty, dinged and bent, festooned with straps and blades and bipods and scopes but somehow -- if you read the postures of the men who carry them -- totally comforting.

And not without meaning. Guns are like anything else; they don't exist in a vacuum but in a context -- historic, cultural, political, mechanical -- so if you know your guns and ammo, you can take a reading as any critic can from any art form, and learn some stuff.

American guns express America. They're not even guns anymore -- or rather, the gun part of them is only a small part of a larger system, with capabilities beyond the imagination of even the men who carried similar, but more primitive, implements as recently as during the war in Vietnam.

Our gun there was the M16; our gun now is the M4, a carbine variant of the M16, meaning the fourth modification of the weapon since it was initially adopted for jungle warfare back in the 1960s. (Yes -- guns are "edited"!) There's not much difference in the gun part: It's the same orchestration of bolt, chamber, barrel, magazine and stock; it has the same springs and levers and pins and the same plastic furniture. It exists because for about 200 years we've been able to machine metal to exacting tolerances and harden it to withstand great pressures without making it too brittle. And we have the chemistry to invent efficient powders, strong plastics and rustproof steel. But now it's smaller, its stock folds up, it's got a little nubby barrel and . . . it's got stuff.

So much stuff!

We in the West, we are our stuff, no? Who could disagree?

The M4, particularly as love-labored over by Special Forces and Navy Seal armorers, has tubes everywhere. It's a panoply of tubes. It's tubular magic. One tube, mounted atop the frame, is a red-dot sight. In its intimate recesses, a tiny laser emits a beam that strikes a lens. A red dot is captured on that lens, which may be accessed by the simple act of looking into the thing. Then the dot may be adjusted up or down, left or right, so that it coincides with the point of impact -- so that the gun will actually shoot where you think it will. One adjusts the red dot to the bullet, but it feels the other way: You see the red dot, that's where the bullet will go.

The point of all this engineering is to bypass the conscious and enter the soldier's subconscious. To shoot well, one has to look at the sights -- but to do that, one must de-concentrate on the target. Almost impossible when a guy in a turban is shooting at you. With a glowing red dot, the operator's eyes pick up the marker subconsciously and so no time is lost in that most annoying of human habits in close-quarter combat: thinking. If you're thinking, you're already behind the curve, which means you're dead. No, here's what happens: Look at the guy and when the red dot crosses him, your reptile brain instructs your reptile trigger finger to press. You haven't done it, your subconscious has. It's much faster that way.

But suppose it's night. Well, in front of the red dot tube there's a night vision tube, which has the alchemical capacity not to turn lead into gold, but something far more valuable: It turns dark into light. Or semi-light. By magnifying the ambient illumination, the night vision scope can render enough of a universe to shoot accurately.

But suppose you've got five targets and only one of 'em is a bad guy. Then you go to Tube No. 3, which is a Sure-Fire brand flashlight locked neatly to the barrel with an on-off switch up in the trigger housing. You separate the fellow with the AK from the three kids and the veiled gal he's using as hostages. Then you double-tap him and move on.

But suppose . . . all five of them are bad guys? Then you go to tube No. 4, which is an M203 grenade launcher. You go 40mm on them. Pay no attention, ladies and gentlemen, to the sound of two ounces of TNT detonating as they send about 10,000 shards of white-hot steel into a very small area formerly occupied by five human beings.

You won't see guns like that carried by the Taliban, no sir. Look at Osama bin Laden's gun. It's visible in any of a dozen pictures and it's tubeless, screenless and grenade-launcherless. But it, too, is not only a gun. It's a gun with a coded message; you can read this guy like a book.

He's certainly no Captain Winters from HBO's "Band of Brothers," who, despite his natural genius for soldiering, insisted on carrying the line soldier's prosaic M1 all the way to Berchtesgarten. No, bin Laden's narcissism -- dead giveaway to a fake tough guy -- mandates that he make a fashion statement.

Any idiot knows that was an AK-47 leaning against the cave wall behind bin Laden during his videotaped response to the American bombing. Yes, the AK-47, the most famous of the liberation firearms distributed globally by the Soviet Union and its client states during the Cold War. There may be 50 million of them floating around the globe today.

Except it wasn't. But if you're one of the idiots, don't feel bad; you belong with the other 99.9 percent of the population that doesn't know anything about guns. Bin Laden's rifle wasn't an AK-47 at all, but one of its descendants, an AK-74, and of a particular modification that included, for portability and ease of handling, a very short barrel and a folding skeletonized stock and a flash suppressor. It's called a Krinkov.

It's actually a hybrid. If you crossed a classic 7.62mm x 39 Soviet AK-47 with an American 5.56mm NATO M4, its natural antagonist in about a million firefights in about 75 wars, insurrections and special-ops tiffs, you'd get the AK-74, which is the AK-47 mechanism reconfigured to fire the smaller-caliber, high-velocity round. Then you trick it up; by cutting the barrel and adding that folding stock, you get a Krinkov, which is the current hot lick among people who want to be noticed. It was designed for airborne troops. If you're not going to be jumping out of airplanes, it doesn't do anything for you that the 47 won't.

Bin Laden knows this: For him the gun isn't just a weapon, it's a symbol. He's making a statement, as with the curved ceremonial dagger that hangs from his belt when he's all duded-up in his white finery. He is making a claim: I am of the elite. In other words, he is saying something so Western it suggests the soul-deep depth of his hypocrisy. He is saying: I am so cool.

A fellow who favors posing with a Krinkov has delusions of grandeur, and he'll try to take over no matter the venue.

Bin Laden wouldn't be caught dead with a regular old AK, but his men are, all over the place. In a funny way, I like it better that he has this little vanity. I don't think he's a good enough man for an AK-47 and what it stands for. This is the true symbol of the war, for both sides seem to have it in the thousands, and no matter where the war blows next, you can bet that most of the close-in killing will be done with that old war horse. That cold wind you just felt, that was the chill of history.

Remember, folks, in the bad old days, a thing called the Soviet Union, run by a principle called communism? The AK-47 was at once its tool, its icon, its manifesto.

The AK-47 was to the Russian empire what the short sword was to the Roman Empire. It dwelt at the centurion's right hand. It was the cutting edge of a cynical philosophy that disguised conquest under the bogus banner of liberation. It was so simple that even the most undeveloped nations could fabricate it from Russian plans with Russian guidance and a few lathes and stamping machines. You could probably build one in your basement if you wanted. Crude, derivative, simple, powerful, robust, tough as hell.

Can a gun be great? If you don't think so, you probably shouldn't be reading this piece, but the AK-47 was great. It was invented by a peasant sergeant, and it was manufactured in a tractor factory. What could be more Red?

Though they won't acknowledge it -- just as they won't acknowledge that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane -- the Russians must know deep in their hearts that the AK family of weapons was influenced heavily by a German creation from late in World War II called the Sturmgewehr-44. Yes, folks: Sturmgewehr decrypts perfectly into . . . assault rifle.

The Stg-44 represents what might be called the "base of fire" approach to military doctrine, something the Russians, who were machine-gun nuts, agreed with enthusiastically. The Russians, in fact, armed whole battalions with the PPSh-41 submachine gun in World War II -- that's the real clunky-looking one with a ventilated barrel, no handgrips and a giant drum to hold 71 9mm rounds. They just sprayed out blizzards of lead and marched in behind them. But late in the war, one story has it, the Russians ran into an SS unit armed with the new Stg-44s, and the result was a slaughter. The submachine guns fired that 9mm pistol round and their effective range was about 50 yards. The assault rifle fired a shortened rifle round just as fast, but its range was about 200 yards. Simple reality: 200 is farther than 50 by 150. So as they advanced, the Russians were in a 150-yard kill zone and couldn't even bring fire to bear on the hidden Germans who mowed them down from so far out. Ultimately, the Russians simply called in air support and dumped white phosphorus on the Germans.

But they learned: In the small physics-driven universe of terminal ballistics, the faster round beats the slower round, and the rifle round always beats the pistol round. If you can fire it fast and accurately, you will win.

Thus, the AK-47, officially adapted by the Soviet Army in 1949 -- when our men were still carrying the M1, which had been designed in the early '30s. Later, in Vietnam, the AK-47 so outperformed the Army's M14 (a sort of super M1), we hastily adapted, as a countermeasure, the M16. The AK-47 is what might be called a rough masterpiece, with its weird choreography of slants and curves, the bluntness of its receiver. It looks like a tommy gun designed by Mr. Moto, after reading Dostoyevsky and a favorable history of Peter the Great. The curved magazine is necessary for technical reasons, but it provides an aesthetic: It gives the rifle an Orientalized sensibility. Then there's the peasant thickness of the gas tube over the barrel like a Siberian pipeline, and that wicked high front sight that just keeps on going. It has no elegance whatsoever, and no wit. Its cleverness lies in its contempt for cleverness. It's a tractor of a rifle, a serious piece of work.

The genius behind this was one Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov, a senior tank sergeant who, wounded in the battle of Bryansk in 1941, conceived of the weapon's design while in sick bay. Later he fabricated early prototypes "with the help of the leadership and comrades," according to the official Kalashnikov Web site. (Yes -- it's at kalashnikov.guns.ru/!) For his efforts he was ultimately awarded the Hero of Socialist Labour (twice), the Stalin Prize and the Lenin Prize Laureate, as well as a chestful of other cheesy Red doohickeys.

Look at his face; he's got that bluff-peasant look of utter placidity, those cold gray eyes that suggest the steppes in winter, that sheathing of flesh, the surprisingly luxuriant hair, but somehow a sense of the orthodox to him.

He's as Russian as vodka, and his masterpiece reflects his culture brilliantly. It is not fancy or high tech. It answers one question so useful to empires: How do you kill a lot of people fast, simply and without spending too much money?

Because of the failed Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the country is awash in Russian pieces. You see as well the ever-present PK machine gun on its bipod, the former squad automatic weapon of the Soviet army; it looks like it was designed by drunken plumbers in an Odessa hotel room while waiting for the hookers to arrive. But still, like the other Russian weapons, it just keeps on working, even after being packed in mud.

That is why, when you look at the small arms the Taliban and the Northern Alliance use, and the sleeker things our soldiers carry, you can see not just things and stuff but ideas and metaphors: the drift of violent history over the dusty hills of that raw land. You can feel shadows of a past never forgotten. When it is over and history has moved elsewhere, only the bones and the guns, one whitening, the other rusting, will remain.

-------- asia

Use of Nepali Army Urged

WORLD In Brief
Monday, November 26, 2001; Page A21
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14477-2001Nov25?language=printer

KATHMANDU, Nepal -- The ruling Nepali Congress party urged the government to use the army against rebels who have killed at least 42 soldiers and policemen in two days after breaking a four-month cease-fire.

Nepal's constitution says the military's purpose is to defend against foreign attacks, and the army has not been mobilized against the leftist rebels during their five-year insurgency to topple Nepal's constitutional monarchy.

"The party has directed the government to use all its security forces to protect lives and property," Nepali Congress spokesman Arjun Narsingh Chetri told reporters.

The rebels have often targeted police, but on Friday they attacked a Royal Nepalese Army installation for the first time, killing 14 soldiers at a command post in Dang, nearly 250 miles west of the capital. The raid was part of a series of attacks the rebels launched Friday after announcing their withdrawal from a truce with the government following failed settlement talks. The raids also killed at least 28 police officers.

-------- biological weapons

NEWS ANALYSIS
Moving Bioterror From Back Burner Singed C.D.C., Forcing It to Learn Fast

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/national/26CENT.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 - When a letter containing anthrax was mailed to a Senate office last month, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said antibiotics were not necessary for postal workers in the nation's capital, and two of the workers died. But when a 94-year-old woman in Connecticut contracted a lethal case of anthrax last week, the disease control agency quickly recommended treatment for postal workers, even though there is no evidence as yet that a contaminated letter was the source of her infection.

Those disparate responses, coming one month apart, illustrate how much the C.D.C. is learning - and how much it had to learn - in trying to manage what may be the most complex disease outbreak in its history.

Widely regarded as the world's premier public health organization, the agency has drawn praise for devising a treatment plan that has greatly reduced the fatality rate from inhalation anthrax, the deadliest form of the disease. But the agency has also been caught short, critics say, by a failure to prepare adequately for bioterrorism. It has been forced to rely on its experience with anthrax as a naturally occurring illness. That experience is limited because the disease is so rare, and it is of little value in a situation in which germs have been manufactured into potent weapons and spread intentionally by someone who wants to kill.

"Amidst all of the experts, virtually none have taken care of a case of anthrax," the disease control centers' director, Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, said in a recent interview. "Nor do we have experience with anthrax being sent through the mail."

So as the investigation takes new twists and turns, the agency is left, in Dr. Koplan's words, trying to put together bits and pieces of information "into a coherent scientific picture, and at the same time trying to shape public health policymaking."

The death of Ottilie W. Lundgren, the elderly Connecticut woman who last week became the fifth American to die of inhalation anthrax in the last two months, poses yet another daunting challenge for the disease control centers. Its epidemiologists are already struggling to unravel another anthrax mystery, that of Kathy T. Nguyen, the Bronx hospital worker who died on Oct. 31 from inhalation anthrax.

In contrast to the case of the two postal workers who died in Washington, no one faults the disease control centers for failing to prevent the deaths of Mrs. Lundgren and Ms. Nguyen. But the agency will certainly be judged by whether and how quickly it learns the source of their infections, because doing so could lead law enforcement to the criminals behind the anthrax attacks. And it will be judged as well by whether and how well it readies itself to deal with bioterrorism, which in the future could kill many more people.

"They have to get ready for the next, bigger hit," said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "It's not just what we did. It's what are we going to do."

The C.D.C., a branch of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, has long been asked to do too much with too little. Its buildings date back to World War II and are crumbling. Expensive equipment is stored in hallways and draped with plastic sheeting to protect it from rain dripping from the ceiling. In the early days of the anthrax outbreak, a power failure shut down the centers' laboratories overnight, just as technicians were trying to confirm a suspected anthrax infection in an employee of NBC News.

Based in Atlanta, the agency and its leaders are unaccustomed to the rough and tumble of Washington politics. They operate out of view of lawmakers and the public. Until this month, when President Bush toured the buildings, no United States president had visited the disease control centers while in office. Most Americans rarely give the centers a second thought, until an outbreak of disease - AIDS, West Nile virus and now anthrax - forces them to think about the importance of public health.

Critics say leaders at the disease control centers have, until recently, expressed little interest in preparing for bioterrorism, viewing it as a theoretical threat that distracted from their work of fighting real diseases.

As concern mounted about bioterrorism in the mid-1990's, the agency did not seek any money to prepare for the threat. But in 1999, the centers started an antibioterrorism program at the direction of Congress, which appropriated $122 million for it, a small fraction of the agency's $2.6 billion overall annual budget at the time. The amount has since increased to $181 million out of a yearly budget of $3.9 billion.

Officials used the money to build a network of 81 public health laboratories that can test for biological agents, including anthrax, as well as to improve communications between state and local health departments and the centers, and to develop a National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, a cache of medicines and supplies to be used in emergencies. The government drew on the stockpile for the first time after the Sept. 11 attacks, when drugs and supplies were shipped to New York City, and has since used it to provide drugs for people exposed to anthrax.

As a result of the antibioterrorism program, Dr. Koplan said, the agency now has a "world-class anthrax laboratory" and a unit of anthrax experts. But despite these improvements, the recent anthrax outbreak, which is a limited germ attack by any measure, has stretched the C.D.C. thin.

Its laboratory technicians are working overtime, even sleeping in their laboratories, and epidemiologists are being pulled from their regular jobs to join in the investigation. Few have had experience with anthrax. Until last month, when a Florida man came down with the inhalation form of the disease, only 18 cases of inhalation anthrax had been seen in this country in the last century.

So the agency found itself learning as it went. As Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, told the House of Representatives this month, "The response to anthrax is an evolving science." He said it was a testament to the centers "that people with inhalation anthrax are walking out of the hospital."

Yet that accomplishment may be overshadowed by the agency's decision not to treat postal workers in Washington. It was a decision based on the mistaken - and easily testable - assumption that anthrax could not escape a sealed envelope. And the agency has made other missteps. For instance, it was not until a few weeks ago, and then only at the urging of advisers to Mr. Thompson, that officials of the centers consulted with the retired Army scientists who developed anthrax as a weapon in the days before the United States abandoned its biological warfare program in 1972.

That kind of consultation might not have saved lives, experts say, but it might have given officials at the disease control centers a better understanding of how anthrax spores could float through the air. And it might have helped guide the centers as the agency made scientific decisions about which people, and what buildings, to test. For instance, officials used nasal swabs early in the outbreak to test people for exposure to anthrax. But they later learned those tests were largely useless.

Agency officials, and in particular Dr. Koplan, have also been criticized for being inaccessible to reporters and medical professionals in the early days of the anthrax attack, creating confusion among the public and, more important, doctors.

That problem has since been corrected. On Wednesday, the day Mrs. Lundgren died, a news conference to discuss her case featured the nation's foremost health officials: Mr. Thompson and Dr. Koplan, as well as Dr. D. A. Henderson, who heads a new bioterrorism preparedness office, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"Could they have done better?" said Tom Milne, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, a group that has been critical of the disease control agency in the past. "Probably. Did they blow it? Absolutely not."

But if there are future anthrax attacks, Mr. Milne said, "if we don't do better, some heads ought to roll."

Public health people tend to tally their successes based on a calculus of lives saved versus lives lost, and on this score, said Dr. Scott Lillibridge, a centers' expert on bioterrorism, the agency's performance has been "about as good as you can get in a crisis environment." Those saved include people on Capitol Hill, who were exposed to a very potent form of anthrax when a tainted letter was opened in the office of Senator Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader, and the postal employees who were treated aggressively after the first two died.

But as Dr. Osterholm, of the University of Minnesota, said: "You never really know in public health how many lives you saved. You always know how many you lost."

-------- business

Northrop Wins Contract

Monday, November 26, 2001; Page E02
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14445-2001Nov25?language=printer

Northrop Grumman's Maryland division won a contract to build 13 radar systems for the Air Force's widely used AWACs surveillance aircraft, a job worth $73.5 million.

Northrop makes the systems at its Linthicum plant, near Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Northrop is to complete the work as a subcontractor for Boeing.

The Linthicum operation first developed the radar system for the planes in the 1970s. The plane, with an acronym that stands for airborne warning and control systems, tracks targets in battle theaters and then communicates the information to attack planes. The Air Force has 33 such planes, and all of their systems are to be upgraded by Northrop.

No workers are expected to be added at Northrop's Linthicum facility, which employs 7,000 people.

-------- china

BEIJING JOURNAL
Mao's Buried Past: A Strange, Subterranean City

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/international/asia/26BEIJ.html?searchpv=nytToday

BEIJING - Twenty-five feet below the streets of Beijing, Feng Guangbin rattled off the remarkable attributes of the maze of vaulted tunnels that stretched out in four directions from the dim intersection at which he stood.

"Down that way we can even reach Taipei," he told a slack-jawed cluster of tourists from Taiwan, who appeared to believe China's Communist Party capable of anything. Mr. Feng went on to explain in his practiced patter that the tunnel ran 20 miles to the Beijing airport, from where it was possible to travel to the Taiwanese capital by plane.

Perhaps nowhere in the world is there a more mind-bending example of a country's reaction to a national threat than the hundreds of miles of subterranean passageways that the Chinese dug, mostly by hand, beneath its cities during the late 1960's.

The excavation, meant to shield much of the country's urban population from a Soviet nuclear attack, took on a frenzied pace in 1969 after Soviet troops seized a small island in the Amur River that forms part the two countries' border.

Mao Zedong, the increasingly monomaniacal leader, called on the masses to "deeply dig caves, extensively store rice." They did so with evident abandon. Major cities entered a molelike competition to build the country's most extensive tunnel network. Almost every able-bodied adult and child took part.

By the end of 1970, the country's 75 largest cities had reportedly dug enough holes to hold 60 percent of their populations. The industrial city of Wuhan, where Mao famously swam across the Yangtze River, hollowed out about 68,000 square yards of floor space underground. Strategic mountains were riddled like Gruyčre.

The capital's citizens dug miles of tunnels, too, including a fabled four- lane underground roadway between the Communist Party's leadership compound and the Great Hall of the People, where the country's servile congress sits. It was in part of that tunnel, sealed off and turned into a temporary mortuary, that Mao's body was embalmed after his death in 1976, according to the memoirs of one of his many doctors.

Most of the tunnels beneath Beijing are now empty, their gas-proof hatches paved over and their 10-inch- thick, radiation-proof steel doors locked shut.

One exception is the section in which Mr. Feng works as a guide. The network, with its tunnels 10-to- 15-feet wide and at least as high, had a 500-bed hospital, a 1,000-seat movie theater, classrooms, granaries, a barbershop, an arsenal and, of course, public baths.

All that is left of what the local district government calls the "underground city" are unlit antechambers marked by hand-lettered signs.

Other signs point down damp, darkened passageways toward Beijing landmarks.

"Summer Palace," reads one.

A silk company from the central Chinese city of Wuxi rents a large meeting room in which embattled Communist Party members were meant to hold inspirational strategy sessions. A group of middle-aged women make comforters from boiled silk cocoons there now and sell the blankets to the tourists who traipse through.

The women say they do not mind spending much of their days deep underground. "It's warm in the winter and cool in the summer," said a woman who would identify herself only as Ms. Hua and who wears long pants year-round.

Beijing's total honeycomb, which took 400,000 people to complete, could reputedly hold a million people and stretched to the Western Hills, behind whose distant outline the city's sun sets each night. Elaborate ventilation systems and storehouses were designed to allow Beijingers to live deep in the earth for up to four months while waiting for the air above to clear from a nuclear or chemical attack.

It was a gargantuan but wasted effort. By the time the tunnels were complete, Mao had calmed down and stopped talking about imminent invasion.

A mountain of excavated dirt behind the city's Temple of Heaven sprouted grass and then trees. Grain stored in the tunnels grew moldy. The underground hospitals, barbershops and movie theaters built for a bombarded population were cannibalized so their contents could be used topside, and eventually many of the tunnels were blocked to keep the curious, criminals or perhaps even counterrevolutionaries from moving around beneath the city.

There have been various efforts to turn the tunnels to good uses. More than 3,700 hotels have been opened in tunnels around the country, according to the Liberation Army Daily, and there are more than 13,000 underground warehouses (some of Wuhan's famous caves are now used to store bananas). Nearly 4,000 restaurants, shops or "recreation venues" have been carved out of others.

One warren in Shanghai is used as a karaoke club, in which the nooks and crannies provide plenty of privacy for hired hostesses and their customers.

In Beijing, for all the sweat that was expended to build the tunnels, few Chinese citizens are allowed into the underground complex.

Some of the tour guides say that local residents are not permitted into the tunnels because the network is a "military secret," though it is not clear why a military secret would be advertised to foreigners.

A woman who would identify herself only as Ms. Li, who works in the local civil defense administration, which manages the network, confirmed that Chinese citizens are not allowed in, saying mysteriously that military considerations are "part of the reason." But a bigger consideration, she said, is that "domestic travelers are not as cultured as overseas tourists."

"Strictly speaking," said Wang Mingqi, the district's director of civil defense and Ms. Li's boss, "few domestic travelers would be interested in the souvenirs they sell in the underground city and if we admit more groups, the cost of maintenance will go up."

-------- drug war

States: Kentucky, South Carolina

USA Today
01/11/26
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Kentucky

Owensboro - The Daviess County Sheriff's Department transformed a 1962 Cadillac ambulance into a Methbuster. It's the latest crime-fighting vehicle in the department's Drug Abuse Resistance Education fleet. The 10-foot-tall, 4-wheel drive monster car will be used at local schools, parades and other events to spread D.A.R.E.'s message, said Sheriff Keith Cain.

South Carolina

Columbia - Defense lawyers are concerned about police agencies setting up unaccredited crime labs to avoid waiting for the State Law Enforcement Division to test evidence. It can take a year or more for some prosecutors to get drug evidence analyzed through the state agency, said Tommy Pope, president of the South Carolina Solicitors Association. The seven local crime labs are limited to testing fingerprints and drug evidence.

---

DRUG TRADE
With Taliban Gone, Opium Farmers Return to Their Only Cash Crop

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/international/asia/26POPP.html

KHERABAD, Afghanistan, Nov. 25 - Come spring, the poppies will be blooming in Afghanistan again.

"This is the time for planting," said Abdul Wakil, a 54-year-old farmer. "This year, 400 families here in the village will cultivate it. We take the opium and put it in a bag. Then we search for customers at the Friday bazaar."

"There is no other way to survive," he added. "I have 10 children. There are 28 people in my house."

There is nothing to do here except farming, and there is not enough profit in wheat or corn to make a living, the farmers say. There is only one way - to cultivate poppies and get the money.

The Taliban are gone from here. So is their ban on growing opium poppies. Afghanistan's production of raw opium fell from a world-record peak of more than a million pounds in 1999 to a mere 40,600 pounds this year, a 96 percent decline, according to the United Nations Drug Control Program.

Say what one will about the Taliban, they just said no to poppies, imprisoning farmers who defied them. But now, barring an unexpected turn of events, Afghanistan can be expected to regain its status as the world's leading source of heroin in a year or two.

In late April, the children will slit the flowers' fat bulbs and scrape the ooze into a sack. Buyers will pay the farmers $100 or more per pound, at least one hundred times what fruits and vegetables will bring.

Then thousands of tons of opium will be hauled by trucks, taxis and mules over the mountains to Pakistan.

Refiners will turn it into hundreds of thousands of pounds of heroin worth billions of dollars to millions of addicts all over the world.

"This is my message to the world," Mr. Wakil said. "Help us establish industries in Afghanistan. We are tough people, hard workers, and we would happily quit the cultivation of poppy. But here there are no industries, no factories, nothing, and we need to take the money from the one remaining source."

The economics of opium in Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest nations, are so stark as to defy argument. Aubaidullah, a 22-year-old farmer in Kherabad who is sowing poppy seeds, explained them well.

He said he planted one hectare, about 2.5 acres, of poppy last year and turned a profit of $13,000, allowing him to feed 15 people in his extended family and buy two new oxen to plow his fields. If he had planted wheat and vegetables on that land, he might have made $100, he said. Furthermore, Afghanistan has gone through a four-year drought, and poppies need far less water than vegetables or grain.

"A lot of people under the Taliban tried to plant corn and wheat, and they had to leave the country because of their debts," said Aubaidullah, who only uses one name. "If you plant poppy, the buyers will lend you the money you expect to reap from your crop in advance, at planting time."

Shamshul Haq has the unenviable job of deputy chief drug-control officer in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, the second-leading opium producing province during the 1990's. His duties have become unclear under the new self-proclaimed government in eastern Afghanistan, the Eastern Shura. A chief official of the new ministry of law and order, Sorhab Qadri, said today that "the top authorities have not yet decided whether to let the farmers continue cultivating poppies."

Nangarhar had nearly 50,000 acres planted in poppy in 2000. That was enough to produce roughly a quarter of a million pounds of heroin base, Mr. Haq said, and represented 85 percent or more of all farm income in the province. That fell to less than 540 acres in the two growing seasons of 2001, a nearly 99 percent decline. But Mr. Haq said poppy planting is soaring now in Afghanistan.

"Nothing is done for the farmers to show them why they should not grow poppy," Mr. Haq said. "Without a lot of help from the world community, they will grow it not only in their fields but on the roofs and in their flowerpots."

The Taliban's ban on poppy cultivation in no way meant a ban on opium sales, farmers and dealers say. Nearly a year's supply had been stashed away. "We have a lot of people with opium in warehouses," said Mr. Wakil, the farmer. "It doesn't have an expiration date."

In a hole in the wall deep in the Jalalabad bazaar, surrounded by currency traders and tea shops, Gul Zaman conducts his opium business. Business is good, he said with a smile. It has been good for two years straight.

"There never was a ban on selling under the Taliban - just cultivation," he said.

Although wholesale prices plummeted from about $400 a pound to about $150 a pound after the Taliban fell, they will rebound, for the warehouse supplies that kept things running this year are almost dry now, Mr. Zaman said. If the middlemen ever run out, he has plenty of his own land planted with poppies.

He said he can sell up to 2,500 pounds of opium base on a good day. That will produce about 275 pounds of heroin. On an average day, he has 600 to 700 pounds of opium sales.

"The Taliban regime was the first in the history of Afghanistan to stop the cultivation of poppy," he said. "It simply isn't possible for anyone except the Taliban to stop it. They had real power. The present regime does not."

-------- france

French general on trial for Algeria crimes

By Elizabeth Bryant
United Press International
November 26, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/26112001-060001-1309r.htm

A former French general went on trial Monday on charges of "apologizing for war crimes," tied to his published descriptions of tortures and summary executions he and other French military committed during Algeria's 1954-1962 civil war.

The three-day trial against 83-year-old Gen. Paul Assauresses is expected to feature testimony from an array of historians, former military officers and judicial experts likely to dredge up new details of France's troubled war-time past.

But the focus centers on Assauresses' book, "Special Services, Algeria 1955-57." Published in May, the book offers a stark account of tortures and executions ordered by Aussaresses and other French officers to "liquidate" Algerians fighting French occupation of their country.

Aussaresses' editors, from the Perrin and Plon publishing companies, are also defendants in the trial.

If found guilty, Aussaresses faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and a 300,000-franc(around $42,500)fine.

"Who cares what happens to him?" said Jean-Pierre Dubois, vice president of the Paris-based Human Rights League, one of the plaintiffs in the trial. "He's an old man, and our problem isn't to wonder how many years he'll remain in prison."

"Our problem is that the [French] Republic confesses what it has done," Dubois said in an interview Monday with United Press International. "Of course we know we tortured in Algeria. The historians said it, the witnesses said it. But it's different when the Republic and the state says it -- that it's true, there were people who tortured in Algerian the name of the French government, and who therefore have committed inhuman acts."

Aussaresses book, along with similar confessions of other French war-time officers, have roiled France over the last year.

Last spring, the French government expelled Aussaresses from the military reserve -- a largely symbolic act, meaning only the former general cannot wear his military uniform.

This year, France created a national day -- Sept. 25 -- paying tribute to those Algerians who fought alongside the French during their country's civil war. But a group of the former fighters -- known as "harkis" -- filed suit against the French government in August, charging Paris allowed thousands to be executed by the post-war Algerian government.

Paris has also ignored demands by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to formally apologize for the war.

Both in his book and in interviews, Ausseresses has also remained largely unapologetic for his actions. In his new book -- "For France: Special Services 1942-1954" -- he said he was merely doing his job.

"What would you have done to the man who knew terror would strike Manhattan but refused to speak?" Aussaresses asked in the book, drawing a comparison with the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Like Aussaresses, Dubois agrees the trial carries lessons for the current war against terrorism -- notably prospects of military tribunals in the United States, or chances undemocratic means will be used to justify rooting out terrorism.

"Mr. Aussaresses' argument was that in order to avoid chances that thousands face an inhuman fate, one must be inhuman as well," Dubois said. "And that is a real issue in current events. It's not just history."

-------- israel

Militant kills himself as Sharon demands quiet

USA Today
11/26/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/26/palestinian-militant.htm

EREZ CROSSING, Gaza Strip (AP) - An Islamic militant blew himself up near an Israeli checkpoint and Palestinians fired shots at a Jewish neighborhood Monday as U.S. mediators renewed efforts to end Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon renewed a demand for seven days of "absolute quiet" - meaning no attacks on Israelis - before moving ahead with a truce deal that would require Israel to pull back troops, lift travel restrictions in Palestinian areas and later halt all settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians dismissed the demand as a ploy enabling Israel to evade its obligations and accused Sharon of stepping up military strikes in recent days in an attempt to sabotage the U.S. mission.

The Americans, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, arrived Monday. At Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, they met with the head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, Avi Dichter, U.S. officials said.

Burns and Zinni were to meet with Sharon and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres on Tuesday and with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Wednesday, after he returns from a tour of several Arab countries.

Sharon appointed Meir Dagan, a counterterrorism adviser to a previous Israeli government, to handle daily contacts with the U.S. team.

In violence Monday, Israeli military officials said a Palestinian worker carrying explosives blew himself up outside a concrete pillbox used by soldiers at an Israeli checkpoint near an Israeli-Palestinian industrial park in northern Gaza.

The militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

The assailant, Teissir al-Ajarmi, 22, from the nearby Jebaliya refugee camp, passed through two or three Palestinian police checkpoints while carrying the explosives, said Col. Ofer Shafran, an Israeli army officer in the area.

During al-Ajarmi's funeral, a Hamas member told several hundred mourners the attack was revenge for the killing of the group's military leader in the West Bank.

-------- korea

The World's Oppressors

New York Times
November 26, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/opinion/L26KORE.html

To the Editor:
Re "North Korean Death Rate Is Said to Be Up Sharply Since 1994" (news article, Nov. 22):

The rulers of North Korea, like the Taliban, are true believers. North Korea believes in Marxism and the Taliban believe in Islam, but both have tried to end heterodoxy in order to change human nature.

A government that seeks to change human nature is logically a system that hates human beings the way they are. It is no coincidence that the Taliban and North Korea have brought so much suffering to their people. Now that the Taliban have lost control of much of Afghanistan, North Korea has become the country that most oppresses its own people.

GEORGE JOCHNOWITZ Staten Island, Nov. 22, 2001

-------- us

States: Delaware, North Dakota

USA Today
01/11/26
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Delaware

Wilmington - The U.S. Coast Guard has boosted security along the busy shipping channels of the Delaware River, officials said. A foreign vessel wanting to enter the Delaware River and Bay now must give 96 hours notice; 24 hours notice was previously required. The Delaware River has three ports: Philadelphia, Camden, N.J., and Wilmington.

North Dakota

Grand Forks - The Army Corps of Engineers said estimates for flood-control projects in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, Minn., are higher than expected. If the new numbers are correct, the 1997 estimate of $350.3 million for the project is off by about $70 million. A Grand Forks city engineer said it's too early to produce an accurate estimate of total costs.

---

U.S. Marines battle armored column

USA Today
11/26/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/26/marine-attack.htm

SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN (AP) - Newly landed U.S. Marines went into combat for the first time late Monday, with fighter jets attacking armored vehicles near their new base in southern Afghanistan. Two F-14 Tomcats hit the armored column, said Maj. Brad Lowell, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command. He said AH-1W Cobras were in the area but did not fire on the armored vehicles. Earlier Marine spokesman Capt. David Romley said Cobras had attacked 15 tanks and armored personnel carriers and destroyed some of them. As he spoke with reporters shortly before midnight local time, he indicated combat continued. There was no word on casualties for either side.

Romley did not say who manned the vehicles, but the desert airstrip the Marines seized Sunday night is in the region of Kandahar, the last major stronghold held by the Taliban.

Romley would not say if the armored column was heading toward the base or give any details about where it was attacked, except to say it was "in the vicinity of this base." He said the vehicles had been spotted by U.S. aircraft.

Romley said the column included tanks and BMPs, which are armored vehicles capable of carrying a dozen soldiers each. When the Soviet army retreated from Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade-long war, it left its client regime with dozens of tanks and BMPs that later were captured by a coalition of local militias and warlords.

At the base, helicopters and transport planes ferried in troops and equipment late into the night, and the Pentagon said it would take at least another day to reach the full complement of about 1,000 Marines. The aircraft were operating off the USS Peleliu hundreds of miles away in the northern Arabian Sea and from unidentified bases on the coast.

Working under a bright moon in the chill night air, Marines hurried to set up shop and fortify the airstrip for a new phase of the U.S. war on terrorism. Until now, the U.S. role in the war had been mostly in the air.

Carried by CH-53E Super Stallion heavy lift helicopters, the first contingent of Marines touched down at the desolate airstrip at 9 p.m. local time Sunday and met no resistance, according to their reports.

"The Marines have landed and we now own a piece of Afghanistan," Gen. James Mattis, commander of the task force, said Monday. "Everything went without a hitch."

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declined to talk about what kinds of operations might be staged from the base. He suggested only that it would ratchet up the pressure on the leaders of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda network by further hindering their movements in the Kandahar area.

Rumsfeld also said that "hundreds, not thousands" of Marines would man the "forward operating base," but not necessarily as the vanguard of a substantially larger American ground force.

Earlier, President Bush said the Marines would assist in hunting down terrorists linked to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Associated Press was allowed to accompany the Marines on condition its reports not reveal the base's exact location or any future mission plans.

The base is isolated, with no signs of towns in the distance across the flat desert. The only lights for miles around were the runway lights installed by the Marines and lights burning inside the airstrip's buildings.

Col. Peter Miller, chief of staff of the Marine task force, said the sand landing strip and buildings had been built by a wealthy Arab to provide access to his hunting lodge. The compound includes a small mosque with a minaret and a large white building that may have served as a hangar.

There are more than 4,000 Marines in the two units contributing troops to the operation: the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Pendleton, Calif., and the 26th from Camp Lejeune, N.C., which are on amphibious ships in the Arabian Sea. The units are trained for ground combat, evacuations, humanitarian aid and other missions.

The first troops to land - from the 15th brought in by helicopters - were watched over by AH-1W Cobra and UN-1N Huey helicopter gunships, Harrier jump-jet fighter-bombers and other aircraft.

The aircraft flew as far as 400 miles from their ships in what was described as the longest amphibious and air deployment ever conducted by the Marine Corps.

"We are going to operate at the very extremes of the ability of our machinery," said Miller, the task force's British-born chief of staff. "We would much prefer to be closer in, because it just makes it logistically that much easier for us. But the way this operation is designed, with the intermediate staging bases, we'll be able to pull this off."

Shortly before the operation began Sunday night, the steel hull of the Peleliu echoed with the sound of gunfire as infantrymen tested their weapons by firing into the sea from a wide doorway. Then they hauled their packs, weapons and protective gear - often pushing 100 pounds of equipment - to transport helicopters waiting on deck.

As some of the Marines boarded the helicopters, beads of sweat on their faces from the heat and the strain of carrying their heavy gear, a Navy chaplain, Lt. Cmdr. Donald Troast of Boston, touched some on the shoulder.

Once they had boarded, he stood with his head bowed. He said later: "I asked God to bless every one of them. I don't care what their religion is."

---

On Campuses, Seeing the Military With New Eyes After Sept. 11

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By DAVID W. CHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/nyregion/26RECR.html

At Seton Hall University, some students who previously ignored the R.O.T.C. cadets roaming around campus now regard their uniformed classmates as - of all things - cool. Some have been so inspired that they say they may join the military, too.

At Bronx Community College, where military service has always been an attractive avenue to win a scholarship, some students who had previously thought of joining the military now say they won't. They are too scared.

At Columbia University, where students have for decades shared a liberal disdain for all things military, some students say they have had a change of heart. A small group has even formed a new, pro-military organization.

In ways large and small, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have altered how college students regard the military, the prospect of military service and their peers who decide to join. The reaction varies from campus to campus, but what emerges from interviews on three distinctly different campuses in the New York area is a complex and sometimes surprising portrait of students who are rethinking their views of the military - or for the first time thinking about the role of the military in American life.

Even with the war effort seemingly going well, few students believe that the military buildup will suddenly subside. Most say they would serve if asked, though some say they are afraid to die. Few challenge the reasons of those who do join. And while some students, particularly at Columbia, oppose the war in Afghanistan, few question whether one should be loyal or patriotic.

"Growing up, I was very anti-establishment, anti-American government," said Margot Schulman, a Columbia junior and premed student. "But since Sept. 11, I have softened my views about everything."

Of the three campuses, Seton Hall, a private Catholic university in South Orange, N.J., has witnessed the greatest display of patriotism among its students, who are generally conservative.

After the attacks, dozens of students either called military recruiters or talked to resident advisers about joining the military. When R.O.T.C. students conduct their exercises on campus, more classmates seem to notice.

"People come up to me and are extremely interested in the military," said Colin Kelly, a Seton Hall senior and economics major who is the student leader, or battalion commander, of the campus R.O.T.C. "Usually they'll say that it's cool that you do it."

Aubrey Carpe, a sophomore journalism major, reflects the changes.

Mr. Carpe said he used to worship anti- establishment punk-rock groups like Anti-Flag, "but I feel totally weird listening to that now." A fan of Neil Young, Bob Dylan and other icons from the 1960's, he finds the lyrics of protest, suddenly, to be off-key.

"It's cool what they're saying, but this is not Vietnam at all," he said. "This is terrorism." Now he says he admires the patriotism of his friends in R.O.T.C.

Even dovish students said they were not opposed to the military, per se. Jonathan Ernesto, a sophomore business major at Seton Hall who participated in a recent event promoting tolerance called Circle of Unity, said that he hoped civilians would not be hurt in Afghanistan, and that he had developed an interest in joining either the Navy or the F.B.I.

After one recent late-afternoon Mass on campus, Junno Arocho, a freshman from Newark, said that he was now contemplating a stint in the Army.

"With everything that's happened, it's made me think," said Mr. Arocho, who is studying diplomacy. "What am I going to do with my life? Being part of the U.S. is not just being a citizen, it's being able to defend life and defend the existence of mankind as we know it."

That gung-ho enthusiasm is less evident at Bronx Community College, part of the City College of New York. Sure, there is an Army Reserve site opposite the campus entrance. Sure, many students have long considered the military because of its scholarships.

But for many students, joining the military has usually meant exchanging the hazards of a tough neighborhood for the economic benefits of a relatively safe military life.

"I don't want to fight in a war; I'd rather go to jail," said Paul Brown, 21, a Bronx native and radiology major. "I might have a chance in jail, but if I go to war, I might be dead in 0.5 seconds."

Randy Rampersaud, 19, said that he once thought about joining the military. But because his family is of Indian descent, via Guyana, he worries that he might be viewed with suspicion. As a result, he said would serve only if there was a draft or a great need for enlisted men.

More than half of the student body at Bronx Community College is foreign-born, including 32 percent from the Dominican Republic alone. And generally, immigrants volunteer for military service more readily than the natives, partly because they are eager to prove their patriotism.

But most students sound like Edward Polanco, 26, who came from the Dominican Republic six years ago. At first, he wanted to join the American military to emulate his older brother, who was an army sergeant in the Dominican Republic. But then came Sept. 11.

"Before, I was thinking that it would be good for my résumé, because anywhere you go, you say, `I was in the Army,' they give you a job easily," said Mr. Polanco, a computer science major who works part time as a security guard. "But now it's scary. Everyone I see, they are scared. They don't want to go. My family doesn't want me to go."

For decades, antipathy toward the military has never been in short supply at Columbia, where students protesting the Vietnam War once occupied campus buildings. And in response to the current crisis, some students, particularly those active in recent antiglobalization protests, have formed a new antiwar group called People for Peace.

One member, Yvonne Liu, a junior who is a neuroscience major, said: "It's definitely something that I'm not comfortable with. It's like sending the poorest and most marginalized people in our nation to be killed in the name of corporate interests."

But Columbia is also the birthplace of another student group, Students United for Victory, founded after the attacks to support the military.

"I was expecting people to confront me and try to provoke me, because this is a college campus in a liberal city, and Columbia has a history of antiwar protests," said Lovinsky Joseph, a freshman from Linden, N.J., who is the group's spokesman."But I've never received anything like that. In fact, I would say that two-thirds of the students have been supportive."

One student who once considered joining the Navy, Carly Burton, a junior from Austin, Tex., said that a few friends had considered volunteering after Sept. 11 because "they don't want to sit back, 10 years, 20 years from now, and say, `I wasn't a part of it.' " But she decided against it. Ms. Burton says she believes that she could contribute more to society by becoming an investment banker.

Some students acknowledge that they feel somewhat removed from the military, because they have the luxury of cocooning themselves in academia. Even so, most say that they no longer view the military as something alien and distant from their lives, and they expect that the military will be a looming presence for some time to come.

"Before, the military was like the little place in Times Square where you could sign up, and I never knew anyone who did it," said Jennifer Lynn Stermer, a junior and an English major from Manhattan. "Now, I feel - I don't know if respect is the right word - but I'm thankful that there are people willing to do that."


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

States

USA Today
01/11/26
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Connecticut

Danielson - A new state police unit formed to deal with quality-of-life issues in eastern Connecticut has made 75 arrests in its first 3 months. The six-member task force from Troop D concentrates on cleaning up neighborhoods known for drug dealing and loud parties. They also are responsible for handling calls dealing with drinking, drug use or domestic violence.

Nebraska

Omaha - Shortly after police officer Jimmy Wilson Jr. was murdered while making an on-duty traffic stop 6 years ago, money in his memory came in unsolicited, according to his father, retired police officer. Now, the Jimmy Wilson Jr. Foundation is struggling to raise money for law enforcement and firefighting agencies. Last year, expenses exceeded revenues by $78,393, tax returns showed.

New York

Grand Isle - Police and rescue workers from Vermont and New York recovered the body of Joseph Rostak, 20, in 19 feet of water about 150 yards north of Valcour Island, authorities said. Rostak, of Plattsburgh, and three other men had been duck hunting on the island and were returning to New York when their boat capsized Friday.

North Carolina

Durham - A district court judge has begun issuing arrest orders for those arriving late for court. Latecomers must report to the magistrate's office, where they must post an additional bond or go to jail. Judge Craig Brown said the method prevents defendants from manipulating the court by showing up late or not at all to delay their case. Court begins at 9 o'clock, Brown said.

Pennsylvania

Philadelphia - Police are searching for a mugger who punched a nun visiting a South Philadelphia parish and stole her purse. Sister Eileen O'Connell, 35, was visiting Our Lady of Angels Convent from Kentucky. Police said the nun was not seriously hurt.

Utah

Salt Lake City - State budget cuts shut down two Utah prisons, bringing an early release for 400 inmates and more leniency for parolees who violate terms of their release. Sending parole violators back to prison is the last resort, said Mike Chabries, executive director of the Department of Corrections. Parolees who miss appointments, skip work or take alcohol or drugs are more likely to receive a stern warning or drug tests than jail time.

Vermont

Rutland - The Vermont Corrections Department is opening mail between inmates and their lawyers to protect against anthrax or other biological agents. The defender general's office and the American Civil Liberties Union argue the policy could interfere with private communications. A corrections official says no mail is being read.

---

Military tribunals provide streamlined justice

USA Today
11/26/2001
By Laura Ingraham
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-26-ncguest1.htm

What can Democrats do as President Bush's approval rating continues to hold steady in the 90% range? Desperately scour the political landscape for leverage on fringe issues, apparently.

How else to explain the decision of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to hold hearings on the president's Nov. 13 executive order that allows for military trials of suspected terrorists and their helpers.

To listen to the scorching rhetoric on the left, one would think the administration had indiscriminately begun rounding up people during Ramadan instead of breaking the fast with Muslim leaders, as Bush did at the White House.

"They're literally dismantling justice and the justice system as we know it," bellowed Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said, "These procedures belong in a Soviet state or a dictatorship, not in a free society."

The New York Times' lead editorial branded Bush's decision on military courts "A Travesty of Justice." In liberal lock step, The Washington Post described the tribunals as "comparable" with "secret courts by hooded judges in Peru." Neither newspaper bothered to mention the fact that presidents throughout history (Washington, Lincoln and FDR) relied on military trials. Or that the Supreme Court's Quirin decision in 1942 upheld their use for "unlawful combatants" engaged in murderous plots against America.

Some conservatives, such as William Safire and Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., are also against the use of military commissions. Democrats who were blasting Barr as an obsessed, seething Clinton-hater a few years ago now cite him as a learned, reasonable Republican.

The president's executive order is narrowly tailored. It allows for military tribunals against a non-U.S. citizen if there is "reason to believe" the person is or was a member of al-Qaeda and "has engaged in, aided or abetted, or conspired to commit" acts of terrorism against U.S. interests, or is preparing to do so. Tribunals are straightforward in their application, used for those carrying out war crimes.

Much of the anti-military-tribunal howl centers on the fact that the proceedings are held in secret. However, it is eminently reasonable to think that as we pursue our war against terror, the public prosecution of individuals who are part of a worldwide conspiracy to murder as many Americans as possible would be harmful to a wide variety of U.S. interests. Classified information whose secrecy is critical to future U.S. investigations could be compromised - such as the identity of double agents, specifics of other terrorist plots and the details of the covert techniques used by our government to prevent them.

And let's not forget: The media have a built-in conflict of interest in assessing the pros and cons of the secrecy of military tribunals. It would be great business for the media if the tribunals were public, but what about for our country? If you thought the anchor-jockeying for the Gary Condit interview was vicious, imagine what Diane, Larry, Ted or Barbara would do to get the first Osama bin Laden TV sit-down.

In wartime, it is incumbent upon our commander in chief to make the safeguarding of U.S. citizens his top priority. By authorizing military commissions, he sends an important deterrent message to aspiring terrorists worldwide: If you set out to kill Americans - whatever your justification - you will pay swiftly and severely.

With the Taliban near total collapse, it is likely that military tribunals have already been convened at home or abroad. As Catholic University law school dean Douglas Kmiec pointed out, this is not just about punishment. The tribunals "are extensions of the military campaign" to prevent future attacks, which Congress has authorized the president to do.

Imagine what fun bin Laden would have dragging out a trial in U.S. federal court, his pre-trial objections and deft courtroom maneuvers carried by his own "dream team" of $600-an-hour lawyers. Should families of the victims of Sept. 11 be forced to endure media coverage of terrorists' trials and the lengthy appeals that would follow? (With thousands of al-Qaeda members worldwide, a new cable network could be launched to accommodate wall-to-wall trial coverage - TTV, Terrorism Television.)

Some have floated the idea that we mete out wartime justice through an international panel of judges - something akin to the United Nations war-crimes tribunal now trying former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic. Do we really need a permission slip from the U.N. to try the people who planned and organized the Sept. 11 attacks?

Although it is true, as the president has said, that terrorism threatens all civilized nations, we are fighting this war for our national interest first, not for some U.N.-scripted new world order. That we welcome and seek cooperation in the war against terror is irrelevant to the fact that it is our national right and responsibility to defend our citizens against those who want to do us harm, and our leaders' duty to find them and bring them to justice.

Farming out our judicial interests for the "global good" would set the terrible precedent that we do not have the sovereign right as a nation to capture and try people who have murdered or plan to murder our innocent citizens. Whatever damage military tribunals do to our international reputation, we risk far greater damage to our national psyche if non-citizen terrorists are allowed to exploit our system and our national pain in prolonged and costly courtroom dramas. Do any of the president's naysayers remember his visit to an Islamic center only days after the attacks? Or his subsequent gestures to reassure Muslim-Americans?

If Democrats and their civil-libertarian compatriots want to take up the case of terrorist rights in the 2002 elections, Republicans will be smiling all the way to electoral gains. Bush continues to maintain overwhelming public support for his war against terror because he is aggressively pursuing terrorists and those who harbor them. The administration has struck a balance between the public's right to know and the need to destroy al-Qaeda before it strikes again.

Bush knows that the media beast will always be hungry for more. But military tribunals, which avert the possibility of a media spectacle for militant martyrs and safeguard classified information, give this country what it deserves after Sept. 11 - streamlined justice for war criminals.

Laura Ingraham, a former Supreme Court clerk, hosts a radio program syndicated by Westwood One. She is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

---

U.S. looks at which tech proposals will fly

USA Today
11/25/2001
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/26/tech-usat.htm

Remote-controlled flights. Bulletproof cockpit doors. Eye scanners at airport gates. As federal aviation officials ponder how to make air travel safer after the Sept. 11 attacks, they've been deluged with more than 30,000 ideas such as these for applying technology to airport and airline security. Ideas for new safety gizmos and smart security systems have rolled in not just from companies with dollar signs in their eyes. Citizens who are trying to be helpful have also offered suggestions since President Bush on Sept. 27 advocated some technological advances in security as a way of restoring public confidence in commercial air travel.

And the government is taking them seriously. The Federal Aviation Administration is wading through the proposals it has received and plans to require the airlines and airports to adopt the best ones. The Transportation Department is doing the same. Bush has set aside $500 million for airlines to spend on security technology, including fortifying jet cockpits.

Among some of the other ideas that are being reviewed:

- Stun guns. United Airlines has proposed giving all of its pilots stun guns, which can subdue assailants with jolts of electricity. Stun guns are now banned aboard planes. - Full-body scans. These modified X-ray machines can look through clothing to see weapons, drugs and other items. The Customs Service uses them to screen some passengers arriving from overseas. - Video cameras in the cabin. They'd allow pilots to monitor the rest of the plane without leaving the cockpit. Delta has installed test cameras in one of its planes. - Strobe lights and sirens in the jet that could distract hijackers.

Although few dispute that spending more money on people, such as baggage screeners, can make travel safer, aviation experts also say that machines like these can do things people can't.

"Machines don't get distracted," says Steve Luckey, head of the security committee for the Airline Pilots Association. "They don't get tired, they don't need a break, and they don't need to go to the bathroom. Technology's great."

Although Luckey and other experts share the president's hope that technology can make air travel safer, they also dismiss some suggested fixes, such as Bush's suggestion for remote-control piloting, as naive. Other ideas, such as building tamper-proof transponders or ID cards, have provoked disagreement over their effectiveness and affordability.

Even taking seemingly simple steps as strengthening cockpit doors, which Bush advocated as one of the first steps of applying technology to make flying safer, is not so easy.

For years, the FAA required cockpit doors to be light enough to break through in case pilots had to be rescued. Doors also had to allow air to pass during a sudden decompression, so most were designed to swing open or allow a panel to flip open under pressure. Such doors could be easily battered down.

After the hijackings, the FAA gave airlines 18 months to make it harder to storm cockpits.

It will take clever engineering to design doors that can stop a 250-pound man yet still give way in case of emergency, experts say. But they also say it's possible.

So far, the nation's largest airlines have put new locks and bars on cockpit doors as a stopgap measure. Only Alaska Airlines, which flies on the West Coast, and JetBlue Airways, which flies mostly out of New York's Kennedy International Airport, have started installing doors lined with material used in bulletproof vests on all their craft. It's not clear yet whether the doors will meet FAA standards.

Less feasible, experts say, is Bush's suggestion that technology be developed to allow controllers on the ground to land jets if trouble, such as a hijacking, broke out.

"I don't know anybody who's thought about it hard who thinks it's a good idea," says John Hansman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Hansman and others say that such a ground-control system would be just as vulnerable to terrorists as airplanes are - and to computer hackers as well. Security experts also fear that the takeover of an aircraft's flight controls could prompt desperate hijackers to start killing passengers on the plane to get what they want.

In addition, less than half of the nation's commercial fleet is equipped for this technique. Bringing the fleet up to snuff would cost billions of dollars, experts say. And controllers would need extensive training to handle the task.

"That's one for the reject bin," says Robert Poole, director of transportation studies at the Reason Public Policy Institute, a free-market think tank.

Discarding obviously unworkable ideas is easy. Much harder is deciding what to do about technology that has generated both criticism and enthusiasm. For example, Bush has said that the government would fund research on transponders that cannot be switched off in the cockpit.

Transponders, which are normally kept on during flights, identify jets to radar. The Sept. 11 hijackers turned them off so that ground controllers couldn't see the jets' altitude or identification codes.

The recommendation sounds simple enough. But such a step should be approached cautiously, says Charles Higgins, head of a newly created division of Boeing that works on security technology.

For example, what would happen if a redesigned transponder shorted out and began sparking? In modern jets, pilots can shut off power to devices to prevent fires. Should the transponder be given different safety standards than the rest of the electronics?

And what about the hazards of rewiring the cockpit? Wiring is one of aviation's top safety concerns, and work on jet wiring has led to numerous safety incidents. Safety officials say the idea is feasible, but they warn that a rushed effort to redo the wiring of thousands of jets could cause trouble.

Critics also have strong grievances about a technology that has won widespread favor from airlines and some security experts: voluntary identification cards.

Passengers would get one by undergoing a strict background check. Card holders could then breeze through the airport without being subjected to rigorous searches. Automated airport scanners would verify cardholders' identity by checking their palms or the irises of their eyes. Both body parts are as unique as fingerprints.

Similar systems already are in place for passengers entering the Amsterdam airport from abroad. London's Heathrow Airport will soon start a trial of iris-linked ID cards for Americans and Canadians who travel to Britain frequently.

At a congressional hearing last month, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey called this body-based technology, known as biometrics, "one I'd liked to see all of us embrace and advance in an even more aggressive fashion."

The Air Transport Association, the trade group for airlines, goes a step further. It says such ID cards could be linked to databases held by the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and other security agencies. That way anyone who's had any trouble with the law would be stopped before getting on a plane.

"If you don't subscribe to the voluntary approach, you're going to go through a very rigid, invasive" search, says Michael Wascom, the association's vice president of communications.

That's precisely the problem, according to opponents.

"People will effectively be coerced into getting these cards to avoid intrusive, sometimes demeaning searches," says Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Besides, say Steinhardt and others, the purpose of the cards could easily be undermined. It's so easy to concoct a new identity that criminals could get a biometric ID card under a fake name and legal history, Steinhardt says. Others point out that such a system probably wouldn't have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Seventeen of the nineteen Sept. 11 terrorists were ordinary, law-abiding citizens until after they were on the planes," says James Wayman, director of the National Biometrics Test Center at San Jose State University. "They had Social Security cards and frequent-flier numbers. How could any biometric device have stopped them?" Even the loudest critics don't doubt that some technologies can improve safety. The ACLU, for example, doesn't oppose the use of biometric ID cards to bar access to areas off-limit to the public. Such cards are in use at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.

Contributing: Alan Levin

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U.S. seeks mutual 'security perimeter'

November 26, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011126-67231860.htm

U.S. officials are proposing that Canada and Mexico toughen their immigration and border-control policies and help the United States create a three-nation North American "security perimeter."

Ideally, revamping border-crossing processes would facilitate the flow of commerce across the borders while more efficiently screening border crossers with high-tech devices such as identity cards, which contain fingerprints or palm prints, and various sophisticated electronic sensors.

Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador to Canada and a former governor or Massachusetts, first proposed tightening the three nations' air and sea entry ports and updating border policy two months ago in Canada. It has gained scant notice in the United States, but has caused sustained and heated debate north of the border.

Canadian provincial officials, business leaders and the general public mainly favor the notion, while federal officials, including Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, view it as surrendering Canadian sovereignty.

U.S. defense specialists say America's borders are so difficult to secure that the nation must look at new ways of limiting access to would-be terrorists.

"Although the United States has renewed its focus on homeland defense following the September 11 terrorist attacks, true security will require the United States to implement a continental defense system with Canada and Mexico," states an analysis by Stratfor, a prominent private intelligence firm based in Austin, Texas. "The September 11 attacks on the United States effectively created a North American theater of operations."

The "security perimeter" concept reportedly was the main issue when Mr. Chretien, and Mexican President Vicente Fox met at the Mexican port of Veracruz Nov. 16.

The National Post daily newspaper in Canada quoted Mexican officials as saying the Chretien-Fox discussions in Veracruz were pointed toward establishing a "NAFTA-wide security zone," referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement that links their countries with the United States.

"It's pretty obvious that Americans are going to lock down their own borders," said Stratfor analyst Nathan Brown. "American border policy has to change, and it's better to have Canada inside the fence rather than outside. The traffic between the two countries is intense. For instance, you have auto parts made in Canadian companies going across the border to General Motors in Detroit daily - hourly."

The value of trade between the United States and Canada exceeds $1 billion a day.

Mr. Brown said that while an agreement with Mexico is important, striking a deal with Canada matters more. Among other things, a worthwhile pact would have to involve joint Canada-U.S. border patrols and having U.S. and Canadian officers jointly manning frontier points of entry.

Stratfor noted the difficulties of sealing off the 5,500-mile U.S.-Canada border and the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, but in its analysis said a North American theater of operations is a more useful concept than focusing only on the United States.

"The United States has vast, virtually unprotected borders with Canada and a long, ineffectively protected border with Mexico. Access to either Canada or Mexico creates innumerable opportunities to penetrate the United States," the report says.

Mr. Brown says the continental defense idea is not new among security specialists. He notes that the military of the United States and Canada recognized the continental perimeter concept in forming NORAD, the binational North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Last week, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill and Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin met before a weekend gathering in Ottawa of world finance ministers to discuss using technology and other resources to change the way traffic moves across borders.

Mr. O'Neill, who characterized the progress made as excellent, said that some of the ideas under consideration included inspecting and certifying trucks before they depart and using information technology to collect duties and taxes, "without following the age-old concept that all things need to be done at the border."

The Treasury secretary said: "It's not something we should do in years or months, but in weeks."

Defense strategists say the U.S. northern border is particularly sensitive because it provides a comparatively short, direct route to the U.S. political and economic centers such as Chicago, New York and Washington.

For years, U.S. security officials and certain U.S. legislators have warned that Canada is a staging area for terrorist activity against the United States and other nations. Canada has been called a "Club Med for terrorists."

A prominent former member of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service - that nation's equivalent of the CIA - testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on immigration and said his nation's "laws are, frankly, terror friendly."

It is known, for instance, that some 50 terrorist groups and roughly 350 terrorists from India, the Middle East, and various Mediterranean countries reside in Canada and raise money for their overseas operations - often by stealing and by intimidating the law-abiding compatriots.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, the Colorado Republican who is chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, said it is time that Canada and Mexico actually do something to show their involvement in the fight against terrorists, and backing the perimeter security effort would do that.

"The task of defending our own borders is made easier if those countries do the same to defend theirs," he said. "And when they do that, they're doing exactly what friends should do."

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Kangaroo Courts

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/opinion/26SAFI.html

WASHINGTON -- As soon as German U-boats put eight saboteurs on U.S. shores during World War II, one of the eight called the F.B.I. to betray the mission but was brushed off as a crackpot. Days later, he called again and managed to persuade the F.B.I. he was an authentic saboteur. Partly to keep this embarrassment of bungled enforcement from becoming known, the eight were secretly tried by a military court inside the F.B.I. headquarters.

Unexpectedly, a U.S. Army lawyer assigned to the Germans mounted a spirited defense. Col. Kenneth Royall, citing the landmark 1866 Supreme Court decision of Ex Parte Milligan - holding that martial law could not be applied where federal civil courts were in business - challenged the secret tribunal's legality.

F.D.R. told his attorney general, according to Francis Biddle's memoirs, that he would resist any Supreme Court decision to give the accused saboteurs a regular court trial: "I won't hand them over to any United States marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus." Confrontation was averted when a cowed Supreme Court unanimously acknowledged the extra-judicial power of a president armed with a Congressional declaration of war. Six of the eight captives went to the electric chair; J. Edgar Hoover was awarded a medal of honor.

Now President Bush, with no such Congressional declaration, is using that Roosevelt mistake as precedent for his own dismaying departure from due process. Bush's latest self-justification is his claim to be protecting jurors (by doing away with juries). Worse, his gung-ho advisers have convinced him - as well as some gullible commentators - that the Star Chamber tribunals he has ordered are "implementations" of the lawful Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Military attorneys are silently seething because they know that to be untrue. The U.C.M.J. demands a public trial, proof beyond reasonable doubt, an accused's voice in the selection of juries and right to choose counsel, unanimity in death sentencing and above all appellate review by civilians confirmed by the Senate. Not one of those fundamental rights can be found in Bush's military order setting up kangaroo courts for people he designates before "trial" to be terrorists. Bush's fiat turns back the clock on all advances in military justice, through three wars, in the past half-century.

His advisers assured him that a fearful majority would cheer his assumption of dictatorial power to ignore our courts. They failed to warn him, however, that his denial of traditional American human rights to non-citizens would backfire and in practice actually weaken the war on terror.

Spain, which caught and charged eight men for complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks, last week balked at turning over the suspects to a U.S. tribunal ordered to ignore rights normally accorded alien defendants. Other members of the European Union holding suspects that might help us break Al Qaeda may also refuse extradition. Presumably Secretary of State Colin Powell was left out of the Ashcroft try- 'em-and-fry-'em loop.

Thus has coalition-minded Bush undermined the antiterrorist coalition, ceding to nations overseas the high moral and legal ground long held by U.S. justice. And on what leg does the U.S now stand when China sentences an American to death after a military trial devoid of counsel chosen by the defendant?

We in the tiny minority of editorialists on left and right who dare to point out such constitutional, moral and practical antiterrorist considerations are derided as "professional hysterics" akin to "antebellum Southern belles suffering the vapors." Buncha weepy sissies, we are. (Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn - I've always been pro-bellum.)

The possibility of being accused, however, of showing insufficient outrage at those suspected of a connection to terrorists shuts up most politicians. And a need to display patriotic fervor turns Bush's liberal critics into exemplars of evenhandedism. Careers can be wrecked by taking an unpopular stand.

But not always. Forty years ago, my political mentor introduced me to his senior partner, Ken Royall, who after World War II had been appointed by President Truman to be the last secretary of war. Royall, then head of a great New York law firm, considered the high point of his career his losing fight to get a group of reviled Nazi terrorists a fair American trial.

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CIA-Backed Team Used Brutal Means to Break Up Terrorist Cell in Albania
Officials Call Operation One of the Agency's Great Successes

Truthout By Andrew Higgins and Christopher Cooper
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
http://www.truthout.com/11.22A.CIA.Albania.htm

TIRANA, Albania, Nov. 20 -- Ahmed Osman Saleh stepped off a minibus here in the Albanian capital in July 1998 and caught what would be his last glimpse of daylight for three days. As he paid the driver, Albanian security agents slipped a white cloth bag over Saleh's head, bound his limbs with plastic shackles and tossed him into the rear of a hatchback vehicle. Supervising the operation from a nearby car were agents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

SALEH'S ALBANIAN captors sped over rutted roads to an abandoned air base 35 miles north of Tirana. There, recalled an Albanian security agent who participated, guards dumped the bearded self-confessed terrorist on the floor of a windowless bathroom.

After two days of interrogation by CIA agents and sporadic beatings by Albanian guards, Saleh was put aboard a CIA-chartered plane and flown to Cairo, according to the Albanian agent and a confession Egyptian police elicited from Saleh in September 1998. "I remained blindfolded until I got off the plane," Saleh said in the confession, a document written in Arabic longhand that he signed at the bottom.

There were more beatings and torture at the hands of Egyptian authorities. And 18 months after he was grabbed outside the Garden of Games, a Tirana children's' park, Saleh was hanged in an Egyptian prison yard.

BY THE SCRIPT

His capture was one of five scripted and overseen by American agents as part of a covert 1998 operation to deport members of the Egyptian Jihad organization to Cairo from the Balkans. At the time, Egyptian Jihad was merging with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. U.S. authorities considered the Tirana cell among the most dangerous terror outfits in Europe. The CIA has refused to acknowledge the 1998 operation. But privately, U.S. officials have described it as one of the most successful counterterrorism efforts in the annals of the intelligence agency.

Today, as the Bush administration loosens its interpretation of the rules on foreign assassinations and other restraints imposed on the CIA in the 1970s, America's clandestine role in Albania illuminates some of the tactical and moral questions that lie ahead in the global war on terrorism. Taking this fight to the enemy will mean teaming up with foreign security services that engage in political repression and pay little heed to human rights. By authorizing special military trials for some terrorists caught abroad, President Bush has signaled that the protections of American-style justice won't apply to all.

Although executed swiftly, the CIA's operation in Albania was far from clean. At least two men targeted by the Americans eluded capture. Another was shot dead during a gunfight with Albanian security forces. One Albanian participant in the violent arrests recalled that an apparently innocent elderly man was grabbed at Tirana's airport and then bound and blindfolded.

The old man was interrogated for several days by the CIA before being dumped on a downtown street. In statements to their lawyer in Egypt, the five men who were deported there said they suffered the sort of elaborate torture that has been a hallmark of a decade-long Egyptian counterterrorist campaign.

Bill Harlow, a spokesman for the CIA, said any suggestion that "the CIA either participated in or condoned torture" in any of its operations is "wrong." He declined to comment further.

Albania is nominally Muslim but largely secular and pro-American. It has served as a laboratory for counterterrorism tactics shunned in Western Europe, for example, where governments are wary of giving the CIA too much leeway and balk at sending suspects to countries that employ the death penalty. Fatos Klosi, head of Albania's intelligence service, acknowledged that some of his agency's actions, undertaken at the CIA's behest, were "not so justified legally." But he defended them as necessary. "They convinced us not to be soft with terrorists," said Klosi, who oversaw the 1998 operation.

The Tirana group broken up by the CIA was years in the making. Its members, who ultimately numbered more than 20, started drifting in and out of Albania in the early 1990s. They eventually coalesced into what appears to have been a classic "sleeper" cell: a self-sufficient group ensconced in its surroundings, awaiting a call from its leadership to begin terrorist activities.

In addition to Saleh, a self-described terrorist with a 1993 Cairo car bombing to his credit, cell members included an accomplished forger and a budding propagandist. Most had spent time in Afghanistan or Pakistan, learning how to handle weapons and explosives. Egyptian Jihad's leader was Ayman Zawahri, a Cairo surgeon-turned-mujahedeen warrior who became bin Laden's right-hand man after the Jihad group merged with al-Qaida in 1998. The interrogation of the five Tirana cell members by Egyptian authorities in the summer and fall of 1998, and the military trial that followed in Egypt the next year, produced some 20,000 pages of confession transcripts and other documents. The confessions apparently were coerced, which could cast doubt on the credibility of some self-incriminating statements. But the defendants' descriptions of their activities generally are consistent with those of other sources and provide a rare detailed account of the activities of a Muslim terrorist cell.

FERTILE GROUND

Islamic militants and CIA agents began arriving in Albania at about the same time when the country's doctrinaire Communist regime collapsed in 1992. Both groups of outsiders saw fertile ground for expansion. Arriving early was Mohamed Zawahri, the younger brother of Ayman Zawahri. The younger Zawahri worked as an engineer for the Islamic Relief Organization, one of more than a dozen charities based in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic states that opened offices in Tirana. Mohamed Zawahri helped other Egyptian Jihad members land jobs with charities that were building mosques, orphanages and clinics there.

The CIA, meanwhile, found shelter in the new U.S. Embassy, which opened after the Communists' fall. CIA agents provided the Albanian intelligence service, known by its initials, SHIK, with equipment to record telephone calls, as well as lessons on surveillance techniques, according to current and former SHIK operatives.

The CIA, which aimed to track Muslim extremists in the region, found an eager partner in Sali Berisha, a cardiologist elected Albania's president in 1992. "Total cooperation," is how Berisha described his relationship with the American intelligence agency. "They worked in Albania as if they were in New York or Washington," he added.

Gaining permission for wiretaps was a snap, requiring little of the legal red tape common in the U.S. Berisha estimated that almost two-thirds of the hundreds of telephone conversations recorded in Albania during his five-year tenure as president were taped at the CIA's behest.

While the CIA organized, so did Egyptian Jihad. In January 1993, Mohamed Zawahri recruited Mohamed Hassan Tita, an architect and Jihad member, to work at the Islamic Relief Organization. Funded by Saudi Arabia, the group had offices in a former Communist Party academy, alongside Western charity groups.

Within hours of stepping off the plane from Egypt, Tita was told by Zawahri that he would have a special duty: collecting dues from the charity's Jihad employees at a rate of 20 percent of their salary. "I think that all Jihad members employed at the organization were employed through Mohamed Zawahri," Tita said in his 1998 confession. By the mid-1990s, the Egyptian Jihad cell in Tirana had swelled to 16 people, according to the Tita confession. His collections were running about $1,100 a month.

Meanwhile, the CIA monitored the mixture of Muslim charity and militancy in the Albanian capital. SHIK agents who worked with the Americans said the CIA scrutinized the travel, phone calls and contacts of various charity workers with suspected links to extremist groups from Egypt, Algeria and other countries.

Every few days, a CIA officer from the American Embassy collected audio tapes of phone conversations that SHIK operatives recorded on American-supplied equipment in a secret eavesdropping center next to Tirana's central post office. Since nearly all the conversations were in Arabic, the tapes went back to the U.S. for translation, SHIK agents said. For much of the 1990s, the CIA and SHIK contented themselves with observing the suspected terrorists. The strategy, said ex-President Berisha, was "not to cleanse [Albania of] these people, but to study them."

U.S. diplomats and spies did worry that Jihad members or other Muslim extremists might attack the American Embassy in Tirana, SHIK officials said. On one occasion in 1993, the Americans were alarmed when a suspected Islamic militant drove repeatedly around the embassy. In another incident, phone intercepts picked up an apparent order from overseas instructing a Muslim-charity worker to case the embassy. An attack never came. In 1994, the CIA sent an agent to Tirana to oversee the training of a new SHIK unit dedicated to surveillance of suspected terrorists, according to Albanian security officials. The American was a Vietnam veteran and spoke Arabic. Operating out of a former military academy in Tirana, the agent, who has since died in an unrelated car accident, according to his former Albanian pupils, taught recruits how to follow and monitor targets. The SHIK contingent, said then-President Berisha, was "trained by the CIA, chaired by the CIA and run by the CIA." Some Albanian agents to this day save surveillance photographs they said they took under CIA tutelage. As American intelligence activity increased in the mid-1990s, Egyptian Jihad expanded its network in Albania. In February 1996, Tita, the dues collector, offered a job to Saleh, the man later grabbed near Tirana's Garden of Games. Wanted by Egyptian authorities in connection with a botched 1993 attempt to assassinate former Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sedki, Saleh came to Albania for the nominal purpose of teaching the Quran to school children and running a Muslim orphanage.

Tita's most important hire was Shawki Salama Attiya, a forger and instructor at al-Qaida camps originally set up in the 1980s to train anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan. The son of a Cairo carpenter, Attiya arrived at the camps in 1990, too late to fight the Soviets, who had left in 1989. But that didn't diminish his enthusiasm. "We used to train on attacking [mock] tourist buses," he said later in his confession. Instructors "always told us to imagine the people in these buses were Israeli tourists."

LEARNING FORGERY

By 1994, Attiya had relocated his family to Sudan, then home to bin Laden and al-Qaida. He apprenticed himself to a forgery expert, learning how to doctor passports, a talent much in demand among Muslim militants. "I specialized in removing stamps and visas from passports and putting new ones on," he said in his 1998 confession. Most of what he said in the confession was corroborated by his wife, Jihan Hassan Ahmed, who gave a statement to Egyptian police in 1998 but wasn't tortured or charged. After awarding himself a diploma of his own making from the prestigious al-Azar University in Cairo, Attiya arrived in Albania in August 1995, with a fake passport and a new name, Magad Mustafa, he said in his confession. His job at the Islamic Heritage orphanage paid $700 a month.

The main force drawing Egyptian Jihad operatives to Albania at the time was the availability of paying jobs with the Muslim charities. The subject of Jihad finances surfaced during a meeting in Sana, Yemen, in December 1995. Ayman Zawahri, the Jihad leader, discussed a successful bombing that year of the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan. Then, he delivered discouraging news: Jihad was nearly broke. "These are bad times," he said, according to the confession of Ahmed Ibrahim al-Naggar, a Jihad member who attended the Yemen gathering.

A month after the conclave, Egyptian Jihad outfitted Naggar with a plane ticket, laptop computer and $500. He followed Attiya, Saleh and Tita to Tirana. A trained pharmacist from a Cairo slum, he got a job with al-Haramein, a Saudi charity operating out of a three-story villa in the center of Albania's dilapidated capital.

In April 1996, eight Jihad operatives gathered in a Tirana house for a fast-breaking feast at the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. A visiting Jihad leader appointed Attiya the chief of the Tirana cell and "emphasized the need for Jihad leaders to stick together," Tita recalled in his 1998 confession.

The threat to Americans posed by al-Qaida was becoming clearer at that time. In June 1996, the Khobar Towers U.S. Marines barracks in Saudi Arabia were bombed in an attack attributed to the bin Laden group. In Albania, the CIA struggled to maintain its carefully nurtured relationship with SHIK, as Berisha's regime wobbled. Elections in May 1996 were marred by violence and voting irregularities. Nonetheless, in October 1996, six SHIK agents traveled to Langley, Va., for a weeklong CIA course in surveillance offered at a Marriott Hotel near the agency's headquarters, according to Albanians familiar with the visit.

Conditions in Albania deteriorated into anarchy in early 1997, following the collapse of a large investment-pyramid scheme. Protesters stormed a government armory, emptied prisons and attacked SHIK offices.

Amid the turmoil, Attiya kept up a lively forgery business. And Naggar began training as a propagandist, cultivating contacts with the media center that Egyptian Jihad ran openly in London. In May 1997, Naggar saw his first article published: a feature on the life of Muhammed in "Call of Jihad" magazine.

NEW URGENCY

President Berisha called an election in June 1997, lost and resigned. The new government quickly revived surveillance operations with the CIA, which had waned during the unrest. There was new urgency on the American side. U.S. military planners, alarmed by mounting strife in neighboring Kosovo and considering American intervention, wanted Albania purged of any extremists who could threaten U.S. forces.

In 1998, as SHIK expanded its eavesdropping with yet more American equipment, Attiya and Naggar began making frequent calls to Ayman Zawahri, the Egyptian Jihad leader, who by then had joined bin Laden in Afghanistan, Attiya said in his confession. The Tirana cell received word of the merger of the two organizations during a phone call from Jihad's media committee in London, Naggar said in his confession. Jihad, which had primarily targeted the secular Egyptian government, would now join a broader assault on Americans, Naggar recalled.

"There is a direct benefit from the merging of the groups under bin Laden, financial strength being the most important," Naggar said. "Joining with bin Laden is the only solution to keeping the Jihad organization abroad alive." With war in Kosovo looming and Jihad resurgent, the U.S. shifted from monitoring the Tirana cell to crushing it. In the spring of 1998, the CIA asked Albania to help round up a half-dozen extremists operating locally, according to current and former SHIK operatives. Egypt also was recruited to help with the project, Egyptian court records show.

The Albanians were skeptical that the Muslim charity workers posed a serious threat. But SHIK's head, Klosi, recalled that he was convinced after visiting CIA headquarters in Langley in the spring of 1998. About a dozen U.S. agents arrived in Albania to plan the arrests, according to their Albanian counterparts. CIA and SHIK operatives spent three months devising the operation, often meeting in a conference room next to Klosi's office.

On June 25, 1998, the Egyptian government issued a prearranged arrest warrant for Attiya, the forger, and demanded his deportation. Most such requests to Western countries had been ignored in the past, said Hisham Saraya, Egypt's attorney general at the time. This one was not.

That day, while driving in his 1986 Audi in Tirana, Attiya found himself being trailed by an Albanian police car and another vehicle, he later recalled in his confession. He was stopped and arrested. The same day, Albanian security officers raided his home and found more than 50 plates and stamps used to produce fake visas and other bogus documents, according to court records from his 1999 trial.

Several days later, he was taken, handcuffed and blindfolded, to the abandoned air base, north of Tirana. "There, a private plane was waiting for me," he said in hisconfession. Once in Cairo, he was blindfolded again and driven to Egypt's state security offices on July 2, 1998. "Since then, the interrogations have not stopped," he said.

Attiya later told his lawyer, Hafez Abu-Saada, that while being questioned, he was subjected to electrical shocks to his genitals, suspended by his limbs, dragged on his face, and made to stand for hours in a cell, with filthy water up to his knees. Abu-Saada, who represented all five members of the Tirana cell, subsequently recorded their complaints in a published report.

Also deported from Tirana was Naggar. He was nabbed in July 1998 by SHIK on a road outside of town. He, too, was blindfolded and spirited home on a CIA plane. In complaints in his confession and to his defense lawyer, Abu-Saada, Naggar said his Egyptian interrogators regularly applied electrical shocks to his nipples and penis.

Naggar's brother, Mohamed, said in an interview that he and his relatives also were and continue to be harassed and tortured by Egyptian police. He said he had suffered broken ribs and fractured cheekbones. "They changed my features," Mohamed Naggar said, touching his face.

About two weeks after Attiya and Naggar were deported to Egypt, Albanian security agents took Tita, the dues-collector, from his Tirana apartment. They covered his head and put him on a plane. "After I was arrested, [Egyptian interrogators] hung me from my wrists and applied electricity to parts of my feet and back," he said in his confession.

As the CIA operation drew to a close, an Arab newspaper in London published a letter on August 5, 1998, signed by the International Islamic Front for Jihad. The letter vowed revenge for the counterterrorism drive in Albania, promising to retaliate against Americans in a "language they will understand." Two days later, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown up, killing 224 people. U.S. investigators have attributed the embassy bombings to al-Qaida and now believe the attacks were planned far in advance. At the time, American officials were rattled enough about the possible connection to the Tirana arrests that they closed the U.S. Embassy there, moving the staff to a more-secure compound across town.

The embassy bombings didn't stop the CIA from going after Saleh in Tirana. In August, Albanian security agents grabbed him outside the children's park. During two months of detention in Egypt, he was suspended from the ceiling of his cell and given electrical shocks, he told his lawyer, Abu-Saada. Also rounded up was Essam Abdel-Tawwab, an Egyptian Jihad member who had lived for a time in Tirana before moving to Sofia, Bulgaria. He, too, later told Abu-Saada he was tortured. Egyptian prosecutors acknowledged in court documents that they observed a "recovered wound" on Tawwab's body.

MASS TRIAL

The Jihad members brought back from the Balkans were tried by the Egyptian military in early 1999. The prosecution of cell members expanded into one of the country's largest-ever mass trials of alleged Islamic terrorists. In all, 107 people were tried in the so-called Returnees-from-Albania Case. Many were rounded up locally and had no direct connection to Albania. There are no appeals from such trials.

About 60 of the defendants were tried in absentia, including Ayman and Mohamed Zawahri, who were sentenced to death. Like his al-Qaida comrade, bin Laden, Ayman Zawahri is thought by U.S. officials to be on the run in Afghanistan. Mohamed Zawahri is assumed to be there, as well. Naggar and Saleh were hanged in February 2000 in connection with charges from earlier terror cases. Attiya was sentenced to life imprisonment. Tita and Tawwab each received 10-year prison terms.

Egyptian presidential spokesman Nabil Osman said of such mass prosecutions: "Justice is swift there, and it provides a better deterrent. The alternative is to have cases of terrorism in this country dangling between heaven and earth for years."

Osman brushed off torture claims by members of the Tirana cell, without commenting directly on their validity. Egypt permits alleged torture victims to seek remedies in civil court, he said. Members of the Tirana cell, however, have been held incommunicado with no way to file suit. "Forget about human rights for a while," Osman said. "You have to safeguard the security of the majority."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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Witchhunt

Daily Texan
Chu is a journalism junior
By Paulette Chu (Daily Texan Columnist)
November 26, 2001
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/11/26/3c01e94314592

Life in Salem, Mass. was scary in 1692. A recent smallpox epidemic was still haunting villagers, and threats of attack from warring factions filled residents with suspicion and fear. Soon, over 150 people from nearby towns found themselves in jail and awaiting trial before a "witchcraft" court, which relied solely on hearsay and ethereal evidence.

Fast-forward over 300 years and things are eerily similar with the FBI desperately hunting "evil-doers," and the president seeking swift justice for the accused in secret, due process-less tribunals.

Women in Black, a movement of international peace activists, is one of the latest targets in the FBI's witch hunt. The FBI has classified Women in Black as a potential terrorist organization for being "anti-American," and has threatened members with a grand jury investigation, according to London-based newspaper The Guardian.

The Women in Black movement began in 1988 in Jerusalem, when a small gathering of Israeli women silently protested Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. They met once a week wearing black clothes to symbolize their mourning for victims of the violent conflict, and held a black hand-shaped sign that said, "Stop the Occupation." Some women also brought their children.

Hardly the feats of terrorism, their vigils have since gained popularity worldwide, where women of numerous nationalities and religious backgrounds demonstrate against all forms of violence afflicting their nations. Jewish and Arab Women in Black still advocate an independent Palestinian state together. Italian and Yugoslav women held vigils in Belgrade for seven years in opposition to Slobodan Milosevic's aggressive regime. German Women in Black have protested against neo-Nazism. India's movement demonstrates against religious fundamentalism, and Beijing's members hosted a vigil for the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women.

Apart from the FBI's probe, their admirable work has been well-acknowledged, with nominations for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for the Israeli and Bosnian groups. The entire international Women in Black movement also received the Millennium Peace Prize for Women from the U.N. Development Fund for Women this year.

Thus far the FBI has only contacted Jewish Women in Black, apparently because their progressive, anti-war political work in the Middle East yields suspicion. But Americans should hope they aren't entrusting their safety to federal investigators so dense as to associate leftist Jewish women with anti-Semitic, misogynistic terrorists.

The alternative is that the FBI is following the administration's moves, by crying witch and selectively eroding civil liberties in the name of America's hunt for evil-doers. And in these moments of paranoid hysteria mongering, everyone is a suspect.

Federal investigators have also probed over 200 universities for information about international students from the Middle East and Central Asia. They want to know what the students think about Osama bin Laden and where they live, according to The New York Times.

In addition, the administration still has more than a thousand detainees in custody, though it refuses to disclose precise figures of how many are detained, their identities, the activities or associations that warrant their detainment and even, as The New York Times editorial board observed, "the reasons for such secrecy."

Moreover, President Bush just authorized the government to prosecute non-citizen terrorist suspects in secret military tribunals, which he will reign over as commander in chief. These modern-day witch trials will be closed to the public and will permit evidence civilian courts may otherwise consider illegally obtained and therefore inadmissible - including hearsay. Now the administration has revealed many of these tribunals will take place at sea, aboard U.S. naval vessels far from prying eyes and public scrutiny.

Surely the administration's Constitution-trampling is just an effort to protect Americans in the best way it knows how, and therefore citizens should help officials in the best way they know how as well. To make the FBI's job easier, Women in Black has made a sadly unpublicized confession of guilt before, which is still useful intelligence for investigators today.

"I confess," the women stated, "solidarity is the politics which interests me; that throughout all the seasons of the year I insisted that there can be an end to the slaughter, destruction, ethnic cleansing, forced evacuation of people and rape." The women continued, "I confess, that I took care of others while the patriots took care of themselves."

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Hate groups using Sept. 11 to further causes

USA Today
11/26/2001
By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/27/hate.htm

ATLANTA - Hate groups across the nation are trying to use fear generated by the terrorist attacks Sept. 11 to recruit members and adherents, say experts who monitor the extremist organizations.

Many hate groups, which often operate on the Internet, have posted messages and editorials blaming Jews for the attacks. Anti-Semitism, often mixed with hatred of the government, is a key component of their effort.

"It's important to remember that these groups latch on to any current event to try in some warped way to make it work in their favor," said Jay Kaiman, Southeast regional director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Devin Burghart, a researcher at the Center for New Community, a human rights organization in Chicago, said some groups have adopted a three-part strategy since the attacks. "Blame Jews for Sept. 11, rile up anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment and blame immigration as the root cause for the attacks," he said.

Some milder examples of the recent Web postings: "We may not want them in our societies, just as they would not want us in theirs," wrote Billy Roper of the National Alliance in Hillsboro, W.Va., shortly after the attacks. "But anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill jews (sic) is alright by me."

The World Church of the Creator, based in East Peoria, Ill., shows on its Web site a photograph of the burning World Trade Center with a caption that reads, "Friendship with Israel leads to this."

In addition to the Internet, the groups also are spreading their message by distributing fliers and turning to the airwaves. Experts say the groups have begun using shortwave radio broadcasts.

It is unclear how many hate groups are active in the USA. Kaiman said the ADL has identified more than 400, and there is a lot of "cross-pollination" among them. The Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., which tracks hate groups, identified 602 active groups last year.

Polls consistently show that about 8% of the nation hold similar views, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino.

Experts say it is too soon to know how successful the groups will be with this new wave to enlist sympathizers.

"I don't think they have been particularly successful in recruiting large numbers of new members," Levin said. "They have been successful at solidifying their base."

He and others say that new members are not the only aim of the hate groups.

Organizations such as white supremacists, neo-Nazis, skinhead groups, black separatists and other extremists also are trying to get people to agree with their beliefs and prejudices.

"Many of these groups have changed their strategy to converting people to their cause rather than increasing their actual membership," Levin said.

"They are looking for fellow travelers who embrace their ideology and their rhetoric rather than people to join the group," he said. "They are much more interested in cultivating the lone wolf to go out and do violence but not under their rubric."

Experts point to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and accused Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park pipe-bomber Eric Rudolph as examples of people influenced by the rhetoric of hate groups.

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U.N. Report
Defining terrorism

November 26, 2001
By Betsy Pisik,
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011126-54533950.htm

The omnibus convention against terrorism hit the wall last week, with legal envoys unable to agree on a definition of terrorism. Arab and some Islamic states want an explicit exemption for "freedom fighters" who say they are fighting to throw off an unjust foreign occupation - a clear reference to Israel's territorial disputes with its Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese neighbors.

The United States, Europe and many African, Asian and Latin states said in the recent General Assembly debate that no cause justified political attacks on civilians. President Bush said in his remarks that there was no such thing as "a good terrorist."

The proposed 27-article comprehensive treaty will combine the key elements of more than a dozen terrorism-related agreements, few of which have entered into force. U.N. legal analysts hope that a single omnibus agreement will be easier for national legislatures to accept.

Some legal analysts say it will be difficult for governments to adapt their own laws when such an important term is left open to interpretation.

For example, they ask, will the treaty apply to military actions that cause civilian deaths or dislocations? Does it matter if the civilian impact is accidental or deliberate?

The sixth committee of the General Assembly, which deals with legal affairs, will reconvene in late January to take another stab at creating a universally accepted definition of terrorism.

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Ashcroft picks lawyer to oversee victims' funds

USA Today
11/26/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/26/lawyer-funds.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General John Ashcroft has selected Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg to oversee a government compensation fund for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and their families, Feinberg's office said Monday. Feinberg, a former assistant to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., will play a pivotal role in deciding how much money victims' families will receive and how the compensation fund will work. The program, established by Congress in September, is to begin Dec. 21 and will dispense money - the amounts have not been determined - to cover lost wages and victims' pain and suffering.

Feinberg was selected based on his considerable experience as a mediator, government officials said.

Feinberg was one of three arbitrators who determined how much the government should pay the heirs of Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder for his film that captured the assassination of President Kennedy.

He was also a special master in Agent Orange cases involving soldiers alleging they were sickened by chemicals used by the government in Vietnam. He also worked on asbestos cases, a class-action case concerning the Shoreham nuclear facility and litigation involving claims against the maker of the Dalkon Shield birth control device.

Feinberg was an assistant to Kennedy in the late 1970s and was special counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1975 to 1980.

His appointment comes a week after the Bush administration renamed the Justice Department building after Kennedy's late brother, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

As special master of the victims compensation program, Feinberg will oversee thorny issues about how people should apply for compensation, whether the program should pay for victims' lawyers and whether people who are not satisfied with their payment can appeal.

One of the most contentious issues is whether government compensation should be reduced by the amount victims' families receive from pensions, insurance payments or gifts from charities.

The law creating the program says awards should take into account the amount of "collateral source compensation" applicants have or will receive but does not specify what sources should be included in determining reductions in awards.

The program was set up to serve as an alternative to filing lawsuits against the airlines and other entities. Those who receive awards will forfeit their right to sue.

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Heroes inspire Americans to live up to their example

USA Today
11/26/2001
By Rudy Giuliani
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-26-ncguest2.htm

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, New York City has received tremendous support from people across our great nation. We've all been inspired by the courage and consummate professionalism of our firefighters, police officers, Port Authority police officers, emergency medical services workers and court officers. Hundreds gave their lives to save 25,000 other people in what will be remembered as the most successful rescue operation in American history.

Now, especially as we enter the holiday season, we have a responsibility to look after the families of these fallen heroes. In New York City, we established the Twin Towers Fund to take care of the families of the uniformed servicemen and women who lost their lives in the World Trade Center attacks. Heartfelt donations ranging from 5 cents to $10 million have been sent from across the county and around the world. Children have set up lemonade stands in Iowa and Tennessee; firefighters, police officers and municipal workers have collected money in towns across America.

A 4-year old girl from Utah named Jayde Cluff sent six dimes taped to a card - allowance money that she had been saving to buy a Barbie doll. This gift is just as meaningful as a multimillion-dollar check from a foreign nation or corporation. From Boy Scouts to bikers, from elderly retirees at home to gospel groups on the road, the generosity of everyday Americans has been deeply appreciated.

Together, we have proved that the bonds between free people are far stronger than the barbaric acts of terrorists. Together, we have met the worst of humanity with the best of humanity.

Meeting victims' needs

The Twin Towers Fund has received more than 60,000 contributions totaling $100 million. We have begun distributing $40 million to the families of deceased uniformed servicemen and women. Checks averaging about $120,000 have been sent to families, so they will have the money before the holidays. Spouses will receive $75,000, then an additional $25,000 for each child under the age of 23.

We want to do everything we can to help these families meet their immediate financial obligations, while also setting the remaining money aside to assist with long-term needs. Just as the heroism of their loved ones will never be forgotten, these families will never be forgotten. We will be there for them for decades.

Every person who has donated to the Twin Towers Fund can be sure that the money he or she has given will go directly to the families themselves. We have raised money separately to pay for the fund's administrative costs.

Don't forget others

It's also important for Americans to remember that those charities that existed before Sept. 11 still need your support, too. Eight days after the attack, I attended a benefit for New Yorkers for Children to help highlight the fact that the needs of vulnerable communities continue in times of crisis. And new needs also will emerge. For example, New York Gov. George Pataki and I are putting together the Flight 587 Relief Fund to help the families of that terrible crash.

So while I encourage you to contribute to any one of the disaster-relief funds, you should also keep in mind the needs of your own town and community. The new spirit of responsibility and volunteerism President Bush has spoken of is essential to helping America heal and become even stronger. I encourage everyone, in his or her own way, to become a volunteer.

We have experienced one of the worst tragedies in American history, but we have emerged more united than ever before. The generous actions of ordinary people are further evidence that what we share is far greater than those things that make us different.

During this holiday season, as we gather with friends and family, we should all give thanks for the bravery and sacrifice of the heroes of Sept. 11. If we continue to meet our great sense of loss and anger with determination and love, we will continue to live up to the example set by our emergency workers, who ran toward danger as others were running toward safety. Their actions represent a pure love for human life. We will rise to new heights as a nation if we carry on in their name, inspired by their memory.

Rudy Giuliani is the mayor of New York City.

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Bin Laden's camps teach curriculum of carnage

USA Today
11/26/2001
By Jack Kelley, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/acovmon.htm

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Plastic explosives, timing devices and sketches of the best places to hide a bomb on an airplane filled the files of Osama bin Laden's terrorist training camps near here. Gas masks, cyanide and recipes for biological agents lined the shelves of his chemical weapons laboratory. Kalashnikov rifles, silhouetted targets and lesson plans teaching children to shoot at their victims' faces lay among the toys and near the swing set at the elementary school bin Laden established.

The terrorist camps around this eastern Afghan city were apparently abandoned sometime in the past few weeks as bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network fled U.S. bomb attacks and Northern Alliance fighters. The camps offer clear evidence of the systematic way bin Laden and his lieutenants have been pursuing their efforts to wage jihad, or holy war, against the United States.

Last week, USA TODAY, with the permission of Jalalabad's new governor, alliance ally Haji Abdul Qadir, visited two of bin Laden's former camps. One, in the village of Farm Hadda, is about 12 miles south of the city. The other, near Darunta, is about 15 miles west.

Both are guarded by alliance troops sent by Qadir. Neither has yet been searched by U.S. troops or intelligence agents because, U.S. officials say, the area is still considered too dangerous.

U.S. and alliance officials say bin Laden and up to 1,500 of his fighters, as well as some Taliban troops, may still be hiding in the hundreds of caves south of Jalalabad. For now, it is assumed that only heavily armed U.S. commandos involved in the hunt for bin Laden are in the region - but U.S. officials won't comment on the record about such operations.

In Washington, Marine Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan, says U.S. forces have begun "the business of checking those sites as they fall under our control." Once U.S. forces get to the camps, officials say, some of the information gathered could provide a "windfall" of intelligence.

USA TODAY was escorted to the sites by Jalalabad security officials who insisted that it was not necessary to wear a gas mask or protective clothing. Nothing threatening happened the day of the visits, but ominous lesson plans for war were everywhere, out for display as if the camps were some sort of museum.

The evidence shows that recruits at bin Laden's two main camps, at least those visited by USA TODAY, were trained in conventional, biological and even nuclear warfare, according to class manuals. They came from at least 21 countries, including Bosnia, Egypt, France, Great Britain, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other U.S. allies, enrollment records show.

Nearly all the students were told to return to their countries after training and "await orders" to carry out attacks against the United States, class notes reveal.

"These materials provide circumstantial evidence that corroborates the suspicion that Osama bin Laden had been seriously pursuing weapons of mass destruction," says military analyst Rifaat Hussein of Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. "They give us a clue as to what this guy was up to. You're dealing with an enemy that has to be taken seriously."

Targets identified

Many of the buildings and barracks at the Darunta camp, a former Soviet military base, were destroyed by U.S. airstrikes Oct. 28. But the most important building at the camp, which contains the one-room laboratory lit by a single light bulb, was untouched. U.S. officials, who were unable to explain why it was not hit, say it has now been added it to their target list.

A drawer in the lab contained three manuals. One appears to be an 18-chapter, 179-page training book written by bin Laden operatives. It identifies "buildings, bridges, embassies, schools, (and) amusement parks" as targets for destruction in the West. Another chapter discusses the destruction that can be wreaked by "atomic explosions." Hand-drawn sketches of bombs fill the margins of those pages.

The two other manuals, both printed in the USA, are titled Middle Eastern Terrorist-Bomb Designs and Advanced Techniques for Making Explosives and Time-Delay Bombs. There were also 84 pages of bomb-building techniques involving dynamite and C3 and C4 plastic explosives that appear to have been downloaded from the Internet.

In another drawer were several fake visa and immigration stamps, one purporting to be from the Pakistani Embassy in Rome and another from the Tajikistan Consulate in Islamabad, Pakistan. There was also a photocopy of a money transfer requesting that a London branch of Pakistan's Habib Bank AG Zurich credit the account of an individual identified as Moazzam Begg in Karachi for an unspecified sum of money. U.S. and Pakistani officials say they do not know who Begg is but will try to find him.

On one shelf of the laboratory was a long metal box lined with wood shavings. It held 18 bottles of liquids with labels identifying them as lead acetate, nitric acid, carbolic acid and glycerin, all of which are highly toxic. On another shelf were several plastic containers, including one labeled cyanide. A dozen gas masks lay on the floor.

All the chemicals had labels reading "Made in China." The equipment in the lab, ranging from scales to heaters, was from the United Arab Emirates. A packet of earplugs, apparently purchased in Britain, still had a price tag reading 2.51 British pounds.

Perhaps most telling about the minds of those who trained here is a document found at the camp. "I am interested in suicide operations," wrote Damir Bajrami, a 24-year-old ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, on his entry application in April 2001. "I have Kosovo Liberation Army combat experience against Serb and American forces. I need no further training. I recommend (suicide) operations against (amusement) parks like Disney."

Hijackers among thousands trained

More than 5,000 recruits, including at least four of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, received training at bin Laden's camps, starting in the early 1990s, U.S. officials say. Muslim militants involved in the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 American sailors, and the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, which killed more than 200 people, also graduated from the camps, they say.

"It is from these camps that much of the world's terror has originated," says Qadir, the Jalalabad governor. "What was taught at these camps is sickening. The more I learn, the more I am in disbelief at what was going on here."

Qadir has designated the camps "crime scenes" and ordered police to seal off the sites to prevent looters or intruders from disturbing them.

Bin Laden, who has lived in Jalalabad at various points since coming to Afghanistan in 1996, operated at least six terrorist training camps near the city. He also owned or rented at least six homes and dozens of apartments and ran the elementary school for the children of his fighters here.

The camp at Farm Hadda was one of the largest. The camp, made up of mud and brick buildings, was abandoned quickly by its 600 recruits after suffering a major U.S. bombardment in late October. Tanks, family photographs and even a pair of dentures were left behind. A bucket of black facial hair, indicating that some of the recruits may have trimmed their beards to disguise themselves, was also found.

Amid the rubble were dozens of copies of a 26-page booklet, Jihad Against America. The booklet, which Pakistani officials say was given to all new recruits to the camp, contains speeches and statements by bin Laden. In it, the Saudi financier-turned-terrorist sets out his goals. At the top of the list: ousting thousands of U.S. troops still stationed in Saudi Arabia after driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in 1991. Saudi Arabia is home to Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. Bin Laden has stated that he does not want non-Muslims, or infidels, defiling Saudi Arabia's "holy ground."

'Eliminate all these problems'

The cover of the booklet, which is printed in English, Arabic and Bengali, shows a map of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, with American flags pinpointing the locations of U.S. military bases.

Bin Laden also has taken up several other Muslim causes. "Americans and Jews (are) shedding Muslim blood every day, looting their property," bin Laden writes in the booklet, apparently referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "I want to eliminate all these problems created by the Americans and the Jews."

He goes on to list various militant groups that he says are "helping Afghanistan in its fight against the infidels" around the world. They include the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Libyan Jihad Fighters, the Abu Sayyaf rebels of the Philippines, and what it calls "jihad militants" from Burma, Bosnia, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Men from these countries or regions also were students at his camps.

Bin Laden says in the booklet that he has found a home in Afghanistan, the country where in the 1980s he and other Islamic fighters defeated another great superpower, the Soviet Union.

"We can defeat the infidels from here," bin Laden writes. "I will give you the training so you can carry on after we are gone. Our struggle will never end; it will grow stronger and more lethal by the year."

Back at Darunta - and its lab - were other reminders of the lengths to which bin Laden and his supporters are apparently willing to go.

Outside the laboratory, next to a vegetable garden, were four metal poles with chains attached to their bases. At the end of one of the chains were the remains of what appeared to be a dead animal with white fur.

Nerve gas experiments

U.S. officials, citing satellite photographs taken of the camp earlier this year and intelligence gathered from local residents, say a 60-year-old Saudi man named Abu Khabab experimented with nerve gas on dogs, rabbits and other animals here.

Khabab's neighbors said they saw large trucks, all of them with Pakistani license plates, delivering chemicals and other supplies to the camp at least once a week. Most of the neighbors said they thought Khabab was a doctor.

"Everyone was afraid of him," says Shah Ahmadi, 35, who lives nearby. "One day, he was making something and there was a big explosion. The entire area smelled of chemicals for hours. We protested, and he limited his work. From then on, we knew something evil was going on inside."

Similar chemicals, weapons and manuals, including a brochure for a $4,200 Korean-made chemical agent alarm, were also found among the rubble of bin Laden's palatial home and the elementary school.

It all leads U.S. and Pakistani officials to wonder what the recruits did not leave behind but took with them.

"I fear there's a lot more out there that we just don't know about," Jalalabad governor Qadir says. "I'm afraid what happened at the World Trade Center and Pentagon was just the beginning. The worst terror may be yet to come."

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Lima Summit Meeting Ends

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/international/americas/26LIMA.html

LIMA, Peru, Nov. 25 (Reuters) - Leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal ended a meeting here this weekend, vowing their "maximum commitment" against terror and support for Argentina as it battles to avert a debt default.

The leaders of 23 countries vowed to combat terror, shore up the world economy and support peace in Colombia.

"The time has come to act together, to advance our integration," said President Alejandro Toledo of Peru, the host of the Ibero-American summit meeting.

"All our reflections have and must have a central aim," he said, "sustained economic growth generating decent jobs and an all-out war on poverty."

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Amnesty unlikely for prisoners

From combined dispatches
November 26, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011126-99655752.htm

Al Qaeda fighters captured in Afghanistan will be treated as terrorists, while senior Taliban commanders could face trial as war criminals, a Northern Alliance official said yesterday.

"There is an amnesty for all Taliban soldiers - those who have not committed crimes," Abdullah Abdullah, foreign minister for the Northern Alliance, said on CBS' "Face the Nation" yesterday.

He said that amnesty would not apply, however, to either top Taliban commanders or to members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network, thousands of whom have fought alongside the Taliban.

•Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he expects Attorney General John Ashcroft to testify at hearings on White House plans to use military tribunals to try September 11 terrorism suspects.

•Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, said suggestions that captured terrorists be held on the Pacific island of Guam were "innovative" and "clearly something we're going to have to look at."

On CBS yesterday, Mr. Abdullah said senior Taliban leaders - especially Mullah Mohammed Omar - "would be considered as war criminals" by the Northern Alliance.

"There is no amnesty for terrorists in Afghanistan," the Northern Alliance minister said. "Terrorists will be treated as terrorists, and they will be brought to justice."

Mr. Leahy, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," said he was concerned about plans for military tribunals and other anti-terrorism measures taken by the Bush administration, even though he himself had been a terrorist target.

"Somebody sent me an anthrax letter that could have killed over a hundred thousand people," the Vermont Democrat said. "We still haven't got the letter open. It is so powerful that they're having difficulty figuring out how best to open it and preserve the evidence."

The letter was discovered Nov. 16 in a batch of unopened mail sent to Capitol Hill and quarantined as the result of earlier anthrax attacks.

Asked whether he believed domestic or foreign terrorists were behind the anthrax attacks that have killed five persons, Mr. Leahy said, "I'll leave it to the FBI."

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said he will hold a preliminary hearing Wednesday about the Bush administration's plan to create secret military tribunals to try terrorism suspects, and expects Mr. Ashcroft to testify before the committee next week.

"Meet the Press" host Tim Russert asked Mr. Leahy, "Are you upset with the attorney general?"

"Yes, very much so," answered Mr. Leahy, explaining, "We went out of our way, the Congress, both House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike, went out of the way to put together in very rapid time an anti-terrorism package which the Justice Department said we need. Now, that was weeks ago, and of course they haven't used it.

"All of a sudden, we pick up the paper every morning, and here's, 'We're going to wiretap defense counsel, we're going to do these ad hoc, outside-the-justice-system methods.' It is bothering a great number of people, Republicans and Democrats. I think the attorney general owes the country, certainly owes the Congress, an explanation."

Mr. Leahy, who supported the anti-terrorism bill that passed the Senate by a 98-1 vote Oct. 25, helped lead a failed effort by Democrats to block Mr. Ashcroft's nomination as attorney general.

"I don't know why all this has to be done by fiat at the White House," Mr. Leahy said of the plan to use military tribunals to try foreign terrorists. He criticized Mr. Ashcroft for what he called the attorney general's "perfunctory" appearance to testify about the anti-terrorism bill before the judiciary committee, "where he shows up for an hour or so and wouldn't answer the questions of half the senators there."

On "Fox News Sunday" yesterday, Mr. Daschle responded to press reports that al Qaeda members captured in Afghanistan might be held on the U.S. territory of Guam, a 216-square-mile island in the Pacific.

"Well, I think that's an innovative suggestion," the Senate majority leader said. "I'm not sure anybody's thought through it enough to know for sure."

Guam, southernmost of the Mariana Islands on the eastern edge of the Philippine Sea, has a population of more than 150,000, including a large U.S. military presence. In the past, Guam's Anderson Air Force Base has housed thousands of Vietnamese and Kurdish refugees.

"I'd be concerned if I were some of the people living on Guam whether or not it's a great idea," Mr. Daschle said of the proposal to hold al Qaeda members there. "But clearly, that is something we're going to have to look at."


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[This boosts nuclear power plants. If you have a better idea, write to the Washington Post Letters to the Editor -- mailto:OPED@washpost.com]

Pollution Concerns Over Energy Plants

By Tom Cohen
Associated Press Writer
Monday, November 26, 2001; 6:28 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18562-2001Nov26?language=printer

TORONTO -- Bush administration plans for hundreds more electricity generating plants will substantially increase emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, a North American environment commission said Monday.

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation, which monitors the environmental affects of the North American Free Trade Agreement, estimated carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. electricity sector could increase from 14 percent to 38 percent by the year 2007.

Emissions from the electricity sector now account for 35 percent of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

The commission called for better coordination of environmental policies among NAFTA members Canada, Mexico and the United States to prevent increasing electricity production from bringing jumps in harmful emissions, executive director Janine Ferretti told a telephone news conference.

The commission is hosting a symposium in San Diego this week on the North American integrated electricity market. It believes uncoordinated policies among the three countries could create pollution havens in North America, harm efforts to decrease overall pollution and contribute to trade disputes.

Under the U.S. energy policy first outlined by Vice President Dick Cheney, building hundreds of new plants would be the preferred way to meet growing energy needs. Shifting from coal plants, the most polluting form of electricity generation, to natural gas and nuclear plants would help hold down increases in unwanted emissions, according to the U.S. policy.

However, increased production in the U.S. market since deregulation came more from coal plants, according to Paul Miller, one of the authors of a commission study.

Findings from Miller's study are contrary to goals of the Kyoto Protocol, which has been rejected by the United States as harmful to the U.S. economy.

Delegates from 165 countries recently agreed to rules that would put the 1997 Kyoto agreement into effect. The protocol obliges industrialized countries to cut or limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming by an average 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

Countries may offset the requirements by properly managing forests and farmlands that absorb carbon dioxide, known as carbon sinks. They can earn further credits by helping developing countries avoid carbon emissions.

To take force, the accord must be ratified by 55 countries responsible for 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. With the United States not participating, ratification by virtually all other industrial countries is essential to meet that target.

Canada, which supports the Kyoto agreement but has yet to ratify it, announced Monday it would spend more than $280 million on new measures intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Energy Industry on Alert for Attack

By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Monday, November 26, 2001; 4:51 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18081-2001Nov26?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- The FBI has warned energy companies that Osama bin Laden may have approved plans to attack North American natural gas pipelines and facilities if he's captured or killed, a warning that prompted a tightening of security.

Natural gas producers and pipeline companies continued to be on a high state of alert, industry executives said Monday, although they declined to discuss the latest warning, which was sent in a memo to industry security officials last week.

Attorney General John Ashcroft confirmed the warning, though he expressed some doubt that attacks would be conditioned on bin Laden's capture or death.

"It didn't take anything specific to trigger the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon," said Ashcroft when asked about the alert at a news conference. Even so, "those are the kinds of reports which we take seriously."

The alert did not single out a specific target, but referred to natural gas supplies including the more than 260,000 miles of gas pipelines and hundreds of pumping stations and other facilities.

"We have received uncorroborated information that Osama bin Laden may have approved plans to attack natural gas supplies in the United States," said the memo, according to several industry sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Such an attack would allegedly take place in the event that either bin Laden or Taliban leader Mullah Omar are either captured or killed," the alert continued.

The FBI alert said the information came "from a source of undetermined reliability" and that "no additional details on how such an attack would be carried out, or which facilities would be targeted" could be learned.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the energy industries - including operators of nuclear power plants, refineries, pipelines and power grids - have scrambled to increase security on a belief that they could be singled out for another round of attacks.

One industry source characterized the FBI warning as similar to one issued earlier this month on potential attacks against West Coast bridges that prompted security alerts. In that case, no further evidence of potential terrorist activity emerged.

The alert was sent on Nov. 17 from FBI headquarters to agency field offices, which then forwarded the information to industry officials. The alert prompted the American Petroleum Institute, which is the lead industry group coordinating with the FBI and Energy Department on security matters, to issue a memo last Wednesday to oil and gas companies.

Energy industry executives were reluctant to discuss the latest alert, or their security measures, although several confirmed the memo and said additional precautions have been taken. Still, the potential for a terrorist attack has left some industry officials jittery.

"We prefer to keep a low profile," said an official of one of the largest natural gas pipeline companies, agreeing to speak only on background so that the company would not publicly be singled out.

"Our facilities are on high alert and they have been since Sept. 11," said Laurie Cramer, a spokeswoman for the Natural Gas Supply Association, which represents natural gas producers.

There are 263,000 miles of natural gas transmission lines crossing the country and another million miles of local distribution lines. Although most of the lines are buried, aerial surveillance of major pipelines has been increased and security tightened at pumping stations, industry officials said.

Access to facilities has been restricted as well, officials said. Also, some detailed information about location of pipelines and other energy infrastructure has been taken off some corporate and government Internet sites.

But the industry is in a quandary over how much information should be withheld about the location of pipelines, which often must be clearly marked to prevent someone from accidentally rupturing one when digging. The availability of maps also has helped to promote acceptance of pipelines in communities.

"We want people to know where they are" to prevent accidents, said Benjamin Cooper, executive director of the Association of Oil Pipe Lines. But he acknowledged the desire for public disclosure now is being tempered somewhat for security concerns.

"The biggest danger to natural gas pipelines on an ongoing basis is (the line) being hit by a backhoe or heavy equipment," said Kelly Merritt, a spokesman for Columbia Gas Transmission Corp., one of the country's biggest pipeline companies.

While a rupture of a gas or oil pipeline could cause significant problems, industry experts emphasized that most lines are relatively isolated and even a major break in a line can normally be repaired fairly quickly.

-------- environment

Amazon Plant Proliferates Again in African Lake, Causing Economic Peril

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/international/africa/26KENY.html

KUSA BEACH, Kenya - In the fishing villages along Lake Victoria, locals sneer at the very mention of the water hyacinth. It is an evil weed, they say, a destroyer of their livelihood, far more dangerous than it looks.

With green leaves and violet blooms that bob on the surface of the water, the hyacinth had largely receded in recent years after an aggressive campaign to stem its growth. But the plant is back and local fishermen fear a repeat of the mid-1990's, when the hyacinth reproduced with such a vengeance that it blocked much of the huge lake's shoreline, ensnarling fishing boats and killing fish.

"Controlled, the plant isn't bad," said Peter Ogutu, as he led his fishing boat through a channel clogged with hyacinth in Kusa Beach, on the western edge of Africa's largest lake. "But, uncontrolled, the plant is impossible. How can we fish in this?"

The fast-growing hyacinth has forced fishermen to add a new piece of gear to the wooden boats they use to haul in tilapia, Nile perch and other fish. Along with the king-size nets they use to snare their catch, the men now bring along machetes to hack through the hyacinth.

Authorities in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, the three countries surrounding the lake, have mounted a campaign against the hyacinth. Millions of South American weevils have been released to feast on the water hyacinth, and shredding machines skim along the lake surface grinding up the growth. But the victory that scientists declared over the hyacinth in the late 1990's has proved premature.

"We're seeing a resurgence," said Joseph B. Ojiambo, executive secretary of the Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project, which was formed to combat the hyacinth. "We are watching it carefully." The plant spreads so quickly that a small patch one day can turn quickly into a shore-clogging mess.

Not everybody cringes at the sight of the hyacinth, which the locals sometimes refer to as "tembea," the Kiswahili word for "move," because it floats back and forth in the water.

Tom Mboya Adera has made a living off the plant, operating a mobile shredding machine that tries to keep the hyacinth from clogging the lake. The World Bank provided the money for the effort. "We have other weeds in the lake but nothing as clever as this," Mr. Adera said.

Pamela Okello picks the hyacinth out of the lake for another reason. She is among a small cadre of lakefront residents who dry water hyacinth leaves to make arts and crafts that are sent to European boutiques. "Water hyacinth causes problems but, look, it can also make something beautiful," she said from her showroom full of hyacinth furniture, hyacinth jewelry, hyacinth everything.

The plant, which is native to the Amazon in South America, was first spotted in Lake Victoria in 1989. Scientists suspect that someone transported it across the Atlantic years ago to decorate a garden pond.

Back during the worst overgrowth in 1996, guests in some lakefront hotels could see water only if they squinted into the horizon because vast sheets of water hyacinth were blanketing so much of the lake.

"It would be our wish to remove it from the lake altogether," said Omar Wadda, an engineer who is in charge of Uganda's Water Hyacinth Control Unit. "But when we get rid of it here, it comes back there. It's a biological thing." The fishermen know exactly where it is resurfacing. They point to Port Bell in Uganda as a problem area, along with Homa Bay in Kenya and stretches of the Tanzania coast.

And as the plant reproduces, the fishermen say their boats are coming back to shore emptier. "I keep hearing the experts say that hyacinth is under a control in Lake Victoria," said Elisha Ogomda Mudega, a community leader who lives at the water's edge in Kusa Beach. "What I say to that is: rubbish."

-------- genetics

Bush: Human cloning experiment 'morally wrong'

USA Today
11/26/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-26-bush-cloning.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Monday decried a research company's claim to have cloned the first human embryo. "We should not, as a society, grow life to destroy it," Bush said. The president told reporters during a Rose Garden appearance that the reported breakthrough by a Massachusetts research firm was "morally wrong, in my opinion."

Bush had stated his opposition to such research and said Monday that he hasn't changed his position.

"The use of embryos to clone is wrong," he said. "We should not, as a society, grow life to destroy it, and that's exactly what is taking place."

Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said the work of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., amounts to human cloning and lays bare "the conundrum of scientific progress, where progress can also be measured in terms of how many lives will be taken to save a life. That's something the president has drawn a strong ethical line in the sand on and said that line should not be crossed."

Advanced Cell Technology announced Sunday that its researchers had cloned a six-cell embryo in hopes of developing genetically compatible replacement cells for patients with a range of illnesses.

The Massachusetts company's lab procedure would be banned under anti-cloning legislation passed earlier this year by the House but stalled in the Senate.

Bush "hopes that as a result of this first crossing of the line - and the first step into a morally consequential realm of creating a life to take a life in the name of science - that the Senate will act on the House legislation so that this procedure can be banned," Fleischer said.

---

Company Says It Produced Human Embryo Clones

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By GINA KOLATA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/national/26CLON.html?searchpv=nytToday

A small, privately financed biotechnology company said yesterday that it had created the first human embryos ever produced by cloning. But the embryos died before they had even eight cells, and most died long before that. Cloning experts outside the company said the experiment was a failure.

But by pursuing the research and publicizing it, scientists at the company, Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., have stepped into an ethical controversy. Federal money cannot be used for cloning research involving human embryos, and so the experiments are restricted to the private sector. Advanced Cell Technology was not trying to clone a human being. Rather, it wanted to offer a method that would involve combining human eggs and a person's own cells to create embryos that would provide stem cells. Theoretically, the stem cells could in turn grow into virtually any cell type and serve as replacement tissue in diseases like diabetes.

Such therapeutic cloning would have the advantage that the replacement tissue would be an exact genetic match, so patients would not have to take anti-rejection drugs. But the idea has raised ethical concerns because it would require destroying a cloned embryo to extract its stem cells.

In July, the Advanced Cell Technology revealed that it had been secretly working on therapeutic cloning for a year, paying young women $3,000 to $5,000 for eggs and using them to try to create human stem cells. Its experiments, financed with private money, raised questions about whether science was moving ahead of public policy.

The new paper on the cloning, published in E-biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine, describes the results of those studies.

Advanced Cell Technology used two different methods to try to create human embryos. The first was much like the standard approach that has been used to clone cows and sheep, including the first cloned sheep, Dolly. It involves taking the genetic material out of an unfertilized egg and inserting in its place an adult cell, which has a full complement of genetic material. The resulting clone is an exact genetic copy of the donor of the adult cell - not the donor of the egg.

In its experiment, the company replaced the genetic material of a human egg with that from adult cells, in this case either skin cells or cumulus cells, which are cells that cling to human eggs and that might be more amenable than skin cells for cloning.

The researchers started with 19 eggs, adding skin cell genetic material to 11 and cumulus cell genetic material to the rest. The eggs with skin cell genetic material died before they could even divide a single time. Three of the eight eggs with cumulus cells divided once or twice before dying.

It was impossible to retrieve stem cells. An embryo would have to grow for about five days and, more important, from a ball of cells into a vesicle with two cell types. One type makes up the outer wall and the other type clusters inside and consists of embryonic stem cells.

The second method was to stimulate an egg to divide without being fertilized. Any embryos that might result from this process, known as parthenogenesis, would have only the genes of the egg cell. But they cannot develop into babies - genes from a male are needed to form a functioning placenta. Dr. Michael D. West, the company's chief executive and an author of its paper, said that since the embryos had no hope of developing fully anyway, he hoped there would be no ethical objections to destroying them to get stem cells.

In the parthenogenesis experiments, the scientists at Advanced Cell Technology started with 22 human eggs, chemically stimulating them to divide. Most died within a day or so. Six lasted for five days, but, as in the other experiments, the embryos died before forming stem cells.

Dr. West said he was encouraged even though the experiments did not provide the stem cells the company sought. "We're optimistic," he said in a telephone interview.

But some scientists were not impressed. "It's a complete failure," said Dr. George Seidel, a cloning expert at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. For a first attempt, he added, "they've progressed about as well as you'd expect, or slightly worse." Dr. Steen Willadsen, a cloning pioneer in Windermere, Fla., said, "If one were to take a positive view of this, then one would say there are some problems with the approach they are taking - it hasn't worked."

Some lawmakers want to ban the research entirely.

Senators Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, and Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, reacted with dismay to the company's claims that it had created cloned human embryos. But Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, was cautious in an interview with "Late Edition" on CNN. "We really ought to take it on the basis of much more thorough understanding than this first report," he said.

Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota and the majority leader, said he supported cloning of this kind for research purposes. But Mr. Daschle added that he would oppose any human cloning intended to replicate a person, and said such an effort would face overwhelming opposition in Congress if it were ever proposed. President Bush has said he is opposed to the type of cloning described in the announcement today.

But in its press release, the company was enthusiastic. The paper "provides the first proof that reprogrammed human cells can supply tissue for transplantation," the company said. The press release quoted Dr. Robert P. Lanza, the company's president of medical and scientific development and an author of the paper.

"These are exciting preliminary results," Dr. Lanza said. The company's scientists also wrote a paper for Scientific American, which appears on its Web site today, called "The First Human Cloned Embryo."

"After months of trying, on Oct. 13, 2001, we came into our laboratory at Advanced Cell Technology to see under the microscope what we'd been striving for - little balls of cells not even visible to the naked eye," the scientists wrote. "Insignificant as they appeared, the specks were precious because they were, to our knowledge, the first human embryos produced by the technique of nuclear transplantation, otherwise known as cloning."

The paper goes on to say these embryos died. But then the article returns to the promise of the method.

-------- human rights

Where Thousands of Drought Refugees Wait for Food or Death

New York Times
November 26, 2001
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/international/asia/26CAMP.html

MASLAKH, Afghanistan, Nov. 23 - On the rocky, rutted road that runs from the border with Iran toward the Afghan city of Herat, traditional villages rise from the desert as if they are part of it, their rounded earthen roofs swelling smoothly out of the square walls.

Then suddenly, there comes a place that is different. Its homes are rectangular, made of bricks, and often lacking roofs. Its scale dwarfs that of any village nearby.

Just over a year ago, there was nothing here. Now there are at least 150,000 people, and possibly as many as 300,000, in a refugee camp that has the population of a major city but none of its services - no hospital, no schools, no roads. Its inhabitants have been pushed from their homes, and pulled here, not by war but by the drought heading into its fourth year in three provinces in northwestern Afghanistan.

The people here do not live so much as they wait. They wait for food. They wait for bricks made from earth and water to dry so they can build homes. They wait for something to happen or something to change. And they wait for sick children to die.

Maslakh means "slaughterhouse;" a large one once operated here that sits unused now. But the name seems grimly appropriate for a place whose graveyards are growing every day. Many of the graves are no more than three feet long.

The slaughterers are malaria, diarrhea, tuberculosis, dehydration in summer, respiratory ailments in the winter, parasites, hunger and cold. Infectious diseases are shared along with everything else here. One doctor, Muhammad Nasser Habib, who works in the camp, estimates that 30 percent of its residents have recurrent malaria, and that nearly as many have tuberculosis.

"If one member of a family gets it, they all get it," he said, since as many as 15 to 20 people may sleep in one room here.

Poor Afghan women have as many babies as their bodies will bear, and then put all of their energy into keeping them alive. Gholrolkh, who has only one name, has 12 children and few blankets; they sleep under her chador.

Sara Ashe has eight children. The youngest, Esmatolah, was born here five months ago. His mother fears that he will die here.

He has been vomiting blood, as has one of his older brothers. She carefully unwrapped a bundle hanging from the ceiling - the only storage space in a one-room house that sleeps 16 - to show the white pills and oral rehydration tablets provided by a camp clinic. She does not know what is wrong with her baby, but she knows that the treatment is not working.

Like many women here, she is sick too, with severe pain in her stomach. At 30, she no longer has milk in her breasts. When she went to a clinic doctor, she said, he did not examine her - just asked a few questions and prescribed ampicillin. "They don't examine, they just ask," she said.

In some cases, that is a reflection of the Taliban's reach here. Dr. Habib said the religious police had come to the camp and threatened to beat him for examining women. Some doctors found it easier not to.

Even being able to examine sick patients is not enough, he said. His clinic has no laboratory, so he cannot perform blood tests. In most cases, he is prescribing medication without knowing for sure what disease he is trying to treat.

He sees 50 to 60 patients a day, mostly children. Half the children he sees are malnourished. None of them go to school, or are ever likely to. "They are hungry and they are poor - how could they ever go to school?" Mrs. Ashe asked.

A few homes over, another child is sick, this one a 2-year-old girl. Her fever is high, her little feet swollen. "The girl is going to die any minute," her mother said.

Many people had died in Ghor, the province she left behind six months ago. She chose not to wait for death, only to find that it seems to have followed her.

To make matters worse, the delivery of food aid here was interrupted by American airstrikes. Most private aid groups stopped sending food convoys, although the deliveries are slowly resuming now. Today, 10 International Red Cross trucks headed from the Iranian border toward Herat, six miles east of here; on Thursday, 15 trucks from the Red Crescent, the Iranian relief society and the United Nations relief agency made the same journey.

Aid is desperately needed, and soon may be even more so. In Ghor Province, possibly tens of thousands of people are on the march from drought, according to reports received by Northern Alliance officials. Two thousand families have been registered at Maslakh since Sept. 11.

An additional 750 that arrived more recently have not been registered because of the chaotic political situation. As a result, said Siobhan Isles, project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, they have been without shelter, sleeping on the ground, since they arrived. After an emergency registration this week, 200 tents were finally given out on Thursday.

The registration process has been a thorny problem at this camp. Maslakh is notorious among aid workers for the degree to which cheaters successfully manipulate the system, getting extra ration booklets for "internally displaced persons" under different names, then selling the rations. As a result, other families received less, or nothing, and no one has an accurate idea of how many refugees are at the camp.

Many of the cheats are Pashto speakers who formed close relationships with Taliban officials, who sometimes seemed to be assisting, rather than discouraging, the cheating. Perhaps 55 percent of the residents are Pashto speakers, aid officials say, and many supported the Taliban, if only out of self-interest. A cache of arms was found in the camp's distribution center after Taliban forces fled the area.

Ms. Isles said government officials regularly thwarted efforts to get an accurate count of the number of people at Maslakh. "We weren't even allowed to do graveyard counting," she said.

A few families left with the Taliban, but most have stayed. Now, the last thing they would admit is that they were with the Taliban.

One man, Momen Abdulkarim, 46, represented a group that complained about the people of Block 4, where he said "the rich people" lived. "They were getting more attention under the Taliban," he said. "They were Talibs; they took most of the aid. See, they have wood now, and we don't."

There are many Taliban supporters still in the camp, he said, but now he will make sure that they do not get the aid.

A few minutes later, he was asked if he would show a visitor his home. He demurred, said it was very far and then reluctantly agreed. As it happens, he lives in Block 4, which he suddenly insisted was actually for poor people. And all of the Taliban, he said, had fled.

------- activists

World AIDS Day Action Kit available online now

From: Neil Watkins <neil@econjustice.net>
November 26, 2001
www.globaltreatmentaccess.org/wad.pdf

Dear friends and colleagues,

Each year, on December 1, the world is asked to focus on HIV/AIDS. The theme for World AIDS Day 2001 is "I careŠ Do you?"

To us, to care is to take action.

For those of us living with or standing alongside people living with HIV, every day is World AIDS Day. We thank you for your efforts to combat this global epidemic, and join you in mourning those we have lost in the past year while committing to sustaining our fight for those living.

We have seen that it is through activist efforts and political advocacy that we can best fight HIV, stop the spread of new infections, and bring treatment to those in need. We hope this kit can further these efforts.

Please join us in the week before and after World AIDS Day to take action. We hope this kit will allow people with HIV, students, and others in the United States to continue to further our resolve to fight for the lives of people with HIV and those at risk of infection -- no matter who they are or where they live.

Today, in South Africa, people with HIV are mobilizing to fight for access to antiviral therapies that can prolong life and drastically reduce the rates of transmission of HIV from mother to infant. November 26 is the first day of Treatment Action Campaign's court hearings to challenge the refusal of the South African government to provide these treatments to pregnant women living with HIV.

As you will read in TAC's letter in this kit, the decision to file this lawsuit was not easy. But, after meetings and negotiations and protests and more, they felt they had no choice but to turn to the courts. And now they are asking for our solidarity in their efforts.

----> This 11-page kit is designed for easy download and printing to enable people around the country to distribute relevant materials at local World AIDS Day events. <----

----> It includes two action items -- one on the TAC lawsuit and another on U.S. funding for the Global AIDS fund -- that can help local people fight the global epidemic, as well as background materials <----

----> For information on current advocacy campaigns on U.S. AIDS treatment issues, we recommend joining the Treatment Action Network of Project Inform: http://www.projectinform.org/tan/tanlist.php3 <---- This kit is available at: www.globaltreatmentaccess.org/WAD.html

It is formatted as a PDF document. The software to read and print these documents is available as a free download at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

The World AIDS Day Action Kit contains:

-- Request for solidarity from the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) of South Africa

-- Questions and answers on TAC's lawsuit for maternal-to-child transmission treatment access

-- A sample letter from ACT UP Philadelphia for showing support with TAC's campaign for access to medication

-- An action alert with background to increase the United States contribution to the Global Fund for HIV

-- Update on the World Trade Organization and the TRIPS agreement that affects access to medication

-- Information on how to join the Student Global AIDS Campaign

-- Enrollment form for the Health GAP Action Network to receive updates on these issues

We hope you find this information useful and compelling.

And thank you for taking action - on World AIDS Day and every day.

Sincerely,

Julie Davids for Health GAP and ACT UP Philadelphia jdavids@healthgap.org

Benjamin Wikler for Student Global AIDS Campaign wikler@fas.harvard.edu

p.s. One immediate action that you can take to support the Treatment Action Campaign's court case is to post a new link to your web site: www.actionnetwork.org/campaign/aids-sa.

This link, which is also available for use at www.stopglobalaids.org, will allow users to instantly send e-mails supporting the lawsuit to South Africa's U.S. Ambassador and other decision-makers. As with the struggle against apartheid, this type of political pressure will be crucial in the fight against AIDS in South Africa.

"an eye for an eye will only blind the world" Mahatma Gandhi

Julie Davids ACT UP Philadelphia Health GAP Coalition
c/o Critical Path AIDS Project 1233 Locust Street Philadelphia, PA 19107 215-474-9329

Website: www.globalaidsalliance.org

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