NUCLEAR
Atomic Archive
Chronology of Nuclear Standoff
Report on Consequences of Nuclear Power Plant Accidents
China Has a Muted Response to Bush Move on Missile Pact
India Tests Improved Missile
Missile Defense Rocket Destroyed
Missile Defense Glance
Nine Romanian workers exposed to high radiation
Take This, Terrorist Boogeyman
Transcript: Bush Withdraws From ABM Treaty
Russia regrets plan to scrap missile treaty
Text of Putin's ABM Statement
Powell Doubts New Nuclear Arms Race
ABM Withdrawal A Turning Point In Arms Control
Bush Pulls Out of ABM Treaty: Aides Recount Road to Deadlock
ABM Treaty Glance
Today in Congress
Coast Guard to Decide on Cove Point Project Safety Next Year
NEVADA: NUCLEAR WASTE SITE REQUEST
Nuke industry presses Bush to move on Yucca plan
MILITARY
Report: bin Laden surrounded in Tora Bora
Marines Inspect Kandahar Airport
Troops of U.S. and Britain Set Up Camp in Kandahar
Fewer Bombs Dropped on Afghanistan
Heavy Bombing Resumes After Second Cease-Fire Breakdown
Weekly notes - Somalia
Army Working on Weapons-Grade Anthrax
U.S. Recently Produced Anthrax in a Highly Lethal Powder Form
CDC Gets Pentagon's Anthrax Vaccine
Military quickly going through inventory of bombs
Royal Air Force Push for Test of New Smart Bombs in Labrador
Czech resolve
Terrorism Fight Hurts Drug War
Gunmen Storm India's Parliament
Deadly Shootout at Indian Parliament
Israel Cuts Off Contact With Arafat
China's Capital Orders TV Crackdown
New Tack on Vieques
House Boosts Spy Funds
Cuban Spy Ringleader Gets Life
Concrete-Piercing Bombs Hammer Caves
POLICE / PRISONERS
Bush Invokes Executive Privilege
Fragile Freedoms
Police powers reduced
F.B.I. Faulted in Nuclear Secrets Investigation
FISH POACHERS NABBED BY SATELLITE DATA
Text of Osama Bin Laden Tape
2 leaders of Jewish group arrested in bombing plot
Indonesia to Begin War on Terror
ENERGY AND OTHER
Enron Wind set for Irish order, sees big profits
Coalition Calls for Reforms in Hydropower Licensing
ANTI-TERRORISM ASSESSMENTS CRAFTED FOR POWER PLANTS
LOUD NOISES COULD GIVE WHALES THE BENDS
CARBON CAPTURE COULD BENEFIT AIR, OCEANS
Survey: Hunger, homelessness increase
ACTIVISTS
Some good news on nuclear weapons
Argentines protest new fiscal measures
Urfer to serve 5 months
-------- NUCLEAR
Atomic Archive
AtomicArchives.com
http://www.atomicarchive.com/main.shtml
This site explores the complex history surrounding the invention of the atomic bomb - a crucial turning point for all mankind. AJ Software & Multimedia presents this site as an online companion to its CD-ROM, Atomic Archive.
Follow a timeline that takes you down the path of our nuclear past, from the 1920s to the present. Read biographies of A-bomb father Robert Oppenheimer and other key scientists of the nuclear age. See the Trinity Test through Enrico Fermi's eye as you read his first hand account of that history making event. Examine maps of the damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and summaries of arms-control treaties. You'll also find a gallery of exclusive photographs and animations of nuclear physics.
1938 December- Enrico Fermi receives the Nobel prize for the discovery of transuranic elements (actually fission of uranium) and departs for the "new world" December 22, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann (later Lise Meiter and Frisch) conclude that the identification of barium implies that the uranium nucleus has been fissioned by neutrons.
1942 December 2- First nuclear chain reaction at Chicago's Stagg Field by Enrico Fermi. Learn more...
1946 December 31- Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) takes over nuclear weapons program from the U.S. Army.
1979 December 26- U.S.S.R. invades Afghanistan; SALT II Treaty removed from consideration by the Senate. Learn more...
1986 December- First 10 MXs/Peacekeeper ICBMs become operational.
1987 December 8- President Reagan and Premier Gorbachev sign the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Learn more... http://www.atomicarchive.com/ACTreaty.shtml
-------
Chronology of Nuclear Standoff
December 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuke-History-Chronology.html?searchpv=aponline
A chronology of events in the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union:
December 2001: President Bush alerts congressional leaders that he will withdraw from the 1972 ABM Treaty.
November 2001: During a U.S. summit, Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasize their shared commitment to nuclear arms reductions, but fail to reach a compromise on Bush's plans for a national missile defense, which would violate the 1972 ABM Treaty. Putin vows that the issue would not harm relations between the two nations as it had in the past.
October 2001: The Pentagon announces it has put off several missile defense tests scheduled for the fall to avoid being accused of violating the ABM Treaty. Bush and Putin also hold separate talks following the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders, in preparation for their November summit.
August 2001 - September 2001: Several Bush administration Cabinet members and officials meet intermittently with their Russian counterparts but have little success in breaking down Russian opposition to the notion of scrapping the ABM Treaty.
July 2001: Bush and Putin agree to tie U.S. plans for building a missile defense shield to talks on reducing both nations' nuclear stockpiles.
May 2001: Bush declares, ``We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today's world.''
2000: President Clinton decides not to authorize work to begin on deploying national missile defense.
1997: Members of a congressionally chartered panel chaired by Donald Rumsfeld are named to examine missile threats to the United States.
1993: President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign START II treaty.
1991: Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sign the START I Treaty. Soviet Union disbands.
1989: Berlin Wall falls. Soviet Union cuts conventional forces in Europe.
1987: President Reagan and Gorbachev sign the INF Treaty, which bans ground-launched, medium-range nuclear missiles.
1986: An agreement to drastically reduce strategic nuclear arms collapses at the Reykjavik summit because of Soviet opposition to American Strategic Defense Initiative development.
1983: Reagan announces during a nationally televised speech that the United States will embark on an extensive research and development program to examine the feasibility of a missile defense program.
1982: Soviets and United States begin Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START).
1979: In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter withdraws the SALT II treaty from Senate consideration.
1972: President Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I agreement, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
1968: President Johnson says the United States and Soviet Union will discuss limits on strategic nuclear arsenals and ballistic missile defenses. Talks are canceled when Moscow invades Czechoslovakia in August.
1962: Cuban missile crisis.
1961: Berlin Wall built. Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba fails.
1957: Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first earth-orbiting satellite.
1950s: Cold War accelerates.
1949: The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb.
1945: The United States drops atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to end World War II.
Sources: Associated Press reports, Center for Defense Information and Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
-------- accidents
Greenpeace Report on Consequences of Nuclear Power Plant Accidents
From: donmoniak@earthlink.net
11/15/01
http://www.bredl.org/press/2001/riskybusiness.htm
NUCLEAR REACTORS THREAT TO HOMELAND SECURITY GOVERNMENT DOWNPLAYS THE RISK
This is based on Greenpeace report released today and announced in news release at:
http://WWW.GREENPEACEUSA.ORG/media/press_releases/01_11_15text.htm
For download of Greenpeace report authored by Jim Riccio, go to:
http://WWW.GREENPEACEUSA.ORG/nuclear/
If you would like a copy of the news release and/or the report sent to you electronically I can do that upon request.
The report is in the following sections:
Risky Business: The Probability and Consequences of a Nuclear Accident (124 KB)
Executive Summary http://WWW.GREENPEACEUSA.ORG/nuclear/riskybusiness_summarytext.htm
Appendices to the Report:
Maps: (75-100 kb)
Appendix A: United States Nuclear Reactor Locations, Ownership and Licensing (22 kb)
Appendix B: Consequences of a Nuclear Accident for US Nuclear Power Plants (17 kb)
-------- china
China Has a Muted Response to Bush Move on Missile Pact
New York Times
December 13, 2001
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/international/13CND-CHIN.html?searchpv=nytToday
BEIJING, Dec. 13 - Using muted language, China registered its displeasure today with the Bush administration's announcement that it is withdrawing from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty.
"We have taken note of the reports and express our concern over them," said Zhang Qiyue, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, at a regularly scheduled news briefing today. "It is of crucial importance to maintain the international disarmament and arms control efforts."
China has been staunchly opposed the United States withdrawal ever since the Bush administration first floated the idea this year.
The opposition stems in part from the fact that withdrawal from the ABM treaty is seen here as a prelude to the Bush administration's plan to create a global missile defense system to intercept incoming bombs - a system that China fears would include Taiwan. China considers the island to be part of its rightful territory.
"China opposes the missile defense system," Ms. Zhang said. "We are worried about the negative impact of the U.S. move and hope that the U.S. will listen to the opinions of other countries, exercising prudence on the question of missile defense."
Some analysts said today's relatively mild language reflected less a softening of China's conviction than a sense of caution and a realistic assessment of what could be accomplished by a war of words at this time.
"Chinese foreign policy is getting more mature, so that it adopts a policy that can be supported by its power, rather than saying something it can not back up," Yan Xuetong, a foreign policy expert at Qinghua University, said. "China knows it is beyond its capacity to prevent the United States from withdrawing from the treaty because the gap in strength is just so huge. Loud words won't solve this problem."
He and others pointed out that the Chinese government had expected the move for many months. Also, in the last six months, China's leaders have endeavored to improve relations with both Washington and with Moscow. They are not likely to speak out until President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia makes his position clear.
Indeed, reports tonight in the state news media were matter-of-fact, describing how the events of Sept. 11 had given American officials a new sense of urgency in developing its military's defensive abilities. But they also stressed that a broad coalition of governments nonetheless opposed the move.
"The Bush administration's accelerated development of the missile defense system and its plan to abandon the Antiballistic Treaty have encountered opposition and resistance from Russia, China and America's European allies," said the report carried by the New China News Agency, the government wire service.
"International opinion generally believes that this step by the United States will wreck global strategic stability and may lead to a new arms race."
Experts both in and out of the government here said that the United States withdrawal from the treaty could well heighten China's longstanding suspicion of foreigners just at a time when it has started to engage with the world.
China joined the World Trade Organization just this week, vowing to obey international standards and rules. It has supported the American-led war on terrorism.
"This sets up a model that you can never trust others because treaties can be abolished at any time," Professor Yan said. "It sends the message that you should expect less from international cooperation and should rely more on your own military capacity."
He said that China would respond by redoubling its effort to modernize its military, a process that has been going on for the past year. Although China has nuclear weapons, its arsenal is tiny and its has done far less testing to date than the United States or Russia.
So it was not surprising that China today called for renewed arms talks. "We maintain that the various sides should hold strategic dialogue to seek ways to maintain the global strategic balance without harming the international disarmament and arms control efforts," Ms. Zhang said.
-------- india / pakistan
India Tests Improved Missile
WORLD In Brief
Thursday, December 13, 2001; Page A32
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35108-2001Dec12?language=printer
NEW DELHI -- India tested an improved version of its nuclear-capable, surface-to-surface Prithvi missile from a remote testing center off the east coast, the Defense Ministry said. The medium-range missile was fired over the Bay of Bengal from India's testing range at Chandipur, 750 miles southeast of New Delhi.
The five-ton missile, whose name means "earth" in Hindi, has a range of up to 155 miles, said P.K. Bandopadhyayaa, a ministry spokesman. It can be fitted with a nuclear warhead.
-------- missile defense
Missile Defense Rocket Destroyed
The Associated Press
Thursday, December 13, 2001; 7:15 PM
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- A $10 million prototype booster rocket for the missile defense system veered off course during a test Thursday and had to be blown up by remote control.
"For safety reasons they terminated the flight," base spokesman Capt. Sean McKenna said.
The three-stage rocket was carrying a mock missile interceptor. It went off course about 30 seconds after launch.
The debris splashed into the Pacific Ocean about six miles from the base.
The mishap came after the booster's first test flight on Aug. 31 was declared successful.
Thursday's test did not involve any attempt to intercept a dummy warhead.
----
Missile Defense Glance
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense-Glance.html?searchpv=aponline
Some of the missile defenses the U.S. military is currently testing over the South Pacific, or has plans to test in the future, possibly at a northern Pacific testing range:
--Long-range missile interceptors, launched from fixed silos, that would shoot down incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles. The program is now called ``Ground-based midcourse defense segment,'' while during the Clinton administration it was ``National Missile Defense.''
--Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), medium-range, land-based, mobile interceptor.
--``Ship-based midcourse defense segment,'' long-range naval interceptor, fired from vessels with the Aegis defensive system. Formerly called ``Navy Theater-Wide.''
--Airborne Laser, a laser cannon mounted on a Boeing 747 airplane that would shoot down missiles shortly after launch.
--A naval ``boost-phase'' interceptor that would hit an ICBM shortly after takeoff. Most interceptors target an incoming ICBM later in its flight.
--Short-range Navy and mobile Army missile defenses, including a new version of the Patriot missile.
--Satellite-mounted lasers or missiles. The military says the test range is not being designed with space-based missile defenses in mind, and the first test of an experimental anti-missile space laser is not scheduled until after 2010.
Source: Ballistic Missile Defense Organization
-------- romania
Nine Romanian workers exposed to high radiation
Reuters:
13/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13707
BUCHAREST - Nine workers have been exposed to serious levels of radiation while dismantling a smelting plant in western Romania, officials said yesterday.
The men have been in hospital since June, but the incident has been kept secret while police investigate, the National Commission for the Control of Nuclear Activities (CNCAN) said.
"They wore no protective clothes. They got a huge dose of radiation from Cobalt 60 which could have killed them at once," CNCAN Director Anton Coroianu told Reuters by telephone.
Cobalt 60 is an artificially produced, radioactive isotope which serves a variety of medical and industrial uses.
The nine were employed to dismantle two furnaces at the mothballed Victoria Calan plant, which has been closed since the 1989 fall of communist rule.
A 100-sq-metre (1,100-sq-foot) area around the furnaces has been closed off to all but authorised personnel, including investigators, who must wear special protective clothing before entering the site, the watchdog body said.
-------- terrorism
Take This, Terrorist Boogeyman
By Don Oldenburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 13, 2001; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34577-2001Dec12?language=printer
Twenty years in the U.S. Army beat this credo into Red Thomas's head: "If something needs to get done, you ask: If not me, who? If not now, when?"
For weeks after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Thomas watched in disbelief from his home in Mesa, Ariz., as a nonstop parade of talking heads on television news dissected every real and imagined terrorist threat. He knew there was more to fear than fear itself, but it ate at him day after day that the media and government seemed to be ushering the American people down the path of irrational fear.
"I was watching these ninnies on TV just scaring the hell out of people and I wanted to say 'Just stop it!' " says Thomas, 44.
On the morning of Oct. 6, the craggy retired sergeant first class got out of bed, kissed his "darling bride" of 22 years, "Miss Aggie," and decided something needed to be done. And he was the one to do it. And now was the time.
Thomas sat down at his computer and, despite disabling pain in his back and hips, in one sitting over several hours he cranked out a no-fear dispatch to the American people. Like him, it was nothing fancy. Three pages of pedestrian-grade analysis of what terrorists might do and man-in-the-street advice on how to survive various kinds of attacks, all leftover know-how from his military training in nuclear and biochemical warfare. To him, it was the plain-language survival manual for living on the bull's-eye that the government forgot to issue to civilians. In fact, the Army would later have more than a few quibbles with it.
He could've called it "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Terrorism but Were Afraid to Ask." He might've titled it "Better Red than Dead." Instead, he topped it off with "The Real Deal About Chemical, Nuclear and Biological Warfare," checked it for glaring errors in the old -- decade-old -- Army field manuals in his garage, then e-mailed it to 15 friends. For good measure, he sent it to a small Christian online newsletter called "Day 4 Smiles."
"I actually got down and prayed and said, 'If what I have written is really good, could You please let people see it?' And if the information is bad, I asked to have it killed," he says. "What a testimony, huh?"
For those who didn't mistake "The Real Deal" for a porn pitch or easy-money spam and spike it unread, it was the reality check in the e-mail -- regardless of whether it was all accurate or not. The feel-good report ricocheted from the first 15 in-boxes to countless others. Sobering but empowering, it showed up on dozens of online discussion groups, from depression-support sites to sites on horse racing to weightlifting to Aerosmith.
People said they felt no longer felt helpless. "Some sense at last!" wrote one woman on an herbal-folklore discussion group. "It should be required reading," wrote a regular contributor to a Los Angeles Lakers newsgroup.
Gavin de Becker, the best-selling author and nationally recognized expert on threat assessment, came looking for permission to excerpt Thomas in his next book, after having him investigated, of course.
Why doesn't the government distribute that kind of information? wondered Deryl Looney, an Albuquerque technical support representative who saw Thomas's report on a discussion group. And thousands no doubt wondered:
Who is this guy anyway? And is this stuff true?
Don't Panic
The gist of Red's advice is simple. Know that old nuke maxim that used to be funny, about sticking your head between your legs and kissing your rear end goodbye? Well, the last part isn't necessarily so, according to Thomas.
"Forget everything you've ever seen on TV, in the movies, or read in a novel about this stuff, it was all a lie," he wrote. "These weapons are about terror. If you remain calm, you will probably not die."
His advice in case of a nuclear attack: "If you see a bright flash of light like the sun where the sun isn't, fall to the ground," Thomas wrote, explaining that the first heat wave will pass in a second, followed by two blast waves -- one going out, the other coming back. "Don't stand up to see what happened after the first wave. Anything that's going to happen will have happened in two full minutes. If you live through the heat, blast and initial burst of radiation, you'll probably live for a very, very long time."
Besides, he said, terrorists probably only have small, low-yield suitcase bombs that would kill primarily within a half-mile circle. Others nearby could survive.
His prescription for avoiding radiation poisoning after a detonation: Try not to inhale or ingest the nasty stuff, eat frozen or canned foods, practice basic hygiene.
In a chemical or nerve-gas attack: If you suddenly start experiencing a headache, dimness of vision, runny nose, drooling, difficulty breathing, nausea and stomach cramps, twitching of exposed skin where a liquid just landed on you, he wrote, "ask yourself, did anything out of the ordinary just happen? A loud pop? Did someone spray something on the crowd? Are other people getting sick, too? Is there an odor of new mowed hay, green corn, something fruity, or camphor where it shouldn't be?
"If the answer is yes, then calmly leave the area and head upwind."
The military term is "area denial," and it's the key "right-now antidote," along with staying calm, in Thomas's compendium of survival tips. "If you don't die in the first minute and you can leave the area, you're probably gonna live," he wrote.
Red's bottom line on terrorist weapons of mass destruction: "They are intended to make you panic, to terrorize you, to herd you like sheep to the wolves. Don't let fear of an isolated attack rule your life. The odds are really on your side."
After anthrax began making headlines, Thomas saw a frightened elderly couple on television wearing rubber gloves to sort their mail. Tormented that innocent old folks were scared of their own mail, he wrote this anthrax addendum: "First, ask yourself honestly, 'What are the odds of me getting picked out of 270 million other Americans for this attack?' Second, realize that more people have choked to death on food than have gotten anthrax in the last two weeks."
About "dirty bombs," made from radioactive material and conventional explosives, and currently the threat du jour: "This isn't meant to kill, it'll be meant to harass, to terrorize."
Not that Thomas denies the deadliness of any of these weapons. "If you get a snoot full of this [stuff], it's cancel Kwanzaa," he says. "But the idea that the lady next door doesn't sleep well at night because of it is incredibly unsettling to me."
All hype aside, Thomas says the best overall preparation for any terrorist attack is about the same you'd take for a big storm. "We have a week's worth of cash, several days' worth of canned goods and plenty of soap and water," he wrote.
Shooting Straight
Why take the word of a retired armored-division sergeant on fatal distractions like biochemical and nuclear terrorism? "Reasonable question, sir," says Thomas, who identified himself on the Real Deal e-mail by name and rank but listed no e-mail address or phone number. He didn't have anything more to say: "A lot of people have asked me to expand on this, but if you get any further into the subject than I've written, it's like playing pick-up sticks with a bowl full of cooked spaghetti."
Besides, he didn't want the nuts bothering Miss Aggie, he says.
Ever since severe osteoporosis forced him out of the Army in 1994, he and Aggie Thomas have lived in a modest single-story house on a corner lot in a quiet, working-class neighborhood in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb. Neighbors don't pry but know each other well enough to recognize when something's out of place.
In his back yard, Thomas built a pellet gun range where he helps Boy Scouts earn merit badges in marksmanship. "When I'm shooting it's the only time I ever really manage to lose the pain," says Thomas, who on an average day is up by 8, putters around the house until the pain throughout his body eases, then goes shooting in the nearby desert or at Rio Salado Sportsman's Club east of town. "Shooting's my last link to the man I used to be."
Born in Easton, Md., Red Thomas doesn't readily admit that his given name is Irvin. He hated the nickname his red hair got him as a child growing up on Bruff's Island off Maryland's Eastern Shore in the Chesapeake, and later in Ohio. But he's been Red since dropping out of school at 17 and joining the Army. Being a soldier was all he ever wanted to do since first grade.
"That Army 'Be all that you can be' thing? It's true," says Thomas, whose military schooling covered small-arms repair to bombing investigation to civil defense and disaster shelter management. In 1983 he graduated from the Army's intensive two-week nuclear, biological and chemical warfare school.
"If it went bang, boom or pop, I wanted to understand it," says Thomas. "Someone once lent me an encyclopedia of munitions and I read it all. The Army doesn't make guys like me anymore."
He'd still be in if the Army hadn't put his aching bones "out to pasture." He loved protecting his country, but now, he's just an ordinary man living a regular life. Now, he says, he's more like Scarlett, his old golden retriever -- "fat and gimpy." He owns a T-shirt that he says pretty much sums him up: Printed across the front is "Christian American Heterosexual Pro-Gun Conservative: Any Questions?"
Thomas says he's trying to live a good life so that when he dies he'll be allowed to go back to Bruff's Island and, like he did as a boy, "sit under that giant oak tree plinking at tin cans while the tide takes them out into Shaw Bay." He still has that rifle.
Terror in Perspective
When he read "The Real Deal," Gavin de Becker was impressed.
"My firm has pretty high-level consultants on these topics, but Red was plain-spoken and accessible, and caring, and anxiety-reducing," says de Becker, author of the 1997 bestseller "The Gift of Fear" and whose 70-member consulting firm, Gavin de Becker & Associates in Studio City, Calif., advises the CIA, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Supreme Court, among others.
De Becker had his investigative division look into Thomas's background and credentials. He ran "The Real Deal" past big-cheese warfare experts, then phoned the master gunner about borrowing some passages for his upcoming book on terrorism, "Fear Less." "He is a decent, straight-shooting American," says de Becker. "He is helping his country by fighting the terror that results from terrorism."
Raymond Zilinskas, biological arms control specialist at Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., says Thomas may have downplayed what can happen in a chemical attack when a crowd panics, but "for the average person, this isn't bad at all."
Thomas ended "The Real Deal" with a disclaimer because he knew there are "a million caveats" to everything he wrote. "This letter is supposed to help the greatest number of people under the greatest number of situations," he hedged. "If you don't like my work, don't nitpick, just sit down and explain chemical, nuclear and biological warfare in a document around three pages long yourself."
The Army itself took a look at "The Real Deal," and "nitpick" is not exactly the word for its response. "He is trying to minimize the dread and terror associated with these weapons. However, many of [Thomas's] claims are incorrect," reported Maj. William King, Maj. Keith Carroll and R. Scott Farrar, experts from the Army's 84th Chemical Battalion based at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., in an e-mail to The Washington Post.
Thomas's conclusions about why the 1995 sarin attack in Tokyo killed so few people were flat-out wrong, they said. Thomas wrote that only 12 people died, a fact that he believes disproved expert predictions that one drop could kill a thousand people and demonstrated that biochem weapons aren't that effective in real life.
His comparison of nerve gas to household bug killers like Raid is "wrong info," they said, as was his stating that the fluid in blisters caused by mustard gas is dangerous. Thomas's take on nukes and biological weapons ignores their potential catastrophic consequences, they say.
Furthermore, the Army's experts said they "absolutely disagree that an attack with military-grade agents is 'incredibly hard to do.' Two months ago, any one of a dozen experts would have told you that the use of anthrax was beyond the means of even the most sophisticated terrorists."
Still, the Army experts call his advice to "put space between you and the attack" generally "reasonable for unprotected persons." And his "editorializing" on the low odds of an individual becoming a victim of terrorism wasn't bad either: "Individually, we are in more danger of traffic accidents than getting hit with chemical attack. However, as drivers we can take precautions to lessen that probability."
The Army's last word: "Retired SFC Red Thomas's article offers some common sense advice for unprotected victims of a NBC [nuclear/biochemical] attack. However, his article doesn't reflect the U.S. Army's position for individual defense and contains an overwhelming amount of incorrect material. . . .
"With domestic terrorist acts, the Army is reexamining its role in homeland defense, and how, or if, it will provide individual protection for each citizen. The threat has come to the lands of the once invincible United States and all citizens need to be aware the potential of an attack."
Thomas doesn't take kindly to the "hatchet job" he says the Army did on his report. "To date, nobody's done more than me to combat unwarranted terror that I know of," he says. "Bottom line from me is, yes, there are errors. I had to do a lot of generalizing to make something useful to everyone. My point was to keep things in perspective and to do it in three pages."
The Army used worst-case-scenario explanations that are unlikely, he says, and even depended on "hokey statistics" and "smoke and mirrors."
The reason? They are the experts Thomas warns about. "The government is going nuts over this stuff because they have to protect every inch of America," he says. "You've only gotta protect yourself, and by doing that, you help the country.
"We don't have the right to feel safe -- that's something we have to give ourselves."
-------- treaties
Transcript: Bush Withdraws From ABM Treaty
December 13, 2001
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/bush_text121301.html
Following is a full transcript of President Bush's remarks on the decision to give formal notice of U.S. intent to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Good morning.
I've just concluded a meeting with my National Security Council. We reviewed what I've discussed with my friend, President Vladimir Putin, over the course of many meetings, many months, and that is the need for America to move beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Today, I have given formal notice to Russia, in accordance with the treaty, that the United States of America is withdrawing from this almost 30-year-old treaty.
I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorists or rogue state missile attacks.
The 1972 ABM treaty was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union at a much different time, in a vastly different world.
One of the signatories, the Soviet Union, no longer exists, and neither does the hostility that once led both our countries to keep thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, pointed at each other. The grim theory was that neither side would launch a nuclear attack because it knew the other would respond, thereby destroying both.
Today, as the events of September 11th made all too clear, the greatest threats to both our countries come, not from each other or other big powers in the world, but from terrorists who strike without warning or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction.
We know that the terrorists and some of those who support them seek the ability to deliver death and destruction to our doorstep via missile. And we must have the freedom and the flexibility to develop effective defenses against those attacks.
Defending the American people is my highest priority as commander-in-chief, and I cannot and will not allow the United States to remain in a treaty that prevents us from developing effective defenses.
At the same time, the United States and Russia have developed a new, much more hopeful and constructive relationship. We're moving to replace mutually assured destruction with mutual cooperation.
Beginning in Ljubljana and continuing in meetings in Genoa, Shanghai, Washington and Crawford, President Putin and I developed common ground for a new strategic relationship. Russia is in the midst of a transition to free markets and democracy.
We are committed to forging strong economic ties between Russia and the United States and new bonds between Russia and our partners in NATO. NATO has made clear its desire to identify and pursue opportunities for joint action, ACT 20 (ph).
I look forward to visiting Moscow to continue our discussions as we seek a formal way to express a new strategic relationship that will last long beyond our individual administrations, providing a foundation for peace for the years to come.
We're already working closely together as the world rallies in the war against terrorism. I appreciate so much President Putin's important advice and cooperation, as we fight to dismantle Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan.
I appreciate his commitment to reduce Russia's offensive nuclear weapons. I reiterate our pledge to reduce our own nuclear arsenal, between 1,700 and 2,200 operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons. President Putin and I have also agreed that my decision to withdraw from the treaty will not, in any way, undermine our new relationship or Russian security.
As President Putin said in Crawford, we are on the path to a fundamentally different relationship. The Cold War is long gone. Today, we leave behind one of its last vestiges. But this is not a day for looking back. This is a day for looking forward with hope and anticipation of greater prosperity and peace for Russians, for Americans, and for the entire world.
Thank you.
----
Russia regrets plan to scrap missile treaty
December 13, 2001
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011213-34082920.htm
Russia reacted mildly yesterday to word that the United States will withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the Bush administration said its unilateral decision would not hurt strategic cooperation with Moscow.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who is usually not a leading voice on Russian foreign policy, said his country would "very much regret" if the United States pulled out of the 1972 ABM Treaty banning missile defenses.
"What worries us is strategic stability," he said during a visit to Brazil, carefully avoiding the use of provocative language.
Several senior administration officials, noting that Mr. Bush's announcement could come as early as today, played down fears that scrapping the 29-year-old pact between the former Cold War foes would trigger a new arms race, reducing global stability.
"The president believes very strongly that this promotes peace," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty. "He thinks the worst signal to send to the Russian people is that we are locked in the Cold War."
At the State Department, a senior official said all diplomatic efforts led by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to reach an agreement with Russia on the accord's future had failed and the United States felt it was time to act.
"We worked very hard to achieve an agreement - the president asked us to and he worked very hard himself," the official said.
"Originally, the idea was mutual withdrawal," he said. "The Russians wanted to have a part in that and said, 'How about staying in the ABM during a certain period?' We said, 'Fine, let's talk about it,' so we talked about it, but it doesn't seem to have worked out."
But, the official said, "it's not the end of the world for us to develop a missile-defense system, and certainly not the end of our productive and positive discussions" with Moscow.
Top Democratic lawmakers and other critics predicted strained relations with Russia if the United States pulls out of the accord, which bans missile- defense systems. Mr. Bush yesterday informed the congressional leadership of his decision to give Russia a required six-month's notice before abandoning the treaty.
Reports of imminent U.S. withdrawal from the treaty were first circulated Tuesday by the Russian Itar-Tass news agency, which quoted anonymous Russian sources as saying the United States would make the announcement this week.
Moscow, the reports said, had been informed of the decision by Mr. Powell during his visit to the Russian capital Sunday. Mr. Powell said after meeting with President Vladimir Putin that the two sides "still have disagreements" on the treaty's future but would continue working on the issue.
According to other reports, Mr. Bush himself called Mr. Putin after Mr. Powell's last attempt to work out an arrangement with the Russian leader failed.
Mr. Bush pledged to scrap the accord during his election campaign last year, and his advisers repeatedly have called the treaty a relic of the Cold War. Russia has termed it "the cornerstone of strategic stability."
The president's decision, though hardly surprising and consistent with the administration's widely known intentions, raised anew the political temperature in Washington as lawmakers, experts and lobbyists scrambled to publicize their views.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who along with other congressional leaders met with Mr. Bush for breakfast, criticized the president for not consulting with Congress before making his decision.
"It does appear that the Russians knew about it prior to the time any of the leaders were told about it, or the members of Congress in general. And that isn't as it should be," Mr. Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, said.
"I'm very concerned about the implications of pulling out of the ABM Treaty in part because I think it undermines the fragile coalition that we have with our allies," he added. "It's going to complicate as well our relations with Russia, with China and I think we've got to be very concerned about that."
Republicans praised Mr. Bush for moving forward with his long-stated intention to pursue missile defense.
"The ABM Treaty is a straitjacket irrelevant in the post-Cold War era," said Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican. "Does anyone doubt that if al Qaeda had access to nuclear weapons, they would have hesitated to use them against us?"
In a speech at The Citadel military academy in Charleston, S.C., on Tuesday, Mr. Bush argued that the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States have made the need for missile defense even more urgent and vigorous testing more important.
Responding to speculation that Mr. Bush's decision is a defeat for Mr. Powell, who tried harder than any other of the president's advisers to reach an agreement with Moscow, the senior State Department official insisted that the entire national security team "is on the same page."
"When the president said, 'Let's see if we can work out an understanding,' obviously that's the secretary's diplomatic role," the official said. "When the president says, 'Let's see if we can build missile defense, that's the Defense Department's role."
• Audrey Hudson contributed to this report.
----
Text of Putin's ABM Statement
December 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US-Text.html
Russian President Vladimir Putin's response to the U.S. decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty, as translated by The Associated Press:
The administration of the United States of America announced today that it is withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with six months' notice.
The treaty indeed gives each party the right to withdraw under extraordinary circumstances. The U.S. leadership repeatedly has spoken about that, and this step was not a surprise for us. However, we consider it a mistake.
As it is known, Russia like the United States and unlike other nuclear powers, has long had an effective system capable of penetrating missile defenses. So, with full certainty, I can say that the decision made by the President of the United States does not threaten Russia's national security.
At the same time, our country has not agreed to repeated U.S. proposals to jointly withdraw from the ABM treaty and has done all it could to preserve the treaty.
I continue to believe now that such a stance is correct and well-founded. Russia first of all has proceeded from a concern for the preservation and strengthening of international legal foundations in the field of disarmament and the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The ABM treaty is one of the foundations of the legal system in this sphere. This system has been created by joint efforts over the last decades.
We believe that the logic of modern global developments calls for a certain logic of action.
Now, when the world has confronted new threats, we must not allow a legal vacuum in the sphere of strategic stability. We must not undermine the regime of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
I believe that the existing level of bilateral relations must not only be preserved but used to work out a new framework of strategic relations as soon as possible.
Along with the missile defense issue, especially important in current conditions is the codification of agreements on further radical, irreversible and verifiable cuts in strategic offensive weapons to a level, which we believe should be from 1,500 to 2,200 nuclear warheads for each country.
In conclusion, I would like to note that Russia will further continue to firmly follow its principled course in world affairs, aimed at strengthening strategic stability and international security.
---
Powell Doubts New Nuclear Arms Race
DECEMBER 14, 08:34 ET
By BARRY SCHWEID AP Diplomatic Writer
http://wire.ap.org/?FRONTID=ELECTION&STORYID=APIS7GCVVR80
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's decision to abandon a major weapons control agreement with Moscow will not spur a new nuclear arms race, Secretary of State Colin Powell says.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin said Bush's announcement Thursday that he will scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is a mistake. Several senior members of Congress agreed.
``It's a mistake to withdraw from a treaty before you have something to replace it with,'' Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Thursday after Bush made public his long-anticipated decision. ``I would be very concerned that withdrawal from the treaty does fuel an arms race.''
Bush said he concluded the treaty ``hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks.''
Along with Russia, China and some European allies also had sought to dissuade Bush from abandoning the treaty.
Bush notified Chinese President Jiang Zemin before announcing the decision and Powell talked to Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and Ambassador Yang Jiechi.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush offered Jiang strategic talks among their advisers. Jiang agreed, but U.S. officials said they did not know how substantial the talks would be.
In Beijing, the state media said Jiang urged Bush to preserve the international arms-control system.
The Chinese leader spoke with both Bush and Putin and ``stressed that under current circumstances, preserving the international arms control and disarmament system is extremely important,'' the Xinhua News Agency said.
The United States will quit the treaty in six months, and during that period do nothing to violate it with missile defense tests outlawed by the Cold War-era pact, a senior U.S. official said.
By the spring, the Bush administration will be ready to begin construction of silos and a testing command center for a futuristic and expensive U.S. anti-missile defense shield near Fairbanks, Alaska.
``I don't see the basis for an arms race in anything that we have done,'' Powell said. ``I see a basis for strategic stability.''
Powell said Russia had offered to make even sharper cutbacks in its arsenal of long-range nuclear weapons than Putin pledged during his talks in Washington with Bush in November.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will take up with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov the proposal of a cap of some 1,500 to 2,200 warheads apiece, a reduction of about 60 percent from current levels, Powell said.
Rumsfeld and Ivanov are due to meet in Brussels, Belgium, next week.
Putin, in a nationwide television address, repeated Russia's view that the 1972 treaty was a cornerstone of world security.
``This step was not a surprise for us. However, we consider it a mistake,'' Putin said. ``Now, when the world has confronted new threats, we must not allow a legal vacuum in the sphere of strategic stability.''
The administration has ruled out negotiations with Russia on a new arrangement during the six months before the treaty is jettisoned.
Powell said the strong relationship with Russia that the administration has built over the last 11 months ``could take this kind of disagreement.''
The Russians have come to the conclusion ``this action is not intended against them,'' Powell said. ``It will be a system that goes after those irresponsible rogue states that might come up with a couple of missiles and threaten us.''
China worries that a U.S. missile defense would undercut the deterrent value of its small nuclear arsenal. Chinese officials have warned that Beijing might respond by building more nuclear missiles or trying to make its existing missiles more accurate.
China is believed to have about two-dozen nuclear missiles capable of reaching U.S. territory.
In a carefully worded statement, Lord Robertson, the secretary-general of the NATO alliance, said NATO ``welcomes the pledge of the United States of America to develop a new framework of cooperation with Russia'' that includes dramatic reductions in nuclear weapons arsenals.
In Washington, Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., said he doubted the treaty ever served American security interests.
``President Bush's leadership on missile defense and arms control is precisely the same leadership that's winning the war on terrorism,'' Helms said in a statement.
On the other hand, 21 Democratic members of the House, led by Ellen Tauscher of California and Joseph Hoeffel of Pennsylvania, wrote Bush that there was no compelling reason to withdraw from the treaty now. Doing so, they said, injects ``an unnecessary level of uncertainty in our relations with the rest of the world.''
---
ABM Withdrawal A Turning Point In Arms Control
By Steven Mufson and Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 13, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34804-2001Dec12?language=printer
On Nov. 12, the day after President Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with top Russian officials in a small, first-floor conference room at the Russian mission to the United Nations for a frank talk about the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Rice did most of the talking, saying Russia would have to allow the United States to test missile defense systems without restrictions or the Bush administration would withdraw the United States from the ABM Treaty. "She was as blunt as she could be," one administration official said.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov asked, "In your mind, what are the chances that we would accept a deal like that?"
Rice said she thought it was a good deal for Russia. Ivanov said nothing.
It was a key moment leading up to Bush's decision, expected to be announced today, to withdraw unilaterally from the ABM Treaty, defying the advice of allies and the wishes of Moscow so that the United States can pursue research on missile defense systems that Bush says are critical for guaranteeing the nation's safety.
Though administration officials have repeatedly threatened to pull out of the treaty, Bush's decision -- to exercise a clause allowing either side to withdraw from the treaty with six months' notification -- marks a historic turning point in arms control.
For three decades, the ABM Treaty has been a cornerstone of strategy between the world's two biggest nuclear powers. It was designed when those Cold War rivals saw the threat of mutual destruction as a guarantee of international safety, and codified limits on missile defenses as vital.
Russian leaders say the treaty is still needed. But the Bush administration says it is time to scrap the accord, rely on informal assurances and turn U.S. attention toward missile threats from smaller rogue states or groups. Bush has called the ABM Treaty, which prevents many forms of missile defense tests, a "relic" of the Cold War.
The Bush decision is a triumph for the administration's conservatives, who have wanted to scrap the treaty. But leading Democrats and some administration members such as Powell have said it would be better to get Russia to agree to modifications that would allow for missile defense tests.
"Ultimately, the gap was unbridgeable," said one administration official. "The Russians wanted a treaty. The administration didn't want a treaty." He added, "The administration wants maximum flexibility. The Russians wanted something that allowed them some oversight" of missile defense tests and deployment.
Bush phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin last Friday to tell him the United States would pull out in the coming days, as Putin must have anticipated. Administration officials said they expect Putin to issue a statement of regret, but not of outrage.
"There will be no hysterics," Mikhail Margelov, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian Federation Council, told the ITAR-Tass news agency.
U.S. officials said they expect Putin to say the U.S.-Russia relationship is strong enough to overcome this disagreement and to point to the agreement the two sides are nearing on deep cuts in strategic nuclear arsenals. U.S. officials expect Putin to propose targets for nuclear stockpiles that would largely overlap with numbers the administration has proposed.
On the ABM Treaty, the Russians "don't agree with it. But they are not going to say it's the end of the world," one senior administration official said.
Last month's Rice-Powell-Ivanov meeting was one of the last chances to salvage the ABM Treaty, though some critics of the administration say Bush's foreign policy team was never really committed to doing so.
Bush had proposed eliminating the treaty in a speech at The Citadel in September 1999 during his presidential campaign. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has called the treaty an obstacle. John Bolton, who as undersecretary for arms control and international security affairs is the State Department official responsible for negotiations, had criticized the treaty before joining the administration.
Nonetheless, the administration said it would try to obtain Russian agreement to amend or mutually put aside the treaty so that missile defense systems could be developed against common foes.
In early August, shortly after the Genoa summit between Bush and Putin, Bolton and Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov met in Moscow. Mamedov suggested the two sides pick up where the Clinton administration left off, defining distinctions between theater and national missile defense, carving out areas for testing. Bolton told Mamedov the new president had a new policy.
In subsequent talks, Russia said it was willing to allow missile defense tests -- with conditions. When Putin and Bush met in Shanghai on Oct. 21 during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, Putin presented ideas that would have allowed missile tests for a certain period of time, an administration official said.
But an administration official said the Russian proposal "meant involvement . . . and a measure of approval of what they would agree to and not agree to at a very low level of detail. And that was not acceptable to us." Another official said Russia was never prepared to allow tests of space-based weapons, one of Rumsfeld's priorities.
Nonetheless, Putin's proposals gave Bush pause. Administration officials said Bush's talking points called for him to notify Putin during the Shanghai meeting that the U.S. planned to give its six-month notice in January if they did not reach agreement. But administration officials said Bush softened his message and did not give a date.
On Nov. 3, a week before the U.N. General Assembly meeting, Rumsfeld met in Moscow with Putin, who said he would not agree to give the latitude for missile testing that the administration wanted. Rumsfeld said that meant the United States would withdraw from the treaty, and he later asked Putin's security adviser whether Russia would prefer the withdrawal notification to be made before, during or after Putin's visit to the United States later that month.
Five days after the U.N. meetings, Bush and Putin met at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., where Bush concluded the two would not reach any agreement on revising or setting aside the ABM Treaty.
As a result, Powell's trip to Moscow this week was designed in part to choreograph the U.S. decision and Russian reaction.
By the time Powell arrived in Moscow on Monday, few U.S. officials expected any change in Russia's position. Bush had phoned Putin with his decision. Instead, Powell pushed forward on the agreement to reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons. That, U.S. officials reasoned, would give Putin something to boast about, help assuage Russia's military establishment and keep the two countries talking about cooperation on nuclear weapons. Bush has pledged to cut the U.S. arsenal from about 6,000 warheads to 1,700 to 2,200.
That strategy marked a change from an earlier administration posture. In July, Rice had said a deal on cutting arsenals would be part of a grand bargain on missile defenses and the ABM Treaty. Now that link has been severed. Even though Russia has not given its approval of U.S. missile defense tests, Powell last week said the two sides were close to a formal agreement on stockpiles that would include verification measures.
Even if the Russian reaction is muted, some Russia experts said Bush's decision could have unwelcome consequences. It could draw out hard-liners in the Russian military and political elite, who have been predicting for months that Putin's turn to the West would prove a mistake.
Sergei Markov, a political analyst, characterized the White House decision as "a slap in the face." He said, "Putin will have to send a signal to the U.S. that he is not going to give everything to the U.S. and get nothing in exchange."
Vladimir Lukin, vice speaker of the state Duma and a former Russian ambassador to the United States, said U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty suggests that Russia's influence in Washington has waned with the success of the war in Afghanistan.
"We supported the U.S. unconditionally, we worked, we shared all sort of very sensitive data to do with combating terrorism," he said. "What happened after that is the moment we scored the victory, this line prevailed in the U.S.: 'Thanks, but in matters concerning both of us, we will be acting the way we want.' "
Bush's decision could again raiseamong European allies and Democratic critics the specter of American unilateralism, which has been less of an issue since the Sept. 11 attacks invigorated U.S. diplomacy.
Strobe Talbott, President Bill Clinton's deputy secretary of state and lead negotiator with Russia, said yesterday that European allies would wonder "whether the extraordinary pivot the administration did on Sept. 11 is going to be temporary and tactical or a real sea change." He added: "The way in which the administration handled the ABM Treaty issue will be seen today as an unwelcome indicator."
Though word of Bush's decision leaked on Tuesday, congressional leaders were not formally briefed by the White House until yesterday.
At a news conference after meeting with Bush at the White House, Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), said, "I think it's unfortunate that the Russians knew before the [congressional] leaders did." He added, "It's unfortunate that a matter of this import would not have been vetted more carefully, more completely and with greater care for U.S. foreign policy than this was."
LaFraniere reported from Moscow. Staff writers Helen Dewar and Mike Allen contributed to this report.
----
Bush Pulls Out of ABM Treaty: Aides Recount Road to Deadlock
December 13, 2001
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/international/13CND-MISS.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - Six months of negotiations between the United States and Russia over the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty failed because the Bush administration was unwilling to discuss each missile test with Moscow in advance, senior administration officials said Wednesday, and because Russia refused any change that would allow unrestricted testing.
The officials said that the critical moments in their talks came when President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in Moscow on Nov. 3 that the American plans for extensive testing would gut the landmark accord.
Mr. Rumsfeld shot back that if that was Russia's position, then the United States would withdraw from the treaty - exactly what President Bush announced today.
Mr. Bush, in making the announcement in the White House Rose Garden, said he had informed Mr. Putin of his decision.
"Today, as the events of Sept. 11 make all too clear," he said, "the greatest threats to both our countries come not from each other, or other big powers in the world, but from terrorists who strike without warning or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction."
Any hope of reaching an accord was finally buried in the opening hours of Mr. Putin's visit to the White House on Nov. 13. Neither president had any new proposals to break their impasse, each recognizing that there was simply no way to accommodate the Pentagon's aggressive testing program in a treaty that was clearly designed to prevent just that.
As one senior administration put it Wednesday afternoon, the American testing plan "would essentially negate the fundamental nature of the treaty."
Still, at a meeting between the two presidents two days later in Crawford, Tex., Mr. Putin signaled that American withdrawal from the treaty would not end his personal relationship with Mr. Bush, nor would it end Russia's desire to reduce nuclear weapons in tandem with Washington and fight terrorism through greater cooperation.
Mr. Bush also pledged to enhance Russia's role in NATO and help integrate Russia into the world economy, thus deepening the incentive for Mr. Putin to move beyond the dispute.
Mr. Bush's announcement that the United States is to withdraw from the treaty marks the first time in the nuclear era that the United States has renounced a major arms control accord. His critics at home and abroad argue that it could incite a new arms race and undermine other major accords, including the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
A senior administration official repeated on Wednesday the White House's past offers to Moscow to take part in developing missile defenses and cooperate with NATO in developing such defenses for the Western alliance.
"There is a whole list of potential cooperation on defenses that we intend to fully explore," a senior official said.
Another official said, "I think cooperation now gets much easier."
The description of the negotiations came from senior Bush administration officials, as they called around Europe and Asia warning allies of the impending announcement.
They described differences with Mr. Putin as amicable, and said they did not expect an explosive reaction from Moscow. At the same time, they insisted that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who had made little secret of his desire to reach a new accord with Moscow, agreed with the president's decision.
American officials said that they anticipated that Mr. Putin would issue a statement of regret today but pledge to continue working with the United States to reduce strategic offensive weapons and fight terrorism.
He may also announce, they said, the size of planned Russian reductions in the offensive strategic weapons, a sign that the two countries are still working together closely.
If Mr. Putin's objections to Mr. Bush's action are muted, it will mark a pronounced shift. Last summer he warned that abandoning the treaty would set off the collapse of other arms control agreements and the deployment of new Russian multiple-warhead missiles.
Administration officials said they did not expect either to occur. "I think the Russians will react," said a senior State Department official. "It is not going to be the end of the world, and it will not be the end of cooperation on strategic issues across the board."
However, they said, the reaction of China - whose small nuclear arsenal would be more vulnerable to any antimissile system than Russia's huge missile stockpile - was harder to predict.
China was never a signatory to the treaty, and Mr. Bush and President Jiang Zemin of China have not discussed the issue in any detail. China had previously said it would increase the size of its nuclear arsenal, and Mr. Bush's announcement may well speed that process.
The question of the treaty's fate came up first in the presidential campaign, when Mr. Bush said he would deploy a much more ambitious missile defense system than President Bill Clinton had proposed - and made it clear that he would not be constrained, as Mr. Clinton was, by the treaty.
Once in office, Mr. Bush's suggestion that, if necessary, the United States could withdraw from the treaty rattled many European and Asian allies.
In June and July, Mr. Bush sought to reassure those allies during two trips to Europe and by meeting Mr. Putin and pledging to work with him in creating a new "strategic framework." He said he would consult broadly before making any decisions on the treaty.
By the time the two men met in Shanghai in October, the terrorist attack on Sept. 11 had drawn them closer than ever. Mr. Putin emerged from their meeting declaring that "we can reach agreements" on missile defense, and administration officials said that, for the first time, Mr. Putin no longer viewed American missile defense testing program as "a threat." Privately, Mr. Putin said he could "stretch" the treaty to accommodate a great deal of testing.
But it was not clear whether that meant he was willing to reach an agreement allowing tests that the treaty clearly prohibited, or if he would insist that Russia be briefed - and perhaps approve - each and every test.
That was the case until the administration sent a detailed list of questions to Moscow, and then sent Mr. Rumsfeld to get the answers on Nov. 3. Mr. Rumsfeld had been the administration's most outspoken critic of the treaty.
It was Mr. Rumsfeld, who on that Saturday afternoon in Moscow described to President Putin a broad program of American missile defense testing in the air, space, at sea, and from a new base under construction in Alaska.
Mr. Putin objected, saying, "You want such flexibility that you are asking to effectively to gut the treaty," according to a senior administration official who participated.
John R. Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control, who accompanied Mr. Rumsfeld, interjected that he agreed with the Russian interpretation. Mr. Bolton said the United States was "asking for the ability to test" in a manner that was completely "unrestrained by the treaty."
At that point, Mr. Putin asserted that as a lawyer, he viewed the American demand as overly broad with "too much latitude." He said such an interpretation was not acceptable to Moscow.
"Well, then," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "we will be giving you notification of unilateral withdrawal from the treaty."
Still, there was another attempt to brief top Russian military officials, this time in New York a week later during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. American officials described in great detail the tests they had in mind. The Russian officials, according to American accounts, were somewhat stunned by the scale of the testing program, noting that they were completely out of the treaty's bounds.
"Basically what the Russians figured out was that this was a serious testing program to develop missile defenses and that wasn't going to work within an ABM treaty designed to prevent it," one senior State Department official said.
But White House officials held out a sliver of hope that, once they sat down together a few days later at the White House, Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin could work out an accord.
Their aides had left an open space in their draft joint statement that they hoped could be filled with a breakthrough reached by the two leaders. A breakthrough still seemed possible based on their public statements.
But it was a mirage. Neither Mr. Putin nor Mr. Bush offered any new ideas that morning, and during lunch, their senior staffs jammed into a cramped room in the basement of the White House to hastily draft a statement that conveyed a sense of progress on strategic talks when, in fact, none had occurred.
"We had not reached an agreement," said one official in the room. Moments later, the two president stepped into the East Room with nothing to announce about missile defenses, and over the next two days at Mr. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, they barely discussed the subject.
Secretary Powell, last week in Romania, told his Russian counterpart that the time was "very close" when the president would make a decision to unilaterally withdraw. Still, there was no progress as Secretary Powell flew to Moscow for a final session with Igor S. Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister.
On Friday, Mr. Bush called Mr. Putin and told him the United States would withdraw this week.
"It is absolutely the case that this would have been a lot harder to do eight months ago than today, because the president took the time to build the relationship with Russia," a senior administration official said.
That will depend on the Russian reaction, which will have the greatest effect on how the rest of the world judges the wisdom of Mr. Bush's choice.
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ABM Treaty Glance
December 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-ABM-Treaty-Glance.html?searchpv=aponline
Key provisions of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the former Soviet Union:
--Limits the scope of anti-missile systems. Based on the assumption that if both the United States and Russia are vulnerable to a devastating retaliatory nuclear attack, neither would launch a first strike.
--Neither party can deploy a missile defense that covers its entire territory. They can have a defense that protects a single site, with no more than 100 interceptors deployed. Russia has such a system to defend Moscow; the United States deployed one to protect missile fields in North Dakota in the 1970s but shut it down.
--Ratified in 1972 and amended in 1974. Some argue the treaty is no longer in force because the Soviet Union no longer exists.
--Either party can withdraw from the treaty on six months notice.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Today in Congress
Thursday, December 13, 2001; Page A06
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35099-2001Dec12?language=printer SENATE Meets at 9:30 a.m.
Committees:
Armed Services -- 2:30 p.m.Strategic forces subc. Security of U.S. nuclear weapons and weapons facilities. 222 Russell Office Building.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maryland
Coast Guard to Decide on Cove Point Project Safety Next Year
By Raymond McCaffrey and Michael Amon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 13, 2001; Page SM02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28879-2001Dec11?language=printer
The Coast Guard probably will not complete a shipping safety plan until next year regarding a Tulsa company's proposal to ship liquefied natural gas on tankers to the firm's southern Calvert County plant on the Chesapeake Bay.
Last Thursday, state and federal officials concluded a two-day meeting in Portsmouth, Va., on the Williams Co.'s Cove Point project. The Coast Guard now will study such issues as whether to require moving safety zones around the tankers and escorts for the vessels when they move into the bay, according to Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Gordon A. Loebl.
The decisions concerning the Cove Point project also will serve to guide the overall handling of liquefied natural gas importation along the Eastern Seaboard in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Loebl added.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is also reconsidering the Cove Point project. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) publicly criticized FERC's decision in October, a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to allow reopening and expansion of the liquefied natural gas plant.
Mikulski said in letters sent to the federal energy panel, the Coast Guard, the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, that the project "could create a new vulnerability to terrorism." She also pointed out that the facility is three miles from the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant.
FERC announced Nov. 9 -- just two days after Mikulski criticized the commission's original approval -- that it would reconsider the plan. A week later, its staff conducted a closed technical conference, during which interested parties and regulatory agencies discussed "any national security issues" raised after Sept. 11.
Officials at Calvert Cliffs, who previously determined that the Cove Point operation would not jeopardize their facility, are reexamining safety concerns, too, according to Karl Neddenien, a Calvert Cliffs spokesman.
The nuclear plant is now under top alert -- so much so that the plant asked the NRC for permission to postpone its 2001 test of its emergency response plan so that officials could "continue to focus on the heightened level of security," Neddenien explained.
"The goal is to test the plan and the people who would implement it," he said.
The drill was to have taken place in late September, and Calvert Cliffs officials now would like to hold it in 2002.
The NRC is "still evaluating that request," said Sue Gagner, a commission spokeswoman.
-------- us nuc waste
NEVADA: NUCLEAR WASTE SITE REQUEST
December 13, 2001
National Briefing
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/national/13BRFS.html?searchpv=nytToday
State officials will ask the federal courts to block a decision on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, saying the Energy Department has abandoned a Congressional mandate that the site's natural geology must protect the public from radiation. Instead, the Nevada officials say, the latest design for the waste burial ground, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, relies "nearly 100 percent" on engineered barriers to assure the waste's isolation. The proposed nuclear repository is supposed to hold thousands of tons of used reactor fuel now kept at nuclear power plants in 31 states. If approved, it is scheduled to open in 2010. (AP)
--------
Nuke industry presses Bush to move on Yucca plan
Reuters:
13/12/2001
Story by Chris Baltimore
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13696
WASHINGTON - The U.S. nuclear industry's lobbying arm this week reiterated its demand for the Bush administration to quickly approve plans to build an underground radioactive fuel dump in Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
As used fuel from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants stacks up at a rate of about 2,000 tonnes a year, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) pressed Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to submit the Yucca Mountain plan for presidential approval before year-end.
After public hearings this week in Nevada, "the record the Energy Secretary will have will be more than adequate" to justify the move," said Marvin Fertel, an NEI vice president, speaking at a press event.
Controversy has grown since a draft of a General Accounting Office (GAO) report leaked to the press showing that government auditor asking the Bush administration to postpone approval of Yucca Mountain past 2010.
GAO made the request because the Energy Department "has no reliable estimate of when, and at what cost, such a repository could be opened," according to a draft of the report later released by Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who has staunchly opposed the plan on safety grounds.
Abraham criticized the leaked report as "fatally flawed" because it was released before the Energy Department could review it.
The site in the Nevada desert would store 70,000 tons of radioactive materials from nuclear power plants for an estimated 10,000 years.
In mid-November, the Energy Department released a rule on Yucca Mountain to allow high-tech devices to play a larger role in containing nuclear material, easing the protective burden placed on natural geological formations.
In October, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved a draft proposal from the Energy Department to study Yucca Mountain as possible site.
If Bush approves the project, it still faces a long path to fruition. That includes multiple comment periods for Nevada and other states to air objections, a congressional vote and a four-year NRC review before construction on Yucca could proceed.
NEI CHALLENGES RADIATION LIMITS
NEI took aim at federal standards for minimal radiation exposure for Nevada residents that live near the desert site.
The Environmental Protection Agency in June set overall radiation exposure at a maximum 15 millirem per year. That level is roughly double the exposure from naturally occurring radioactive materials in brick houses, she said.
"We don't see that adding any value from the public health and safety standpoint," Fertel said. "It causes you to spend a lot more money ... and it doesn't add to public health and safety, which is our paramount issue."
In comparison, U.S. lawmakers absorb 15-20 millirem a year because of trace amounts of radioactive elements contained in the granite walls which form the U.S. Capitol, NEI said. Assuming a 10,000-year life of the storage facility, an August Energy Department study pegged radiation exposure at less than 1 millirem of radiation per year.
Some $8 billion has been spent over the last 20 years to determine if Yucca Mountain will offer safe storage, with critics contending the studies have shown it is unsuitable.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Report: bin Laden surrounded in Tora Bora
December 13, 2001
UPI
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/13122001-115050-4501r.htm
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 -- U.S. and Afghan Northern Alliance forces have surrounded Osama bin Laden, a Defense Department official told CNN on Thursday.
The United States says bin Laden is behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that killed more than 3,000 people, and destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon. A tape released by the Pentagon Thursday showed bin Laden gloating about the attacks and acknowledging he had prior knowledge of them.
Bin Laden is believed to be holed up with members of his al Qaida network in the Tora Bora cave complex -- near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan -- which is surrounded by members of the Northern Alliance. U.S. planes are also bombing the area.
Although the United States says bin Laden is in the region, on Wednesday the Christian Science Monitor reported that he might already have crossed over to safety in Pakistan.
----
Marines Inspect Kandahar Airport
By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 13, 04:44 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7GC7H1G0
WASHINGTON (AP) - Many of the 1,500 U.S. Marines in southern Afghanistan could soon help rebuild the airport near the Taliban's last stronghold of Kandahar, a senior defense official said.
A few dozen Marines were to travel to the Kandahar airport Thursday or Friday to determine whether it can be repaired enough for humanitarian aid flights to land, the official said Wednesday on condition of anonymity.
Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, was the last city held by the Taliban militia before opposition fighters took over last week. U.S. Marines have established a base called Camp Rhino at a remote airstrip about 70 miles southwest of the city.
The military hopes to repair the battered airport for deliveries of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies, the official said. The United States and its allies are making similar repairs to airports at Mazar-e-Sharif in the north and Bagram near Kabul.
Four Air Force crew members of a B-1B bomber that crashed in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday received a medical evaluation at their island base. The pilot, Capt. William Steele, said he and his crew suffered only cuts and bruises.
The plane, on its way from its base at Diego Garcia to bomb targets in Afghanistan, crashed after sustaining multiple malfunctions, Steele said. The four crew members were rescued by a Navy ship after floating for about two hours in the warm waters.
In the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, the United States is using a lethal combination of heavy bombing and stealthy commandos as it helps tribal Afghan fighters clear an al-Qaida stronghold.
The bombs include satellite-guided weapons and the U.S. arsenal's biggest conventional bomb, the 15,000-pound ``daisy cutter'' that obliterates everything within a few hundred yards.
The rugged Tora Bora area near the border with Pakistan is dotted with caves and tunnels, and an unknown number of al-Qaida fighters remains there. The Afghan forces attacking the complex believe they include Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and top suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Air Force has dropped one BLU-82 ``daisy cutter'' bomb in the area, killing an undetermined number of al-Qaida members. U.S. soldiers have not determined whether any high-ranking terrorists were among those killed, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday.
``We don't know until we get through the target area whether we have leadership or not,'' Pace said. ``It'd be nice if there were leaders there and it'd be great if we were able to kill or capture them, but we don't know yet until we uncover the ground.''
The daisy cutter can be particularly lethal when used against caves or tunnels: Its explosion can suck all the oxygen out of a cave and the rock walls help focus and intensify the blast's shock wave.
The airstrikes are being guided by U.S. special operations soldiers who also are giving Afghan fighters advice and weaponry.
``These people have changed the face of war,'' said Robert Andrews, a Pentagon official who oversees special operations forces.
Jordan has offered to send some of its special forces teams, Andrews said. He would not say whether any Jordanian units were already operating in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon released three videos from cameras on an F/A-18 jet that attacked the Tora Bora area Tuesday. One of the videos, made with a thermal imaging camera that detects heat sources, shows three shadowy figures moving through a forest before being swallowed up in a huge explosion. Pace said the three figures were al-Qaida fighters.
Another high-tech way of finding and killing al-Qaida fighters has involved using an unmanned Predator surveillance plane teamed with an AC-130 gunship. The Predator provides live video to the AC-130, a large propeller-driven plane bristling with rapid-fire cannons, Gatling guns and howitzers.
U.S. warplanes have continued to bomb al-Qaida positions, even as some of the Afghan fighters try to cut a deal with them to surrender and hand over their leaders. Pace said such negotiations would not stop U.S. airstrikes.
``It's a very complex situation on the ground,'' Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said. ``And you're not dealing with set entities or one large group of people on either side, you're dealing with factions within factions.''
Pentagon officials say they do not know how long the al-Qaida fighters can hold out.
``We do know that as that (Afghan) force moves forward, they are encountering resistance,'' Pace said. ``How much resistance they'll end up encountering throughout the entire length of that valley, which is several miles, I cannot tell you.''
------
VISIBLE SUPPORT
Troops of U.S. and Britain Set Up Camp in Kandahar
New York Times
December 13, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/international/asia/13KAND.html
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, May 12 - Brazenly advertising their presence in a city where the Taliban were routed only last weekend, a group of American and British special forces troops rode downtown in open trucks and set up camp right next to the governor's compound.
The very public move, by troops whose presence here was not, until today, officially admitted by the Pentagon, startled the throngs who shopped for long-forbidden music cassettes and other goods in Kandahar's fully opened markets.
This trip and other visible forays today by Western soldiers, who carried weapons but were bareheaded and vulnerable to snipers, seemed intended as a show confidence in the security of the city, where streets are patrolled by the militias of two private "commanders."
By placing the small contingent where they did, the United States and Britain signaled their support for the provisional governor, Gul Agha Shirzai, who is one of those two warlords.
The United States has provided extensive political and military support to the man charged with stitching Afghanistan back together, Hamid Karzai, and a contingent of perhaps 30 Western troops has stayed for days at his headquarters here.
Today about 15 of those men moved with their backpacks to the city center, and it has become more evident that the United States is also betting on Mr. Shirzai, who is working in concert with Mr. Karzai but is not as widely trusted by Afghans because of his imperious behavior when he was governor of Kandahar Province in the early 1990's.
During that time, after the Soviets were driven out, the country was ruled disastrously by competing and often corrupt warlords, triggering revulsion that aided the rise of the moralistic Taliban.
The American and British soldiers at both locations refused to answer any questions about their identity or mission, but it appeared that many had previously advised Mr. Karzai and Mr. Shirzai during the military campaign to drive out the Taliban.
At the Pentagon today, a senior military officer confirmed that American forces were in Kandahar accompanying opposition leaders.
"We do have U.S. forces in with the opposition leaders as they consolidate their control of Kandahar," said Gen. Peter Pace of the Marines, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff . "So there are U.S. forces in Kandahar, like there are with the other major leaders of the opposition groups."
General Pace declined to describe the type of troops specifically, although the Pentagon previously announced that Army Special Forces - the Green Berets - and members of other Special Operations units had been working as liaison officers with opposition commanders. "Right now we're providing assistance, as we have in the past, to the opposition leaders," General Pace said.
Kandahar's residents today expressed a longing for peace and high hopes for Mr. Karzai and a new goal of national unity. But many also indicated worry about the evolving political and security arrangements here and called for the rapid introduction of United Nations peacekeeping forces. The United Nations has approved such forces so far only for the capital, Kabul.
"We'll only have peace when those men up there are controlled," said Abdul Samad, 38, a mechanic, gesturing with disgust at the dozens of armed guards who stared down from the roofs and walls around the new Western encampment.
They were members of Mr. Shirzai's ubiquitous militia, assigned to protect the foreigners.
"This isn't real government," Mr. Samad said of the rooftop gunmen. "We need peacekeepers to come in and control these men."
Mr. Shirzai has announced his own ambitious plan to reduce the number of guns in the streets, but how it can be carried out remains vague.
Under the plan, Mr. Shirzai's militia will not disarm, nor will that of his chief rival in the city, Mullah Naqib Ullah, who still controls more than a third of Kandahar, a senior Shirzai commander, known as Abdullah, said in an interview today.
But those militias will be largely confined to bases, he said, while selected men from each group - 320 from Mr. Shirzai and 300 from Mullah Naqib - will be given police uniforms in coming days and will take control of the streets.
Already today, many weapons were collected from "unauthorized people," Mr. Abdullah said, without specifying who had peacefully given up the guns that have ruled here for so many years. Within days, he said, "you won't see anyone on the streets who isn't wearing a uniform."
The city appears to be peaceful for now, though some straggling Arab Taliban fighters were discovered and killed near the airport just two days ago, according to Mr. Abdullah. But many of the Afghan Taliban fighters from Kandahar took their weapons as they fled to their home villages, and parts of Kandahar Province, especially to the west, remain lawless. The search for the former Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, continues, though the Americans seem to be pursuing it with more enthusiasm than any of the local armies.
All day today, a large crowd stood outside the downtown compound that Western soldiers had entered this morning with duffel bags and packs, riding in trucks with "I Love New York" bumper stickers. The mood seemed more curious than hostile.
"We came here to see the Americans and to see how they will treat us," one man said.
In midafternoon perhaps 10 American and British special forces troops, dressed in civilian clothes, armed and wearing flak jackets but no helmets, sped out onto busy city streets in pickup trucks and a Land Rover, accompanied by two truckloads of Mr. Shirzai's guards.
People watched with astonishment as the strange caravan wound through congested streets. A British soldier with short blond hair and a Palestinian-style checkered scarf stood through the roof of the Land Rover and waved back at children, sometimes offering a thumbs up.
The vehicles left the city center and sped south toward the airport, several miles away on a road filled with reminders of the recent months of warfare. They passed a cemetery with several fresh graves, many sporting the "martyr's flag."
They wound around bomb craters and passed charred truck hulks that scavengers were starting to strip for scrap metal. They passed the airport, where last week scores of cornered Arab Taliban fighters were reportedly killed or committed suicide with their own grenades.
The caravan stopped at the bomb- ravaged campus of a Taliban madrassa, or religious school, near the airport previously known for housing many foreign students. The blond British soldier set up his machine gun atop the Land Rover while the others made a quick inspection of the school carcass and grounds.
The soldiers made no effort to collect any of the Korans, lesson books or handwritten student notebooks that littered classroom floors.
In one was a letter from one mullah to another, listing 62 students who had not shown up for classes and noting the 25 who had a good excuse because they had gone to fight the holy war for the Taliban.
One student had scrawled this on his notebook: "Mullah Omar is a good man, and we want to fight for him and we will do everything that he wants."
----
Fewer Bombs Dropped on Afghanistan
DECEMBER 13, 04:29 ET
By ANDREW ENGLAND
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7GC7A3G0
ABOARD THE USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (AP) - U.S. fighters are dropping about 50 percent fewer bombs on Afghanistan as the war against the al-Qaida terror group and their Taliban allies focuses on the Tora Bora mountains, a Navy task force commander said Thursday.
F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18C Hornets aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt are flying about 40 sorties a day over Afghanistan. But only 10 to 15 planes are dropping bombs, including 2,000 pound bunker-busters that can penetrate caves, said Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald.
Three days ago, 25 to 30 fighter jets would have been dropping bombs, Fitzgerald said.
About 90 percent of the fighters' bombs are targeting the Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan, one of the few remaining areas of Taliban and al-Qaida resistance, he added. The U.S. airstrikes began Oct. 7 after the Taliban administration refused to hand over Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida group, the prime suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Those planes that don't drop bombs carry out surveillance and reconnaissance operations, as well as providing a show of force, Fitzgerald said.
Afghan opposition forces had given the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters until 8 a.m. Wednesday to disarm and walk out of the Tora Bora area, but the surrender deadline was ignored.
Fitzgerald declined to say whether the deadline had affected bombing missions over Tora Bora, but he said the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters would be forced from the area.
``Whether it happens tomorrow or in a week, that's certainly going to happen. The real question is 'who are you going to get in there?' and 'are people going to leak out or not?','' he said.
In recent days, U.S. aircraft flying over Afghanistan have not seen any large groups of Taliban or al-Qaida forces, Fitzgerald said, adding that he had been surprised by the speed of the Taliban's fall.
``We thought it would take a longer period of time ... certainly what has proven out is the Taliban were not as strong and not very well liked within the country. That has precipitated their fall and we have certainly enabled it with air power,'' he said.
U.S warships are likely to remain in the northern Arabian sea for some time, despite the Taliban's collapse.
``The political side of Afghanistan is far from settled,'' he said. ``There certainly will be a requirement for us to be on station until they achieve some political stability in the country.''
U.S. fighter jets are now focusing more on providing escorts for humanitarian operations and anti-Taliban forces, as well as scouring the country for remaining Taliban vehicles or weapon caches, Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald said he hoped some of the burden would be taken off U.S. jets by Italian and French aircraft aboard their carriers.
Fitzgerald is the commander of a task force that includes around 40 vessels with ships from Australia, France, Italy, Britain and Canada.
The Italian carrier Garibaldi is already in the Arabian sea undergoing ``integration training'' with the U.S. Navy, while the French carrier Charles de Gaulle is expected to arrive soon.
If their governments approve, both carriers could launch aircraft on combat sorties, Fitzgerald said.
``We've been out here 3 1/2 months and we would like to get a break,'' he said.
The Roosevelt is one of two U.S. carrier battle groups in the northern Arabian sea. The other is led by the USS Carl Vinson.
----
Heavy Bombing Resumes After Second Cease-Fire Breakdown
New York Times
December 13, 2001
By JOHN KIFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/international/13CND-AFGH.html
TORA BORA, Afghanistan, Dec. 13 - Backed by a stepped-up American bombing campaign, Afghan fighters launched a new ground assault today against Al Qaeda fighters trapped in mountain canyons and caves after attempts to arrange a second surrender deal collapsed.
Commanders of the eastern tribal alliance said they had dropped their plans for Al Qaeda fighters to turn themselves in at midday amid reports that key terrorist leaders had fled Osama bin Laden's besieged mountain base for Pakistan, leaving their troops to face the full fury of the opposition.
The exact whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, remained unknown.
Initially, the alliance advance met little resistance, Hazrat Ali, a senior alliance member told The Associated Press. Later, however, Al Qaeda holdouts pinned down tribal fighters with mortars and heavy machine-gun fire. Mr. Ali estimated the number of Al Qaeda fighters at around 700.
One key Qaeda position was captured and officers said they were determined to crush the enemy, most of them Arabs and other Muslim fighters.
At the border with Pakistan today military helicopters hovered overhead and hundreds of soldiers patrolled the narrow mountain trails, looking to stop Mr. bin Laden or any other Al Qaeda leaders who might try to escape from Afghanistan. The Pakistani forces are concentrated on a 25-mile stretch opposite Tora Bora.
American bombing pouned Al Qaeda positions Wednesday night and this morning.
B-52's circled above the combat zone in the foothills of Afghanistan's eastern White Mountains and fighter aircraft roared across the Tora Bora and Milawa valleys.
After one jet dropped 1,000-pound bombs on an Al Qaeda post, an Afghan soldier could be heard cheering over the alliance's radio network.
Pentagon officials told the A.P. that the bombs included satellite-guided weapons that home in on their targets and the biggest conventional bomb in the American arsenal, the so-called daisy cutter, a 15,000-pound weapon that obliterates everything within a few hundred yards when it explodes.
At least one, and perhaps as many as three of the 15,000-pound bombs were dropped before dawn on a canyon where many Al Qaeda men have been hemmed in since Monday.
An Associated Press reporter who saw one blast said a huge, bright magenta fireball hung in the air and lighted up the sky at around 3 a.m.
Casualty figures were not known.
American officials said it was not clear whether some enemy personnel were still sheltering in the hundreds of caves and tunnels that riddle the area.
Today's fighting came after two surrender deals between the alliance and Al Qaeda troops fell through.
The latest surrender ultimatum came after a day of crushed hopes and steady American bombing on Wednesday that sent huge clouds of smoke and debris billowing across the ridges.
Some anti-Taliban, anti-Qaeda commanders were privately furious and dejected, believing that they had negotiated a cease-fire and surrender agreement in good faith, only to see it derailed by American bombing and strafing by AC-130 gunships through the night and a heavy barrage early in the morning, just before the surrender was to take place.
A B-52 bomber made lazy circles overhead much of the day, its white contrails a constant reminder of the threat of American air power. Late in the afternoon, a huge black cloud - much bigger than those from the rest of the day's bombing - rose over the mountains.
The main Afghan military leaders here - including Commanders Ali, Muhammad Zaman and Hajji Zahir - met in glum discussions throughout the day and into the evening in a municipal government building on a barren bluff near the battlefield. Fighters with weapons slung over their shoulders milled about outside.
"I am angry, and I put my gun down and told my commander I am going home," said one soldier, Murad Ali, 20, who had just returned from several days of fighting on the mountaintop.
"They agreed to surrender," he said. "But the Americans bombed overnight. So the Arabs are mad, and we are mad, too. All the mujahedeen are mad because the Americans have done a bad thing."
The situation was complicated by rivalries among Commanders Ali, Zaman and Zahir. Divisions in Al Qaeda were reported, too, with some foreign fighters ready to surrender, and a group of Arabs eager to fight on. The Afghan Islamic Press, often the voice of the Taliban, reported that some of the fighters were demanding that they be turned over to the United Nations, with diplomats from their home countries present.
The United States, however, has been adamantly opposed to any such surrender deal.
"We have made it very clear what our intents are," a Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, said in Washington.
Commander Ali said Wednesday night that fighters from Uzbekistan, Chechnya, Pakistan and Afghanistan, whose numbers he put at about 700, were ready to surrender. But, he added, about 500 Arabs did not want to give up.
"We've had discussions with these people," Commander Ali said. "They are ready to give us 22 Al Qaeda leaders, but not Osama. But there are conditions."
"We want Osama alive," he added.
Asked if Mr. bin Laden was, in fact, still in the Tora Bora region, Commander Ali replied, "I don't want to disclose that."
On Wednesday senior Defense Department officials played down a report on the Web site of The Christian Science Monitor that Mr. bin Laden escaped to Pakistan 10 days ago with the help of local tribesmen. The chief spokesman for the United States Central Command, Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, said he would view such reports "with a healthy dose of skepticism." Besides American warplanes, heavily armed American and British commandos took part in the offensive here Wednesday. The commandos were not only directing the bombing but also searching the caves and training bases that have been captured so far. Anti-Taliban forces put the numbers at 40 American and 60 British soldiers.
Gen. Peter Pace of the marines, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington Wednesday that American Special Operations forces were working with the opposition fighters, mostly to direct strikes from warplanes. He said that he had seen no reports of American soldiers' actually attacking caves, but that the fluid situation meant that Americans advancing with opposition fighters might engage in combat if they came across Al Qaeda troops.
-------- africa
Weekly notes - Somalia
Briefly December 13, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011213-292069.htm
The possibility is "very real" that terrorist cells linked to al Qaeda are present in Somalia, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner said in Pretoria, South Africa, yesterday, at the end of an 11-day visit to Africa that included Ethiopia, Kenya and Zimbabwe. "Somalia is an environment that could be hospitable to terrorists The first goal is to make it inhospitable," he told reporters.
-------- biological weapons
Army Working on Weapons-Grade Anthrax
Utah Facility Quietly Developed Formulation; Spores Sent Back and Forth to Md.
By Rick Weiss and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 13, 2001; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34707-2001Dec12?language=printer
An Army biological and chemical warfare facility in Utah has been quietly developing a virulent, weapons-grade formulation of anthrax spores since at least 1992, and samples of the bacteria were shipped back and forth between that facility and Fort Detrick, Md., on several occasions in the past several years, according to government officials and shipping records.
The Utah spores, grown and processed at the 800,000-acre Dugway Proving Ground about 80 miles from Salt Lake City, belong to the Ames strain -- the same strain used in the deadly letters sent to media outlets and two senators in September and October. No other nation is known to have made weapons-grade Ames. And although it is legal to make small quantities of such agents under the provisions of an international treaty the United States has signed, experts said yesterday they were surprised by the revelation that a U.S. lab was producing such lethal material.
"It comes as a bit of a shock," said Jonathan Tucker, a former member of the U.N. team that inspected Iraq's bioweapons stocks after the Persian Gulf War and now director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies' Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program in Washington.
Army officials said yesterday that all the material they have made has been accounted for and that they are cooperating with the FBI in its investigation. The FBI would not comment on the Dugway program yesterday, but agency officials have hypothesized that the attacks were the work of a domestic terrorist -- perhaps someone with some knowledge of microbiology.
Sources said that hypothesis is now sure to get renewed attention.
"This is a very important lead," said one person involved in the government's investigation, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Dugway has in the past acknowledged growing small quantities of virulent anthrax spores in a form that does not pose a significant risk of deadly inhalation. It has also processed related but nonvirulent bacteria into dry powdery forms that mimic weapons-grade anthrax in experiments. Dugway's production of a powdered form of Ames anthrax was first described in yesterday's Baltimore Sun. Dugway officials said in a statement yesterday that it became necessary to process virulent bacteria into a dangerous powder form to conduct certain defensive experiments.
Under the terms of the international biological weapons convention, small amounts of weapons-grade biological weapons can be produced in "types and quantities consistent with prophylactic, peaceful and protective purposes." No specific allowable quantities are spelled out. Among other things, the Army research seeks to find new ways to detect anthrax spores after a clandestine attack, to develop new ways of decontaminating spore-laden environments, and to test the efficacy of face masks and other protective equipment.
The Dugway statement said its spores are always shipped in a wet paste form, to minimize the danger of a spill or other dangerous accident. Spores must generally be processed into a fine dry powder for them to become airborne and enter the lungs, where they can trigger the most serious "inhalational" form of the disease.
No details were available yesterday about how Dugway scientists converted that paste into powder for their experiments. Various nations have achieved that goal by different means, and investigators hope to get clues about who has been sending the contaminated letters by studying the powders' physical and chemical characteristics, which can reveal details about how they were made.
Army and other officials have said the anthrax spores in the letter to Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) were highly concentrated and were produced in a powder made of particles smaller than three microns in diameter -- well into the size range that would make them extremely dangerous if released into the air. They were mixed with silica, an additive.
Army officials in Washington said yesterday that Fort Detrick does not have the equipment for making dried anthrax spores. But Fort Detrick does have a machine that can kill bacteria with irradiation -- equipment Dugway lacks. Thus, in some instances, when Dugway scientists wanted to work on dried spores without risk of infection, they shipped samples to Detrick to be sterilized.
The most recent shipment of the deadly spores to Fort Detrick left Dugway Proving Ground June 27. The spores were to be irradiated at the Maryland lab to render them harmless, according to shipping records and interviews with officials.
Those spores apparently sat at Fort Detrick for more than two months before being shipped back to Dugway on Sept. 4, less than a month before this fall's spate of bioterrorist attacks began with a Florida photo editor's fatal case of anthrax.
Army officials yesterday could not provide details about how they kept track of the spores in each facility, except to say they were in full compliance with the federal "special agents" law. That law spells out how certain dangerous germs -- including the anthrax bacterium, Bacillus anthracis -- are to be handled when being shipped from lab to lab.
Shipping records obtained by The Washington Post indicate that the June shipment from Dugway to Detrick involved two small vials, one containing 180 milliliters and the other 160 ml. The return shipment contained five vials, each with 150 ml, for a total of 750 ml. An Army spokesman yesterday could not explain the discrepancy.
A previous shipment of Ames went from Dugway to Detrick in August 2000. Two weeks later, six times the original volume of material was shipped back to Dugway.
New revelations about the technical sophistication of the material used in the letters to Daschle and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) have only deepened the debate over who could be behind the attacks. Some prominent anthrax experts believe the signs point to an American scientist with connections to the U.S. biological weapons program or one of its contractors.
"The anthrax in the letters was probably made and weaponized in a U.S. government or contractor lab," Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist and director of the Federation of American Scientists' Working Group on Biological Weapons, concluded in an analysis released by the federation on Monday. "It might have been made recently by the perpetrator on his own, or made as part of the U.S. biodefense program; or it may be a remnant of the U.S. biological weapons program before [President Richard M. Nixon] terminated the program in 1969." Richard Spertzel, a former Army colonel who directed the U.N. biological weapons inspection team in Iraq, scoffed last week at the idea of a "bio-bomber," a disgruntled or deranged scientist crafting a lethal anthrax weapon alone in a basement lab.
"The quality of the product contained in the letter to Senator Daschle was better than that found in the Soviet, U.S. or Iraqi program, certainly in terms of the purity and concentration of spore particles," Spertzel said in testimony Dec. 5 to the House Committee on International Relations, apparently referring to the U.S. offensive program that ended in 1969.
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THE INVESTIGATION
U.S. Recently Produced Anthrax in a Highly Lethal Powder Form
New York Times
December 13, 2001
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/national/13ANTH.html
As the investigation into the anthrax attacks widens to include federal laboratories and contractors, government officials have acknowledged that Army scientists in recent years have made anthrax in a powdered form that could be used as a weapon.
Experts said this appeared to be the first disclosure of government production of anthrax in its most lethal form since the United States renounced biological weapons in 1969 and began destroying its germ arsenal.
Officials at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah said that in 1998 scientists there turned small quantities of wet anthrax into powder to test ways to defend against biowarfare attacks.
A spokeswoman at Dugway, Paula Nicholson, said the powdered anthrax produced that year was a different strain from the one used in the recent mail attacks that have killed five people. Dugway officials said powdered anthrax was also produced in other years but declined to say whether any of it was the Ames strain, the type found in the letters sent to two senators and news organizations.
Government records show that Dugway has had the Ames strain since 1992.
Dugway officials said in a statement that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking into "the work at Dugway Proving Ground," along with that of other medical facilities, universities and laboratories. "The Army is cooperating with and assisting the F.B.I.'s efforts," the officials said.
The disclosure at Dugway comes as federal agents, as part of a vast investigation of the anthrax attacks that has made little apparent headway, are trying to figure out where stores of anthrax are housed around the nation and who has the skill to create the powdered form - a major technical step needed to make the anthrax used in the terror attacks.
The F.B.I. declined to detail its strategy other than to say its agents have visited some laboratories and are identifying new ones that may have handled, or had access to, the Ames strain.
"We're following every logical lead," said one law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The F.B.I has subpoenaed records from dozens of laboratories that do pathogen research, drawing up a list of places that possess the Ames strain. The bureau, citing the criminal investigation, will not release the list or identify the labs being scrutinized. But private experts say the list is most likely short.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a biological arms control expert at the State University of New York at Purchase and chairwoman of a bioweapons panel at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, concluded that at least 15 institutions had worked recently with the Ames strain. Dr. Rosenberg, who has argued that the likeliest suspect in the anthrax attacks is a government insider or someone in contact with an insider, drew up her list after surveying scientific publications about anthrax and consulting private and federal experts.
Of the 15, Dr. Rosenberg said, four are "probably more likely than the others to have weaponization capabilities" - the ability to turn wet anthrax spores into a fine powder that could be used as a weapon.
Army researchers have previously acknowledged making wet anthrax, but Dr. Rosenberg said the acknowledgment yesterday by Dugway officials that they had produced dried anthrax was the government's only such disclosure. "I know of no case of the United States saying that it has made anthrax powder," she said.
Some details of Dugway's anthrax work were reported yesterday by The Baltimore Sun.
Dugway's disclosure was so sketchy that it was impossible to determine how similar the powdered anthrax produced there was to that sent in the anthrax attacks. In addition to drying, other steps involved in producing the most lethal powders include making the particles uniformly small and processing them so they float freely.
Private and federal experts are clashing over how much powdered anthrax Dugway has made. The issue is politically sensitive since some experts say producing large quantities could be seen as violating the global treaty banning germ weapons.
William C. Patrick III, a scientist who made germ weapons for the United States and now consults widely on biological defenses, told a group of American military officers in February 1999 that he taught Dugway personnel the previous spring how to turn wet anthrax into powders, according to a transcript of the session.
The process, Mr. Patrick told officers at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, was not as refined as the one used in the heyday of the government's germ warfare program, but it worked. "We made about a pound of material in little less than a day," he told the officers. "It's a good product."
He did not say what strain of anthrax was used in this work.
But Ms. Nicholson, the Dugway spokeswoman, said workers there "never produced more than a few grams" of powdered anthrax in any given year. There are 454 grams in a pound.
Experts have said the letter sent to Senator Tom Daschle contained about two grams of anthrax spores - a small amount, but enough, if distributed with high efficiency, to infect millions of people.
Ms. Nicholson said the dry anthrax made in 1998 was of the strain known as Vollum 1B, which the Army used to make anthrax weapons before the United States renounced biological arms in 1969. She said it was used for decontamination studies.
"You have to use live spores because you are determining the rates of inactivation or kill," she said.
She said Dugway did make one- pound quantities of Bacillus subtilis, a benign germ sometimes used to simulate anthrax. Mr. Patrick could not be reached for comment on this point.
Elisa D. Harris, who handled biological defense issues on the National Security Council for the Clinton administration, said she knew nothing about a pound of dried anthrax being made at Dugway. She added that after President Richard M. Nixon unilaterally ended America's germ weapons program, the United States destroyed about 220 pounds of anthrax.
Dugway's production of dried anthrax is part of the government's secret research program on how to defend against germ weapons, which gained momentum in the late 1990's. The Clinton administration began a series of projects aimed at understanding the nation's vulnerabilities to biowarfare and devising ways combat the threats.
Experts like Dr. Rosenberg have argued that some of these programs violate the 1972 global treaty banning germ weapons. Others say these projects, including making small amounts of the germs, are permitted by the treaty and are vital to defense research.
It is uncertain how the disclosure by Dugway will be perceived abroad, where some European countries have recently accused the United States of turning its back on the germ treaty, charges that the Bush administration denies.
It is not known whether Dugway has shared its skills in making biological powders with other institutions, but it has shared its supply of the Ames strain.
In 1997, it sent germs to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, said Christopher C. Kelly, a spokesman there. He added that the institute, a sister lab to the Naval Medical Research Center, uses Ames to develop research assays for biological defense.
F.B.I. agents have interviewed staff members there, he said.
Intelligence officials say that Battelle Memorial Institute, a military contractor in Ohio, has experience making powdered germs. They say the contractor participated in a secret Central Intelligence Agency program, code-named Clear Vision and begun in 1997, that used benign substances similar to anthrax to mimic Soviet efforts to create small bombs that could emit clouds of lethal germs.
Katy Delaney, a Battelle spokeswoman, would not comment on the laboratory's anthrax work except to say that the lab had always cooperated "with any and all legitimate inquiries from law enforcement."
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CDC Gets Pentagon's Anthrax Vaccine
Officials to Use Medicine to Treat Those at Risk of Infection
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 13, 2001; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35061-2001Dec12?language=printer
Federal health officials have acquired 220,000 doses of anthrax vaccine from the Pentagon and preliminary approval from the Food and Drug Administration to use the vaccine as an experimental treatment if antibiotics fail.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has received permission to use the controversial vaccine in tightly controlled experiments to either inoculate high-risk workers or treat individuals who were recently exposed to the deadly bacteria, Bradley Perkins, a top anthrax researcher at the CDC, said yesterday.
The plan, which is still under review, signals continued concern among public health authorities that anthrax remains a very real threat. In addition to the possibility of future attacks, officials are worried about the hundreds of people exposed to anthrax bacteria in last fall's bioterrorist incidents who failed to complete a 60-day prescription to prevent the illness.
Although there is little solid evidence, researchers estimate anthrax spores can survive in the body for 60 days. That means that people who discontinue antibiotics prematurely could later develop the disease, and may not respond to another round of the drugs.
In addition to protecting against initial infection with the bacteria, officials suspect that the vaccine may work in treating anthrax victims in cases where an antibiotic is halted early or fails to work initially. "If we have any evidence of failure," such as a new case of anthrax disease, "the vaccine is available as a contingency," Perkins said.
Behind the scenes, Bush administration officials are involved in feverish negotiations over who should be vaccinated immediately. Calls to the Department of Health and Human Services were not returned yesterday.
Earlier this fall, at the height of the anthrax attacks, the CDC said it intended to inoculate about 1,000 laboratory workers and field investigators who are most likely to come into contact with anthrax bacteria. Others groups, such as the U.S. Postal Service and emergency rescue workers, expressed a desire for similar protection.
Depending on how the vaccine is used -- as a preventive measure or for post-exposure treatment -- health officials could inoculate 36,000 to 73,000 people, Perkins said. At least 32,000 people were initially given anti-anthrax medication. Anecdotal reports from postal workers in particular suggest 25 percent to 75 percent of the patients instructed to take a full course of medicine have chosen not to, often because of the unpleasant side effects.
"One of our biggest concerns is people who didn't take the full course," CDC Director Jeffrey Koplan said. "They really need to take all of those antibiotics that were available to them, because that's what kills those lingering spores when they turn into bacteria."
Although there has not been a new anthrax case since the mysterious death of Ottilie Lundgren in Connecticut on Nov. 21, the nation's public health leaders are aggressively pursuing potential new weapons against the disease.
Private and government researchers are studying possible antidotes and the behavior of the anthrax used in the attacks. But the vaccine is the most promising short-term hope.
Perkins said the CDC "worked closely with FDA in developing" the protocols for testing new uses of the anthrax vaccine, which is made by BioPort Corp. Anyone given the vaccine must provide informed consent and agree to thorough follow-up, he explained. The purpose is to both monitor the vaccine's safety and collect data.
Currently, the Department of Defense controls the nation's vaccine stockpile. In 1998 and 1999, about 400,000 military personnel were vaccinated against anthrax. But many soldiers, complaining of unpleasant side effects, have balked at taking the six shots over 18 months, and safety problems at BioPort's plant in Michigan have drastically slowed the vaccination program.
BioPort hopes to have its refurbished plant inspected by the FDA this month, which could mean the release of as many as 5 million doses of quarantined vaccine.
Meanwhile, the House yesterday approved bipartisan legislation by an overwhelming margin that authorized billions of dollars to guard against a future bioterrorist act.
The bill, which passed 418 to 2, would give $1 billion to HHS to bolster the nation's stockpile of antidotes and vaccines; another $1 billion in grants to state and local governments along with public and private health facilities for preparedness programs; $450 million for CDC; $100 million for FDA and $100 million to protect the nation's drinking water supply.
Staff writer Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.
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Military quickly going through inventory of bombs
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 13, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011213-99623021.htm
In the midst of the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. Navy ordered 1,074 more of one of the conflict's most-used weapons - bombs with satellite-guided tail kits that steer them to their targets.
The rapid pace of bombing during nine weeks of daily air strikes means that half of the more than 10,000 Joint Direct Attacks Munition kits manufactured so far could have been used, according to estimates.
"We've been using them with great effect, but also in very large numbers and we're looking at how we can build those inventories back as rapidly as possible," says Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
In October, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper said the military would order more JDAMs because its stocks were "below what we want them to be, but OK for what we see on the horizon."
The JDAM satellite guidance kits can be fitted on 1,000-pound or 2,000-pound bombs dropped from a variety of bombers and attack jets. A pilot or bombardier enters target coordinates into the bomb's computer, and the JDAM system controls the tail fins to steer th