------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Backpack nukes small but deadly
Irish Vow to Force Nuke Plant Shutdown
UK BNFL say to start controversial n-plant in days
Small News: Killing Other People's Children
EU protests over possible US duties on uranium
European Defense Ministers Meet
Turkey - CIA Factbook
Slovenia and Croatia ink accord on nuclear plant
Iraq Special Weapons Facilities
Leak Found at Japan Power Plant
ABM Treaty: Over and Out
Nuclear Strike on Bunkers Assessed
Radiation Bulletin NIF SPECIAL
US FERC won't block Williams LNG plant reopening
Reid Pleading Nevada's Case For Large Anti-Terror Share
Resting Nuclear Plant Is Finally Put to Sleep
Poll of world opinion leaders shows little empathy for U.S.
Anti-Terror Compromise Approved

MILITARY
Navy crew barges onto oil tanker
Norway offers landmine clearers for Afghanistan
Life during Wartime
Security terms get OK from Afghanistan's new rulers
Britain to Lead Peacekeeping Force
Taliban Rank and File Fade Back Into Society
Troops May Scour Caves for Qaeda, U.S. General Says
Rwanda-backed rebels, Congo warriors clash
Reeling From Riots, Argentina Declares a State of Siege
Thailand sees golfing paradise in minefield
Defector tells of hidden weapons sites
U.S. Scientist Questioned
Anthrax Vaccine Plan Sows Confusion
U.S. joins chemical arms audit
Adams, Cuba and IRA
Indian Army Kills 5 Islamic Militants
India Seeks International Support
Iran hits back after US 'attack' on tanker
An Iraqi Defector Tells of Work on at Least 20 Hidden Weapons Sites
Palestinians Win U.N. Approval
Bombing That Killed 5 Children a Mistake, Says Israel
S.Korea presses for peace talks with North
Enemies of the states
Report: Pakistan allows 'hot pursuit'
U.S. military supplies arrive in Philippines
U.S. Police and Intelligence Hit by Spy Network
Struggles Inside the Government Defined Campaign
U.N. Security Council Approves International Force for Kabul

POLICE / PRISONERS
State of Siege Declared in Argentina
Outside probe sought of police shooting
Al-Qaeda 70 per cent intact, says FBI official

ENERGY AND OTHER
NYPA buys 8 fuel cell power plants for NY City
Windmill power -- a breath of fresh air
Nine European Cities to Get Fuel Cell Buses
DOW CHEMICAL FINE WILL FUND GREEN CARS
UK Ofgem sets guidelines for green power tariffs
Regional Electricity Group Gets Approval
Ibuprofen blocks benefits of aspirin
Controversial Professor to Be Fired

ACTIVISTS
It's not extreme to hold all life sacred



-------- NUCLEAR

Backpack nukes small but deadly

UPI Science Writer
12/20/2001 6:55 PM
http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20122001-055216-3875r

NEW YORK, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Backpack nuclear devices are small, man-portable nuclear weapons with the explosive power of thousands of tons of TNT.

These weapons were designed to be carried by one or two people for use behind enemy lines in the event of a war. With yields of up to 10 kilotons, they are relatively tiny when compared to the 100- to 25,000-kiloton bombs found in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But they are nevertheless still weapons of mass destruction -- the bomb detonated at Hiroshima was about 15 kilotons in explosive strength. One kiloton is the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT.

The most immediate effects of a nuclear explosion would be an intense flash of ultraviolet light and a fireball tens of millions of degrees hot that would set a large area ablaze. This would be followed seconds later by a shock wave that leveled buildings and turned debris into a torrent of deadly high-speed projectiles.

Ted Postol of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., estimates that even a 1 kiloton bomb would instantaneously leave a swath of destruction a half-mile in radius in which no one could survive the heat and blast. A 5-kiloton bomb and a 10-kiloton bomb would immediately create lethality zones about two miles in diameter.

In addition, the nuclear flash would be much brighter than the sun at noon. The intense light would cause blindness and permanent retinal injuries for anyone looking directly at the explosion in an area up to roughly eight miles from ground zero, assuming clear weather with high visibility.

The explosion of a backpack nuke at ground level would be limited in some ways. The blast would be mitigated to some degree by buildings, especially in an urban area. A ground-level explosion would also not produce an electromagnetic pulse or EMP as would an atomic burst well above ground -- from an incoming missile, for example. An EMP would shut down power grids and knock out unprotected electronics -- effectively cutting telecommunications, destroying computers and knocking out automobile engines.

Nonetheless, even a relatively small nuclear blast at ground level would produce an intense, deadly blanket of gamma ray-emitting radioactive fallout.

"The fireball breaks through the surface of the earth, carrying into the air large amounts of dirt and debris," explained theoretical physicist Robert Nelson at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J. "This material has been exposed to the intense neutron flux from the nuclear detonation, which adds to the radioactivity from the fission products."

Predicting radiation levels from early fallout is difficult and extremely dependent on factors such as weather, terrain and bomb design. Postol estimated that even with a 1-kiloton bomb, within an hour or so there would be a swath of fallout 2 1/2 to 3 miles long and maybe a quarter-mile wide. "Anyone who didn't get out of that would be exposed to a lethal dose of radiation," Postol said.

Because of the fallout, relief operations would be highly risky in the immediate aftermath of such an attack. First responders like paramedics and firefighters could be entering areas of very dangerous radiation.

In weapons tests with 5-kiloton bombs, about half of the total radioactivity produced was distributed in the fallout, while the other half was confined to the highly radioactive crater. "A rough estimate would be that as many people would die of fallout as would die from the initial blast, assuming that they couldn't immediately evacuate and be properly decontaminated," Nelson said in an interview with United Press International.

The number of casualties caused directly by the explosion is difficult to predict and dependent on the location of the device, whether there is any warning, as well as the time of day and the number of people at work or home.

Nonetheless, the officials -- who spoke to UPI during a recent briefing in Washington -- estimated that a 1-kiloton nuclear device exploded in Lower Manhattan could inflict between 80,000 and 200,000 casualties. A 10-kiloton device would kill at least twice as many they said.

Moreover, immediate casualties are likely to represent only a proportion of the eventual death toll.

Even if medical centers around the blast zone are still operable, it is likely that they will be overwhelmed, and there not will be enough empty beds for even the most critically injured.

In the days following the attack many of the injured would almost certainly die from lack of any medical care. Victims trapped in collapsed buildings or tunnels might not survive in time for rescue teams to save them. In addition, while early fallout comes down roughly a day after the explosion in an area around the blast site, delayed fallout knocked hundreds of miles into the atmosphere could spread radioactivity around the world for decades.

"A ground burst would have much more fallout than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, because those were high altitude explosions," Nelson said.

-------- britain

Irish Vow to Force Nuke Plant Shutdown

By Shawn Pogatchnik
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, December 20, 2001; 11:46 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6524-2001Dec20?language=printer

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Ireland vowed Thursday to force Britain to shut down its Sellafield nuclear complex, as Irish lawmakers and environmentalists led protests outside a new facility at the plant designed to produce recycled fuel for reactors worldwide.

"We cannot allow this situation to stand. It is an act of supreme arrogance," said Joe Jacob, Ireland's government minister responsible for public safety, who warned of a possible Sept. 11-style terrorist strike on the Irish Sea plant.

Sellafield, Britain's major nuclear facility, has been a sore in Anglo-Irish relations ever since Queen Elizabeth II opened the first reactor there in 1956.

British Nuclear Fuels PLC, which operates the complex in northern England, said it had drastically reduced emissions of radioactive material into the sea since the 1970s. It insisted that the Mixed-Oxide Fuel plant, which opened Thursday after a 5-year delay over safety concerns, would not produce any harmful emissions at all.

"This is wonderful news and is the best Christmas present we could have had," declared Jack Allen, head of operations at Sellafield, where the MOX plant is expected to underwrite at least 1,200 jobs.

Britain says it will have a strong market for the MOX plant's product, particularly in Japan.

The plant - completed in 1996 but delayed partly because of a scandal involving forged security checks at a sister recycling facility - would receive shipments of spent plutonium and uranium from several countries to be converted into new rods of fuel, each equivalent in energy to a ton of coal. The sea shipments in and out would receive armed escort.

Ireland, which has no nuclear energy, has complained for decades of its potential exposure to any accidents at the plant, which lies some 150 miles across the sea. Pressure groups in two coastal towns, Drogheda and Dundalk, claim their communities suffer higher-than-average rates of cancer and birth defects because of Sellafield.

British politicians and scientists, however, insist that recent studies by independent nuclear watchdogs had all found no evidence of dangerous emissions from Sellafield. They suggest Irish ire has more to do with a pending general election in Ireland, where all parties consider opposition to Sellafield a vote-winner.

"We are not aware of any scientific or epidemiological evidence showing any ill effects from Sellafield operations in either the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland," said Dr. Michael Clark, editor of Britain's Radiological Protection Bulletin.

As Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's ruling Fianna Fail party promised to pursue every legal and diplomatic channel against Britain, opposition lawmakers traveled to Sellafield to join protesters who handcuffed themselves to the gates of the MOX plant.

The Sept. 11 attacks on the United States have given local lawmakers a particularly fearful new angle of protest.

"If Sellafield goes up in an attack, the prevailing wind will take it right to our country," warned John Gormley, a former mayor of Dublin and a lawmaker from Ireland's Green Party, who took part in Thursday's demonstrations.

Dr. Tom O'Flaherty, chief executive of Ireland's nuclear watchdog, the Radiological Protection Institute, which has not been permitted to visit Sellafield, said radioactive clouds would be released if an aircraft crashed into key storage tanks or reactors. He estimated that, depending on winds, the radiation could produce fatal cancers in 30 out of every 50,000 people in Ireland.

----

UK BNFL say to start controversial n-plant in days

Reuters
December 20, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13771/story.htm

LONDON - State-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) said it will start operating a controversial nuclear fuel manufacturing plant within the next few days.

"We expect to put plutonium into the plant on or around December 20," a spokesman for the group said on Tuesday.

BNFL's 472 million pound ($796 million) mixed oxide (MOX) fuel plant has been the focus of several legal challenges to stop it starting up following its completion in 1996.

The lastest legal battle was tied off on Monday when a United Nations court announced that both Britain and Ireland had submitted reports outlining consultations they had been ordered to have.

The Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which ordered the two countries to consult each other about safety and pollution concerns, had earlier this month rejected a request from Ireland for an injunction to prevent the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) from opening.

Ireland says it is worried about safety and pollution from Sellafield because the BNFL's MOX plant will discharge low level radioactive emissions into the Irish Sea.

The plant will mix highly toxic plutonium with uranium oxides to create a fuel that can be burnt in specially adapted nuclear reactors.

Environmental groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, also say that apart from the pollution concerns, the MOX fuel will find few customers because it is more expensive than conventional uranium reactor fuel.

An international furore erupted in 2000 when it was revealed data on a pilot batch of MOX fuel sent to Japan had been falsified.

The ensuing row and cancelled orders led to the UK government shelving plans to part privatise BNFL.

A government commissioned report into SMP published earlier this year said the plant would deliver net financial benefits of 216 million pounds ($364 million) over its lifetime once build costs were excluded.


-------- depleted uranium

Small News: Killing Other People's Children

By Lawrence McGuire,
December 20, 2001
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcguire1.html

The deep craters and pieces of shrapnel indicate that America's weapon of choice in Kabul was the Mark 82 500lb bomb, which is designed to be guided to its target by the pilot, a nearby observation plane or a spotter on the ground. But there was nothing accurate about the 500lb bomb which fell on Bibi Mahru. It killed Gul Ahmad, 40, a Hazara carpet weaver, his second wife Sima, 35, their five daughters and his son by his first wife. Two children living next door were also killed.

Children killed because of war or terrorism is not a subject I like to contemplate. I draw away from it instinctively, perhaps because the unnecessary death of a child represents the horror of our society and I can do so little about it. I prefer to escape this horror by focusing on the enjoyable aspects of my place in modern life: my warm apartment, the food in my refrigerator, books, movies, music, hiking, travel, my work, and most importantly, the personal human relationships which give me love, friendship, security, and a feeling of belonging.

However, thousands of innocent people have died in Afghanistan, and are still dying, and every death is, after all, the death of somebody's child. I know I am in some way related to their death, because first of all I am another human being sharing their world, participating in the creation of that world in my daily life. I'm also connected because I grew up in the country, the U.S.A., whose political system has organized the bombing: the bombs that killed were partially paid by my tax dollars, and the same political system also issued my passport, which gives me privileges most people in the world lack. And in a small way I participate in that political system. So I feel I have some small responsibility to face the fact of these dead children and to talk about them.

The children who died, and are dying, in Afghanistan because of U.S. bombing do not merit much attention in our mass media.

They are small news, other people's children. Perhaps this is even more of a reason for me to talk about them. They seem to me to be an important part of the story. Perhaps the reason that the mass media keep the story small news is to maintain wide support for this war, and the next one. That is certainly a possibility.

But for the mass media the deaths of poor people are usually small news, throughout the year. How many newspapers put this on the front page?

On Sept. 11, more than 35,000 of the world's children died of starvation. A similar number have perished from hunger every day since then in developing countries, according to figures from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Another reason for the lack of coverage is that we don't want to know about U.S. bombs killing other people's children. It threatens our sense of who we are. We prefer to cast ourselves as the good guys, and good guys don't kill children. This can be seen as proof of our humanity. After all, if we were completely depraved the news of the deaths of children would not disturb us.

On the other hand, when we so willingly and easily allow ourselves to be ignorant of the results of U.S. bombing we are also, perhaps, indicating our level of morality. I'm not sure about this. Measuring the level of morality is hard enough, if not impossible, for myself, so how can I hope to measure the level of my culture's morality? Is morality something that can be measured? If it cannot be, then how does George Bush know we are 'good' and they (Osama bin Laden, the Taleban, etc.,) are 'evil'?

Perhaps my focus on the deaths of children is a result of morbidity. If so, then at least I share some respectful company. For example one of my favorite writers, Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry, also is contemplating the deaths of other people's children these days:

Here is the other question that I have been leading toward, one that the predicament of modern warfare forces upon us: How many deaths of other people's children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) at peace? To that question I answer: None. Please, no children. Don't kill any children for my benefit.

I wonder how many children actually died? And what were their names? And what has happened to their families? This brings up another equally horrible fact to contemplate, what is happening right now to the children who have (so far) survived? Some are freezing to death, others are starving:

Farough, an 11-year-old boy whose family of six arrived here from Chaghcharan a month ago, says he spends his days begging for a piece of bread or a sip of clean water or standing in line for hours in the cold in hope of getting a bag of rice.

"My mother is deaf and dumb and my father is very old," he explained. A 2-year-old sister died from the cold a few days ago. "We came because we had nothing to eat at home, but here sometimes I eat and other times nothing. The ground is my mattress and the sky is my roof. We are very miserable."

How many are orphans? How many have wounds that will disfigure and affect them for the rest of their lives? And, yet another addition to the horror, how many will die or be disfigured in the years to come from all the unexploded cluster bombs (the bomblets are yellow, and look very similar to the food packets that were dropped) which the U.S. left behind? The harmful effects of the U.S. bombing will last for years, and we will never know the true human cost to the people of Afghanistan.

In Laos, Cambodia, and Viet Nam people are still dying from the land mines planted by the U.S. military 30 years ago. (Why did we plant these mines in the first place? Anybody know?) The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world to refuse to sign an international treaty to ban land mines.

We do know that as a result of the bombing a country that was dependent upon international aid for survival before September 11, has become an even more desperate place:

The U.S. bombing campaign, while helping to defeat the oppressive Taliban regime, has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in two ways. First, hundreds of thousands of people, terrified by the bombs, have fled their villages and swelled the ranks of the refugee population. Second, before the Oct. 7 air attack, millions of Afghans were receiving international assistance despite the difficulties of working with the Taliban. But after the bombing began, humanitarian agencies pulled their staff from the country and closed, or severely curtailed, their operations.

The U.S. is currently preventing aid from reaching people by refusing to support an international peacekeeping force to insure the aid gets to the people in need, though it's possible this will change soon:

All of the aid groups I talked to in Afghanistan say that unless an international force is sent in to secure the roads, Afghanistan will be the scene of a humanitarian crisis of horrific proportions. The good news is that England, France, Turkey, Jordan, Bangladesh and Indonesia have all offered troops to carry out this mission. The bad news is that the Pentagon and the Northern Alliance are resisting the introduction of such a force.

When the American terrorist and Gulf War hero Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City he also blew up a day care center. The death of those children was big news in the U.S. They were not other people's children, they were our children. McVeigh called it 'collateral damage', a phrase he learned from the U.S. officials who used it to describe the 200,000 civilians killed by the U.S. bombing of Iraq.

Since our bombing of Iraq in 1991 over a million Iraqis have died because of U.S. imposed trade sanctions. The man who used to be in charge of this 'program', Hans Von Sponeck, says this:

"The fact that today, on average, according to UNICEF, 5,000 children are dying every month because of sanctions, is a violation of human rights. The Convention of the Rights of the Child is violated. The Covenant on Political and Civic Rights is violated. The Hague Convention is violated."

Another UN official who resigned said this:

"We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral." Denis Halliday, after resigning as first UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, The Independent, 15 October 1998

In addition many are dying in Iraq from cancer caused by the depleted uranium in the bombs that were dropped. The U.S. also dropped depleted uranium bombs on Kosovo and Serbia. Here is a recent headline about that subject:

US Wins Defeat of Depleted Uranium Study

McVeigh said he blew up the building because the Federal Government killed a lot of adults and their children in Waco, Texas. He was avenging those deaths, he said, and also he hoped to prevent more deaths in the future, by using terrorism against the Government. From his point of view it seemed like a logical thing to do. To me it seems insane. Perhaps it was insane. But the surviving members of families who lost children in Afghanistan due to U.S. bombing might feel like doing the same thing. It's not unlikely:

Rukia, 39, who like many Afghans uses only one name, lost her family five days ago when she says a United States bomb hit her Kandahar neighborhood. Wounded in the stomach and with her left arm shattered, she had to flee before she could bury her children. She was nearly bombed again, while a relative was driving her to a hospital in Pakistan "They're bombing anything that moves," she said. "It's not true that they bomb civilians by accident. They're targeting the innocent people instead of Osama bin Laden.".. ..Rukia covered her face and started to cry when asked what she wanted to tell the Americans about the loss of her five children. She thought a while before responding: "Destroy, finish, terminate America."

Why disturb ourselves with reading articles about civilian deaths? Isn't it better to console ourselves with the idea that even though children died, it was worth it because the bombing prevented more children from dying in the future? I think many people feel this way.

That is one reason they support what they call war and what I call state terrorism. And maybe they are right. The problem is this: however pleasant the idea that 'bombing is good', there is no evidence that supports it, in reality. How does bombing defenseless civilians prevent terrorism or promote peace? The past two months of bombing have not made our world a safer, more peaceful place to live in. It has helped certain politicians, certain arms manufacturers, and promoted the philosophy of 'might makes right'.

But I don't really believe that people support the bombing because they think it will prevent children's deaths in the future. I think, instead, that people support it because they are able to ignore the deaths of other people's children, and they are afraid.

Perhaps I'm wrong. But there is definitely a strong correlation between refusing to acknowledge the suffering our bombing is causing other people, and support for the bombing. Most people who support the bombing of Afghanistan have no idea how many civilians were killed by the bombing of Iraq, or the bombing of Viet Nam. A Viet Nam war memorial showing the names of every civilian killed by the U.S. in that war would be at least 40 times longer than the one in Washington. But we don't want to know that, it's old small news. That makes it easier for us to support bombing Afghanistan.

There is also an element of moral cowardice. This is a dangerous subject to broach because maybe it represents my own version of self-righteousness. It probably does. However it seems true to me, so I'll say it. I think many people support the bombing because they are afraid to speak out against it. I think it takes moral courage to oppose the government during a war, and to speak out to your friends, family, co-workers, and daily acquaintances. Instead it is so much easier to identify with the government leaders, to allow ourselves to be guided in our opinions by the mass media, and to pretend that we are being brave by supporting the bombing.

Our culture tells us all our lives that the heroes are the men who kill for the good cause. But it takes no heroism to support war, absolutely none. But men in particular like to think of themselves as possible heroes, that if necessary they will also have 'the stomach' to kill. It pleases their self-image to support the war, and to see themselves as 'protecting' someone by killing others. They can easily dismiss those who disagree as 'peaceniks' who just do not understand. A real man, in their view, must not get emotional and worry about the deaths of other people's children. He must be mature and be willing to follow the leader and kill, and support killing with pious logic about 'just war'. This is one way many men conform and support mass murder and pretend to themselves they are being brave by doing so.

I think most women who support the bombing do so because they are able to ignore the deaths it causes, and because they think 'since politics are controlled by men, it's their responsibility'. Women seem to be less inclined to heroic fantasies about the necessity of war, perhaps because women and children are always the one who suffer the most in modern war.

However I think a lot of people, men and women, agree with me, but like me have little clue as to what to do about it. Many people say we should, as citizens, act to restrain the military capacity of our government.

Our government wants to militarize space in order to have complete military hegemony over every other government in the world. That is the plan according to the government document Vision 2020 published during the Clinton Administration. On the front cover it says: 'Dominating the Space Dimension of Military Operations to Protect U.S. Interests and Investment.' This is the meaning of the Missile Shield plan. This is why President Bush is going to tear up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Most governments do not want to militarize space. They have voted against it in numerous United Nations resolutions. But the U.S. wants to do it, and probably will.

This brings me back to my question about measuring the moral level of our culture. If we begin with a moral rule as old as humanity, common to all cultures and religions, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you', we can ask ourselves to what degree we are following that moral rule.

But how can we follow this rule (supposing that we even want to) if we refuse to learn just what we are 'doing' unto others? We can first of all ignore the fact that our bombs are killing other people's children. We can also rationalize it by repeating what our leaders say, who describe the deaths as 'unintended consequences' of our bombing. We can also refuse to name it what it is: state terrorism, mass murder. If we ignore that we are 'doing death' unto others, we will surely do nothing to prevent further deaths in the future.

Just how many deaths of other people's children are we willing to ignore, or to rationalize with words like 'unintended consequences'? One million? Two million? If the government tells us it is necessary, and the mass media makes the deaths small news, could we perhaps ignore the deaths of ten million children? Why not? It's certainly possible, given our recent history.

Since WW II the United States has been regularly dropping bombs on civilians, killing lots of people and their children, in Japan, Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan, and many other places. The U.S. directed and supported Contras killed thousands of other people's children in Nicaraugua:

In 1989 the US invaded Panama to overthrow the former CIA agent, General Manuel Noriega - a man who had now become an enemy; 5,000 civilians were killed by American forces and buried in mass graves. And in 1982 the US began funding the Contra war against the Sandinista governm0ent. Corinto harbor was mined in 1984 and the court of world opinion recognized that the policy of the United States was that of a war criminal. Nicaragua, now the second poorest nation in the western hemisphere, has never recovered from that war. There were 40,000 Nicaraguan dead, the innocent who were categorized as "soft targets".

That's part of the Nicaragua story. The Afghanistan story goes something like this: in 1979 Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State Zbignew Brezinski authorized the training of foreign terrorists to fight in Afghanistan, to draw the Soviet Union into a 'trap'. This was before the Soviet Union invaded the country. After the invasion the CIA continued the massive financial aid and training for these Islamic extremists, most of whom came from Middle East. Among those who answered the CIA's call was Osama Bin Laden. This CIA operation was the biggest in its long history of covert operations. The Soviet Union was successfully driven out of Afghanistan but the country was devastated and the U.S., goal accomplished, did nothing to help rebuild the country. Out of this devastation arose the warlords of the current Northern Alliance and also the Taleban. The Taleban was supported by U.S. allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. itself. The U.S. oil company Unocal negotiated with the Taleban, asking them to assist in the building of pipelines through the country.

However Osama Bin Laden returned, after being driven from Sudan, and his new battle was directed against the U.S., apparently because of the U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia, his homeland.

So what is the justification for killing over 3,600 civilians, and putting hundreds of thousands at risk of starvation? This was the news on December 9:

More than seven million people out of an estimated population of 22 million are classified by aid organisations as being at "very high risk".

And from another source, on the same day:

Every night as the temperature dips well below zero, as many as 40 people die from cold and starvation. In the six cemeteries scattered through the camp, many of the piles of stones marking graves are so tiny that it is clear most victims are children and babies.

15 out of 19 of the September 11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. Not a single one was from Afghanistan. Not a single one was a Taleban. The Sept. 11 terrorists have not even been proven to have visited Afghanistan. The Taleban had agreed to negotiate an extradition of Bin Laden, but the U.S. government refused. Perhaps the Taleban were lying, but we will never know. Certainly they were a terrible government, but our government helped create them and helped create the foreign terrorists who were living in Afghanistan, and then it kills innocent civilians trying to destroy what they created, justifying this with the 'war on terrorism'. And now there is no real government in Afghanistan, just a loose assortment of warlords. And the Taleban are still there, they've just switched sides.

All this death, sadness and suffering. President Bush says again and again we are 'good'. He is confident that he knows our level of morality. I'm not so sure.

We are killing other people's children and ignoring their deaths.

In fact we get upset if people bring up the subject. We condemn people who call it 'U.S. terrorism'. For some reason when we kill other people's children it's not terrorism. It's the 'unintended consequences of a just cause'. When 'they' do it, it's 'evil'. If we are willing to do this what is our level of morality? As I said at the beginning, this is a difficult question to answer, and I think it can be only answered as individuals, talking to ourselves.

The U.S. government is currently taking the steps that greatly increase the possibility of nuclear war in the future. The U.S. government wants to be able to wage war on any country on the planet without the risk of counterattack, just like we now can bomb Afghanistan for months with little risk to our aircraft and almost no risk to our own people and territory.

It's very possible that the U.S. Government will soon be able to kill every child on the planet who is not a U.S. citizen, without any reprisal. Many people in the U.S. advocated using nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. What is our level of morality? Are we truly 'good'? How will we use our military power? If we were willing to ignore the deaths of civilians in the past, and if we are willing to ignore the deaths of civilians now, what do you think our behavior will be in the future?

Will civilian deaths in the future also be small news: other people's children?

Lawrence McGuire lives in France. He can be reached at blmcguire@hotmail.com

Source of quotes in text:

1 Published on Saturday, December 1, 2001 in the Guardian of London US Planes Rain Death on the Innocent 'Precision' Raids Kill Residents in Capital City By Rory McCarthy in Kabul

2 December 10, 2001"A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting" by Professor Marc W. Herold Ph.D., M.B.A., B.Sc. Study available here: http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/.

3 Published on Wednesday, November 28, 2001 in the Christian Science Monitor Injustice Seen as Fertile Soil for Terrorists by Peter Ford

4 Published in the Winter 2001/2002 issue of YES! Magazine The Failure of War by Wendell Berry

5 NEWARK STAR-LEDGER 11/30/01 For many, home is a blanket and the food is weeds BY FARNAZ FASSIHI

6,7 Published on Sunday, December 16, 2001 in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Feeding the Hungry May Be the Prime Task of Peacekeepers by Medea Benjamin

8 December 6, 2001 OPPOSING SANCTIONS ON IRAQ AN INTERVIEW WITH HANS VON SPONECK By Larry Everest Published at http://www.zmag.org

9 Published on Friday, November 30, 2001 by Reuters Going Backwards US Wins Defeat of Depleted Uranium Study by Irwin Arieff

10 Published on Saturday, December 8, 2001 in the Sydney Morning Herald Terminate America: Message From an Afghani Mother in Mourning by Tasgola Karla Bruner in Quetta, Pakistan

11 Published on Saturday, December 8, 2001 in Guardian of London Selective Justice: The US Has Been Sponsoring Terror in My Native Latin America for Decades by Bianca Jagger

12 The Independent on Sunday (London) December 9, 2001 Humanitarian crisis: 'anarchy' leaves 1m without food Conditions are worst in areas firmly under Northern Alliance control By Imre Karacs

13 The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) December 9, 2001 They call this 'the slaughterhouse' Christina Lamb

-------- europe

EU protests over possible US duties on uranium

REUTERS BELGIUM:
December 20, 2001
Story by Adrian Croft
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13779/story.htm

BRUSSELS - The European Union voiced concern on Monday about a U.S. finding that European exports of uranium were subsidized and said it might complain to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The EU said the U.S. Department of Commerce had made a decision on Friday which could lead to the imposition of duties on low-enriched uranium from several European countries.

Enriched uranium is used as a fuel in nuclear power generating plants. EU exports worth around $500 million are at stake, and would be heavily hit by any duties, the EU said.

In a statement, the EU's executive Commission voiced "serious concerns" and disappointment about the way the Department of Commerce reached its decision that the EU exports were dumped and subsidized.

The European Commission questioned the methodology used by the Department of Commerce, saying data and arguments put forward by the EU and the European industry had not been properly taken into account.

"The EU will now carefully examine this decision and reserves its right to take the matter up in the World Trade Organization if this dispute cannot be amicably resolved," EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said in the statement.

The EU said it regretted that the Department of Commerce had "again demonstrated a very protectionist approach to trade policy," noting that the U.S. International Trade Commission recently proposed imposing high tariffs on steel imports.

The 15-nation EU and the United States often cross swords over trade matters, with uranium joining steel, an EU ban on hormone-treated beef and U.S. tax breaks for exporters as causes of transatlantic friction.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick is due to hold talks with Lamy in Brussels on Tuesday.

URANIUM PROBE

The Commerce Department launched an investigation of two European uranium companies in Dec. 2000 after receiving a complaint from USEC Inc., the only American producer of enriched uranium.

USEC accused its European competitors, Eurodif SA and Urenco Ltd., of unfairly selling uranium in the U.S. market for less than their cost of production and benefiting from government subsidies.

Urenco is a British-Dutch-German consortium, while Eurodif is controlled by the French government.

The European Commission said that if the International Trade Commission found next month that the European imports were harming the U.S. industry, the United States would impose duties of 32.78 percent for uranium exports from France and 2.26 percent for exports from Germany, the Netherlands and Britain.

The EU also said it was concerned about the use of antidumping duties to protect USEC, which it said received generous assistance from the U.S. government.

An executive with Urenco's U.S. subsidiary said last week the company could file a preliminary application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission early next year to build a $1 billion U.S. uranium enrichment facility.

----

European Defense Ministers Meet

By SELCAN HACAOGLU
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 20, 08:45 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=turkey&SLUG=TURKEY-DEFENSE-SUMMIT

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Defense ministers from southeastern Europe met on Thursday to discuss the U.S.-led war on terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and border security.

The countries from Balkans and southeast Europe were expected to issue a statement backing the campaign against terror but it is not clear what new measures they might take. They activated a multinational force in May to conduct peacekeeping missions in the Balkans.

Turkey's Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu said at the opening of the meeting that border security, the non-profileration of weapons of mass destruction, and the terrorism fight would top the agenda. The annual meeting coincides with increased awareness of terrorist threats following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

``Compared to the past, regional countries are more eager in preserving the peace and stability in the region,'' Cakmakoglu said. ``This meeting is a sign of this eagerness.''

Turkey, despite fully backing the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign and being the first Muslim country to offer troops for Afghanistan, is deeply concerned over suggestions that the war could spread to its southern neighbor, Iraq. Turkey served as the launching pad for attacks against Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War.

U.S. officials have recently accused Iraq of maintaining a germ warfare program.

Meanwhile, Balkan countries are disturbed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld proposal Tuesday during a summit in Brussels that NATO cut its forces in Bosnia by up to a third because their police work there has begun to strain nation's needs to fight terrorism.

Countries such as Macedonia fear that the new U.S. policy could hurt long-term stability in the region. NATO is leading close to 60,000 troops in three separate military operations, in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was scheduled to attend the meeting in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya but he canceled after it coincided with Rumsfeld's trip to Europe.

Instead, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Jack D. Crouch, attended the meeting along with defense ministers or representatives from Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Romania, Ukraine, Italy, Croatia and Slovenia.

Many defense ministers will hold bilateral meetings on the summit sidelines, but there are no scheduled meetings between rivals Turkey and Greece, which are at loggerheads over the use of NATO facilities by the newly created European Union army.

---
[A related earlier story... ]
Turks Train Northern Alliance Guards

NOVEMBER 28, 05:30 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=turkey&STORYID=APIS7G2BPO80

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkish police are training 13 guards of Afghanistan's northern alliance in Istanbul to help build a stronger police force in Afghanistan.

The guards arrived last week for three weeks of training at the Istanbul Police Department, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday. The ministry oversees police and security. The ministry said the northern alliance leadership requested that Turkey train the 13 guards. He said it was not clear if more guards would arrive for training.

Turkey, NATO's only Muslim member, has strongly supported the U.S.-led campaign against Afghanistan's Islamic Taliban rulers and Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect of Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

It was the first Muslim country to offer troops for combat in the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan. a Turkish force of up to 3,000 soldiers is on standby for a possible peacekeeping mission.

Turkey has a long history of training Afghan officials both in Afghanistan and in Turkey since the 1920s. Thousands of Afghan students also have attended Turkish schools.

The country enjoys close links to groups opposed to the ruling Taliban regime and especially to Uzbek Gen. Rashid Dostum of the northern alliance.

---

Turkey - CIA Factbook

12/20/01 excerpt
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/tu.html
Map at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/maps/tu-map.jpg

Transnational Issues

Disputes -

international: complex maritime, air, and territorial disputes with Greece in Aegean Sea; Cyprus question with Greece; dispute with downstream riparian states (Syria and Iraq) over water development plans for the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; traditional demands regarding former Armenian lands in Turkey have subsided

Illicit drugs: key transit route for Southwest Asian heroin to Western Europe and - to a far lesser extent the US - via air, land, and sea routes; major Turkish, Iranian, and other international trafficking organizations operate out of Istanbul; laboratories to convert imported morphine base into heroin are in remote regions of Turkey as well as near Istanbul; government maintains strict controls over areas of legal opium poppy cultivation and output of poppy straw concentrate

---

Slovenia and Croatia ink accord on nuclear plant

REUTERS
SLOVENIA: December 20, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13775/story.htm

KRSKO, Slovenia - Slovenia and Croatia signed on Wednesday a deal resolving a ten-year old dispute over jointly-owned nuclear power plant Krsko, which will enable it to resume power supplies to Croatia in July next year.

"With this deal Croatia will re-establish its co-ownership and active management in Krsko. Since we are net energy importers, we needed to resume energy supplies from this plant," Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan told a news conference.

He added that the Krsko plant, located in Slovenia close to the Croatian border, would deliver a fifth of Croatia's total power needs.

Slovenia and Croatia have had a number of ongoing disputes since they declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

In addition to the Krsko plant, the two neighbouring states are trying to resolve disputes over their sea and land borders and money owed to Croatians by Slovenia's Ljubljanska Banka.

Slovenia cut Krsko's electricity supply to Croatia in July 1998 after the two countries failed to strike a deal on the future of the plant.

Negotiations on all unresolved issues were resumed by Racan and his Slovenian counterpart Janez Drnovsek this year and led to the signing in July of draft agreements on their borders and the Krsko plant. The Ljubljanska Banka issue remains unresolved.

"I hope the agreement signed today (on Krsko) will stimulate the solution of all remaining questions," Racan said.

Drnovsek had warned in September that Slovenia would not ratify the Krsko agreement if Croatia did not approve the border agreement. However, he said his government had decided to sign the deal anyway to reduce the number of open issues.

"Not signing this agreement would mean our government was reneging on its commitments. Both governments committed to do this, even though we would have liked to see both agreements signed today," Drnovsek said.

-------- iraq

Iraq Special Weapons Facilities

Posted at Federation of American Scientists
December 20, 2001
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/osiraq.htm

Osiraq / Tammuz I 33°12'30"N 44°31'30"E

Iraq established its nuclear program in the late 1960s when it acquired its first nuclear facilites. Later, in the 1970s, Iraq was unsuccessful in negotiations with France to purchase a plutonium production reactor similar to the one used in France's nuclear weapons program. In addition to the reactor, Iraq also wanted to purchase the reporcessing plant needed to recover the plutonium produced in the reactor. Even through these requests were denied, France agreed to build a research reactor along with associated laboratories. Iraq built the Osiraq 40 megawatt light-water nuclear reactor at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Center near Baghdad with French assistance. Approximately 27.5 pounds of 93% U-235 was supplied to Iraq by France for use in the Osiraq research reactor.

The reactor was a type of French reactor named after Osiris, the Egyptian God of the dead. The French renamed the one being built in Iraq, "Osiraq" to blend the name Osiris with that of the recipient state, Iraq. French orthography then made it "Osirak." Iraq called the reactor "Tammuz," after the month in the Arabic calendar when the Ba'th party came to power in a 1968 coup.

Iraq began to expand its nuclear sector in the 1970's, but made little progress in the early 1980's, when most of its energy and attention were focused on the war against Iran. In September 1980, at the onset of the Iran-Iraq War, the Israeli Chief of Army Intelligence urged the Iranians to bomb Osiraq. On 30 September 1980 a a pair of Iranian Phantom jets, part of a larger group of aircraft attacking a conventional electric power plant near Baghdad, also bombed the Osiraq reactor. Minor damage to the reactor was reported. No further Iranian air attacks against Iraqi nuclear facilities were identified during the rest of the seven-year war.

When Israeli intelligence confirmed Iraq's intention of producing weapons at Osiraq, the Israeli government decided to attack. According to some estimates, Iraq in 1981 was still as much as five to ten years away from the ability to build a nuclear weapon. Others estimated at that time that Iraq might get its first such weapon within a year or two. Prime Minister Menachem Begin felt military action was the only remedy. Begin feared that his party would lose the next election, and he feared that the opposition party would not preempt prior to the production of the first Iraqi nuclear bomb.

The raid would have to occur before its first fuel was to be loaded, before the reactor went "hot" so as not to endanger the surrounding community. The target was distant: 1,100 km from Israel. Preparations included building target mock-ups and flying full scale dress-rehearsal missions. The aircrews were selected from the cream of the IAFs fighter corps. The IDF Chief-of-Staff, Lt. Gen. Rafael (Raful) Eitan, briefed the pilots personally. Displaying unusual emotion, he told them: "The alternative is our destruction".

At 15:55 on 07 June 1981, the first F-15 and F-16's roared off the runway from Etzion Air Force Base in the south. Israeli air force planes flew over Jordanian, Saudi, and Iraqi airspace After a tense but uneventful low-level navigation route, the fighters reached their target. They popped up at 17:35 and quickly identified the dome gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. Iraqi defenses were caught by surprise and opened fire too late. In one minute and twenty seconds, the reactor lay in ruins.

Baghdad reiterated a previous statement that the French atomic reactor was designed for research and for the eventual production of electricity. In a statement issued after the raid, the Israeli government stated that it had discovered from "sources of unquestioned reliability" that Iraq was producing nuclear bombs at the Osiraq plant, and, for this reason, Israel had initiated a preemptive strike.

The attack raised a number of questions of interpretation regarding international legal concepts. Those who approved of the raid argued that the Israelis had engaged in an act of legitimate self-defense justifiable under international law and under Article 51 of the charter of the United Nations (UN). Critics contended that the Israeli claims about Iraq's future capabilities were hasty and ill-considered and asserted that the idea of anticipatory self-defense was rejected by the community of states. In the midst of this controversy, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) came under fire from individuals and from governments who complained that the Vienna-based UN agency had failed to alert the world to developments at Osiraq. IAEA officials denied these charges and reaffirmed their position on the Iraqi reactor, that is, that no weapons had been manufactured at Osiraq and that Iraqi officials had regularly cooperated with agency inspectors. They also pointed out that Iraq was a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (informally called the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT) and that Baghdad had complied with all IAEA guidelines. The Israeli nuclear facility at Dimona, it was pointed out, was not under IAEA safeguards, because Israel had not signed the NPT and had refused to open its facilities to UN inspections.

With the loss of this reactor, Baghdad apparently refocused its nuclear weapons effort on producing highly enriched uranium. Its interest in acquiring plutonium as fissile material for weapons continued, but at a lower priority.

After the raid, Baghdad announced that it planned to rebuild the destroyed facility. Although France agreed in principle to provide technical assistance, no definitive timetable was announced. Ultimately, France decided to forego commercially lucrative opportunities to repair the damaged Osirak reactor.

Project 182, relating to the construction of a research reactor, foresaw the construction of an indigenous research reactor to replace the capability that would have been provided by the Osirak (Tamuz-1) research reactor. This project originated in 1984/85 after the breakdown in Iraq's negotiations with France for the rebuilding of the Osirak reactor. The Project 182 reactor was intended to be a natural uranium - heavy water type, similar to the Canadian NRX reactor. When the project had become more defined, in 1987 and 1988, studies concentrated on the design of the reactor core. As this work progressed it was recognised that considerable IAEC and foreign resources would be needed to bring the project to fruition. In mid-1988, while still in the study phase, the project was allowed to lapse due to lack of available resources - a consequence of the higher priority given to the needs of the EMIS enrichment program.

After invading Kuwait, Iraq attempted to accelerate its program to develop a nuclear weapon by using radioactive fuel from the Osiraq reactor. It made a crash effort in September, 1990 to recover enriched fuel from this supposedly safe-guarded reactor, with the goal of produced a nuclear weapon by April, 1991. The program was only halted after Coalition air raid destroyed key facilities on 17 January 1991.

On the third day of the Desert Storm air campaign, a large conventional daylight strike by 56 F-16s with unguided bombs attacked the nuclear complex, which was one of the three most heavily defended areas in Iraq. The results were assessed as very poor. According to DIA, the nuclear research facility was not fully destroyed following the F-117 strikes on day 6 of the campaign. An additional 48 F-117s were tasked seven more times against the target over the next 32 days, dropping 66 more bombs. Moreover, on day 19 of the campaign, 17 F-111Fs were tasked to strike the site. On 26 February 1991, day 42 of the campaign, DIA concluded that the ability to conduct nuclear research or processing at the site was severely degraded.

Sources and Resources

The Israeli Strike Against OSIRAQ Lucien S. Vandenbroucke Air University Review Sep-Oct 1984
http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1984/sep-oct/vanden.html

IN SUPPORT OF ANTICIPATORY SELF-DEFENSE ISRAEL, OSIRAQ, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW By Prof. Louis Rene Beres & COL. (IDF Res.) Yoash Tsiddon-Chatto
http://freeman.io.com/m_online/jun97/beres1.htm

Major Sites Associated With Iraq's Past WMD Programs UNSCOM 3 December 1997
http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/s/971203_sites.htm

-------- japan

Leak Found at Japan Power Plant

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 20, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Nuclear.html

TOKYO (AP) -- A radioactive leak was found in the turbine room of a massive nuclear plant in northern Japan but was quickly contained, a company official said Thursday.

Officials at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant discovered the leak during a spot check of a radioactive waste disposal area inside reactor No. 5, the official said on condition of anonymity.

More precisely, the leak was detected within a device that analyzes gas formed as a byproduct of the plant's operations. The device is part of the building that houses the turbine.

No one was injured, he said.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa's seven reactors have a combined capacity of 8.2 million kilowatts, making it the world's largest power-generating nuclear facility.

The company official refused to specify what the radioactive substance was, but said that there was no danger of radioactivity escaping outside the building. The reactor was functioning normally, he added.

Katsuyuki Ishii, a spokesman for Niigata state, where the plant is located, said monitors in the area indicated no abnormally high radioactivity levels. It is in the village of Kariwa, 160 miles northwest of Tokyo.

Resource-poor Japan depends on nuclear power for about 30 percent of its electricity needs. A recent spate of accidents and cover-ups, however, have made many Japanese uneasy about nuclear power.

Japan's worst nuclear accident killed two workers and exposed hundreds of others to radiation at Tokaimura, 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, in September 1999.

-------- treaties

ABM Treaty: Over and Out

Thursday, December 20, 2001
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3906-2001Dec19?language=printer

Robert Stayton [letters, Dec. 14] is misinformed about the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (in arguing that it is illegal for President Bush to order withdrawal from the ABM Treaty). The treaty's specific provisions allow either party to withdraw without reason, given six months' notice. President Bush has done that.

By withdrawing, the United States also releases Russia from its obligation -- if it had any (the treaty was with the Soviet Union, which no longer exists).

He also should note that the Soviet Union illegally built and operated the Krasnoyarsk ABM radar in violation of the ABM Treaty and, as recently revealed documentation has shown, surreptitiously fielded a national ABM system, also in violation of the treaty.

The United States is doing this the proper way by withdrawing in accordance with the terms of the treaty.

LAWRENCE COOPER
Crofton

•Regarding George W. Bush's unilateral executive shredding of the ABM Treaty:

Why is it that, to enact a treaty with another nation, it takes the signature of the president and ratification by a two-thirds majority of Congress, but to obliterate that same treaty, it takes nothing more than a single president's willful decision that he'd rather go off on his own in another direction?

President Bush has a proclivity for writing into law whatever he wants -- again without having to go through the inconvenience of getting the approval of Congress -- through the instrument of executive orders. If you look at these actions, from the creation of military tribunals to the evisceration of laws such as the Freedom of Information Act, you begin to get the picture of a president with little use for Congress, the courts or, when it comes right down to it, the American people, a majority of whom, after all, didn't vote for him in the first place.

MARTY KURZFELD
Santa Cruz, Calif.

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

Nuclear Strike on Bunkers Assessed
Congress Receives Pentagon Study

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 20, 2001; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3935-2001Dec19?language=printer

The Pentagon and the Energy Department have completed initial studies on how nuclear weapons could be modified to attack hardened bunker complexes and buried tunnels that conventional weapons cannot destroy, but no decision has been made to go ahead with such a program, according to a Defense Department report to Congress made public yesterday.

The two departments have also been studying the need for a new, low-yield nuclear weapon to find a military means, conventional or nuclear, to attack and verify destruction of the growing number of such underground facilities that protect the "most valued and strategic capabilities" of such potential enemies as North Korea, Iraq and China, the report said.

The study was completed in July, before U.S. military forces in Afghanistan were faced with trying to bomb and destroy caves where Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network may be holed up.

"Any development and procurement of advanced nuclear capabilities would be considered in the context of nuclear stockpile policy, plans and priorities as well as future [Defense Department] strategic programs," according to the Pentagon report. It was sent to Congress in October and disclosed yesterday by Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, a nonprofit organization concerned with safety, environmental and nonproliferation issues surrounding nuclear weapons.

A decision on whether design work will begin on a new or modified nuclear weapon to go after hardened underground targets is expected to be contained in the long-awaited Bush administration nuclear posture review, which sources said yesterday is at the White House for final review. Under law, it is required to be completed by the end of this month and may be released Dec. 28, according to sources.

Although some Pentagon and nuclear weapons laboratory experts have been pushing for more than a year to have design work begun on such a weapon, as of July, when it was completed, the report said, "There is no current program to design a new or modified [hard target] nuclear weapon."

Nonetheless, the report said, the Defense and Energy departments "continue to consider and assess nuclear concepts" that could result in a requirement for such a weapon, and a planning group is working to define the scope for a design feasibility study.

Although most publicity has been devoted to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's use of underground bunkers, U.S. intelligence "suspects" there are more than 10,000 potential hardened targets "and their numbers will increase over the next 10 years," according to the report.

Such underground facilities are being used to protect not only a country's leadership, but also command, control and communications centers; weapons production facilities; and missile launching sites for chemical, biological and nuclear warheads, the report said.

One advantage nuclear weapons have over conventional weapons when it comes to destroying bunkers containing chemical and biological warfare materials is that they "destroy both agent containers and the CBW agents," the report says.

The "lethality is optimized," the report added, "if the fireball is proximate to the target. This requires high accuracy; for buried targets, it also may require a penetrating weapon system."

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

------- california

Radiation Bulletin NIF SPECIAL

Thu, 20 Dec 2001
To: radbull@southwark.dsl.net
From: Roger Herried <rogerh@energy-net.org>

This is a special on the push to build the National Ignition Facility at the Livermore Labs. There were articles on the NIF in yesterdays bulletin, which is part of an large series by the Albuquerque Tribune.

Ed.

12/20/01 RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL)VOL 9.302

RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE
NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS NIF SPECIAL

1 NIF: 'It will work'
2 'NIF won't do it'
3 Former Livermore scientist says NIF is a lemon
4 Local company Ktech Corp. vies for huge NIF power contract
5 NIF: Need for objectivity
6 Watchdog group: NIF is a blunder; Livermore should be green lab
7 NIF: Meet the opposition

NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES

1 NIF: 'It will work'

Albuquerque Tribune Online
By Lawrence Spohn Tribune Reporter

Associate Livermore Laboratory Director George Miller is confident the lab's massive fusion energy laser will overcome its obstacles and perform as promised

LIVERMORE, Calif. - It may have lost some of its luster, but the controversial National Ignition Facility fusion energy laser still is the star at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Laser-charged feud

The $4.2 billion National Ignition Facility is a complex machine that scientists hope to use to produce tiny blasts of fusion energy, the power source of the sun, stars and nuclear bombs.

What: Fundamentally, the NIF is an enormous laser that uses special chemically-doped glass and unique crystals to generate powerful beams of light energy.

How: That energy is to be focused by 192 individual laser beams into a target chamber and onto a BB-sized pellet containing radioactive hydrogen, which, when super-compressed and heated, is supposed to ignite, yielding fusion energy.

Where: NIF is being built at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with assistance from New Mexico's Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories. They are the nation's three nuclear weapons laboratories operated by the Department of Energy.

Why: Government officials say NIF is the core instrument of the nation's multi-billion-dollar nuclear-science-based Stockpile Stewardship and Maintenance Program. Program scientists aim to maintain the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear arsenal without nuclear testing, using the advanced experimental tools of nuclear blast simulators such as NIF and supercomputer simulations of bomb blasts based on past real bomb test data and the new simulations.

Issue: Various critics, including scientists in New Mexico, say NIF is too costly, won't work as promised and can't achieve ignition.

NIF, which is supposed to generate real but very tiny "stars" in the laboratory, is "the biggest single project we have ever done here," says the project's overseer, George Miller, a Livermore Lab associate director who assumed control of the project after it was rattled by severe cost overruns and delays.

The Tribune in a series of interviews - in person, by phone and via e-mail over several months - invited Miller to address questions raised about NIF, including the latest report by government investigators that predicts the project will cost at least double what Congress originally budgeted for it and be six years late. NIF was supposed to open next year at an original budgeted cost of $1.2 billion. Now the Department of Energy, which owns and operates Livermore Lab, estimates NIF will cost $3.5 billion and be completed by 2008. Other estimates, including government investigators', are much higher, even assuming no further fiscal complications or delays.

None are anticipated, says Miller. He is enthusiastic about finally completing construction of the building that will house NIF and the installation inside of the first series of platforms that will hold NIF's special glass and optical components.

The $275 million building dwarfs the rest of the lab, which, except for its tall fences and strict security, resembles a college campus.

Miller insists enthusiastically that the building is virtually complete and that construction now is concentrating on assembling the laser's skeleton, the metal pedestals, boxes and other infrastructure that will support thousands of optical elements, from laser glass to turning mirrors.

"This will show we can do it cleanly, with precision alignment of these clean structures," he says, emphasizing the lab has resolved how to maintain critical cleanliness for the sensitive laser.

While critics continue to hammer NIF as out of control and likely to fail, Miller says he is confident it not only will work as advertised but will achieve its goals - including igniting a small, hydrogen-filled sphere to produce fusion energy. NIF's primary purpose is create, in the laboratory, the conditions of a nuclear bomb explosion on a very small scale, so that scientists can better understand the process without actually blowing up test bombs.

Livermore and DOE say NIF is critical to maintaining the reliability and safety of the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal despite critics who say it is not and ultimately will fail.

Miller says a host of problems - from producing costly, defect-free laser glass to maintaining a clean environment to protect laser optical components - have largely been resolved and that the lab deserves credit for some remarkable technical achievements.

The project already has in hand about half of the optical glass of "fused silica" and about 75 percent of the laser glass in hand, he reports.

Most of it is being stored in a Fremont, Calif., warehouse, he says, from which it will be shipped for "finishing and polishing to very tight tolerances."

NIF's building, essentially completed this fall, now is occupied with crews assembling optical platforms and benches.

Miller says "there were major structural issues which the project has managed and organized." The big solution: "Execute the classic aerospace project management technique" and go outside the lab for management expertise, hiring Jacobs Engineering to put the NIF ship back on a even keel and prevent further listing.

"It's big, it's complex," Miller says. He points out that it is a huge experimental laboratory like other DOE projects that have "failed because of management," not because of technical problems.

"We're a research lab, and things this big, the lab can't do itself," he explains, calling it a tough but well-learned lesson. "But we brought the technical talents to bear on the technical issues that were inherent in this project."

And, he says, contrary to others' claims, Livermore scientists have largely resolved them. He disputes critics' claims the problem was fast-tracking the project "on the fly" before technical hurdles were resolved.

"It was the lack of (our) appreciation for the engineering problems in a project of this size," he says. "It was like trying to solve Rubic's Cube.

"The conceptual design was quite good. The step that was missed was how exceedingly difficult it was going to be to put all of this together, to integrate," he says.

Miller acknowledges "there are still remaining technical issues that have not been completely resolved."

Among them, he says, is the damage the laser could do to expensive optical elements "right at the target chamber" as the light is being converted from NIF's main infrared energy to the ultraviolet light needed at the target to ignite it into a fusion energy burst - a tiny thermonuclear blast.

He says the laboratory is working diligently on the problem and believes it has demonstrated a solution in a one-inch-square test glass. The lab plans - between now and the laser's initial operational deadline, in about four years - to do further experiments.

But he says he doesn't worry much about it working, though he is concerned that failure will mean further worries "about what the operational costs will be."

Ultimately, he says, the damage threshold may not be fixable. It may turn out to be an "operational cost issue," meaning the sensitive optics may simply need to be replaced when damaged, but that won't keep NIF from fulfilling its mission.

The cost of each piece at risk, he explains, is "about $10,000, and you need 192 of those."

So he calculates that, in the context of NIF's current operational and management budget projection of $150 million per year, "if we have to change more frequently than we assumed, it costs about $7 million more. That's real money, so we are concerned," he says.

"I have very high confidence we will solve this problem," he says firmly. "This is not something that keeps me up at night."

"The glass impurities (which had caused most of the damage in the past) are out," Miller says. "The raw glass meets - in fact, exceeds - the specifications that we wrote."

Regarding claims that NIF could cost as much as $5 billion or more to build, Miller says, "I totally reject that. That's not a true figure."

He says Congress has authorized a new budget of $2.2 billion for the project and that there are roughly $1.2 billion in associated costs, pegging the lab's and DOE's total cost estimate at about $3.5 billion. Investigators for the Government Accounting Office, however, says NIF will cost at least $4.2 billion.

NIF or `Blatz'

Miller questions whether it's fair to attribute all associated costs to NIF, arguing that, even if NIF didn't exist, DOE would be incurring those costs for some other nuclear weapons blast machine based on a technology other than NIF.

The critics, he contends, "assume that effort will go away if NIF goes away. It won't.

"The stockpile stewardship program (to maintain the nation's nuclear warheads) has a set of requirements to certify the stockpile without testing (nuclear bombs)," he explains. "NIF is a tool to do that. Take it away, and you still have to do it a different way.

"You still need (fusion) targets for the `Blatz' machine, or whatever. You still have to get ignition somehow to certify and warrant the stockpile, whether you like it or not," he says.

In response to suggestions - including at Livermore's sibling labs, Los Alamos and Sandia - that NIF be scaled down and fully tested first, Miller says the technology is proven, and scaling the project down ultimately would just be more costly.

Suggestions range from reducing NIF from its planned and approved 192 beams to 96 beams, 48 beams or even a single eight-beam line demonstration project to prove the technology works before proceeding. Livermore says this not only would be more expensive but also would delay important nuclear stockpile stewardship experiments.

"There is no question it (NIF) will work," Miller says. "We've already showed it will. We did that on Beamlet."

Beamlet was a small, prototype NIF laser on which Livermore conducted experiments to assess potential NIF performance and problems. When Livermore finished with Beamlet, it was disassembled and shipped to Sandia Labs, where it was rebuilt and currently is being used in conjunction with Sandia's much-heralded Z fusion accelerator - considered by some to be a NIF challenger.

Many external critics - including Steve Bodner, a retired Naval Research Laboratory fusion laser expert, and Leo Mascheroni, a Los Alamos fusion physicist - contend that Livermore failed to conduct complete and thorough NIF testing on Beamlet, which would have revealed NIF's fundamental problems and its probabilities for failure.

Miller insists Beamlet testing was complete and that, in any event, building only a fraction of NIF would cause a three- to five-year delay and add in the neighborhood of "$500 million to the cost."

The need for NIF

While even some of Livermore's own nuclear weapons scientists have dismissed NIF as unnecessary, Miller argues that "NIF actually is a subset of the requirements" for maintaining the nation's nuclear arsenal in DOE's Stockpile Stewardship and Maintenance Program at Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia labs.

In that program, considered the alternative to maintaining the nuclear arsenal by blowing up test bombs, scientists at the three labs are trying to use nuclear blast simulators and the fastest supercomputers in the world to assess or predict problems with weapons in the arsenal.

Critics argue, however, that much of this program, including NIF, has little relevance to existing weaponry and really is designed to attract young scientists to design the next generation of weapons.

"Some say you don't need it for stockpile stewardship; others say you can only do it with nuclear testing (actually detonating nuclear bombs)," Miller says.

"There is a range of opinions, and it's a matter of judgment. We won't actually know the answer until you do the work."

[http://www.abqtrib.com/print/index.cfm]

The Albuquerque Tribune.

==

2 'NIF won't do it'

Albuquerque Tribune Online
By Lawrence Spohn Tribune Reporter

Some nuclear weapons scientists say NIF might be a good idea, but it will not - can not - be actualized, and the Department of Energy needs to move on to something more dependable and less costly


LOS ALAMOS - For more than three decades, physicists have dreamed of using a powerful laser to instantaneously superheat and compress hydrogen to ignite it into miniature stars on Earth.

In the $4.2 billion National Ignition Facility, a glass laser under construction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, some expect to see that dream finally come true, with NIF creating controlled thermonuclear burns and fusion energy in the lab.

Los Alamos' Leo Mascheroni is not among them.

In fact, NIF is a dream-shatterer for the fusion physicist, who predicts the project will fail, even as it diverts scarce funds from a far more promising research path with staggering global energy implications.

"Taxpayers are being absolutely robbed by a band of crooks," says Mascheroni, "who are also robbing science and the future, your children and my children, of a path to energy security."

It's a righteous position, but warranted, he says, because the stakes are very high and the deception extreme.

"One of the reasons I came here in the beginning and why I still am fighting is the dream," he explains. "It's a beautiful dream of clean, abundant fusion energy for all mankind. But NIF won't do it."

An independent Los Alamos scientist, Mascheroni is far from alone in criticizing NIF, Livermore Lab or the Department of Energy, which owns both.

NIF is the country's biggest science project and the nation's premier nuclear weapons blast simulator. It has been a lightning rod for DOE's nuclear weapons Stockpile Stewardship and Maintenance Program, in which scientists are attempting to use simulators and supercomputers in place of nuclear bomb tests. But even weaponeers at DOE's three nuclear weapons labs have had little good to say about the giant laser.

Controversial since its start, it was scientifically assailed by weaponeers on the eve of its groundbreaking in 1997. And it has struggled since 1999 with at least $1 billion in cost overruns and a six-year delay.

Scientists familiar with NIF say the laser is:

Underpowered and has little to no chance of reaching fusion energy ignition - its major technical goal. Stephen Bodner, a retired Naval Research Laboratory laser physicist, chides that it should be renamed "The National Illumination Facility" and if allowed to proceed should do so on a basic science mission, not under the ruse of fusion energy ignition for nuclear weapons research.

A highly questionable defense investment, with little, if any, direct benefit to nuclear weapons stewardship - its primary mission. Retired Livermore Lab laser physicist Ray Kidder, Bob Peurifoy, a retired vice president of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, and Los Alamos National Laboratory physicists Chuck Cranfill and George York say NIF is not necessary to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal. "Safety sells," says Peurifoy, who accuses DOE of using scare tactics to sway Congress. "The stockpile is safe, as safe as it's going to be. These expensive toys will not affect safety and reliability of the enduring nuclear weapon stockpile."

Still prone to cost escalations based on the suspicion that Livermore "low-balled" its costs and still has not resolved costly technical issues. Robert Civiak, a physicist and retired analyst for the Office of Management and Budget, cites potential laser-energy induced damage to NIF's special glass and optics as a huge potential problem.

A civilian fusion-energy technology dead-end, because a glass laser is subject to damaging itself and cannot be fired fast enough (the so-called "rep-rate") to generate electrical power.

Mascheroni believes a hydrogen fluoride laser is the only alternative; scientists at Sandia and elsewhere see Sandia's Z accelerator as the most promising NIF challenger.

Six years after NIF was proposed, four years after nuclear weaponeers challenged it and three years after its cost overruns and delays were revealed, Christopher Paine asks "the fundamental question: How did we get here?"

Paine, a senior nuclear weapons analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C., says Congress, the White House and taxpayers should want to know how NIF could "be more than double its budgeted cost, 10 times its initial cost estimate and still never have been subjected to an independent scientific review."

And the bargain is getting worse, he charges, because NIF's costs and delays have risen and its overseers have been quietly reducing its requirements. In the simplest terms, he says taxpayers are spending "more money but get less performance."

Mascheroni has been making that case, or versions of it, for more than a decade. NIF's most enduring critic, he snipes scientifically at the giant laser every chance he gets in front of: NIF or laser fusion review panels; DOE officials who will listen; a secretary of Energy; members of the New Mexico Congressional delegation; staff members of key congressional committees; and, of course, the media.

He shares the anti-NIF spotlight now with a vocal, independent and diverse band of scientists and analysts who question the laser's value, its scientific mission and a void of accountability for it.

Livermore and government officials responsible for NIF say the critics are all wrong, that NIF is the right train, and it's back on track after a two-year cascade of mismanagement, budget overruns, delays, investigations and reforms.

In contrast, Mascheroni and company are predicting a train wreck with taxpayers holding the only ticket.

Collectively, they see NIF as:

At best a daydream providing some interesting science but at worst a nightmare, failing its "vital" nuclear weapons mission.

Consuming taxpayer dollars by the billions as an exotic nuclear weapons tool looking for a job.

Threatening funding for far more fundamental nuclear weapons stewardship research at Livermore and sibling nuclear weapons labs, Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories in New Mexico.

Undermining the future of the nuclear test moratorium and the nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Compromising future fusion energy research, if not science's own hard-won political credibility.

As NIF has ballooned to more than a billion dollars over budget and a six-year delay, Mascheroni has felt vindicated but unfulfilled. The NIF train, he says, is still rolling.

He and other critics believe that only a full, public, congressional investigation using subpoena powers and a comprehensive, independent scientific review can fully expose NIF. Otherwise, Mascheroni predicts, it will be one of the costliest, most heralded scientific duds in history.

"The politicians are not hearing the truth," he says. "The guys who know - the weaponeers - haven't been included and aren't allowed to talk. That's because they know that the NIF is not going to work and isn't going to help with these stockpile problems."

If the issues were not so grave, the Argentine-born scientist says, NIF would be "a laughing movie, a costly comedy of errors."

Livermore Lab Associate Director George Miller, fending off critics from California to North Carolina, isn't amused.

He says Mascheroni's hydrogen fluoride laser was considered by experts and dismissed. NIF won, he says, and hydrogen fluoride lost.

"Mascheroni certainly has his opinions, but the vast community (of scientists in this field) disagrees with him," says Miller, a nuclear weaponeer who directs the NIF project.

Miller says Mascheroni, as well as Bodner, are at odds not only with Livermore's own NIF analysis and predictions but also with several NIF reviews done over the last decade for DOE.

He cites reviews by the National Academy of Sciences, the DOE Interial Confinement (fusion) Advisory Committee and the Department of Defense's JASONs panel as supporting "NIF because of its importance to the weapons program."

Science on the firing line

DOE owns and operates all three nuclear weapon labs, all of which are contributing to NIF and all of which have received some NIF funding.

But critics in and out of the government say DOE not only has done a miserable job of overseeing the project or honestly evaluating it but has compromised scientific integrity by repressing serious peer review of NIF among the three labs.

Peurifoy slams the lab directors for failing in their duty to be honest about NIF, but he lays most of the blame on DOE.

"Look, people need to know DOE can't spell `peer review'; they have no clue; they couldn't tell night from day," says Peurifoy.

Efforts to obtain DOE comment on NIF over several weeks were unsuccessful. Officials have told Congress that experts believe the project reforms are succeeding and they expect NIF to meet its milestones.

But a federal District Court judge earlier this year prohibited DOE from forwarding to Congress the latest in the series of official and positive NIF reviews.

The judge, responding to a petition by environmental and anti-nuclear groups, echoed a previous federal court ruling in which another NIF review was similarly blocked. The courts concluded that DOE produced the assessments in violation of federal laws that govern the fairness and openness of governmental advisory groups.

"And now even the GAO says NIF has never had an independent scientific analysis," says Mascheroni, referring to two critical Government Accounting Office investigations ordered by Congress on the heels of NIF mismanagement revelations.

In two reports, GAO details serious NIF concerns and shortcomings, including a lack of NIF project consensus among scientists at Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia Labs. The reports warn of DOE's failure - even after NIF cost overruns, delays and continuing scientific criticism - to conduct truly independent reviews of the project.

"Persistent DOE oversight problems continue to place the NIF project at risk," the GAO tells Congress. And NIF's caretakers, it charges, are "the same people (who) have performed oversight since 1999 when NIF's cost and schedule grew unnoticed."

Mascheroni is disappointed that Congress has virtually ignored the GAO reports, which he says represent the first official government recognition of his contentions in over a decade.

Peer review reviewed

Officials at New Mexico's two labs, which previously have raised concerns about NIF, declined interviews about the project, saying through media officers that they fear DOE retribution.

Fusion program scientists, even some now outside the program but still subject to DOE, declined comment for fear they would face punitive measures, including loss of their security clearances - a tactic used against Mascheroni, according to a DOE security investigation.

An article in the British science journal Nature last fall by NIF critics Bodner and Paine suggested that NIF's problems aren't just a reflection of poor DOE or Livermore management but of a failed scientific process at the national labs.

The article, "When Peer Review Fails," details how Livermore complaints to DOE, about the only negative DOE review of NIF, resulted in the wholesale dismissal of that committee. DOE then obtained a NIF-sympathetic National Academy of Sciences review panel, they write.

Eleven of its 16 members, according to the article, "had either previously stated positions supporting NIF and/or were consultants or advisers to Livermore or even the NIF program itself." And overall, it charges, "14 members had a personal or institutional connection with the very agency whose program was supposedly undergoing independent review."

While NIF has been endorsed in a so-called "white paper" by all three nuclear weapons lab directors - often cited by NIF proponents and sympathetic politicians, insiders say that document is a farce. They say it had to be substantially watered down before Sandia President Paul Robinson and Los Alamos Director John Browne would sign it, along with Livermore Director C. Bruce Tarter.

In 1997, Robinson addressed swirling rumors that his vocal concerns about NIF had put his job in jeopardy. He denied he had any direct evidence they were true. And the allegations were denied directly by then-DOE Defense Programs Chief Vic Reis, a staunch NIF supporter and the acknowledged architect of the DOE's Stockpile Stewardship Program.

But a former Sandia fusion scientist says Robinson was ordered to fire him, but the Sandia leader refused.

Last year, the NIF lid blew off when Sandia's own internal NIF analysis - favoring a significant reduction in NIF's size and funding - became public. The lab was immediately denounced publicly by then-Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, who within hours of the news report issued a formal statement criticizing Sandia, saying its NIF opinions were not conducive to inter-lab cooperation and would be ignored.

The next day, Robinson apologized for allowing the internal analysis to become public, but he stood by it technically.

In an earlier appearance at a nuclear weapons research conference, Robinson was asked why Sandia was not pressing Congress to fund his lab's highly successful Z accelerator, a technology now considered to be far cheaper than NIF and a direct NIF competitor.

Robinson responded bluntly: "Congress would never believe the second liar."

Mascheroni, Bodner and Paine applaud Robinson's candor - as have other NIF critics. But they say Congress and the public have received an overwhelming and grossly distorted view of NIF from DOE, Livermore and the otherwise silent New Mexico labs.

They charge that an inter-lab NIF alliance, forged and enforced by DOE officials, gives each lab a lucrative piece of the stockpile stewardship program, masks serious scientific disagreements over NIF's potential for success and stifles criticism over NIF's role in weapons stewardship.

Mascheroni sees it as basic intimidation, with which he says he has first-hand experience. He says he lost his Los Alamos Lab job after criticizing the lab's and DOE's laser fusion program and the underlying "short wavelength" laser beam science that favors the NIF path - based largely on experiments performed on NIF's predecessor, the Nova glass laser.

He has argued then and since that trying to create fusion energy, whether for nuclear weapons simulators or for fusion energy potential, would require a much more potent instrument, a brute hydrogen-fluoride laser that produces a long wavelength beam.

He points to an internal Los Alamos review, known as the Canavan Panel, that carefully scrutinized his research and theory, intensely questioned him, and evaluated what then was considered his doomed approach. It was headed by Greg Canavan, the former director of DOE's military fusion program and a close research associate of hydrogen bomb developer and retired Livermore Lab leader Edward Teller.

Staffed with other skeptics who, like Canavan, favored Livermore's short wavelength approach, the Canavan Panel ultimately reversed course. It endorsed the potential validity of Mascheroni's theories. Not only that, it called for more research to evaluate them and actually recommended funding his ideas as an alternative mode.

In a controversial decision by Los Alamos Lab Director Browne - then an associate director responsible for military fusion research - the Canavan Panel's recommendations were dismissed.

At the same time, the lab destroyed its Antares fusion laser, a long wavelength laser which other scientists had used in independent experiments that suggested Mascheroni could be right.

Mascheroni says it was part of a Los Alamos lab effort to focus its research on a short wavelength competitor to Livermore's Nova glass laser. Ultimately, Los Alamos was forced to abandon that research because of unfavorable scientific progress and negative scientific reviews.

Mascheroni contends that many scientists at Los Alamos who tactfully tried to side with him suffered intimidation and eventually gave up, some feeling their jobs were on the line in behind-the-scenes conflict.

Officially, Los Alamos Lab says Mascheroni was laid off as part of a labwide reduction in force and lost his job by the rules, not because of his scientific views. A DOE security agent who examined internal Los Alamos and DOE records found otherwise.

William Risley, asked by DOE officials to independently review Mascheroni's case, later confirmed Mascheroni's claims in a "Special Report to the Inspector General, DOE." He found that Mascheroni had been the victim of trumped-up security violations, before which he had had a good performance work record.

Risley took the unusual step in his report of recommending Mascheroni's research be revived, because the evidence suggested his theories might be right. Mascheroni had been railroaded out of the lab, he concluded, because his unconventional fusion research views clashed with the mainstream laser fusion research path that Los Alamos wanted to follow, to keep pace with Livermore's lead.

DOE and Los Alamos ignored Risley's charges.

Secret experiments

Mascheroni says his case demonstrates the extent to which DOE and lab officials were willing to go to sustain the fusion research momentum toward NIF, even when it clashed with scientific evidence and mounting concerns among weaponeers that NIF wouldn't do them much good.

Mascheroni says they know that, even if NIF works, it might only produce a "hot spot" ignition, not the "volume" ignition produced in actual nuclear weapons detonations that are of the biggest interest and use to weapons scientists.

Mascheroni contends that Los Alamos weaponeers said as much to the GAO investigators, who included the concern in their official NIF report to Congress.

And, he says, NIF reviews have not accounted for actual secret underground nuclear bomb experiments that show the NIF laser is too puny and will fall far short of fusion energy ignition.

Driven by his own analysis of a series of classified underground nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site, Mascheroni is unequivocally convinced that, despite its massive grandeur, NIF is but a nuclear pea-shooter.

Essentially, in these still classified experiments - known as the Halite-Centurion series - Livermore and Los Alamos scientists used focused X-rays produced by detonating nuclear bombs underground to generate fusion ignition, which actually burned small hydrogen-filled targets.

In these sophisticated experiments - the data from which remain secret - several different types and sizes of hydrogen targets were used. Some ignited, yielding fusion energy, while others did not.

Scientists agree that the bomb experiments demonstrated that a focused, directed energy beam, such as a laser, might be used to produce fusion energy ignition in a laboratory setting and possibly even, one day, in a fusion power reactor. Less clear, however - and downright contentious among some - is what kind of laser power, and how big, is needed to drive the fusion reaction.

Mascheroni says the Halite-Centurion experiments were prematurely ended before scientists could answer that question clearly. But based on the data collected from experiments that yielded fusion energy ignition and those that didn't, he contends NIF is doomed.

He charges that its potential is incorrectly calculated, based on the Halite-Centurion data and on a faulty nuclear weapons predictive computer code called LASNEX.

Los Alamos Lab's Chuck Cranfill and George York, intimately familiar with the research, agree and actually went to DOE headquarters last year to make the case against NIF personally and at their own expense.

They, too, unsuccessfully argued that NIF is another giant, risky experiment, York warning that DOE's military fusion program is "literally littered with lasers of failed (fusion ignition) promise" - that is, which were sold, like NIF, as ignition machines.

Mascheroni says: "The successful (Halite-Centurion) experiment showed you need a laser with energy 55 times higher than what NIF is designed to reach," referring to NIF's target output of 1.8 megajoules of energy (about the equivalent of 1.8 million watts).

Mascheroni charges that NIF's certification to Congress earlier this year, by retired Air Force General John Gordon, the new director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, is based on "nonvalidated LASNEX (computer) code calculations.

"These calculations have no credibility and are known to be in error," he says.

Livermore's Miller responded, in a prepared statement: "There has never been any guarantee given that the NIF or earlier systems would achieve ignition.

"Ignition is a grand scientific and technological challenge that requires significant research, development and technology evolution over decades. NIF was designed with our best knowledge of the requirements for ignition. As an example, that is why NIF will have 60 times more energy than the Nova laser.

"Our current knowledge of ignition requirements is better than it has ever been, in part because of the approximately 15,000 experiments conducted on Nova and the seminal experiments during the Halite-Centurion (H/C) series at NTS.

"The H/C series of experiments was used to study the physics of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) capsules. The results from the H/C experiments demonstrated excellent performance and put to rest fundamental questions about the feasibility of achieving high gain in ICF."

True, says retired Livermore Lab laser physicist Kidder, but that doesn't mean NIF will actually ignite a fusion target or that Mascheroni is wrong in claiming it can't.

He worries that the scientific establishment has placed unwarranted confidence in the NIF predictions and may have erred in refusing to take Mascheroni's analysis seriously.

Because of Mascheroni's constant criticisms, Kidder says he was asked late last decade by then NIF director Mike Campbell to reassess the secret underground bomb fusion experiments.

Kidder says his analysis of the experimental Halite-Centurion data was inconclusive: It does not support NIF proponent's claims, but neither did it prove them wrong.

Kidder says that following intense criticisms from Mascheroni and other scientists - in particular those aired in a 1997 Albuquerque Tribune article - Campbell asked him to explore "the (target) scaling relationships - that is, between the large ones (targets used in underground tests) to small ones (planned for use on NIF)."

Kidder says he looked only at the Livermore experiments to which he had direct access, not at Los Alamos', to which he didn't have access. And he says that many of the experimental capsules didn't work, so, he "was particularly interested in the capsule (target) that worked best."

His conclusion: "You couldn't say that the NIF capsule wouldn't work, but you sure couldn't say, either, that it (underground experiments) showed that it would.

"The capsule (used) in Nevada was enormously more likely to ignite than the corresponding NIF (designed) capsule . . . because there is a scaling of energy here," he says, but gaps in the data make it difficult to say accurately if the scale will hold true for NIF.

He says he proposed declassifying the Halite-Centurion data so he could publish his analysis in a scientific journal that might invite additional analysis of the Halite-Centurion experiments by others. But the data and his analysis remain classified.

"There is a chance that this still might get declassified," says Kidder, noting that he recently learned some Livermore scientists still are pushing to get the data declassified. But he suspects that NIF officials, who remain anxious about NIF funding, might be able to prevent that.

"Look, they shot something (a bomb) in Nevada that was much bigger and that delivered much more energy than NIF could ever deliver," Kidder says.

"And then they used that (experiment) to say, hey, we can do this with NIF," he says, waving a finger like a magic wand and adding, "But, really, it was inconclusive."

Mascheroni insists the data are far more revealing and that they show, in fact, that NIF is too puny to ignite its targets by a factor of 100.

Kidder, a laser expert, says Mascheroni's argument seems reasonable to people who grasp the serious limitations of glass lasers, such as NIF, and the competing power of chemical lasers, such as hydrogen fluoride: "With glass, because of the technical problems and the cost of solving them, you need a lot more energy than you can pay for. Comparatively, hydrogen fluoride gets you more bang for the buck."

"It may be true that you can't get enough energy out of glass, period, to do this job," he says, suggesting that, if so, the country is spending billions of dollars to decide an "academic issue" that should have been sorted out long ago in routine lab experiments.

"Frankly," he says, with a hearty roll of laughter, "I'm curious myself to see if these idiots can make it work."

Scientific deception

Critics such as Mascheroni used to be hard to find.

But today, NIF's scientific bashers can be found from coast to coast, including within the nuclear weapons establishment - some even in Livermore's back yard.

Marion Fulk is an "80-something and counting" physicist who has been retired from Livermore for 15 years and has little use for NIF.

Fulk was a weapons system "trouble shooter." Originally, he worked - in the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb - in the University of Chicago lab of Enrico Fermi, the revered Nobel laureate who produced the first nuclear chain reaction.

Fulk, who now volunteers to help the Livermore Lab watchdog group Tri-Valley CAREs, uses barnyard humor to describe how useful NIF will be "in solving problems in the primary (the initial reaction in a thermonuclear explosion), which is what the stockpile program would need.

Fulk explains what other experts - York, Cranfill, Mascheroni, Kidder and Peurifoy - have been saying for years: that NIF produces energy regimes that mimic the explosion of the secondary, or hydrogen-boost phase, of a thermonuclear explosion. But that's the least troublesome part.

"Secondaries (driven by the explosion of the vexing plutonium atomic bomb primary) are pretty passive," Fulk explains. Most stockpile issues, he and others say, are in the primary's plutonium core, which NIF is not designed to address.

Looking at NIF in the context of more than 50 years of nuclear weapons research, Fulk says, "Then and now . . . the most stupid, hair-brained things have gotten support.

"They just throw money at it," he says, citing as an example the defunct Plowshares program, in which DOE's predecessor experimented with using nuclear weapons for oil exploration or canal excavations. Two of those detonations, Gnome and Gas Buggy, were conducted in New Mexico.

"You know," Fulk says, referring to the Manhattan Project, "there was less money spent on that whole project (to develop the first atomic bomb) than they're going to spend on the NIF."

"Now, I think the NIF is very interesting to astrophysicists and high-density (energy) physicists, and they could learn a lot from it," such as how stars are born, live and die, he says. "But they're never going to produce (fusion) ignition on it."

"And that's what they've sold it to the public and to Congress as: the National Ignition Facility," he says. "I just don't think they've got enough energy to do it, and I'll bet you right now they don't."

Fulk also says Livermore has a history of scientific exaggeration, which he thinks is indefensible, even under the mantra of national security.

"I object to the false selling of any of these devices," he says. "This business of lying about these things has become standard. But it's wrong."

He says that Americans are entitled to the truth and that, "eventually, taxpayers are going to react," and all science research funding might suffer.

"They need to see some return on their investment, and I don't see what they get for NIF," he says.

Fulk fears the ultimate plans are more sinister, including the eventual use of plutonium in NIF experiments and going "back to (underground nuclear bomb) testing again" when NIF fails.

Serious scrutiny

The Natural Resources Defense Council's Paine, author of a 12-page technical bashing of NIF called "Unlovable Laser," suggests that NIF is a high-tech nuclear weapons tool with no job.

Worse, he says, DOE has persuaded Congress to "buy before you fly," because Livermore has failed to prove it has mastered the essential NIF technologies, let alone fully demonstrate them in a prototype beam line.

He contrasts a series of NIF justifications with "reality checks" and challenges Livermore's and DOE's contentions that NIF is unique and valuable weapons science which, by its very nature, will be costly, uncertain and difficult to predict.

Of all of the "numerous justifications for the project over the last decade, none . . . can withstand serious scrutiny," he contends.

Paine says it isn't only NIF's own "uncertain prospects" of achieving its goals but also its "tangential and speculative relevance to the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons" that place it off the chart in terms of its cost-to-benefit ratio. He argues that canceling it now would save taxpayers about $11.5 billion.

Despite representations by Livermore, DOE and the new National Nuclear Security Administration, he contends that "NIF has nothing to do with the safety (or reliability) of nuclear weapons" and that DOE's "glib presentation of it should be labeled for what it is - a deception."

Paine cites Sandia's Peurifoy and others, who contend the U.S. nuclear arsenal is extremely robust and can remain so for decades without NIF, whereas the claims that NIF will contribute to stockpile stewardship are nebulous at best.

Agreeing with Mascheroni and others about the Halite-Centurion experiments, Paine contends that NIF ignition, if it ever was a real possibility, is "now severely in doubt."

But even if it weren't, he says, it would produce an incomplete or spot fusion ignition "not particularly useful to the weapons program."

He charges that "there are not great lessons to be extracted or directly inferred about the performance of U.S. nuclear weapons from observing NIF ignition experiments."

And because ignition is increasingly being called into question, NIF's basic value should be, as well, he says.

Paine and his collaborator, Bodner, the retired Naval Lab fusion researcher, say DOE within the last year has conveniently provided NIF and Livermore with a fall-back position that significantly lowers the laser's required performance standard.

"They've lowered the bar on the acceptance criteria," says Paine. "Livermore gets a pass, because the tension is building in the program that they just aren't going to be able to achieve the original criteria."

Livermore's Miller says Paine is wrong. He insists that NIF's experimental criteria remain stringent and unchanged and that the laser has a very good chance - 75 percent, in his judgment - of reaching ignition.

None of the critics agree. Scientists offer a range of NIF ignition probabilities from 20 percent to zero. Paine and Bodner say if the new NIF criteria stand, the laser has no chance of reaching ignition.

In a table contrasting NIF requirements set in 1994 and those established at DOE last fall, Paine contends performance mandates have been downgraded between 45 percent and 75 percent in every stage of NIF development - from the first "eight-beam performance bundle" to its final configuration of "192 beams in 24 laser bundles."

In a series of three graphs showing drastic reductions in DOE criteria for NIF energy per beam line, laser pulse duration and the percent of energy focused on a tiny (target) spot, Bodner says NIF expectations have hit the floor.

Because critics have contended for years that even the original NIF outputs would leave NIF well short of ignition, the revised ones suggest the laser "would also be nearly worthless for non-ignition experiments."

Livermore's Miller says that NIF has high value to the physics community even if it fails to reach ignition.

"In spite of Bodner's claims," Miller says, "there are experimental demonstrations reviewed and published in reputable scientific journals that the basic (NIF) system can achieve all three of the critical physics (fusion ignition) parameters simultaneously."

If so, challenge Paine and Bodner, why has DOE felt the need to downgrade NIF's specified acceptance criteria for these parameters? They say it's a pre-emptive strike that will allow Livermore to claim NIF is a success, even if it fails to live up to its original billing, including the one used to name it - fusion energy ignition.

Citing the recent review of the government's Foster Panel on these issues, Mascheroni says the highly regarded group concluded that "NIF without ignition is not worth the investment for stockpile stewardship. We believe that ignition should be the prime goal."

With a decade of NIF analysis in his head and in his home computers, Mascheroni argues that the reduced NIF criteria should be another red flag to Congress that "NIF is a boondoggle, as the GAO, I and others have shown."

He says the laser's construction should be stopped immediately and until Congress can see an independent scientific NIF review. He believes the review should be comprehensive, including DOE's entire military fusion research program, the decisions made in it over the last 15 years and, particularly, scientifically questionable decisions made against NIF's technical competitors.

That history, he says, will show NIF is an impostor.

The Albuquerque Tribune.

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3 Former Livermore scientist says NIF is a lemon

Albuquerque Tribune Online
By Lawrence Spohn Tribune Reporter

PLEASANTON, Calif. - It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize a lemon, says Ray Kidder, a retired physicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he fears the world's biggest fusion energy lemon may be under construction.

Kidder's criticism might be dismissed if he hadn't been the one to start Livermore's impressive military fusion laser program decades ago.

Aptly named and an atypically irreverent scientist, Kidder waves his arms in big circles as he jokes about the troubled $4.2 billion National Ignition Facility being the "biggest everything."

Livermore Lab officials say NIF not only will be the world's biggest laser but also the largest optical instrument ever built and the most massive nuclear weapons blast simulator.

The project is being built in a stadium-sized building in Livermore a few miles east of Kidder's house, where he agreed to be interviewed.

On his patio as the sun sets behind Pleasanton's rolling hills, Kidder is alternately serious and comedic, suggesting NIF's history doesn't instill confidence and can be funny.

"Just getting the laser to work would be very interesting experimentally," he confesses. He hesitates, then adds, "But if it really does turn out to be a lemon, then you're nowhere again. Lemonade. Not fusion. If they flop on their face with the laser, it's curtains. You're stuck with a lot of glass - lavender glass."

The laser's special qualities come from chemically doped, colored glass and specially grown crystals that the lab's top scientists say will crack the fusion energy ignition barrier.

Lab Associate Director George Miller says most of NIF's problems have been resolved, such as how to keep the sensitive instrument clean as it is built in a construction environment. Miller also says NIF is on a new timetable, with challenging, but reachable milestones and that the lab believes it has technical fixes for the remaining problems, the worst being anticipated damage to the laser's sensitive optics.

Kidder buys almost none of that. He doesn't see that Livermore Lab did its homework or has been forthcoming on fixes for NIF.

As an alternative to testing nuclear warheads by actually exploding them, NIF is to be the first machine to ignite a hydrogen pellet into fusion energy, an achievement which, if accomplished, will be laudable, says Kidder.

But he scoffs at lab and government officials' contentions that NIF is critical to the nation's nuclear weapons Stockpile Stewardship and Maintenance Program to maintain the safety and reliability of the nuclear arsenal. He isn't even sure NIF can attract good, young physicists to Livermore.

"Look, the nuclear weapons scientific problem was solved in 1958 . . . and demonstrated in 1962," he says. "The job was done, and you can't get people interested in a problem that was done 40 years ago. It's going to be like trying to get the best and brightest people to work on improving buggy whips and then, to boot, you tell them they can't talk about it to anybody, because it's secret."

"NIF is DOE and Livermore saying: `How do you make lemonade out this, because stockpile stewardship is one big lemon?'" he says. "I think they didn't know about the difficulty of the program they were undertaking or how to resolve the many problems they thought they would be able to resolve. So they ran into a (technical) minefield. They have a string of difficult things yet to solve, and you really need to have those things solved before you run ahead and plunge into the big money."

"They didn't really understand what the technical difficulty of those problems were and still don't," he says. Leaning forward, as if to confide, he adds, "I don't think they have a solution for many of them even today, but they say they do."

Kidder, who is retired but still works at the lab as a visiting scientist, was among nuclear weapons lab scientists at each of the three national labs who openly warned in 1997 that the project was deeply troubled.

That was on the eve of NIF's groundbreaking. Two years later, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson boasted at a NIF ceremony that the project was on time and on budget, only to have to retract those words weeks later, when Livermore acknowledged that NIF actually was over budget and behind schedule.

Kidder laughs today at Livermore and DOE officials who were quick in 1997 to criticize Kidder and other scientists for speaking out.

NIF Program Director David H. Crandall, for one, had called their appraisals published in The Albuquerque Tribune "irresponsible" and damaging to "the future for all us." Crandall cited consistently favorable peer reviews by the Inertial Confinement Fusion Advisory Committee, the highly regarded military JASONs and other groups.

But Kidder agrees with critics that those reviews were engineered by hand-picked, "somewhat arrogant" DOE panels that "pontificate" but have not given NIF the honest scientific review it should have received.

Federal courts have invalidated some of the studies, and Congress' General Accounting Office officially recommended in April that NIF, six years after it was officially proposed and four years after it was started, still lacks an independent scientific review.

"This is a big scandal," says Andreas Toupadakis, a nuclear chemist who formerly worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and who resigned from Livermore last year to protest its continuing nuclear weapons work under the guise of maintaining the nation's warheads.

He agrees with Kidder about NIF's technicals hurdles and is among scientists who fear the worst about NIF has yet to be revealed.

Kidder says the project so far is escaping serious congressional or public scrutiny, because Livermore and DOE have played the national security card.

"Hiding behind that, they can bamboozle anyone," Kidder says. "If anyone challenges them, they can say, `Well, they don't know what they're talking about or they don't know what we're doing.' But when you ask them, they say

`Oh, it's all classified.'"

Retiring from his patio to a well-worn recliner in his den, Kidder delivers his assessments into the night like quips of a stand-up comedian. He belly laughs and nods as if to ask: Get it?

On a wall is a framed 1993 letter of thanks from then-Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary for Kidder's testimony on behalf of the "future of nuclear weapons and the Comprehensive Test Ban." He explains that it refers to his lab-defying analysis of the reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons, based on reams of their own data from nuclear weapons testing and predictions.

His conclusion: "These weapons were damn reliable, very robust." In contrast, he says, the lab directors who wanted to return to testing "put up an absolutely lousy case" against the nuclear test moratorium ordered by President George H.W. Bush and which President Bill Clinton and O'Leary later wanted to maintain.

Among those testifying to the contrary before Congress, Kidder says, was Livermore's Miller.

"He came out second best to me on that one," Kidder muses. "And I think if anybody in Congress would listen, he'd come out second again on NIF."

Based on his warhead reliability study, Kidder says bluntly of NIF: "You could maintain this stockpile forever without it." But, he says, Livermore, DOE and the new National Nuclear Security Administration can be expected to fight any effort to scale back NIF to test its components before continuing NIF.

Their worst nightmare, he says, is "being told to build just eight beam lines" and run exhaustive experiments. "We may find out they're not so good, and then they won't get any more funding. As long as they're delayed anyway, they've adopted a strategy that drags it out, gets full funding and all the beams and then runs them easy to get a few more years out experimentally."

"It's just money," he adds with another hearty laugh. "The country can afford it, and, compared to the new stealth bomber, it's peanuts."

But if Congress were really sharp, Kidder contends, it would realize that Livermore's "track record is not good. Most of these big, high-flying projects they had didn't go anywhere."

Like retired Naval Research Laboratory fusion laser physicist Stephen Bodner, Kidder says that careful examination of Livermore's claims on these projects reveals an optimism that defies scientific reality and credibility.

Marylia Kelly, executive director at Tri-Valley CAREs, the Livermore-based nuclear watchdog group, cites just one, the $450 million Mirror Magnet Fusion Machine.

"Can you believe they held opening and closing ceremonies (for it) on the same day?" she asks.

NIF won't be that bad, Kidder is convinced, explaining that there are a number of valuable and basic astrophysics and high density energy physics experiments NIF should be capable of performing, even in a truncated version of itself.

He believes there also is some legitimacy to the argument "that NIF may attract young kids" to work in the nuclear weapons program, because nuclear weaponry has become an increasingly boring business.

"They need something," he says. "Frankly, once the tests went underground, it wasn't all that much fun.

"Seeing the bang and the flash and that cloud," he says, beaming, "that was sort of the high time. When the stuff went underground, you went from the South Pacific, which was fun, to roasting your ass off in the Nevada desert (at the Nevada Test Site).

"Heck, now they don't even have that," he says. "They may need NIF - just to get kids in the door."

The Albuquerque Tribune.

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4 Local company Ktech Corp. vies for huge NIF power contract

Albuquerque Tribune Online
By Lawrence Spohn

If glass is the heart of what is to be the world's biggest laser, power is its lifeblood and Albuquerque is its connection.

The technical means to condition electrical power for the giant National Ignition Facility glass laser was developed in Albuquerque at Sandia National Laboratories, which also designed NIF's special target chamber and its stadium-sized building.

Also in Albuquerque, a small company, Ktech Corporation, is seizing a "David vs. Goliath" opportunity to compete for a projected $50 million NIF power contract.

"We like our chances," says Steven Downie, Ktech vice president for pulse-power operations at the upstart company's south Albuquerque office near the airport.

The contract winner will supply literally tons of special electrical equipment - in the form of linked chains of huge, steel-encased capacitors in "power conditioning modules" - needed to power NIF. Each of NIF's 192 power modules is slightly bigger than a typical backyard storage shed.

Now under construction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory east of San Francisco, NIF requires the storage and instantaneous release of a vast electrical energy reservoir to power its glass laser for each "shot."

While the laser project has been mired in controversy that includes severe cost and schedule overruns, Downie has promised his company won't contribute to that legacy.

"We will deliver on time, on budget," he says.

Ktech, which has about 130 employees also operates a manufacturing plant in the Renaissance Park in north Albuquerque, where it is building semiconductor processing equipment and one of the first of the 30,500-pound NIF power conditioning modules.

Until recently, the small, 30-year-old business sold primarily technical and operational expertise to the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base and, more importantly, to Sandia's world-renowned and extensive pulse-power operations, also at Kirtland.

Among its Sandia clients (pulse power machines) past and present: Particle Beam Fusion Accelerators I and II; Hermes III and Saturn; and the current world record X-ray producer, the Z accelerator. All were or are nuclear weapons blast simulators, such as NIF.

Now Ktech is locked in a small but potentially lucrative NIF power demonstration contract with the much larger Raytheon Corporation, having already outbid the likes of Lockheed Martin, General Atomics and Titan in the initial competition.

In the final showdown, Raytheon was picked to produce and supply eight of NIF's 192 power modules. Ktech also got a $2.8 million contract to supply another eight NIF modules. The contracts run through next spring, when the Holy Grail of all pulse-power contracts will be awarded to one or the other company.

Whichever does best in the technical performance shootout wins what is expected to be at least a $50 million contract to supply the remaining 176 power modules.

The special modules, designed and tested over a three-year period at Sandia by engineer J. Michael Wilson, will provide the split-second electrical energy pulses needed on each of the beam lines of the NIF glass laser. Like NIF's special glass and crystals, the pulse-power modules are critical to producing the ultimate ultraviolet laser beam that Livermore scientists say will instantly convert a tiny sphere of hydrogen into a nuclear fusion energy blast.

Fully aware of the controversies swirling about the project, Downie says they're political and for someone else to resolve.

"It's not about the technology," he insists. "If you're willing to spend enough money, they can make it work."

Why does the Albuquerque small business think it can win a showdown with a huge corporation like Raytheon?

Because, according to Downie, Ktech is a specialist and holds the aces. For example, he says, "We have Mike Wilson, who originally designed the prototype module system and fully developed it and who we hired away from Sandia."

Wilson now works at Ktech's downtown Livermore office, a short distance from the lab and NIF. But he spends every second or third week back at the Albuquerque plant where, during a recent visit, he suggested the NIF power modules are deceptively clunky.

Actually, they are highly efficient at producing tremendous power. Downie says that, collectively, they will contribute nearly 6 million pounds to NIF's mass, but they are not about steel, wire or cooling oil.

"Electrons," he grunts. "A helluva lot of electrons." In contrast to similar modules that power Sandia's Z accelerator, the NIF modules have "a lot higher energy density," he explains, looking at the ceiling and instantly calculating "about five times more."

Downie, who also used to work at Sandia, says Wilson knows the small Sandia contingent that has been assigned to NIF in Livermore on a first-name basis.

Downie says it certainly won't hurt Ktech that for three decades it also has provided technical and operational support for all Sandia's pulse-power machines, including the Z accelerator.

Then there's Ktech's thoroughly modern, 20,000-square-foot Albuquerque manufacturing facility in a converted business supply warehouse on Alexander Boulevard Northeast.

Its "fully automated inventory management system" impressed visiting Livermore contract officials, Downie says. "When they saw the (NIF) power conditioning module system already fully integrated into our system, they were blown away. Raytheon couldn't show ąem anything like that."

He says that Ktech used its vast pulse-power system experience to tell Livermore "where we thought they were making some bad decisions and they bought it."

"We feel they were impressed overall with what we could do for them," he says, stressing in particular that with NIF's myriad of problems, Ktech represents "as close to a low-risk supplier as possible on a very high-risk project."

Already, NIF is estimated to be at least $1 billion over budget and six years behind schedule. So one of Ktech's contract strategies is "to deliver our entire system, all eight PCMs, six months ahead of schedule."

In this and other respects, Downie says, Ktech's proposal "far exceeds what Livermore specified, so they turned around and wrote those into our contract."

Ktech, he says, is no Raytheon, but "we are the largest pulse-power house in the country," and Ktech intends to win the NIF bid - assuming the project continues as advertised and survives continuing pressure to pull its plug.

"It's not just us," says Downie. "This would be good for Albuquerque."

Ktech plant manager Randy McKee says the initial contract will produce work for about 20 people, but about 45 will be needed if Ktech wins the big NIF contract. Such numbers attract more than the Chamber of Commerce's interest.

In Washington, D.C., U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican, went to bat for Ktech in spite of NIF's reputation.

Domenici has been critical of the project since its fiscal and schedule problems were revealed - problems he says threaten the stability of the stockpile program and the DOE budgets for Los Alamos and Sandia.

But last April he wrote a letter on Ktech's behalf to Livermore Lab Director Bruce Tarter, saying the company's reputation in pulse power is "unmatched" and worthy of the big Livermore contract.

"I encourage your careful review, consistent with all pertinent laws, rules and regulations, of the Ktech proposal," wrote Domenici, who is the ranking minority member of the powerful Senate Budget Committee, which he chaired until Democrats gained majority control in late May.

Although Downie says the letter arrived at Livermore the day officials already had selected Ktech, he says Domenici helped open Livermore's doors for the little Ktech.

"He provided significant help," says Downie. "Make sure Pete gets credit, because he was instrumental, we feel."

Downie declines to address other aspects of the controversial project - for example, continuing contentions that NIF's optics will suffer from routine laser light damage and likely need replacement at a cost of from hundreds of thousands of dollars to perhaps millions of dollars each time NIF is fired.

But Downie did confirm that Ktech also has a small research contract with Livermore to develop and test an "explosively driven optical valve closure" as a solution to optical damage threats.

This technology would allow the laser light to pass through sensitive optics at the NIF target chamber, after which protective valve doors would be rapidly slammed shut by a small precision-timed explosive charge. It would prevent blast "blow-back" damage from the target. And it is similar to valves that Ktech developed to protect sensitive diagnostic equipment on Sandia's Z accelerator.

"They still need some technical miracles," Downie acknowledges. However, he considers NIF "an engineering masterpiece" and is "impressed that Livermore can get that many balls into the air, juggle them and keep them up there." While critics say Livermore has fumbled the NIF ball repeatedly and should be held accountable, Downie counters that some failure has to be expected when you're "inventing technologies as they go, creating miracles as they build it."

As for NIF's power modules, he promises, they won't be needing any refurbishing. Downie says they are good "for 20,000 shots." Print this [http://www.abqtrib.com/print/index.cfm]

The Albuquerque Tribune.

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5 NIF: Need for objectivity

Albuquerque Tribune Online
By Lawrence Spohn Tribune Reporter

Government investigators say the National Ignition Facility is six years behind schedule, $1.4 billion over budget and needs independent review

The nation's biggest science project - for which more than $1 billion tax dollars already have been spent - has never been independently reviewed by unbiased scientists, according to government investigators.

Laser-charged feud

The $4.2 billion National Ignition Facility is a complex machine that scientists hope to use to produce tiny blasts of fusion energy, the power source of the sun, stars and nuclear bombs.

What: Fundamentally, the NIF is an enormous laser that uses special chemically-doped glass and unique crystals to generate powerful beams of light energy.

How: That energy is to be focused by 192 individual laser beams into a target chamber and onto a BB-sized pellet containing radioactive hydrogen, which, when super-compressed and heated, is supposed to ignite, yielding fusion energy.

Where: NIF is being built at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with assistance from New Mexico's Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories. They are the nation's three nuclear weapons laboratories operated by the Department of Energy.

Why: Government officials say NIF is the core instrument of the nation's multi-billion-dollar nuclear-science-based Stockpile Stewardship and Maintenance Program. Program scientists aim to maintain the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear arsenal without nuclear testing, using the advanced experimental tools of nuclear blast simulators such as NIF and supercomputer simulations of bomb blasts based on past real bomb test data and the new simulations.

Issue: Various critics, including scientists in New Mexico, say NIF is too costly, won't work as promised and can't achieve ignition.

It's an astonishing finding, say critics, considering the controversial National Ignition Facility, a giant fusion energy laser and nuclear weapons blast simulator, has been under construction since 1997 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory east of San Francisco.

The project has been subject to review by the Department of Energy - a NIF booster - since 1995. And, in concept, the project dates to about 1990. It has passed several DOE and external reviews arranged by the department.

At last count, the complex laser was $1.4 billion over budget and six years behind schedule, with a projected construction cost of $4.2 billion and a completion date of 2008 - 11 years after it began.

The latest NIF figures are estimates of the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, which twice in two years was asked to examine the NIF project.

"They're off by more than a billion dollars," says GAO's lead NIF investigator Gary Boss. "How does that happen?"

While lab officials plead that NIF is a complex and unique experimental project, Boss says that if the lab is not guilty of outright deceit, it certainly has exhibited "an element of self-deception."

Besides the concerns about cost, the latest GAO report also warns Congress that:

There is significant scientific disagreement about the promise of NIF for a project so far into construction.

The nation's three nuclear weapons labs - including Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico - remain at odds over aspects of the project.

Its costs still may be escalating, primarily because unresolved technical issues could prove expensive to solve.

The report recommended the government "arrange for an independent and outside scientific and technical review of NIF's remaining technical challenges as they relate to the project's cost and schedule risks."

So far, GAO has been ignored.

Associate Lab Director George Miller acknowledges the lab has made critical errors, the biggest of which was assuming its own scientists were capable of building such a complicated and engineer-dependent project.

But he insists that NIF now is on solid management footing and is fiscally and scientifically sound.

Boss is among those not persuaded. He says NIF's problems are too large to be explained by simple carelessness or even its technical challenges. He says Livermore made conscious decisions to fast-track unproven technology and still is pushing the project.

NIF critics believe the numbers for costs and scheduling problems are worse and are worsening - that, ultimately, NIF will cost at least $5 billion just to build.

But even if the numbers hold, says Chris Paine, a nuclear weapons analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, $4.2 billion is a far cry from 1990, when a government panel used Livermore's numbers to estimate a cost of $400 million for the next fusion energy laser.

"That's 60 times the energy but only twice the cost of Nova (NIF's predecessor at Livermore)," says Los Alamos fusion physicist Leo Mascheroni. "How can that be? It never made sense."

Critics see NIF as a black hole that, among other things, threatens to consume the nuclear weapons stewardship program, including basic warhead maintenance at Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories.

So far, those programs have been bolstered by massive infusions of hundreds of millions of new dollars in each of the last several years - budget increases spearheaded by New Mexico's Sen. Pete Domenici, who sits on critical Senate Budget and Energy committees.

Critical of NIF last year and promising that he will not allow it to affect budgets at Sandia or Los Alamos, Domenici said he deferred on NIF to the judgment of the project's newest player, retired Air Force Gen. John Gordon.

Gordon, the first director of the new National Nuclear Security Administration, told Congress last spring that NIF reviews show the project is "making significant progress" and remains crucial to maintaining U.S. nuclear warheads.

But the June GAO report reiterates that NIF still "lacks an independent external review process" and will play no role in current warhead refurbishments.

The report stresses the value of independent external reviews for "measuring cost, schedule and technical success in any large and ambitious science project.

"Yet," investigators report, "no such external independent reviews of NIF have been conducted or (are) planned."

The GAO also reports "it is unclear if the results from prior (internal) reviews have been fully addressed" by the Department of Energy, which operates all nuclear weapons labs and, like Gordon, considers NIF a critical national security project.

Delivered to Congress without fanfare, the GAO report has had no apparent impact on congressional leaders, even though Congress asked for it.

It was presented to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees before the 2002 budget appropriations for NIF sailed through key congressional committees.

In fact, the Senate tacked on additional $7 million to the original NIF request for $245 million. A congressional conference committee in late October settled on a total of $252 million for NIF line items, though critics say the figure is larger because other military fusion programs are subsidizing NIF research.

After having been asked twice to assess the project, Boss says he's surprised Congress this year did not order a comprehensive scientific analysis of NIF.

"Our feeling was always that they were going to give the lab another chance, but the sense I had last year was that they were going to require some very stringent things along the way," Boss says. "That hasn't happened."

Boss describes the NIF report as "fairly hard-hitting" by GAO standards and says that Congress usually makes a strong response. He says NIF cries out for congressional oversight, including formal hearings that should start with all three lab directors and include weapon designers and other experts.

In that respect, the GAO reports echo Mascheroni, who for years has argued that Congress needs to hear direct testimony, under oath, about NIF - not only from Livermore officials but also from key nuclear weaponeers representing each of three labs, without DOE filters or threats.

Mascheroni says that official NIF "reviews do not reflect the views of the nuclear weapons community that is supposed to use the laser. There is a huge disagreement that has been kept from Congress between the (laser fusion) scientists (who promote NIF) and the real weaponeers who designed the bombs (and have expressed little use for NIF)."

He also charges that DOE-engineered review panels have failed to fully examine a substantial body of technical data, including secret bomb experiments at the Nevada Test Site and computer-code simulations, which challenge NIF's performance premises.

Livermore's Miller counters NIF has passed a decade of exhaustive reviews, evaluations and assessments by highly regarded scientists who have the expertise to understand its complex components, science and objectives.

The scientists have had access to all the relevant classified data, Miller says, and continue to favor NIF, even after its cost overruns and delays.

Boss says bluntly that those were reviews by NIF's own "cheerleaders" - essentially, "nobody who doesn't have some stake in the outcome."

"They're all members of the same club," he says. "All have connections to the fusion energy research field, if not to Livermore itself."

He said NIF's serious and numerous problems certainly are no tribute to those reviews and he sees DOE and Livermore as culpable.

"I find it very surprising that there were known technical problems that DOE was not aware of until so late in the game," Boss says.

Efforts to obtain comment directly from Gordon and NIF program directors at DOE headquarters were unsuccessful.

Paine says Livermore and DOE shun true peer review at all costs, because "they know that NIF will fail."

His Natural Resources Defense Council has successfully challenged DOE's NIF panels in court for being loaded with DOE and national lab employees or known scientific advocates of the project.

Federal courts invalidated NIF assessments and barred DOE from using them, finding that the review committees were selected, or acted, in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The act requires a balanced panel and open meetings.

"It's been a struggle for us to penetrate the cloud," Boss says, referring to efforts at damage control.

Specifically, he says, Gordon rebuffed GAO's formal request to attend a NIF-driven High Energy Density Physics research review, which Gordon has used to justify NIF to Congress.

"We were barred from attending," Boss says. "General Gordon said we couldn't go. We wanted to go, because we had questions."

"Nobody we've talked with about NIF is real happy with what's happening out there," he says, noting GAO investigators cast a wide net that included weaponeers at Sandia and Los Alamos labs.

Officially, both labs told GAO they favor substantially downsizing NIF, at least until Livermore demonstrates that the laser actually works as advertised and has achieved specific technical milestones.

But according to GAO, even Livermore has acknowledged that "achieving ignition is not guaranteed." And, the GAO reports, there remains considerable disagreement among the labs over how to proceed with NIF as well as over its real value to nuclear warhead stewardship.

Los Alamos has proposed DOE initially limit NIF to 120 beam lines. Sandia is far more restrictive, favoring just 48 to 96. Livermore has argued that, while building a smaller NIF would save money - $338 million to $540 million - it ultimately would result in additional costs of up to $583 million to build the abbreviated version, pause for tests and then complete a full, 192-beam NIF.

But GAO notes: "Importantly, (these) Livermore Lab estimates have not been independently reviewed or carefully studied by DOE. They were not independently verified."

DOE is trying "to reconcile these different views" as well as the preferences by scientists at Los Alamos and Sandia to use other, existing facilities for aspects of nuclear weapons research instead of NIF, GAO reported.

The report also concludes "NIF will not make any contribution to planned stockpile refurbishments" to existing nuclear warheads, including lifetime extensions to the W76 and W80 warheads or to the B61-Mod 7 and B11 bombs, all crucial efforts. Nor will the project contribute to certifying a remanufactured plutonium pit for the W88 warhead, the most modern in the U.S. arsenal.

Given all of this, Boss acknowledges the size, scope and objectives of NIF require "a faith-based approach" that many skeptical scientists and analysts aren't willing to give it anymore, especially given Livermore's "behavior and their history."

The lab has been widely criticized for heavily promoting weapons and energy technologies over the last two decades that received vast government outlays before being abandoned.

"Again, with NIF, you're sinking in a couple of hundred million (dollars) per year before you know if this thing even works," Boss says. He warns that, without intermediate milestones, "you wait so long - years in fact - to find out what happens when you actually turn the lights on on this thing.

"That's a lot to swallow," he says. "There are a lot of scientific and technical issues that are still ahead of us." The report specifically notes NIF's first major performance milestone still is three years away.

Boss acknowledges "we're not scientists; we're cost-and-schedule guys." But he said it was clear to his team that "this thing needs a true scientific assessment."

GAO also recommended that DOE not reallocate funds from other nuclear weapons programs to cover NIF cost overruns "until DOE evaluates the impact of NIF's costs and schedule plan," and "certifies that the selected NIF plan will not negatively affect the balance of this (nuclear weapons) stockpile stewardship program."

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6 Watchdog group: NIF is a blunder; Livermore should be green lab

Albuquerque Tribune Online
By Lawrence Spohn Tribune Reporter

"NIF has no utility to the real question of national security, the real threat of terrorism, but Congress has been convinced that it is this vital scientific thing for protecting this country." Marylia Kelly, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs

LIVERMORE, Calif. - Think of it as "No-NIF Central."

Tri-Valley CAREs, one of several U.S. nuclear weapons watchdog groups, regards stopping the controversial, $4.2 billion National Ignition Facility as its top priority.

Make no mistake, its roots are anti-nuclear, and its long-term aims reflect that. CAREs actually stands for Communities Against a Radioactive Environment.

Organized in 1983 by six Livermore families concerned with radiation exposures from Livermore National Laboratory - where NIF is being built - Tri-Valley CAREs now has 2,900 members.

It also keeps a distant eye on the nation's other two nuclear weapons labs, Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico, as well as contacts with similar watchdog organizations in Oakland, Calif., Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Washington.

Funded through foundation grants and individual contributions, Tri-Valley CAREs is located a short distance from the laboratory, very near Livermore's town square.

Occupying the top floor of a commercialized old home, the "nongovernmental organization" has modest offices most notable for its squeaky wood floors. It is furnished mostly with second-hand, donated chairs, desks, tables, computers, shelves and a very active copying machine. Newsletters, action alerts and news releases are core missions.

Volunteers perform many of the tasks assigned by Marylia Kelly, the soft-spoken but tenacious executive director.

Her previous experience as a news reporter explains the walls lined with shelves holding boxes of documents. They include many government reports - from Government Accounting Office assessments of NIF to Environmental Protection Agency characterizations of Livermore's Superfund hazardous waste site.

One filing box is labeled "Plutonium," a core component of nuclear bombs. Others are cryptically marked "GAO Reports" or "FOIA," for Freedom of Information Act requests for lab or DOE documents. Several are designated sequentially "National Ignition Facility Box 1," "Box 2" and so on.

On one wall is a handmade poster with big letters: "NIF Busters." It has a freehand drawing of the NIF target chamber with a circle around it and a slash through the circle.

No-NIF is the objective, but Kelly says Livermore Lab probably will have to stumble again before Congress is moved to pull the plug on the troubled monster fusion energy laser.

As important as that objective is, it would be only one step toward Tri-Valley CAREs' ultimate goal.

"It's simple," says Kelly: "We want to convert Livermore Lab from nuclear weapons work to peaceful scientific research. We think it would make a great green lab."

Because the lab's role in nuclear weapons research and maintenance has shrunk, Kelly is among critics who believe NIF's real purpose is to get federal money pumping through the lab's research centers, experimental halls, corridors and offices.

She says NIF isn't a mission, it's a revenue stream intended to keep Livermore Lab focused on nuclear weapons for years to come, even as its role in warhead stewardship shrinks.

After the Soviet Union crumbled last decade, some government officials asked if the nation still needed three nuclear weapons labs, and a government panel suggested one might be closed and its work consolidated at the other two.

Kelly says Livermore was the target, but DOE officials masterminded a convoluted stockpile stewardship strategy to persuade Congress that all three nuclear weapons labs still are needed.

She says watchdog groups took some encouragement recently, when President Bush suggested that nuclear weapons facilities ought to be part of the new military base closure review.

The organization recently helped publicize the concerns of scientists who have fled Livermore Lab.

Issac Trotts, a computer scientist who resigned a Livermore Lab job earlier this year in protest, says understanding NIF's "real role" helped convince him to leave.

"It's not about what they say it is (existing warhead safety and reliability)," he says. "They're adding capabilities to these weapons and contemplating new designs."

Likewise, says Andreas Toupadakis, a chemist who left his Livermore Lab job last year. He says NIF's purpose is offensive and provocative and eventually it will draw foreign fire.

"The East will react sooner or later," he says, suggesting the United States is insisting on being the world's only nuclear superpower and is acting like the international aggressors it opposed last century during hot and cold wars.

"Here at places like this," he says of Livermore, "we are creating the nuclear gas chambers . . . of tomorrow."

Referring to his "colleagues" at Livermore and at Los Alamos National Lab - where he worked for more than three years - Toupadakis says, "They have convinced themselves that all they are doing is for peace, but it can't be.

"The truth is, we want other people (nations) to not have nuclear weapons, but we insist we must have them and build things like NIF to build new ones. It's hypocrisy."

Toupadakis says lab officials tried to steer him into the NIF project when he raised objections about working in the nuclear weapons program itself. Smiling, he says, "I wasn't fooled, but you see they even work their deceptions on the inside (on scientists)."

He says when he raised questions about NIF's real costs and the unresolved technical problems, he got troubling answers that made it clear the functional problems remain and the project's costs were deliberately and grossly underestimated to guarantee funding.

"It's lies and deceptions," he says. "It is a government within a government, and they have they're own rules to play by, and they are using the American people, money and sweat to do all of this, saying its for national security.

"The people in New Mexico need to hear this because they do not know what's going on, how bad it really is."

He predicts that "when NIF fails, everybody here will head to Sandia (Labs in Albuquerque)," referring to its expanding Z fusion accelerator.

Some scientists believe that Sandia's technology has better prospects for nuclear weapons simulation and as a technical path to fusion energy than does NIF.

"This is the way it works," he says. "They think they create jobs for life here. It's not about peace; it's about this," he says, rubbing his fingers together to indicate money.

Kelly argues that even from a pure national security perspective, terrorism has emerged as the real threat to the United States, and projects like NIF not only do nothing to deter it but distract both research attention and money from programs that could make the country safer.

She believes if Americans really knew about and understood NIF, they would "go ballistic."

"NIF has no utility to the real question of national security, the real threat of terrorism," she says, "but Congress has been convinced that it is this vital scientific thing for protecting this country."

"It's about robbing our future to pay for their present," she says of Livermore Lab.

She hopes that as the entire nation, Congress and the White House come to grips with the true dimensions of terrorism and the extensive costs of battling it, that projects like NIF will be seriously re-evaluated.

"There really is no benefit from NIF to most Americans," she says, suggesting that before the auditors are done the project's cost could balloon to $6 billion or even $7 billion.

"It's all about pork," she says. "The usual pigs at the usual troughs."

The Albuquerque Tribune.

====

7 NIF: Meet the opposition

The Albuquerque Tribune.
Albuquerque Tribune Online
By Lawrence Spohn Tribune Reporter

From nuclear watchdog groups to nuclear weapons scientists, NIF certainly has its share of adversaries. Naysayers claim the giant project is either a waste of time and money or just `a big lie.'

LIVERMORE, Calif. - On a bright day last summer, at a busy intersection south of Interstate 580 here, passing motorists were startled by a message taking on "the company" in this company town.

LIVERMORE LAB FACTS

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is one of three U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories. It:

Is about 40 miles east of San Francisco in the small community of Livermore.

Was established in 1952 as the third nuclear weapons laboratory - with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico being the first and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque the second.

Has a 2001 budget of $1.32 billion, with more than a third of its nuclear weapons budget devoted to the National Ignition Facility fusion laser.

Employs some 7,300 people, about 2,800 of whom hold scientific, engineering or other technical degrees.

Is owned and operated by the Department of Energy and competes with Sandia and Los Alamos for funding.

Screaming yellow against a deep, blue sky, a billboard at the intersection of Murietta Boulevard and Portola Avenue not only questioned nuclear weapons research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory but also targeted its biggest project ever.

Shouting, "Your mind is a terrible thing to waste," the 11-by-24-foot advertisement pictured the target chamber of the National Ignition Facility fusion laser.

Under construction a few miles away at Livermore Lab, NIF is a nuclear weapons blast simulator, the 30-year brain child of laser fusion energy scientists, Livermore Lab, the Department of Energy and New Mexico's Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.

Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia are the nation's three nuclear weapons labs, owned and operated by DOE.

Both New Mexico labs are doing work that supports NIF, even while raising their own concerns about the project's impact on the nuclear weapons program.

Sandia and Los Alamos also have been targets of similar anti-nuclear roadside rhetoric on billboards near the Albuquerque airport and along Interstate 25.

But the Livermore billboard is the first to strike at NIF - the heart of the nuclear weapons stewardship program - to make the point that weapon scientists could be doing other nationally-important research and to exploit increasingly public differences within the nuclear weapons research community over NIF's real value.

While Los Alamos and Sandia have been less enthusiastic NIF cheerleaders, DOE and Livermore have told Congress and the White House repeatedly that NIF is a must-have for ensuring the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons, if the weapons labs are not permitted to test the weapons themselves.

Opponents, however, see DOE and other proponents as Wizards of Oz, hiding the truth about NIF behind a curtain of national security and official reports they see as biased and self-serving.

"NIF is a big lie," says Marylia Kelly, director of Tri-Valley CAREs, the nuclear weapons watchdog group in Livermore that paid for the billboard.

"NIF is not going to make our existing weapons any safer or more reliable," she insists. "It's intended to train the next generation of nuclear weapons scientists in advancing nuclear weapons designs which we, and the world, don't need."

Kelly says taking on NIF hasn't been easy, because Livermore Lab is the major employer in this town of 74,000 people, where it has been an economic engine since the beginnings of the Cold War in 1952.

But NIF - to be the world's biggest laser when completed in 2008 - isn't just an economic boon to the lab or the city of Livermore.

It also happens to be the nation's biggest science project, and it has become a lightning rod for a variety of organizations and scientists from coast to coast, for a variety of reasons.

`Bloated mega-laser'

Among organizations that have NIF in their cross-hairs are the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C.; the Western States Legal Foundation in Oakland, Calif.; the Los Alamos Study Group in Santa Fe; the Physicians for Social Responsibility in Washington, D.C.; and the Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington, D.C.

NIF tops Physicians for Social Responsibility's "Nuclear/Security" Internet Web page, where the organization has encouraged people to call their representatives and senators to oppose NIF as "the biggest boondoggle in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex."

The organization argues that NIF is plagued by technical problems and is wasting taxpayer dollars; threatens U.S. commitments to prevent nuclear proliferation; and, contrary to government and weapons lab contentions, "is not needed" to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

It contends NIF experiments will "have nothing to do with safety - preventing accidental explosions or leaks in nuclear weapons - and very little to do with how reliably the weapons perform." These objectives already are ensured through ongoing, less expensive DOE operations, the group claims.

At Common Sense, an independent advocate for American taxpayers, NIF has become a poster-project of government waste.

This organization doesn't view NIF as a crucial tool of nuclear weapons science but rather as a "bloated mega-laser" burning up taxpayers' money.

In the budget surplus era, "It's been gift-wrapped and tied up with a beautiful bow," says Common Sense analyst Keith Ashdown, who says that in spite of a long, troubled history, NIF has risen from what should have been certain death two years ago.

"Here you have a project that is probably billions of dollars over budget, years behind schedule, highly controversial in the scientific community, challenged by the weapons scientists it is supposed to serve, the subject of a GAO (Government Accounting Office) report that said the lab misled Congress and the American people - and what does Congress do but throw more money at it," Ashdown says.

"It's indefensible," he says. "And on so many levels."

While he says critics are frustrated with the political and military power that Livermore and its managing contractor, the University of California, have wielded in Congress over the past several months to sustain NIF, the laser remains a prime target for budget cuts.

Common Sense has joined with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Friends of the Earth to challenge NIF in the groups' collective "Green Scissors Campaign."

It aims to focus public, Congressional and administration attention on government projects that the groups deem "environmentally harmful and wasteful spending" and worthy of being cut from the federal budget.

NIF currently is easily the most expensive project on Green Scissors' top-10 list, which recommends that NIF "be canceled and construction terminated" and that the nuclear weapons labs and DOE rely on "existing laboratory capabilities, rather than wastefully expensive facilities."

It describes NIF's value to maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal as "dubious at best" and contends that in insisting on funding NIF, "DOE is throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at an experimental program" that many scientists believe has little or no chance of reaching its prime goal of nuclear fusion energy ignition.

Green Scissors estimates that cutting NIF will save taxpayers as much as $10 billion. Cutting NIF could save taxpayers much more, depending on whose analysis is used and whether it's credible.

Full accounting

"Soaring Cost, Shrinking Performance" is a 64-page documented analysis of NIF produced in May by Robert Civiak, a retired analyst for the Office of Management and Budget.

It was funded by Kelly's Livermore-based nuclear watchdog group, Tri-Valley CAREs. She said copies were sent to members of Congress.

Civiak sets the tone in the first paragraph, charging that DOE "is keeping the full cost" of NIF from Congress and taxpayers.

He estimates the full, 30-year lifetime cost of NIF "comes to $32.4 billion." That is six times what Congress was told by DOE in approving the project.

George Miller, Livermore Lab associate director and NIF overseer, calls that figure "ridiculous" and insists NIF is back on budget and back on schedule.

He says that Civiak's figure "would mean we would be spending a billion (dollars) a year, and the entire DOE budget for this kind of physics is only $500 million (per year)."

But Civiak defends the estimate, saying that DOE and Livermore officially have given NIF a 30-year lifetime, and taxpayers are entitled to know the real NIF costs based on the likelihood that the project's technical problems continue to bloom.

He says that even after budget overruns and schedule delays were revealed two years ago, "DOE still significantly understates the likely cost of construction."

The Government Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has issued similar warnings that DOE has not had NIF costs independently assessed. Indeed, the same investigators have twice warned in successive reports that NIF as a complex technical and scientific project has not been independently reviewed.

While DOE and Livermore insist the final bill for building the laser will be $3.5 billion, Civiak calculates it will be $5 billion. The General Accounting Office, which prepared two NIF reports for Congress, has consistently bumped its estimates upwards, finally settling on $4.2 billion.

These estimates, however, assume "no more problems with NIF." But Civiak warns: "On the contrary, there is significant potential for future problems and delays" because of a number of technical uncertainties that plague the project.

Civiak also charges that "DOE has dramatically under-estimated the operating costs for the NIF" by excluding overhead costs and much of the cost of the experiments planned for NIF.

Worse, he says, NIF's performance objectives have slipped at the same time. As a result, DOE in effect is turning the bargain Livermore had argued NIF would be into a taxpayer burden.

He says DOE does not now require NIF to reach even 75 percent of its promised key energy and focus requirements on operational beam lines by 2006 - three years after the project was supposed to be completed and fully two years before new projections say it will be finished.

"We calculate that the output from the NIF laser will be only one-ninth the amount per dollar spent that DOE anticipated as recently as last year," he writes. "This represents a dramatic decline in the projected return on the taxpayers' investment."

While other analysts have reached similar conclusions, Livermore's Miller insists that original NIF objectives remain firm and that there has been no slippage in its ultimate performance expectations because of cost overruns or nagging technical issues.

But Civiak concludes that the combination and documented pattern of "increasing cost and declining performance expectations" for NIF are a compelling case, that Congress should stop it now and that "every taxpayer . . . should work to cancel" it as soon as possible.

He says NIF should be subjected to an intense scientific review, followed by extensive Congressional hearings into its checkered history, because he believes the project's record shows it "is no longer justified, if in fact it ever was."

Livermore shuffle

But Kelly says it will take substantial congressional education and leadership savvy for that to happen anytime soon.

She says both House and Senate leaders have been "fooled again" in appropriating funds for NIF by Livermore's public relations machinery and the oft-repeated message from DOE that NIF is vital to maintaining the nation's arsenal.

"Congress never seems to learn," she says, referring to what she calls Livermore's knack for "selling" big science projects for decades without producing the results to support them.

Most notable, she says, are the lab's "expensive and exaggerated Star Wars weapons programs." Among many failed Livermore projects she cites are:

The X-ray Laser Space-based Weapon, which was to be powered by a nuclear weapon to shoot down nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.

Brilliant Pebbles, another anti-missile project in which small "kinetic kill vehicles" were to be used to destroy ballistic missiles.

The Magnet Mirror Fusion Machine, which, like NIF, was supposed to lead to a civilian fusion energy power reactor.

The Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation Program, a high-tech process of separating uranium, whose mounting development costs and technical problems ultimately sank it.

And NIF's predecessor, the Nova glass fusion laser, which itself was supposed to reach fusion ignition but fell woefully short of the mark.

While consuming billions of federal taxpayers' dollars, none of these projects fulfilled their ultimate goals, Kelly contends.

Livermore and many scientists believe Nova did achieve substantial scientific success and made the short wavelength, glass laser technology the military fusion research leader.

Kelly agrees but counters that the $200 million Nova laser could have accomplished much more if it had not been scrapped for NIF, and, in any event, it "never even came close" to its prime mission of fusion ignition, the same mission NIF has.

Kelly and other critics believe the evidence is overwhelming that Livermore - supported by a biased laser fusion energy community - prematurely rushed NIF into the appropriations pipeline when a myriad of technical problems were unsolved.

Stephen Bodner, retired laser fusion physicist with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., says that in scientific circles, Livermore's penchant for exaggeration has severely tarnished its reputation. But Washington seems oblivious to holding it accountable.

"They get away with it because they are a nuclear weapons laboratory," says Bodner, "and the perception is we need them, so we put up with it."

But, he says, NIF is so far outside the realm of reasonable that it is now incumbent on Congress to step in and downgrade the project to reflect its immature technical merit.

In their article in Nature last fall, Bodner and Chris Paine, nuclear weapons analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, recommended limiting NIF construction to just eight of its 192 laser beam lines until its various technical hurdles are overcome.

"Stop the project, and force them to test it, force them to prove that all the technical problems they say have been resolved are indeed fixed," he says. He says its time for Livermore "to prove it or lose it."

Marylia Kelly said her organization is suing to get the documents she believes will show that Livermore officials knew for a long time that NIF was well out of budget bounds and likely to be seriously late, perhaps even before the project was officially funded by Congress.

"They slipped the schedule without telling anyone or accounting for it," she says.

"For a government report, we think the GAO was absolutely scathing on NIF," she says, though it appears to have had little impact on Congress.

"Not yet," she says.

-------- maryland

US FERC won't block Williams LNG plant reopening

REUTERS USA:
December 20, 2001
Story by Tom Doggett
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13772/story.htm

WASHINGTON - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said Wednesday it would not rescind the operating certificate for a liquefied natural gas plant located near the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Maryland.

The agency gave its approval in October for restarting the Cove Point LNG plant despite concerns that the facility could be subject to sabotage that would threaten the nearby nuclear plant owned by Constellation Energy Group .

FERC said several government agencies, including the U.S. Coast Guard and Transportation Department, have adequate safety measures in place for the LNG plant in southern Maryland.

"Based on the evidence submitted by numerous federal and state agencies...the commission confirms its previous finding that the proximity of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant to Cove Point's facilities does not raise a specific national security concern," FERC said.

Several U.S. lawmakers and activists asked FERC to review security concerns raised over the LNG plant, which Tulsa, Oklahoma-based energy company Williams Cos. Inc. wants to reopen and expand.

Opponents raised safety issues regarding the plant and LNG tankers entering the Chesapeake Bay to deliver imported gas supplies.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland demanded that FERC reconsider its approval order, arguing that it was now too dangerous to have an LNG plant operating so close to a nuclear power plant.

An LNG facility in Boston had been closed by state officials following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Officials feared an LNG tanker entering Boston harbor could be subject to sabotage, causing massive damage.

However, FERC stood by its earlier approval order, saying the Cove Point plant could be safely operated.

Williams wants to resume LNG shipments to the plant during the second quarter of 2002. The company also plans to build a another storage tank at the site that could hold up to 850,000 barrels of LNG.

The facility currently consists of four storage tanks, three 8.45 megawatt gas-turbine generators, an offshore LNG receiving pier with two unloading docks and an 87-mile pipeline.

The Cove Point plant, built in 1974, was bought by Williams last year. The plant stopped importing natural gas in the early 1980s, but reopened as a natural gas storage site about 10 years later.

LNG is kept at ultra-cold temperatures and compressed for transport aboard special tankers. It begins as natural gas in a vapor form. The manufacturing process cools the gas to minus-259 degrees Fahrenheit, changing the gas into a liquid and shrinking it to less than 1/600th of its original size.

LNG, which is odorless and colorless, is then loaded into tankers and shipped to markets, and converted back into dry gas for electric power generation or another use as a fuel source.

-------- nevada

Reid Pleading Nevada's Case For Large Anti-Terror Share

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 20, 2001; Page A41
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3454-2001Dec19?language=printer

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has done better than most lawmakers in tapping the deluge of government anti-terrorism spending on behalf of his state.

As a Democratic leader with considerable influence over spending policy, Reid this year has steered tens of millions of dollars to Nevada for counterterrorism training, expanded Immigration and Naturalization Service activities and a new public health laboratory in Las Vegas to test for anthrax and smallpox.

Now Reid, hoping for his biggest victory yet, is seeking Bush administration approval to convert the old Nevada nuclear test site into the nation's premier counterterrorism center -- a $250 million, five-year project to provide cutting-edge training to police, firefighters, public health workers and other "first responders" to nearly any form of terrorism.

Homeland security has become big business since the attacks in New York and Washington and the rash of anthrax-related deaths, and influential lawmakers are vigorously competing for funding for projects in their states. The Nevada site has been used for some counterterrorism activities for decades -- including preparation for the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission in 1980, and a limited program in bioterrorism for the past three years. But Reid is wooing Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to embrace a much grander vision of training and research.

Abraham "is very interested in the proposal," according to spokesman Joe Davis of the Energy Department, and has promised to tour the sprawling Nevada Test Site -- which is larger than Rhode Island -- in early January.

The 1,350-square-mile site, a landscape of parched earth and jagged mountain ranges, was the scene of 928 underground nuclear detonations through 1992. With hundreds of miles of underground tunnels, factory-size structures and applied technology laboratories, the site, Reid said, could be used for training in dealing with hardened or deeply buried targets as well as coping with chemical spills and the release of biological or nuclear materials.

"It's a laboratory waiting to be used," he said last week.

His plan for a National Center for Counterterrorism would also bring an estimated 1,000 jobs and an influx of government spending to southern Nevada, capitalizing on the country's new obsession with security to boost the area's sagging tourism- and gambling-based economy.

Congress and the White House this week agreed on how to carve up about $20 billion in funding to respond to the terrorist attacks, including $8.3 billion for bioterrorism research and training, border security and measures to protect the nation's food supply. Congress approved another $20 billion shortly after the attack to respond to immediate needs in New York and Washington and to prepare for a military response to the terrorists.

This unprecedented spending has touched off a feeding frenzy among business and government agencies and among lawmakers who are looking out for the economic interests of their states as well as the security of the country.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) won approval in late September for $2 million to begin developing a "one-stop training center" for homeland security and bioterrorism at a West Virginia National Guard training facility. The State Department and Maryland lawmakers have advanced a plan to create a $52 million Center for Anti-Terrorism and Security Training at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. And Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, supports increased funding for the Center for Domestic Preparedness, a chemical warfare training facility at the Army's largely abandoned Fort McClellan in Anniston, Ala.

The Anniston and Nevada Test Site bioterrorism training programs are part of a Justice Department-funded National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, a network that also includes programs in New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana that deal with an array of terrorism responses.

But the consortium programs taken together train only several thousand first responders each year, or less than 1 percent of the 11 million American police, fire and emergency personnel who arguably need the training in the post-Sept. 11 world. Officials of these programs and their patrons on Capitol Hill are clamoring for more money to expand the operations and meet the growing demand.

"If we don't train these guys to survive, who the heck will take care of us when we have a real incident?" said a federal official familiar with the operation of the Nevada program. "Throughout the United States there are lots of very good training and scientific test beds, but there doesn't seem to be one place where it all comes together."

The soft-spoken Reid has shown a flair for the congressional spending game and is well positioned to catapult the Nevada training program far ahead of the others. As the No. 2 Democratic leader in the Senate and chairman of the Appropriations Committee's energy and water subcommittee, Reid has led the fight against a proposed national nuclear waste site beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain while claiming a substantial share of grants, projects and spending initiatives for his state.

"I always try to do what I think is important for the state," Reid said. "There's a limited amount of money to go around, and I try to get our fair share."

This year he persuaded Congress to spend $3 million to establish a public health laboratory at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas that could respond to a bioterrorism attack. Reid engineered the transfer of the Atlas, a centrifuge used in experiments involving high-energy density physics, from New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory to the Nevada Test Site.

And he added $23 million for Nevada projects to a funding bill for the departments of Commerce, Justice and State, including money for continued counterterrorism training at the Nevada test site, an improved 911 emergency response system and authorization to create an INS district office in Las Vegas to better ferret out potential terrorists.

Illustrating that he can round up federal money with the best of them, Reid last month slipped $550,000 into the fiscal 2002 veterans affairs and housing spending bill to finance a new West Las Vegas beauty salon and nearby child care center. Reid argued persuasively that the money would be put to good use creating jobs and day care for struggling low-income women interested in learning a trade.

Over the summer, Reid proposed that Congress spend $27 billion more than the administration requested for public works projects as part of a new "Marshall Plan" to stimulate the economy. He invited Nevada government officials and business leaders to submit a list of road and building projects that could be launched quickly, while promoting some of his own favorites, including a $12 billion high-speed monorail between Southern California and Las Vegas.

When his Marshall Plan proposal fell flat, Reid joined forces with Byrd in an attempt to force the administration to spend billions more on homeland security and bioterrorism than was budgeted.

This week, the administration bowed to congressional pressure by agreeing to shift nearly $4 billion from the military budget to boost overall homeland security spending to $8.3 billion. However, the White House fended off efforts by Byrd, Reid and other Democrats to add $15 billion more to the anti-terrorism package.

Ironically, even as he has vigorously clashed with Abraham over the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, which is strongly favored by the administration, Reid, in his typically understated, disarming way, has been able to cultivate the energy secretary's enthusiasm for the proposed anti-terrorism training center.

Reid persuaded Congress to set aside $10 million as seed money for the proposed training center and probably could win a lot more in coming years even without the administration's blessing. But Reid said that it's important to get Abraham and Ridge on board if the center is to become, as he hopes, the centerpiece of the nation's war on terrorism.

"I want this to be something the country wants and gets behind," Reid said. "I don't want this to be just a matter of spending money."

-------- washington

Resting Nuclear Plant Is Finally Put to Sleep

New York Times
December 20, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/national/20REAC.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - The Energy Department announced today that it was closing a nuclear reactor that was built for a program canceled almost 20 years ago. The department has spent about $1 billion on the reactor, with almost half of the money used to keep it in standby condition since 1992 in case anyone could find a use for it.

The Fast Flux Test Facility, on the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington State, was the last gasp of the American program to build breeder reactors, which create more nuclear fuel than they consume.

The Test Facility, completed in 1982, was intended to test components for a full-scale breeder, the Clinch River Breeder Reactor, which Congress canceled in 1983 after the Energy Department spent $4 billion on it.

But the Hanford plant remained in operation for another nine years before being put on standby in 1992. Since then it has been maintained in operable condition. Members of Congress from Washington State lobbied to keep it open, and the state and local business interests tried to find a use for it. Producing tritium for nuclear weapons, plutonium for space missions or electricity for local use were discussed. Local boosters once said it could be used to make medical isotopes.

A few days before the end of the Clinton administration, the Energy Department decided to close the Hanford plant, but that decisions was stayed by the incoming Bush administration.

Today, Spencer Abraham, the secretary of energy, said that no customers for the isotopes had been identified, and that it could cost $2 billion to set up the reactor to make them even if there was a market.

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has fought to stop nuclear operations at Hanford and clean up radioactive pollution there, said that "millions and millions of dollars that could have gone for cleanup, for public health and safety, was lost as the Department of Energy went on this scavenger hunt trying to find a mission for this boondoggle."

The "fast flux" in the title refers to the speed of neutrons, the subatomic particles that sustain a chain reaction in a reactor. Fast neutrons are needed to make plutonium, the nuclear fuel that the breeder was meant to produce. To cool the reactor without slowing the neutrons, the Fast Flux Test Facility used sodium, a metal, in a molten form. The problem was that if the sodium was allowed to solidify, the reactor could not be used again. So the standby reactor was kept for years at a temperature of several hundred degrees.

Joseph H. Davis, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said that estimates of the cost of tearing down the plant ran as high as $300 million but that the department believed it could be done for less.

Opponents had fought the project for years and were frustrated by the momentum that kept it alive.

"I figured they'd drag this out and give it $30 to $40 million a year ad infinitum," Tom Clements of the Nuclear Control Institute, a nonprofit antiproliferation group, said. "The reactor has always been in search of a mission."

Some nuclear experts had talked about using the reactor to destroy surplus plutonium from the weapons program, but most nuclear weapons opponents favor mixing that bomb fuel with contaminants instead, to ensure it is not put back into weapons.

Representative Doc Hastings, a Republican whose district includes Hanford, said he was "deeply disappointed" by the decision to close the facility.

-------- us politics

Poll of world opinion leaders shows little empathy for U.S.

By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 20, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011220-868849.htm

The United States is conducting the war on terrorism without taking into account its allies' interests, and expanding the war beyond Afghanistan lacks international support, according to a survey among 275 opinion leaders from 24 countries released yesterday.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center, also shows the world's "love-hate relationship" with the United States hasn't changed after the September 11 attacks in New York and on the Pentagon. America's power and its contribution to widening the gap between rich and poor are most frequently cited as reasons for resentment abroad.

"While the survey reports popular support for the war on terror, the United States is seen as overreacting to the terrorist attacks," Andrew Kohut, Pew's director, said at the project's release in the offices of the Albright Group, a global strategy firm founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and other members of the Clinton administration.

More than half of all overseas respondents said the September 11 attacks were "caused by U.S. policy," while this opinion was shared by 81 percent of the participants from the Middle East. About 70 percent of all surveyed agreed that it was "good for the United States to feel vulnerable."

Such an attitude is a result of the fact that for a long time "we just talked about turbulence in the world" without knowing what it's really like, said Mrs. Albright, who chairs the survey as part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

The United States is a "major magnet for those who have problems with major powers," she said, but "you don't want to live in a neighborhood where everyone hates you."

Mrs. Albright said the "major red flag" in the survey is the gap between rich and poor, noting that she should have used it as a reason to ask Congress for an increase of the foreign aid budget, which is currently less than 1 percent.

"We are rich, and we don't share" is how she characterized the perception of the United States overseas. "We are powerful and selfish."

Asked about the main reasons for "liking" America, most international survey respondents pointed to its democratic values, the opportunities it offered, and its scientific and technological advances. The survey also found that 54 percent of foreign opinion leaders and 40 percent of those in the Middle East said the battle against terrorism was worth the risk of destabilizing the governments of Muslim and Arab states supporting the anti-terror coalition.

Unlike the majority of U.S. respondents - 70 percent - who think Washington's support of Israel is a major source of resentment, fewer than 30 percent of the foreign participants share that opinion.

The survey reflects the views of political, media, cultural, business and government leaders. The interviews were conducted between Nov. 12 and Dec. 13.

----

Anti-Terror Compromise Approved

By Alan Fram
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, December 20, 2001; 12:53 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6914-2001Dec20?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- The House overwhelmingly approved a compromise $20 billion anti-terrorism package on Thursday as weeks of battling between President Bush and lawmakers over the government's fiscal response to terrorism drew to a close.

By a 408-6 vote, the House approved the package and a mammoth $318 billion defense bill it was attached to. The anti-terror money is for the Pentagon, domestic security, and New York and other areas staggered by the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Senate was likely to grant final approval to the measure later in the day.

With lawmakers exhausted from a near all-night session debating economic stimulus legislation, House debate on the anti-terrorism measure was brief.

But underlining the oft-bitter partisan battling over the package, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., praised the compromise as one in which "rationality prevailed over stubbornness." That seemed to be a reference to the Bush administration's insistence on limiting the measure's price tag.

The Senate, by 90-7, gave final approval to a $123 billion measure financing education, health and labor programs, and neared completion of a $15.4 billion foreign aid bill. The House approved the education measure Wednesday by 393-30 and signed off on the foreign aid bill by 357-66.

The three bills are the last of the 13 annual spending bills for fiscal 2002, which began Oct. 1. After finishing them and other lingering measures, Congress was expected to leave the capital for the year to end an unusually lengthy session prolonged by the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

The defense bill, along with military funds in other legislation, would bring Pentagon spending to $345 billion this year, 15 percent over 2001.

Besides leasing 100 Boeing 767s for conversion to Air Force refueling tankers, the Defense Department could lease four smaller 737s, to be available to administration officials and lawmakers. Congressional aides said the 737s were sought by Vice President Dick Cheney and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

The bill has a 5 percent pay raise for military personnel and $7.8 billion for missile defense, $500 million below Bush's request.

The anti-terrorism package provides $3.5 billion for the Pentagon, less than half what Bush wanted. It also has $8.3 billion for preventing bioterrorism attacks, aviation security and other domestic defense programs, plus $8.2 billion for New York and other areas directly affected by the attacks - both exceeding what Bush sought.

The education, labor and health bill provides $11 billion more than last year's and exceeds Bush's request by $7 billion. The added money helped lawmakers reduce their squabbling after the attacks.

The bill would provide $48.9 billion for schools, 16 percent more than last year and 10 percent over Bush's initial request. It closely followed the legislation revamping federal education programs that Congress sent Bush this week.

Substantial increases are included for research by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for programs to retrain some jobless workers and for Pell grants for low-income college students.

The legislation also has almost $1 billion in home-district projects for health care facilities, local job training, education and health care programs and museum exhibits.

Scores of hospitals and health care centers would get money for improvements totaling $312 million, though the earlier Senate bill had just $10 million and the House approved nothing.

The foreign aid bill is $400 million higher than last year and $200 million over Bush's request.

The president's $731 million plan for combating illegal drugs from South America's Andean nations was cut to $660 million. Russia and other former Soviet states would get $784 million, and there is $229 million to finance debt relief for poor countries.

The bill would provide $34 million to the U.N. Fund for Population Activities, a $3.5 million reduction demanded by conservatives who said the program helps finance abortions in China. Supporters of the program deny that.

Following Bush policy, that money, and $446.5 million for family planning programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development, cannot go to groups that help provide abortions overseas.


-------- MILITARY

Navy crew barges onto oil tanker

Around the Nation
Washington Times
December 20, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011220-26533890.htm

The crew of a U.S. Navy ship forcibly boarded a Belize-flagged Saudi oil tanker in the northern Arabian Gulf yesterday after the tanker refused permission to board and ignored repeated requests for information about its cargo, U.S. officials said.

Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Lapan said a small explosive was detonated against a door to gain access to the tanker but no shots were fired. Lt. Col. Lapan said a member of the tanker's crew was slightly injured in the leg by flying debris from the explosive charge.

The ship was suspected of violating the U.N. oil embargo against Iraq, but the boarding team determined otherwise and let the tanker proceed.

-------- afghanistan

Norway offers landmine clearers for Afghanistan

NORWAY: December 20, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13778/story.htm

OSLO - NATO-member Norway said on Tuesday it had offered the United States equipment and personnel to clear landmines around Kandahar airport in Afghanistan.

The Norwegian Defence Ministry said, at a request from Washington, a team of 10 to 15 mine clearance experts were ready to fly to Afghanistan at short notice.

"We have a team ready, but we are awaiting final acceptance from the United States," ministry spokeswoman Kirsti Skjerven told Reuters.

The ministry said Norway had experience from similar operations in Kosovo and that the United States would provide logistical support and protection in Afghanistan.

Afganistan's new rulers and the U.S.-led coalition which toppled the former Taliban government have yet to agree on the size of a foreign peacekeeping force for Kabul.

The United States and Britain are keen to see the international force in place before the new government takes office on Saturday.

----

Life during Wartime

Dec. 20, 2001
http://www.sfbg.com/News/36/12/ogwar.html

Destroying Afghanistan to save it

Unlike the Defense Department - or the mainstream media - University of New Hampshire economics professor Marc Herold has been looking closely at the human "collateral damage" in Afghanistan. Last week Herold released a study estimating more than 3,700 innocents have been killed in Afghanistan - about as many as were killed in the World Trade Center attacks. His stats are based on foreign press reports and firsthand accounts. The White House has downplayed the civilian deaths, proclaiming that no nation "has worked so hard to avoid civilian casualties."

But it looks like Herold may be right. Consider this account by Global Exchange staffer Deborah James, who witnessed the carnage up close. She returned Dec. 3 from a four-week fact-finding mission to Pakistan and Afghanistan. "We met with a woman named Ramsir," James told the Bay Guardian. "She's 24 years old. Not only did her neighbor's house get bombed, and all nine family members were killed, but the park where she was playing with her 5-year-old daughter was bombed because it was near the Kabul airport and [U.S. planes] missed. Her daughter now is in a total state of shock. There were kids in the playground who were killed."

James continued, "We talked to a 12-year-old girl who was out with her father one day and came home and found her house in a pile of rubble with her mother and siblings dead inside. Her father went crazy and now this 12-year-old girl is the head of the household."

What does James think of the media's portrayal of the conflict? "I believe the media is doing us a tremendous disservice" by ignoring the civilian casualties. "Most people in the U.S. cannot name one person who's been killed in the bombing."

She also expressed disgust at the United States' paltry aid offers. "The latest proposal is $200 million. We've just spent a billion dollars a month bombing Afghanistan, and we're talking about $200 million reconstructing it - and $65 million is just for the American embassy. That's not even going to address the damage we've done." (A.C. Thompson)

A brave new humanitarian mission

During a Nov. 30 press briefing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld informed the world that U.S. forces are doing far more than simply kicking terrorist ass. Culled from transcripts posted on the Pentagon Web site (www.defenselink.mil), here's a choice comment:

Q: Mr. Secretary, as General Pace outlined early on, that we're continuing to go after the cave and tunnel complexes, how do we know who's in the caves that we're trying to seal up in these hits? How do we know who's there?

Rumsfeld: [pause] Well. We don't. And the people who hide in caves, it seems to me, for the most part are people we would prefer not to be hiding in caves. But you can't know of certain knowledge who's in a cave unless you crawl in there to find them. And what we're doing is we're helping them, by closing up the entrances to caves so that they can't be used. And that will reduce the problem. (Rachel Brahinsky)

-

Inside the caves they called home

The Guardian, The Boston Globe

Geared up ... a Western commando inspects the Tora Bora area after al-Qaeda forces were driven out. Photo: AFP/Romeo Gacad

John Hooper was taken into the terrorist organisation's mountain fortress at Tora Bora.

The cave is 300 metres up a shale-strewn incline almost perpendicular to the narrow valley floor. The entrance is set back at the end of a sloping path between two bulging expanses of rock that form a kind of chicane. It may be natural, but might just as easily have been hewn from the crumbly sandstone.

At all events, it is a superb defensive position - and that is precisely how it was used by Osama bin Laden's soldiers in the recent conflict which ended this week when local warlords claimed victory over the foreigners.

United States-backed Afghan fighters, saying the heaviest fighting is over, have withdrawn their tanks and artillery from Tora Bora, the former al-Qaeda mountain stronghold. But American special forces are still there, going cave to cave, searching for traces of Osama bin Laden.

Afghan commander Hazarat Ali said US forces had stayed behind to search several hundred caves, including some that were sealed during three weeks of intense US bombing of the area.

"This really is very, very difficult," Marine General Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon. "In each of those valleys you have several hundred caves. And you want to go through very methodically, one by one, and if it's been closed by bombs, determine whether or not you want to open it up and see what's in there. And if it's not been closed by bombs, you have to determine whether or not it's worth going in."

On the floor of one cave, there are eight tins of heavy machine-gun ammunition baring Chinese characters. The lids of some have been removed - not lifted off normally, but ripped up from one edge with a force that spoke of life-or-death urgency.

The mujahideen who overran al-Qaeda's network of training camps on Tuesday permitted journalists to go deeper than before into the White Mountains where the battle was fought. What they allowed us to see demonstrated that it would have been almost impossible to dislodge bin Laden's guerillas without the America's aerial might.

The steep walls of the Melawa Valley where al-Qaeda had an extensive training camp ripple like billowing curtains. There is scarcely a square metre of low ground that is not vulnerable to devastating fire from defensive emplacements. It had been doubly protected. When a photographer strayed, a mujahideen brought him back with a cry of "Minefield!".

It was unclear how the machine-gunners in the cave were dealt with. They may have been killed by marksmen or caught in the open with US planes.

The cave can only be approached by a ridge that has been formed by two bomb craters, about three metres deep. Between the ridge and the cave there is an area of scrub and shale littered with the remains of cluster bombs.

Inside the cave, which measures about 2.5 metres by 1.5 metres, there is nothing left amid the ammunition except a mangled book in Arabic.

Kilometres behind, down a winding track, mujahideen form up on an area of slack land as part of their phased withdrawal from the mountains.

For the local Pashtun warlords, al-Qaeda has already become a thing of the past. But after visiting its results, it is hard to believe the last has been heard of an organisation that saw more than 10,000 men pass through training camps like the one in the Melawa Valley.

----

Security terms get OK from Afghanistan's new rulers

From combined dispatches
Washington Times
December 20, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011220-37138680.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan - The incoming government announced an agreement yesterday on the terms for an international force to police Kabul, even as the United States and its European allies bickered over command arrangements.

Hamid Karzai, who will serve as prime minister when the new administration takes up its duties on Saturday, signaled his satisfaction with the arrangement as he returned from Rome, where he had been holding talks with the former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah.

The British-led force was expected to start arriving any moment - but in limited numbers, and playing a low-key role. Mohammed Fahim, designated defense minister in the new administration, said the force will not exceed 1,000; additional members would be limited to logistical support.

"If there are more, then the rest will participate only in providing technical support and assist in humanitarian aid deliveries. The contingent providing support for peace and stability will be up to 1,000 people."

A spokesman for Mr. Fahim, military leader of the Northern Alliance, said an agreement on the force had been reached with British Gen. John McColl, who will head the contingent.

Mr. Fahim told reporters that the force would be quartered at one base and would stay for six months from the day the interim government takes power on Saturday. His spokesman said the force and logistical support team would total 3,000, and the first contingent would arrive tomorrow.

Diplomatic and military sources said earlier that a vanguard of about 100 British Royal Marines from the vessel HMS Fearless was expected to arrive first.

British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, in a formal letter yesterday, informed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan of Britain's readiness to lead the peacekeeping force with 1,500 of its own troops.

Military advisers from the 17 countries that have offered to contribute personnel met in London yesterday to discuss the mission. The deployment still awaits U.N. approval, which diplomats say could come today.

Mr. Hoon said the main body of the force would not begin to deploy before Dec. 28.

Differences over the size and role of the force have dogged discussions between Mr. Fahim and senior military officers from Britain and other likely contributing nations.

Serious differences also emerged among key European allies yesterday on the command structure of the foreign security force for Afghanistan, but the United States said its ongoing military operation must take priority.

Britain has suggested linking its command structure with that of the U.S. troops waging war against the Taliban and the al Qaeda network. But German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping told reporters in Brussels, where he was attending a NATO meeting, that there had to be a strict separation between the two missions.

A senior German government source said Berlin might not take part unless it was satisfied with the command arrangements and rules of engagement. If Germany did not join, the Netherlands might also stay out, one source said.

Diplomats said the United States was frustrated by Germany's reluctance to put its forces under U.S. command. They said France was essentially on board but found it hard to say so publicly.

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said there had to be coordination to avoid friendly-fire incidents and interference in the U.S.-led offensive.

"You don't want to have anything happen that could bring either one of those forces to come under each other's fire for some reason or to be operating in areas where one doesn't know where the other is. That could be very disastrous," he told reporters in Brussels.

"The second point is not to inhibit the war on terrorism that's going on inside Afghanistan."

Germany, France, Turkey and Jordan were likely to be among the countries taking part in the force, whose role is expected to be confined to guarding government buildings and conducting low-key patrols in Kabul.

Mr. Karzai, speaking in Rome, said he would be happy with a foreign peacekeeping force of any size necessary that would be beneficial to his country.

----

Britain to Lead Peacekeeping Force
U.S. to Have Formal Operational Authority in Afghanistan

By Colum Lynch
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, December 20, 2001; Page A33
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3964-2001Dec19?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 19 -- Britain will lead the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, but the Pentagon's Central Command will have formal authority over the peacekeepers and U.S. troops will be prepared to rescue or evacuate them in an emergency, U.N. diplomats said today.

U.S. and British military planners worked out the arrangement, which gives British commanders day-to-day control over the peacekeeping mission in Kabul, unless the security situation collapses, the diplomats said.

"The United Kingdom, as lead nation, will exercise command of the International Security Assistance Force," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said today in a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, using the formal name of the force. But Straw added that "the U.S. Central Command will have authority" to ensure that the peacekeeping mission does not interfere with U.S. military goals in Afghanistan.

The commitment to oversee -- and rescue, if necessary -- the peacekeepers indicates the Bush administration's intention to maintain a military presence in or around Afghanistan for at least a few more months and to act as a guarantor of the peace.

The decision to place the mission under formal U.S. control, however, has generated controversy in Berlin, where the government faces fierce opposition to sending German troops on their first military operation outside Europe since World War II. German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said in Brussels today that there must be a clear separation of powers between the U.S.-led military coalition and the U.N.-mandated peacekeeping mission.

"We do not want the German troops to come under the command of the Americans," added Peter Struck, a senior member of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party, in an interview on Germany's ARD television.

U.S. and Western officials said American troops will play no peacekeeping role. But they described U.S. oversight as essential to guarantee the force's safety.

"If there is a problem, the umbrella command from the United States kicks in," a Western diplomat said. "If all hell breaks loose, all foreign military elements in Afghanistan will come under one clear command."

Last week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair delayed announcing Britain's role to secure a firm U.S. commitment of support. After a visit to London by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, British officials requested that Washington provide logistical help, intelligence and air transport for troops from several countries.

"They came to us with a list, and we came back and said, 'Yeah, of course,' " said a senior State Department official. "The British will have all the support they need from the United States to lead this organization."

British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons today that London will provide 1,500 troops under the command of Maj. Gen. John McColl.

McColl said he expects to arrive in Kabul with an advance team of about 200 British Marines as early as Saturday, when the transitional government of Prime Minister Hamid Karzai assumes power.

France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, Jordan, Malaysia and Turkey also have expressed interest in participating in the force. Spain and the Czech Republic offered today to send a total of nearly 1,000 troops.

Meanwhile, the United States, Britain and France reached agreement on a six-month Security Council mandate for the mission, which will be authorized to use force to protect U.N. personnel and the transitional government. Diplomats said the resolution could be passed by the 15-member council Thursday.

Straw informed Annan today that Britain will lead the force for three months. But he asked the secretary general to identify another nation to take charge for an additional three months.

Annan told reporters he was concerned that the force initially will operate only around the capital. "If the international force that is going in is going to focus on Kabul and its environs, what happens to other parts of country which are unsafe?" he said.

----

Taliban Rank and File Fade Back Into Society
Still in Kabul, Once-Hated Soldiers Are 'Everywhere'

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 20, 2001; Page A33
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3589-2001Dec19?language=printer

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Fazlulah couldn't believe it. He was headed to prayers the other day when he heard loud music from a shop near the mosque. Indignant, he marched inside and ordered the shopkeeper to turn it off. The shopkeeper meekly complied.

What happened next was even more unbelievable. After Fazlulah stepped out the door, the shopkeeper turned the music back on -- something no one would have dared do just weeks ago, when Fazlulah was a member of the feared Taliban army.

Defiance of the old strictures no longer earns a beating or jail time the way it did before the Taliban surrendered the capital last month. But while the leaders are gone, the Taliban is still here in the presence of Fazlulah and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other former soldiers. These enforcers of the Taliban's harsh Islamic code have melted back into society, trying to adjust to a life out of power, or waiting for their turn to come around again.

"They're walking around town everywhere," said Fazlulah, 23, who like many Afghans uses just one name. "There are many people like us living in Kabul."

The Northern Alliance forces that captured Kabul on Nov. 13 decided not to punish the enemy's ordinary foot soldiers, focusing instead on those responsible for specific crimes, their leaders or, better yet, their foreign allies. As a result, the Taliban rank and file who terrorized Kabul have simply become its latest jobless residents looking for work.

The continued presence of the vanquished army speaks volumes about Afghanistan's distinctive style of war and politics. The same men who are blood enemies one day find themselves neighbors, co-workers or even allies the next.

Yet because the Taliban army was more disbanded than defeated, the question remains whether it could be reconstituted into a viable guerrilla force that might destabilize the interim government slated to take power Saturday.

"The Taliban who were armed and gave up their weapons to us are free today and they're here in Kabul," said Abdullah Jan Tawhidi, the deputy minister of security and intelligence for the Northern Alliance. "Inshallah [God willing], I hope they have lost the capacity to attack us."

Many Taliban regulars who remained have trimmed their beards, stashed their turbans and begun mixing with the population again. They are not in hiding, nor could they be. For the people of Kabul, there is little mystery about who once carried truncheons and whips to discipline those who listened to music, flew a kite, failed to pray enough or violated any of the other severe rules under the Taliban version of sharia, or Islamic law.

Apparent Absence of Reprisals

For all the potential for bitterness among the victims, though, there have not been reports of widespread reprisals in Kabul, either by Northern Alliance fighters or by the city's residents, a break from the cycle of violence that has governed Afghanistan for decades.

"I'm walking freely. I go outside. I don't want to hide myself," said Fazlulah, fiddling with prayer beads and staring with dark, intense eyes. "I'm not afraid. I don't hide from people. They know I was with the Taliban. I didn't punish anybody. I haven't done any bad things to be afraid of. They know that I was a Taliban but I didn't do anything bad to be sorry about."

Fazlulah became a Taliban soldier three years ago, in part to earn a living and in part, he said, to protect himself from being arrested because he was from the Shomali Plain north of Kabul, where the Taliban had persecuted residents. Fazlulah, an ethnic Pashtun like most of the Taliban, said he disagreed with the restrictions on women, but appreciated that Taliban leaders ostensibly were men of God. "They prayed and made people go to the mosque and pray and I agreed with that," he said.

Although he denied abusing people, he recalled a day when he had noticed a man peering out of a house while his unit was on patrol. "I was confused," he said. "What was he doing? Maybe he's trying to shoot us. So I told some other Taliban about the guy in the house. . . . They went to the house and arrested the man. . . . They hit him for a long time. It was the only thing I was sorry about. I was sorry because I didn't want to report him. I was the cause that he was beaten by other Taliban."

No one need worry that he will pick up a weapon again, he added. "Now I'm fed up with fighting," he said. "I won't fight on any side, Taliban side or Northern Alliance side."

The decision by so many Taliban soldiers to remain in Kabul may reveal a force far less ideologically committed than its leaders would have believed. Unlike the largely foreign force of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization, many Taliban soldiers were happy to give up their guns and return to their homes in Kabul.

While the Taliban army had a core of true believers, former soldiers here said the majority were regular men trying to earn a living and avoid the wrath of their superiors. Some had served in the army of the previous regime, and some are already signing up with the Northern Alliance.

'I Had a Family. I Had to Support Them'

"We had to join" the Taliban, said Mohammed Aref, 30, a tall, quiet man who served at a Taliban base in Kabul for the last three years. "I had a family. I had to support them. I couldn't get another job and I needed the salary." As for the Taliban's goals and actions, he insisted, "I was against everything they did."

Sufi Mohammed Naim, a Taliban soldier who stayed when Kabul fell, recalled a top militia official once telling him that "only 10 percent of the Taliban are people who actually believe in the Taliban."

Naim said he was part of the other 90 percent. "For a while, for self-protection, I tried to join the Taliban," he said. "Then when I saw their actions against the people of Afghanistan, I made contact with the Northern Alliance." He said he served as an informer for years. "I was with the Taliban but I was working like a spy. When they tried to attack Northern Alliance forces, we tried to contact them."

Today Naim can be found at a Northern Alliance military base, where he has been named a commander in charge of 100 soldiers. Fifteen of the men were with him in the Taliban.

Beyond the fighters, many people who helped maintain the apparatus that supported the Taliban -- the civil servants and others involved with the highest levels of government -- remained in Kabul. Like others, they said they had little choice but to go along when the Taliban seized Kabul and the government in September 1996.

"We had to work with them. We were living like a bird in the cage," said Hadimullah, 30, who worked as the personal assistant to the head of security and intelligence in the Taliban government, an agency at the center of the machinery of repression. "We couldn't defend ourselves against the Taliban. Any time they wanted to, they could arrest us."

Hadimullah worked at the department for eight years before the Taliban arrived, and estimated that 600 of 800 employees were holdovers from the previous government. Even though his department was instrumental in propping up the regime and squelching opposition, Hadimullah does not believe he bears any personal responsibility. "We weren't involved in arresting people or punishing people," he said. "It was someone else's job. So I don't feel myself to be guilty."

Neither does Ahmed Fahim, 50. While at the security ministry under the Taliban, he taught young agents intelligence techniques such as how to follow someone undetected, how to go undercover and how to unmask a spy for a foreign country.

"All the people working there were Afghans. I was surrounded by Afghans," he said. "I didn't feel they were foreigners or against us. I considered them the rulers of Afghanistan and I had to be at their service. I did my duty for my country."

He had done the same for every other set of Afghan rulers, he noted. In his lifetime, he has seen nine regimes running Afghanistan. And he expects to serve the next one.

"I wasn't the only one to adapt to the situation," he said. "Everybody in Afghanistan adapted."

--------

THE HUNT
Troops May Scour Caves for Qaeda, U.S. General Says

New York Times
December 20, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON with ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/international/20MILI.html?pagewanted=all

TORA BORA, Afghanistan, Dec. 19 - Frustrated by the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan has proposed that United States marines or Army troops be deployed to comb the wild terrain of Tora Bora to try to determine the fate of Al Qaeda leaders, American officials said today.

The proposal, presented to the Pentagon by Gen. Tommy R. Franks, head of the United States Central Command, stems from the recognition that the Afghan allies may not have the ability or the will to establish control over Tora Bora, an untamed and dangerous region that borders Pakistan.

A United States defense official in Washington declined to say how many marines or other American ground forces would be involved, but another person familiar with the discussions said it could involve "several hundred" troops. One of their tasks could be to dig their way into blown-up caves in search of clues about Mr. bin Laden.

American military officials said that the Pentagon was still assessing the risks, but that a final decision might come in several days, and the first troops could arrive soon after.

Dispatching significant numbers of Marine and Army forces would considerably aid the effort to search the ridges and valleys of Tora Bora. But it would also expand the risk to Americans from sniper attacks, land mines and booby traps.

It could also entail political complications. In northern Afghanistan, Northern Alliance forces have bragged about the support they have received form the Americans as a badge of respect. But in this conservative Pashtun region of Afghanistan, senior commanders routinely refuse to acknowledge help they receive from American Special Forces. Suspicion of Americans runs so strong that some American reporters try to hide their nationalities.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking in Washington, made no reference to General Franks's confidential proposal today. But he indicated that he had received assurances from Hamid Karzai, the Afghan leader who will formally take charge of the provisional government on Saturday, that the American military could continue to operate in Afghanistan until the last "pockets of resistance" had been eliminated.

"Our goal is to stop them," Mr. Rumsfeld said of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, "not simply move the problem into other countries."

The military campaign has toppled the Taliban and destroyed Al Qaeda's network of terrorist training camps. But it has not provided the closure that many Americans are yearning for: the capture or death of Mr. bin Laden, the man the Bush administration and the vast majority of Americans blame for Sept. 11.

American military officials have said that communication intercepts indicated that Mr. bin Laden had probably been personally directing the defense of Tora Bora. Al Qaeda prisoners here have also told their Afghan captors that Mr. bin Laden was seen in the area late last week.

But American intelligence information about the location of Mr. bin Laden recently came to an abrupt and mysterious end, officials said. That has led intelligence experts to infer that he was killed in an air strike or fled to Pakistan. It has also added to the pressure to send American troops to sort out the situation.

"We have nothing new on him," a senior military official said. "There are no new signs of his activity. There are two main theories now. Some think he was blown to kingdom come and is buried in one of the caves or tunnels we took out. Others say it is more likely that he escaped. We are trying to gain clarity in a situation that has no clarity."

Certainly, the Afghan fighters who currently patrol the area may not resolve the mystery. Until now the task of searching the mountains and ravines here has been entrusted to fighters from the Eastern Shura, a regional government that is the source of three different and sometimes antagonistic forces.

About 50 United States Special Operations troops have been working with anti-Taliban forces or operating independently in the Tora Bora area to cut off Al Qaeda fighters trying to flee to Pakistan. Some British commandos are also deployed.

But on Sunday some Afghan commanders signaled that they considered the war to be largely over now that Tora Bora is back in their hands and that the search for Mr. bin Laden was a secondary mission.

At times, some of the Afghan groups also seem more preoccupied with internal feuds than with tracking down the arch-enemy of the United States. On Tuesday, fighters for Cmdr. Hajji Zahir rushed from their command post deep in the Tora Bora mountains after being alerted that men from Cmdr. Muhammad Zaman's faction was trying to make their way home from a patrol by crossing through Commander Zahir's turf. The tension was high and at times it seemed that a firefight between factions might erupt.

The task of tracking down Mr. bin Laden is also inherently difficult.

If the terrorist leader is entombed in a cave, combat engineers may be needed to dig out the body. General Franks said in a television interview on Sunday that the United States might not be able to find some Al Qaeda leaders without excavating the bombed-out caves.

"Well, it'll be a question mark until we decide whether we want to go in and dig these bunkers and caves out," he said. "And in some cases, we may well do that."

A senior defense official said in Washington said that deploying American troops would also send a message that the United States is continuing the hunt for Mr. bin Laden.

"There are a whole lot of caves up there," the official said, referring to Tora Bora, "and we're looking at what resources you might need to get the job done. The X-factor in all of this is to continue to make clear with the anti-Taliban forces that we're just as committed as ever to following through with our objectives."

Under the proposal by General Franks, marines could be drawn from their bases near Kandahar, in the southeast, and soldiers could be summoned from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, which is deployed in Uzbekistan and at the Bagram air base, north of Kabul. Other soldiers might be drawn from the Army's 101st Airborne Division, which is guarding bases the United States is using in Pakistan.

There are about 2,000 marines in Afghanistan, operating largely from the Kandahar International Airport, 12 miles south of the city. Until recently, they had set up roadblocks on the outskirts of Kandahar in an effort to block Taliban forces from trying to escape.

A Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2,200 is to arrive in the North Arabian Sea in the coming weeks, to join the two units already there or ashore in Afghanistan.

"We will use what we need, but there's no anticipation of a major infusion," said a defense official.

During the war, General Franks has suggested that he would dispatch troops to hot spots around the country if they were needed in the hunt for the leaders and fighters of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Senior military officials may also bolster the marines in Kandahar to begin attacking pockets of resistance in the south, and perhaps broaden the hunt for Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader.

After punishing air attacks and assaults by Afghan fighters, hundreds of Al Qaeda members have sought to flee to Pakistan.

Today, captured fighters in Pakistan grabbed weapons from their guards and tried to escape, leaving at least 13 people dead, Pakistani government spokesmen said. Seven prisoners and six guards were said to have died in the revolt and Pakistani troops were pursuing as many as 40 other prisoners who had fled into the surrounding countryside during the mayhem.

The rebelling prisoners were among about 100 fighters captured early today and late Tuesday as they fled, government officials said.

The fighters, mostly non-Afghans, were being transported by bus and truck from a makeshift detention center near Parachinar, in western Pakistan, to a prison in Kohat, the government said. A prisoner seized a guard's weapon and other prisoners joined an attempt to take over one of the buses.

"In the ensuing melee, the bus carrying 48 Al Qaeda men careened off the winding road near Arawali village in Kurram Agency and fell 20 feet down," the Pakistan government said.

The government said the fighters exchanged gunfire with the security forces and escaped into the surrounding hills and forests. Army helicopters and Special Forces troops were brought in for the pursuit and most prisoners were recaptured within hours, officials said.

Today, Secretary Rumsfeld said Pakistani forces along the mountainous border had captured hundreds of non-Afghan Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters fleeing Afghanistan in the past few days.

So far, few if any of those prisoners have been handed over to American forces. But American officials will soon join in interrogating them, Mr. Rumsfeld said today.

Some critics say Pakistan has done a poor job of sealing the border.

Mr. Rumsfeld tried to counter that impression today. He said seven battalions of Pakistani soldiers - several thousand troops in all - have been patrolling the border region, with assistance from American reconnaissance aircraft and drones, trying to cut off escape routes.

Mr. Rumsfeld also sought to dispel a report that a German official had said the United States would focus its antiterror campaign on Somalia next, calling the report "nonsense."

And he sought to put the best face on the frustrating and so far fruitless search for Mr. bin Laden: "He's either dug in some tunnel, or he's alive. And if he's alive, he's either in Afghanistan or he isn't. And it does not matter; we'll find him one day."

-------- africa

Rwanda-backed rebels, Congo warriors clash

Briefly
Washington Times
December 20, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011220-542071.htm

GOMA, Congo - Clashes between rebels and traditional warriors who back the Kinshasa government resumed last weekend in the eastern part of the country, a rebel source told Agence France-Presse.

Officials of the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) said fighting between Mai-Mai tribals and RCD rebels broke out Saturday in Maniema and South Kivu provinces.

"They are in fact attacks that occur in a repeated fashion and leave these areas in a permanent state of war," RCD Secretary-General Azarias Ruberwa told AFP, accusing the Kinshasa government of supplying the Mai-Mai.

They recently received three speedboats for use on Lake Tanganyika, he said.

Weekly notes

An Islamic court in northern Nigeria's Sokoto state has sentenced two persons - Sani Shehu and Garba Dandare - to amputation at the right wrist and left ankle for breaking into a house by night, beating up the occupants and stealing valuables including a TV set and motorcycle, local Rima Radio reported yesterday. Presiding Judge Bawa Sahali Tambuwal said the offense was contrary to Islamic law.

-------- argentina

INTERNATIONAL
Reeling From Riots, Argentina Declares a State of Siege

New York Times
December 20, 2001
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/international/20ARGE.html

BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 19 - President Fernando de la Rúa declared a 30-day state of siege after food riots and looting broke out across Argentina today, and the police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at rock-throwing protesters in Buenos Aires and several provincial cities. Five people were killed in the rioting.

The most widespread social disturbances since the 1980's came on a sweltering summer day. The near anarchy in many cities appeared to be a mix of spontaneous pilferage by the unemployed seeking to put food on their Christmas tables and organized protests to force the tottering government of Mr. de la Rúa to give up power.

Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo resigned his post around midnight, according to two local television networks, after eight months in office in which he failed to jump- start the economy with tariff increases, cuts in government salaries, subsidies for exporters and finally capital controls to stop a run on the banks. His resignation and the rioting came just as Mr. De la Rúa's government was faltering in its efforts to avert a default on the $132 billion public sector debt.

Tensions have been building for the last four days as poor people massed around supermarkets in the cities of Rosario, Concordia and Mendoza, demanding handouts and sometimes breaking down doors to loot. But the sporadic, isolated disturbances suddenly swelled in the predawn hours across the country today, even reaching the working- class slums surrounding the capital.

By late afternoon here police officers with night sticks and tear gas grenades were wading into crowds of looters.

"Keep calm," said Chrystian Colombo, the cabinet chief, who asked the people for patience in an improvised television news conference. "Magic solutions do not exist."

The government appeared surprised by the lawlessness and confused about whether to strike a public pose of toughness or sympathy to growing social needs. The cabinet met in emergency session through much of the day with intelligence and security officials and top military officers before government officials told reporters of the state of siege.

The state of siege, which applies nationwide for 30 days, gives the president broad powers to suspend constitutional guarantees, including freedom of travel, press, property, association, labor organizing and even private property rights. He can also order arrests as he sees fit.

Mr. de la Rúa is not expected to adopt dictatorial authority, and the Congress has the ability to trim his emergency powers.

"The looting is not about hunger," said Interior Minister Ramón Mestre. "They are stealing alcoholic beverages. This is a political matter."

Government officials were quick to blame the rioting on two powerful governors of the Justicialist opposition who have declared their interest in the presidency.

Today's disturbances broke an uneasy social peace that dominated the last four years of economic decline as unemployment rose to nearly 20 percent of the work force and per capita income fell by 14 percent. Mr. de la Rúa canceled a luncheon with reporters who cover the presidential palace, and the Congress refused to discuss the emergency measures publicly until late tonight.

"I will assure order throughout the republic," the president said in a brief, rushed taped statement on national television. "I understand the suffering, but the people know violence does not solve problems."

He released $7 million in food aid to impoverished neighborhoods.

Immediately after the speech, thousands of Buenos Aires residents took to the street clanging pots and pans and marching on the presidential palace in protest of the president's policies. The streets of the city rang out with honking horns from drivers supporting the protests.

The increasing tensions are likely to make it more difficult for Mr. de la Rúa and an increasingly rebellious opposition-controlled Congress to agree to an austerity budget for 2002 that would cut more than $4 billion in social spending and salaries.

Agreement on the budget by the end of the year will be necessary to persuade the International Monetary Fund to release $1.3 billion in emergency loans and foreign lenders to agree to a swap of more than $45 billion in bonds at lower interest rates. Otherwise, a default and a probably sharp devaluation will almost certainly follow.

In more than 20 cities and towns across northern Argentina, thousands of Argentines were sacking supermarkets and stores, and smashing windows of businesses. Among the dead was a looter who was stabbed to death by an immigrant merchant trying to defend his shop in the Buenos Aires provincial neighborhood of Villa Celina. A woman was critically wounded in the same neighborhood when another merchant opened fire on looters.

At least 10 police officers were injured.

Entire families, including children, climbed over chain fences and filled supermarket carts with cooking oil, food and toilet paper. There were no immediate estimates of damages, but frightened merchants in many parts of the country locked their doors, keeping out both looters and Christmas shoppers, while antigovernment demonstrators blocked roads and city streets.

Some of the most serious violence was in the industrial city of Córdoba, where public workers protesting wage cuts destroyed their offices. Police officers in riot gear stormed city hall to break up the demonstration and fired tear gas and rubber bullets to clear the downtown area. The palm-lined avenues became battle zones as demonstrators taunted the police by throwing rocks at them.

In the working-class neighborhood of Ciudadela, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, gleeful people swaggered through the streets with wooden wagons and shopping carts full of food and Christmas trees. Giggling children swilled down bottles of stolen apple cider and adults walked quickly down the street with stashes of wine. The police were nowhere to be seen as looters climbed the fences of a supermarket warehouse.

"We are stealing because we have to," said Jorge Castro, 31, a former custodian who lost his job months ago and is now a street vendor. "The government has been a pigsty ever since Juan Perón left office."

In several towns, the police stood by as looters attacked.

Television news programs broadcast tapes made by security cameras showing the looting of a supermarket in Concepción del Uruguay, a town near the Uruguayan border. The police watched the pilferage with their hands behind their backs.

Such scenes reminded government officials of similar protests, in part organized by opposition Justicialist Party leaders, against President Raúl Alfonsín. Those protests, along with hyperinflation, forced Mr. Alfonsín to resign several months before his term was to end in 1989.

Opposition leaders disagreed with the comparison. The Buenos Aires governor, Carlos Ruckauf, a Justicialist, attributed the crisis to the fact that people "have lost their jobs and faith in the economic policies of the federal government."

Today's disturbances came amid more bad economic news. Acindar, a major steelmaker, announced today that it could not meet its debt payments, another sign that the private sector is collapsing under debt and high interest rates.

Meanwhile, the government appears to be coming close to halting payments on its debt.

Wall Street analysts reported today that $34 million in interest payments scheduled for Friday on bonds due in 2015 did not appear in bondholders' accounts as scheduled. Some $87 million on bonds due in 2008, payment of which was due today, was also not paid.

-------- asia

Thailand sees golfing paradise in minefield

THAILAND: December 20, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13777/story.htm

BANGKOK - Thailand, one of Asia's popular golf destinations, plans to turn a landmine-infested area bordering Laos and Cambodia into golfing paradise. Somsak Thepsutin, a cabinet minister in charge of tourism, told Reuters that Thailand was working on a project to build a 27-hole golf course linking Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.

"We will issue a certificate of play to those golfers who fly from all over the world to play golf there, just like other world famous golf courses do," Somsak said.

The proposed site is in Ubon Ratchathanee province's Chong Bok town, 650 km northeast of Bangkok, next to Laos' Champasak province and Cambodia's Prea Vehear mountain.

The proposed area is littered with landmines. "Yes, the area is booby-trapped, but it is a piece of cake for the three countries to solve," Somsak said.

-------- biological weapons

Defector tells of hidden weapons sites

December 20, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20122001-021636-6771r.htm

NEW YORK, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- An Iraqi defector who said he worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Baghdad provided details of at least 20 hidden weapons sites, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri's account gives new clues about possible locations of illegal facilities that international inspectors have long suspected Iraq of trying to hide.

Saeed said Iraq had used companies to purchase equipment with the approval of the United Nations, and then secretly used the equipment in its unconventional weapons program.

He said Leycochem, a construction materials company based in Cologne, Germany, has long done business in Baghdad and other Middle Eastern countries, according to the newspaper report.

"The evidence shows that Iraq has not given up its desire for weapons of mass destruction," said Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chairman of the United Nations panel once responsible for weapons inspections in Iraq.

Saeed said several of the production and storage facilities were hidden in the rear of government companies and private villas in residential areas, or underground in what were built to look like water wells which are lined with lead-filled concrete and contain no water. He said those sites were chosen to protect weapons from U.S. bombing raids.

The Times quoted him as saying he was shown biological materials from a laboratory that was underneath Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest hospital in Baghdad.

He said he had visited at least 20 different sites that he believed to have been associated with Iraq's chemical or biological weapons programs, based on the characteristics of the rooms or storage areas and what he had been told about them during his work in preparing the rooms to be used for such dangerous research.

Saeed said his company had specialized in filling cement cracks in the floors and walls of such facilities to prevent leaks and enable them to be easily decontaminated.

He said that many extra chemical and biological facilities were built in case some were discovered or attacked.

----

U.S. Scientist Questioned
Former Researcher Denies Connection to Anthrax Attacks

Dec. 20, 2001
ABC News
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/US_ANTHRAX.html

A scientist formerly involved in U.S. anthrax research has told ABCNEWS he is now under investigation by the FBI regarding the recent attacks-by-mail, but has denied involvement in the deadly incidents. Federal authorities are now convinced theanthrax mailed in poison letters was made inthe United States, and told ABCNEWS theyare investigating a former anthrax researcherwho allegedly threatened to use the potentiallydeadly bacteria.

Unknown to all but a few government officials,the United States has been producing smallquantities of weapons-grade anthrax forseveral years at two secret locations, one ofthem the Army's Dugway Proving Ground inthe Utah desert.

The FBI is now interviewing current andformer scientists in Utah and at the secondsecret anthrax-producing facility, Battelle inColumbus, Ohio, a nonprofit corporation thatdoes the work for the CIA and the military.

An estimated 200 U.S. scientists dealt with theanthrax program over the last five years andfederal authorities have told ABCNEWS theyare now investigating the activities of a seniorresearch scientist who FBI sources say wastwice fired from Battelle and who allegedlymade a threat to use anthrax in the days afterSept. 11.

Agents Search American Scientist's Home

According to an FBI affidavit, agents searched the home of one former top Battelle scientist in late September after he allegedly made threats about using anthrax. Agents said they found suspicious chemicals but no anthrax, according to the sources.

The scientist confirmed to ABCNEWS' Brian Ross that agents had searched his home and taken his personal computer, but he denied any involvement in the attacks. He also insisted he had quit his post at Battelle, and was not fired.

Authorities told ABCNEWS the program, designed to protect U.S. soldiers, grew out of the Gulf War. The idea was to replicate the kind of anthrax Iraq might make and one day use against U.S. soldiers.

According to documents obtained by ABCNEWS, the U.S. scientists have been making a powdered aerosol form of anthrax, and also have the unique strain of the bacteria found in deadly letters sent to two U.S. senators. Scientists who worked on the project were vaccinated against anthrax and are immune to the bacteria.

One of the few to be told of the classified program, the chairman of a House subcommittee on national security, said the research is very important.

"The program's been going on a number of years, thank God," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. "I mean, the purpose of the program is for us to know how to deal with an attack."

But the Army won't talk about the anthrax production, and has not shared what it learned with civilian authorities.

The Army says all of the anthrax it has made since 1997 is accounted for. But what the FBI is really looking for is one of the 200 or so U.S. scientists who have been secretly making anthrax - looking for the one who may have used the bacteria to wreak havoc.

----

Anthrax Vaccine Plan Sows Confusion
D.C. Advises Workers Against Treatment

By Ceci Connolly and Avram Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 20, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3541-2001Dec19?language=printer

Postal workers expressed frustration and confusion yesterday over the federal government's plan to offer them anthrax vaccine on an experimental basis, complaining they do not have the medical information to make such a difficult decision.

Even as the Bush administration scrambled to meet the legal requirements of such an unprecedented proposal, lawmakers and local officials reacted bitterly to the lack of guidance they were receiving eight weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began formulating the plan.

"First it was Cipro; then it was the other pill. Now it's this," said Willard Tucker, an employee at the Brentwood postal facility. "Why do we have to be guinea pigs for them? They don't even know what's going on."

Adding to the confusion, Mayor Anthony A. Williams said in a statement released last night that District officials were advising against vaccination and recommending that workers contact the CDC.

"After discussing this issue at several scientific meetings, and the careful review of the scientific data, and absent a recommendation from the CDC, the District . . . affirms its previous public health advisory which recommends strict compliance with the 60-day course of antibiotics," the statement said. "As such the District Department of Health does not recommend investigational post-exposure prophylactics with anthrax vaccine at this time."

"No one has recommended the vaccination yet. We're not ready to do so," said District Health Director Ivan C.A. Walks. He met with postal workers for about two hours last night and told them of the mayor's recommendation.

Antoine Barry, 40, a letter carrier at the Friendship Station post office, said he felt more confident about not taking the vaccine after hearing Walks speak.

"My concerns were basically just 'Am I safe?' " he said. "We're just handling this one day at a time. I feel a little better now. I feel like I know a little more about what's going on."

Postal workers in New Jersey, still waiting to be contacted by federal officials, said they are relying on news reports for guidance.

"We don't know how to protect ourselves," said Dianne Fazekas, who worked beside two co-workers at a Hamilton, N.J., postal facility who contracted inhalational anthrax. "We read in the paper that the spores can reactivate themselves after we stop the medicine. We also read that the vaccine has problems and we'd have to sign a release if we take it. Nobody knows what to think."

On Capitol Hill yesterday, inoculation of congressional workers was postponed a day because federal officials had not completed the necessary consent forms laying out the risks associated with taking a vaccine that has not been approved as a post-exposure treatment.

At the same time, inspectors from the Food and Drug Administration gave a partial endorsement to the vaccine maker, BioPort Corp., after conducting an evaluation at the plant in Lansing, Mich., as part of the company's efforts to win final approval for the vaccine.

The FDA made seven "observations," issues that BioPort must address, said Kathyrn Zoon, the agency's top vaccine evaluator. Many of those issues were addressed while inspectors were at the facility, she said, such as the company's procedures and rules.

But it was the fresh wave of uncertainty that dominated discussions in post offices, a conversation that was often tinged with an element of race and resentment over how postal workers were treated during the anthrax attacks.

"We've been pushed to the side and that frustrates me," said George Bryant, who said he has felt from the start that postal workers have been treated differently from congressional aides. "I think they know more than they're telling us. I'm really scared. I just want to know what's going on."

Bailus Walker, a professor of public health and health policy at Howard University, said the government's handling of the anthrax attacks has only reinforced long-held suspicions.

"There is a long-standing, deeply ingrained concern in the black community about being used as guinea pigs," he said. "As much as we try, we have not been able to remove from the minds of the black community the Tuskegee episode. . . . We confront it almost monthly as we try to get blacks to participate in clinical trials. This just feeds it." Tuskegee refers to a notorious federal study in which treatment was withheld for 40 years from hundreds of poor black sharecroppers with syphilis.

On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced that the anthrax vaccine would be made available to about 3,000 people on the East Coast who may have been exposed to spores. The decision was prompted by concerns that the spores may survive longer in the lungs than had been thought and could still make people sick once their 60-day courses of antibiotics end.

In the announcement, Thompson did not make a recommendation on who should receive the vaccine but said individuals could opt instead to take antibiotics for an additional 40 days or simply monitor their health and watch for symptoms of anthrax disease.

"It appears that once again federal officials do not have a comprehensive plan of action," said Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), recalling the confusion that arose when 1,000 postal workers were told one Friday afternoon in October to get antibiotics to protect against anthrax. "In the first go-round we tried to exercise some patience as the experts found their way. This time there is no excuse."

Last night CDC Director Jeffrey P. Koplan offered some insight on who should consider receiving the three-shot vaccine regimen. They include individuals who were in proximity to tainted mail, such as the 70 people in and near Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle's Hart Building offices, anyone who had contact with one of the five people who died of inhalational anthrax and anyone who was in an area that was "heavily contaminated" with anthrax bacteria, such as the Brentwood and Hamilton postal facilities, he said.

"Those are the individuals at higher risk who may want to consider these more aggressive options," he said in an interview.

Yet one day after Thompson announced his decision, it was clear many critical aspects of the plan remained unresolved or strayed from standard practice.

Although anthrax vaccine has been licensed in the past for inoculating high-risk groups such as soldiers, it has never been used as a treatment for people who may have been exposed to the bacteria. Because of that, the CDC must submit a detailed request outlining why and how it will conduct the treatment. This is known as an investigational new drug (IND) program.

"INDs are used when you are experimenting on people," said Mary Pendergast, former deputy commissioner of the FDA. Two key documents, she said, are the scientific protocol and the consent form that all participants must sign. Both must be approved by independent panels concerned with the safety of patients.

"You must give the person who is giving consent all the relevant information so they can make a wise decision whether to take the experimental drug," she said.

Koplan said the agency's institutional review board was still revising the consent form and the scientific protocol last night.

Prominent physicians, meanwhile, disagreed publicly over what patients should do.

Capitol physician John Eisold, in an e-mail to congressional workers, said that while federal officials remained neutral, he was recommending the vaccine for about 70 people exposed to an anthrax-laden letter sent to Daschle (D-S.D.).

"If the federal government leaned toward Eisold and said we really should be giving it and recommending it, the other people would say, 'Why are you doing that? Why are you exposing us to risk?' " said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "If you lean the other way, the Eisold people would say, 'Wait a minute -- we want it.' "

Staff writers Andrew Demillo and Dale Russakoff in New Jersey contributed to this report.

-------- chemical weapons

U.S. joins chemical arms audit

By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 20, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011220-25175141.htm

Russia and the United States have agreed to a joint audit of Russia's huge chemical weapons-stockpile management program, former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin said yesterday.

Mr. Stepashin, now chairman of the Russian government's primary auditing agency, said he had agreed to the joint audit in talks with General Accounting Office head David Walker this week.

The investigation will look into the efficiency of the equipment provided to destroy the chemical weapons and into how U.S. money for the program is being spent.

"As Russia has about half of the world's chemical weapons stocks, this is an issue that's important not just for us but for world security," said Mr. Stepashin, who met with reporters at the Russian Embassy.

Congress lifted a two-year block on U.S. funding for the chemical weapons program in August. Russia spent $100 million on the program this year and has budgeted $200 million for 2002, Mr. Stepashin said.

But he added that a proposed $2 billion U.S. contribution was critical if the program was to move forward.

Originally intended to destroy the former Soviet Union's chemical weapons stocks by 2007, the program now calls for their elimination by 2012.

Mr. Stepashin said the joint U.S.-Russian audit would bolster confidence that the program was being managed wisely. The Russian official said he had floated the idea that Russia could shoulder the bulk of the costs of the chemical-weapons destruction program - estimated at $10 billion to $15 billion over the next decade - in return for an equal amount of forgiveness on some $67 billion in Soviet-era government debts.

Vice President Richard B. Cheney, who met with Mr. Stepashin by teleconference from an undisclosed location because of security concerns growing out of the September 11 attacks, agreed to form a joint working group to consider the idea and the program's long-term financing.

Mr. Stepashin said he discussed with GAO officials the U.S.-led campaign to cut off funding for terrorist organizations in the wake of September 11. He said Russian financial officials were working to build relationships with the country's banks to deny terrorists access to the financial system.

He said Russia may have special expertise from its long struggle with Islamic fundamentalist groups in Chechnya, which Moscow contends have extensive links to the terrorist network of Osama bin Laden.

"We know very well that the Chechen terrorists and bin Laden's networks used some of the same schemes to get financing," he said.

On another issue, Mr. Stepashin said he was increasingly confident that talks with congressional leaders would lead to an easing of sanctions on Russian exports. He said legislation to repeal the Soviet-era Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which imposes sanctions in protest of Russia's emigration policies, could be introduced before Christmas and would almost certainly be passed next year.

He said Russia is also hoping for normal trading rights with the United States as it bids to join the World Trade Organization and is seeking the end of dumping charges that block the sale of Russian steel here.

"We are aware that the United States has to protect its internal markets, but our arguments met with understanding here," Mr. Stepashin said.

Mr. Stepashin briefly served as prime minister under former President Boris Yeltsin in 1999 before being replaced by an unknown former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin. Named chairman of Russia's Audit Chamber in April 2000, Mr. Stepashin is credited with taking on some of the country's most sacred cows.

His investigators have probed the Kremlin's notorious property division, the shaky finances of the Russian Baltic Sea enclave Kaliningrad and the financing of the war in Chechnya.

He said the cooperation he met with this week in Washington reflected the closer U.S.-Russian ties since September 11. Divisive issues such as the Chechnya campaign have faded in importance since the attacks, he said.

"I received no questions about Chechnya the whole time I was here," he said.

-------- colombia

Adams, Cuba and IRA

December 20, 2001
Embassy Row
James Morrison
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011220-70311962.htm

The U.S. ambassador to Britain criticized Gerry Adams for a visit to Cuba but said his Sinn Fein political party has been helpful in efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

Ambassador William Farish noted that Mr. Adams' visit to Havana this week followed the arrest in Colombia last summer of Niall Connolly, Sinn Fein's representative in Cuba, along with two suspected members of the Irish Republican Army.

Sinn Fein is the political wing of the IRA.

Colombian authorities have accused all three of assisting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

"You combine Colombia and September 11 and now the visit to Cuba, it certainly isn't a positive thing," Mr. Farish said Tuesday on a visit to Belfast.

However, he added, Sinn Fein helped advance the Northern Irish peace process by persuading the IRA to begin disarming.

"We are looking at the big picture," Mr. Farish said. "We are moving forward, and I think there have been things Sinn Fein have done in the near recent time that have been very positive, and that is what we are after."

-------- india

Indian Army Kills 5 Islamic Militants

December 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Kashmir.html

JAMMU, India (AP) -- The Indian army said its soldiers killed five Islamic militants in the disputed Kashmir province on Thursday during a battle to prevent the militants from entering India from Pakistan.

The militants tried to cross the cease-fire line between India and Pakistan in the Kerni sector of Poonch district, 130 miles northwest of Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, an Indian army spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Pakistani officials in Muzaffarabad said Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged heavy artillery fire across the cease-fire line for several hours overnight. They said Indian troops fired on Pakistan positions, and that three villagers were seriously wounded.

Tensions have mounted between the two South Asian rivals after last week's suicide assault on the Indian Parliament in which 13 people, including five attackers, were killed. India blamed the Pakistan intelligence service and two Pakistan-based militant groups -- Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed -- for the attack. Both militant groups, and the Pakistan government, have denied any involvement.

The militants killed trying to cross the cease-fire line Thursday belonged to Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the Indian army spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

Pakistani and Indian troops were on high alert along the 450-mile Kashmir border, military officials from both nuclear-armed countries said.

Pakistan has sent fresh troops to strengthen its positions in Kashmir, and India has sent tanks, anti-aircraft guns and extra troops to other points along the border.

Since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan and India have fought two wars over Kashmir, which is divided between them.

Hindu-majority India accuses Pakistan of fomenting 12 years of Islamic militant violence in India's only Muslim-majority state. Pakistan denies the charge and accuses India of human rights violations in Kashmir.

The insurgency has killed at least 30,000 people, according to Indian government estimates. Human rights groups put the number at 60,000 people.

--------

India Seeks International Support to Force Pakistan to Crack Down on Militants

New York Times
December 20, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/international/asia/20INDI.html

NEW DELHI, Dec. 19 - Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said today that India was vigorously pursuing diplomatic efforts to get Pakistan to crack down on two militant groups that India blamed for an attack on its Parliament last week. But he also said that if peaceful means failed, India would consider other options.

At a time when many in his own party are clamoring for the army to chase militants into Pakistani territory, Mr. Vajpayee's comments in Parliament today were widely interpreted as suggesting that the government would consider military action if diplomacy failed, although he never explicitly said so.

His words presented a warning to Pakistan's military rulers and to countries in the United States-led coalition to press for action against militants acting openly in Pakistan. Many here fear that if diplomatic action fails, India will take action that could lead to war. That, in turn, would distract Pakistan from the hunt for Osama bin Laden at a crucial time, when he is on the run, perhaps to Pakistan.

American diplomats have already ratcheted up the pressure on Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, to rein in the two Islamic militant groups that India holds responsible for last week's attack.

Even if its diplomatic initiative fails, Mr. Vajpayee said, India is prepared to stand alone. "We don't expect anyone to jump into the battlefield for us," he said. "We will fight on our own."

Mr. Vajpayee's speech in Parliament offered the first glimpse of the Indian government's strategy for responding to Thursday's attack on the seat of Indian democracy. Fourteen people died in the attack, which left the outer sandstone walls of Parliament gouged with bullet holes and spattered with blood.

Mr. Vajpayee clearly wants diplomacy to work. Retired Indian Army officers and defense analysts said that was not only because peace was preferable to war - and the prime minister, a sometime poet, today reminded lawmakers of his anti-war writings - but because the military options available to India offered uncertain gains and formidable risks.

Unlike the United States, which had an overwhelming military advantage over the Taliban, India in facing Pakistan would confront an adversary equipped with a large, well-trained conventional army and nuclear weapons.

Every day since Thursday's attack on Parliament, Pakistani officials, including General Musharraf and his chief spokesman, have denied India's charge that Pakistan's intelligence agency coordinated the attack. They have also unambiguously told India that there would be dire consequences if India were to strike Pakistan.

In recent days, there has been a buildup of military forces along the India-Pakistan border. But Western diplomats said it was no more pronounced than in other periods of heightened tensions between the uneasy neighbors.

Mr. Vajpayee today offered no description of the nondiplomatic options he was considering. Members of Parliament from his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have pushed for "hot pursuit" of militants into portions of Kashmir under Pakistani control. But retired army officers and defense analysts have suggested caution. Many of them said attacking training camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir with commando raids or airstrikes would accomplish little.

"That's a lot of hothead talk that doesn't make military sense," said P. R. Chari, director of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi.

Most of the camps have been dismantled or moved deeper into Pakistani territory and away from India since Sept. 11, experts in India said. And even if India succeeded in hitting the camps, they could spring up elsewhere, said experts, including Gen. V. P. Malik, who retired as army chief last year.

India could use military strikes or covert operations to go after the leadership of the militant outfits Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, which India has blamed for Thursday's attack. But that would require good and continuous intelligence about the targeted person's location - a necessity that has foiled efforts to find Mr. bin Laden for years.

Another possibility would be a covert action in which India could hire disaffected Pakistanis to execute a retaliatory attack on Pakistan, Mr. Chari said. Although that may be doable, it would cost India international sympathy.

Deeper strikes at targets inside Pakistan could well bring on a war, experts said.

Nonetheless, there is a sense that the government must act if diplomacy fails. "For far too long, the message that's gone to these guys is that we're soft, that we don't have the gumption," said Gen. Satish Nambiar, who retired as deputy army chief in 1994. "When Americans or Israelis say they'll do something, they really do it. We've just been talking."

Such sentiments have put enormous pressure on Mr. Vajpayee to do something dramatic if Pakistan refuses to crack down on the militant groups. India has accused Pakistan of supporting and training the groups for a proxy war in Kashmir, a Himalayan territory both claim.

Much of Mr. Vajpayee's speech today was aimed directly at the United States, which had enough clout with Pakistan to get it to turn against the Taliban, which Pakistan had nurtured.

He said that the attack on India's Parliament was a test of the world's sincerity in fighting terrorism. Without naming the United States, he rebuked American officials for telling India not to act in ways that would complicate the situation in Afghanistan and to share its evidence against the militants with Pakistan.

Such suggestions are widely viewed in India as hypocritical because the United States has vowed to go after not only terrorists but the countries that harbor them.

"Now we are being given sermons about restraint," Mr. Vajpayee said. "But when have we not shown restraint? Truly, our restraint has been understood as weakness."

He also vehemently rejected Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's suggestion that India share its evidence with Pakistan and Pakistan's proposal for a joint investigation.

"What evidence is needed to show the terrorism taking place in India?" he asked. "The bullet marks on Parliament? The dead bodies of terrorists outside Parliament?"

-------- iran

Iran hits back after US 'attack' on tanker

FROM MICHAEL THEODOULOU IN NICOSIA
THURSDAY DECEMBER 20 2001
The Times (UK)
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001570012-2001585397,00.html

IRAN protested to the United States yesterday after accusing American forces of intercepting an oil tanker in the Gulf which Tehran at first said was Iranian and had been mistaken by the Americans for an Iraqi vessel smuggling oil.

Two people on board were injured, Iran's state television reported. However, the US Navy, confirming the incident later, said that only one seaman had been hurt.

Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the Swiss Ambassador, whose country represents US interests in Iran, to deliver a strong protest and demand an explanation.

The Pentagon said last night that its forces had boarded a Belize-flagged oil tanker suspected of violating sanctions against Iraq. A spokesman for the US Defence Department, Lieutenant-Colonel Dave Lapan, said the tanker had been allowed to proceed after it was found not to be breaking sanctions. "It was a Belize-flagged tanker, so I don't know what the Iranian part of this is," Colonel Lapan said.

Last night a spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, Hamid Reza Asefi, said that the tanker was Saudi-owned and had been carrying raw material for unleaded fuel to the southwestern Iranian port of Abadan when it was intercepted by US boats and seized.

Earlier Mehdi Mohtashami, head of the American Affairs Department at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, denounced the move as "contrary to international laws" and called for "measures to avoid a repetition of such acts", the Iranian news agency, Irna, said. It was a "vile transgression" and Iran reserved the right to "follow up this violation through legal channels", he added.

The first reports on Iranian state television said that two American frigates had intercepted the ship and two of the tanker's crew had been injured by US forces on speedboats. Iranian radio reported that the seamen had been wounded when the Americans "opened fire", although it did not explain why. Irna said that the tanker had been "intercepted" by several American vessels, but, unlike the country's broadcast media, made no mention of injuries.

The Swiss Ambassador was said to have expressed his "deep regrets". He told an Iranian Foreign Ministry official that the American boats had mistaken the tanker for an Iraqi vessel smuggling oil, Iranian television said.

Iranian analysts doubted that the incident would seriously damage the tortuous thaw in relations that has been taking place between Tehran and Washington, without diplomatic ties for 22 years. Last month Iran won praise from the American head of the United States-led multinational interception force that patrols the Gulf to enforce United Nations sanctions on Iraq.

Vice-Admiral Charles Moore said that, as a result of Iranian action to curtail the use of the Shatt al-Arab waterway between Iran and Iraq, there had been a fall of almost 50 per cent of the oil Iraq could smuggle through the Gulf.

President Saddam Hussein's regime makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the unauthorised sale of an estimated 350,000 barrels a day. Only 30,000 barrels a day are now smuggled by sea because it is less profitable for Iraq and because of the risks involved, oil experts said. The rest goes as unauthorised cross-border trade to Syria, Jordan and Turkey.

The US Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, often intercepts tankers accused of smuggling Iraqi oil. An Iraqi vessel sank last month after being boarded by US Navy troops.

-------- iraq

SECRET SITES
An Iraqi Defector Tells of Work on at Least 20 Hidden Weapons Sites

New York Times
December 20, 2001
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/international/middleeast/20DEFE.html?pagewanted=all

An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago.

The defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, gave details of the projects he said he worked on for President Saddam Hussein's government in an extensive interview last week in Bangkok.

Government experts said yesterday that he had also been interviewed twice by American intelligence officials, who were trying to verify his claims. One of the officials said he thought Mr. Saeed had been taken to a secure location. The experts said his information seemed reliable and significant.

The interview with Mr. Saeed was arranged by the Iraqi National Congress, the main Iraqi opposition group, which seeks the overthrow of Mr. Hussein. If verified, Mr. Saeed's allegations would provide ammunition to officials within the Bush administration who have been arguing that Mr. Hussein should be driven from power partly because of his unwillingness to stop making weapons of mass destruction, despite his pledges to do so.

Mr. Saeed's account gives new clues about the types and possible locations of illegal laboratories, facilities and storage sites that American officials and international inspectors have long suspected Iraq of trying to hide. It also suggests that Baghdad continued renovating and repairing such illegal facilities after barring international inspectors from the country three years ago.

Spokesmen for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department's Defense Intelligence Agency declined to comment about Mr. Saeed or whether they had interviewed him.

Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chairman of the United Nations panel once responsible for weapons inspections in Iraq, said that Mr. Saeed's account was consistent with other reports that continue to emerge from Iraq about prohibited weapons activities. "The evidence shows that Iraq has not given up its desire for weapons of mass destruction," said Mr. Duelfer, who was the highest-ranking American on the United Nations panel.

Evading Restrictions

In the interview, Mr. Saeed said Iraq had used companies to purchase equipment with United Nations blessing, and then secretly used the equipment in its unconventional weapons program. One such firm, he said, was Leycochem, a construction materials company based in Cologne, Germany, that has long done business in Baghdad and other Middle Eastern countries.

In a telephone interview today, Jürgen Leyde, the managing director of Leycochem, said that his limited contracts with the Iraqi ministries of oil and industry have nothing to do with unconventional weapons and had been approved by the United Nations.

Separately, Mr. Saeed had told representatives of the Iraqi National Congress, which helped Mr. Saeed flee Iraq last August, that Iraq had tested chemicals and biological agents on Shiite and Kurdish prisoners in 1989 and 1992 at undisclosed sites in the Iraqi desert.

Mr. Saeed said that his work for the government's Military Industrialization Organization and for a company associated with it, Al Fao, continued until just before he was arrested on what he called trumped-up fraud charges and imprisoned last January in Hakamiya, where political prisoners are held. He said that he bribed his way out of jail last summer and fled Iraq after receiving a tip that he would soon be re- arrested.

To support his account, Mr. Saeed provided copies of contracts, including one involving his company, the Iraqi industrialization group and Al Fao.

Mr. Saeed said that several of the production and storage facilities were hidden in the rear of government companies and private villas in residential areas, or underground in what were built to look like water wells which are lined with lead-filled concrete and contain no water. He said that he was shown biological materials from a laboratory that was underneath Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest hospital in Baghdad.

Mr. Saeed said that he had not personally visited the lab and was not certain whether it was a storage facility for germs and other materials to be used in the program or a place where actual research and development was conducted.

"They brought me this material to ask me whether or not it had expired," he said. The Iraqis and another contractor who brought him the material to examine "told me where, and the conditions under which it was stored, and asked me to tell them whether it might still be good, even though it had been kept beyond the expiration date."

Visits to 20 Sites

He said, however, that he had personally visited at least 20 different sites that he believed to have been associated with Iraq's chemical or biological weapons programs, based on the characteristics of the rooms or storage areas and what he had been told about them during his work. Among them were what he described as the "clean room" of a biological facility in 1998 in a residential area known as Al Qrayat.

Most of the time, he said, no research or development was going on at those places while he visited, because his work involved preparing the rooms to be used for such dangerous research. Mr. Saeed said that his company had specialized in filling cement cracks in the floors and walls of such facilities, lining their floors and walls with layers of epoxy paste and other substances that would prevent leaks and enable them to be easily decontaminated, and injecting cement walls and floors with additives to resist chemical corrosion.

Mr. Saeed said that over the years he had also picked up some odd jobs. In 1999, for instance, associates in the Iraqi intelligence service had asked him to help them design a better glue for the Defense Department's hand grenades. "I devised a better glue for them," he said, "which could hold together at higher levels of heat."

Not all of his work was for the military, he said. In 1998, he received part of the contract to build the sauna rooms, swimming pool, and gym of Al Salaam Palace, one of the many lavish, sprawling palaces that Mr. Hussein had built. He said he had also built Mr. Hussein's first whirlpool bath.

Saying that money was no object in Iraq's quest for weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Saeed noted that many extra chemical and biological facilities were built in case some were discovered or attacked. Often the facilities stood idle for years until officials decided to use them, he said.

Duplicate nuclear facilities, he said, were also built as part of an Iraqi program that he called "Substitute Sites." He claimed to have done repair or construction work in facilities that were connected with all three classes of unconventional weapons - nuclear, chemical, and biological programs.

Although work usually began in such facilities after he had left, he said that once he was called in to repair a biological facility located in Waziriya, an industrial area in Baghdad. "It was near the Mercedes dealer," he said, pointing to a map of the capital. The facility had been bombed in January, 1993, but rebuilt soon after the bombing. "They had an accident in 1997 and the floor was chipped, so I was taken to treat it," he said.

Although the facility was empty when he arrived to do the work, he said he was required before entering the room to put on the protective clothing that researchers in high- containment biological labs wear: a white rubberized suit, a gas mask with respirator, and blue plastic booties. The room, he said, had pipes that brought in fresh air.

He described Iraq's biological facilities as among the most sensitive of all the weapons efforts. The word biology is never used, he said. "They always refer to it as chemical work."

He also said that he had secured areas underneath what seemed to be water wells on farms around Baghdad, where lead-lined storage containers were stored. He said that he did not know what the boxes contained. "But my assumption is that there was radiation there," he said. "Why else use the lead?" These particular wells contained no water, he said, and part of his work involved sealing the ventilation pipe that emerged from the ground next to the wells. He personally worked on about 20 of these installations, he said.

Early Origins

Mr. Saeed said that Iraq had begun using rooms in or under villas in residential areas and in commercial areas during the Persian Gulf war to protect weapons sites from American bombing, but that they had now become a permanent feature of Iraq's weapons programs.

He said that the "presidential sites" from which Saddam Hussein had tried to bar inspectors in 1997 were also used for concealment. Specifically, he said, between two presidential sites in Radwaniya, there was a secret underground structure that had been built by a Yugoslav company. He had been brought there, he said, to treat a very fine crack in the tunnel's ceramic wall.

He said that he had been selected for the government contracts and that he had received them without competitive bidding.

Richard Butler, an Australian diplomat who led the United Nations international inspection effort in Iraq when Mr. Hussein barred inspectors from his country, said that Mr. Saeed's account seemed "plausible." Mr. Butler said that several of the places and projects that the Iraqi engineer had mentioned had been known to, or suspected, by his inspection commission, which was then known as Unscom.

"It rings true what this mans says about underground wells and tunnels," Mr. Butler said.

But American intelligence officials have long had cause to be skeptical of such defectors. Although some of them provided "invaluable" information about such activities, he said, "many embellish what they actually did and what they know in order to try to get safe haven in the United States and other countries."

Caution was especially warranted, a weapons expert said, in light of the ongoing debate within the Bush administration over whether to expand the war against terrorism to Iraq, on grounds that the country's hostility towards the United States and its illegal weapons development pose a national security threat.

There was no means to independently verify Mr. Saeed's allegations. But he seemed familiar with key Iraqi officials in the military establishment, with many facilities previously thought to be associated with unconventional weapons, and with Iraq itself. A representative of the Iraqi National Congress, the opposition group, said that he had served in the army with Mr. Saeed, had known him for many years and trusted him.

Mr. Saeed was born in 1959 and is a Kurd originally from Kirkuk, he said. After graduating from the university in Baghdad in 1980, he enjoyed the good life, owning two farms near the capital and apartments abroad. He set up his company, Wedian, in 1992 and did well, he said. After his imprisonment - he said he did not know the precise reason - he fled the country with $18,000 and two kilograms of gold, "a fraction of what I own," he said. Because of his time in prison and his flight, he said, he now understood the fear that gripped so many supposedly privileged, well- connected Iraqis.

He said he would return to his country "tomorrow" if Saddam Hussein were gone.

-------- israel / palestine

Palestinians Win U.N. Approval

By GERALD NADLER
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 20, 21:38 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=mideast&SLUG=UN-PALESTINIANS-ISRAEL

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Five days after the United States vetoed a Palestinian-backed Security Council resolution calling for monitoring Israeli actions, Palestinian supporters put their case to the larger General Assembly on Thursday and won overwhelming approval.

The assembly vote has no binding authority but carries the weight of international opinion.

The resolution, vetoed by the United States on Saturday, passed Thursday in the 189-nation Assembly by a vote of 124-6, with 25 abstentions.

The measure condemned ``acts of terror'' against Israelis and Palestinians, demanded an end to nearly 15 months of Mideast violence and asked for a ``monitoring mechanism'' to bring in observers, which Israel opposes.

The Assembly also passed a second resolution, demanding that Israel as an ``occupying power,'' immediately refrain from such acts as ``willful killing,'' torture, and extensive destruction of property.

That vote was 133-4, with 16 abstentions.

In a veiled attack on the United States, the Palestinian U.N. observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, said the 15-member Security Council ``is being used by some only when it suits them.''

The United States voted against both resolutions on Thursday.

``These one-sided resolutions do nothing to further the goals'' of ending the violence between the Palestinians and Israelis and to get both parties back to the peace table, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said.

``Terrorism cannot be justified by any cause,'' said Negroponte, who objected that the resolution made no reference to the attacks on Israel.

Israel's deputy U.N. ambassador Aaron Jacob said the resolutions ``invoke misleading language and amount to an effort to provide diplomatic cover and manipulate the United Nations into providing a rubber stamp for the chronic failure to end the Palestinian terrorist campaign.''

The request for the emergency Assembly session was made by Egypt on behalf of the Arab League and South Africa, which heads the Non-Aligned Movement of mainly developing countries.

Egypt's U.N. Ambassador Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Wednesday that supporters of the resolution believe ``an endorsement by the General Assembly would help the Palestinians and show that international legality and world opinion is ... supporting the just needs of the Palestinian people under occupation.''

----

Bombing That Killed 5 Children a Mistake, Says Israel

December 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Military.html

http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=mideast&SLUG=ISRAEL-MILITARY

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli military acknowledged Thursday that its troops made a ``professional mistake'' when they planted a bomb that killed five Palestinian school children in the Gaza Strip.

Several officers will be reprimanded, the military said in a statement.

In the Nov. 22 incident, five children, ranging in age from 7 to 14, were killed when they inadvertently set off the bomb while on their way to school in the Khan Younis refugee camp.

The army acknowledged shortly after the explosion that it had planted a bomb in a sandbagged position from which Palestinian militants fired at Jewish settlements.

Presenting the findings of its investigation, the army said Thursday that ``the incident was an operational mishap, whose result was grave and saddening.''

The planting of the bomb was the result of ``professional mistakes and mistaken decisions,'' the army said.

Many Israeli politicians had called for an investigation into the incident, including Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

-------- korea

S.Korea presses for peace talks with North

December 20, 2001
By Jong-Heon Lee UPI Correspondent
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20122001-121713-3097r.htm

SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- South Korea urged North Korea Wednesday to "unconditionally" return to peace talks, brushing off North Korea's calls for the lifting of a counter-terrorism alert ahead of any dialogue.

"Inter-Korean dialogue should be resumed with no strings attached to discuss reviving stalled reconciliation process," Seoul's Unification Ministry said.

The concerns raised by the North over the security alert in the South can be addressed through dialogue "based on the spirit of mutual understanding and respect," the ministry spokesman, Kim Hong-jae said in a statement.

"Once again we urge the North side to move toward dialogue and make clear that the South is fully prepared to tackle inter-Korean issues through dialogue for the sake of inter-Korean development," the statement said.

The statement came in response to North Korea's calls for South Korea's "decisive measures" as preconditions for the resumption of dialogue, saying they include the lifting of the military alert. On Monday, it insisted the impasse in inter-Korean relations was caused by the South's alert which Pyongyang claims was aimed at the communist regime.

The North's state-run Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland also blasted the South's definition of the communist regime as its "principal enemy."

The South Korean spokesman said that his government considered the North's statement as a sign that Pyongyang was willing to resume dialogue. "Despite its complains over the security alert, the North pledged to carry out the reconciliation agreement reached at last year's summit between their leaders," he said.

Inter-Korean reconciliation talks collapsed in November after Pyongyang protested against a security alert imposed in the South following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

South Korea is home to 37,000 American troops stationed as a deterrent against North Korea, which is on the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism. The North has denounced the United States for trying to make the Pyongyang regime the second target for its war against terrorism after Afghanistan.

Many analysts here ruled out immediate resumption of inter-Korean talks because the North has called for the lifting of the South's security alert before reopening talks.

As a discouraging sign, North Korea rejected the South's proposal to hold Red Cross talks last week to discuss reviving exchanges, including reunions of families split by the Korean War half a century ago.

-------- nato

Enemies of the states

Franklin D. Kramer
December 20, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011220-45789044.htm

Despite Afghanistan's recent prominence, the most important international decisions in the past few days have not been in the worldwide meetings focusing on that country's fate. Rather, the key issues have involved Russia and the West, and the crucial meetings have turned round technical adjustments to a minor, and heretofore ineffective, piece of bureaucratic machinery, the so-called NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council. Though the changes thus far are wholly bureaucratic, if properly implemented they can result in a geostrategic readjustment nothing short of earthquake proportions. For the first time in history, Russia could become fully aligned with the West.

Grand historical events can often turn on small beginnings. The current grand Russian realignment, if it is successful, will have begun because an American president with limited foreign experience was willing to walk into a room with his Russian counterpart without preconceptions. The resulting positive discussion led the Russian president promptly and productively to respond when America was struck on September 11. That establishment of personal trust now allows the opportunity for implementation of actual long-term cooperation between Russia and the West.

Here, however, is where the proposed NATO-Russia bureaucratic realignment becomes crucial. For the Bush-Putin effort to become effective will require the support of the real implementers of foreign policy - who are, after all, not the heads of state, but their bureaucrats. The famous Truman dictum that, upon taking the presidency, "Poor Ike - he'll sit here and say 'Do this' or 'Do that' and nothing will happen," illustrates that high level motivation is not enough. This is especially true since as one Russian defense writer has noted, "The new course is bound to provoke resistance from . . . officials who work out decisions in the fields of foreign and defense policy."

In those fields of foreign and defense policy, much of the Russian-Western relationship turns round NATO. But an effective NATO-Russia security arrangement requires a forum in which real problems can be jointly addressed. Until now, the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council had badly failed in that regard. The NATO foreign ministers determined in principle that changing it into an effective instrument is crucial, but doing so in fact will require four key steps.

First, the success of this, like any new endeavor, will be enhanced by adopting a new name. If renaming sounds trivial, consult any advertising agency about its importance. Such a change sweeps away the vestiges of the past, allowing parties to act with a new frame of mind. Of course, renaming is far from enough for real change. The second critical step will be the establishment of processes that allow parties to work together effectively. Here, the key is that Russia needs to become part of a group of participants, all of whom who are reaching for consensus. Involving Russia in real security decisions will break important new ground.

Third, new substance also is crucial. Russia is not part of NATO and should not be involved in all matters, but there can be no serious discussion without serious subjects. In reality, however, common overlapping issues of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, Central Asia and peacekeeping present an important initial agenda on which Russia and NATO can cooperate. Finally, NATO is a military alliance, and to create a new security relationship requires some significant military arrangements. Here, new approaches are required. In order to implement the key area of cooperation, Russia needs to be involved in NATO military exercises regarding terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and missile defense. More broadly, especially given Russia's involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo, contingency chains of command for new activities can be established. Likewise, units that potentially will work together can train together regularly.

Successfully implementing what has been proposed in principle will be far from easy. Indeed, it should be understood that, to make NATO-Russia security cooperation successful, some real risks will have to be taken. For example, making Russia a real participant risks that it can politically if not legalistically block agreement on important issues. There is a significant chance that Russia may not play its part in responding on issues such as missile defense or weapons of mass destruction. Certainly, Russian bureaucrats, to now, have not been forthcoming. Working together militarily likewise will not be easy. There is a good deal of suspicion to overcome as well as the more mundane problems of different structures and limited funding. But the greater risk is to leave Russia unnecessarily outside the security framework for crucial common questions. This is both because Russia has important substance to offer and because Russian geostrategic involvement with the West will increase the benefit of that very security framework that NATO provides.

At the end of the day, NATO is strong enough to take the risks involved, and the benefits from achieving common interests are substantial. The foreign ministers seized the moment. Now comes the hard work of implementation.

Franklin D. Kramer is a former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs (1996-2001).

-------- pakistan

Report: Pakistan allows 'hot pursuit'

December 20, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20122001-013635-1578r.htm

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- The United States and Pakistan have reached agreement on a secret deal to allow U.S. forces to pursue al Qaida fighters fleeing across the border from Afghanistan, ABC News reported.

The arrangement will allow U.S. troops to hunt the fighters on the ground and fire on them from the air.

But the report quoted sources as saying the "hot pursuit" of al Qaida fighters will be on a case-by-case basis, with the United States required to ask permission each time.

Meanwhile, U.S. forces in Afghanistan stepped up the hunt for suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and other al Qaida leaders.

U.S. special forces are searching cave by cave in the eastern border region of Tora Bora, site of an intense battle between al Qaida and Afghan tribal forces last week.

A search also continued in the mountains of south-central Afghanistan for ousted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Haji Gulalai, the new Afghan intelligence chief in Kandahar city, said Mullah Omar is in the Baghran region of the southern Helmand province, adding most top bin Laden associates have fled to Pakistan.

-------- phillipines

U.S. military supplies arrive in Philippines

The Associated Press
12/20/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/12/20/philippines.htm

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - The U.S. Army on Thursday gave hundreds of weapons, including sniper rifles, mortars and grenade launchers, to the Philippine military for use against a Muslim extremist group linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

The arms are part of a military assistance package promised by President Bush when Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo visited Washington in October.

"Our troops need this very badly," said Philippine army spokesman Lt. Col. Jose Mabanta Jr. "We expect more in the coming months."

Mabanta said the arms are meant to "reciprocate" Arroyo's condemnation of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and "our government's role in leading the war against terrorism in Southeast Asia."

The Philippine government is fighting the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf, which is holding American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham of Wichita, Kan., and a Filipino nurse, hostage on southern Basilan island. The group is on a U.S. list of terrorist organizations and has been linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Most of the weapons will be used against Abu Sayyaf, army chief Lt. Gen. Jaime delos Santos said.

At the handover at Philippine army headquarters, U.S. Embassy Charge d'Affairs John Caulfield said the arms and equipment were only a "small part" of the U.S. military aid package.

"Our nations have stood together in the past and we stand together in the new millennium," Caulfield said. "We are now in an era of cooperation in the global war against terrorism."

A C-130 transport plane, also part of the U.S. aid package, arrived last month along with 16,000 pounds of military hardware. The Philippine military had only one operational C-130 aircraft, which was used to transport troops and for disaster relief.

Philippine defense officials said U.S. military hardware to come includes a Cyclone-class patrol boat, 100 army trucks and about eight Huey helicopters, as well as funds to upgrade their poorly equipped army.

Along with the hardware, U.S. forces will train a local special forces unit called the Light Reaction Company in Zamboanga City near Basilan. Officers from the U.S. Special Operations Command based in Hawaii have visited Zamboanga and Basilan to prepare for the training.

The first such unit trained by U.S. experts has already seen action on Basilan and is believed to be at the spearhead of the operation to rescue the U.S. and Filipino hostages.

Philippine forces are also fighting gangs of former Muslim separatist rebels who have turned to banditry and kidnapping for ransom in the southern Mindanao region.

More than 7,000 soldiers are scouring Basilan's jungle-covered mountains for the three hostages, the last of scores taken in a kidnapping spree that began late May. Most hostages were released or escaped, but others have been beheaded, including Guillermo Sobero of Corona, Calif.

The Abu Sayyaf claims to be fighting for Muslim independence.

-------- spies

U.S. Police and Intelligence Hit by Spy Network
Spies Tap Police and Government Phones

Charles R. Smith
Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2001
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/18/224826.shtml

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the FBI has stumbled on the largest espionage ring ever discovered inside the United States. The U.S. Justice Department is now holding nearly 100 Israeli citizens with direct ties to foreign military, criminal and intelligence services.

The spy ring reportedly includes employees of two Israeli-owned companies that currently perform almost all the official wiretaps for U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement.

The U.S. law enforcement wiretaps, authorized by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), appear to have been breached by organized crime units working inside Israel and the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.

Both Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were warned on Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from local, state and federal law enforcement officials. The warning stated, "Law enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted."

The spy ring enabled criminals to use reverse wiretaps against U.S. intelligence and law enforcement operations. The illegal monitoring may have resulted in the deaths of several informants and reportedly spoiled planned anti-drug raids on crime syndicates.

Global Spy and Crime Network

The penetration of the U.S. wiretap system has led to a giant spy hunt across the globe by American intelligence agencies. U.S. intelligence officials now suspect the spy ring shared and sold information to other nations.

"Why do you think Putin so nonchalantly and with such great fanfare announced the shutdown of the Lourdes listening post in Cuba?" noted Douglas Brown, president of Multilingual Data Solutions Inc. and program director at the Nathan Hale Institute.

"Besides the PR benefit right before his visit here, the Russians don't need it anymore. They've scraped together a cheaper, more effective monitoring system. Is the Israeli company an element of that system? I don't know," stated Brown.

"With all the whining and crying about Echelon and Carnivore, critics, domestic and foreign, of U.S. electronic eavesdropping vastly overestimate our abilities to process and disseminate the stuff," noted Brown.

"The critics also underestimated the incompetence and total ineptness of the people running our intelligence and law enforcement services during the Clinton-Gore years. One guy uses his home computer for storing top secret documents; another high-tech guru guy can't figure out how to save and retrieve his e-mail, and the guy in charge of everything is having phone sex over an open line with one of his employees," said Brown.

"On the other hand, the Europeans, including the Russians, have been much more focused on the nuts and bolts of practical systems to process the information they scoop up. The stories linking German intelligence and the L&H scandal got very little play here but were widely noted in the European software community," said Brown.

"Except for a few Germans and an occasional Pole, nobody can match the Russians in designing and developing algorithms. We may have some of the world's greatest programmers, but the Russians and Europeans do a better job of matching up linguists and area experts with their programmers," noted Brown.

The discovery of a major spy ring inside the United States is straining the already tense relations with Israel. Although, Israel denied any involvement with the penetration of the U.S. wiretap system, the CIA and FBI are investigating the direct government ties to the former Israeli military and intelligence officials now being held by the Justice Department.

Israeli Company Provides U.S. Wiretaps

One company reported to be under investigation is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm. Comverse provides almost all the wiretapping equipment and software for U.S. law enforcement.

Custom computers and software made by Comverse are tied into the U.S. phone network in order to intercept, record and store wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.

The penetration of Comverse reportedly allowed criminals to wiretap law enforcement communications in reverse and foil authorized wiretaps with advance warning. One major drug bust operation planned by the Los Angeles police was foiled by what now appear to be reverse wiretaps placed on law enforcement phones by the criminal spy ring.

Flawed laws Led to Compromise

Several U.S. privacy and security advocates contend the fault actually lies in the CALEA legislation passed by Congress that allowed the spy ring to operate so effectively. Lisa Dean, vice president for technology policy at Free Congress Foundation, delivered a scathing critique of the breach of the U.S. law enforcement wiretap system.

"We are exercising our 'I told you so' rights on this," said Dean.

"From the beginning, both the political right and left warned Congress and the FBI that they were making a huge mistake by implementing CALEA. That it would jeopardize the security of private communications, whether it's between a mother and her son or between government officials. The statement just issued by law enforcement agencies has confirmed our worst fears," concluded Dean.

"How many more 9/11s do we have to suffer?" asked Brad Jansen, deputy director for technology policy at the Free Congress Foundation.

"The CALEA form of massive surveillance is a poor substitute for real law enforcement and intelligence work. It is an after-the-fact method of crime fighting. It is not designed to prevent crime. Massive wiretapping does not equal security. Instead, we have elected to jeopardize our national security in exchange for poor law enforcement," said Jansen.

"For example, FINCEN monitoring of all money transactions did not detect al-Qaeda, nor did it find Mohamed Atta before he boarded his last flight. It was an ATM receipt left in his rental car that led the FBI to the bin Laden bank accounts," noted Jansen.

U.S. National Security Compromised

"The CALEA approach is the same approach law enforcement has been pushing for a number of years. It's the same approach that was used to push Carnivore, Magic Lantern, FINCEN and even the failed Clipper project. This approach leads to a compromise in national security and in personal security for the American public," said Jansen.

"In addition, there is always government abuse of these kinds of systems," stated Jansen. "Law enforcement on all levels does a very poor job in policing itself. We need to hold our police and government officials to the highest standards."

"This also hurts the U.S. economy when the whole world knows that our communication systems are not secure. We cannot compete with inferior products when other countries are exporting secure software and hardware. New Zealand, India and Chile already offer security products that actually provide real security," stated Jansen.

"The current mentality of law enforcement is what failed to protect us from 9/11. CALEA wiretaps will not protect us from terror attacks in the future. The system does not provide better intelligence information. It actually leads to less security and more crime. We get the worst of both worlds," concluded Jansen.

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Struggles Inside the Government Defined Campaign

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 20, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3616-2001Dec19?language=printer

Second of two articles

In his last year as CIA station chief in Sudan, Paul Quaglia lived no more than a mile from Osama bin Laden.

It was 1995. The al Qaeda leader's residence was not on the way to the U.S. Embassy, but Quaglia preferred to vary his daily commute. Sometimes he drove right past the three-story brick and stucco home, sport utility vehicles standing sentry outside. When the two men crossed paths at the airport, Quaglia gazed with frank curiosity at the tall Saudi Arabian in the VIP lounge, "surrounded by security guys, openly armed, wearing those long white flowing robes."

The face of international terror had begun a dangerous transformation in the early 1990s, and the U.S. government knew but little of bin Laden's part in it yet. Terrorism was still, by presidential directive, a third-tier national security issue.

President Bill Clinton and his advisers reached a pivot point in their grasp of the terrorist threat by the end of 1995. In his second term, the president reshaped his government in response. By degrees the national security establishment shifted its view of terrorism from tactical nuisance to strategic challenge, sharpening its focus on bin Laden after the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa.

By any measure available, Clinton left office having given greater priority to terrorism than any president before him. His government doubled counterterrorist spending across 40 departments and agencies. The FBI and CIA allocated still larger increases in their budgets and personnel assignments. Clinton devoted some of his highest-profile foreign policy speeches to terrorism, including two at the U.N. General Assembly. An interagency panel, the Counterterrorism Strategy Group, took on new weight in policy disputes from the Justice Department to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the foreign policy cabinet, by the time it left office, had been convening every two to three weeks to shape a covert and overt campaign against al Qaeda.

But neither Clinton nor his administration treated terrorism as their top concern, because it was not. Without the overriding impetus provided by Sept. 11, the war on terror in the 1990s lost as many struggles inside government as it won. Steps to manage risk moved forward readily. Some of the harder initiatives, hurried through these past three months by President Bush, foundered then on money, bureaucratic turf, domestic politics and rival conceptions of national interest.

The Treasury Department declined to monitor money transfers outside the formal banking system, such as the hawala network used by bin Laden's operatives, and opposed funding for a White House-sponsored National Terrorist Asset Tracking Center. The department strongly cautioned against proposals for covert action against bin Laden's financial accounts, arguing that the United States should be the foremost defender of the norm that cyberattacks on banks are themselves acts of terror.

FBI investigators, who knew as much then as they do now about some domestic fundraising sources for foreign terror, were prevented from opening criminal or national security cases for fear that they would be seen as "profiling" Islamic charities.

In two of the countries of central concern - Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - terrorism seldom rose higher than third place on the agenda when Clinton and his Cabinet secretaries sat down with their counterparts.

Even in Afghanistan, a country that otherwise held no strategic interest for the United States, the Clinton administration chose not to exhaust its available carrots and sticks with the Taliban regime that sheltered bin Laden from 1996. To induce the Taliban to hand over bin Laden, Clinton offered neither the incentive of normal relations nor the threat that he would back armed opponents of consolidated Taliban rule.

Beneath every trade-off lurked the incontestable fact that terrorism on the grand scale remained a hypothetical danger through Clinton's final day in office. In the 1980s and 1990s, 871 Americans died in terrorist attacks at home and overseas, an average of not quite 44 a year. In actuarial terms, chicken bones were deadlier. Colleagues told Paul R. Pillar at the CIA's counterterrorism center, he wrote later, that "fewer Americans die from it than drown in bathtubs."

That was not, said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, Clinton's second national security adviser, the view from the top. "Terrorism didn't start in 1993 with the World Trade Center," he said. "We had the Lebanon Marine barracks, the Lebanon embassy, hijackings, the Achille Lauro and Pan Am 103" in the 1980s. "I think the Clinton administration was the first administration to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort - organizationally, in terms of resources and in terms of anti-terrorist activity."

'Just Too Complacent'

Presidential Decision Directive 35, which remains classified, set out the Clinton administration's intelligence collection priorities on March 2, 1995. Terrorism came in the third tier, after support for ongoing military operations and analysis of potential enemies in Russia, China, Iraq and Iran.

This actually represented an elevation in status for a danger that had seldom been granted much respect. At the time, James B. Steinberg held one of the few senior posts in government charged with thinking about national security on a horizon measured in years. As director of policy planning in the State Department, he commissioned a series of cables on what threats the United States might face after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Drugs, crime, terrorism and weapons proliferation emerged in these cables, he said, as "the dark side of globalization." Analysts called them the "transnational threats."

"From 1995 and 1996 on, you can see this rising curve of urgency and attention," Steinberg recalled.

Terrorists, and terrorism, were changing. Some of the secular, leftist radicals that made their names in the 1970s - Red Brigades, Direct Action, the Communist Combatant Cells - had faded away.

But if less numerous, terrorists grew more lethal. No longer was it true, as Brian Jenkins wrote in the Futurist in 1987, that they "want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead."

It took 267 attacks in the United States to kill 23 people in the 1980s. The 10 years that followed saw many fewer attacks - only 60 - but nearly nine times the casualties - 182. A single bombing on April 19, 1995, which ripped the face off the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, accounted for 168 of the dead. The same trend held overseas: fewer attacks, more lives lost.

Most commonly driven by religious zeal, the new terrorists sought to inflict mass casualties. Those who studied them, including Bruce Hoffman at the Rand Corp., tracked a corresponding improvement in their operational competence. Islamic extremists had come to dominate the 10-year war that drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in 1989. Hard on their victory, they characterized the Persian Gulf War of 1990 and 1991 as a second invasion of the Islamic world by an infidel superpower.

Jihadist terror, as government experts began to call it, came to America just as Clinton took office in 1993.

Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, convicted of plotting that June to bomb the United Nations, the FBI's New York office and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, provided a window into the new adversary's intent. Trial evidence described his instructions to "break and destroy the morale of the enemies of Allah" with attacks on "their high world buildings . . . and the buildings in which they gather their leaders."

Ramzi Yousef, a follower, killed only six people when he bombed the World Trade Center five weeks after Clinton reached the White House. He had spent $400 on ammonium nitrate and fuel oil to fashion the Feb. 26, 1993, truck bomb. But little-noted testimony of the building's engineers suggested later that, with two or three times the budget, Yousef might have killed tens of thousands in the towers' sudden collapse.

Former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), who sat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence until early last year, said of the attitude inside the committee: "We thought we were pretty hot. I mean, [the 1993 truck bombers] went back to Ryder to ask for their deposit back! How stupid are they? We were just too complacent."

Turning Points

The United Nations celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1995. Clinton devoted his marquee address on Oct. 22 to the cross-border threats his advisers kept talking about, including terrorists who had "plotted to destroy the very hall we gather in today."

He named all four horsemen, not perhaps of apocalypse, but of America's new unease: "international organized crime, drug trafficking, terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction." The list came roughly in order of his attention. Money laundering took center stage, and Clinton's only concrete move that day was to seize assets of the Cali drug cartel in Colombia.

At the Warwick Hotel a few blocks away, Richard A. Clarke of the National Security Council staff briefed reporters. The mafia had its FBI, and the drug war had its czar. As yet the war on terror had no such central command. But Clarke had begun to create one in the Old Executive Office Building.

Clinton's first guiding directive on terrorism, a few months before, had given lead responsibility to the FBI for hunting terrorists. To coordinate the scores of offices elsewhere that had some claim to a counterterrorist role, Clinton also named an alphabet soup of interagency panels. A congressional report noted that these panels had to "operate on a consensus basis, do not have decision-making authority, and do not establish government-wide resource priorities."

No one appeared to have told Clarke any of that. By force of personality, he used his gavel in the Counterterrorism Strategy Group to hammer unusually rapid change through large government organizations. In the next five years, he would roll over a formidable array of bureaucratic foes, interjecting himself in programming and personnel decisions that the executive departments saw as sovereign.

"Dick gets things done," Berger said. "He is a pile driver."

Three weeks after Clinton's U.N. speech, on Nov. 13, 1995, a powerful explosion destroyed an American-leased office building in Riyadh where U.S. soldiers trained the Saudi Arabian National Guard. Five Americans died. Next came a much larger bomb, this one fabricated into a Saudi tanker truck. Reverberating audibly as far away as Bahrain, the June 25, 1996, detonation killed 19 Americans at the Khobar Towers dormitory for servicemen assigned to the King Abdul Aziz Air Base.

These episodes, and a set of near-catastrophes just before them, raised new alarms in Washington.

Yousef, the World Trade Center bomber, had been caught in Pakistan, but not before reaching advanced stages of planning for the synchronized destruction of a dozen commercial airliners over the Pacific. In Tokyo about the same time, the Aum Shinrikyo cult killed 12 subway passengers with sarin nerve gas that, dispersed effectively, would have killed many of the 5,700 who fell ill.

"Terrorism is the enemy of our generation, and we must prevail," Clinton told an Aug. 5 audience at George Washington University. But he added a proviso: "While we can defeat terrorists, it will be a long time before we defeat terrorism." Clinton did not foresee decisive victory. The task was to manage terrorism as an unavoidable feature of the global landscape.

"In light of September 11th, we ought to do some soul-searching," said Michael A. Sheehan, who served as Clinton's last assistant secretary of state for counterterrorism. "That's what I'm doing. But it has to be said that it was the collective judgment of the American people, not just the Clinton administration, that the impact of terrorism was at a level that was acceptable."

To prevent an unbearable increase would require fresh resources to match the ambitions of the new jihadist threat. Clarke oversaw the infusion.

Spread over so many departments and agencies, the aggregate spending on terrorism was hard to sort out. But the best estimates of the Office of Management and Budget showed an increase from $5.7 billion in fiscal 1996 to $9.7 billion in 1999 and $11.1 billion in 2001.

The money went to hundreds of programs from pathogen research and medical stockpiling to training of "first responders" to biological and chemical attacks. Large increases went to law enforcement and intelligence gathering.

Terrorism accounted for less than 4 percent of the FBI's resources at the start of the Clinton administration and more than 10 percent at the end, according to unpublished Justice Department data. The CIA's counterterrorism center nearly tripled in budget and personnel, sources said, though its managers complained that the numbers changed capriciously with the ebb and flow of White House and congressional urgency.

'Duck and Cover'

In the aftermath of twin truck bombs that destroyed U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya on Aug. 7, 1998, the most urgent priority for the Clinton administration was hunkering down.

"Really, this was the first thing you thought about in the morning," said James Bodner, one of Defense Secretary William S. Cohen's top policy aides. "If it was the morning, and you hadn't been woken up [by a call], you knew there had not been an attack." Everyone involved, he said, saw the need to take the offensive because defense was so hard: "You've got to bat a thousand, whereas the other guy only needs to get one single every year."

But fully half of the counterterrorist budget in Clinton's last 29 months went to increased security at overseas posts, military or diplomatic. Counting comparable measures domestically, the proportion surpassed three-fourths.

Long after the embassy bombings, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright held a daily 8 a.m. meeting at Foggy Bottom with her chief of diplomatic security. David Carpenter, who had come to State from the Secret Service presidential detail, walked Albright through more than 650 threat reports in the seven months after the Aug. 7 attacks. "Our analysts believe that about 33 percent of these threats are 'viable' threats," he reported in March 1999.

Carpenter and Albright dispatched Emergency Security Assessment Teams, Security Augmentation Teams, Mobile Training Teams. They hired more than 1,000 new guards and built countless vehicle barriers and blast walls. They deployed 53 bomb detection units, 98 "back-scatter" X-ray systems, 200 closed-circuit recording cameras and 600 metal detectors.

The State Department also mandated "duck-and-cover practice drills," as recommended by retired Adm. William Crowe's Accountability Review Board after the embassy bombings, "in order to reduce casualties from vehicular bombs."

These defensive improvements, in the State Department alone, cost twice the combined spending of the FBI and CIA counterterrorism programs. The Pentagon's defensive improvements were nearly three times again as expensive as State's.

In the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there was a counterterrorism directorate, but its mission was not to hunt and kill terrorists. No one on the Joint Staff had that as a primary mission. The directorate managed efforts to make U.S. troops abroad more difficult to strike.

Joint Publication 2000.12H gave the authoritative direction to all military services on "defensive measures taken to reduce vulnerability to terrorist attacks." Uniformed services bought window laminates engineered to withstand explosive blasts without sharding, armored tactical rescue vehicles, portable tire deflation systems. They ordered body armor for their security dogs.

The Clinton administration felt obliged to buy all this protection for employees it dispatched around the world, but it had little confidence in the strategy. Steinberg, who had become deputy national security adviser, said later that "the adversary can see what you're hardening and directs his efforts somewhere else." It is, he said, a "horrible game where offense always outstrips defense."

Follow the Money

No issue frustrated Clarke more than his inability to open an effective financial front in the war on terror, according to regular participants in his Counterterrorism Strategy Group.

"He wanted to identify assets and freeze them," a colleague said. "He couldn't get the interagency process to move."

A central irritant was the government's antiquated approach to tracking money. On the day of his 1995 U.N. speech, Clinton had directed Treasury to lead an initiative to disrupt new techniques of illicit financial transfer. Three years later, there had been no progress.

Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Center, known as FinCEN, geared itself to 1980s-style money laundering. It took reports from chartered banks on large cash transactions and suspicious activity by customers. But for years, it had put off writing regulations to give it comparable oversight of other money service businesses.

William Wechsler, who chaired Clarke's working group on terrorist finances, said that by January 1999, his group identified informal, unregulated money transfers "as being a really significant problem." The principal concern was a type of channel originating in the Middle East and South Asia, called hawala, from the Arabic word for "change" and the Hindi word for "trust."

Hawala offered a method of transferring money across international borders without physically moving it, relying on trusted partners on each side. To send money to Pakistan, for example, a person could hand cash dollars to a tea shop owner in Brooklyn. The shop owner would call a relative in Pakistan with instructions, and the relative would pay out the sum in rupees at the other end.

Hawala appeared to create a vulnerable point of entry for al Qaeda operational funds into the United States. White House officials could find no government agency willing to police it.

As it happened, FinCEN had one of the world's preeminent experts. Patrick Jost, a jazz musician whose Virginia vanity license tag reads "HAWALA," spoke Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu. He had teamed with Interpol's senior authority to write a primer on alternative remittance systems. But when U.S. law enforcement agencies approached him for advice on monitoring the shadowy transactions, Jost's managers instructed him to decline.

Director James Sloan and chief of operations Connie Fenchel, he said, "did not want FinCEN to pursue this line of work." Made to feel unwelcome, Jost left government in June 2000.

"It was infuriating," Wechsler said.

(The Bush administration shut down two hawala operators in the United States as part of a crackdown on al Qaeda financial assets on Nov. 8.)

One member of the Counterterrorism Strategy Group remembers Clarke "pounding on tables and railing about the Holy Land Foundation," a Texas-based charity whose accounts were seized this month after years of government debate. FBI eavesdropping at a Marriott Courtyard hotel in Philadelphia as long ago as 1993 linked the foundation to Hamas, the most active Palestinian terrorist group against Israel.

But investigators at the bureau felt handcuffed. After preparing the case, one of them said, they were refused permission to take the next steps. The Texas charity, like the Hamas political leadership, maintained it concerned itself only with social services.

"There was a lack of political will to follow through and allow investigators to proceed on the case, despite the fact that all of the i's were dotted and the t's were crossed," said a government analyst who reviewed it. "You have a front organization that you know is contributing to terrorists, with extremely solid intelligence information, but it is also making charitable contributions, and that is its ostensible purpose. When I say political, I mean we can't have the public come out and saying we're bashing Muslims."

During 1999, Clarke persuaded Clinton to establish an interagency terrorist asset tracking center, headquartered at Treasury. With no role in law enforcement, it could draw from and feed to intelligence arms such as the CIA's Illicit Finance Group. At the Coast Guard Academy on May 17, 2000, Clinton announced its creation. He was premature.

It was not until this September - the week of the hijacking calamity - that a reluctant enforcement division at Treasury was persuaded to form the new team.

In meetings of Clinton's Cabinet-rank national security officials, Defense Secretary Cohen and Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, complained repeatedly that the government was not bringing its financial leverage to bear on bin Laden's network.

"We knew where the front organizations were," Shelton said in an interview. "We know today. If we allowed the money to continue to pour in, that was something we were giving them as a freebie."

According to sources, the two Pentagon leaders favored an aggressive campaign of covert action against financial accounts and centers owned by al Qaeda.

The government was capable of manufacturing "all the indices of authentication" needed to make a validated withdrawal from a terrorist account, said one person who participated in the internal debates. It was also capable, some advocates believed, of raining electronic havoc on a business or financial institution as a whole.

Participants in the debate recall it as largely hypothetical, with doubters wondering whether such an attack could be launched to good effect.

But Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin took a strong stand against the idea in principle. As the world's preeminent financial center, he said, the United States had the strongest interest in maintaining a global norm that cyberattacks on banking systems are acts of war. The United States could not defend that principle if it engaged in such attacks, and its own vulnerabilities would be substantial.

Of Presidents and Kings

Sheehan, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, arrived in the job not long after the 1998 embassy bombings. He concluded almost immediately that al Qaeda could not be defeated cell by cell.

A 1977 West Point graduate, Sheehan had been counterinsurgency adviser in El Salvador and a leader of U.S. Special Forces teams in Panama. He saw law enforcement and intelligence as essential tools but argued that on their own, they made for "a defensive, marginal strategy, like swatting mosquitoes." Sheehan's image later entered the public idiom of the terror debate. Washington, he wrote, needed a strategy to "drain the swamp."

Terrorists could not operate without sanctuary and state support. To remove them, he wrote in a classified 30-page cable, would require substantial changes of behavior by five key states: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Only the top leaders of those countries could make the necessary political decisions, he wrote, and only the highest-ranking American leaders could engage them.

What Sheehan proposed in effect was to place terrorism at or near the top of the agenda whenever Clinton, Albright or Cohen spoke to their counterparts. That is what happened under Bush after Sept. 11. But for Clinton, in the times in which he governed, the proposal was out of the question.

Shelton, the retired Joint Chiefs chairman, said, "If you didn't talk to the emir or the king, it was probably not going to happen." The only way to have stopped the flow of money from the Persian Gulf to al Qaeda, he said, was to say, "‚'If you're not with us you're against us,' and not from some deputy secretary or some third assistant going to the finance ministry."

Clinton's overarching priority in the Middle East, and the animating foreign policy goal of his presidency, was peace between Israel and its neighbors. Martin Indyk, who advised him at the White House and as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, described terrorism's inverse relationship to success at the bargaining table.

"After the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a very real sense of a window of opportunity to achieve a comprehensive peace in the Middle East," he said. "That became the priority. The assumption was that if you could achieve that kind of breakthrough, it would have a transforming effect on the whole region." That, in turn, would "deal a blow to those who opposed the peace process, particularly using terrorism to do so."

The Saudis gave direct financial aid to the Taliban, but the royal family held no brief for bin Laden. He had been stripped of his Saudi citizenship for, among other things, accusing King Fahd of inviting crusaders to defile the land of the two holy mosques.

Washington hoped that Riyadh would use its influence to drive a wedge between the Taliban and bin Laden's network, the easiest course. When that did not work, the Clinton administration urged the royal family to cut two kinds of financial ties: direct Saudi aid to the Taliban, and the thick web of contributing relationships from charities, religious schools known as madrassas and influential princes to al Qaeda.

"The most we got out of them was that they stopped the direct funding in 1999 and downgraded their relations" with the Taliban from ambassador to charge d'affairs, Indyk said. When Americans asked for information about private contributions to al Qaeda, another senior American said, "the Saudis wanted account numbers" before they would answer.

'It Wasn't in the Cards'

Clinton flew to Islamabad, over vehement Secret Service objections, on March 25, 2000. The Secret Service assumed that bin Laden's network, based across the border in Afghanistan, still had the shoulder-fired Stinger missiles the United States had provided to the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in the 1980s. Air Force One flew ahead of Clinton as a decoy. The president slipped into Pakistan in an undignified tactical landing that bounced him hard in the seat of his unmarked jet.

Pakistan held the key to bin Laden. It had pressure points and hopes of better ties with Washington, it shared a long, porous border with Afghanistan, and it had some interests even stronger than its considerable investment in the Taliban. Without Pakistan, the Taliban would have no meaningful ally left. Without the Taliban, bin Laden might be finished.

Clinton was arriving in a political maelstrom. The previous October, Gen. Pervez Musharraf had seized power from the elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was a friend of the United States. Critics in Congress were livid at any visit at all, calling it legitimation for a coup.

Apart from that, there was a war on between Pakistan and India in Kashmir, a potentially explosive mix of nationalism and religion. And not least, they were the world's newest nuclear powers - the only ones sharing a hostile border.

How to choose among democracy, war, terrorism and nuclear miscalculation - in a meeting with Musharraf lasting an hour and 40 minutes? Clinton did not choose. He spoke of them all, according to records and recollections of those present. Two participants said separately that terrorism came third.

Contacts with Pakistan over the Taliban, known formally as demarches, had been much the same for a long time. The United States would ask Pakistan to use its influence to deliver bin Laden. Pakistan would say it was trying. Critics inside the Clinton administration called these "demarche-mallows" - soft and insubstantial.

In person, Clinton told Musharraf that "he thought terrorism would destroy Pakistan from within" if the government did not take firm control of al Qaeda, said an American in the room. But Clinton, the American said, expected no substantial reply: "It just wasn't in the cards." Because of mandatory congressional sanctions against Pakistan, "our carrots were pretty chewed up," and "there wasn't much left that we could cut off."

The Clinton administration had much the same analysis of the Taliban after cutting off its air links and winning U.N. backing for limited sanctions. In demanding custody of bin Laden, Clinton's advisers found themselves with little to offer or threaten the Islamic fundamentalist regime.

After visiting an Afghan refugee camp in northern Pakistan in late 1997, Albright had described the Taliban regime as "despicable" in its treatment of women and girls. Hillary Rodham Clinton joined the attack, and the human rights issues far eclipsed bin Laden in most commentary about the regime. When Taliban representatives asked Americans what would happen if the bin Laden problem were resolved, the best the Americans could do was say "a boulder would be removed" from the path to better ties.

"I did say, and I was absolutely right, that what they were doing to the women was despicable," Albright said recently. "We decided that they could not be recognized because of all the things they were doing to suppress their own people."

During much of this period, the Taliban was struggling to complete its conquest of Afghanistan, with the Northern Alliance hanging on to about one-third of the territory. The Clinton administration joined the "six plus two" process in which Afghanistan's neighbors, together with Moscow and Washington, tried to broker an end to the civil war.

Though trying to bring pressure on the Taliban, Clinton's advisers rejected proposals to interfere with the regime's consolidation of power. The United States maintained its position in favor of what Assistant Secretary of State Karl F. Inderfurth called "a broad based, multiethnic government" long after it was clear the Taliban had the will and the means to win a victory outright.

Interceding on the side of the Northern Alliance would have meant backing the losing side and casting lots with corrupt and brutal militias, a former official said - not "white knight versus black knight" but "dark gray knight against black knight."

Albright said the idea was unworthy of serious thought.

"We all were operating with the history of Afghanistan and the unintended consequences of getting involved" in the 1980s, Albright recalled. "We armed all those people and provided them with the Stingers. For us to get involved in a civil war on behalf of the Northern Alliance would have been insane."

Researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report.

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U.N. Security Council Approves International Force for Kabul

New York Times
December 20, 2001
By SERGE SCHMEMANN with WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/international/20CND-SECU.html

The United Nations Security Council today authorized an international force to help keep the peace in Afghanistan, with Britain leading the troops and the United States prepared to move in if an emergency arises.

The 15-member council voted unanimously after an advance group of 53 British Royal Marines arrived in Afghanistan today, with some 250 British soldiers to be deployed around Kabul, the capital, by Saturday. Afghanistan's new interim government, with Hamid Karzai as prime minister, is to be sworn in on Saturday.

"This is an important day for Afghanistan," the British ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, said after the resolution was adopted. He said it showed that the United Nations was moving "quickly and in concrete terms to provide a future for Afghanistan."

The United States envoy, John D. Negroponte, added that the unanimous vote marked a new demonstration of the Security Council's ability to act in concert on matters affecting peace and security.

A British military officer in Afghanistan said the Royal Marines' mission would begin on Friday when, together with Afghan security forces, they would accompany V.I.P.'s arriving for the ceremony from the Bagram airbase to Kabul.

The United Nations resolution says the force, which could reach 5,000 troops, is to maintain security in an around Kabul "so that the Afghan Interim Authority as well as the personnel of the United Nations can operate in a secure environment."

Britain will contribute 1,500 soldiers, and 21 countries - Canada, France, Germany, Turkey, Indonesia and Jordan among them - have expressed interest in making up the balance.

The multinational troops are expected to guard government buildings, and Britain said it would also help Afghans train security and military forces.

While Britain will lead day-to-day operations, the United States military will be in overall charge of coordination and would help rescue the new troops in an emergency.

A draft of the United Nations resolution said the "International Security Assistance Force" would be established for six months to maintain security in and around Kabul "so that the Afghan Interim Authority as well as the personnel of the United Nations can operate in a secure environment."

The British decision to lead the contingent had been expected since Afghan factions agreed on Dec. 14 at United Nations-brokered talks in Bonn to form an interim administration. But the announcement was delayed by London's efforts to pin down details of the operation, especially coordination with the American campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

In a letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan formally announcing Britain's readiness to lead the force, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, also declared that the United States would have the ultimate authority over the force to ensure that its activities "do not interfere with the successful completion of Operation Enduring Freedom," which is the code name of the pursuit of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

That clarification was sought by both the United States and Britain to avoid any interference in the continuing American military campaign. But it became a sticking point when Germany, declaring that it was willing to provide 1,000 to 1,500 troops, insisted they not be under United States command.

Perhaps to assuage the Germans, whose deployment needs approval by Parliament, Mr. Straw also said that Britain would "exercise command" over the international force, and that its mission would be distinct from the American operation.

It remained unclear today whether this resolves the dispute with Germany. Another potential problem was the public resistance of the Northern Alliance to an active role for the international force. The interior minister of the interim government, Yunis Qanooni, who is widely regarded as a moderate, said in an interview yesterday that the force should not exceed 1,000 combat soldiers in a total force of no more than 3,000, that it should be restricted to Kabul and that it could employ force only at the Afghan government's request.

"Their main job would be keeping themselves secure," Mr. Qanooni said. "If the state needs them, at that time they will help us."

Western diplomats at the United Nations, however, viewed that statement as a face-saving tactic. Mr. Qanooni also said allied soldiers currently stationed in the city would withdraw to military bases.

The interim government's minister of foreign affairs, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, had similarly indicated to the United Nations last week that the foreign troops would be acceptable only as a peacekeeping force, authorized to use force only in self-defense.

But in a letter to the Security Council yesterday, Dr. Abdullah said that "taking into account all relevant considerations," the international force could be deployed under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes it to use force. The Security Council draft specifically invokes Chapter 7 as its authority.

In fact the British, and the United Nations, have made it clear that the powers and composition of the force would be settled with the Afghan authorities before full deployment.

The Security Council resolution calls on the force to work "in close consultation" with the interim government, and Mr. Straw said its tasks would include finding ways of helping the Afghans train security forces.

Mr. Straw also said in his letter that Britain would lead the force only until April 30. But diplomats at the United Nations said that if the force functioned well, the British could remain longer.

Representatives of the 21 countries that have offered to take part in the force held their second meeting in London yesterday. "We do not lack for volunteers," said one British defense official.

The purpose of the meeting, he said, was to whittle down the number of potential donors and to balance their contributions. "Everyone was offering infantry so we said, `Please come back and think about some of the more complicated tasks,' " the official said.

The British defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, told Parliament yesterday that the force would be led by Maj. Gen. John McColl, who conducted a reconnaissance mission to Kabul last weekend. Mr. Hoon said the United States would be offering "essential enabling support to deploy and sustain the force, a vital and considerable task."

A defense official said the British mission would be one of patrol, and while soldiers would be prepared and outfitted to react with force if threatened, their principal equipment would be wheeled vehicles and small arms.

"The vast majority of forces there are friendly and they invited us in," he observed.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

State of Siege Declared in Argentina

By TONY SMITH
AP Business Writer
DECEMBER 20, 08:22 ET
http://wire.ap.org/?SLUG=ARGENTINA%2dUNREST also see: http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011220-1335312.htm

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - Argentina teetered on the brink of economic collapse after anti-government protests and looting prompted the president to declare a state of siege and the powerful economy minister to resign. Nine died in violence that extended into a second day Thursday.

At first light, about 100 people gathered outside the government house, banging pots and pans as a riot police were soldier-to-soldier guarding the seat of power. It was a smaller version of earlier protests countrywide against President Fernando de la Rua's measures to quell demonstrations and to decry his and Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo's handling of the economy.

Banks reopened Thursday and people went back to work on what began as a calmer day, with little police presence on the streets. But many small shops remained shuttered for fear of further unrest.

Cavallo, widely blamed for failing to halt the nation's slide into economic ruin, offered to resign Thursday. The state news agency TELAM said De la Rua had accepted the resignation.

``We're fed up with corruption, hunger and the poverty we're living in,'' said Ana Arce, a 75-year-old doctor, outside the government house late Wednesday. ``I think that if they don't go, the people will kick them out.''

Unemployment has topped 18 percent in South America's second-largest economy. Mired in a four-year recession, the nation is near default on its staggering $132 billion public debt.

On Wednesday, thousands of Argentines looted stores and supermarkets in poor neighborhoods, saying they were going hungry. Riot police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. The violence left nine dead and at least 109 injured. Police made 328 arrests.

``This is not our fault, this is the government's fault, the president's and Cavallo's,'' said Sandra Guttierez, a 28-year-old unemployed mother of two, who left one ransacked supermarket loaded with bags of food Wednesday. ``We feel we've got no future, for us or for our kids.''

Austerity measures introduced by Cavallo, including a partial freeze on bank withdrawals designed to prop up the financial system, have sparked widespread anger, especially in poorer areas.

In a televised address Wednesday night, De la Rua said he was imposing a 30-day state of siege to guarantee order.

``I urge those who are exercising violence to cease such acts,'' De la Rua said. ``With violence and illegality, we will not solve our problems.''

Wednesday's decree marked the first time in 11 years an Argentine president has seized special powers that effectively grant security forces greater powers of arrest and allow them to ban public gatherings.

Such measures were last used by Carlos Menem - De la Rua's Peronist predecessor - in 1990 to quash an uprising by a right-wing antidemocratic militia group. A year earlier, a state of siege failed to stop widespread looting and social chaos that eventually forced then-president Raul Alfonsin out of office.

But De la Rua's emergency measures only provoked more anger. As the protests swelled around government house and the presidential palace, where De la Rua's cabinet was meeting, the government's future appeared to hang in the balance.

Outside the residence, crowds of thousands gathered shouting ``Cavallo out,'' also calling for De la Rua's resignation.

Thousands more thronged the central Plaza de Mayo at the Casa Rosada government house, until riot police charged them, firing tear gas. Others rallied outside Cavallo's home on the swanky Libertador Avenue.

``It's great that Cavallo's gone,'' said Elena Sicilia, an actress rushing toward government house after hearing about the minister's resignation on television. ``But they all have to go, we don't want De la Rua and we don't want Menem back. We want a fair government of the people.''

Sick for years, the economy has nosedived during De la Rua's two years in office.

His government has tried to fix the economy with nine different economic plans and has faced eight general strikes.

Until Tuesday, Cavallo had been working on enacting another punishing austerity plan, pushing a belt-tightening 2002 budget through Congress and staving off a default on Argentina's staggering debt.

Rising social tensions are expected to make it more difficult for De la Rua to push 2002's austerity budget slashing an extra $4 billion in public spending through Congress.

Agreement on the budget is seen as key in persuading the International Monetary Fund to release $1.3 billion of emergency funds that cash-strapped Argentina needs to keep up payments on its debt.

Failure to secure IMF funding could lead to a default, which would probably spark more chaos and social unrest.

In his speech, De la Rua called for a broad political consensus to assume the ``historic responsibility'' of pulling Argentina back from the brink of economic and political collapse.

But he made no concrete proposals, nor did he mention the fate of Cavallo.

----

Outside probe sought of police shooting

Briefly
Washington Times
December 20, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011220-542071.htm

BLANTYRE, Malawi - University lecturers called yesterday for an independent probe into last week's fatal shooting of a student by police, a senior lecturer said.

"We are calling for an independent and transparent investigation to establish if it was lawful action by police," Nandin Patel, secretary of the lecturers union at the university's main campus, Chancellor College in Zomba, told Agence France-Presse.

The student, Fanikiso Phiri, was shot Dec. 11 at the main university when police used live bullets to break up a protest by dreadlocked Rastafarians, which university students and others had joined.

The Rastafarians were protesting the mysterious death of Malawian musician and government critic Evison Matafale, who died Nov. 27 in police custody.

Mr. Patel deemed the use of live ammunition to break up a demonstration unjustified.

-------- terrorism

Al-Qaeda 70 per cent intact, says FBI official

Sydney Morning Herald,
December 20, 2001
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0112/20/world/world7.html

Washington: Hundreds of highly trained members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network remain scattered throughout the globe, capable of launching more terrorist attacks if the United States and its allies fail to root out the organisation's "middle management", FBI officials have told Congress.

"Getting bin Laden isn't going to cause al-Qaeda to collapse," J. T. Caruso, acting assistant director of the FBI's counter-terrorism division, told a Senate hearing.

Mr Caruso said the loss of bin Laden and the elimination of terrorist bases in Afghanistan would reduce the ability of the al-Qaeda network to commit "horrific acts" by 30 per cent.

"That still means 70 per cent (of the organisation's capabilities for terror will remain intact)," he warned on Tuesday.

Thomas Wilshere, deputy section chief of the FBI's international terrorism operational section, said the US-led military campaign against the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan had "stunned" the terrorist organisation but much of its international operation and personnel remain in place.

"To disrupt and destroy this operation, we need to go beyond just one man," Mr Wilshere said. "We need to do down to middle management."

The FBI officials testified as US policy makers begin to contemplate two scenarios: a possibly drawn-out pursuit of bin Laden and his lieutenants and the campaign that will follow the war in Afghanistan.

They painted a picture of a network that stretches across 60 countries, has access to money, training and equipment, and, above all, operates with patience.

Mr Wilshere said the number of al-Qaeda members around the world could be in the "tens of thousands".

But he said the vast majority were poorly trained and incapable of carrying out sophisticated terrorist operations like the September 11 attacks.

However, "hundreds" of al-Qaeda members with training in terrorist operations continued to operate in dozens of countries, including the US and many nations in Europe.

Al-Qaeda had built a "critical mass" of several hundred "hard-core" operatives capable of carrying out major acts of terrorism worldwide, Mr Wilshere said.

The network could also count on support from thousands of people who "graduated" from its training camps in Sudan and Afghanistan during the 1990s.

Hearst Newspapers, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

NYPA buys 8 fuel cell power plants for NY City

Reuters:
20/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13774/story.htm

NEW YORK - United Technologies Corp. unit UTC Fuel Cells said Wednesday it sold eight fuel cell power plants to the New York Power Authority (NYPA) for use at wastewater treatment plants in New York City.

The 200-kilowatt PC25 power units will produce power for four wastewater plants in Brooklyn, Staten Island, the Bronx and Queens, UTC said in a statement.

Waste gas produced in the water treatment process will fuel the power plant.

With the addition of these eight units, a total of 17 fuel cell plants will supply electricity for New York City area facilities including the police station in Manhattan's Central Park, North Central Bronx Hospital and St. Vincent's Hospital on Staten Island, and the Conde Nast building at 4 Times Square.

Fuel cells use hydrogen to produced electricity leaving heat and water as the primary byproducts.

UTC Fuel Cells, formerly known as International Fuel Cells, has manufactured the fuel cell plants since 1991, delivering more than 235 of them to customers in 19 countries.

----

Windmill power -- a breath of fresh air

December 20, 2001
By August Gribbin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011220-42047677.htm

Talk of harnessing the wind as a source of electricity has long been considered a lot of hot air - but wind power now is the world's fastest-expanding energy source, and much of the expansion is occurring in the United States.

Attempts to use windmill-powered generators to produce clean, renewable energy have been seen widely as the flaky efforts of die-hard environmentalists. After all, the wind is not always blowing - a serious handicap.

Nonetheless, there are areas in the Midwest, on both coasts and in hilly areas of the Middle Atlantic region where there are breezes aplenty. While few were watching, technicians have converted the squeaky, clunky windmills used to pump water on farms into sleek, high-tech obelisks topped by giant propellers or eggbeaterlike spinners that efficiently turn electricity-producing turbines with enough zip to power a city.

The electricity is fed into local utility company grids to supplement - and in some instances drastically cut - the amount of power generated using traditional coal, oil and natural gas. As wind-power backers are quick to point out, reducing the amount of traditionally produced power lowers petroleum consumption and lessens the nation's dependence on foreign oil while also reducing pollution and providing jobs in a growing industry.

However, the breakthrough that makes wind power feasible comes because technicians have driven down the cost of building wind turbines and related paraphernalia. A kilowatt-hour of wind-generated electricity that cost 38 cents to produce 20 years ago can be manufactured now for 3 to 5 cents.

That means wind power is more affordable than electricity generated using natural gas, which last winter sold in some areas for 15 to 20 cents per kilowatt-hour. Another advantage is that wind-power prices are steady, whereas gas and oil prices fluctuate.

On average, the sale of wind-generated energy to local utilities has increased 40 percent a year for the past five years, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Documents the industry group provides state: "In 2000, turbine sales reached nearly $4 billion worldwide, and industry forecasters expect total installed capacity to triple over the next five years."

"Wind energy is a breath of fresh air," says Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican.

With 12 bipartisan co-sponsors, Mr. Grassley has introduced the BREEZE Act - the Bipartisan Renewable Efficient Energy With Zero Effluent Act. The proposal would extend for five years a production tax credit for those firms developing electricity-generating "wind farms."

"Wind energy is reliable, renewable, inexhaustible, environmentally safe and homegrown," Mr. Grassley says. "It's so good that we need a lot more of it."

Rep. J.C. Watts Jr. agrees. The Oklahoma Republican and three colleagues sponsored the Home and Farm Wind Energy Systems Act, which provides an investment tax credit for householders and farmers who buy small wind-powered generators.

Such units are feasible in breezy areas on lots of an acre or more. The turbines are tied into the home's electric meter, and electricity from the wind turbines flows into the existing electric utility power grid.

When the breeze fades and windmill blades stop spinning, power provided by the local electric utility enters the home. When the wind blows and the turbine generates power, the meter actually runs backward, reducing the user's utility bill.

Because utilities in most states buy wind-power energy that is produced but not consumed, the wind-turbine owners actually could earn money from the utility. This is attractive to many.

Indeed, the industry association estimates Americans will buy some 4 million to 8 million small turbines in the near future. The Department of Energy puts the figure at 5 million.

For the most part, however, wind turbines aren't used to power homes and small businesses, although Mr. Watts believes they should be. Rather, big windmills more than 80 feet tall with blades stretching more than 30 feet are used to supply large volumes of energy for sale to utilities. Many of them have been installed in areas likely to produce high volumes of power.

Hawaii has the biggest wind turbine, 20 stories high. Its blades are 300 feet long, and it produces enough electricity to power 1,400 homes. The small turbines favored by Mr. Watts are roughly 30 feet tall and have blades ranging in size from 8 to 25 feet.

Through land leases, a farmer or rancher can earn more than $2,000 a year for each wind turbine installed on his property. That is a huge boon when the windmills are placed on land difficult to till. In Iowa, windmill owners are paying more than $640,000 a year to landowners, Mr. Grassley's office reports.

Last year the United States added enough new wind generators to power 240,000 homes. Although wind-generated electricity accounts for just 1 percent of the nation's power-generating capacity, that figure is expected to double soon.

According to federal estimates, the wind conditions in North Dakota would enable that state to produce a third of the nation's energy needs. North Dakota and 11 other states in the central part of the country have the potential to produce four times the amount of power the United States requires.

Consider the Florida-based FPL Energy company. It operates wind turbines in Iowa, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon and California and calls itself the nation's largest generator of wind power.

The company's turbines continuously produce some 1,000 megawatts once they crank up. Because engineers calculate that 1 megawatt - or 1 million watts - of wind-generated electricity will serve 300 households, FPL's generators can produce enough energy to serve 300,000 homes.

Richmond-based Atlantic Renewable Energy Corp. is reported to be the East Coast's leading wind-power developer. It has been operating electricity-generating windmills in New York since last year and in the past two months has brought units on line in Pennsylvania.

One of those windmill clusters - the wind-power facility nearest to the Washington metropolitan area - is 125 miles from the District at a spot called Appalachian Highlands near the point where Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia intersect.

By all accounts, these ventures are just a sampling of what is to come. The federal government is pushing hard for wind-power development, as are many states.

David Garman, an assistant secretary at the Department of Energy, explains that wind power can - among other perks - provide new income sources for farmers, Indians and other rural landowners.

Mr. Garman, who heads the DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Network, summarized the wind-power situation: "The president's national energy plan directs us to expand the use of renewable energy, and we now believe wind energy is the most economic near-term renewable resource."

Researcher Clark Eberly contributed to this report.

----

Nine European Cities to Get Fuel Cell Buses

December 20, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-20-02.html

BRUSSELS, Belgium, The famous red double decker buses on the streets of London will soon be joined by zero emissions fuel cell powered buses. London is one of nine European cities wishing to introduce fuel cell powered buses into their public transport systems that have received a funding boost from the European Commission.

As part of the Clean Urban Transport for Europe demonstration project, the Energy and Transport Directorate General of the European Commission has awarded €18.5 million to the nine cities, one of the largest amounts of funding it has ever given.

Two fuel cell powered buses by EvoBus similar to the ones that will run in nine European cities (Photo courtesy EvoBus)

"Hydrogen is an efficient and environmentally friendly power source for the future which the commission is committed to promote as part of its action plan to foster the use of alternative fuels in transport," the European Commission said in a statement today.

The fuel cell buses will operate in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hamburg, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Porto, Stockholm, and Stuttgart. This fuel cell bus project will be the first volume production test of this scale conducted anywhere in the world.

The buses will be produced by EvoBus GmbH, and will be delivered to the cities during the year 2003. The performance of one of these fuel cell powered buses is comparable to conventional diesel driven buses. Each bus will accommodate up to 70 passengers.

Europeans are travelling more and more each day, the commission acknowledged. In line with the new White Paper on transport policy the commission said it is "committed to work to reduce congestion and its detrimental effects, in particular in urban areas. The promotion of alternative fuels for transport is a key objective in this respect."

These bus engines do not emit any pollutants. The hydrogen fuel cell buses will help cities improve air quality and reduce carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming. When fueled by pure hydrogen, heat and pure water vapor are the only by-products from a fuel cell's electrochemical reaction.

Each of the bus operators will build a filling station for gaseous hydrogen. Fuel producers are partners in the creation of the hydrogen infrastructure, some of whom will subsequently operate the filling stations so as to gain experience with alternative fuels themselves.

A fuel cell produces electricity by electrochemically combining hydrogen fuel, which can be obtained from fuels such as natural gas, methanol, or petroleum, and oxygen from the air.

For the fuel cell buses in these nine cities, hydrogen will be produced through different methods in order to provide data for an efficiency comparison.

----

DOW CHEMICAL FINE WILL FUND GREEN CARS

December 20, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-20-09.html

FREEPORT, Texas, Dow Chemical Company has agreed to pay $433,388 in fines for multiple air pollution violations at the company's chemical plant in Freeport, Texas.

The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) says the company's violations include failure to submit complete notifications for 29 "upsets" - unexpected or unexplained release of emissions - allowing unauthorized emissions into the atmosphere on more than two dozen occasions. Dow was also charged with failure to properly control emissions from a benzene tank, a reactor and a distillation tower.

The violations were found during inspections conducted between August 1999 and October 2000. Dow Chemical has been issued 22 enforcement orders by the TNRCC over the past 15 years.

As part of their agreement with TNRCC, Dow Chemical has agreed to pay $216,694 for the purchase of nine certified low emission vehicles for Brazoria County, City of Freeport, Brazosport Independent School District, and Head Start in Brazoria County. The low emission vehicles will replace older vehicles now being used by the organizations.

The vehicles donated to Brazoria County and the City of Freeport will be used by law enforcement agencies.

The purchase of the low emission vehicles is coordinated as a Supplemental Environmental Project, an innovative program designed by the TNRCC to benefit the communities where environmental violations occur. The remainder of the $433,388 fine will be paid as an administrative penalty.

----

UK Ofgem sets guidelines for green power tariffs

Reuters UK:
December 20, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13773/story.htm

LONDON - Britain's energy regulator on Wednesday said it was setting up new guidelines to help electricity consumers who wish to buy green power - electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind farms.

"Competition in the energy market has made it possible for customers to get all or part of their electricity from suppliers who offer green tariffs," said Ofgem's Director of Social and Environmental Affairs, Virginia Graham in a statement.

"These guidelines aim to give customers the confidence that a green tariff is actually contributing positively to the environment," she added.

Several suppliers currently offer customers green electricity and the number who do so is set to rise once the government's Renewables Obligation comes into effect in April next year.

The obligation will require suppliers from next year to buy three percent of their power from green schemes and by 2010 the requirement will be for 10 percent.

About 2.8 percent of Britain's current electricity output is classed as green by the government.

The draft guidelines will define what constitutes green energy and explain what consumers should expect from a green tariff, Ofgem said.

-------- energy

Regional Electricity Group Gets Approval
Regulators Pushing Multi-State Model

By Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3447-2001Dec19?language=printer

Federal regulators yesterday approved a new independent organization to take control of electricity transmission in 20 central states, the first such group that regulators are demanding to ensure freer flow of lower-priced electricity across the country.

It was one of a series of actions in which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has expressed its determination to keep electricity deregulation moving forward despite last winter's power price eruptions in California and the recent collapse of Enron Corp., the leading political power behind electricity deregulation.

FERC signaled that deregulation will have limits, however.

It reaffirmed, with some changes, the electricity price ceilings that it had imposed on California and 10 western states last summer, after the region's explosive rise in energy prices over the winter. The price controls will come off on Sept. 30, 2002.

The commission also said it will consider whether to require unregulated energy marketers and traders to disclose holdings in derivative financial contracts used to limit risks of volatile price swings in energy purchases and sales.

Enron and other unregulated energy suppliers are exempt from FERC's traditional financial disclosure requirements and from oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on most of their trading activities -- which, in Enron's case, generated 90 percent of its revenue. Some members of Congress have asked whether stricter financial disclosure requirements could have revealed Enron's deteriorating financial condition before its bankruptcy filing this month.

FERC's decision on power grids authorizes the nonprofit Midwest Independent System Operator to take over operation of long-distance high-voltage transmission lines in an area extending from Ohio to Montana. The Midwest group has agreed to merge with the Southwest Power Pool, another regional transmission group.

"This is a market model that will stand the test of time," said FERC Chairman Pat Wood III.

Along with another Bush administration appointee, Nora Brownell, and holdover commissioner William Massey, Wood has put heavy pressure on the nation's utilities to create perhaps half a dozen such multi-state groups, which would buy the utilities' power lines and offer access to all power generators on equal terms.

The commissioners have warned that power companies that don't join regional transmission groups could lose their ability to charge market-based electricity rates and instead be limited to charging the cost-based rates that were the rule before deregulation began. FERC set a tight timetable for creating the new transmission groups, with a deadline of July.

Support for FERC's campaign has generally come from a new class of unregulated "merchant" power companies that seek to sell power across regional lines. Enron was a leader of this group until its collapse this month.

The regulators' campaign has stirred up strong opposition from many traditional utilities, and those battle lines hardened yesterday.

Reversing a previous FERC position, the commission yesterday rejected a proposal by 11 midwestern power companies that want to form their own transmission group apart from the Midwest Independent Systems Operator.

That group, called Alliance Companies, included major utilities such as Richmond-based Dominion Resources, Chicago-based Exelon Corp. and American Electric Power Co., based in Columbus, Ohio.

A majority at FERC, led by Wood, want to lock in procedures that will prevent traditional utilities from using their current control of transmission lines to thwart competition. The Alliance plan did not have sufficiently strong safeguards to prevent dominant generators from pushing up power prices unfairly, FERC's majority contends.

FERC said the Alliance group should try to join the Midwest group.

"We are obviously very disappointed," the Alliance companies said in a statement.

FERC Commissioner Linda Breathitt yesterday dissented on the Alliance vote, noting that FERC conditionally approved the Alliance proposal early this year -- before Wood and Brownell became members. Alliance representatives said its companies have spent more than $100 million to form the organization and expect FERC to allow them to recover those costs in their electricity rates.

Wood said the approval of the Midwest plan was supported by most state regulators in the region, but he added that other such regional groups would not have to follow the Midwest model. "There are no preordained right answers."

But some industry officials say they believe FERC intends to dictate how transmission groups should be formed.

"We favor the formation of transmission organizations. But the companies should be able to join the ones that best fit their interests," said Bill Brier, vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities. "We think this [FERC's ruling] will create a lot of confusion in the industry."

-------- health

Ibuprofen blocks benefits of aspirin

December 20, 2001
AP
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011220-70871898.htm

BOSTON - The popular pain reliever ibuprofen blocks the heart-protecting effects of aspirin, according to a study that sounds a warning for people who take both medicines.

"It would not do you a lot of good to take one medication only to have another wipe out its effects," said Dr. Muredach Reilly, a University of Pennsylvania cardiologist who took part in the 30-patient study reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine.

Many heart patients regularly take aspirin because it thins the blood and prevents the clots that cause heart attacks. Ibuprofen, which is in Motrin and Advil, is widely used for arthritis and other aches and pains.

In the study, when patients took a single dose of ibuprofen beforehand, aspirin lost 98 percent of its blood-thinning power. When aspirin was taken first, three daily doses of ibuprofen sapped aspirin of 90 percent of its benefit.

The researchers believe that ibuprofen clogs a channel inside a clotting enzyme known as cyclooxygenase-1.

Aspirin gets stuck at the bottleneck and cannot reach its own active site inside the enzyme.

The study found no conflict between aspirin and three other arthritis drugs: rofecoxib, diclofenac and acetaminophen, which is in Tylenol. But the researchers suggested that other drugs with structures like ibuprofen, such as indomethacin, will similarly block aspirin.

Ibuprofen belongs to a widely used class of pain relievers known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

"This isn't an indictment of all nonsteroidals, but it does give one pause," said Dr. Leslie Crofford, an arthritis specialist at the University of Michigan.

She wrote an accompanying editorial.

She said researchers now should study humans to verify whether these laboratory findings translate into a real danger of heart attacks.

The study was funded partly by the National Institutes of Health and aspirin maker Bayer.

Fran Sullivan, a spokesman for Advil maker Whitehall-Robins Healthcare of Madison, N.J., said if the study is right, "it's more a matter of timing." He suggested that regular aspirin be taken two hours before ibuprofen.

He said enteric-coated aspirin, which is released more slowly into the blood, could be taken at bedtime without a conflict.

Today's journal also included a separate study on unintended effects of aspirin and acetaminophen. The study, overseen at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, showed a 21/2 times greater risk of chronic kidney failure in patients who regularly take either drug.

Earlier research suggested similar side effects.

-------- human rights

Controversial Professor to Be Fired

Associated Press
Thursday, December 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3970-2001Dec19?language=printer

TAMPA, Dec. 19 -- The president of the University of South Florida said today that she plans to fire a Palestinian-born professor with alleged ties to Middle Eastern terrorists.

President Judy Genshaft sent a termination letter to Sami Al-Arian, a tenured computer science professor who has been on paid leave since September because the university feared for his safety.

Al-Arian, 43, who has 10 days to respond to the letter, said he could not comment until he talked with an attorney. A community activist who also runs an Islamic school and community center, Al-Arian has denied he supports terrorism.

Al-Arian, who is paid more than $67,000 a year, has the right to have an independent arbitrator review his dismissal.

He has never been detained or charged with a crime. But he founded the World and Islam Studies Enterprises, a now-defunct think tank.


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It's not extreme to hold all life sacred

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
December 20, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011220-3705892.htm

I hold human life sacred. As a mother and as an American, I oppose war because any war anywhere is a war on life. Without exception, anyone's war, however contemptible one's opponent, destroys life and creates horror, terror, grief and suffering far beyond the intended target.

The horrors of September 11 devastated countless thousands of innocent families and communities. That day truly will live in infamy. Bombing Afghanistan has devastated countless thousands of innocent families and communities. This campaign, too, will live in infamy.

I beg to differ with the contention of Michelle Malkin ("Hostile fire from eco-extremists," Dec. 11) that "eco-extremists" are endangering the nation by attempting to protect life. Human life is one part of a lovingly created and intricately woven fabric of life. When we assault one aspect of that living cloth, we weaken the whole at our own peril. Wanton destruction, whether for training or practice or war, assaults all the delicate and complex systems that support life - air, water, soil, countless creatures great and small. New Yorkers are breathing that truth every day. It is undeniable.

War does not create peace. This is Orwellian double-speak on an absurd level. War begets war, hatred and suffering, and we go on reaping what we are sowing.

The American values of loving life and revering and protecting the beauty of creation are rooted deeply in our Christian heritage and also in the Judaic, Islamic, Buddhist and other traditions that are woven into the cloth that creates the American flag. Protecting the sacred value of all life is my responsibility as a citizen and as a human being. Those who would destroy life, anywhere, are extremists, not the other way around.

BETSY TOLL
Portland, Ore.


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