------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Revived fears about radiation
Lax control puts secrets and world in danger
Engineer Pleads Not Guilty to Bomb Component Exports
Briefer Regimen May Fight Breast Cancer
Green group still campaigning against Honeymoon mine
Iron-loving bacteria can learn to consume uranium
Depleted uranium at issue in war
Depleted Uranium Conference 17th January 2002
Next Target in Terror War
Congress Checks N. Korea Reports
Pakistan Detains Nuclear Scientists
House OKs Nuke Plant Liability Limit
For Radiation, How Much Is Too Much?
Program offers aid to energy workers
Powell to Visit Turkey, Russia
Iraq's Weapons Could Make It a Target, Bush Says
Did bin Laden have help from U.S. friends?

MILITARY
Millions of land mines hinder Afghan recovery
Afghans suspect bin Laden is hiding in huge tunnel fortress
U.S. admits dangerous new situation in Afghanistan
Pentagon ready for fight to death at stronghold
Afghan South: Different War Than in North
U.S. Will Place 1,000 Troops on Ground
Congress looks into missile deal
Report: U.S. to Provide Egypt with Missiles, Boats
Plan for Smallpox Rules Out Mass Vaccination
Careful Plan Devised for Anthrax Letter
Could Iraq be next?
Inspectors must return to Iraq
U.N. May Not Overhaul Iraq Sanctions
Israeli Analysis Raises New Doubt About Arafat's Power
Independent TV Station In Moscow Faces Closing

POLICE / PRISONERS
Democrats Question Tribunal Concept
McAfee Virus Software Opens Your Computer to Feds
AV vendors split over FBI Trojan snoops
More Than 600 Held in Terror Probe
States
Professor to Be Deported After Secret Evidence Case
U.S. Pressures Foreign Airlines Over Manifests
Excerpts From the Justice Dept.'s Interview Instructions
Maryland juvenile-justice system beset by violence
McCain: Terrorists bypass laws by using gun shows
A Harvard Professor's Baffling Vanishing

ENERGY AND OTHER
A Practical Way to Make Power From Wasted Heat
German EnBW to increase wind energy to 10 MW Dec
British Energy, AMEC mull Scottish wind farms
Waste Heat Conversion Is Improved
Senate unlikely to act soon on cloning ban
A Breakthrough on Cloning? Perhaps, or Perhaps Not Yet
U.S. Details Response to Smallpox
California homeless
Religious freedom, a casualty of war?

ACTIVISTS
Impact on Global Social Justice Movement
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Big Greenaction Website Updates and Action Alerts



-------- NUCLEAR

Revived fears about radiation

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2001
San Jose Mercury News
BY GLENNDA CHUI AND BARBARA FEDER
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/cgi-bin/edtools/printpage/printpage_ba.cgi

The fear that terrorists might set off a nuclear bomb or spread radioactive material through a city has revived a decades-old American worry: How can we protect ourselves from a radioactive attack?

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the answer seemed clear. The government handed out plans for building and stocking fallout shelters, and students practiced ``duck and cover'' drills in anticipation of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

But while Americans built some 200,000 fallout shelters in their back yards, the drive to prepare for a nuclear war quickly faded -- in part because of the expense involved, in part because of the seeming futility of trying to survive nuclear annihilation.

Now reports that suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaida network may plan to build a nuclear weapon -- or, worse, already have one in hand -- have forced the issue back into the spotlight. The weapons they might be capable of detonating are likely far smaller than those of the Cold War era, but still have the potential for spreading havoc and fear.

Analysts have been quietly warning for years that the nuclear threat persists in the form of thousands of nuclear weapons and tons of radioactive materials that could fall into the hands of terrorists or a rogue nation with no scruples about using them.

Some experts offer words of comfort in the face of such scenarios, saying the United States is far better prepared to deal with a nuclear problem than it is an all-out bioterror attack. But all agree the issue should get renewed attention -- quickly.

``I think what's happened after Sept. 11 is these threats have all become much more real,'' said Kevin O'Neill, deputy director of the Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

``The willingness of terrorists to kill thousands of people, which for many years has been an issue of academic debate -- I think that debate has been settled, so really all bets are off in terms of what they might use.''

The breakup of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War caused many people to breathe a sigh of relief and shake off any worries they had about the threat of nuclear weapons. Today's disaster preparedness brochures barely mention radioactive hazards, if they address them at all.

Likely attack scenarios

There are a number of ways terrorists could carry out a radiological attack, according to a report released last month by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. It's an organization chartered by Congress in 1964 to provide advice on radiation protection issues.

The most destructive but least likely scenario has a terrorist group stealing or manufacturing a nuclear weapon. Any homemade bomb would probably be crude and have the explosive power of fewer than 10,000 tons of TNT, the report said. For comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II was the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT.

Even so, such a bomb would send out a powerful blast of air that shatters windows and sends shards of glass flying at high speeds. It would also produce a fireball, reaching temperatures of tens of millions of degrees, that incinerates objects and burns people over long distances. And it would loft material high into the atmosphere, which would settle over a wide area as radioactive fallout.

Another possibility: Terrorists set off a ``dirty bomb,'' a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material. Or they could accomplish much the same thing by crashing a plane into a nuclear power plant or nuclear waste pond, scattering and perhaps burning its radioactive contents.

In a third scenario, terrorists put a source of radiation in a place where a lot of people go by, or scatter it by dribbling it off the back of a bicycle or injecting it into a ventilation system.

``Something like that, unless you were very lucky or looking for it, you might not understand that the source was there until people started getting sick,'' O'Neill said.

Detecting radiation

Some experts think the people most likely to respond to the scene of a terrorist attack should be equipped with small, hand-held radiation detectors.

They should be installed in firetrucks and police cars ``just like the radio, the lights and all the other stuff,'' said John W. Poston, a radiation safety expert at Texas A&M University and chairman of the committee that wrote the radiation protection report.

The detectors could pick up radiation attacks that aren't obvious.

And they would also tell emergency crews how much danger they were facing on the scene of an attack, Poston said. He noted that of the 31 people killed by radiation in the worst nuclear accident in history -- the 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine -- 29 were firefighters.

This type of simple detector is already available, Poston said. ``It could be made in your garage,'' he added. ``We were hoping to entice one or more companies to make these things,'' which might cost $50 to $100 each.

If terrorists did detonate a dirty bomb, hospitals would be confronted with patients both injured in the blast and exposed to radiation. Some might be temporarily or permanently blinded from viewing an explosion.

Health workers would confront some unusual circumstances: Most would know how to safely dispose of radioactive clothing, but what about radioactive blood or body wastes? Radioactive metals or other materials embedded in wounds would have to be handled with care to avoid exposing doctors and nurses.

The National Council on Radiation Protection recommended that health workers wash victims with tepid water and perhaps a mild detergent. Patients would undergo radiation surveys: Doctors would take nasal swabs to check for inhaled radioactive material and check metal objects like jewelry or belt buckles for accumulated radiation.

In the early stages of radiation sickness, patients show symptoms such as nausea and vomiting, hair loss or cataracts. More severe radiation poisoning can cause infection, internal bleeding, fluid loss, diarrhea, reduced appetite and weight loss.

``The greatest concern is to make sure physicians are comfortable enough to deal with radioactive contamination so they can treat the traumatic injuries,'' said Dr. Jerrold Bushberg, a radiologist who directs the health physics program at the University of California-Davis.

The health effects of radiation depend on the dose and on which organs are exposed. Radiation can enter the body through the skin or a wound, by breathing radioactive gases or aerosols, or by eating contaminated foods or liquids.

Radiation can damage DNA, the genetic material within cells, causing mutations that can lead to cancer decades down the road. The death of bone marrow stem cells can hamper the production of new blood cells, leading to infection or tissue death.

Preparing for attack

Dr. Fred Mettler, chairman of radiology and nuclear medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, has studied the nation's level of preparation for terrorist nuclear attack and helped to write the radiation protection report.

``The readiness is going to be a lot better a year from now than it is right now, but the capability to handle a radiologic incident is better than any chemical or biological incident,'' Mettler said. ``Nobody's got an anthrax meter, but everybody's got a Geiger counter. The whole thing would be assessed very fast and located very quickly. You wouldn't stand around waiting for someone to develop symptoms.''

Hospitals near nuclear power plants, such as the San Onofre facility outside San Diego, are required to hold regular drills and keep specialized decontamination supplies and medications on hand in the event of a nuclear accident. The same is true for hospitals along routes where nuclear materials are transported.

If you include the nation's hospitals with nuclear medicine departments, Mettler said, ``there really are 3,000 hospitals where somebody would have a clue if someone said `radiation.' ''

The California Department of Health Services has two teams of a dozen health physicists on call -- one for Southern California, the other for Northern California -- to respond to any releases of radioactive material, spokeswoman Lea Brooks said. In addition, medical advances are improving survival rates after radiation exposure. Doctors have learned from mistakes made at Chernobyl and in other nuclear disasters.

For example, bone marrow transplants, once thought to help contaminated patients, have been discredited as a therapy, Bushberg said. Effective only in patients whose bone marrow had been almost destroyed, the transplants were often performed on patients who didn't need them. Perfect bone marrow matches were difficult to locate. Some patients died because their bodies rejected the transplants.

Instead, physicians now rely on a class of drugs called interleukins to help stimulate the production of bone marrow stem cells.

Doctors would also use drugs intended to protect people from the harmful side effects of radiation cancer therapy, such as Ethyol. Another treatment, Trentol, helps strengthen red blood cells so they can survive the journey through blood vessels shrunken by radiation exposure.

Health workers might also give potassium iodide, a form of iodine, to keep patients' thyroid glands from absorbing the radioactive iodine that is produced in some nuclear blasts.

Some have worried that Americans might hoard potassium iodide like they did the antibiotic Cipro in the recent anthrax scare. Mettler said that while potassium iodide might cause thyroid dysfunction or rashes if people take too much of it, its effects aren't life-threatening. In contrast, Cipro is a powerful antibiotic that can cause fatal allergic reactions.

The report from the National Council on Radiation Protection cautions that because radioactive iodine is not present in all blasts, giving potassium iodide to large numbers of people may prove worthless. Still, federal officials are taking steps to stockpile potassium iodide in the event of an attack.

Long-term risks

Researchers for decades have studied the long-term health effects of radiation, examining thousands of survivors of the Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl blasts.

``Basically, what it comes down to is cancer risk,'' Mettler said. ``You can get some kinds but not others. The point is, the risk of cancer from radiation is pretty low compared to the spontaneous risk'' of cancer in the general population.

For example, among 86,000 survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings who were studied from 1950 to 1990, there were only 334 more cancer deaths from tumors and 87 more deaths from leukemia and other blood-cell cancers than ordinarily would have been expected in a population that size.

Children, however, are more likely to develop cancer as adults than people exposed to radiation when they are older, Mettler said.

More attention is also needed, experts say, to the psychological impact of a radiation incident. Even a small release, not enough to affect human health, could send people pouring into hospitals and demanding testing and treatment, as they did during the recent anthrax scare.

And the scars of a radiological attack could run deep.

Imagine the agony of firefighters ordered not to enter an area where people are obviously in need of help, for fear they would be killed by dangerous levels of radioactivity; of parents worried about the health of their children, and of people from all walks of life who would worry, for decades afterward, if they were at increased risk for cancer.

Even after the contamination was cleaned up, the stigma could linger for people in the affected area.

``What we learned at Chernobyl is that getting accurate information to people quickly is what's important,'' Mettler said. ``In Chernobyl, there were as many psychological problems in the `clean' villages as there were in the `dirty' ones. People just didn't trust the government saying the villages were clean.''

Renewed interest

No one, so far, is recommending a return to the days of the fallout shelter boom, which had Americans heatedly debating such questions as whether it was OK to shoot neighbors who tried to force their way into the family shelter during a nuclear attack.

But there does seem to be resurgence of interest in creating reinforced ``safe rooms'' within homes -- ``not as protection against all-out nuclear war, but as protection against gas or germ attacks or the nuke in the suitcase,'' said Kenneth D. Rose, a historian at California State University-Chico and author of ``One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture.''

In 1959, at the height of the Cold War, a 31-page booklet from the Office of Civil Defense and Mobilization showed how to build a family fallout shelter and stock it with two weeks' worth of supplies.

Today, the Federal Emergency Management Agency Web site on disaster response contains one brief mention of the danger of radioactive materials, under a section on chemical emergencies.

The same guidelines apply to both: People should evacuate the area of an attack if told to do so by authorities. If they can't get away, they should ``shelter in place'' by going indoors, sealing all windows and vents and turning off fans and heating or cooling systems.

``Nobody's recommending that people go out and dig bomb shelters in the back yard because of the minute percentage of a chance that kind of threat would be released,'' said Dallas Jones, director of the California Office of Emergency Services.

In a state where the risk of a devastating earthquake probably exceeds that of a nuclear attack, he said, ``it's a common-sense kind of approach.''

Contact Glennda Chui at gchui@sjmercury.com. Contact Barbara Feder at bfeder@sjmercury.com.

--------

Lax control puts secrets and world in danger
NUCLEAR MATERIAL HAS MANY SOURCES, IS EASY TO OBTAIN

BY GLENNDA CHUI
Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2001,
San Jose Mercury News
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/scitech/docs/falloutsid27.htm

Small-scale nuclear attacks may be rare, but they are not unheard of. And experts fear that lax controls on radioactive materials may make these attacks easier to carry out.

In one such incident, separatists from the Russian region of Chechnya buried some radioactive material in a Moscow park in 1995, then called authorities to tell them it was there, said Lyudmila Zaitseva, a visiting researcher at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

Security forces found it and cleaned up the site before it could do any harm.

The center has collected data on 700 cases starting in 1991 in which radioactive material was stolen, lost or abandoned, she said. They include 20 incidents involving plutonium or highly enriched uranium that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

But sources of radiation that could be used to make dirty bombs are much more common and would be easier to obtain, Zaitseva said. They're widespread in hospitals, research and industry.

``There are thousands and thousands of such sources available all over the world, and very often the control of these sources is very poor,'' she said. ``Some countries don't even have databases to account for all the sources they have, and to track them over their lifetimes.''

To many analysts, the most worrisome situation is in Russia.

A report from a high-level study commission in January called the prospect of theft of Russian nuclear technology ``the most dangerous unmet security threat'' the United States faces.

It recommended spending $30 billion during the next eight to 10 years to secure or neutralize all the material in Russia that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Approximately 40,000 nuclear weapons are now spread among more than 100 sites there, many of them poorly guarded. And about a million Russian nuclear scientists and engineers are now out of work, or are in jobs that pay so little that they might be tempted to sell nuclear secrets, materials or expertise.

Contact Glennda Chui at gchui@sjmercury.com.

----

Engineer Pleads Not Guilty to Bomb Component Exports

New York Times
November 27, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/national/27TRIG.html?searchpv=nytToday also
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19551-2001Nov26?language=printer

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 26 (Reuters) - A 72-year-old engineer from the Los Angeles area who had been on the run for the last 16 years pleaded not guilty today to charges of illegally shipping nuclear triggering devices to Israel.

The engineer, Richard Kelly Smyth, faces 15 counts of violating the Arms Export Control Act and 15 counts of making false statements to the federal government. If Mr. Smyth is found guilty, he could face life in prison.

He pleaded not guilty before Judge Pamela Ann Rymer at a hearing in Federal District Court in Los Angeles. Judge Rymer, assigned to the original case in the 1980's, set a trial date of Jan. 15.

Mr. Smyth, a former Air Force and NATO adviser, disappeared from the United States in 1985, three weeks after pleading not guilty to charges that he had exported 800 devices that could be used as nuclear triggers, worth about $60,000, to the Heli Trading Corporation in Israel. After 16 years as a fugitive, he was arrested in July in Malaga, Spain, shortly after filling out a bank application. He was extradited to the United States last week and is being held without bail.

In addition to the charges from the original indictment, Mr. Smyth could also be charged with fleeing the United States, prosecutors said.

The devices Mr. Smyth is accused of exporting are small glass bulbs called krytrons. Invented in 1934 for use in high-speed photography, krytrons have many applications including laser photocopying machines, strobe lights and nuclear weapons. Because they can be used to trigger nuclear bombs, federal law forbids their sale overseas without a permit.

Mr. Smyth, who at the time of the indictment was president of an export and engineering business in Huntington Beach, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles, is accused of illegally sending the krytrons to Israel between 1980 and 1982.

Mr. Smyth has not "made any assertions as to their intended use," said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the United States attorney's office here.

Israel, which has maintained that the krytrons were not intended for use in nuclear weapons, returned "a substantial number" of them after Mr. Smyth's indictment, Mr. Mrozek said.

At a hearing set for Dec. 17, Judge Rymer will also have to determine whether to admit statements made to news organizations by Mr. Smyth's defense lawyer, James Riddet, in 1985. In the statements, Mr. Riddet allegedly acknowledged that Mr. Smyth had shipped the triggers without a license. Prosecutors maintain that Mr. Riddet could be a potential witness because of those statements, Mr. Mrozek said.

---

Briefer Regimen May Fight Breast Cancer

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/health/womenshealth/27BREA.html?searchpv=nytToday

CHICAGO, Nov. 26 (AP) - A single, concentrated dose of radiation may be as effective as six straight weeks of daily radiation 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 and some surrounding tissue are removed - available to many more women.

About 180,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States.

"Approximately three-quarters of women with breast cancer are candidates for lumpectomy, rather than mastectomy, which is total removal of the breast," said Dr. Jayant Vaidya, a surgeon at University College London Medical School, who led the study.

But lumpectomy is typically followed by radiation, and some women with early breast cancer decide against a lumpectomy because they cannot spend six weeks receiving daily radiation treatments, Dr. Vaidya said.

Instead, they choose mastectomy, which typically does not require radiation. Mastectomies are often the only option for women who live far from cancer treatment centers, cannot travel back and forth every day or find the standard radiation schedule unworkable.

An experimental technique called intraoperative radiotherapy uses a miniature radiation probe right after a lumpectomy, while the patient is still in surgery. The probe is inserted inside the cavity created by the removal of the tumor, and radiation equivalent to six weeks of daily doses is emitted for about 25 minutes.

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

The women all underwent lumpectomies for tumors of less than about 1.5 inches. About half got the single dose and half received the standard six weeks of radiation. All have remained cancer-free during a year and a half of follow-up.

Since the 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, a senior medical consultant for the American Cancer Society.

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

Dr. Paula Schomberg, a Mayo Clinic radiologist, said the approach required 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."

The technique will also be studied in the United States, and it is already used for the initial radiation treatment in lumpectomy patients in some American hospitals.

The report said the technique was not sufficient for a form of breast cancer called lobular carcinoma, which accounts for up to 15 percent of all breast cancers.

Dr. Vaidya said victims of such cancer still needed an extended period of radiation, but could start with one intraoperative treatment.

-------- australia

Green group still campaigning against Honeymoon mine

ABC Online
ABC Sci-Tech -
27/11/01
http://www.abc.net.au/news/scitech/2001/11/item20011127130356_1.htm

The Friends of the Earth say it still has a few hands to play before the Honeymoon uranium mine gets its mining licence.

The mine has been given the green light from the Federal Government, but still needs the approval of the South Australian Government before it can go ahead.

Friends of the Earth campaigner Bruce Thompson says state approval of the mine could become a major issue as the South Australian election draws nearer.

This is why he will encourage the state Labor Party to adopt similar policies as its federal colleagues who promised no new uranium mine licences if it was voted in.

Mr Thompson says environmentalists will also approach potential Canadian investors to advise them of the controversial aspect of the project.

"The Honeymoon mine back in 1982 was given the same approval but never got a go at a federal level," he said.

"We're back 17 years later [and] nothing has improved in terms of environmental protection, nothing has improved in terms of process, it's just that we have a Government that seeks to facilitate these projects."

However, Southern Cross Resources says it is not concerned about the Friends of the Earth lobbying potential Canadian investors.

Project manager Tom Hunter says environmentalists have been threatening they will contact investors for the past three or four years.

He says the main concern investors have is about the price of uranium, which he believes can only increase.

"At a time when uranium prices did bottom and are now increasing we've been able to manage to keep on track and to keep ourselves financed, our share price has gone up quite strong since the news came through," he said.


-------- depleted uranium

Iron-loving bacteria can learn to consume uranium

Monday, November 26, 2001
By Environmental News Network
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/11/11262001/iron_45659.asp

For more than 50 years the United States has used nuclear energy for power generation and for military purposes, resulting in the creation of a network of facilities engaged in research, development, production, and testing of nuclear materials. Now, the nation must deal with radioactive materials generated by these facilities that contaminate about 40 million tons of soil and debris, enough to fill 17 professional sports stadiums.

One researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia thinks she has found a type of bacteria that can be modified to clean up uranium contamination. Biochemistry professor Judy Wall has been working with the bacteria known for creating the rotten egg smell of stagnant water with the goal of harnessing them to help remediate sites contaminated with radioactivity.

The radioactive contamination extends to 1.7 trillion gallons of groundwater in 5,700 distinct plumes, about four times the amount of water that Americans consume daily.

With the end of the Cold War threat in the early 1990s and the shutdown of all U.S. nuclear weapons production reactors, the Department of Energy (DOE) has shifted its emphasis to remediation, decommissioning, and decontamination of the immense volumes of contaminated water, sediments, and over 7,000 structures spread over 2,810 square miles. The DOE must characterize, treat, and dispose of hazardous and radioactive waste at more than 120 sites in 36 states and territories.

Wall believes she may have an answer, at least for the remediation of uranium contamination. For the past four years, she has studied one species of bacteria, Desulfovibrio desulfuricans, with the goal of determining its potential for bioremediation of sites contaminated by uranium spills.

Bioremediation is the use of living organisms to reduce or eliminate environmental hazards from toxic chemicals or other wastes.

Wall says her "bug" may be able to clean up sites contaminated by uranium spills from mining, processing and nuclear power plant accidents.

"This particular bacterium is found virtually everywhere," Wall said. "What makes it unique and a potential remediator for uranium is how it makes its energy. It doesn't create its energy through photosynthesis like plants or by burning oxygen like animals. Instead, it makes energy by pushing, or adding, electrons onto other compounds."

Wall believes this electron transport system could be used for bioremediation. By pushing electrons onto the very soluble but dangerous Uranium VI, a more neutral form -- Uranium IV -- is created.

This form is not soluble and can be more easily contained and filtered from contaminated water. Despite its miniscule size, the bacterium contains between 3,000 and 4,000 genes in its DNA. The idea is to identify the genes believed to be involved in controlling the electron flow.

Through such methods as creating mutant genes in the DNA, Wall hopes to decipher the code governing the bacterium's electron transport system. The result could be the release of a bacterium with a reduced appetite for sulfur or iron -- and a huge hunger for uranium.

Currently, Wall is working with researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to understand the proteins that deliver the electrons to Uranium VI. The researchers have identified at least one protein in the process, and in the future, they hope to learn how to increase the bacterium's affinity for uranium and increase its efficiency as a bioremediator.

"Once we've determined the genetic pathway, we can begin to examine other factors that might affect the bacterium's use in bioremediation," Wall said. "We'll need to identify competitors for the electrons, such as other heavy metals, isolate environmental factors that could stop the transport system and determine methods to encourage growth of these helpful bacteria."

"If we can use the bacteria occurring naturally at a site, we can reduce the level of disturbance to the environment during cleanup," she said.

Wall believes that bioremediation should provide a cost savings, a prediction of interest to the DOE which funds Wall's research as part of the department's Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research program.

The DOE has spent more than $23 billion up to 1995 on the cataloging and preliminary characterization of radioactive contamination. Budget projections for these activities just for the next 10 years exceed $60 billion.

--------

Depleted uranium at issue in war

UPI From the Science & Technology Desk
11/27/2001
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=26112001-044840-7177r

TAMPA, Fla., Nov. 26 -- There are conflicting reports about whether the United States has used depleted uranium projectiles in Afghanistan as well continued questions about their potential effect on health.

Sources told United Press International Nov. 15 that ever since it opened its bombing strikes on Oct. 7, the United States has been using depleted uranium munitions against Taliban targets.

However, Maj. Brad Lowell, of the Central Command in Tampa, Fla. later told UPI, "Depleted uranium weapons have not been deployed in the Afghan theater."

When depleted uranium was used in U.S.-led air strikes in Kosovo, and prior to that in attacks on Iraq, it caused a storm of controversy over the short-and long-term side effects.

While Lowell denied DU weapons were used in Afghanistan, he reiterated the military's assertion depleted uranium is safe. He said an Army technical advisor "told me that depleted uranium is used in lots of things, including digital wristwatches."

Depleted uranium is a waste product that comes from the enrichment of natural uranium for use in nuclear reactors. Natural uranium is a slightly radioactive metal found in rocks, soils, rivers and seawater. It is mainly made up of two isotopes or forms of uranium, Uranium-235 and Uranium-238, in the proportion of about 0.7 percent and 99.3 percent, respectively. Nuclear reactors require U235 to produce energy so the natural uranium must be enriched to get the U235 by removing a large part of the U238. Uranium-238 then becomes DU.

DU is an extremely heavy, dense material that provides an extra punch when loaded in weapons and makes shielding more effective.

A RAND report from 1999 indicated use of depleted uranium projectiles in combat causes no immediate or long-term health hazards to soldiers or civilians who come in contact with the weapons or their residue. In addition to researching the long-term effects of natural uranium on workers in the uranium industry, the RAND review reported on the findings of the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center, which is tracking the cases of 33 Desert Storm veterans who came in contact with DU during the Gulf War more than 10 years ago.

According to the RAND review, this "cohort of individuals, about half of whom have embedded fragments, represents a group who received the highest levels of exposure to DU during the Gulf War.

"Although many of these veterans have health problems related to their injuries in the Gulf War, and those with embedded fragments have elevated urine uranium levels, researchers to date report neither adverse renal effects attributable to chemical toxicity of DU nor any adverse health effects as they relate to DU radiation," the report said.

John Capalinotto, a spokesperson for the International Action Center, a worldwide group that wants to ban the use of depleted uranium weapons, told UPI, "DU weapons pose a danger to both soldiers and the environment."

Capalinotto, based in New York, said studies in "Iraq after the Gulf War suggest an increase in childhood cancers," which he attributed to depleted uranium exposure. He said the "inherent cruelty and death-dealing effect" of the weapons violate international law.

Earlier this year NATO and the World Health Organization investigated claims exposure to the depleted uranium rounds increased the risk for leukemia and other cancers. In a report released last spring, WHO investigators concluded, "scientific and medical studies have not established a link between DU exposure and the onset of cancers, congenital abnormalities or serious toxic chemical effects on organs."

But WHO also stated it relied on military data and that "some scientists would like to see a larger body of independently -- i.e. non-military -- funded studies to confirm the current viewpoint."

DU munitions have been part of the U.S. arsenal since 1991. Reports claim the United States and its allies fired about 315 tons of DU during the Persian Gulf War and more than 30,000 rounds during the Kosovo conflict. Additionally, the United States fired more than 10,000 depleted uranium rounds during air engagements over Bosnia in 1994 and 1995. DU offers improved defense when used as armor shielding and enhanced power when used in armor penetrating munitions. Along with the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Thailand, Israel, and France are developing or already possess weapons systems that make use of DU.

According to the Federation of American Scientists: "DU is ideal for use in armor penetrators. These solid metal projectiles have the speed, mass and physical properties to perform exceptionally well against armored targets. "DU provides a substantial performance advantage, well above competing materials allowing DU penetrators to defeat an armored target at a significantly greater distance," FAS said.

It is the impact of the penetrators on armored targets that causes activists the greatest health concerns. Capalinotto said depleted uranium is dangerous when it explodes because it causes small amounts of still radioactive uranium to become aerosolized. Soldiers and civilians can then breathe in these dangerous particles, he said.

When a DU penetrator hits a solid object and burns, radioactive U-238 is released into the air in tiny particles called particulates, which can be blown by the wind or carried over water for miles. "Originally it was thought that up to 70 percent of the DU round may be aerosolized upon impact of a DU penetrator on its target or in fires in which DU burns. However, based on more refined testing, the percentage of the original material to aerosolize is now known to range from 10 to 35 percent with a maximum of 70 percent," the RAND report said. The report also said DU has been found useful in medicine as radiation shields, in aviation as counterweights, in aerospace for satellite ballast, and in petroleum exploration in drilling equipment, along with military applications.

In terms of environmental risk, the WHO report stated that DU shells buried in the ground "are unlikely to decompose quickly and hence, their addition to the natural environmental abundance of total uranium in soil will be small."

(Reported by Peggy Peck in Cleveland and Malcolm Visser in Washington.

----

Depleted Uranium Conference 17th January 2002

Commonwealth Institute,
Kensington High Street, London

From: uranium@t-online.de
Tue, 27 Nov 2001
Booking: http://www.srp-uk.org/formjan02.html

Morning Session - Chairman: Brian Spratt, Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine

09.30 Registration and Coffee

10.00 Chairman's Introduction

10.10 DU and Public Concerns Ron Brown, Dstl Radiological Protection Services, MoD

10.40 Transport, Pathways and Exposure Routes Barry Smith, British Geological Survey

11.10 Environmental and Personal Monitoring Nick Priest, Middlesex University

11.40 Biokinetics and Toxicology Neil Stradling, National Radiological Protection Board

12.10 Discussion Session

12.40 Lunch Afternoon Session - Chairman: Dudley Goodhead, Medical Research Council

14.00 Chairman's Introduction

14.10 US Perspective on DU Steve Shelton, Dowbiggin Ltd, USA

14.50 Unresolved Issues on DU Keith Baverstock, World Health Organisation

15.20 Future Research: MoD UK Perspective Phil Sutton, Director Research (Corporate), Ministry of Defence, UK

15.50 Discussion Session

16.15 Tea and Close Organisers: David Smith and Mike Thorne

Scope of the Meeting

There has been much recent interest in the issue of depleted uranium (DU) in the environment, especially its use in recent military conflicts. This meeting will set the scene with invited presentations on DU, pathways, environmental and personal monitoring. Further speakers will cover aspects of biokinetics, and toxicology. In conclusion, unresolved issues and future research requirements will be discussed.

For those under 35

A limited number of registrations will be available free on application. Travel expenses may also be applied for.

-------- iraq

Next Target in Terror War:
Bush Says It Could Be Iraq

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/international/27PREX.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - President Bush warned Saddam Hussein today that if he did not admit United Nations inspectors to determine if Iraq is developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, he would face consequences.

Mr. Bush declined for now to say what those might be. "He'll find out," Mr. Bush said.

In issuing the threat, the president seemed to broaden his definition of terrorism to include the development of weapons that would "terrorize nations," a significant departure from the definition he used in an address to Congress in September about the purpose of the war.

"If anybody harbors a terrorist, they're a terrorist," Mr. Bush said today. "If they fund a terrorist, they're a terrorist. If they house terrorists, they're terrorists. I mean, I can't make it any more clearly to other nations around the world. If they develop weapons of mass destruction that will be used to terrorize nations, they will be held accountable."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said tonight that Mr. Hussein should hear Mr. Bush's words as "a very sober, chilling message." In an appearance on CNN on "Larry King Live," Secretary Powell added, "There are many options available to the international community and to the president."

Mr. Bush's remarks came as his administration continues an internal debate over the next phase of the war, including whether it will undertake military action to try to oust Mr. Hussein. Mr. Bush has been criticized by conservative Republicans for not moving forcibly against Mr. Hussein, who has been accused of plotting to assassinate Mr. Bush's father and whose survival continues to torment Washington a decade after the Persian Gulf war.

For his part, Mr. Bush insisted that he had not widened the definition of what his administration considers terrorism, even though he did not mention weapons of mass destructions in his speech to Congress. "Have I expanded the definition?" Mr. Bush said. "I've always had that definition, as far as I'm concerned."

Mr. Bush made his remarks in a question-and-answer session with reporters after a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden welcoming two American Christian relief workers who were rescued this month by American forces in Afghanistan.

The president, whom one missionary, Heather Mercer, praised as "such a man of God," repeated some of the same strong language that he first used last week in a speech to cheering members of the 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell, Ky.

"Afghanistan is still just the beginning" of the war on terrorism, Mr. Bush said today, emphasizing that Americans would die there.

"It's going to happen," the president said. "I said this early on, as the campaign began: America must be prepared for loss of life. I believe the American people understand that we've got a mighty struggle on our hands and that there will be sacrifice."

Mr. Bush added that "as for Mr. Hussein, he needs to let inspectors back in his country, to show us that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction."

Other than this warning, the president gave no further hint of what course the war might take should Osama bin Laden be captured or killed and his Al Qaeda network be destroyed in Afghanistan.

Iraq is the most conspicuous example of a country that either has or is suspected of developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, but it is not the only one. Mr. Bush also said today, "We want North Korea to allow inspectors in, to determine whether or not" North Korea is developing nuclear weapons.

A showdown with North Korea in 1994 led the United States to reinforce its troops on the peninsula. The crisis was partly resolved with an agreement that froze the North's nuclear activity at one major site, but the Bush administration suspects there are additional plants capable of producing nuclear weapons.

The United States has also said it strongly suspects Iran, Libya and Syria of developing biological weapons. In each of these cases, the White House appears to be laying the groundwork for demanding international inspections. What administration officials will do if the nations refuse is unclear.

Iraq has refused to admit inspectors since 1998, when the Clinton administration and British forces responded with four nights of air and missile strikes against more than 100 targets, including military headquarters and air defenses. But Mr. Hussein remained in place.

During the the 2000 presidential campaign, Mr. Bush and his advisers pledged to confront Mr. Hussein more aggressively than Mr. Clinton had. Significantly, those advisers included Secretary Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney, who had helped Mr. Bush's father oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the gulf war in 1991. In February of this year, barely a month in office, Mr. Bush ordered air strikes with Britain against Iraqi radar stations and air-defense command centers, calling the action a necessary response to Iraqi provocation.

Since Sept. 11, a group of administration hard-liners has argued that the United States should move further against Iraq, but Secretary Powell has said there is no evidence linking Mr. Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks and that the coalition against terrorism will not hold if Washington acts against Iraq.

The secretary said on CNN tonight that he was working with Russia for a compromise on what the administration calls "smart sanctions" against Iraq, which are intended to let in civilian goods but not military ones.

"What we don't want to have go in, are equipment that can be used for developing weapons of mass destruction," Secretary Powell said. "We're not doing this just to protect America, but to protect the region."

Mr. Bush has so far seemed to endorse the views of Mr. Powell, and the president said again today that he remained focused on the war in Afghanistan. "We're going to make sure that we accomplish each mission that we tackle," Mr. Bush said. "First things first."

Although Mr. Bush has been criticized by some conservatives for what they consider his hesitation in dealing with Mr. Hussein, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, warned today about opening up another front in the war.

"The principal focus should be on achieving the goals of this mission," Mr. Warner said in a news conference on Capitol Hill. Before tackling terrorism in a new country or region, Mr. Warner added, the administration should conduct "a complete reassessment with regard to coalition support."

-------- korea

Congress Checks N. Korea Reports

By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Tuesday, November 27, 2001; 5:26 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23777-2001Nov27?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- Congress is looking into reports North Korea is providing Egypt with long-range missiles even as the Bush administration plans to sell the Arab country more than 50 surface-to-surface missiles in a $400 million arms deal, a congressional source said Tuesday.

Administration officials have been asked to testify behind closed doors Friday on the reports of a North Korean missile deal. The U.S. plan to arm Egypt with 53 Harpoon Block II satellite-guided anti-ship missiles was reported by The Washington Post and confirmed on Capitol Hill.

Two senior members of Congress, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, have questioned the U.S. deal as a potential threat to Israeli ships. Presumably, the missiles could reach land targets, as well.

The deal was outlined in a classified memorandum to Congress in early November, said the congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It surfaced as Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher was arriving in Washington for talks with Secretary of State Colin Powell and members of Congress on Thursday.

Lantos, in a statement to the Associated Press, said, "Egypt today faces no external threat that warrants the sale of advanced Harpoon anti-ship missiles."

"The greatest threat Egypt faces today is not external attack, but poverty and a lack of democracy, a sure recipe for future instability," he said.

Meanwhile, a senior State Department official plans to go to Saudi Arabia this week to confer with officials of the Arab kingdom about efforts to counter terrorism.

William Burns, the assistant secretary of state, will report also on new U.S. efforts to establish a cease-fire and start Israel and the Palestinians on a path of peacemaking.

Burns is in the region with Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps. general, to try to mediate a cease-fire and rekindle peace talks.

Zinni is staying on, but Burns will make stops in a handful of Arab countries and return to Washington.

The New York Times, in a report from Riyadh, said Saudi Arabia was balking at American requests to freeze the bank accounts of those the United States says are linked to terrorism.

The report said a U.S. delegation would be sent to Saudi Arabia to persuade its officials to cooperate.

But Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, credited the Saudis with excellent cooperation in cutting off financial assets for terrorists. The Riyadh government has instructed banks to look for and freeze accounts linked to terrorists, Boucher said Tuesday.

An official at the Saudi embassy called the story in the Times "absolute nonsense."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said later, "The Saudi Arabian government has done everything the United States has asked it to do in the war on terrorism."

Bush spoke by phone Tuesday with Jordan's King Abdullah, Fleischer said. He said they discussed the war in Afghanistan and the Mideast peace process, but he had no further details.

-------- pakistan

Pakistan Detains Nuclear Scientists

The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 27, 2001; 9:20 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21361-2001Nov27?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists suspected of having ties to suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden were detained again for questioning, a spokesman for the military-led government said Tuesday.

Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid were first taken into custody Oct. 23. Authorities said last week that they had been released.

On Tuesday, Gen. Rashid Quereshi said the scientists were brought in for further interrogation but declined to say why. No charges have been filed, officials said.

The two men worked for Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission until retiring in 1999. Both subsequently made frequent trips to Afghanistan and met bin Laden on two occasions, government officials have said.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Monday that authorities suspected the men of having links within Afghanistan. He did not elaborate, but said the two were not tied to Pakistan's atomic weapons program.

The scientists have said they visited Afghanistan on behalf of a charity organization that helped farmers and students. They deny passing nuclear secrets to Afghanistan's now-retreating Taliban regime or to bin Laden.

Officials in Pakistan, which conducted its first underground nuclear bomb tests in 1998, say there is nothing to suggest they revealed nuclear secrets to anyone in Afghanistan.

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

House OKs Nuke Plant Liability Limit

By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 27, 2001; 6:44 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24208-2001Nov27?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- The House overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday to extend a law that limits the financial liability of nuclear power plant operators in a major accident or terrorist attack.

The measure also would require a review of security requirements for nuclear power plants taking into account the kind of terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission already has begun such a review.

The House rejected arguments that the Price Anderson Act, which limits private companies' liability in a nuclear accident, is outdated and should be scrapped.

The law's supporters argued that in 44 years of the law's existence, the taxpayer has never had to pay on claims arising from a nuclear accident and that some liability limits are needed if the nuclear industry is to survive with a new generation of power plants.

The current law, enacted in 1957 and extended several times, requires individual nuclear power plants to have private insurance covering at least $200 million. In addition, the industry as a whole must have insurance for another $9.3 billion to be available for an accident at any of the plants.

Any costs above that would be borne by the government.

The House-passed bill would extend the law, which expires next August, to August, 2017. It now awaits Senate action.

Several Democrats joined in supporting the legislation after compromises were reached on new liability limits for private Energy Department contractors and on new security measures at reactor sites.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., called the federal liability limits "particularly odious" but urged colleagues to support the legislation because of its new security requirements.

The bill requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reassess its security rules to establish more clearly what kinds of attacks the industry must guard against and what is the responsibility of the government.

It also calls on the NRC to more closely monitor and grade mock terrorist exercises, better track the transportation of nuclear materials, and tighten background checks for employees with access to such materials.

In the weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the NRC began a broad security review - much along the lines outlined in the bill - with an eye toward overhauling its regulations.

While the legislation passed by a voice vote, it prompted sharp criticism from a few lawmakers, who argued that a major accident or terrorist attack could inflict tens of billions of dollars in damages and leave the taxpayer holding the bill.

"It's nothing more than a giant government subsidy to keep the nuclear industry afloat," declared Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., whose state has been fighting a proposed federal nuclear waste site 90 miles from Las Vegas. She called the government's assuming of liability over a major nuclear accident "nothing short of highway robbery."

But Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., argued that "taxpayers have not spent one dime" although there have been 206 claims involving nuclear incidents. The claims, even those arising from the Three Mile Island accident, were covered by private insurance because they fell far below the trigger for government payments.

House Energy and Commerce Committee: http://energycommerce.house.gov
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov
Department of Energy: http://www.energy.gov

----

For Radiation, How Much Is Too Much?

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By GINA KOLATA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/science/physical/27RADA.html?searchpv=nytToday

In their efforts to protect Americans from the hazards of radiation, federal agencies have found themselves in a quandary. People are constantly exposed to radiation from natural sources - from cosmic rays, radon seeping out of the earth and radioactive substances in soil, water, food and even from potassium in the human body itself.

Compared with this radiation, the amounts coming from human efforts like nuclear plants are, relatively, minuscule. So, the question is, How closely must this radiation be regulated?

Up to now, regulators have typically acted as if every bit of excess exposure is potentially hazardous. But some scientists question this assumption.

The issue is becoming increasingly pressing as more than 100 nuclear power plants are being relicensed so they can continue to operate. At the same time, the country faces a growing predicament of what to do with nuclear waste from power plants and weapons sites.

"The issue rages because we are regulating doses that are lower than the natural background of radiation," said Dr. Arthur Upton. A radiation expert and former director of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Upton is a professor of environmental and community medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

In a report last year on radiation standards, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said: "The standards administered by E.P.A. and N.R.C. to protect the public from low-level radiation exposure do not have a conclusive scientific basis, despite decades of research."

The situation is further confused, experts say, because regulatory standards are a hodgepodge.

The Environmental Protection Agency advocates a standard for all radiation exposure from a single source or site at 15 millirem a year, with no more than 4 coming from ground water. A standard chest X-ray, in comparison, gives about 10 millirem to the chest, which is equivalent to 1 or 2 millirem to the whole body. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sets its acceptable level of radiation exposure from any one source at 25 millirem a year. In contrast, the natural level of background radiation in the United States, on average, is about 350 millirem a year, and in some areas of the country it is many times higher than that.

In New York, for example, people absorb about 100 millirem of radiation each year from cosmic rays alone, said Dr. John Boice Jr., a radiation expert, who is the scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Md. In Denver, exposure from cosmic rays averages 200 millirem a year, he said, and natural variation in radiation exposure is many times the amounts of radiation that are being disputed by regulatory agencies.

"We eat, breathe and drink low levels of radiation," Dr. Boice said.

At the same time, said Dr. Fred Mettler, chairman of the radiology department at the University of New Mexico medical school, major medical sources of radiation, like CAT scanners, have fallen outside the purview of any regulatory agency.

"A whole lot of places aren't regulated at all," Dr. Mettler said. "It's a bit of a nightmare."

"When you look at the exposure of the population from radiation, about two-thirds is due to natural background and about 15 percent is due to your friendly doctors and chiropractors," Dr. Mettler said. "Everything else is, to tell you the truth, very minimal. Less than a couple of percent is from all the nuclear reactors and all the research industry."

But, asked Dr. John Evans, a risk analyst at the Harvard School of Public Health, Why should the level of background radiation matter to the question of how much additional risk from human-generated sources is acceptable? "Why isn't the more relevant question, How much of this risk can be mitigated at what cost to you?" he asked.

The quandary over how to set radiation levels does not result from a lack of research or analysis, scientists say.

"Radiation's effects on people have been studied for over a century," Dr. Mettler said. "There's a vast literature. There are probably more studies on the harmful effects of radiation than for any other toxic or noxious agents in the environment."

And as scientists studied radiation, committees to evaluate the data proliferated.

"We have national and international standing committees that periodically review the world's literature on ionizing radiation," said Dr. Boice, who is a member of many such groups. "At the International Committee on Radiological Protection, we just celebrated our 75th anniversary and we meet two or three times a year."

Then, he said, there is the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. "That started in 1955," Dr. Boice said. "We meet every year in Vienna and we publish volumes."

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements wrestle with the radiation standards question, and the National Academy of Sciences has been called upon periodically since the 1950's to weigh in with its committee, called the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation committee. The Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health conduct extensive research.

The science has grown rapidly. In 1980, Dr. Boice set up the radiation epidemiology section at the National Cancer Institute with just a handful of researchers. Now, he said, while he moved on to form the International Epidemiology Institute, which conducts research for industry and the government, the cancer institute's radiation department is no longer a section, it is a branch, and one of the largest branches there, with hundreds of scientists.

"A lot of people say, `Gee, we don't know a lot about the risks of radiation,'" Dr. Boice said. "I say: `We know a whole lot. We've studied populations all over the world since the turn of the last century. We know what happens at high doses. We know what happens at medical doses. And we know that at low doses the risks are low. The controversy is just how low are they. Are they really low or are they really, really low?'"

As with other toxic substances in the environment, the stricter the standards, the more it costs to meet them.

The G.A.O. report last year, which had the subtitle "Scientific Basis Inconclusive, and E.P.A. and N.R.C. Disagreement Continues," gave some examples of the costs of complying with standards setting different levels of radiation. The cost of cleaning soil around reactors and nuclear weapons facilities could range from thousands of dollars to more than $100 million, depending on whether the standard was an exposure of 15 or 25 millirem a year, the report said.

The report said that for groundwater, the cost of going from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's limits of 25 millirem a year to the level that the Environmental Protection Agency wants could be billions of dollars.

Scientists usually rely on a mathematical model in estimating radiation risk. The most widely used model is known as the linear-nonthreshold dose-response model. It assumes that there is no safe dose of radiation and that the risk of getting cancer or genetic damage increases along with radiation exposure.

"For better or worse, that is our model," said Stephen Page, the director of the environmental agency's office of radiation and indoor air. And with that model, he said, "the E.P.A. has tried to be as protective as possible." The agency, he added, uses that model to make sure the risk from radiation is within the allowable range from toxic chemicals, 1 in 10,000 to 1 in a million chance of developing cancer.

Some say that the linear model is the best way to estimate radiation risk, but others say that there is, in fact, a threshold below which radiation poses no hazard to health. And still others say that low doses of radiation are actually beneficial.

The linear hypothesis had its origin in 1927, when the geneticist Dr. H. J. Muller published a paper on his work eliciting gene mutations in fruit flies by bombarding them with radiation from X-rays. In a paper published in the journal Science, Dr. Muller showed that the number of mutations in fruit flies was proportional to the dose of X-rays that had struck the insects.

"He said: `Aha! There's a linear relationship,'" said Dr. Dade W. Moeller, a radiation expert and professor emeritus at Harvard who runs a consulting company, Dade Moeller & Associates in New Bern, N.C. Yet, Dr. Moeller points out, those studies by Dr. Muller used very high doses of radiation, and he elicited gene mutations, not cancer. But the idea that radiation's effects were directly proportional to its dose caught hold and soon was being used to predict cancer cases. The difficulty was in demonstrating it.

The risks of getting cancer from exposure to radiation increase with dose. But since a third of all people get cancer anyway, at some time in their lives, the problem is to find evidence that low doses of radiation cause cancers that would not have otherwise occurred. Even for people exposed to large radiation doses, like the 80,000 to 90,000 survivors of the atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it has been hard to find excess cancers.

"They were exposed in 1945 and nearly half are still alive," Dr. Moeller said.

Dr. Mettler said the latest data show that 12,000 of these atomic bomb survivors had died from cancer. He said the number of excess cancers in the group is about 700.

Those data, Dr. Mettler said, show that there is a small risk of cancer with an exposure of tens of thousands of millirem of radiation.

"There's a group that says that if you can't see it, it doesn't exist," Dr. Mettler said. "Then there's another group that says, `That's nice, but it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.'"

Now, some scientists even say low radiation doses may be beneficial. They theorize that these doses protect against cancer by activating cells' natural defense mechanisms. As evidence, they cite studies, like one in Canada of tuberculosis patients who had multiple chest X-rays and one of nuclear workers in the United States. The tuberculosis patients, some analyses said, had fewer cases of breast cancer than would be expected and the nuclear workers had a lower mortality rate than would be expected.

Dr. Boice said these studies were flawed by statistical pitfalls, and when a committee of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement evaluated this and other studies on beneficial effects, it was not convinced. The group, headed by Dr. Upton of New Jersey, wrote that the data "do not exclude" the hypothesis. But, it added, "the prevailing evidence has generally been interpreted as insufficient to support this view."

In the meantime, the regulatory agencies are at a stalemate, continuing to disagree on radiation standards. And the committee reports and committee meetings on radiation standards go on.

A recent report, issued in June by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Risks, is 287 pages long and devoted entirely to evaluating the linear-nonthreshold model. It explains that the council "has sought to leave no significant aspect of the subject unaddressed."

Its conclusion?

For lack of a better model, it recommends keeping the linear one.

"There is not conclusive evidence on which to reject" the model, the report says, adding that "it may never be possible to prove or disprove the validity of the linear nonthreshold assumption."

-------- nebraska

Program offers aid to energy workers

BY KEVIN ABOUREZK
Lincoln Journal Star
November 27, 2001
http://www.journalstar.com/nebraska?story_id=4890&date=20011127&past=

The two widows spoke slowly, sharing tragic, similar details of their lives.

Both had husbands who worked at the Hallam Nuclear Power Facility.

Both men died abruptly from cancer.

"My husband died within two months of being diagnosed with colon cancer," said Marcia Philippi of Beatrice.

"My husband died within three months," said Marge Etherton of Lincoln.

The women came together briefly Monday to hear U.S. Department of Labor representatives explain the benefits they might be eligible for under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. About 10 people attended the presentation at the Federal Building in Lincoln.

The federal act went into effect July 31. It provides $150,000 in lump-sum compensation, as well as related medical expenses, to workers who are seriously ill because they were exposed to beryllium, silica or radiation while working for the Department of Energy, its contractors or subcontractors in the nuclear weapons industry.

It also provides benefits to some survivors and $50,000 in lump-sum payments and medical expenses to some uranium workers.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 claims have been filed with the Labor Department, which has paid out $21 million in benefits.

"This is the extent of what we can do to make it right," claims examiner Susan Atwood told those who attended the presentation. "It doesn't even begin to replace what you've lost."

The only Nebraska site confirmed to be a location where Department of Energy employees could have become ill was the Hallam Nuclear Power Facility, about 20 miles south of Lincoln, she said.

"At some point in time, it must have had something to do with development of nuclear weapons," Atwood said. The Hallam site closed as a nuclear plant in 1971 and now serves as a coal plant.

To qualify for compensation, workers or their survivors must provide the Labor Department with the worker's employment history and medical records showing evidence of a covered disease. The only diseases covered by the act are cancer caused by radiation, chronic beryllium disease and chronic silicosis.

During the presentation, Etherton asked Atwood how survivors would find medical and employment records from 30 or 40 years ago. While she agreed such records might not still exist, Atwood said survivors should file claims anyway.

"Tell us everything you know that you can remember," she said.

Philippi, whose husband died in 1990 at the age of 46, has many memories of her husband's death.

"I remember a lot because I didn't want him working there in the first place," she said, "but he wouldn't listen to me."

Reach Kevin Abourezk at 473-7237 or kabourezk@journalstar.com.

-------- us politics

Powell to Visit Turkey, Russia

By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Tuesday, November 27, 2001; 8:58 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21278-2001Nov27?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin Powell will solicit support from Turkey and Russia for an expanded U.S. campaign against terrorism during an eight-day trip to Europe.

With U.S. forces routing the Taliban in Afghanistan and postwar planning under way, the focus on efforts to counter terrorism is shifting to Iraq and other nations accused of sanctioning terror.

Powell's stop in Turkey provides a chance to ponder strategy against Iraq, if it is the next U.S. target, as some Pentagon officials have proposed. Terrorism also is on the agenda for his stop in Moscow.

Russia is a strong ally of the United States in the war in Afghanistan. Mindful of its own problems with some of the separatists in the Chechnya republic, Russia shares President Bush's view that terrorism is a worldwide issue.

Powell spoke by telephone Monday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov mostly about a U.S. move in the U.N. Security Council this week to ease economic sanctions on the Iraqi people while tightening controls on weapons technology.

"Our goal is to bring Russia on board," department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Evidently, Russia's resistance to the so-called "smart sanctions," which Iraq also opposes, was not overcome. "We'll keep working on that," Boucher said.

Powell is due to begin his trip Monday after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who will be in Washington on a two-day visit.

The main issue is how to reduce violence and start down a road to renewed peacemaking with the Palestinians.

In Moscow, Powell also is likely to begin planning Bush's anticipated visit to Russia next year for another meeting with President Vladimir Putin. The meeting is unlikely to be held before the spring.

Talks between Bush and Putin earlier this month in Washington and Crawford, Texas, boosted U.S. relations with Russia and produced announcements by the two leaders that they would slash their stockpiles of long-range nuclear warheads.

But Bush and Putin did not agree on Bush's ambitious program for mounting a defense against missile attack, which critics say could throw decades of arms control efforts into disarray.

The Pentagon is eager to proceed with anti-missile tests that could bump up against a 1972 treaty that prohibits a nationwide anti-missile shield, and Bush may be edging closer to withdrawing from the agreement.

A dust-up on anti-missile defenses could be avoided if Russia went along with the tests. Powell may try to find out how much leeway, if any, Russian policy-makers may be willing to extend on the issue.

The State Department announced Monday that Powell would stop first in Bucharest, Romania, for a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He plans to then go to Brussels, Belgium, for a series of meetings at NATO headquarters with the 18 NATO allies and with Russia and Ukraine, which are gradually strengthening ties with the military alliance.

He then flies to Turkey and later Russia. Other stops, in Central Asia, may be sandwiched in. Powell is due to return to Washington on Dec. 10.

--------

Iraq's Weapons Could Make It a Target, Bush Says

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 27, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19205-2001Nov26?language=printer

President Bush offered a new justification for future military strikes against Iraq yesterday, declaring in blunt and personal terms that countries that develop weapons of mass destruction could be a target in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Bush was emphatic that much work remains to be done in Afghanistan, where U.S. ground troops landed Sunday for the first time, and he warned that casualties are likely as soldiers hunt cave to cave for Osama bin Laden and other suspected perpetrators of the Sept. 11 hijackings. "This is a dangerous period of time," he said.

But Bush, when asked at a Rose Garden appearance about whether Iraq could be a target as the United States looks to expand the war on terrorists, said, "Afghanistan is still just the beginning. . . . If you develop weapons of mass destruction that you want to terrorize the world, you'll be held accountable."

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the president's comments represented a "restatement of a long-standing American policy." Since Sept. 11, the administration has appeared divided about where to take the war after Afghanistan, with some key Bush advisers urging a more aggressive stance versus Iraq.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has barred United Nations weapons inspectors from searching for chemical and biological weapons depots since 1997. U.S. officials have said satellite photographs and intelligence reports suggest that Hussein has continued his quest for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

"As for Mr. Saddam Hussein, he needs to let inspectors back in his country, to show us that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction," Bush said.

Asked the consequences if inspectors are not admitted, Bush said, "He'll find out."

The president also said North Korea must allow weapons inspectors. "We've had that discussion with North Korea," Bush said. "I made it very clear to North Korea that in order for us to have relations with them, that we want to know: Are they developing weapons of mass destruction? And they ought to stop proliferating."

Kenneth Allard, a former Army colonel who is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said administration officials have been disciplined about not dwelling publicly on their grievances with Iraq, but now "are allowing themselves the luxury of looking ahead."

"They have been very careful not to bite off more than they could chew," Allard said. "It is very clear that Iraq looms as the major continuing terrorist threat, and they just didn't want to talk about that until they were ready to go."

In Bush's address to Congress on Sept. 20, he said, "Any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." On Oct. 30, he was more specific, saying, "If you feed a terrorist, if you provide sanctuary to a terrorist, if you fund a terrorist, you are just as guilty as the terrorist that inflicted the harm on the American people."

Bush said yesterday that he was not consciously expanding his list of possible targets by citing countries, like Iraq, that possess weapons of mass destruction. "I've always had that definition, as far as I'm concerned," Bush said.

The series of recent administration remarks about Iraq began with an appearance by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on CNN's "Late Edition" on Nov. 18. She said the United States is monitoring Hussein and added, "We'll deal with that situation eventually."

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz said during a briefing on Wednesday, after noting that the focus remains on Afghanistan, "We see a good deal of evidence -- chemical, biological, and even nuclear -- that the Iraqis are working both with their indigenous capabilities and acquiring what they can illicitly in the international market."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said last night on CNN's "Larry King Live" that Hussein should take Bush's comments as "a very sober, chilling message."

Powell said Iraq remains dangerous. "They continue to try to develop these weapons, and we will keep the pressure on them to make sure that these weapons do not become a serious threat to the region or to the world," he said.

Despite the drumbeat, White House officials said it would be a mistake to assume that Iraq is the next target, or even that the next phase in the war would be military. Officials have said strikes against bin Laden's al Qaeda network are possible in Sudan and Somalia. Actions are also possible, probably in coordination with the host governments, in the Philippines and Indonesia.

"The military has been making plans and contingencies with regard to Iraq for 10 years," a senior administration official said. "We are focused on what we're doing right now, which is in Afghanistan."

Bush's Rose Garden remarks were part of an appearance with two U.S. aid workers who had been detained in Afghanistan on charges that they had promoted Christianity. As Bush took questions, he said he was "not the least bit concerned" about international concern over his plan to establish secret military tribunals for certain terrorist suspects from abroad.

Bush is to meet Wednesday with Jose Maria Aznar, the prime minister of Spain, which has cited the possible use of the tribunals as a reason for not extraditing eight suspects as conspirators in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"A president must have the option of using a military tribunal in times of war," Bush said. "It makes sense for national security purposes, it makes sense for the protection of potential jurors. It makes sense for homeland security. It is the right decision to make, and I will explain that to any leader who asks."

Staff writer Steven Mufson contributed to this report.

--------

Did bin Laden have help from U.S. friends?

Thomas Walkom
COLUMNIST
Nov. 27, 02:00 EDT
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1006790798783

AN INTRIGUING new book, just published in France, details the curiously amicable relationship between the regime of U.S. President George W. Bush and Afghanistan's Taliban, a relationship that turned hostile only after the terror attacks of Sept. 11.

Ben Laden: La Verité Interdite (Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth) is written by former French spook Jean-Charles Brisard and journalist Guillaume Dasquie. Both are said to be plugged into the murky world of intelligence. During his time with French intelligence, Brisard was regarded as something of an expert on bin Laden's finances.

The nub of their argument is that the Bush regime's attitude toward the Taliban - and even to bin Laden - was driven by the new president's fixation on energy. A stable regime in Afghanistan would allow construction of an oil and gas pipeline from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia to Pakistan and the sea. And initially, Washington's best bet for a stable regime in Afghanistan was the Taliban.

From February, when the Taliban first offered to extradite bin Laden in exchange for U.S. recognition, until August when negotiations stalled, the Bush administration and the government it later labelled a terrorist regime got along just fine.

Indeed, the book quotes John O'Neill, a former director of anti-terrorism for the Federal Bureau of Investigation as complaining that American and Saudi oil interests acting through the U.S. State Department kept interfering with efforts to track down bin Laden.

In particular, the authors say, O'Neill was irked after the State Department refused to let his FBI team return to Yemen to investigate the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole there last year. Frustrated, he quit to take a private sector job. Unfortunately for him, that job was as head of security in New York's World Trade Center. O'Neill was killed on Sept. 11.

Skeptics might argue that his death proved convenient for the authors. Now there is no one to dispute their account of what he said. Certainly, Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth has the whiff of an old-fashioned conspiracy theory starring the usual panoply of villains.

Still, the details that Brisard and Dasquie provide (including the fact that the Taliban hired the niece of former CIA director Richard Helms to orchestrate their publicity) do not contradict what was already known about the relationship between Washington and its soon-to-be arch-enemy. In fact, they support it.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid's well-regarded book Taliban: Islam, Oil And The New Great Game in Central Asia outlines how oil politics has affected U.S. policy in Afghanistan. The Taliban's unprecedented offer to extradite bin Laden to a third country, well before the Sept. 11 attacks, was reported by the Times of London in February. In September, this newspaper reported on the often cozy relationship between Washington and the Taliban.

Last month, the Washington Post reported that Sudan had offered in 1996 to extradite bin Laden, who was wanted at that time for attacks on U.S. servicemen in Saudi Arabia.

However, the U.S. declined that offer. Instead, it agreed with Sudan's decision to deport bin Laden and his entourage to a place where he couldn't do any damage - Afghanistan. The official reason for U.S. reluctance was that it wasn't sure a case against him could stand up in court. Saudi Arabia, the other extradition destination proposed by the Sudanese, refused to take him

But there is a pattern. Earlier this month, the Guardian, a U.K. newspaper, reported that FBI agents had been told by the Bush administration to back off investigating members of the bin Laden clan living in the U.S. In September, the Wall Street Journal documented the lucrative business connections between the bin Laden family and senior U.S. Republicans, including the president's father, George Bush Sr.

What are we to make of all of this? One possible conclusion is that the bin Laden terror problem was allowed to get out of hand because bin Laden, himself, had powerful protectors in both Washington and Saudi Arabia. If that's true, no wonder the Bush administration prefers that he be killed rather than allowed to testify in open court.

The other conclusions - questions really - have to do with the justification for the war on Afghanistan. If the Taliban unilaterally offered in February to extradite bin Laden (an offer they repeated after Sept. 11), were they just kidding? If not, was the war necessary?

This question will become particularly important if the U.S. fails to find the terrorist it says started this war, the man it allowed to go to Afghanistan in the first place.

This weekend, Spain announced it would not extradite suspected Al Qaeda terrorists to the U.S. as long as Bush plans to try such people in military tribunals. We should recall that the Taliban imposed conditions on their extradition offer, too, conditions the U.S. deemed unacceptable. Will Madrid be the anti-terror coalition's next target?

Thomas Walkom's column appears on Tuesday. He can be reached at twalkom@thestar.ca


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Millions of land mines hinder Afghan recovery

USA Today
11/27/2001
By Tim Friend, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/acovwed.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan - When he saw his left foot was gone, Abdul Majid was confused. Six weeks later, as he lay in a hospital bed in the northern Afghan town of Khoja Bahauddin, Majid pieced together what happened. He had been leading a donkey loaded with cookies, cooking oil and soap from his village in Takhar province to the bazaar at Khoja Bahauddin. A blanket of stars and a half moon illuminated the narrow path ahead. Majid, 60, was thinking about how many more trips the aging pack animal could make across the rugged trails. A good donkey costs $200 - 4 or 5 months' pay. An instant later, there was a flash, then a deafening explosion. Majid's blood - black under the moonlight - quickly soaked the ground around him. His left foot was gone. So was the donkey, which he now assumes ran away.

"I felt dizzy, and I couldn't understand what had happened," Majid says through an interpreter.

Majid is one of about 150 to 300 civilians in Afghanistan who are maimed each month by land mines - the seeds of war planted along the country's roads and paths, under fields and irrigation ditches, during the past 2 decades of nearly constant war. An unknown number of people have died - experts presume many more than have been injured - because they bled to death before reaching hospitals.

The problem, experts say, is enormous. "Afghanistan is the country most contaminated with land mines and unexploded ordnance in the world," says Abdul Latif Matin, regional director of the United Nations Mine Action Center for Afghanistan.

The last estimates of the number of land mines here, made in 1992 before 9 more years of civil war between various factions, put the number at 10 to 14 million. Matin and U.N. officials say there must be many more land mines now.

"How many mines are there in this country? We have a saying: When we pull the last one out, we'll tell you how many there were," says Ross Chamberlain, demining field coordinator for the U.N. Mine Action Program in Kabul.

The invisible costs

As Afghan leaders struggle to form a new government and the United States and its allies try to bring peace to this country, no one at the table is discussing how Afghanistan will deal with the mines. Clearing them would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, money this nation does not have.

But until they are removed, the mines will continue to drain the country of resources - crippling its workforce and leaving vast stretches of valuable farmland and roadways useless and dangerous.

Land mines also pose significant risks to U.S. forces on the ground and to humanitarian groups attempting to deliver aid.

Older mines, laid by Soviet armies during their unsuccessful battle for control of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, were designed to kill. Newer mines, laid by Afghanistan's own fractious military regimes, primarily those of the Northern Alliance and Taliban, are designed simply to maim.

Local surveys by the United Nations indicate that 4% of the population is disabled because of injuries from mines and unexploded bombs. The legacy: deafness, blindness, amputations and severe psychological trauma.

Mines have forced people to abandon entire villages and have prevented many from returning to their homes. The empty villages and idle farmland can be seen across northern Afghanistan.

All roads leading to Kabul, including the country's two main highways, A76 and A01, are laden with the destructive pieces of plastic and explosives. Many roads are simply too dangerous to travel. Others are risky at best.

"Eleven people traveling in a minivan were killed near here a week ago when the van dodged a pothole and went only inches onto the shoulder," Chamberlain says.

Drivers are forced to take treacherous mountain trails and carefully follow the tire tracks of other vehicles. When a vehicle strays onto a road that has no fresh treads, even war-hardened veterans tense and carefully back up until they find the right trail. Small craters and smoldering tires are common sights on the roads.

The country is also littered with unexploded bombs and bomblets, including those dropped by U.S. fliers since Oct. 7 in and around Kabul and the other cities targeted in the war on terror. Officials at the U.N. Mine Action Program say at least 434 square miles of land, mostly in narrow bands along highways and roads, are known to contain mines and bombs that failed to explode on impact.

The not-so-invisible victims

Soldiers routinely die or are injured in encounters with land mines. Three weeks ago, doctors in Dasht-i-Qaleh, near what were the northern front lines at Kalakata, performed a dozen amputations by flashlight in one night. All the injuries were caused by mines.

Civilians, though, are hurt more often than soldiers. Most civilian victims of land mines are males ages 18 to 40. They are most likely to be out working on farms or as drivers and run the greatest risk of hitting mines. But in cities, including Kabul, children bear the brunt of the carnage. Maimed children can be seen on the streets of Kabul and in the markets of small villages. They walk with makeshift crutches, and many have badly scarred faces and bodies. Few receive even basic rehabilitation care or prosthetic limbs.

Some children are injured when they pick up mines out of curiosity or because they hope to sell them on the black market. "Poverty is a real issue that gets tangled with mines. Kids go looking for them. They strip them of the explosives and parts and sell them for money," Chamberlain says.

The United Nations, working with 22 international organizations, has made some progress in removing mines and unexploded ordnance from high-concentrations areas, including Kabul. Matin says the Mine Action Program in Afghanistan removed about 226,000 mines and 1.3 million pieces of unexploded ordnance from 1989 through 2000. The U.N.-led group also provides mine awareness training, which has reached 7 million people since 1989. The result is a more than 50% reduction in accidents.

In Kabul, which was designated as a high priority mine-removal area, accident rates have fallen in the past 2 years from about 50 a week to less than five because of efforts to clear mines from parks, schools and streets. An agreement 2 years ago by the Taliban to crack down on the resale of mine parts at bazaars also has made a difference, Matin says.

Though the situation has improved for now, accident rates are expected to soar again because of unexploded bombs left by the U.S. military campaign and because, as refugees return home, some will wander into minefields.

Chamberlain has spent several weeks interviewing Kabul residents in areas where U.S. bombs were dropped. He estimates that 10% to 30% of bombs dropped by coalition forces, many of which released smaller bomblets and minelets, did not explode.

There's no doubt U.S. bombing has added a new layer of danger to a countryside already littered with explosives.

Earlier this month, a crowd of 40 children was found around an unexploded, 5-foot long olive green bomb in the right lane of a busy Kabul street. The bomb had been covered by sandbags, but a truck ran over it the night before and exposed it. The children were poking and prodding it. One said it had been making sounds like hissing when it first landed on the street after a raid Nov. 12.

Chamberlain shook his head in disbelief and ordered the kids to block the highway with rocks to prevent more cars from running over it. "The ground vibrations could cause some problems," he said at the time, "and these kids would (try to) strip it if they could figure out how to take it apart."

Across the road was a crater more than 30 feet across and 10 feet deep where the bomb's twin had detonated on impact. Both had missed a Taliban commander's house just up the road.

Matin, with a map of heavily mined areas around Kabul on a wall behind his desk, sighs at such news. He says the U.N. has had to halt its demining expeditions for the next month and a half to retrain its personnel on how to handle unexploded U.S. ordnance.

Working with other organizations, the U.N. staff here coordinates the efforts of 124 mine-clearing teams in Afghanistan. Mines in cities and fields are cleared manually by teams equipped with metal detectors and explosives used to detonate the mines. Dogs are used to sniff out mines along roads and tank battlefields. On farmland and irrigation canals, crews use backhoes, bucket loaders and steam rollers to explode any buried mines.

The country has no resources of its own to clear mines. Afghanistan has a fragile infrastructure and at the moment doesn't even have an official government. Almost all the limited resources are spent on war.

About the size of a saucer

A typical mine, the Russian PMN, is about the size of a coffee cup saucer. There are also many made in Italy, Iraq and China that cost as little as $2 each. Chamberlain says he has seen no evidence of U.S.-made mines in Afghanistan. Mines usually detonate on contact, but some designs pop up into the air before exploding, sending shrapnel flying at eye level.

Greg Long, a retired U.S. special operations officer and founder of the Cambodian demining operation Me Boun Foundation, says old mines can become new problems after being exposed by rains or heavy winds. Long has been in Afghanistan as a member of Pathfinders International, a humanitarian group made up of retired and active military officers, to evaluate mined areas and secure drop zones for humanitarian aid.

Though it is easy and inexpensive to mine an area, Long says, it costs about $60,000 to clear an area the size of a football field. Who would pay to clear millions of mines is hard to say.

The United Nations, through donations to groups such as Save the Children and the Organization for Mine Clearance and Afghan Rehabilitation, expects to spend $20 million this year to clear stretches of territory that added together equal about 50 square miles of contaminated land. "Afghanistan desperately needs clearing ops around the villages," Long says. "Not only is it the right thing to do, it is the only thing to do if you hope to move these people out of the Stone Age. I hope we can do something. If the U.S. walks away from this one, it would be a shame."

---

Afghans suspect bin Laden is hiding in huge tunnel fortress

By Chris Tomlinson,
Associated Press,
11/27/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/331/nation/Afghans_suspect_bin_Laden_is_hiding_in_huge_tunnel_fortress+.shtml

ALALABAD, Afghanistan - Osama bin Laden has no shortage of hiding places, from the thickly forested region west of Kandahar to an impregnable fortress built with US aid during the Afghan war against the Soviet Union.

Yet if the United States knows where bin Laden is hiding, no one in the Bush administration is saying so publicly. In Afghanistan, rumors of his whereabouts abound.

Militia leaders in eastern Afghanistan suspect bin Laden may be holed up in a mountain base called Tora Bora that veteran Afghan guerrillas describe as an impregnable fortress.

Built with US aid, Tora Bora sits about 35 miles south of Jalalabad, atop a 13,000-foot mountain, and is three hours by foot from the nearest road. Carved 1,150 feet into the mountain are a series of rooms and tunnels, reportedly with room for hundreds of people.

''I am sure he is there, 70 percent sure,'' Hazrat Ali, a militia leader in charge of security around the eastern city of Jalalabad, said yesterday. He contends that bin Laden wants to stay near the Pakistani border in case he wants to leave Afghanistan.

However, Tora Bora is about 300 miles northeast of the Kandahar area where hundreds of Marines landed Sunday, suggesting Washington is eyeing other possible hiding places more accessible to the Taliban stronghold.

Mullah Mohammed Khaqzar, a former Taliban intelligence chief, contends that bin Laden and the Taliban might head for the towering mountains that rise up to the northwest of Kandahar beginning at Argandab.

However, Khaqzar said bin Laden would probably not stay there because the area has been heavily bombed since the start of the air campaign on Oct. 7. Instead, he says, bin Laden would push deeper into Islam Dara, a well-fortified, area that is difficult to reach.

US jets have also struck around Islam Dara, which is tucked into the crevices of a mountain near Khaqrez, some 30 miles northwest of Kandahar. However, the bombs may not have caused serious damage to the caves, Khaqzar said.

Another possible destination could be Kajakai in neighboring Helmand province, where the mountains are nearly 10,000 feet.

''Bin Laden could go to Kajakai, and from there he could lose himself in the mountains,'' Khaqzar said. ''It would be very difficult to get him.''

To the west of Kandahar lies another former base from the war against the Soviets - Maiwand. The area is overgrown with trees.

Still, officials in Jalalabad stick by their theory that bin Laden is in Tora Bora. Ali said he has heard reports that bin Laden was riding on horseback between caves at night in the White Mountain range, south of Jalalabad and that he had been seen in Tora Bora as recently as Wednesday.

When Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters abandoned their camps near Jalalabad in early October, about 6,000 of them, led by bin Laden, headed south toward the White Mountain range, said Abdul Qadir, the new governor in Jalalabad. But he said he could not confirm reports that bin Laden, who visited Tora Bora in the 1980s, was hiding there.

Ali, who used the base to launch attacks against the Soviet Army in the 1980s, said Tora Bora was almost impossible to take by force. The Soviets bombed and attacked it repeatedly for a decade with little effect, he said.

Afghan guerrillas used US funding to carve the anthill-like Tora Bora complex into the side of Ghree Khil mountain, a day's walk from the Pakistani border.

Inside Tora Bora - the name means ''black dust'' - are a series of rooms and tunnels, said an Afghan who says he visited the complex six months ago with Arab fighters. The man, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution, said it can comfortably house 1,000 people.

The mouth of the cave is hidden behind tall pine trees. The 50-foot-long tunnel to the entrance is wide enough for a car, and a wooden door opens to a maze of hallways.

''After the door, the way is divided into branches, just like a hotel, with doors on the right and left,'' he said.

The caves have a ventilation system, and the Taliban have installed electrical wiring. They use a hydroelectric generator powered by mountain runoff.

Inside, the walls are concrete, but the ceiling reveals the location - mountain rock, black with tiny crystals. The man said the rooms vary in size from large to very small and include bedrooms, offices, and communal rooms.

People from nearby villages sell supplies to the Taliban and Al Qaeda members, said Sorhab Qadri, one of Ali's intelligence officers.

''The Arab people in the mountains are giving a lot of money to them to work'' to expand Tora Bora), he added. Qadri said sympathizers sometimes slip into Jalalabad to buy supplies and then take them back to Tora Bora.

Only certain people are allowed to approach the heavily defended valley, which is flanked by cliffs crowned with fighting positions.

''Osama warned the villagers that if they come near the cave,'' he said, ''they will be killed.''

----

U.S. admits dangerous new situation in Afghanistan

USA Today
11/27/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/27/new-situation.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The stepped-up pace of the war inside Afghanistan also means increased risks: A CIA operative remains unaccounted for, five soldiers are recovering from friendly fire and more casualties are likely with Marines on the ground. In addition, the enemy is so dedicated to its cause that fighters are "willing to have hand grenades wrapped around themselves and blow themselves up, so they can kill a half-dozen other people in close proximity," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "The thought that they'll surrender," Rumsfeld warned, "is not likely."

The increased danger was apparent Tuesday as some of the 600 Marines already setting up base at a remote southern airstrip began to set out on patrol, in Humvees loaded with anti-tank weapons and heavy machine guns.

The eventual deployment of 1,000 Marines at the airstrip will more than double the number of U.S. troops on the ground, raising the chance of combat casualties. And those forces face the task of wiping out the last pockets of the hardest-core Taliban and al-Qa'eda fighters, including terror suspect No. 1 Osama bin Laden.

"This is a dangerous period of time," President Bush said Monday. "We're now hunting down the people who are responsible for bombing America."

During the war's first seven weeks, the United States mostly bombed from aircraft in support of Northern Alliance fighters who swept the Taliban from all territory except for a few pockets. A few Americans advised the rebels, and a few hundred special operations forces were put on the ground to guide bombers to targets and, later, to blockade roads and search for bin Laden.

Although there have been injuries and accidental deaths outside Afghanistan, no American military commandos have died so far while fighting alongside anti-Taliban forces.

But in the last few days, the fighting has entered a more aggressive, messier and potentially more deadly phase.

The Marines sent to the airstrip, 60 miles southwest of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, will help block escape routes for Taliban and al-Qa'eda leaders, Rumsfeld said.

The Marines also will make quick strikes when they can and help identify targets for U.S. bombing. Shortly after arriving, some of the Marines participated in an attack by Navy F-14 Tomcat jet fighters on an armored column, keeping Marine Cobra helicopters nearby and ready to fire if needed.

The Marines face an enemy "who've made the decision to fight to the end," said retired Rear Adm. Stephen Baker, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "For that reason, they are extremely dangerous."

In the north, meanwhile, the Northern Alliance - aided by U.S. and British special forces - finally managed to put down a riot by al-Qa'eda fighters inside a prison fortress.

But the days of brutal fighting took a toll: Five American soldiers were hit by a misguided bomb as they called in air attacks over the weekend on the al-Qa'eda troops. And the fate of an American CIA operative caught inside the fortress during the rioting remains unclear, although he is feared dead.

-------

Pentagon ready for fight to death at stronghold

November 27, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011127-68157649.htm

Taliban militia forces are battling to hold their last remaining bastion in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and could end up fighting to the death, the Pentagon's top general said yesterday.

"In Kandahar, it's sort of the last bastion, we think, of Taliban resistance," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.

Fighting was reported around Kandahar yesterday as several hundred U.S. Marines landed on an airstrip captured Sunday about 12 miles from the city. It is the first base inside Afghanistan for U.S. ground troops.

In Mazar-e-Sharif, five U.S. special-operations commandos were injured by an errant U.S. air strike they had called in to help quell an uprising by captured Taliban fighters.

The five soldiers were evacuated by air to a hospital in neighboring Uzbekistan and were listed in serious condition.

Mixed reports from the area indicate that the last Taliban holdouts around Kandahar could either surrender or refuse to give up, Gen. Myers said.

Gen. Myers said he agreed with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who said a fight to the death is a more likely option.

"We think they'll dig in and fight, and fight perhaps to the end," Gen. Myers said.

In Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman quoted by the Afghan Islamic Press as saying the Islamic movement's forces would fight U.S. troops "to our last breath."

Anti-Taliban forces had moved to within five miles of Kandahar and heavy bombardment was reported near the city yesterday.

Gen. Myers said there were no reliable estimates of the number of Taliban fighters in Kandahar. One U.S. official said that about 4,000 Taliban soldiers remain in Kandahar.

The focus of U.S. military operations is shifting toward Kandahar following the fall of the northern city of Kunduz over the weekend.

Mr. Rumsfeld said the fight at Kunduz was "a long, hard battle and a lot of people were killed" and some prisoners were taken.

Taliban fighters also have formed a pocket of resistance near the northeastern city of Jalalabad, near Kabul.

Kandahar is where most of the senior Taliban leadership is believed to be right now, including Mullah Mohammed Omar, the top Taliban leader.

The U.S. Marines' first battle took place yesterday against a column of Taliban armored vehicles that came close to the new, captured air base. The 15 tanks and armored infantry vehicles were struck by F-14 jets flying from the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, a senior military official said.

Mr. Rumsfeld, appearing with Gen. Myers at a Pentagon briefing, said captured Taliban fighters are being interrogated as part of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader believed to be behind the September 11 terrorist bombings.

"We get information [about terrorists in Afghanistan], to be sure, but how far it moves us in the direction we want to go, it has to remain an open question until we get where we want to go," Mr. Rumsfeld said, referring to efforts to find and kill terrorist leaders.

Regarding the prisoner uprising, which was ongoing yesterday, Mr. Rumsfeld said it involved some of the foreign Islamic fighters who are fighting on the side of the Taliban.

Mr. Rumsfeld said U.S. Special Forces troops were working with the local opposition commander about 100 miles west of Mazar-e-Sharif when the uprising started, some time on Sunday.

Hundreds of prisoners were able to get hold of weapons and escaped from a fort that was being used to hold them. At least 300 of the prisoners were killed in the fighting, according to news agency reports from Afghanistan.

Mr. Rumsfeld said putting down the uprising could be difficult.

"If you have people who are willing to have hand grenades wrapped around themselves and blow themselves up so they can kill a half-dozen other people in close proximity to them, the thought that they'll surrender readily is not likely," he said.

Asked about the outcome, Mr. Rumsfeld said: "I'm hopeful that some will surrender. I suspect some won't, and I suspect the result of that will be that the opposition forces will kill them."

The al Qaeda and non-Afghan troops were "among the toughest of the fighters and the most determined and the least likely to surrender," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment on reports that an American working in the region of the uprising near Mazar-e-Sharif had been killed.

"Until the compound is secured, which, at the last word I received this morning, it has not been, we will not know the answers to those questions," he said.

The defense secretary said the global war against terrorism is "making some progress," although he expressed concerns that the United States needed better international cooperation.

"We've applied steady pressure on terrorist networks across the globe," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We've frozen some of their assets, and in my view, we need more cooperation from more countries if we're going to dry up their financial assets."

Administration officials have pointed to Saudi Arabia in particular as one state that has moved too slowly in taking steps to block funds being used by terrorists. Several charity groups based in Saudi Arabia have been used by al Qaeda terrorists for raising funds.

Mr. Rumsfeld said most Taliban strongholds have fallen to opposition forces and the Taliban leaders "are clearly forced to move around and having difficulty managing their remaining capabilities and assets and forces."

Gen. Myers said nine planned targets were bombed on Sunday, including cave and tunnel complexes used by Taliban and al Qaeda forces.

"We also remain focused on providing support to opposition groups throughout Afghanistan and on establishing airfield hubs for humanitarian assistance efforts," he said.

----

Afghan South: Different War Than in North

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/international/asia/27ASSE.html

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 26 - For all the Pentagon's talk about waging an unorthodox war, the campaign in northern Afghanistan has been fairly conventional, culminating today in the fall of the city of Kunduz. But the situation in southern Afghanistan, where hundreds of United States marines are now deployed near the Taliban's last stronghold, Kandahar, is strikingly different.

The Pentagon lacks a strong proxy ground force in the south and has a more demanding mission there: to take the fight to the adversary's heartland and roust Osama bin Laden, his Qaeda fighters and the Taliban from their sanctuaries and pursue them, even if they flee into caves and mountains that make Afghanistan one of the most rugged places in the world.

The goal in the north has been to undermine the Taliban regime and Al Qaeda by killing their fighters and taking control of the major cities, many of which had little loyalty to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader.

The strategy for pursuing those goals was not dramatically new. In an echo of the 1999 campaign over Kosovo, the American military provided the air power while its proxies on the ground, the Tajik and Uzbek-dominated force known as the Northern Alliance, did the brunt of the fighting.

In the south, the American military has some newfound allies, Pashtun commanders like Hamid Karzai, who has been taken in and out of the south at least once with American help. But none of those allies are capable of winning the war in the south with only the support of American airstrikes.

The Northern Alliance, dominated by ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks, cannot do the fighting in the Pashtun-controlled south. The alliance's reach extends barely 20 miles south of Kabul, stopping short of Ghanzi.

More than 100 British and American commandos scouring southern Afghanistan have lacked the punch and speed to take on concentrations of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters on their own and perhaps to prevent their escape.

That is why the marines are now establishing what Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld today called a forward operating base near Kandahar. The move will enhance the American military's combat power as the Pentagon steps up its search for Mr. bin Laden and his key lieutenants. Many military experts have, in fact, been predicting such a step for weeks.

Still, the move is a calculated risk. The gamble is that the arrival of the American troops will be seen by Pashtuns in the south as heralding the inevitable demise of the Taliban and not be taken as yet another foreign trespass - one of many in Afghanistan's history - that is to be resisted at all costs.

Before the decision to send the marines, the United States had some success in the south. But despite the airstrikes and Special Operations raids, the Taliban had not relinquished Kandahar.

There was a sense that the Northern Alliance was consolidating its power in the north while the Taliban was digging in the south, a dynamic that threatened to partition the nation and may yet draw out the war.

Fearful that the success in the north will raise public expectations for a speedy victory, the Bush administration has been working hard to lower public expectations and prepare the American public for the first substantial casualties.

"The degree of difficulty is increasing as we work hard to achieve our objectives," President Bush said recently. "It may take longer than some anticipate."

The establishment of a forward base with some 1,000 marines will strengthen the American position in the south in several ways.

Cobra helicopter gunships, armored vehicles and larger number of troops should enable American commanders to respond quickly and with more firepower to reports that Taliban or Al Qaeda leaders have been located.

Until now, the United States has been limited to smaller and lightly equipped teams of Special Operations forces on the ground and larger numbers of commandos who took hours to fly in from the carrier Kitty Hawk in the Arabian Sea or from Oman and who lacked armored force when they arrived.

The marines could be used to press the fight against small concentrations of Taliban. In conjunction with Special Operations commandos, they could assist in the search for Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, perhaps by cordoning off an area and providing needed backup.

They could also, as Mr. Rumsfeld said today, attack any Taliban and Al Qaeda forces who might be trying to escape into neighboring Pakistan, or even Iran, along Afghan roads or mountain passes.

"The highways that connect the north and the south and the east-west in the southern part, going toward Iran, exits or entrances from Iran and Pakistan, can be interdicted from those locations," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

The deployment will also ease the enormous logistical strains. The United States military has struggled in this campaign with limited access to bases in Pakistan, Central Asia and the Middle East. Now it will have a base of its own on enemy soil, a jumping-off point for the marines and also a possible bridgehead for yet more ground troops, an option Mr. Rumsfeld pointedly left open.

The move also puts strong psychological and military pressure on the Taliban forces in Kandahar. The marines do not plan to rush into the city for a round of bloody house-to-house fighting, as the Russians did at huge cost in their battle in Chechnya for its capital, Grozny.

But the deployment will help the United States and any Pashtun allies it does acquire to cut off Kandahar and methodically hunt Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders still left there as they try to flee.

While the northern campaign went more quickly than many experts expected, the administration is still cautioning that the southern campaign could prove to be more problematic. Nobody at the Pentagon is claiming that victory is at hand.

"You get mixed reports on whether they're about ready to leave and give it up or not," Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today, referring to the Taliban fighters in Kandahar.

"We think they're going to dig in and fight and fight perhaps to the end."

---

U.S. Will Place 1,000 Troops on Ground

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By THOM SHANKER and JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/international/asia/27MILI.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - Just hours after establishing a base in Afghanistan, American marines helped direct air attacks today on an armored column, inaugurating a new phase in the war that will deploy 1,000 American ground troops, Pentagon officials said.

About 500 marines dug in today at a primitive desert airstrip less than 80 miles southwest of Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold, but still within easy helicopter striking distance of the city. Officials said the Marine vanguard, along with another 500 marines who were expected to land Tuesday, will intercept military traffic, cut off escape routes for enemy fighters and, given credible intelligence, strike at leaders of the Taliban and at Osama bin Laden's organization, Al Qaeda.

The marines will operate from a base set up alongside an airstrip first surveyed during a daring nighttime parachute raid by United States Army Rangers on Oct. 19, the first significant mission of ground troops in the war, Pentagon officials said.

"They are not an occupying force," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today. "Their purpose is to establish a forward base of operations to help pressure the Taliban forces in Afghanistan, to prevent Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists from moving freely about the country."

From the base and rudimentary airstrip, where marines installed runway lights today, the American troops will focus attacks on the road system that Mr. Rumsfeld noted connected the "exits or entrances from Iran and Pakistan" and converged at Kandahar, the location of the last large concentration of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

The conduct of the war has been fairly conventional so far, but the situation in southern Afghanistan is strikingly different from that in the north.

Mr. Rumsfeld did not rule out a broader role for the marines, who will more than triple the number of American forces on the ground in Afghanistan, said to be about 300 members of Special Operations units. But senior Pentagon officials cautioned against viewing the marines as an advance guard for an even larger number of troops or aircraft into Afghanistan - at least for now.

"They will be looking for opportunities to mount a series of raids," one senior Defense Department official said. Said another official: "Could we put more troops in there? Yes. But it's not in the plan now."

The violent prisoner uprising by Taliban fighters on Sunday near Mazar-i-Sharif, to the north, was viewed within the Pentagon as more evidence that the Taliban leaders and its most hard-core troops plan a fight to the death at Kandahar. One senior military officer, anticipating a fierce, drawn-out battle for the city, said the marines - aided by a heavy American bombing campaign - could play a supporting role for southern opposition forces battling the Taliban, but would certainly not lead any attack on Kandahar.

The Afghan Islamic Press had said that Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban supreme leader, was still in command of forces at Kandahar, and Mr. Rumsfeld said it was unlikely he would be captured alive.

"From everything I've read about him, he's a rather determined, dead- ender type," Mr. Rumsfeld said, adding, "He just doesn't feel to me like the surrendering type."

Gen. Richard B. Myers of the Air Force, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that in contrast to Mullah Omar, who continues his efforts to rally his troops, Mr. bin Laden appears to have done little except seek refuge.

"I would only comment to that that Omar seems to be trying to organize the fighting of the Taliban, and bin Laden, on the other hand, seems to be concentrating on hiding," General Myers said today.

Pentagon and military officials said Cobra helicopter gunships flown by the marines from the base were dispatched to help attack an armored column of up to 15 vehicles today. The officials said the Cobras did not fire on the vehicles, but marines aboard helicopters or on the ground helped coordinate strikes by Navy F-14 fighter jets flying off the carrier Carl Vinson.

The 1,000 marines expected to be sent to Afghanistan are members of the 15th and 26th Marine Expeditionary Units, which have been afloat on their amphibious assault ships in the North Arabian Sea for weeks. About 700 or 800 will be infantry, military officials said. The rest are pilots and mechanics for the helicopters and other aircraft that may accompany the marines, including Harrier attack jets, and those marines responsible for logistical issues like communications, power and water.

Members of the expeditionary units routinely travel with artillery, 155 millimeter Howitzers that have a range of 10 miles - 18 miles with rocket-assisted projectiles. The marines also bring with them Humvees and light armored vehicles, each of which has a small cannon. The marines can be self-sufficient for up to 30 days.

"The Marines have landed and we now own a piece of Afghanistan," Brig. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the attack task force, told reporters who accompanied the marines to the air base. "Everything went without a hitch."

The complexities and dangers of the new phase of the war were underscored by General Myers, who confirmed today that five American soldiers were seriously injured by "friendly fire" in a United States bombing strike. The injuries occurred Sunday when the troops were helping quell the prisoner uprising at a mud fort near Mazar-i-Sharif.

They had radioed in their location and that of the target. A senior Pentagon official said preliminary inquiries indicated that the coordinates were reversed, bringing a Joint Direct Attack Munition, a 500- pound satellite-guided bomb, onto their location. The five injured soldiers were evacuated to Uzbekistan for initial treatment and are likely to be airlifted to a military hospital in Germany.

The Pentagon continued to scour Afghanistan, hunting for Mr. bin Laden and other members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership, sending pilots aloft to scout for activity around caves suspected of sheltering them. Aerial surveillance and on-the-ground intelligence have identified possible hideouts, "and there are several hundred caves on our list," a Defense Department official said today.

General Myers said that in the previous 24 hours, bombs and missiles again were "concentrated on the Al Qaeda and Taliban cave and tunnel complexes, as well as Taliban military forces, primarily in the Jalalabad and Kandahar regions."

Two senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee who have returned from a weeklong tour of Central Asia, the Persian Gulf and Eastern Europe, warned today that rooting out Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters from a maze of tunnels and caves along the Pakistan border could take weeks or months.

Both senators, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the committee, and John W. Warner of Virginia, the panel's ranking Republican, said Afghan opposition forces would conduct the cave-by- cave hunt, not American marines or other United States ground forces.

"It will be the Afghan forces that will ultimately be the ones, with our technical assistance, who will be successful in rooting out Al Qaeda from those caves," Mr. Levin said.

The senators said they met with senior American commanders in the region, as well as top Pakistani officials, including President Pervez Musharraf.

Mr. Levin said there were differences of opinions among both American and Pakistani officials over whether capturing or killing enemy forces would take weeks or months.

Mr. Rumsfeld stressed again today that the war on terrorism would be prolonged, and that the first front that opened in Afghanistan on Oct. 7 was still far from over. But he expressed certainty that Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and their Taliban hosts would be captured or killed.

"We are pursuing them across the country, from north to south and east to west and intend to continue following them wherever they go," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

-------- arms sales

Congress looks into missile deal

USA Today
11/27/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-27-korea-missiles.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress is looking into reports North Korea is providing Egypt with long-range missiles even as the Bush administration plans to sell the Arab country more than 50 surface-to-surface missiles in a $400 million arms deal, a congressional source said Tuesday.

Administration officials have been asked to testify behind closed doors Friday on the reports of a North Korean missile deal. The U.S. plan to arm Egypt with 53 Harpoon Block II satellite-guided anti-ship missiles was reported by The Washington Post and confirmed on Capitol Hill.

Two senior members of Congress, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, have questioned the U.S. deal as a potential threat to Israeli ships. Presumably, the missiles could reach land targets, as well.

The deal was outlined in a classified memorandum to Congress in early November, said the congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It surfaced as Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher was arriving in Washington for talks with Secretary of State Colin Powell and members of Congress on Thursday.

Meanwhile, a senior State Department official plans to go to Saudi Arabia this week to confer with officials of the Arab kingdom about efforts to counter terrorism.

William Burns, the assistant secretary of state, will report also on new U.S. efforts to establish a cease-fire and start Israel and the Palestinians on a path of peacemaking.

Burns is in the region with Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps. general, to try to mediate a cease-fire and rekindle peace talks.

Zinni is staying on, but Burns will make stops in a handful of Arab countries and return to Washington.

The New York Times, in a report from Riyadh, said Saudi Arabia was balking at American requests to freeze the bank accounts of those the United States says are linked to terrorism.

The report said a U.S. delegation would be sent to Saudi Arabia to persuade its officials to cooperate.

But Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, credited the Saudis with excellent cooperation in cutting off financial assets for terrorists. The Riyadh government has instructed banks to look for and freeze accounts linked to terrorists, Boucher said Tuesday. An official at the Saudi embassy called the story in the Times "absolute nonsense."

Earlier, two administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that the Saudis are cooperating. They said Burns would head the delegation and that terrorism is one of several items on his agenda.

One of the officials said Powell's assertion earlier in the month that the Saudis were cooperating in the U.S. campaign against terrorism was still on the mark.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said later, "The Saudi Arabian government has done everything the United States has asked it to do in the war on terrorism."

Bush spoke by phone Tuesday with Jordan's King Abdullah, Fleischer said. He said they discussed the war in Afghanistan and the Mideast peace process, but he had no further details.

---

Report: U.S. to Provide Egypt with Missiles, Boats

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-usa-egypt-missiles.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration plans to provide Egypt with surface-to-surface missiles and four patrol boats on which to base them in a $400 million deal that has alarmed some of Israel's supporters in the U.S. Congress, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

Citing a classified memo sent to Congress on Nov. 2, the Post said the administration had notified lawmakers of its intent to provide Egypt with 53 Harpoon Block II missiles, satellite-guided weapons made by Boeing Co .

The missiles, reportedly accurate to within 30 feet (9 meters), would be mounted on four ``fast missile patrol craft'' built by Halter Marine Inc. of Gulfport, Mississippi, the Post said.

Although the United States gives Egypt $1.3 billion in military aid annually, a legacy of the 1978 Camp David peace accords, the Harpoon deal is proving more troublesome than most, the Post said.

Some lawmakers are reluctant to provide Egypt with sophisticated new technology they say could blunt Israel's ''qualitative'' military edge over neighboring countries, the newspaper said.

Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell asking him to provide a rationale for the sale while North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms and California Rep. Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, have expressed concern, the Post said.

``A stable and prosperous Egypt is in our interest, while an arms race between Israel and Egypt is not in our interest,'' Lantos told the newspaper.

``The State Department is sort of following a pattern of escalating the level of arms sales to Egypt, which in turn will mean escalating the number of arms sales and the sophistication to Israel.''

The State Department, White House and Pentagon declined comment on the plan, the Post said.

A U.S. government official said the Harpoon missiles would help Egypt to protect the Suez Canal, an important passage for U.S. commercial and military ships, the newspaper said.

-------- biological weapons

Plan for Smallpox Rules Out Mass Vaccination

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/national/27SMAL.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - Should smallpox occur in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will recommend isolating victims and vaccinating a "containment ring" of people exposed to an infected patient rather than mass vaccinations, according to guidelines sent to state health officials.

The approach relies on the tools and strategy that eradicated smallpox from the world by 1980. In that campaign, mass vaccination was not needed.

In any case, vaccination capability in the United States is now limited, because the nation has only about 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine in its stockpiles.

But preliminary findings from tests to dilute the vaccine suggest that the number of doses could be multiplied by a factor of at least five, said Dr. D. A. Henderson, the director of the office of public health preparedness of the Department of Health and Human Services. The government is also seeking to make more vaccine. Officials said that in the meantime, vaccine from the existing stockpile could be delivered anywhere in the country within hours of a call about a confirmed or suspected case.

Vaccination can offer protection if given in the first four days after an individual is exposed to the virus. The 300-page plan was issued today by the disease control centers in the interests of being prepared in the event of a bioterrorism attack involving smallpox, and not because the centers had received information about an increased risk of smallpox after the anthrax outbreak, officials said.

"Any vaccination strategy for containing a smallpox outbreak should utilize the ring vaccination concept," the guidelines said. "This includes isolation of confirmed and suspected smallpox cases with tracing, vaccination and close surveillance of contacts in these cases as well as vaccination of the household contacts of the contacts."

Such vaccination involves detecting infected people and then finding everyone they had contact with when they could have transmitted the smallpox virus. The program would focus on vaccinating contacts in outward rings to create a buffer of immune people.

The plan was developed with state and local health officials, with a goal of getting them to think about how they would rapidly carry out the control measures. The plan details how state and local officials can set up teams of epidemiologists and vaccination clinics to put such a strategy into effect rapidly.

But it does not specifically address whether cities would need to be quarantined, said Dr. Lisa Rotz, a bioterrorism preparedness expert at the disease control centers. That would depend on factors like the number of cases identified.

Smallpox is highly contagious, and symptoms usually develop 12 to 14 days after exposure to the virus. For the first 10 to 12 days the person feels well and cannot transmit the virus. Then high fever, malaise and headache occur for two to three days, followed by a rash that generally appears first on the inside of the mouth, face and forearms, and then on the abdomen, back and legs.

Smallpox patients are most infectious in the first week of the rash, but they can transmit the virus as the rash evolves and becomes infected and until the scabs that form over the rash disappear. Patients can remain infectious for three to four weeks. About one in three victims die.

Because routine smallpox vaccination was stopped in this country in 1972, younger Americans have no immunity to the disease, and the immunity of older people who were vaccinated is in doubt because it presumably has waned with time.

Although smallpox vaccine is considered safe, it can lead to serious adverse effects among those receiving it for the first time. The plan mentions that patients who develop serious reactions can be helped by injections of vaccinia immune globulin, which is derived from the blood of people who have recently received smallpox vaccinations. The globulin is in short supply, with enough to treat only about 600 people, but plans are being made to increase the supply, Dr. Rotz said.

The guidelines, which have existed in draft form for many years, have been revised to include more details about the disease, which the vast majority of American doctors and public health officials have never seen.

The guidelines also include advice on communicating with the public about a potential outbreak due to bioterrorism and avoiding panic.

---

Careful Plan Devised for Anthrax Letter

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/politics/27INQU.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - Forensic scientists have formulated an elaborate plan for opening the anthrax-contaminated letter found more than a week ago that was addressed to Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, law enforcement officials said today.

The officials said the scientists had delayed opening the letter and did not expect to do so before Thursday, because of fears of losing or, perhaps, damaging evidence from the letter, which has been kept in a sealed safety cabinet in a heavily secured Army biomedical laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md.

The anthrax will be handled live, the officials said, and will not be decontaminated until it has been removed from the envelope and tested. The tests will be conducted by Army scientists and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in full protective gear in a sealed laboratory.

One official said that when the envelope was placed in an evidence bag a tiny plume of anthrax spores drifted from the exterior of the envelope. "We don't want to lose a single spore of anthrax," a government investigator said. "Every spore is critical."

Consulting with scientists inside and outside the government, F.B.I. forensic experts have drawn up written protocols to guide the opening of the letter, the removal of the spores, the procedures to test the anthrax and the reporting of the results.

"Even anthrax experts have no experience doing this," a government investigator said. "We're writing the book on this one as we go along."

Scientists plan to conduct tests outside the laboratory on sample letters to perfect techniques to open the letter. They plan to use a scalpel and a small spatula to open a seam before extracting the letter and removing the anthrax.

The scientists have ordered new equipment for a laboratory that is already one of the most sophisticated to preserve as much anthrax as possible. Some equipment is designed to reduce the ability of the anthrax to aerosolize, or float easily in air. Other equipment will lower the level of static electricity in the cabinet.

The letter was addressed to Mr. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, in the same writing that appeared on the anthrax letters sent to NBC News, The New York Post and the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle. Like the others, Mr. Leahy's letter was postmarked at the Trenton postal center.

Today, Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news conference that the anthrax case had made progress, even though no suspects had been identified. "In specifics," Mr. Ashcroft said, "the anthrax situation has been the subject of some progress that I think is important."

Repeating a conclusion that investigators have offered since the letter to Mr. Leahy was found, Mr. Ashcroft added, "That is, the F.B.I. has determined that they believe all four of the anthrax letters have come from a single individual."

Mr. Ashcroft said an F.B.I. profile of the suspected mailer of the letters had helped the investigation, although some scientists have complained that the profile was too vague to be useful.

"They have developed a profile, which I won't belabor at this point," Mr. Ashcroft said. "But it's an individual accustomed to working with toxic and dangerous chemistry. It's an individual who has certain technical skills and capacities and a variety of other things. And the F.B.I. is following leads, in that respect, which we believe are constructive."

Officials said scientists consulting with the F.B.I. and other agencies had said they had little to lose by taking more time in opening the letter.

Investigators regard the letter as the most pristine evidence yet uncovered in the case. They say they hope that it will prove helpful in solving a crime that has killed five people, the latest a 94-year-old woman in Connecticut who died last week in an unexplained case of inhalation anthrax.

The Leahy letter was found on Nov. 16 by F.B.I. agents in one of more than 600 sealed plastic bags of mail that had been destined for Capitol Hill but were set aside after an anthrax-contaminated letter was opened on Oct. 15 by employees of Mr. Daschle in his office.

F.B.I. microbiologists determined that the anthrax on the bag in which they found the Leahy letter was similar to the highly lethal form sent to Mr. Daschle. They said the bag contained at least 23,000 anthrax spores, enough to cause at least two cases of inhalation anthrax. Mr. Leahy said the anthrax in the letter itself could have killed many more.

The anthrax attacks are not the sole form of terror that has kept federal authorities at a high state of alert. Mr. Ashcroft said today that the government had received information about a possible terrorist attack on the natural gas industry.

"There was, maybe 10 days or close to two weeks ago, an uncorroborated report of undetermined reliability about natural gas," Mr. Ashcroft said at a news conference. "Frankly, those are the kinds of reports which we take seriously."

He did not say whether the threat was against a specific pipeline or a storage site. A law enforcement official said later that the threat was nonspecific and uncorroborated by other intelligence sources.

Nonetheless, Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters sent an alert on Nov. 17 to its field offices, which relayed the warning to industry officials. The alert referred to concerns about gas supplies, including the more than 260,000 miles of pipelines and hundreds of pumping stations.

The alert referred to a threat based on information that suggested that Osama bin Laden had approved a plan for his followers to attack gas supplies in the United States. "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 warning said.

Energy companies and operators of nuclear power plants, refineries and pipelines have increased security since the attacks on Sept. 11, based on their expectations that they might be targets.

-------- iraq

Could Iraq be next?
The US already regularly bombs Iraq

By Jon Leyne
BBC correspondent at the US State Department
Tuesday, 27 November, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1678000/1678053.stm

Among right-wingers in Washington, it is so obvious it barely needs to be discussed. Saddam is next. The war on terror should be taken to Iraq as quickly as possible.

Those hawks now seem to have found a friend in US President George W Bush. For the first time, at the weekend, he described Saddam Hussein as "evil".

And at the White House on Monday he used new language that must sound ominous to Iraq.

"If (anybody) develops weapons of mass destruction that will be used to terrorise nations, they will be held accountable," he told a Rose Garden audience.

"And as for Mr Saddam Hussein, he needs to let inspectors back in his country to show us that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction."

Right-wing support

There's a familiar queue of right-wingers urging Mr Bush on.

"If we end this with Afghanistan, and leave all the other terror-sponsoring regimes intact, then I don't see how we can call this a victory," says Richard Perle, a consultant to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"Iraq is not just a tactical issue," insists William Kristol of the Weekly Standard. "Whether we take on Iraq has huge implications for the US role in the world, and fundamentally, it's whether we're going to take it upon ourselves to shape a new world order."

And yet a nagging question remains, articulated most eloquently by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

How to do it?

No clear plan

Mr Powell won the first round of this debate back in September, when the administration agreed to put the Iraq problem on hold.

"With respect to what is sometimes characterised as taking out Saddam," he told a New York Times interviewer at the time, "I never saw a plan that was going to take him out. It was just some ideas coming from various quarters about, 'Let's go bomb'."

Mr Powell's opponents don't have much clearer answers now.

Mr Perle argues the Baghdad regime is already rotten. Support the opposition, add in air strikes, and it could quickly crumble.

As for the alliance against terror, so assiduously cultivated by Colin Powell, that is a luxury, not a prerequisite for success.

Other targets

Of course there are other options. North Korea has long been accused of sponsoring terror, and dabbling in weapons of mass destruction.

But 40,000 US troops, and the South Korean capital Seoul, are within easy range of North Korean missiles.

Syria? A tough call if Washington has any real interest in a Middle East peace process.

Somalia? Perhaps there are terrorist training camps to target, but there is no government to accuse of sponsoring terror.

Iran? Even the most ardent hard-liners admit it's too big a bite to chew on.

So the focus moves inevitably back to Iraq - the unfinished business of President Bush (Senior). Unfinished because of the complicated series of interlocking issues that somehow refuse to unravel.

----

Inspectors must return to Iraq

November 27, 2001
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011127-742518.htm

President Bush yesterday told Saddam Hussein to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into his country and warned the Iraqi leader that "he'll find out" the consequences if he did not.

However, Mr. Bush deflected questions about whether Iraq was the next target in the U.S.-led war against terrorism.

"First things first," Mr. Bush said in a Rose Garden session with reporters. "We're going to make sure that we accomplish each mission that we tackle."

Mr. Bush also braced the country for military casualties in Afghanistan, saying the campaign against terrorism had entered a "dangerous" phase.

With Marines choking off Kandahar, "this is a dangerous period of time. This is a period of time in which we're now hunting down the people who are responsible for bombing America," he said during a short appearance with two women rescued by U.S. special forces in Afghanistan.

The women, Heather Mercer, 24, and Dayna Curry, 30, had been jailed on charges of preaching Christianity.

"No president or commander in chief hopes anybody loses life in the theater, but it's going to happen," Mr. Bush said. "I said this early on, as the campaign began: America must be prepared for loss of life."

But, he said, "Afghanistan is still just the beginning."

Reporters looking beyond the war in Afghanistan repeatedly asked Mr. Bush whether the next target would be Saddam. Mr. Bush's father stopped short of removing the Iraqi leader during the Gulf war a decade ago.

Mr. Bush repeated his doctrine that any nation that harbored or aided terrorist groups was itself a terrorist. He also reiterated that the main targets were groups - in some cases, nations - that could wreak global damage through weapons of mass destruction.

"If they develop weapons of mass destruction that will be used to terrorize nations, they will be held accountable. And as for Mr. Saddam Hussein, he needs to let inspectors back in his country, to show us that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Bush said.

Asked the consequences if Saddam refused, the president said "he'll find out."

The White House said Mr. Bush's comments on Iraq were no different from previous remarks and rejected interpretations to the contrary.

Said Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer: "It's nothing new. It's a reaffirmation, a restatement of the long-standing American policy, and I think it should be readily understood that every American president has spoken out strongly about Iraq Saddam Hussein can figure out the rest of it if he wants," he said.

Mr. Fleischer also said the president was not widening his definition of terrorists to include those who possessed weapons of mass destruction. Still, some White House TV reporters mused that Mr. Bush's comments on Iraq were a trial balloon directed at U.S. allies in the war on terrorism.

Yesterday, Mr. Bush grouped Iraq with other countries that supported and sheltered terrorists.

Asked about his "message" to Iraq, which the State Department had labeled a state sponsor of terrorism, Mr. Bush said: "My message is, is that if you harbor a terrorist, you're a terrorist. If you feed a terrorist, you're a terrorist. Terrorism is terrorism. In this country, we'll deal with it."

Iraq agreed after its defeat in the Gulf war in 1991 to allow weapons inspectors into the country to ensure that Baghdad dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear-weapons programs.

Saddam expelled the inspectors in December 1998 in response to a three-night bombing campaign by the United States and Britain. The air assault was in retaliation for what U.N. weapons inspectors called years of noncooperation, obstruction and dithering by Iraq.

Despite its complaints that Gulf war-era economic sanctions were killing its children by the hundreds of thousands, Iraq in 1999 rejected a U.N. resolution that called for suspending the sanctions if it allowed weapons inspectors to return.

Many Republicans have been pressing the Bush administration to make Iraq its next target in the war on terrorism, but U.S. officials have said repeatedly they have no evidence of any link between Iraq and the September 11 assaults or the anthrax attacks.

Mr. Bush's comments came as the United States tried but failed yesterday to persuade Russia to support its proposals for tightening U.N. controls on military imports in Iraq while easing the flow of civilian goods.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell discussed the sanctions yesterday by telephone with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov of Russia, whose government blocked the changes at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council in June.

"We're still trying to work that and to get agreement as soon as possible that would bring Russia into alignment with" the other permanent members of the Security Council, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"We're still working on trying to achieve a resolution that precisely targets Iraq's acquisition of weapons and materiel that makes them, particularly weapons of mass destruction, and which can allow a smoother flow of civilian goods for the Iraqi people. We also continue to support strongly the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq," he said.

Twice this year, the United States has tried to persuade the Security Council to strengthen the sanctions but, in the face of opposition from Russia, has had to accept extensions of the existing oil-for-food program. The current six-month phase of the program expires Friday.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri vowed Sunday that Baghdad would stop the oil-for-food program if this week's U.N. vote included provisions of the targeted sanctions it opposed.

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Bush said about Saddam: "If I found in any way, shape or form that he was developing weapons of mass destruction, I'd take 'em out. I'm surprised he's still there."

Mr. Bush made the same demand for weapons inspections to North Korea.

"We want North Korea to allow inspectors in, to determine whether or not they are. We've had that discussion with North Korea. I made it very clear to North Korea that in order for us to have relations with them, that we want to know, 'Are they developing weapons of mass destruction?'"

---

U.N. May Not Overhaul Iraq Sanctions

By Edith M. Lederer
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 27, 2001; 3:10 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20184-2001Nov27?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS -- With the United States and Russia still at odds over Iraq, the U.N. Security Council is expected to avoid overhauling sanctions against Saddam Hussein's government when it extends Iraq's U.N. humanitarian program later this week.

But diplomats said the extension of the oil-for-food program could be shorter than the usual six months to maintain pressure for a sanctions overhaul. It could also include a reference to a U.S.-British plan to revamp sanctions that was never voted on in the council to avoid a Russian veto.

Russia, Iraq's closest council ally, argues that any such overhaul must address the lifting of sanctions, which critics say are responsible for civilian suffering in Iraq.

The current phase of the oil-for-food humanitarian program is set to expire at midnight Friday. The Security Council met behind closed doors Monday to discuss a report from Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the program's operation.

The nearly 5-year-old program was instituted to help ordinary Iraqis cope with the sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It allows Iraq to sell oil on the condition that the proceeds be spent on food, medicine and other humanitarian goods and to pay for war reparations and oil industry spare parts.

The United States and Britain say their overhaul plan would lift most restrictions on civilian goods entering Iraq while tightening enforcement of the 1990 arms embargo and plugging up Iraqi smuggling routes.

When the Russians threatened a veto in early July, the other 14 council members agreed on a list of items that could be used for military purposes that would have to be reviewed before shipment to Iraq.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke by telephone Monday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov about the U.S.-British proposal.

"Our goal is to bring Russia on board," department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Under council resolutions, sanctions cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify that Iraq has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. But weapons inspectors left Iraq ahead of U.S.-British airstrikes in December 1998, and Baghdad has barred them from returning.

President Bush warned Iraq Monday to allow weapons inspectors to return - or face possible consequences.

But Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad al-Douri said that as long as sanctions remain, "We will not permit ... weapons inspectors."

"We have nothing to inspect," he insisted.

-------- israel

Israeli Analysis Raises New Doubt About Arafat's Power

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/international/middleeast/27MIDE.html

JERUSALEM, Nov. 26 - As the Bush administration begins its first intensive drive for peace here, senior Israeli officials have concluded that no solution will be possible until new leaders replace Yasir Arafat at the top of the Palestinian movement.

Palestinians present a mirror-image argument: that no agreement is likely or even possible with Ariel Sharon as Israeli prime minister.

These are the dueling versions of reality facing two American envoys who arrived here today, Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general, and William J. Burns, an assistant secretary of state. They will be dealing with administrations that are more and more convinced that the other must fall before peace is possible.

After negotiations collapsed at the end of President Bill Clinton's second term, the Bush administration waited 10 months before committing itself to achieving peace here.

During that time, the antagonism and impasse here have only deepened, and neither side seems inclined to take a risk now for peace. But having declared war on terrorism worldwide and begun recruiting Arab nations to that cause, President Bush has restacked priorities, moving the Middle East up the agenda.

On the Israeli side, there has been a subtle but important shift in the statements of recent days, from a claim that Mr. Arafat is simply unwilling to crack down on militants to an argument that he also feels too weak politically to do so.

That was one element of an intelligence briefing presented last week to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, according to an official familiar with its contents. It argued that the government should focus on developing links to a forthcoming generation of Palestinian leaders, a step military officials say they are already taking.

The Israeli intelligence analysis described Mr. Arafat as coming under heavy pressure from several sources, including extremist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Palestinian leaders who believe the intifada is going nowhere, and the Israeli military, which has been attacking Palestinian-controlled areas in what it calls a campaign to enhance Israel's security.

[The Israeli Army announced on Tuesday that it had completed its withdrawal from all Palestinian areas it seized last month after the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister, Reuters reported. The pullout from Palestinian-ruled territory around the West Bank city of Jenin overnight coincided with the start of a new United States mediation mission. A Palestinian security official called the pullout cosmetic and said Israeli forces were still besieging Jenin from territory designated by interim peace deals as under Israeli control.]

The new intelligence assessment, which was first reported today in the newspaper Haaretz, in some ways conforms to the arguments of Palestinian officials, who say that Mr. Arafat has limited power to crack down on militants. The crucial difference is that the Palestinians insist Mr. Arafat would act if he could.

"They hit Palestinian areas on a daily basis, and they are carrying out the assassination policy, and at the same time they are asking the Palestinian Authority to control its people," Mohammed Dahlan, the commander of Palestinian preventive security in the Gaza Strip, said in a recent interview. "That's not fair. The Palestinian Authority cannot succeed under the circumstances. They're asking the Palestinian Authority to attack the Palestinian people, and that's not possible."

Mr. Dahlan insisted that the Palestinian Authority would take the desired steps if the Israeli government would demonstrate to the Palestinians that they would benefit, by, for example, an end to the closures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In 1996, Mr. Arafat arrested leaders of Hamas, among other militants. "Why did we arrest them?" Mr. Dahlan asked. "Because they didn't abide by the law. There was a very serious peace negotiation, and there was a hope for the Palestinian people. Today what is going on? Seven years under siege - and I am one who believes in the peace process - seven years with one result, and all we have is islands, prisons."

Israeli officials insist that their virtual blockade of Palestinian areas and their military campaign - including the killing of Palestinian leaders they accuse of terrorism - are required by Mr. Arafat's failure to act against extremists.

They say that they are not trying to overthrow Mr. Arafat, and will continue to deal with him. But they increasingly believe, as the intelligence briefing argued, that Mr. Arafat will not be part of the solution to the conflict.

Mr. Dahlan is himself an example of the limits of Mr. Arafat's control. He recently submitted his resignation, out of frustration, associates said, with corruption and ossification in the ranks of the ministers in the Palestinian Authority, which governs Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Mr. Arafat rejected the resignation, but Mr. Dahlan has been working in an insurance company's office in Gaza City, rather than his security headquarters.

He declined in the interview to discuss his offer to resign. But at one point he observed that he could not be sure of the Palestinian Authority's plans. "I'm on the outside now," he explained.

No one knows who might eventually take Mr. Arafat's place, but Israeli officials mention Mr. Dahlan, together with Jibril Rajoub, the leader of preventive security in the West Bank, as possibilities, along with more senior Palestinian leaders like Mahmoud Abbas, a longtime P.L.O. leader better known as Abu Mazen.

They say power might be split up among regional leaders. Other analysts suggest more radical groups like Hamas may step into any vacuum, and that even civil war is a possibility. That, some Palestinians believe, is Mr. Sharon's real goal.

On the surface, the new analysis might seem more sympathetic to Mr. Arafat's position than the argument that he had the means but lacked the will to arrest those carrying out terrorist actions.

But one senior Israeli official said that, from the viewpoint of his government, the policy implication of either position was the same: There is no point in trying to negotiate a final agreement with Mr. Arafat.

In acknowledging that Mr. Arafat does not have a free hand with his own people, the Israeli intelligence analysis may have the political effect of blunting the criticism of United Nations and European diplomats, as well as Palestinian officials, that the Sharon government and the Bush administration are asking too much of Mr. Arafat.

Mr. Sharon today again demanded seven days of "absolute quiet" before permitting formal steps toward truce and negotiations already agreed upon by the two parties.

Absolute quiet still seems a long way off. A suicide bomber blew himself up today at a crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, wounding two officers of the border police. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The bomber, Tayseer al- Ajrami, 26, left a note saying he was trying to avenge the killing last week of five Palestinian children by an Israeli bomb, as well as Israel's killing on Friday of a top Hamas leader.

The intelligence analysis concluded that the main threat to Mr. Arafat now came from the Palestinian "street," particularly from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, according to the official familiar with the briefing.

It said that Mr. Arafat feared being seen as surrendering if he acted to arrest militants and to take other measures publicly demanded by Israel. But it does not appear to suggest any change in Israeli policies to alleviate these pressures.

The analysis also said that even some Palestinian officials were talking about life "post-Arafat," a sign, it concluded, that Mr. Arafat might become simply a symbol.

Some of this may be wishful thinking, and some of it is stating the obvious. Palestinian analysts and diplomats here have noted the emergence of powerful, local Palestinian leaders in cities like Jenin and Tul Karm that are largely cut off by Israeli forces and rarely visited by Mr. Arafat. But those leaders lack any broader constituency, let alone Mr. Arafat's ability to secure international financing or backing.

"They need Arafat," said Khalil Shikaki, the director of The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, who has studied these new leaders. "That's why they will not attack him, they won't delegitimize him, though the public at large to some extent is delegitimizing him."

The Israeli analysis may also be self-fulfilling. The more the Israeli government cultivates other leaders, the more likely it is to weaken Mr. Arafat's status.

Palestinian officials accused Mr. Sharon of simply trying to avoid negotiating. "Israel's goal is to discredit Arafat as much as possible, and if one excuse doesn't work they'll come up with another excuse," said Michael Tarazi, an adviser to the Negotiation Affairs Department of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. "And the end result is the same: They're not interested in getting back to the table."

-------- propaganda wars

Independent TV Station In Moscow Faces Closing
Workers Allege Court Had Political Motive

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 27, 2001; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18929-2001Nov26?language=printer

MOSCOW, Nov. 26 -- A Moscow court today ordered the dissolution of TV-6, the last major independent television station in Russia, a decision that could wipe out the only broadcast voice consistently willing to air criticism of President Vladimir Putin's government.

The court ruled that the station, owned largely by exiled media and automobile magnate Boris Berezovsky, was financially unsound. It agreed with a suit filed by a minority shareholder, Lukoil petroleum company, to liquidate the firm.

The station was a refuge for journalists from another independent station, NTV, whose owner, Vladimir Gusinsky, was forced out last spring by Gazprom, the natural gas giant that is a major NTV shareholder. Gusinsky fled to Spain to escape corruption charges lodged by Putin's government. The dissolution of TV-6 effectively brings to heel two independent broadcast voices this year.

Although the court ruled on narrow economic grounds -- the station is in debt -- TV-6 employees said they suspected political maneuvering. Gazprom is partly owned by the government; Lukoil, Russia's largest oil company, deals closely with the Kremlin on important issues of export quotas and taxes. Lukoil officials declined to comment on the suit. "There is no rule of law in this case," said Yevgeny Kiselyov, the station manager and the country's most popular political talk show host. "This is purely political."

TV-6 has six months to appeal, and Tatyana Blinova, a spokeswoman for the station, said the company would do so. Theoretically, the station can continue broadcasting during that period. However, the press ministry has the power to immediately revoke the broadcaster's license. "If it does that, we won't be able to go on broadcasting," Blinova said.

Political observer Otto Latsis said Putin has been trying recently to portray himself as a promoter of civil society and democracy. "The show is not convincing," Latsis said. "The media is the most accessible channel for daily dialogue between state and society. We all know what the state wants. The state used a corporation it controls to destroy NTV. Another corporation is putting pressure on TV-6."

State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said he could not address the specifics of the TV-6 case, but he stressed that the Bush administration continues to support the independence of the Russian media. "It remains the strong position of the United States that a free media is essential to the kind of modern democratic society that Russia wants to build," he said.

Despite an apparent atmosphere of lethargy in Russia surrounding the issue of media independence, Russian viewers apparently looked to TV-6 to get a view beyond Kremlin control. Newscasts on TV-6, which hardly anyone watched a year ago, shot to the front of Moscow's ratings race with the influx of NTV talent.

"Itogi," a political talk show hosted by Kiselyov, is television's highest-rated program. Ratings in Moscow are considered key to a station's performance, because the city is home to the country's political elite and the most lucrative market for advertisers. NTV's ratings have fallen, and currently trail both TV-6 and government-controlled ORT.

When Gusinsky operated NTV, Kremlin officials attacked the station's hard-hitting coverage of Putin's initiation and prosecution of the war in Chechnya. On occasion, the government barred its reporters from broadcasting from the separatist republic. In August 2000, NTV was the first and only station to report that the nuclear submarine Kursk, with 118 hands on board, sank because a torpedo exploded inside. Other stations offered the government version of the story: a collision with a U.S. submarine.

After Gusinsky's ouster, journalists from the station walked out and looked for work elsewhere.

Berezovsky took them in. He seemed an unlikely choice for upholding standards of press independence. He had controlled the ORT station during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, and employed newscasts and political talk shows to crush Kremlin opponents. He and Gusinsky were bitter rivals.

Under Putin, Berezovsky lost both his Kremlin entree and control of ORT. As government investigators looked into suspect financial dealings between Berezovsky and the airline Aeroflot, Berezovsky went into exile in France.

Berezovsky owns 75 percent of TV-6, but placed management responsibility in the hands of Gusinsky and Kiselyov, the station manager. A few months ago, when Lukoil first sued TV-6, Berezovsky said he did not "see any decisions here except those of a political nature."


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Democrats Question Tribunal Concept

By JESSE J. HOLLAND,
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday November 27 5:49 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20011127/us/military_tribunals_2.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats began making plans Tuesday to fight President Bush's decision to prosecute suspected terrorists before secret military tribunals.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer announced hearings next week on whether the president has the authority to call for tribunals without congressional approval. Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich said he would offer legislation this week banning to use of government money to set up the secret trials.

``To come up with the best way to do this, Congress ought to be involved,'' said Schumer, chairman of the Senate Judiciary courts subcommittee.

Bush signed an order earlier this month allowing the Pentagon to form military courts to try non-U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism. White House lawyers say military tribunals could be conducted in secret outside the United States to protect against retaliation and the exposure of intelligence sources.

The idea has been criticized by members of Congress and civil libertarians, who say the civilian court system and due-process protections should be made available to terrorism suspects.

Attorney General John Ashcroft will come before the Senate next week to defend the administration's actions. Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff will face the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

In a letter released Tuesday, Kucinich and 38 other House members wrote, ``We oppose the creation of military tribunals, which would permit secret arrests, secret charges using secret evidence, secret prosecutions, secret witnesses, secret trials, secret convictions, secret sentencing and even secret executions.''

The only two non-Democrats who signed the letter were GOP Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia and independent Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Kucinich said he plans to put an amendment on the Defense Department spending bill this week that would keep the government from spending public money to create and operate the military tribunals.

Schumer said he was not as opposed to the idea of military tribunals as Kucinich is, but thought that Bush should have consulted Congress before unilaterally deciding to have tribunals as an option.

``If we have a congressional process to vet this proposal, we'll gain a number of things,'' Schumer said. ``We'll gain more balance; we'll gain legitimacy; foreign countries like Spain will look at the process better; and we'll gain a system of checks and balances, which certainly should apply to this situation, which is a large feeding of power to the executive branch.''

Spain's government has said it would not extradite a group of al-Qaida suspects it has in custody unless the United States promises that the suspects won't face the death penalty or trial in a military court.

Schumer said he also wants a discussion on whether Bush has the authority to create a military tribunal without congressional approval. There were military tribunals during World War II, but Congress approved of those first, Schumer said.

``Certainly the joint resolution of Congress from Sept. 18 gives the president the authority to prevent future actions of international terrorism against the U.S., but using that language alone as authorization for military tribunals may be too broad a reach,'' Schumer said. ``It is also unclear whether the president's powers as commander in chief or those under the Uniform Code of Military Justice give him that authority. So there are a lot of questions to be answered.''

Schumer said he would hold a hearing next Tuesday to get some answers, although he did not immediately know who from the Justice Department or the White House would attend.

----

McAfee Virus Software Opens Your Computer to Feds
'Lantern' Backdoor Flap Rages

By Declan McCullagh
Nov. 27, 2001 PST
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,48648,00.html

WASHINGTON -- Network Associates has been snared in a web of accusations over whether it will place backdoors for the U.S. government in its security software.

Since Network Associates (NETA) makes popular security products, including McAfee anti-virus software and Pretty Good Privacy encryption software, reports of a special arrangement with the U.S. government have drawn protests and threats of a boycott.

The flap started last week, when news reports began to appear about an FBI project code-named "Magic Lantern." Details are sketchy, but Magic Lantern reportedly works by masquerading as an innocent e-mail attachment that will insert FBI spyware inside your computer.

In the past, the FBI has said publicly that agents have been flummoxed by suspects using encryption, something that software such as Magic Lantern could circumvent by secretly recording a passphrase and secret encryption key, then forwarding the confidential data to the feds.

An Associated Press article then reported that "at least one antivirus software company, McAfee Corp., contacted the FBI ... to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's snooping software and alert a criminal suspect."

Condemnation from security mavens was quick and fierce. Columnist Brett Glass echoed the Slashdot crowd when he said: "Network Associates has shown that it is willing to compromise its integrity by selling intentionally faulty products. For this reason, it is no longer appropriate or wise for those concerned about the security of their networks, systems or confidential data to use them."

Other security mavens pointed to free software projects such as openvirus.org as more trustworthy alternatives to Network Associates' McAfee anti-virus products, and GPG as a replacement for Network Associates' PGP encryption software.

The criticism raised a well-known point in security circles: Security software, including PGP and anti-virus products ware, is either looking out for your interests or those of the government. It can't do both.

But on Monday, Network Associates denied contacting the FBI.

In a statement released late in the day, a spokeswoman for the company made four points: "1. Network Associates/McAfee.com Corporation has not contacted the FBI, nor has the FBI contacted NAI/McAfee.com Corp. regarding Magic Lantern. 2. We do not expect the FBI to contact Network Associates/McAfee.com Corporation regarding Magic Lantern."

The statement continued: "3. Network Associates/McAfee.com Corp. is not going to speculate on Magic Lantern as it's (sic) existence has not even been confirmed by the FBI or any government agency. 4. Network Associates/McAfee.com Corporation does and will continue to comply with any and all U.S. laws and legislation."

Sharp-eyed critics pointed to the narrowness of Network Associates' denial: It did not rule out the possibility of conversations with the White House, the Justice Department or even conversations with the FBI about a product with identical capabilities that was not called Magic Lantern. Network Associates also did not pledge to reject future pleas from the FBI done in the absence of legislation making backdoors mandatory.

In an e-mail, Network Associates was asked to clarify with this question: "Can you assure ... that Network Associates/McAfee has not had any contact with any law enforcement or intelligence agencies or other government entities including Congress or the White House about Magic Lantern or a product with capabilities it is reported to have?"

Tony Thompson, a spokesman for the company, replied: "You are correct. We have not."

Thompson also rejected the possibility of any conversations with the government between Network Associates or other anti-virus vendors taking place informally through trade associations in Washington.

For his part, Ted Bridis, a veteran reporter for the Associated Press, says he stands by his story from last week that reported the link between the FBI and Network Associates.

Bridis wrote in an e-mail message Monday afternoon, "I stand by my reporting for the AP. This information came from a senior company officer. I won't identify this person in this post because I've been unable to reach this person by phone or e-mail since the flap erupted."

"I can't resolve what McAfee told me last week and today's contradictory statement except to note the critical public response against McAfee that emerged over the holiday weekend," Bridis added.

In a well-documented incident that was tried in court in New Jersey, the FBI sneaked into an alleged mobster's office to implant PGP password-sniffing software in his Windows computer. Since that approach requires physical breaking and entering, FBI agents seem to want to be able to bypass encryption without leaving their desks.

The feds have worked with technology companies in the past to insert backdoors for surveillance and eavesdropping.

To gain an export license, IBM's Lotus subsidiary weakened the encryption used in its Lotus Notes program so the U.S. government could readily penetrate it. (All versions of Notes use 64-bit keys, but export versions of Notes gave a portion of the key to the U.S. government, allowing federal agencies to decode Notes-encrypted files in real-time.)

In his 1982 book The Puzzle Palace, author James Bamford recounted how the National Security Agency's predecessor coerced Western Union, RCA, and ITT Communications to turn over telegraph traffic to the feds in 1945. "Cooperation may be expected for the complete intercept coverage of this material," an internal agency memo said.

ITT and RCA gave the government full access, while Western Union limited the number of messages it handed over. The arrangement, according to Bamford, lasted at least two decades.

In 1995, The Baltimore Sun reported that for decades the NSA had rigged the encryption products of Crypto, a Swiss firm, so U.S. eavesdroppers could easily break their codes.

The six-part story, based on interviews with former employees and company documents, said Crypto sold its security products to some 120 countries, including prime U.S. intelligence targets such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and Yugoslavia. Crypto disputed the allegation.

-------

AV vendors split over FBI Trojan snoops

By John Leyden,
UK Register
27/11/2001
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/23057.html

Antivirus vendors are at loggerheads over whether they should include in their software packages detection for a Trojan horse program reportedly under development by the FBI.

A keystroke logging Trojan, called Magic Lantern, will enable investigators to discover break PGP encoded messages sent by suspects under investigation, MSNBC reports. By logging what a suspect types, and transmitting this back to investigators, the FBI could use Magic Lantern to work out a suspect's passphrase. Getting a target's private PGP keyring is easy in comparison, and with the two any message can be broken.

MSNBC quotes unnamed sources who says that Magic Lantern could be sent to a target by email or planted on a suspect's PC by exploiting common operating system vulnerabilities.

Although unconfirmed, the reports are been taken seriously in the security community, and are consistent with the admitted use of key-logging software in the investigation of suspected mobster Nicodemo Scarfo. In that case, FBI agents obtained a warrant to enter Scarfo's office and install keystroke logging software on his machine.

Magic Lantern, which would be an extension of the Carnivore Internet surveillance program, takes the idea one step further by enabling agents to place a Trojan on a target's computer without having to gain physical access.

The suggested technique creates a clutch of legal, ethical and technical issues. Greater powers in the Patriot Act, which Congress is considering, may allow the tool to be used. But what if it was modified for use by hackers?

And antivirus vendors are mulling over the rights and wrongs of putting Magic Lantern on their virus definition list.

Eric Chien, chief researcher at Symantec's antivirus research lab, said that provided a hypothetical keystroke logging tool was used only by the FBI, then Symantec would avoid updating its antivirus tools to detect such a Trojan.

Symantec is yet to hear back from the FBI on its enquiries about Magic Lantern.

"If it was under the control of the FBI, with appropriate technical safeguards in place to prevent possible misuse, and nobody else used it - we wouldn't detect it," said Chien. "However we would detect modified versions that might be used by hackers."

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, disagrees. He says it it wrong to deliberately refrain from detecting the virus, because its customers outside the US would expect protection against the Trojan. Such a move also creates an awkward precedent.

Cluley adds: "What if the French intelligence service, or even the Greeks, created a Trojan horse program for this purpose? Should we ignore those too?"

----

More Than 600 Held in Terror Probe

By Larry Margasak
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 27, 2001; 11:33 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25441-2001Nov27?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- The government is detaining 603 people in its terrorism investigation, including some alleged members of Osama bin Laden's network. Federal agents have cited concerns about nuclear power plants, guns and box cutters in seeking the detentions, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Faced with growing congressional concern about the secrecy and scope of his investigation, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Tuesday that 104 people have been charged with federal crimes in the probe.

In his most detailed public accounting yet, Ashcroft released the names of those facing federal charges. But he refused to provide names for the hundreds held on immigration violations, saying he didn't want to aid bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

"The Department of Justice is waging a deliberate campaign of arrest and detention to protect American lives," Ashcroft said. "We are removing suspected terrorists who violate the law from our streets to prevent further terrorist attacks."

A senator who has been pressing for more disclosure said he wasn't satisfied.

"I continue to be deeply troubled by (the Justice Department's) refusal to provide a full accounting of everyone who has been detained and why," said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis.

Several former high-ranking FBI officials interviewed by The Washington Post suggested the Justice Department is resurrecting tactics the government rejected in the late 1970s because they did not prevent terrorism and led to abuses of civil liberties.

One of the officials, former FBI Director William H. Webster, said Ashcroft's policy of pre-emptive arrests and detentions "carries a lot of risk with it. You may interrupt something, but you may not be able to bring it down. You may not be able to stop what is going on."

Documents provided to Congress and reviewed by the AP divulged evidence in some of the cases.

For instance, a Pakistani man who took video footage of the World Trade Center a few days before the Sept. 11 attacks was charged by agents in Wilmington, Del., with being an illegal immigrant who possessed firearms, the documents show.

A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms affidavit also alleged the Pakistani, Raza Nasir Khan, requested maps of a hunting area near a rural Salem County, N.J., nuclear power plant and had a handheld global positioning system. A search of his home found four long guns and one handgun. Khan told authorities he visited the World Trade Center a few days before the attacks and shot videos, the documents said.

The magistrate who ordered Khan held said she didn't see any connection to terrorism. In fact, few of the hundreds of pages of supporting documents provided to Congress mentioned a connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.

In northern California, an Immigration and Naturalization Service affidavit alleged Nabil Sarama, a Palestinian, made a false statement to obtain a permanent residency card. Sarama was arrested Sept. 16 in Orlando, Fla., after police found him near a pay phone that had been used to make bomb threats, the documents alleged.

A search of his suitcase, the affidavit said, turned up a kit capable of making between eight and 12 box cutters - like the weapons used by the Sept. 11 hijackers. He also had a California Department of Motor Vehicles identification card, a Georgia driver's license, four Florida identification cards and a Palestinian Authority passport.

Government computer records show that between 1994 and 2001, Sarama entered the United States at least five times through at least five ports and also used passports from Israel and Jordan.

Most of the court papers given to Congress charged individuals with child pornography, Social Security fraud, illegal firearm possession, credit card fraud and immigration violations. One alleged possession of more than $40,000 worth of stolen Kellogg's cereals.

Ashcroft disclosed 603 people remain in custody - 55 on federal criminal charges and 548 on immigration violations. Forty-nine others who have been charged with crimes are either being sought or have been released on bond, officials said.

Until Tuesday, the government had said only that more than 1,100 people had been detained since Sept. 11 and that a majority remained in custody. Ashcroft alleged that some in custody are members of bin Laden's al-Qaida network, though he declined to be more specific.

"We will use every constitutional tool to keep suspected terrorists locked up," he said.

He said the government's refusal to name most of those in custody was designed to protect American lives.

"I am not interested in providing, when we are at war, a list to Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida network of the people we have detained that would make any easier their effort to kill Americans," he said.

The information released by the Justice Department on the 548 immigration detainees listed their countries of origin and the dates and types of charges they face. More than a third are from Pakistian. Ashcroft said immigration law barred him from divulging names.

But he released the names of 93 of the 104 people facing federal criminal charges - 11 cases remained sealed, officials said. Dozens of the names released by Ashcroft had already been made public but some were disclosed for the first time. They included:

-Hussein and Nasser Abduali, indicted in New Jersey for conspiracy to embezzle. Court records show they were charged with conspiring to buy, receive and possess $43,270 worth of stolen cereal products. They have been released.

-Ahmed Abdullah Alashmoud was indicted in New York for insurance fraud. He is in custody.

-Souhail Sarwer was charged with credit card fraud in New York. He is a fugitive, the list said.

The Justice Department also released documents detailing federal charges against 16 of the 104. Charges ranged from illegal possession of guns to visa fraud.

One man detained on Sept. 11 on a bus carrying diverted airline passengers had box cutters in his baggage. He pleaded guilty to one count of trying to re-enter the country after being deported. Another man was charged with lying about coming to the United States to attend pilot training.

The documents turned over to Congress included an FBI affidavit against Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian pilot the United States is trying to extradite from Britain in proceedings that began Tuesday.

Authorities allege Raissi trained some of the hijackers who attacked the Pentagon. The affidavit said he made false statements in applying for a pilot's license.

The FBI said Raissi failed to notify the Federal Aviation Administration of knee surgery and told the FAA he had no history of non-traffic convictions although he had been convicted of theft in Britain.

On Tuesday Raissi was indicted for a second time by a federal grand jury in Arizona for conspiring to submit a false application for asylum on behalf of Redouane Dahmani, a 26-year-old Algerian who was living in the Phoenix area and faces similar charges.

Ashcroft did not mention some key suspects, including Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan, arrested aboard a train in Texas the morning of the hijackings. Authorities said the two were carrying box cutters, cash and hair dye, and had shaved their bodies as was recommended by hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta.

----

States

USA Today
01/11/27
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Arkansas

Pine Bluff - The state Board of Correction and Community Punishment voted to move up parole dates of 480 males and 72 females to make room in prisons for state inmates held in county jails. The Correction Department said releases will occur during the next 90 days, with most leaving in the first month. State prisons must be at or above 98% capacity for 30 consecutive days to take this step, officials said.

Connecticut

Hartford - The state Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a trooper who was fired after being accused of propositioning a female motorist for sex can sue to have the Department of Public Safety pay his legal costs. The court said the law requires the state to cover costs of troopers who are acquitted of charges filed for actions that occurred while on duty. Alex Martinez was found innocent of coercion charges in November 1999.

Delaware

Smyrna - A company that makes protective hoods at a local plant donated 20 of them to the Smyrna Police Department. The hoods from Harris Manufacturing are designed to protect wearers from biological, chemical and nuclear threats. The company says it has experienced a tremendous increase in demand for its product since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Kentucky

Frankfort - The state police trial board began hearing the case of former Madisonville post commander Ron Allgood, who is charged with taking a state van to a motorcycle rally and allowing police to consume alcoholic beverages inside the vehicle. The 18-year veteran was suspended with pay last June and faces dismissal for the alleged incident in July 2000. Allgood's lawyer said he made mistakes but doesn't deserve dismissal.

------

Professor to Be Deported After Secret Evidence Case

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By DANA CANEDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/national/27DETA.html

MIAMI, Nov. 26 - A Palestinian man who was held in United States custody for more than three and a half years on secret evidence was jailed again this weekend after an appeals court ruled that the government could deport him.

The professor, Mazen al-Najjar, who was born in Israeli-occupied Gaza and settled in Tampa, Fla., was arrested outside his home on Saturday and faces deportation for overstaying a student visa in the early 1980's.

Last Tuesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, upheld Mr. Najjar's deportation.

The Justice Department maintains that Mr. Najjar has ties to terrorist groups and that his legal recourse for fighting deportation has simply run out. But lawyers for Mr. Najjar say he is being used to test the government's powers to detain foreigners, particularly men of Middle Eastern descent, a power they say the government is misusing.

Mr. Najjar, a former adjunct professor at the University of South Florida, has raised three daughters in Tampa, is active in a mosque and has no criminal record. He came to the attention of federal authorities because of his involvement in the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, a research center affiliated with the university, and the Islamic Concern Project, whose activities included sending money to orphans in occupied Palestine, his lawyers said.

The Justice Department said Mr. Najjar supported terrorism through those organizations.

The I.C.P. and the World and Islam Studies Enterprise "are front organizations that raised funds for militant Islamic-Palestinian groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas," the Justice Department said in a statement. "Furthermore, Al-Najjar's Tampa-based I.C.P. was responsible for petitioning for other known terrorists to obtain visas to enter the United States."

Mr. Najjar has repeatedly denied those accusations. One of his lawyers said today that the government had never proved its case.

"This was one of the last secret evidence cases," said David Cole, Mr. Najjar's lead lawyer and a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. "The government has lost case after case in which it has sought to detain or deport aliens on the basis of secret evidence."

The Immigration and Naturalization Service first detained Mr. Najjar in May 1997, contending that he was involved in organizations that were fronts for terrorism. But citing national security, the government refused to reveal its evidence to Mr. Najjar's lawyers.

In May 2000, a federal judge in Miami ruled that Mr. Najjar's detention violated due process and ordered a hearing in which he would be able to confront the evidence against him. Last December, an immigration judge ruled that a summary of the secret evidence provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service was not detailed enough to allow Mr. Najjar to defend himself.

The Board of Immigration Appeals decided to release Mr. Najjar, and he left jail on Dec. 15.

Russell Bergeron, a spokesman for the immigration service in Miami, said today that last week's decision to detain Mr. Najjar "was made in consultation with the Justice Department, although it is based purely on immigration issues."

Mr. Najjar's lawyers said they were reviewing options that might enable him to remain in the country.

"We don't believe that it is proper for I.N.S. to detain Mazen al-Najjar because the government has already failed to prove that he was either a threat to national security or a danger to the community," said Martin Schwartz, one of his lawyers.

A Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Najjar's arrest had occurred after he exhausted his appeals through the courts.

"All of them found Mazen al-Najjar did not merit relief from deportation," said the spokesman, Dan Nelson. "This is a matter that addresses an immigration law violation of Mr. Najjar on his student visa when he entered the U.S. originally in 1984."

---

U.S. Pressures Foreign Airlines Over Manifests

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By ROBERT PEAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/politics/27SECU.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - The United States has told Saudi, Russian, Chinese and other foreign airlines that their passengers arriving in this country will be put through extremely rigorous, lengthy searches, starting Thursday, if the airlines did not provide information needed to identify potential terrorists.

The new aviation security law, signed by President Bush on Nov. 19, requires foreign carriers to cooperate.

Under the law, airlines had two months to begin the electronic transmission of passenger lists for all flights to the United States. But the commissioner of customs, Robert C. Bonner, sent letters to the airlines last week saying that they must comply earlier, by Thursday, or else customs inspectors will search "all hand-carried and checked baggage on every flight arriving in the United States." The searches could add hours to the clearance process for overseas travelers.

Mr. Bonner sent the ultimatum to 58 carriers, including Saudi Arabian Airlines, Royal Jordanian Airlines, Pakistan International Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, Aeroflot and Air China, Beijing's main international carrier. China Eastern, based in Shanghai, and China Southern, based in Guangdong Province, also received the letters. Mr. Bonner said any delay could put security at risk.

The Customs Service said it had received hardly any responses. A spokesman for the Jordanian airline said it would comply. Other carriers said they did not know much about the new requirement or were still studying it.

American officials have said 15 of the 19 hijackers whose planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September were from Saudi Arabia. For years, the United States has been trying to get the Saudi airline to provide passenger manifests in advance of flights.

Indeed, for more than a decade, federal officials have been encouraging airlines to participate in the automated system used to compare biographical data on international air travelers with lists of suspected terrorists and criminals.

The lists are compiled by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The computer system, operated by the Customs Service, is known as the Advance Passenger Information System. Customs officers used the system to check the names of 57 million travelers who entered the United States on 387,000 flights last year. Those passengers accounted for 85 percent of the 67 million air travelers arriving in this country.

More than 90 carriers have been voluntarily supplying data on passengers. Airlines collect the information at the time of departure and send it to the Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service while the flight is en route to this country.

The Customs Service checks the names against several databases, including the Interagency Border Inspection System and the files of the National Crime Information Center, maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Suspects can be arrested or pulled aside for further questioning after they land in the United States.

Under the new aviation security law, airlines no longer have a choice. For each passenger and crew member, they must provide the full name, date of birth, citizenship, sex, the number of the passport and the country where it was issued, the visa number or green card number and "such other information" as American officials deem necessary to ensure air safety.

"This information will be used by the Customs Service to improve air security by, among other things, identifying potential terrorists seeking to enter the United States," Mr. Bonner said in his letter.

"We recognize that the vast majority of travelers are not a threat to the United States," Mr. Bonner said. "However, we believe that in the wake of Sept. 11, international flights pose a serious national security risk to the United States if carriers do not provide comprehensive and accurate data."

Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, said he found it appalling that some airlines had refused to provide the data until they were required to do so. Some of the airlines have said they do not have the necessary computer software.

Wanda Warner, a spokeswoman for the International Air Transport Association, a trade group for the airline industry, said, "I don't know of any airline that could do this and chooses not to do so." She said some airlines might be unable to meet the Customs Service deadline because "they don't have the equipment to do it."

Saudi Arabian Airlines and the Saudi Embassy declined to comment on the new requirement. A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy said last month that his country was not in any hurry to sign up for the passenger information system.

"At this time," the spokesman said, "hundreds of Saudi citizens are being detained and questioned with regard to the hijackings. A lot of them are innocent people. That number would probably quadruple if we shared advance information on air passengers with the United States."

William O. Connors, marketing manager for Royal Jordanian Airlines, said his company had promised today to provide the United States with data on passengers arriving in this country.

Mr. Connors said Jordanian airline executives had signaled their intention in a memorandum faxed to the federal government.

"Airlines don't look very good" if they are repeatedly accused of failing to cooperate, Mr. Connors said, adding: "The U.S. government came to us and said, `Will you join the Advance Passenger Information System?' It left us with no recourse."

Shahid Khan, marketing manager in the New York office of Pakistan International Airlines, said he was aware of the new requirement, but did not know if his company was providing the required information.

Egypt Air, Kuwait Airways, Olympic Airways and LTU, a German charter airline, agreed to participate in the passenger information system on Oct. 31.

---

THE GUIDELINES
Excerpts From the Justice Dept.'s Interview Instructions

New York Times
November 27, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/national/27LIST.html

Following are excerpts from a memorandum from the Justice Department advising United States attorneys how to conduct interviews of 5,000 men, mostly from Middle Eastern nations, who have arrived on temporary visas since Jan. 1, 2000.

TELEPHONE NUMBERS You should obtain all telephone numbers used by the individual and his family or close associates.

RESIDENCE You should ask the individual where he is residing and about any other residences that he has used since his arrival in this country. If he lives with others, you should inquire as to their identities. You should note any information that would assist in locating the individual in the future.

FOREIGN TRAVEL You should ask the individual what foreign countries he has visited, the dates of those visits and the reasons he went to those countries. You should inquire specifically whether he or anybody he knows has ever visited Afghanistan. . . .

REASON FOR THE INDIVIDUAL'S VISIT The individual should be asked about his reasons for visiting the United States. If the individual is here to attend school, you should learn what you can about his studies and future plans. If the individual is here as a tourist, you should inquire as to the cities, landmarks and other sites that he has visited or plans to visit. You should ask when the individual plans to leave the United States and where he plans to go. You should also ask the purpose of any trips the individual has made outside of the United States since his entry.

REGARDING THE EVENTS OF SEPT. 11, 2001 You should ask the individual whether he knows, or is aware of anyone who knows, anything about the Sept. 11 attacks or the perpetrators.

REACTION TO TERRORISM You should ask the individual if he noticed anybody who reacted in a surprising or inappropriate way to the news of the Sept. 11 attacks. You should also ask him how he felt when he heard the news.

INVOLVEMENT IN TERRORISM You should inquire whether the individual knows anybody who has had involvement in advocating, planning, supporting or committing terrorist activities, and whether he has ever had any personal involvement in such activities.

KNOWLEDGE OF WEAPONS The individual should be asked whether he or anybody he knows has access to guns or to any explosives or harmful chemical compounds, or has any training in the development or use of such weapons. You should also ask if he knows of anyone who is capable of developing any biological or chemical weapons such as anthrax.

---

Maryland juvenile-justice system beset by violence

November 27, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011127-69206176.htm

BALTIMORE (AP) - Reports from Maryland's three largest juvenile jails show guards have assaulted teen-agers there dozens of times, nearly two years after the state temporarily shut down three smaller facilities because guards were abusing those in their care.

On Dec. 7, 1999, Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend promised that the entire juvenile-justice system would be reformed, releasing a joint statement declaring that "violence will not be tolerated."

But staff members at Maryland's juvenile-justice systems have described violent incidents since then, such as the time a guard punched a teen in the mouth two or three times, sending him to the hospital.

In another case, a guard grabbed a teen goofing off in the lunch line, resulting in an altercation in which the teen broke an arm. After another fight involving a guard, a teen broke a bone in his face.

The incidents were among dozens of "critical incident reports" last year obtained by the Baltimore Sun under public-information laws from the jails - the Victor Cullen Center in Frederick County, the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County and the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County.

In a report published Sunday, the paper reported that violence in the three largest juvenile facilities is not only tolerated by guards, but often initiated by them.

The state's files show several charges of guards assaulting teens, using excessive force while restraining them or looking the other way when they assault each other. For example, state police found some teens were forced into a weekly "fight club," where they settled problems as guards looked on.

Mrs. Townsend acknowledged the conditions at the facilities in an interview with the Sun.

"I'm disheartened and sickened by it," said Mrs. Townsend, the presumed front-runner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. "It's something that in no way is acceptable."

According to the reports examined by the Sun, 93 were accounts of staff members assaulting teens in their care and 109 were cases of youths assaulting their peers.

The reports of assaults are not conclusions but accusations, some of which juvenile-justice officials say are unfounded. The department would not provide the outcome of specific cases because, officials told the paper, that information was protected in "investigatory files."

The Maryland State Police, which investigates accusations of assaults at the facilities, said they could not provide information on the cases because they involve juveniles.

The roots of the violence have been known for years. Guards at the facilities are paid poorly and receive little training. Confrontations between them and juveniles often escalate into violence.

Teens often wait for weeks or even months to be placed in outside programs that deal with their problems, adding to their frustration. And about 25 percent of the youths suffer from severe mental illness, but are left virtually untreated.

The Department of Juvenile Justice is making changes to decrease jail populations and improve mental health services, which should reduce violence in the facilities, Mrs. Townsend said.

Last week, the lieutenant governor announced that if conditions at the Victor Cullen Center did not improve, she would consider closing it.

"We are not where we need to be," she said. "But we know where we want to go, and we're going to get there."

Last year, at least four guards from Victor Cullen were charged with assaulting juveniles, and two others were charged with sexually abusing youths at the center. At least six guards have been fired this year after accusations of physical assaults.

Juvenile-justice officials said they had no information on any criminal charges against guards at Hickey and Cheltenham.

Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the nonprofit Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in Washington, said the jails, which are designed to hold 235 to 255 juveniles, should be closed.

"It's my fear that what we're seeing is a cycle of scandal, inadequate reform, a dying out of the scandal, deterioration and more scandal," he said. "The governor and lieutenant governor have to get serious about a long-term fix."

-------- terrorism

McCain: Terrorists bypass laws by using gun shows

USA Today
11/27/2001
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/27/guns.htm

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain says he will force Senate consideration of a controversial gun control measure early next year bolstered by a newly powerful argument: Foreign terrorists have exploited a loophole to buy weapons at gun shows while bypassing federal background checks.

"Clearly, alleged members of terrorist organizations have been able to secure guns and weapons using the gun show loophole," McCain, R-Ariz., said in a telephone interview with USA TODAY. "I think that lends some urgency" to tightening the law.

McCain and Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, notified GOP colleagues this week that they would attach the legislation to the first appropriate bill, probably a homeland security measure, after the Senate convenes in January.

The parliamentary move is likely to force debate on one of the most divisive issues in American politics, one that has been largely sidelined for the past year.

The proposal, also sponsored by Democratic senators Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Charles Schumer of New York, would mandate checks on buyers at weekend gun shows similar to those now in effect for customers of federally licensed gun dealers. The National Rifle Association and other critics call the proposal unworkable and intrusive.

Advocates say they'll cite evidence that suspected foreign terrorists are using the loophole:

- In Michigan, Ali Boumelhem, linked to the anti-Israel Hezbollah, was convicted Sept. 10 of conspiring to smuggle guns and ammunition to Lebanon. Federal agents testified they saw him buying weapons at three gun shows.

- In Texas, Muhammad Asrar was arrested in an investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks. He pleaded guilty to immigration violations and illegal possession of ammunition. The Pakistani store owner said he had bought handguns, rifles and a submachine gun at gun shows since 1994.

- In Florida, Conor Claxton, accused of ties to the Irish Republican Army, testified last year that he and associates bought thousands of dollars worth of handguns, rifles and high-powered ammunition at gun shows to smuggle to Ireland.

"In each of these cases, the suspected terrorists were able to acquire guns, hide their immigrant status, and shield their criminal records," McCain and DeWine say in a "Dear Republican Colleague" letter circulated in the Senate on Monday. "We cannot and should not keep rolling the dice with American security."

But James Jay Baker, legislative director of the NRA, argues that the record of arrests and convictions shows that the current system works to enforce gun laws. He accuses McCain and others of "trying to bootstrap on the Sept. 11 tragedy."

"None of the terrorism we saw visited on this country on Sept. 11 had anything to do with firearms," Baker says. Noting that the jet hijackers used box cutters and knives as weapons, he adds, "You don't see people running around talking about closing down cutlery manufacturers."

If anything, he says, Americans since Sept. 11 are likely to be more protective of their ability to buy guns. There is some evidence that they are buying more guns: The FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System says requests for background checks on behalf of licensed dealers increased about 20% in the month after the attacks, compared with a year earlier.

Federal law requires background checks to prevent felons and the mentally unstable from buying guns from licensed dealers. But private sellers at gun shows can complete purchases without conducting a background check or even getting identification from buyers.

The political climate for tightening the law is uncertain. The House and Senate passed different bills to close the gun show loophole in 1999, but negotiations over how the checks would be conducted and how long they could take broke down. Since the 2000 elections, some Democrats have been wary of gun control proposals that they worry have hurt them among rural voters.

But gun control advocates say concern about foreign terrorism and homegrown violence - underscored by the weekend arrest of three teens in New Bedford, Mass., accused of plotting to kill fellow students at their high school - should help build support. "There's a direct nexus to foreign terrorists operating in the United States," says Matt Bennett of Americans for Gun Safety. "It seems to us there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to take care of this problem."

Gun control advocates say they hope they'll have a new White House ally in Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. President Bush has been noncommittal about the proposed legislation. But as governor of Pennsylvania - second only to Texas in number of gun shows - Ridge signed a measure in 1998 to close the gun show loophole in the state. Congress.

---

A Harvard Professor's Baffling Vanishing

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/national/27HARV.html

BOSTON, Nov. 26 - The disappearance of a prominent Harvard biochemist in Memphis earlier this month has baffled his family, friends and law enforcement. But because the professor, Don C. Wiley, is a leading expert on dangerous viruses like Ebola, the mystery of his disappearance has provoked wider attention as well.

Professor Wiley, 57, has been missing since early Nov. 16, when the police found his rental car abandoned on a bridge over the Mississippi River outside Memphis.

There have been reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining the case in connection with its antiterrorism work. But Bill Woerner, the acting assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Memphis office, said today that it was not investigating the case, since there was no evidence of foul play.

And Gregory Verdine, a professor of chemical biology at Harvard, said, "If bioterrorists were to abduct Don Wiley, they'd be very disappointed," because his research was in studying the component parts of viruses, and "that doesn't really help you make a more dangerous version of the virus."

All of which has only added to the mystery for Professor Wiley's wife, Katrin Valgeirsdottir. "There is no logical explanation, and that is what I'm having problems with," said Ms. Valgeirsdottir, reached at her family's home in Cambridge, Mass.

Professor Wiley had no history of mental health problems, there were no family or financial problems, and he was intensely involved with the upbringing of his two children, 7 and 10 years old, according to Ms. Valgeirsdottir, neighbors and colleagues. In fact, the couple had just bought tickets to fly to Iceland for Christmas, she said, and Professor Wiley had been spending time learning Icelandic, his wife's native language.

Ms. Valgeirsdottir was at Logan International Airport in Boston on Nov. 16, heading with her children to Memphis, where her husband had arranged to pick them up at the airport later that day. She received a cellphone call telling her that his rental car had been found at 4 a.m. on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, which connects Memphis with Arkansas. The keys were still in the ignition, the gas tank was full, and the car, a white Mitsubishi Galant, was blocking truck traffic.

Professor Wiley had been in Memphis attending the annual meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. That evening he had been at a banquet for the board at the Peabody Hotel, a short drive from the bridge.

Others who were at the banquet said Professor Wiley left about midnight, heading for his father's home in the suburb Germantown, where he was staying. The suburb is east of the city and in the opposite direction from the bridge.

Professor Wiley also has a brother who lives in Memphis, and it was the family's custom to gather after the annual St. Jude Children's Research Hospital meeting, Ms. Valgeirsdottir said.

J. D. King, an inspector with the Memphis police homicide division, said the disappearance had been classified as a missing-person case, and there was no evidence of foul play or suicide. The police have searched the river, but found nothing, Mr. King said.

"Our main focus is trying to discover his last movements between the time he was at the Peabody and when his vehicle was discovered," between midnight and 4 a.m., Mr. King said. "There have not been any breakthroughs so far."

Patricia Donahoe, the chairwoman of the scientific advisory board for St. Jude and head of pediatric surgical services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said she had been at the banquet and had seen Professor Wiley as late as 10:30 p.m.

"He was normal, very much engaged with what he was going to be doing with his family the next day, talking about his children and sailing these little remote-control power boats on the Charles River," Dr. Donahoe said.

"I certainly saw no signs of depression," she said. "I am just very suspicious that were was some form of accident or foul play. He was a leader in his field and was really on top of his game."

In 1999, Professor Wiley and another Harvard scientist, Dr. Jack Strominger, won the Japan Prize for their discoveries of how the immune system protects humans from infections. They had also won the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award in 1995 for their work on the immune system.

Mr. Woerner of the F.B.I. said he had asked that his office monitor the investigation by the Memphis police. Separately, George Bolds, a spokesman for the F.B.I. office in Memphis, said, "If there were a link to the events of Sept. 11 or a link with some sort of biological weapons or terrorist act, we would want to take a more active role in this."

But the likelihood that Professor Wiley was kidnapped by terrorists "is considered pretty low right now, and unsupported by any kind of objective investigation."


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

A Practical Way to Make Power From Wasted Heat

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By KENNETH CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/technology/27HEAT.html

Scientists at M.I.T. and a small company in Salt Lake City are scheduled to announce today that they have developed technology that can efficiently and inexpensively transform heat pollution into electricity.

Although only a few crude samples have been built, Dr. Yan Kucherov, director of research and development at the Salt Lake City company, Eneco Inc., and Dr. Peter L. Hagelstein, professor of electrical engineering at M.I.T. and a technical consultant at Eneco, say that their devices improve the efficiency of the conversion by more than half.

"It's really first-generation, very primitive implementation," Dr. Hagelstein said. "Potentially, it's an enormous deal. This opens a door."

While the heat generated by car engines and power plants usually does nothing but warm the surrounding air, scientists have long dreamed of building so-called thermoelectric devices that can capture the wasted heat and convert a portion of it into electricity.

Such devices could significantly increase the electrical output of existing power plants or power the electrical systems of automobiles, replacing alternators and increasing gas mileage.

The Pentagon, which partly financed the new research, has been interested in using the devices for silent motors. Operating in reverse, thermoelectric devices can also be used as refrigerators.

Another advantage of thermoelectric devices is that they produce electricity without generating additional pollution.

Current thermoelectric technology converts only about 10 percent of the heat it absorbs into electricity, too inefficient a return for widespread use. The new devices, however, reach about 17 percent, and Dr. Hagelstein said future devices should be able to improve upon that significantly.

It is impossible to transform 100 percent of the heat into electricity. The laws of physics dictate a theoretical maximum of about 50 percent at the temperature a thermoelectric device operates at. Current commercial thermoelectric devices, at 10 percent efficiency, get only one-fifth the maximum. Using the new technology, future devices should be able to achieve more than half the maximum.

The researchers are presenting their findings at a meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston. Scientific papers describing the experiments have been submitted to the journals Physical Review Letters and Applied Physics Letters.

If borne out, the findings would be significant, said Dr. George S. Nolas, a professor of physics at the University of South Florida and an organizer of a symposium about thermoelectric devices at the Materials Research Society meeting. Dr. Nolas had not seen the Eneco paper but said the reported efficiency was high enough to find practical use and "would be pretty good news."

Eneco's thermoelectric device is a sandwich of three layers of semiconductor. One outer layer is heated; the other is kept at room temperature. The middle layer acts as an insulator to maintain the temperature difference.

The heat causes electrons to shoot out, some crossing the sandwich to generate an electrical current. The Eneco researchers added impurities - a process called doping - to the heated layer to increase the flow of electrons.

"The region near the hot part is heavily doped, so it boils off electrons," Dr. Hagelstein said. "We get more voltage and more current."

He added: "The underlying technology is really very simple. It should be a very practical, relatively cheap technology."

Leroy Becker, marketing director of Eneco, which is not associated with the Dutch utility Eneco Energie, said the company hoped to produce a prototype of a practical device within a year and sell it within two years.

Eneco, a privately held company, was created in 1991 to seek to license patents on cold fusion after the controversial claim of two University of Utah scientists that they could produce almost limitless amounts of energy in a room-temperature flask of water. Eneco also financed follow-up research on cold fusion, including work by Dr. Hagelstein. The claims for cold fusion were far overstated, and several years ago, Eneco shifted its focus to thermoelectric devices.

----

German EnBW to increase wind energy to 10 MW Dec

Reuters,
27/11/01
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13451/story.htm

FRANKFURT - German utility EnBW said yesterday it will spend 5.8 million marks ($2.62 million) in building three 900 kilowatt wind energy plants in Rhineland-Palatinate by December, increasing its total wind energy capacity to 10 megawatts.

Wind power forms parts of the firm's renewable energy projects, through which it expects to achieve a one million tonne reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2010, EnBW said in a statement.

----

British Energy, AMEC mull Scottish wind farms

Reuters:
27/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13450

LONDON - Nuclear power group British Energy and British engineering giant AMEC may invest in a 500 million pound ($708.6 million) wind project in the Outer Hebrides, northern Scotland, the companies said yesterday.

"It is very early days and it will be some time before we make a formal planning application," a spokesman for the group told Reuters.

He said British Energy was in talks with engineering group AMEC and various government bodies about proposals to build the world's largest wind project on, and offshore, the island of Lewis.

AMEC confirmed it was taking part in studies about the wind project, which would have output of about 600 megawatts, roughly the capacity of a smallish conventionally-fuelled power station.

Should the scheme go ahead it would significantly add to the amount of green energy produced in Britain.

The government is committed to increasing green energy generation to 10.4 percent by 2011 of total output from 2.8 percent currently as part of plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions, blamed by many scientists as contributing to global warming.

Other large scale wind projects have faltered in the past but recent government statements point to increasing support in pushing renewable energy developments.

Earlier this month Energy Minister Brian Wilson announced a feasiblity study into a 400-mile (640 km) undersea power cable from the Hebrides down the western coastline of Britain to link offshore wind farms and other renewable energy projects to the national electricity tranmission network.

Should such a cable be given the go-ahead it would significantly enhance the prospects for wind developments in the region.

Britain is shortly to publish its review of energy policy and drafts of the document suggest renewable power will move towards centre frame of government policy.

The government's Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) recently predicted that advances in wind technology will see the cost of wind power dropping significantly over the next 20 years, undercutting electricity from conventional power stations.

-------- energy

Waste Heat Conversion Is Improved

By Jay Lindsay
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 27, 2001; 6:41 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24190-2001Nov27?language=printer

BOSTON -- Heat emitted by everything from power plants to car exhausts could be efficiently and cheaply converted into power with new technology announced Tuesday by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist and a Utah company.

The devices, built by Yan Kucherov of Salt Lake City-based Eneco Inc. and MIT electrical engineering professor Peter Hagelstein, are as much as 70 percent more efficient than current technology that harnesses unused heat.

The science at work has been used for decades, but has been refined to produce more power from less heat.

And because it produces energy directly from heat, without moving parts, it could be used to develop quieter, low-cost power generators that are easy to maintain.

"It's potentially very important," Hagelstein said. "We've demonstrated basic effects that can be exploited by one and all."

Eneco's technology, called "solid state thermionics," combines thermoelectrics and thermionics, century-old technologies that convert heat into electricity, but which both have practical drawbacks.

Thermoelectrics joins two conductive surfaces together, one of which is heated to produce a low-wattage current that's too inefficient to be useful.

In thermionics, a vacuum separates the two surfaces. It requires temperatures as high as 1,100 degrees Celsius, or 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's far hotter than most waste heat, and limits its uses to nuclear powered converters, such as those in space probes, satellites and some military systems.

In Eneco's device, impurities are added to the heated surface to increase the flow of electrons to the cooler side, generating a stronger electrical current at lower heat. A semiconductor, rather than a vacuum, lies between the two surfaces and helps maintain the temperature difference between the heated and cooler sides.

At 250 to 300 degrees Celsius, Eneco's devices convert about 17 percent of the heat it absorbs into energy, compared to about 10 percent for current thermoelectric devices. Hagelstein said improvements could soon raise that efficiency to 20 to 25 percent.

The devices - about a millimeter wide and a half millimeter thick - could be used in a variety of situations, said Eneco president Lew Brown.

Power plants could use them to convert heat pouring from smokestacks into energy, leading to lower emissions and less fuel use. Or they could be fitted for a car's exhaust system, and use that energy to power the car's electronics, he said.

Eneco's testing has been independently confirmed by U.S. government labs, but the company is about two years from producing something for sale, said marketing director Leroy Becker.

Louis Smullen, an electrical engineering professor emeritus at MIT who had no connection to the research, said he envisioned the devices being used produce power to cool ever-smaller computer chips, so they don't overheat.

Its efficiency would need improvement for the technology to be practical, Smullen said, but said the technology appears promising.

"What they've demonstrated is good enough to be exciting in the field," he said. "I don't know how to forecast whether it will be part of everybody's home. I think it will be important."

The findings were presented on Tuesday at the meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston.

-------- genetics

Senate unlikely to act soon on cloning ban

USA Today
11/27/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-27-cloning-senate.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite a White House call for Congress to outlaw human cloning, Senate leaders don't plan to bring up the issue again until next year. While some anti-abortion Republicans want at least a temporary ban put into law, members in both parties said they don't expect action by the Senate before Congress adjourns this year. "A lot of senators want time to think through all the medical and scientific issues involved," said Doug Hattaway, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

Many lawmakers returning from the Thanksgiving recess denounced Sunday's announcement by a Massachusetts company that scientists had cloned a six-cell human embryo. But they also acknowledged swift action to halt the fast-moving research is unlikely.

"The Senate never acts immediately, very seldom," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. "And I don't think it should in this area because this has profound applications."

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., held out the threat of trying to delay other bills. But he acknowledged that the most he hoped to get was a temporary ban.

"We don't know who else in the country is working on the issue of human cloning. Let's stop this for a few months, let's pause for a short period of time," Brownback said Tuesday.

President Bush appealed to Congress to act.

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

The House, by a vote of 265-162, passed a ban on cloning in July, after attempts by some lawmakers to exempt research. The issue was raised in the Senate this month but a showdown was avoided after leaders promised extensive hearings next spring.

Advanced Cell Technology, based in Worcester, Mass., said it hopes to develop genetically compatible replacement cells for patients with a range of illnesses - but not human clones.

The issue delves into the thorny debate of stem cells, which are taken from embryos and can grow into various kinds of tissue. Supporters argue that embryos used in stem cell research - even cloned ones - are not yet humans. Opponents disagree.

President Bush tackled the issue in August by issuing a policy that restricts federally financed stem cell research to the 64 stem cell lines administration officials said already exist. Those stem cell lines were from embryos created by in vitro fertilization. Cloned embryos would not qualify under the Bush policy.

Proponents of cloning have argued that by developing stem cells from a patient, there is less likelihood of rejection from a body's immune system. They add that Congress can ban human cloning without limiting research.

"It really is a horrendous thing to stop this research," said Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., the author of an unsuccessful House bill that would have permitted cloning for research. "These people are treating this issue the way they treated Copernicus and Galileo."

Rep. Peter Deutsch of Florida, the Democratic sponsor with Greenwood, added, "Research ... is a critical component for cures."

Critics argue that even a cloned embryo is human.

"To manufacture a human being is a terrible human rights abuse," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. "Mad scientists are still mad scientists no matter how white their lab coats are and how many bioethicists they hire to justify their actions."

The Vatican also commented, issuing a statement that said, "The beginning of human life cannot be fixed by convention at a certain stage of embryonic development; it takes place, in reality, already at the first instant of the embryo itself."

Company researchers say they cloned the embryo by starting with a donated female egg cell. They removed its nucleus and replaced it with a cumulus cell, complete with its genetic DNA. Cumulus cells normally help nurture eggs as they develop.

In a separate experiment, the researchers say they were able to develop a more advanced embryo, known as a blastocyst, in a process known as parthenogenesis. They bathed an egg cell with chemicals that changed its concentration of charged particles, reprogramming it to form an embryo.

The clones did not live past the six-cell stage. A normal embryo would have to grow several hundred cells before it created stem cells

---

A Breakthrough on Cloning? Perhaps, or Perhaps Not Yet

New York Times
November 27, 2001
By GINA KOLATA with ANDREW POLLACk
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/health/27EMBR.html

When Advanced Cell Technology, a small biotechnology company in Worcester, Mass., announced on Sunday that it had taken the first steps in producing human embryos through cloning, it could not report lasting success; all the embryos it created had died.

It could not even report that it had used groundbreaking techniques; its methods had already been used in animals.

Some scientists even suggested that what the company was doing was not cloning at all.

But if there is a future in human cloning, either for reproductive purposes or to create cell lines for use in treating diseases, people may one day say it started in Worcester.

Despite the storm of protest that the company's announcement has provoked, that would be just fine with Advanced Cell Technology. Its president, Dr. Michael D. West, says the company feels pressure to keep the world informed about what it is doing in so controversial a field. But he concedes that the desire to be the first to claim to have created a human embryo by cloning was a factor in the company's decision to publish its results so far.

Whatever the scientific significance of Dr. West's announcement, its political significance was profound. President Bush denounced the work as immoral, and there were loud calls for Congress to outlaw it.

Shadowing the raging dispute on whether such work should be outlawed is a major scientific question: Is the human-cloning attempt a milestone or a forgettable blunder? The answer, cloning experts say, is that it is impossible to know.

Work with animals has shown that cloning is something of an art. There are no rules or formulas. Success, when it comes, can be unpredictable and nearly inexplicable. It could be that human cloning is extraordinarily difficult and that it will take years and thousands of attempts to make it work. Or it could be that a simple change in the laboratory procedure will turn failure into success. That has been the experience of scientists who work at cloning animals.

For Advanced Cell Technology, these uncertainties loom large. The company is betting that it can perfect human cloning, creating embryos not for reproductive purposes but as a source of stem cells. Human embryonic stem cells could, in theory, grow into any of the body's tissues and organs, and the company wants to provide them as replacement cells to patients suffering from any of a wide variety of diseases.

The small company has a track record of achievement in the world of cloning animals; some of the leading cloning researchers are on its payroll.

But it also has a track record of astute dealings with the news media. In interviews, Dr. West acknowledged that scientists for the company had published their results in a little-known online publication - E- biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine - because E-biomed had agreed to arrange for distribution to coincide with articles in Scientific American and U.S. News and World Report.

Like many other small biotechnology concerns, privately held Advanced Cell Technology attracts investors with promise, not profits. And though Dr. West said the company had just completed a round of fund-raising, he noted that it would have continuing needs for money to finance its work.

"We're going to require hundreds of millions in investments," he said, "before we become profitable."

In the work reported on Sunday, the company's scientists, led by Dr. Jose Cibelli, used a standard technique that involves taking the genetic material out of an unfertilized egg and inserting in its place the DNA of an adult cell. In theory, the egg then uses the genes from the adult cell to direct its development, turning into an embryo that is an exact genetic copy of the donor of the adult cell.

The company tried to clone with two types of adult cells: skin cells and cumulus cells, which are cells that cling to human eggs. The researchers added skin cells to 11 eggs; none divided even once. They added cumulus cells to eight eggs; three divided once or twice, the others not at all.

Stem cells appear only after an embryo grows for about five days and, more important, forms a blastocyst, a sphere of cells with a ball of stem cells inside it. The Advanced Cell Technology embryos that were created by cloning were not even close to that developmental stage.

Dr. Ronald M. Green, a Dartmouth professor who heads the company's ethics board, says he prefers not even referring to the cells as embryos. He would like to call them "cleaving eggs," he said.

In fact, scientists say, eggs can divide a few times without making any use of their genes, so the fact that a few eggs divided a few times does not at all mean that the goal of the experiment - to add a new set of functioning genes to an egg - was even close.

But cloning failures can suddenly turn to successes, as those who have cloned other species attest.

That was the experience of Dr. Randall Prather, a cloning expert at the University of Missouri, in years of efforts to clone pigs. Over and over again, Dr. Prather would start the cloning process, and then the cells, like those in the Advanced Cell Technology study, would simply die.

Now he and others can clone pigs, but he does not know which changes in his laboratory procedures made the difference. All he can say, Dr. Prather remarked, is, "Yeah, now it works."

Cloning also depends on scientists' having a delicate touch, experts said.

One scientist now with Advanced Cell Technology, Dr. Tony Perry, who worked on mouse cloning experiments at the University of Hawaii, said it took endless hours of practice to do the careful manipulations of microscopic cells involved in cloning. Some people develop a feel for the work, while others, no matter how hard they try, are never very good.

"It requires a kind of eye-hand coordination" and constant practice, Dr. Perry said, recalling months of practice, seven days a week, 10 hours a day. "If you lapse in your practice for two weeks," he said, "you don't return to point zero, but you're a little bit rusty."

There are also puzzling and unpredictable differences between species. Dr. Ryuzo Yanagimachi, who cloned the mice with Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, also now with Advanced Cell Technology, said about 2 to 3 percent of efforts to clone cattle resulted in the birth of a live animal. Most of the rest die very early: only about 20 percent of the embryo clones make it to the blastocyst stage.

With mice, Dr. Yanagimachi said, about 50 to 60 percent of the embryo clones make it to the blastocyst stage. But even more die afterward. In the end, he said, the same percentage of mouse cloning attempts succeed as cattle cloning attempts.

Given that the human cloning work ended in failure, some, like Dr. Steen Willadsen, a cloning pioneer in Windermere, Fla., have asked why Advanced Cell Technology even bothered to publish its results, orchestrating at the same time a media blitz.

In theory, Dr. Willadsen said, the publication will offer other researchers clues about "things not to do." But, he added, the crucial unknown detail that doomed the attempt may not be so obvious, and may not even appear in the paper. "There might be some trivial thing that is standing in their way," he said.

"All one can say," Dr. Willadsen added, "is it didn't work this time."

-------- health

U.S. Details Response to Smallpox
Cities Could Be Quarantined and Public Events Banned

By Justin Gillis and Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 27, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19297-2001Nov26?language=printer

If bioterrorists attack the United States with smallpox virus, health authorities could impose measures as drastic as banning public events, halting regional transport and placing entire cities under quarantine, according to a draft federal plan released yesterday.

The plan, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, calls for stepped-up awareness by doctors, health officials and the public to be able to detect any outbreak of smallpox, a disease officially eradicated from the planet 21 years ago -- and to be able to respond quickly enough to stop it before a pandemic can sweep the nation.

Prompted by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the anthrax scare that followed, the plan is the federal government's most detailed description since 1972 of how authorities might respond to an outbreak of smallpox. Overall, the plan drew praise from several experts yesterday.

However, one aspect of the plan drew immediate criticism from some state health officers. The CDC has vaccinated 80 to 100 of its employees against smallpox so they can respond to an attack, but the draft plan rules out any broader campaign to vaccinate state workers, who might be the first to respond to an outbreak.

In making that judgment, the CDC noted that vaccine supplies are limited. It said the federal government could rush vaccines to a state and inoculate state employees as soon as an outbreak is confirmed. Vaccination is effective even after exposure to the smallpox virus, if given within a few days.

"The point is that this vaccine works once exposed, so those people who would go out and respond to a confirmed case would in fact be vaccinated essentially as they're going out the door," said Harold Margolis, senior adviser for smallpox preparedness at the CDC. "At that point, they are protected."

But several state health commissioners said yesterday the plan does not take into account the worst-case scenario: simultaneous smallpox attacks in multiple cities, overwhelming the CDC. In such an event, they said, unvaccinated state nurses and state police would be on the front lines trying to contain the epidemic.

"You need to go in and talk to the person who has smallpox" to identify contacts, said Georges C. Benjamin, Maryland's health secretary, who is president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. "That process starts at 3 o'clock in the morning. That process doesn't start 24 to 48 hours later, when the team gets there from Atlanta [where the CDC is located]."

In an attack on multiple cities, "CDC in their role as the cavalry will simply not be able to go to all those places," said Leslie M. Beitsch, Oklahoma's health commissioner and chairman of a state health officers' association task force on bioterrorism. "If we can't have our first responders protected, then we risk chaos and panic."

The state health officers are expected to press the CDC to reconsider its decision, if not now then in the next few months, as more smallpox vaccine becomes available. At the moment, supplies are limited to an aging national stockpile of about 15 million doses in Pennsylvania. The government has asked companies to re-launch production of the smallpox vaccine, aiming to build a stockpile of 300 million doses in a year.

Although the CDC plan would permit large-scale quarantine, that would be a last resort, employed only if other control measures were failing. The heart of the plan is the classic "ring vaccination" strategy used to eradicate smallpox a generation ago.

That strategy depends on quickly spotting a case of smallpox, isolating the initial patients, and identifying and vaccinating others who might have caught the virus from them. Public health workers would continue to identify possibly infected people by considering ever-larger rings of people centered around the earliest cases.

"The main thing you want to do is try to get as much vaccine used in the place where it's going to do the most good -- that is, around the contact of a case and around the families of those contacts, so if they do come down with a disease, there's a barrier around them," said Donald A. Henderson, who led the global campaign that eradicated smallpox and who is now director of health preparedness at the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Local officials would try to locate people thought to have been exposed on a train or at a sports stadium, Henderson said. Should locating them prove impossible, he said, health officials would be forced to consider a broader vaccination program, such as inoculating a large group -- even a whole city.

If early control efforts fail or an initial outbreak is sufficiently large, still more aggressive measures might be necessary, the plan says. In the most extreme case, federal and state authority would be used to erect a "cordon sanitaire" -- a sanitary ring -- around a city or other large area. Control of a big outbreak "may require suspension of large public gatherings, closing of public places, restriction of travel" and other measures, according to the plan.

The last smallpox case in the United States occurred in 1949, and the last naturally occurring case in the world occurred in Somalia in 1977. The eradication of the disease, which the World Health Organization declared in 1980, is considered to be one of medicine's greatest achievements.

But as a result of the disease's eradication, vaccination has stopped. No one under 30 is immune to the disease, and older people who were vaccinated as children are believed to have only limited immunity.

Although a CDC lab in Atlanta and a Russian lab in Siberia are the only official repositories of the virus, many experts fear a handful of countries, such as Iraq and North Korea, may have secret stashes that could wind up in terrorists' hands.

A single case of smallpox would be an international health emergency of the highest order. The CDC plan makes clear that if an attack occurred in the United States, avoiding mass panic would be a challenge.

"In the event of a bioterrorism event involving smallpox, the level of threat perceived by the public -- whether real or imagined -- may be extreme," the guidelines warn. "In these circumstances, state and local health officials should be prepared for a high level of demand for vaccine by the public."

-------- homelessness

California homeless

USA Today
01/11/27
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

San Jose - Homeless people who seek shelter at National Guard armories this winter will be required to pose for a photo card before getting a place to sleep. The Guard has asked the Emergency Housing Consortium, which runs the cold weather shelter at the Sunnyvale and Gilroy armories, to supply clients with the cards as a security precaution.

-------- human rights

Religious freedom, a casualty of war?

Christopher H. Smith
November 27, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011127-88203488.htm

Over the agonizing weeks since September 11, I have observed a trend in U.S. foreign policy that is of great concern: a willingness to allow religious freedom and other human rights to suffer in order to combat terrorism abroad. As the United States assembled an international coalition to fight worldwide terrorism, perennial human rights violators such as Saudi Arabia and heretofore little known Uzbekistan have jumped on board. When faced with the proposition of either "being with us or against us," most countries have chosen the former. Yet, the price for casting our net so broadly would appear to be silence on critical human rights issues.

President Bush has consistently stated that Osama bin Laden and his thugs have "hijacked" the peaceful teachings of Islam, using it as a guise to legitimize their monstrous and perfidious acts. Mr. Bush has clearly drawn a distinction between religious fervor and militant fanatics bent on killing innocent civilians under the pretext of Islamic piety. Other top administration officials have echoed similar sentiments.

However, when the rubber really meets the road, there is a disconnect between the core American value of steadfastly promoting religious freedom and the immediate goal of creating the appearance of a global mandate. Make no mistake, I clearly support the administration's efforts to act multilaterally and employ our allies in what will be a long struggle. However, the desire to create this global mandate, a mandate that exists with or without the involvement of pariah states, has in effect served as blinders to critical American foreign-policy goals. The rhetoric being espoused by the administration, while sounding right, is lacking in actual implementation.

A prime example of this is the State Department's Annual Report on International Religious Freedom. After being delayed for almost a month, when the report was finally released, the State Department again declined to name Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam as "Countries of Particular Concern," despite their systematic abuse of religious freedom, which is described in the report itself. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 empowers the president to utilize an array of sanctions when a country has "engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom." Governments named in this year's report, covering the period of September 2000 to September 2001, include the People's Republic of China, Burma, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan and the Taliban ruling in Afghanistan.

Once again, however, several notorious violators of this universally recognized human right were excluded from the list. Apparently unbeknownst to policy-makers, promoting religious freedom can achieve the goal of concretely communicating the administration's intention to make war against terror and not Islam. For example, the report clearly cites Uzbekistan's "abuses against many devout Muslims for their religious beliefs." Over the past three years, thousands of nonviolent Muslims have been imprisoned for merely worshiping at unapproved mosques. As Human Rights Watch adroitly stated, "By not designating Uzbekistan a 'Country of Particular Concern,' the administration missed an easy opportunity to show that the war on terrorism cannot be a campaign against Islam."

While the State Department report, mandated by Congress, does highlight other specific violations, I can think of no other reason for this abandonment of principles, other than for fear of offending our new "partners" in this war against terror. The effects of these short-term decisions are likely to reap negative long-term consequences, potentially undermining our credibility, something that cannot be quickly repaired. Furthermore, my concern is that emerging democracies, and outright dictatorships, will view this as a signal of retreat from these universally recognized and longstanding principles, such as freedom of religion.

It is not too late for the administration to take positive steps and name additional states as "Countries of Particular Concern" - it can do so at any time. By abdicating our responsibility to monitor and support religious freedom, we risk losing much more than the war against terrorism - our future ability to effectively and legitimately promote religious freedom and other human rights.

From my experience of two decades of congressional service and involvement in international affairs, I believe religious freedom, as Pope John Paul II stated, to be the "first freedom." Yet, if we truly believe in this human right, we should not recede but engage our new friends on this issue. While Mr. Bush, as well as presidents before him in times of crisis, called for America to speak with one voice, it is my fear that through our inaction we are losing our voice all together.

Rep. Christopher H. Smith is co-chairman of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and vice chairman of the International Relations Committee.

-------- activists

BTL Q&A: Starhawk Discusses 9/11 Impact on Global Social Justice Movement

From: "Scott Harris" <sharris@snet.net>
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 01:16:26 -0500

BETWEEN THE LINES
Q&A from the nationally syndicated radio newsmagazine "Between The Lines" http://www.btlonline.org

A weekly column featuring progressive viewpoints on national and international issues under-reported in major media
For release Nov. 26, 2001

Have the Sept. 11th Attacks Derailed the Global Social Justice Movement? http://www.wpkn.org/wpkn/news/starhawk113001.ram

From Ottawa, the site of the November World Bank/International Monetary Fund summit, author and spiritual activist Starhawk assesses the impact of the 9/11 attacks on activists organizing opposition to corporate-led globalization.

Plans for a massive demonstration against the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund scheduled to coincide with the financial institution's annual meeting Sept. 30 in Washington D.C. were called off when the summit itself was canceled in the wake of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks. The growing global social justice movement had expected 50,000 to 100,000 activists to participate in a variety of actions calling attention to economic policies that protesters say exacerbate poverty around the world and enrich wealthy corporations.

After canceling their Washington gathering, the World Bank and IMF rescheduled their summit to meet in Ottawa Nov. 17th and 18th. With short notice, activists from Canada and around the hemisphere pulled together a number of demonstrations to greet delegates of the financial institution. But police reacted to the several thousand protesters that came to Ottawa with what many describe as excessive force. Rubber bullets, pepper spray and water cannons were fired at demonstrators, with many suffering bites from police dogs used for crowd control. In the end some 50 activists were arrested, with only a few held on serious charges.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with author and spiritual activist Starhawk. Starhawk, who led non-violence trainings at the Ottawa actions, and was briefly detained with dozens of others at the U.S.-Canadian border, she says, due to her activism. She reports from Ottawa on how the Sept. 11th terror attacks have affected the organizing and agenda of the global social justice movement.

Starhawk: Gandhi did say that first they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you, then you win. By that token, we should be close to winning. I think we're having a tremendous effect and I think the level of the attacks and the repression comes because we're really hitting at the heart of the beast. We're talking about the basic economic system of global corporate capitalism that is at the core of all of these issues that so many of us are deeply concerned about and I think that's hitting them where it hurts. They are desperately and sometimes quite ruthlessly trying to defend it. But each time they do, in one sense, they lose a certain amount of legitimacy. If they are saying that these institutions represent democracy all over the world, they are attacking peaceful protesters with police dogs, there's a disconnect and that piles up. Also what we saw in the meetings here -- the IMF and the World Bank -- is that their entire agenda now has been influenced by the protests. They're not actually doing anything, but at least at this point, they realize they have to give lip service to the idea of debt reduction; they were talking about "Oh, yes, we have to work together, rich and poor countries, we have to reduce the debt." We'll see if they'll really do any of that. But the fact that they're doing any of that lip service basically means that there are other issues that they are not getting to and there are other agendas they are not able to push forward.

Between The Lines: How do you think the Sept. 11 terror attacks have changed the climate here in the United States and around the world for the social justice movement? I'm certain it has provided new challenges to the movement. Many people are diverting their attention to protesting the pursuit of war against terrorism and are looking for peaceful solutions to terrorism rather than more violence.

Where are the events of Sept. 11 taking the global social justice movement, in your opinion?

Starhawk: I think Sept. 11 has made our work much more challenging ecause first of all, it's allowed the right wing to jump-start a lot of their agenda. I think some of that is wearing off now and I think that there are things we are going to really prevent them from pushing through. But it definitely gave them a good, little leap ahead on a lot of different things. It definitely intensified the climate of repression and it made it a lot harder to get public attention. I think, though, that if we respond to these challenges creatively, it's also opened up some tremendous opportunities.

Yes, a lot of people are focusing on the war, but I don't see the war as a separate issue to these global justice issues, the whole system of global injustice that creates a climate in which terrorism can flourish. Despair breeds terrorism. Despair also breeds the kinds of conditions that breed fundamentalism. When you have the kind of global culture of McDonald's and a sort of soul-less shopping mall culture that is being imposed over the entire world that disrupts traditions and traditional cultures and completely demoralizes whole cultures, those are the conditions that breed fundamentalism and people start to go looking for something else and generally the first answer (they find) is something rigid and clear and authoritarian and cleancut. So we've got to look at these larger global issues if we really want to deal with the root cause of the war. And we've got to look at the way that war and weaponry and American firepower is the ultimate backing for this global system that more and more countries don't want. In some ways, this war in Afghanistan is the way that the U.S. can show every other underdeveloped country in the world that when it comes right down to it, "we can blow you into dust."

Between The Lines: We are living in some very scary times. The right-wing is ascendant after the worst attacks on U.S. soil in our history killing 5,000 people in New York City and Washington. There's a kind of a tribalism, a nationalism here that has an ugly side to it. In the United States there is a visceral, negative reaction to those calling for peaceful, solutions to violence. Because the global social justice movement, or large elements of it, have cast their lot with those seeking peaceful solutions, could this, in your view undermine the potential for building a broad, powerful coalition of groups and individuals fighting for social justice in the future?

Starhawk: I don't think that it will in the long run. Again, if we're creative, if we can get out of our leftist little boxes, and language and actually talk in a language that people can understand.

The Sept. 11 attacks were horrific. They left us in a state of shock and grief and that can be a very powerful open state. I think that there is a way that the right wing and the media try to construct this story for us so that now everybody is behind Bush and everybody is a flag-waving patriot. It misses the real subtleties and nuances of what most people are actually feeling. I think most people are not actually feeling rage: "Let's go get the Afghans." I think most people are feeling shocked, scared and confused. I think if we can start to actually speak to people about their real concerns, we have a chance to reach people in ways that maybe we haven't had before. But it requires us to not just do the things we've always done before, say the things we've always said before.

Starhawk's books include "The Twelve Wild Swans" and "The Spiral Dance." Visit her Web site at http://www.starhawk.org See related links and listen to an excerpt of this interview in a RealAudio segment or in MP3 on our Web site at: <a REF="http://www.wpkn.org/wpkn/news/btl113001.html">www.btlonline.org</a> for the week ending 11/30/01.

Scott Harris is WPKN Radio's public affairs director and executive producer of Between The Lines. This interview excerpt was featured on the award-winning, syndicated weekly radio newsmagazine, Between The Lines, for the week ending Nov. 30, 2001.

--------

World Economic Forum (WEF)
Basic Background Information
Action: Jan31-Feb4 NYC

Date: 27 Nov 2001
From: IMFWB-international-announce@yahoogroups.com

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an exclusive, un-elected, invite-only organization.

A 'think tank' and a driving force behind the global economy.

Incorporated since 1971 as a foundation, the WEF claims to be "independent, impartial and not-for-profit, tied to no political, partisan or national interests."

It has a consultative status with the United Nations.

Members include: 1000 CEOs from the worlds top (sic) multi-national corporations. Academics, trade-ministers, heads of state, and elite media also attend as guests.

According to the WEF their meeting is considered the global summit that defines the political, economic and business agenda for the year.

The WEF's summits allow the richest and most powerful corporations in the world to mingle with trade representatives from nations, and with each other, to make business deals and determine global political and economic policies.

According to the WEF, it initiated the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Its 1982 annual meeting in Davos brought together cabinet members of major countries with heads of international organizations, such as the World Bank, IMF, and GATT. This special Informal Gathering of Trade Ministers from 17 countries organized the launch of the Uruguay Round, which is where the WTO was founded.

This is just one significant example of how the WEF, driven by its corporate agenda, shapes the political, economic and social landscape.

The World Economic Forum is an extremely powerful and unaccountable body who are making major decisions about what we will read in the media, what food we will eat, what we will study in school, where, when and in what conditions we will work; almost every aspect of our everyday life.

The planned actions against the WEF from Jan 31 - Feb 4 in NYC are the continuation of communicating our struggles, learning to co-operate, and working towards an alternative to the violent world order that depends on repressive institutions like the School of the Americas (SOA) and the Prison Industrial Complex to enforces exploitation and inequality throughout the hemisphere.

Pictures of the Direct Action Contingent at Protest against the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Cancun, Mexico in February 2001: http://chiapas.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=361 http://chiapas.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=357

S29 Zapatista Block www.geocities.com/zapatistablock

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Big Greenaction Website Updates and Action Alerts

Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001
From: "Bradley Angel" <bradley@greenaction.org>

Hello friend of Greenaction,

Greenaction continues working day and night in the struggle for healthy communities and environmental justice. We have updated our website with news and action alerts about our campaigns:

- Green Energy and Environmental Justice: Read the latest about campaigns for green energy, including the growing campaign against the polluting PG&E Hunters Point power plant in San Francisco's Bayview Hunters Point and a propsed plant in downtown San Jose. Read about the new study documenting how minority communities are being targeted and disproportionately impacted by new polluting power plants.

- Stop dumping on South Phoenix, Arizona: Read about the campaign against more dangerous waste facilities proposed in this neighborhood already overburdened with dirty industries - and the upcoming public hearing November 28.

- Central California Environmental Justice Network formed! Read about the founding conference, including two Fresno Bee stories. Read about the role youth and Greenaction played in the founding conference.

- Campaign against IES incinerators starting to win! Read the latest, including the full page story in the Bay Guardian and a report about the recent protest.

- ATTEND OUR END OF THE YEAR PARTY, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 5-7 P.M. AT OUR OFFICE, 1540 MARKET STREET, SUITE 325, SAN FRANCISCO

- PLEASE SUPPORT GREENACTION WITH DONATIONS! WE NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE OUR IMPORTANT WORK!

-

Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice http://www.greenaction.org phone (415) 252-0822 fax (415) 252-0823 NOTE OUR NEW ADDRESS! 1540 Market Street, Suite 325 San Francisco, CA 94102


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