NUCLEAR
A nuclear war of words over Rosyth
Safety fears shut oldest nuclear plant
UK police investigate nuclear 'guinea pig' claim
Nuclear rivals: India outguns enemy
India, Pakistan Share Nuclear Lists
India and Pakistan renew nuclear pact
Blair to visit Pakistan next week
Lithuanian nuke to close unit 1 for repairs
Russian prosecutor seeks tougher sentence for Pasko
Germany protests Russia's jailing of journalist
US wants Russia journalist released pending appeal
Confession could be good for Mr. Putin's soul
The NRC: What, me worry?
NRC mulls reissue of nuclear plant status report
RADIATION INJURY CLAIMS SETTLEMENTS
MILITARY
Afghans, U.S. Officials At Odds Over Airstrike
Alcohol, sex stall peacekeeping pact
U.S. Might Send Ground Troops to Assist in the Search for Omar
Fighters Were Lured to Afghanistan
Broken Promise
Dugway Under PR Pressure as Maker of Weapons-Grade Anthrax
Bush yanks "blacklisting" for federal contractors
Bombs rock Indonesia on New Year's Eve
Iran denies contacts with bin Laden group
Nepali soldiers kill 11 Maoist rebels
At least 20 killed in attack on Nigerian village
Car bomb blast in Pakistani port city wounds eight
India offeres peace talks to Pakistan
India Talks Peace, Pakistan Says Situation Explosive
Panamanians fear foreign rebels
Terrorists are terrorists
Kandahar spy chief in talks to get Taliban's Omar
Syria, four others to join U.N. council
Defense Department responsible for military site cleanup
U.S. Marines Deploy on Afghan Intelligence Sweep
POLICE / PRISONERS
Violence mars New Year's Eve in northern France
Zawahiri Urged Al Qaeda to Let Fighters Escape
Terror Watch, 1944
ENERGY AND OTHER
Enron to sell two new wind power plants
AEP buys Texas wind project from Enron Wind
White House energy plan far from being implemented
In Dirt, Water and Hogs, Town Got Its Fill of PCBs
U.S. orders $340 mln California Superfund cleanup
Israel Warned Against Pollution
State Urges Checking for Radon
ACTIVISTS
Human wall urged to prevent war in S. Asia
British green activist heads for U.S. trial
FEAST OF THE INNOCENTS IN D.C. - AN ACCOUNT
Israeli army breaks human chain around Jerusalem's walls
Arrested for Ringing in the New Year with a Peace Presence
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
A nuclear war of words over Rosyth
RAYMOND DUNCAN
January 1, 2001,
UK Herald
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/1-1-19102-23-7-30.html
CIVIL servants in Scotland badgered the Ministry of Defence to amend a letter to councils on the controversial disposal of radioactive waste from nuclear submarines at Rosyth dockyard despite being told the change would not give "the complete truth".
The MoD, which wanted to present the case "in its worst possible light", finally submitted to unyielding pressure over the definition "long-lived activity" in referring to the annual discharge limits.
Government records reveal an exchange of letters between Edinburgh and London, one indicating the Scottish Office was getting tetchy with Whitehall over its insistence on the issue.
The MoD in October 1968 received correspondence from the Scottish Development Department indicating it felt the expression "long-lived activity" was lacking in precision and begged the question as to what limits were placed on the discharge of "short-lived activity".
It came at a time when the Royal Navy publicly strongly denied there was any danger of radioactive pollution in the Forth by the water contaminated from the Fife yard, mainly from the nuclear submarine Dreadnought.
Whitehall responded that in previous assessments of such discharges it was made clear that all "short-lived" activities were ignored because they would have decayed to negligible levels prior to discharge.
It said assessments, were made on 'long-lived activity' and "we would therefore prefer this term to be used."
However, the Scottish Office was unmoved, claiming that if it was questioned about the discharge limits, it might be open to criticism if it was unable to give a definite answer. It said: "If the 'short-lived activity' is negligible, what is your objection to including it in the overall annual limit?"
The ministry responded: "We still consider that if you use the all-embracing term of 'activity', it would be reasonable for the recipients of the letters to assume some proportion of the releases would be subject to relatively rapid radioactive decay.
"That is not, however, the case. Nearly all of the release will be of 'long-lived activity' and by using this term we are presenting the case in its worst possible light." The MoD finally relented.
-Jan 1st
----
Safety fears shut oldest nuclear plant
Financial worries grow at BNFL as fuel rod accident inquiry spells shutdown for two power stations
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
January 1, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,626328,00.html
Calder Hall in Cumbria, the world's oldest nuclear power station, which was opened by the Queen in 1956 to herald the start of the atomic age, has closed because of safety fears. It will probably never be reopened. The four reactors have been taken out of service because years of exposure to high levels of radiation appear to have distorted fittings, making it impossible to guarantee the safe loading and extraction of fuel rods.
The shutdown is costing £30,000 a day in lost output for BNFL, which runs the plant to provide power to run its two Sellafield reprocessing works. Three hundred people work at the power station.
Calder Hall's sister plant Chapelcross, at Annan in Dumfries and Galloway, is also to be closed. Two of the four reactors are already shut and the others will switch off in January. Currently, 400 people are employed at the site.
It was at Chapelcross that the distortion fault was first discovered, during work to retrieve 24 fuel rods that had accidentally been dropped 80 feet during defuelling operations. Shrinkage of graphite because of intense radiation had caused the heavy plates placed on top of the reactor tubes to tilt.
Fearing that this might cause difficulties loading and unloading the fuel, the government's safety watchdog, the nuclear installations inspectorate, ordered a full inspection of all eight reactors at the two stations to see if it was an isolated problem. It is understood that two more tilting "charge pans", as they are known, have been found.
BNFL is now faced with making a "safety case" to the inspectorate for restarting the two stations. Insiders were not certain how the fault could be fixed, but the company "remained optimistic" that it could do so in 2002.
The problem for BNFL is that the stations are due to be closed anyway in 2006 and 2008, and heavy repair expenditure could not be justified. Faults that could not be fixed "without disproportionate cost" at four other Magnox stations have caused their closure earlier than originally planned.
Although Calder Hall is often cited as the first commercial producer of electricity from nuclear power, it was primarily a military reactor - designed to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Although tiny by comparison with modern reactors, with a total output of one-tenth of the Sizewell B reactors in Suffolk, it was big enough to give Britain its independent nuclear deterrent.
Once Britain had enough plutonium for its needs, Calder Hall was gradually run more and more for electricity production, and in the 1990s was no longer needed for defence purposes.
The Chapelcross station was also used for plutonium, although latterly it has been run to produce tritium for the Trident programme. Tritium may now have to be bought from the United States, since the UK has no other defence reactors.
If the stations are closed, it will further damage BNFL's financial standing. Part of BNFL's income has come from supplying surplus power from Calder Hall to the national grid.
Last month, Patricia Hewitt, the trade secretary, admitted to parliament that the company's liabilities exceeded its assets. If Calder Hall and Chapelcross were to provide no further income, the debt burden faced by the taxpayer would continue to rise steeply.
----
UK police investigate nuclear 'guinea pig' claim
REUTERS
January 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13895/story.htm
LONDON - British police said on Friday they were investigating a complaint that military personnel were intentionally exposed by the government to deadly levels of radiation during nuclear tests on Pacific islands in the 1950s.
"I can confirm that the Met specialist crime group is carrying out a preliminary assessment of information received by them in August 2001," a spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police Service in reply to a question about the nuclear tests.
He declined to give further details or estimate when the investigations might be completed.
A police source said the investigation was prompted by the widow of a Royal Air Force pilot, Squadron Leader Eric Denson, who had been ordered to fly his plane several times through the mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb detonated on Christmas Island in the Pacific in 1958.
"The claim is that he...clearly in effect was being used as a human guinea pig," Shirley Denson's lawyer Alan Care told BBC radio. Newspapers said Denson fell ill after the flight and became depressed, and committed suicide in 1976 after three attempts.
Several thousand British service personnel took part in the nuclear tests at Christmas Island and other Pacific atolls in the 1950s.
Protective equipment was scarce as full knowledge of the deadly effects of radiation sickness was only slowly coming to light after the nuclear bombs dropped by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
In the 20 years after the British tests many of the participants began complaining of illnesses they said were related to the radiation exposure.
-------- india / pakistan
Nuclear rivals: India outguns enemy
Nicholas Watt
Tuesday January 1, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,2763,626455,00.html
India enjoys massive military superiority over Pakistan, with more than twice as many armed forces and a larger and more sophisticated nuclear arsenal at its disposal.
Out of a population of just over 1bn people, India has 1.2m armed forces. This compares with 620,000 armed forces in Pakistan out of a population of 144.6m.
As south Asia's military giant, India has boasted in recent days that it could "finish off" Pakistan if the two countries embarked on their fourth full scale war since independence from Britain in 1947.
But in spite of such belligerence in public, India knows that a nuclear conflict would end up destroying both countries. Pakistan has, with the help of China, built up a nuclear arsenal which is strong enough to inflict massive casualties on its neighbour. Such firepower is designed to make India think twice before embarking on a war.
Both countries shocked the world in 1998 when they embarked on a series of nuclear tests, fuelling fears of an arms race that would escalate out of control. Estimates of their rival nuclear arsenals vary.
The Jane's defence group estimates that India has between 200 and 250 nuclear weapons, compared with 150 in Pakistan. The International Institute for Strategic Studies makes a more modest estimate, with up to 90 in India and up to 30 in Pakistan.
Most of these would be delivered by bomber aircraft and not by missiles. However, both countries are developing medium and long-range missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
India has test-fired its $8.5m (£6m) Agni II missile. This has a range of 2,500km, allowing it to hit anywhere in Pakistan. Pakistan has tested its Ghauri II missile. This has a range of 2,500km, making most of India vulnerable.
Neither country has signed the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty or the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Delhi spends £9bn a year on defence, allowing it to maintain 3,414 main battle tanks and 738 combat aircraft. Islamabad spends £1.7bn a year on defence, with 2,300 tanks and 353 combat aircraft.
----
India, Pakistan Share Nuclear Lists
JANUARY 01, 08:36 ET
By BETH DUFF-BROWN
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7GORMH80
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Pakistan.html
NEW DELHI, India (AP) - Despite the biggest buildup of troops along the border since their last war in 1971, India and Pakistan carried out a New Year's Day tradition of exchanging lists of nuclear facilities.
The list has been exchanged annually for 11 years under an agreement that prohibits the rivals from attacking each other's nuclear installations. The list includes civilian nuclear power plants and gives the exact location of each.
An Indian foreign ministry official told The Associated Press that India's list covers 10 nuclear installations and facilities and Pakistan's list has six.
In a New Year address, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said India was willing to resume dialogue with its longtime rival but said Pakistan must do more to halt attacks by Pakistan-based Islamic militants in India.
Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf were both to attend a summit of regional leaders in Nepal this week, but there were no plans for a separate meeting between the two.
Indian police on Tuesday blamed Islamic militants for attacks that left six civilians and two soldiers dead in Jammu-Kashmir and neighboring Punjab state. Indian and Pakistani troops also exchanged heavy gunfire overnight in the disputed Kashmir region. No injuries were reported.
Border skirmishes in Kashmir are common, but India and Pakistan have mobilized troops all along their 1,100-mile frontier since a Dec. 13 suicide attack on the Indian Parliament, which India blamed on Pakistan-based militant groups it said were supported by Pakistan's intelligence agency.
With both the United States and India pressing Pakistan to rein in extremists, Indian officials said earlier this week that Pakistan-based Islamic militants who have fought a bloody insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir for 12 years were lying low, carrying out few attacks.
More than a dozen Islamic militant groups have been waging a violent campaign in Kashmir since 1989, some seeking independence for Hindu-majority India's only mostly Muslim state and others seeking its merger with Muslim Pakistan. Tens of thousands of people have died.
India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring the militants. Pakistan says it does not fund or train them and has no control over their actions in Kashmir.
Still, under pressure from the United States to crack down on extremists as part of the worldwide U.S.-led campaign against terrorism, Pakistan has frozen the assets of the two groups India blamed for the Parliament attack and arrested their leaders.
India called the arrests a step in the right direction but demanded Pakistan do more to halt attacks in Kashmir.
In his address, Vajpayee called on Pakistan to ``take effective steps to stop cross-border terrorism.''
After the Parliament attack, tens of thousands of troops have been moved to both sides of the border and cross-border shelling has escalated in Kashmir.
India and Pakistan also halted cross-border passenger rail, bus and air travel - although India on Tuesday made an exception to allow two Pakistan International Airlines flights to carry Pakistanis out of New Delhi and the southern port city of Bombay.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since 1947 over Kashmir, which was divided between them after independence from Britain in 1947.
India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, but both have said there is no chance their current dispute could escalate into a nuclear war.
---
India and Pakistan renew nuclear pact
Staff and agencies
Tuesday January 1, 2002
The Guardian (UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/kashmir/Story/0,2763,626485,00.html
India and Pakistan today renewed an agreement not to attack each other's nuclear installations in the latest move to dampen war fever. Despite the biggest build-up of troops along the border since their last war in 1971, India and Pakistan carried out a New Year's Day tradition of exchanging lists of nuclear installations.
The exchange took on greater importance this time with the rise in tension between the two neighbours after last month's attack on the Indian parliament. The incident triggered a mobilisation of troops at the border as well as a reduction of bus and air services between the two regional nuclear powers.
But India and Pakistan appear to be backing away from a military clash under intense diplomatic pressure from Washington and London and holding out the prospect of a regional summit in Nepal later this week. India has also welcomed the arrest of the militant leader alleged to be behind the attack on India's parliament.
As both sides cooled their war rhetoric, Pakistan announced today that Tony Blair will visit Islamabad on January 7 and 8 for talks on the stand-off.
"The regional situation, obviously, will also be one of the subjects to be discussed during that meeting," foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said. Pakistani paper the News, citing an unidentified official, said that Mr Blair would visit both India and Pakistan in an effort to defuse tension between them.
Even as both countries say they want peace, there was a heavy exchange of gunfire overnight by troops on both sides of the line of control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
In Indian-controlled Kashmir, six Hindu civilians were shot and killed in a midnight attack on a remote village in Kashmir. The police identified the attackers as Islamic militants, but have yet to offer evidence that the assailants were Muslim.
In neighbouring Punjab state, two army soldiers were killed and at least five others were injured when suspected Islamic militants opened fire on a group of soldiers in Pathankot, 280 miles north of New Delhi.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, a territory claimed by both countries. India accuses Pakistan of supporting a 12-year insurgency that has cost tens of thousands of lives as militants fight for Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan.
Pakistan calls the militants freedom fighters, but denies giving them material aid other than the freedom to operate from its soil. Pakistan said it had arrested some 30 members in the last week, including the leaders of the two groups India blamed for the parliament attack.
----
Blair to visit Pakistan next week
Tuesday January 1, 7:58 PM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-81433.html
ISLAMABAD - British Prime Minister Tony Blair will visit Pakistan next week for talks on the tense stand-off between nuclear-armed neighbours Pakistan and India, a Pakistani government spokesman said on Tuesday.
"Prime Minister Tony Blair will be visiting Pakistan on the 7th and 8th (of January)," Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told a news briefing.
"The regional situation, obviously, will also be one of the subjects to be discussed during that meeting," he said.
Pakistan's The News newspaper, citing an unidentified official, said on Tuesday Blair would visit both India and Pakistan in an effort to defuse tension between them.
The newspaper said he would also be visiting Bangladesh.
Khan did not say if Blair would be visiting India and Bangladesh.
In London, Blair's office said on Tuesday it could not comment on Blair's travel plans, citing security reasons.
Tension between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, has soared since a an attack on the Indian parliament on December 13.
India blames the raid, in which 14 people were killed, on two Pakistani-based Muslim militant groups fighting Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Both sides have sent troop reinforcements to their common border in their biggest build-up of forces in 15 years.
The rivals have said their troop movements are defensive but there have been several clashes in recent days and thousands of civilians on both sides of the border have fled their homes.
But in the first sign of an easing in the stand-off, India on Monday opened the door to the possibility of talks between the countries' leaders on the sidelines of a regional summit in Nepal later this week.
Both Pakistan and India back the U.S.-led war on terrorism and there has been concern in Washington that conflict between the two could derail that campaign and scupper efforts to track down Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the September 11 attacks on the United States.
"EASING OF TENSION"
On Monday Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh for the first time did not rule out the possibility of talks between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf during a seven-nation South Asian summit in Nepal beginning on Friday.
Vajpayee said in a New Year message India was ready to open talks with Pakistan -- including on the disputed Kashmir region -- if its neighbour abandoned an "anti-India mentality".
"Shed your anti-India mentality and take effective steps to stop cross-border terrorism, and you will find India willing to walk more than half the distance to work closely with Pakistan to resolve, through dialogue, any issue, including the contentious issue of Jammu and Kashmir," he wrote in the message.
Disputed Kashmir sparked two of the rivals' three wars.
The hint of a thaw between the two countries followed a Pakistani crackdown on Muslim militant groups, including the detention of the former leader of a group India blamed for the attack on its parliament was detained.
Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, former leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba fighting India's rule in Kashmir, was detained on Sunday night under security regulations.
At the same time police in the southern commercial city of Karachi raided militant group offices and detained more two dozen activists for questioning.
Pakistan newspapers appeared upbeat on Tuesday about prospects for peace. "Crackdown signals easing of tension," the Dawn said in a front-page headline.
India says Pakistan must end sponsorship of Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in the Himalayan region.
Pakistan says it gives only moral support to the Kashmiri groups opposed to Indian rule.
-------- lithuania
Lithuanian nuke to close unit 1 for repairs
Reuters:
1/1/2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13870/story.htm
VILNIUS - Lithuania's Ignalina nuclear power plant said on Friday it will close one of its two units for an equipment check.
"With a decreasing power demand during the holidays, the plan is to suspend operations on the first unit of Ignalina from December 30 to January 10," the plant's Director Viktor Sevaldin said in a statement.
The closure was intended as a "prophylactic measure" to check equipment in the first reactor that could not be accessed when it is in operation, Ina Didziulyte, a spokeswoman for the plant, told Reuters.
She added there were no indications there was something wrong with the unit.
The statement also said the first unit will resume normal operations after January 10. A regular annual maintenance shutdown is planned for the block from June 15 until September 24. The statement added the second unit will be closed for regular maintenance from April 6 until June 5.
The shutdown will cause power exports to neighbouring Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad region to be scaled down in January but exports to Latvia and Estonia would not be reduced, power utility Lietuvos Energija has said.
-------- russia
Russian prosecutor seeks tougher sentence for Pasko
REUTERS:
January 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13878/story.htm
VLADIVOSTOK - A military prosecutor has launched an appealed for a tougher punishment to be imposed on journalist and ex-navy captain Grigory Pasko, saying his four-year jail term for treason is too lenient.
"The court excluded without grounds a series of episodes incriminating Grigory Pasko and handed down an excessively lenient sentence," the prosecutor's office in the Pacific Fleet said in comments made public on Saturday. Naval prosecutor Alexander Kondakov advised on Friday that he would try to overturn the sentence imposed when Pasko, a military journalist, was convicted by a military court this week on charges of passing state secrets to Japan.
Pasko's lawyers also made known that they were appealing against the verdict. The defence team had expected him to be cleared at his retrial in the Pacific port of Vladivostok - which has underscored concerns of media freedom in post-Soviet Russia.
Human rights groups have expressed outrage at the sentence.
A panel of three judges found the ex-navy captain guilty of high treason in the form of espionage and ordered he serve his sentence in a high security prison. The court threw out nine of 10 charges against him but Pasko strongly disputed the verdict.
Pasko had been found guilty of a lesser charge after an earlier trial and, though freed under an amnesty, had sought the retrial to prove his innocence.
Pasko's defence was built on a Russian law stipulating that information about environmental dangers could not be classified. He was incriminated passing to a Japanese newspaper data on where in the Sea of Japan the navy dumped toxic waste.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) domestic intelligence agency, which brought the case, said the principal issue was not of covering up environmental damage, but of punishing an officer who had disclosed secret information.
Pasko was arrested in November 1997 by counter-intelligence agents on his return from Japan and spent 20 months in prison before his first trial.
The retrial came against the background of various cases by the FSB against ecologists and researchers after Putin, a former FSB chief, became head of state.
----
Germany protests Russia's jailing of journalist
Reuters:
1/1/2002
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13887
BERLIN - The German government said on Friday it was concerned about press freedoms and civil rights in Russia after a military court there convicted a journalist of treason.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer was preparing a letter to Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov highlighting German concerns, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told a news conference.
"The Russians should look at ways to revise the judgment," the spokesman said. A military court in the eastern port of Vladivostok convicted
Russian navy captain turned eco-warrior Grigory Pasko of high treason on Tuesday, handing down a four-year jail term for passing state secrets to Japan.
Pasko, a military journalist, was accused of telling a Japanese newspaper where the Russian navy had dumped toxic waste in the Sea of Japan.
His defence was built on a Russian law stipulating that information about environmental dangers could not be classified.
---
US wants Russia journalist released pending appeal
Reuters:
January 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13894/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The United States said on Friday that Russian authorities should release a journalist convicted of high treason pending his appeal and make sure that the appeal is heard promptly and properly.
A military court sentenced journalist Grigory Pasko, an environmentalist and former Russian navy captain, to four years in jail on Tuesday for passing state secrets to Japan.
Pasko revealed the navy's dumping of toxic waste in the Sea of Japan. He denies acting illegally. Pasko had walked free after his original trial two years ago and had expected to be cleared at the retrial, which has highlighted concerns about media freedom.
U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said: "The trial was conducted in closed session and we don't have sufficient information to comment on the evidence or how the prosecution brought their case.
"But we note that prominent human rights activists in Russia have raised questions about whether Mr. Pasko is being punished for legitimate journalistic activity."
"Our hope is that his appeal will be heard promptly and in accordance with Russian law and the constitution, and that, as a humanitarian gesture, he might be released from detention pending his appeal .... We continue to watch that case with some interest," he added.
----
[The same advice would hold true for all nations' leaders. Perhaps President Bush would benefit from confessiong about depleted uranium past and present. et]
Confession could be good for Mr. Putin's soul
Washington Times
Letter to the Editor,
January 1, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020101-61032696.htm#4
The difference of opinion about Russia's partial membership in NATO is amazing ("Attacks bring old foes together," Dec. 28). While U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Varshbow would like to consult Russia before NATO members have taken their own decisions, our former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger considers dangerous even a modest and circumscribed role for Russia in NATO councils.
There are pros and cons on both sides of the picture, but one aspect has so far been completely left out of the discussion - the trustworthiness of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin is highly suspect. A former KGB official, he has been willing to sacrifice hundreds of his countrymen in Moscow in a time of peace, blaming their murder on Chechens in order to attack them as terrorists for their drive for independence. How can we be sure that he does not secretly desire to neutralize NATO?
Only a complete confession of and apology for Russia's mischiefs and crimes, past and present, can ultimately help Mr. Putin to be accepted as a trustworthy and sincere person. Though such an admission would be somewhat of a Pandora's box, the following are only a few examples of a myriad of questions that remain unsolved.
There is strong evidence that hundreds of our POW's from the Vietnam War were transferred to the Soviet Union in the 1960s. At the end of 1998, all became quiet about a letter which had been discovered by former KGB Gen. Dmitri Volkogonov, who had headed the Russian side of a joint U.S.-Russian commission on POWs under the Yeltsin administration.
As for the Baltic states, it is time for Russia to put an end to the myth that they voluntarily joined the Soviet Union in 1940. Also, it is time to cancel double import duties on Estonian exports to Russia, especially at a time when Russia is interested in joining the World Trade Organization.
At the 20th Party Congress in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev had the courage to reveal Stalin's crimes. However, the communist regime, in all its forms and consequences, has so far escaped similar condemnation. Mr. Putin could be the man to do it, provided he is convinced that it is his duty to disclose everything.
CAMILLA KUUS
Washington
-------- terrorism
The NRC: What, me worry?
by Daniel Hirsch,
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
January/February 2002
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2002/jf02/jf02hirsch.html
The question immediately arose on September 11 and has persisted: As horrific as the terrorist attacks were, what might have happened if the terrorists who seized jumbo jets and used them as weapons against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had aimed them at nuclear power plants instead? And if more attacks are likely, as government officials have said, are nuclear facilities on the terrorist target list?
The Sunday Times of London reported in October that some intelligence assessments suggest that the intended target of the fourth plane, the one downed in Pennsylvania, was a nuclear power reactor. The plane had descended much too soon for Washington to be its intended destination, these assessments indicate, suggesting that the true target may have been one of several nuclear plants in its flight path, with the single still-operating unit at Three Mile Island seeming the most likely. This assessment cannot be confirmed, of course. But if it is correct, we owe even more to those brave passengers who succeeded, at the cost of their own lives, in bringing the plane down before it reached its intended target.
Misleading statements
Immediately after the September 11 attacks, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the nuclear industry issued statements asserting that U.S. reactor containments were designed to withstand the crash of a fully loaded jumbo jet. Within days, both had to recant and admit that the opposite was the case. Just hours after the terrorist attacks, NRC spokesperson Breck Henderson said U.S. nuclear plants were safe because "containment structures are designed to withstand the impact of a 747."
Ten days later he admitted that "the initial cut we had on that was misleading." In a formal statement, the agency conceded that it "did not specifically contemplate attacks by aircraft such as Boeing 757s and 767s, and nuclear power plants were not designed to withstand such crashes." A similar pattern of assurance followed by retraction characterized the behavior of public relations personnel for a number of specific nuclear sites.
Early on, however, David Kyd, spokesperson for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was quoted as saying that most nuclear plants, built during the 1960s and 1970s, were designed to withstand only accidental, glancing impacts from the smaller aircraft used at the time. "If you postulate the risk of a jumbo jet full of fuel, it is clear that their design was not conceived to withstand such an impact,'' he said. In reporting Kyd's comments, the Associated Press quoted an unnamed U.S. government official to the effect that a direct hit at high speed by a modern jumbo jet "could create a Chernobyl situation."
The press has focused on the vulnerability of reactor containment buildings to airborne attack. But there are also "soft targets" outside containment, and their protection is critical to preventing radioactive release. Excessive emphasis on the risk of air attack obscures the far larger and more frightening possibility of ground assault or the threat from insiders. Security at the nation's nuclear plants has been grossly inadequate for decades, and the nuclear industry and its captive regulatory agency, the NRC, have refused to do anything about it-both before and after September 11.
1,000 times more
A typical nuclear power plant contains within its core about 1,000 times the long-lived radioactivity released by the Hiroshima bomb. The spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants typically contain some multiple of that-several Chernobyls' worth (see "What About the Spent Fuel?" page 45).
Any analogy with the dropping of a bomb is imperfect, of course, because much of the destruction caused by an atomic bomb comes from blast effects, and the damage caused by a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant would stem almost exclusively from the release of radioactivity. However, the potential casualties from an atomic attack and those resulting from using conventional explosives to produce a radiological release from a nuclear facility would be surprisingly similar. For example, the NRC estimated years ago that a meltdown at one of the San Onofre reactors in Southern California could produce 130,000 "prompt" fatalities, 300,000 latent cancers, and 600,000 genetic defects. Analyses for other reactors performed by Sandia National Laboratories for the NRC estimated damages up to $314 billion in 1980 dollars (the equivalent of about $700 billion today). Because there is an immense amount of radioactivity at a reactor, and because the fuel must be constantly cooled to prevent it from melting and releasing that radioactivity, it is not difficult to understand why nuclear facilities might be a tempting target. As Bennett Ramberg pointed out in 1984 in his seminal book on the subject, Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril, any country that possesses nuclear energy facilities gives its adversaries a quasi-nuclear capability to use against it. Conventional explosives-a truck bomb, for example-could cause a massive radiological release, with terrorists turning their adversaries' own technology against them. And just as simple box-cutters were used to convert U.S. jumbo jets into guided missiles, conventional means could turn U.S. nuclear plants into radiological weapons. The need to protect nuclear facilities against terrorist attack should be obvious.
Minimal protection
Yet for decades, NRC regulations have required only minimal security. Fifteen years ago in the March 1986 Bulletin ("Protecting Reactors from Terrorists"), two colleagues and I warned even then that terrorist trends were rendering the NRC security rules inadequate. But with only a single, partial exception, the agency's primary security regulations are unchanged from a quarter century ago. And despite September 11-when the NRC's assumptions crumbled at the moment the Twin Towers fell-both the industry and the agency that regulates it continue to resist making any significant improvement to dismally inadequate and outmoded security regulations.
We reported in 1986-and it is still the case today-that NRC regulations require nuclear reactor operators to protect against no more than a single insider and/or three external attackers, acting as a single team, wielding no more than hand-held automatic weapons.
Security personnel at power reactors are not required to be prepared for:
• more than three intruders;
• more than one team of attackers using coordinated tactics;
• more than one insider;
• weapons greater than hand-held automatic weapons;
• attack by boat or plane; or
• any attack by "enemies of the United States," whether governments or individuals.
For years, reactor sites were not even required to provide protection against truck bombs. But after a decade of efforts by the Committee to Bridge the Gap and the Nuclear Control Institute to get the agency to strengthen security and repeated refusals by the NRC to require greater protection, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and an intrusion event at Three Mile Island finally propelled the agency to amend the rules. But the truck bomb rule is still a concern because of the limited size of the explosion that operators must protect against. It apparently requires protection against truck bombs of roughly the size used at the World Trade Center in 1993, but not the larger quantities of explosives that have been used in similar attacks since then. The NRC is behind the curve, "fighting the last war" rather than protecting against threats that can materialize without warning.
To deal with the limited threat that the NRC does recognize-called the "design basis threat" (DBT)-the agency requires a nuclear power plant to be guarded by a total of five individuals. It may seem incomprehensible in today's world that targets capable of producing tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties and hundreds of billions of dollars of damage are protected by a mere five guards, but that is the minimum the NRC mandates.
The events of September 11 demonstrated the inadequacy of the agency's quarter-century-old security rules. There were 19 terrorists on the planes, and possibly additional participants in the conspiracy-far in excess of the three external attackers the NRC envisages. They acted as four coordinated teams, but the NRC rule requires the nuclear industry to guard against only a single team. They used jumbo jets filled with jet fuel as their weapons, far more lethal than the hand-carried automatic weapons and explosives contemplated in the regulation. They were very sophisticated, training for months to fly big jets, and willing to die-a level of motivation and capability far beyond that upon which the NRC rules are predicated.
None of the details of the agency's DBT are secret. With a single exception discussed below, they can all be found in the Code of Federal Regulations, available in most libraries and on the Internet. Any potential adversary can immediately learn that the required security arrangements that protect these high-value targets are inadequate.
Three external attackers . . .
The only aspect of the DBT that is not explicitly stated in the Code is the famous number "three"-the maximum number of external attackers against which reactor owners must provide protection. The Code indicates that reactors must be protected against an attack by "several" intruders, and that "several" is less than the number required to operate as more than one team. This is enough to give a pretty clear indication of exactly how small the DBT is, but other publicly available documents make it clear that "several" means three.
The number was publicly revealed as a consequence of the licensing hearings for the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California in the early 1980s. The Governor of California was a party in the hearings, in which the adequacy of security at the plant was a key issue. The state's security experts testified that a dozen attackers was a credible number to safeguard against. But the utility, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and the NRC staff argued that irrespective of any threat that might exist, NRC requirements were far more modest. The precise number in the DBT became a key issue in the hearings.
The NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Board decided in favor of PG&E and the NRC staff, expressly ruling on how many attackers a reactor operator is required to protect against. The ruling was not immediately published on the theory that it contained sensitive information. The specific number for the DBT, according to the Diablo decision, was withdrawn at the last minute from the published regulations and replaced with "several," not for any security reason, but because the commission thought it would have trouble explaining to the public why it was requiring a lesser level of protection against sabotage for reactors than against theft at non-reactor sites. This remains the case today-NRC nervousness about public discussion of the DBT of three external attackers is not motivated by a security concern, but by fear of embarrassment were it widely known that it only required reactors be capable of protecting against no more than a trivial terrorist challenge.
The Governor of California, however, asked that an expurgated version of the decision be published, and the agency agreed. When the "sanitized" Appeal Board decision was released, the actual number had been deleted. But ironically, the remaining text explained what "several" meant, and other underlying documents cited in the text-which had been publicly released-gave away the actual number.
The Appeal Board ruling cited a number of NRC documents it relied on in concluding that the DBT should be limited to three attackers. And although the ruling was redacted, all of the underlying documents were available in the NRC's public reading room. Those documents, the "SECY Memoranda," are the agency's actual decision documents on adopting the rule. Over and over again the SECY Memoranda state that the DBT in the rule is "an external threat of one to three persons armed with pistols, shotguns, or rifles (including automatic weapons), and who may be assisted by an insider (employee or unescorted person)." This is the so-called "three-and-one" threat described in publicly available NRC documents.
The Appeal Board decision discloses some of the rationale for settling on three external attackers. First, the board states, power plants by rule are not required to protect against more than one team of attackers-only fuel-cycle facilities with weapons-grade material must do that. Because the minimum number of attackers who could operate as more than one team is obviously four, three is the maximum number of attackers who cannot act as more than one team.
. . . and five guards
Second, and perhaps most astonishingly, the Appeal Board discloses how the regulation's minimum force of five guards was derived:
"A response force ratio (i.e., ratio of guards to attackers) must be equal to 1 [1 to 1] to protect power reactors. The report [the NRC staff report that formed the basis for the numerical determination for the design basis threat] then states: 'Given the above response force ratio modified by a measure of conservatism, the minimum number of guards available for response to an assault may be determined. Therefore, for the presently specified threat, the minimum number of guards available for response at a nuclear power plant is judged to be 5'" (emphasis added).
The Appeal Board decision went on to indicate that the "presently specified threat" referred to was the external threat (of three) along with a single insider capable of participating in a violent attack. This three-and-one threat created a maximum total of four attackers. A 1:1 ratio of guards to attackers would require only four guards. But modifying the ratio "by a measure of conservatism" (giving the guards a one-person advantage) resulted in the regulations requiring a minimum of five guards.
(The actual regulation mentions a "nominal" number of 10 guards, with a minimum of five. But the Diablo decision and underlying documents indicate that this "nominal" number was employed to "camouflag[e] the exact threat.")
Thus, the NRC security regulations, unchanged except to require protection against small-sized truck bombs, require operators to protect against an attack by three outsiders, perhaps aided by one insider, with no team-maneuvering tactics, no attack by boat or air, and minimal hand-held weapons.
This rule made little sense when it was first adopted, and it makes even less today. The September 11 attacks-with at least 19 attackers, four times as many teams, and a level of sophistication far beyond that contemplated by the agency-blew away the NRC's security regulations. Yet those regulations remain unchanged.
Seventeen years of trying
For 17 years, my group, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, joined by the Nuclear Control Institute, has worked quietly behind the scenes in a largely futile effort to convince the NRC to upgrade its security requirements. With one partial exception, the truck bomb rule, we have failed.
In 1984, in the wake of truck bombings in the Middle East, the NRC staff decided to consider requiring protection against truck bombs at U.S. power reactors. It commissioned Sandia National Laboratories to study the vulnerability of plants to truck bomb attacks. The results were frightening-small truck bombs could cause "unacceptable damage to vital reactor systems," and larger truck bombs could have the same effect, even if detonated off site, because the exclusion zone surrounding many facilities is small. Inexplicably, after the study was conducted, the agency dropped the idea of a truck bomb rule.
In 1985, the Committee to Bridge the Gap testified before the Safeguards and Security Subcommittee of the NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, pointing to data showing increasing terrorist capabilities and actions, urging the agency to upgrade the regulations to deal with larger attacking forces and with truck bombs. The response was unenthusiastic, with many subcommittee members indicating that there were so many ways to destroy a reactor that, if you protected against truck bombs, you'd have to protect against all those other vulnerabilities as well.
Over the next few years, both the Committee to Bridge the Gap and the Nuclear Control Institute continued to push the NRC to upgrade security regulations, to no avail. In 1991, at the time of the war with Iraq and the prospect of terrorist attacks against U.S. targets, we formally petitioned the NRC to upgrade its regulations. In addition to urging protection against truck bombs, the petition called for a new DBT with 20 external attackers (ironic in light of the 19 terrorists on the planes on September 11) capable of operating as two or more teams, with weapons and explosives more significant than hand-held rifles. The NRC denied the petition, ruling that "there has been no change in the domestic threat since the design basis threat was adopted that would justify a change."
Finally, after the truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and an event at Three Mile Island in which an intruder drove a station wagon through the perimeter and into the turbine building, where he stayed for hours while security tried to figure out if he had a bomb, the NRC adopted a new rule requiring some measure of protection against truck bombs. However, the rule may not be sufficient to protect against truck bombs of the size that have been used since 1993.
The rest of the DBT remains unaltered, despite the NRC's promises in 1994 that in a second phase it would consider upgrading the rest of the security regulations.
In fact, a number of actions have weakened security. For example, in 1996 the NRC issued Generic Letter 96-02, "Reconsideration of Nuclear Power Plant Security Requirements Associated with an Internal Threat." It permitted "reductions in unnecessary or marginally effective security measures," granting licensees the option, for instance, to keep "doors to vital areas . . . unlocked."
One counterterrorism program, killed
In late 1998, I received a plain manila envelope in the mail. Inside were documents indicating that the NRC had recently terminated its only counterterrorism program, called the Operational Safeguards Response Evaluation program, (OSRE). The program evaluated nuclear plant security by undertaking mock terrorist attacks-"black hat" force-on-force exercises. The documents contained astonishing information: Given six months advance warning, including the date on which the security test would occur, plants prepared by increasing their guard force by as much as 80 percent. Even so, security failed the tests. In nearly half of the tests conducted at the the country's reactors, mock terrorists penetrated security and reached at least one "target set" that, had the intruders been actual terrorists, could have resulted in a meltdown and massive radioactivity release.
This failure rate is extraordinary. No terrorist group is going to give notice six months in advance of when and where it intends to attack. And these tests were against the existing DBT-against only three intruders.
Other publicly available NRC documents from the early 1990s indicate that in an OSRE test at the Peach Bottom reactor, it took only 17 seconds for the mock terrorists to penetrate the perimeter fence and breach the access control barrier. It took intruders 18 seconds at San Onofre, 30 seconds at Duane Arnold, and 45 seconds at Maine Yankee.
And what was the response to this dismal failure rate? The NRC killed the program-there could be no more failures if there were no more tests.
My organization passed the OSRE documents along to the Los Angeles Times, which ran a major story about the program's termination. The agency was sufficiently embarrassed that a couple of days later Shirley Jackson, then NRC chair, reinstated the program. Since then, however, the industry and the agency have worked together to gut the tests. Earlier this year, the NRC approved the industry's proposed self-evaluation program that would replace NRC-run force-on-force tests. Companies failing the independent tests are now able to test themselves! The problems inherent in self-regulation should be obvious.
After September 11
Our two organizations have persisted in so-far-fruitless attempts to get the DBT upgraded. Last year, we met with NRC Chairman Richard Meserve, trying once again to get the NRC to fix gaping security problems. Nothing came of the meeting. As we were leaving, Meserve said we should feel free to see him again, adding something to the effect that he meets with industry "all the time," and there is no reason he can't meet with public groups from time to time as well. (And indeed, as we left we saw a number of industry lobbyists sitting outside his office waiting to go in.)
After September 11, we wrote to Chairman Meserve, urging him to recommend that the National Guard be called out to protect all the nation's reactors, that air defenses be deployed to protect them, and that employees and contractor personnel be thoroughly re-vetted.
We also asked the NRC to upgrade its security regulations immediately to protect against attacks involving greater numbers, operating as multiple teams, with more than one insider; require a strong two-person rule and other enhanced measures to protect against insiders; require protection against a truck bomb as big as a large truck can carry; require protections against boat and airplane attacks; require full security protection of spent fuel storage pools and dry cask storage, including after reactor closure; and that the Operational Safeguards Response Evaluation program be reinstated and expanded.
The NRC response was business as usual. The agency is continually reviewing the DBT, we were told, just as we have been told for the last 17 years.
But no improvements were promised and none has been made. Both the Committee to Bridge the Gap and the Nuclear Control Institute have decided that after years of quiet work it is time to go public about these problems. It is clear that the United States has sophisticated adversaries out there and everything we know is available to them as well. The only people not taking the danger seriously are the ones who should be required to do something about it-the nuclear industry and the agency that is supposed to regulate it.
All the NRC has done in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is to recommend-not even require-that licensees go to a higher state of alert within their existing security system and within the existing DBT. A no-fly-zone excluded small planes from flying near power reactors, but after a week that restriction was lifted. The federal government has failed to call out the National Guard-although in the absence of federal action, some governors have taken that step on their own. The NRC and the industry strongly oppose legislation introduced by Sens. Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Jim Jeffords, Joe Lieberman, and Cong. Ed Markey that would have required the agency to upgrade security regulations.
In 1981, the NRC and industry argued against the Governor of California's contention in the Diablo case that there should be protection against up to a dozen terrorists, saying such an attack wasn't credible. In 1991, the NRC and industry argued against our rulemaking petition that the DBT be increased from three to 20 external attackers operating as several teams, against asserting that there was no evidence there could ever be an attack of more than three as a single team. Protections against attacks by boats, large truck bombs, or from the air remain beyond the design threat. On September 11, 19 attackers in four teams using planes caused the worst terrorist event in U.S. history. Yet the NRC and industry refuse to upgrade the DBT regulations to a level consistent with the now-evident threat.
The industry's response is shocking. Rather than conceding the vulnerability of its facilities and the need to upgrade security, at a press conference on September 25 a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute took the extraordinary stand that greater security isn't required because Chernobyl wasn't that bad.
Why does the industry continue to ignore the need to protect its facilities? First, more security means more expense, and its every instinct is to avoid current expenses. Second, if it admits its reactors are vulnerable, the industry's dream of a nuclear renaissance is diminished.
Having received a big boost from the Cheney energy plan, the industry had been hoping to build new reactors, supposedly of the new pebble-bed design. In order to save money, these "passively safe" reactors would be built without a containment structure. In addition, they are made of graphite, which burns readily, as evidenced by Chernobyl and the earlier Windscale accident in Britain. As poorly resistant to terrorism as today's reactors are, pebble-bed reactors would be far worse. Furthermore, the industry-Cheney proposals involve a revival of the idea of reprocessing spent fuel to separate plutonium, which would then be used in civil reactors, creating a massive additional risk that terrorists might acquire nuclear weapons materials from poorly guarded civilian power plants. The nuclear industry hopes that its post-September 11 problems will go away, without having to upgrade security.
And why has the NRC not imposed upgraded security requirements? Put bluntly, the NRC is arguably the most captured regulatory agency in the federal government, a creature of the industry it is intended to regulate. Efforts to separate its promotional and regulatory functions, which led to the breakup of the Atomic Energy Commission in the mid-1970s, have failed utterly. The NRC's principal interest is in assisting the industry, keeping regulatory burdens and expenses to a bare minimum, and helping to jumpstart the nuclear enterprise.
But the risk of terrorist attack at one or more nuclear plants is simply too great to allow this failed agency and the industry it allegedly regulates to continue to ignore the need to provide reasonable protection. The industry's short-term economic or political concerns pale in comparison to the damage that would occur if attackers turn the nation's reactors into radiological weapons.
Daniel Hirsch is president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a Los Angeles- based nuclear policy organization.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
NRC mulls reissue of nuclear plant status report
REUTERS:
January 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13871/story.htm
NEW YORK - After withdrawing data from its Web site for security reasons after the Sept. 11 attack, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said it still has not decided whether to reissue its daily plant status report.
The NRC report listed the daily operating status of the nation's nuclear power reactors. "We're still evaluating. It's a Catch 22. Our concern is a security issue. We're trying to balance that with the public's right to know," said Victor Dricks of the NRC Office of Public Affairs in Rockville, Maryland.
"We understand the plant status report is sorely missed ... not just by the trade press but by John Q. Citizen who likes to log onto the Web site and find out if the plant he lives near is up or down," Dricks said.
Wholesale electricity traders use the report, along with other data, to determine whether the price of spot power will rise or fall. Nuclear power, which accounts for about 20 percent of all energy consumed in the United States, is one of the cheapest means of generating electricity.
When a nuclear power plant is shut, the regional grid operator, which dispatches the cheapest units available to meet the daily demand, has to turn on several smaller, more expensive fossil plants that burn oil or natural gas to generate electricity.
Shortly after the terror attacks in New York and Washington, the NRC and other federal agencies removed data from Web sites to evaluate whether that information could be used to harm the public.
Over the past few weeks, the NRC redesigned its Web site, www.nrc.gov, but did not reissue the plant status report or a related document, the daily events report, which lists safety-related events at the plants.
WHY OPERATORS WON'T HELP
In the wholesale power market information is king. Those with knowledge of what will happen tomorrow can make a lot of money buying and selling electricity. To the power trader, electricity is a commodity, similar to oil, grain or gold. It rises and falls in value based on the law of supply and demand.
An electricity trader with nuclear plants has an advantage over other traders because he or she knows when the reactors will shut for work and how long they will be off line.
With this knowledge, traders with nuclear plants can buy power supplies at lower cost before prices rise when the reactor shuts.
To maintain the competitive edge, many nuclear operators, including the federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) which operates nuclear plants in the Southeast, refuse to discuss the operating status of their reactors. "We can't force the utility to give you the information. We don't have that authority. We try to exercise whatever leverage we have to get (the operators) to be more forthcoming about (their plants) in the interest of building public confidence in nuclear power," the NRC's Dricks said.
"If they want to withhold the information, I'm not sure there's much we can do," Dricks explained, especially since the NRC itself has yet to decide what information the agency wants to make public on its Web site.
NEW YORK'S INDIAN POINT
But people who live near a nuclear reactor often care more about safety. They want to know whether the plant they live near is operating and when it is not operating.
Wednesday morning, unit 2 at the Indian Point nuclear station in New York tripped off line. An official at Entergy Nuclear, a unit of energy giant Entergy Corp. of New Orleans which operates the station, would not discuss the outage for competitive reasons.
The company, however, did tell the NRC and Westchester County, where the plant is located, about the shutdown.
Despite rumors of the outage in the New York electricity market, news of the outage did not surface until Wednesday afternoon when Westchester Executive Andrew Spano issued a statement informing county residents of the shutdown.
In his statement, Spano said the plant, which is located about 35 miles north of New York City in the town of Buchanan, shut at about 0720 EST (1220 GMT) Wednesday morning.
He then told the public what they really wanted to know, that "there were no safety issues associated with the shutdown" and "there was no risk of radioactive release."
Some people who live near Indian Point are concerned about the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe in the heavily populated area following a string of safety-related shutdowns at the plant over the past few years, including a radioactive steam leak that shut unit 2 for most of last year.
"We're trying to resolve this the best we can," the NRC's Dricks said. "We have to balance the public's right to know with security sensitivity."
--------
RADIATION INJURY CLAIMS SETTLEMENTS - 62 [How many more now?]
Information from Vina Colley of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant
From: "vcolley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2002 02:28:42 -0800
List #2-August 1, 1962:
Amount Victim Place of Accident Date Settlement
112,000 Clarke, Bernard Windscale, UK March 62
75,000 Henderson, John Oak Ridge, TN. April 56
52,800 Thoonen, John Melbourne, Aus. April 58
21,800 Jones, R. D. Oak Ridge, TEN. April 62
21,800 Collins, O. C. Oak Ridge, TEN. April 62
21,800 Rogers, T. E. Oak Ridge, TEN. April 62
21,800 Wilburn, W. A. Oak Ridge, TEN April 62
21,800 Wagner, H.L. Oak Ridge, TEN April 62
15,000 Mahoney, Harold Oak Ridge, TEN. June 62
12,800 Smith, Herbert Portsmouth, Oh June 62
11,000 Stinnett, T. W. Oak Ridge, TEN. April 62
11,000 McCurry, Paul Oak Ridge, TEN April 62
9,000 Clark, Bill R. Oak Ridge, TEN April 62
Fin Ass Majoni, Madame Saclay, Fr. April 62
==
February 1, 1961 ------- List #2
DATE FATALITY PLACE
1961 Jan. 3 SP-5 John A. Byrnes INEEL, ID
SP-4 Richard L. McKinley
EM-1 Richard C. Legg
1959 Nov. 4 John E. McGowan West Milton, NY
Oct. 14 Leo Poldo Pacheco Los Alamos, NM
Sevedo Duran
Jose C. Cordova
Escolastico Martinez
Aug. 21 M/Sgt. Gilbert S. Smith Ft. Belvoir, VA
Feb. 26 Terence Bishop Aldermaston, UK
James W. Mallin
Feb. 24 Leo G. Guerin Los Alamos, NM
Raymond A. Meana
Feb. Herb Smith Portsmouth, OH
Jan. 19 Mrs. N. A, Marquardt Los Angeles, CA
Jan. 1 Cecil W. Kelley Los Alamos, NM
1958 Oct.16 "Case V" Vinca, Yugoslavia
1957 Dec. Dr. Douglas Whittaker Aldermaston, UK
Sep. 4 Max Pavey Mt. Kisco, NY
May Nathan Salyers Portsmouth, OH
Feb. 18 "John Doe" Berkeley, Cal.
1956 Jul.24 Dr. Kenneth A. Koerber Brookhaven, NY
Jul. 2 James A. Blaber Sylvania, Bayside, NY
May 15 Allan L Lyons Oak Ridge, TN
William R. Stooksbury
1955 Oct.31 R. O. Rose Savannah, SC
1951 Mar. Joe Stevens Knolls Schenectady, NY
1950 Dec.13 "John Doe" Chalk River, Can.
1946 May 21 Dr. Louis B. Slotin Los Alamos, NM
1945 Sep. Harry Dohlian Los Alamos, NM
PREPARED BY:
Leo Goodman, Secretary
Atomic Energy Technical Committee, IUD-AFL-CIO
1126 Sixteenth Street, N.W., Washington 6, D. C.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghans, U.S. Officials At Odds Over Airstrike
Villagers Say Attack Killed Many Civilians
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 1, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46843-2001Dec31?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 31 -- U.S. bombers continuing to attack suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network reportedly hit a small village 60 miles south of here on Sunday. Villagers said scores of people, perhaps more than 100, were killed and that the dead were not associated with al Qaeda or the defeated Taliban government, news services reported.
The Afghan Islamic Press, a news agency with close links to the Taliban, reported that at least 92 people were killed by U.S. bombing near the village of Niazi Qala in Paktia province. The Reuters news agency reported that 107 people were killed in the assault on the dozen or so mud huts in the village.
"The attacks must end. The Americans should stop bombing," Saifullah, head of the area's tribal council, told Reuters television.
A spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which is directing U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, denied the reports.
Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Klee said U.S. aircraft, including one B-52 and two B1-B bombers, hit a Taliban and al Qaeda leadership compound about five to 10 miles northwest of the city of Gardez Saturday morning, but that no U.S. or other allied aircraft had launched airstrikes in that vicinity since.
"We struck a walled compound, which from all information was a known al Qaeda and Taliban compound," Klee said.
The attack did not claim any civilian lives, according to U.S. officials. "We don't have any indication of that," Klee said.
A cache of arms and explosives in the compound was destroyed, Klee said. "When they hit it, secondary explosives were clearly observed," he said.
Two surface-to-air missiles were fired from the site at the U.S. bombers, further evidence that the site was a legitimate military target, Klee said. The missiles did not hit the U.S. aircraft, he added.
The bombing follows a controversial U.S. airstrike on a convoy of cars in Paktia recently that resulted in an unspecified number of deaths. U.S. military officials said those killed in the convoy were members of the Taliban or al Qaeda. Local officials complained that the dead were local tribal leaders on their way to the swearing-in of Afghanistan's new government on Dec. 22.
Despite reports of disagreements within the new Afghan government about how long the U.S. military campaign should continue, Foreign Minister Abdullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, told reporters Sunday that the government's official policy is that the bombing "should continue as long as Taliban cells are in Afghanistan."
Also today, a convoy carrying about 70 British troops arrived here as an agreement about the role of an international peacekeeping force was finalized. Abdullah said Sunday that the Afghan government had reached agreement on accepting the foreign peacekeepers, part of a U.N.-mandated force. But he did not release specifics of the agreement.
There have been reports that the Defense Ministry, headed by Mohammed Fahim, and Abdullah's Foreign Ministry have disagreed about the nature and scope of the peacekeepers' duties.
What is known is that 3,000 to 5,000 troops, mainly British, will assist Afghan police and soldiers providing security for the Afghan government. The soldiers would be authorized to use force to defend themselves. No U.S. soldiers are expected to participate in the force, which is known as the International Security Assistance Force.
Meanwhile, in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. Special Forces came under fire and one soldier was wounded when their vehicle was attacked on a road outside of Jalalabad tonight.
The soldiers returned fire and called for assistance from a special operations quick-reaction force.
By the time the team arrived in a helicopter, the attackers had fled, officials said.
"It could have been bandits, it could have been al Qaeda, we don't know," said Klee, the Central Command spokesman.
The wounded soldier, who suffered a gunshot wound to his leg, was taken to a nearby medical facility for treatment.
The injury is not life-threatening, Klee said.
Officials also said today that an Air Force Global Hawk, an experimental, long-range unmanned aerial vehicle, crashed at an undisclosed location in the region while returning from a surveillance mission. No enemy fire was involved, they said.
Staff writer Steve Vogel in Washington contributed to this report.
----
Alcohol, sex stall peacekeeping pact
Troops in Afghanistan 'must obey' Islam's prohibitions on booze, affairs, official says
By ESTANISLAO OZIEWICZ
Tuesday, January 1, 2002
http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?tf=tgam/common/FullStory.html&cf=tgam/common/FullStory.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam/config&vg=BigAdVariableGenerator&date=20020101&dateOffset=&hub=international&title=International&cache_key=internationalAmericasHeadline¤t_row=4&start_row=4&num_rows=1
International peacekeepers in Afghanistan face the prospect of having to abide by Islamic laws banning alcohol and extramarital sex.
Afghanistan's Interior Minister and the British commander of the peacekeeping contingent have initialled an agreement on the controversial deployment, but no details have been released.
General Deen Mohammad Jurhat, a senior Interior Ministry official, said the agreement had been delayed over the issue of whether foreign troops would have to adhere to Islamic laws, according to Agence France-Presse.
"Afghanistan is an Islamic country and Afghanistan's laws are Islamic," Gen. Jurhat said. "For example, drinking alcohol and also sexual affairs is usual in the countries the troops come from. They must obey Afghanistan's laws."
It remains unclear which countries will participate in what is known as the International Security Assistance Force. But Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, the retired Canadian commander of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, said prohibitions on alcohol and sex would not present a problem for troops from Western nations, including Canada.
"I think that long before our troops arrive in Kabul, Afghanistan, wherever, the direction would have gone out from the very highest levels: No drinking in theatre," Gen. MacKenzie said in an interview. "You should err on the side of not offending your hosts."
He said when he left Bosnia the Canadian contingent became known as the Gatorade Brigade because of an order from on high that there be no drinking. However, that policy changed over time to allow soldiers two beers at the end of the day while in the field.
Gen. MacKenzie said prohibitions on drinking and sex are not without precedent.
"It reminds me of the Gulf War, where the Americans and the majority of the coalition forces did everything to accede to the wishes of the Saudis by way of placing our troops on their soil."
Lieutenant Kelly Kilrea, a spokeswoman at National Defence headquarters in Ottawa, said the Canadian Forces would take direction on such issues based on decisions made by its political masters.
"In general, military policy on drinking and sex is done on a case-by-case basis," she said. "It depends on the mission, it depends on the sensitivities of the mission, the stress levels of the mission."
In 2000, six off-duty Canadian peacekeepers on a day trip to Zagreb got into trouble with local police after some heavy drinking. Alcohol was also at the centre of a scandal in the mid-1990s when drunken Canadian peacekeepers cavorted with nurses and abused mentally disabled patients at a hospital they were guarding in Bosnia.
A military team that investigated the 2000 incident and other alcohol-related misconduct recommended against a zero-alcohol policy.
"Canadian society decided long ago that prohibition is counterproductive to law and order," the team's report said. "Denial of a sought-after commodity, in this instance alcohol, tends to foster illicit activities and markets that require greater policing. Social drinking is part of military culture."
----
U.S. Might Send Ground Troops to Assist in the Search for Omar
New York Times
January 1, 2002
By JAMES DAO with NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/01/international/asia/01MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 - The Pentagon is strongly considering plans to send large numbers of American ground troops into a mountainous area of southern Afghanistan to help search for Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, senior Pentagon officials said today.
The plan calls for hundreds of ground troops, most likely marines, to assist forces allied with Gul Agha Shirzai, the American-backed warlord who controls the Kandahar region, in attacking about 2,000 Taliban soldiers thought to be hiding near the town of Baghran in Helmand Province, the officials said.
The Pentagon has become increasingly convinced that those Taliban troops are shielding Mullah Omar, based on intelligence gathered by people on the ground and communications intercepted by aircraft, the officials said.
However, some anti-Taliban Afghan commanders have said they are less sure of those reports, indicating there may be disagreements between the Pentagon and its Afghan allies over whether to attack the Taliban redoubt near Baghran.
There were reports from American news photographers in Kandahar today that they had seen scores of combat-ready marines depart by helicopter from a Marine Corps base at Kandahar Airport and that they appeared headed for the Baghran area.
But officials with the United States Central Command, which oversees all American forces in Afghanistan, said no marines left the Kandahar base today. The officials left open the possibility, however, that other American forces, like Special Operations soldiers, had been moved aboard the helicopters as part of a combat operation.
In addition, more than 20 American Special Forces soldiers, riding in six civilian and military all-wheel drive vehicles laden with equipment and weapons, were seen leaving Kandahar this morning and heading northwest. They appeared to be joining as many as 30 other Special Forces soldiers who had already left for the area in recent days to assist Mr. Shirzai's troops.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, American Special Operations forces came under small-arms fire today while conducting routine operations in the area around Jalalabad, Central Command officials said. One Special Operations soldier was shot in the leg, but the injury was described as not life threatening, said Maj. Bill Harrison, a Central Command spokesman.
The American forces returned fire, and a Special Operations quick- response force went to the scene, Major Harrison said. But details of the brief skirmish, which took place about 9 p.m. Afghan time, were sketchy, and it remained unclear tonight how many American forces took fire or who attacked them.
More than 50 Special Operations troops have been active in the cave- riddled mountains of Tora Bora, near Jalalabad. Some have been working with anti-Taliban Afghan militias, who are searching through the caves for die-hard Al Qaeda members and intelligence documents. Other Americans, including commandos and snipers, have operated independently in their hunt for Al Qaeda warriors trying to escape into Pakistan.
It was unclear which Americans were attacked today.
In Kandahar, Mr. Shirzai had been planning to send thousands of soldiers to begin a military campaign against the Taliban holdouts. But the plan was placed on hold late Sunday when Taliban commanders offered to surrender, said Yusuf Pashtun, a senior aide to Mr. Shirzai.
"We have now canceled that plan," Mr. Pashtun said this morning, minutes before he left Kandahar for Helmand in a convoy that included the six American vehicles. The convoy stopped briefly in front of the house of Ahmed Karzai, the brother and chief spokesman for Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan's interim government.
Afghan commanders said the Taliban had been given until Thursday to fulfill their surrender agreement.
Sher Muhammad, the governor of Helmand, who was in Kandahar this morning, said a force of Afghan soldiers and the American Special Forces troops were going to the towns of Musa Qala and Kajaki, just south of Baghran. The Taliban were expected to surrender their weapons and vehicles in those towns, before being allowed to return to their villages, Mr. Muhammad said.
Mr. Muhammad said the Taliban there are being led by a commander from the area named Abdul Waheed, but better known as Rais Baghran. Mr. Muhammad added that the Taliban commander had insisted that Mullah Omar was not in Baghran, an assertion that some anti-Taliban commanders seemed willing to believe.
But Muhammad Zali, another senior commander for Mr. Shirzai, said the Taliban officials might be lying and buying time to allow Mullah Omar to escape. "They will say anything," Mr. Zali said. "We cannot trust them. We have to search all the areas in Baghran to make sure Mullah Muhammad Omar is not there."
The anti-Taliban forces here have preferred negotiations over fighting with the Taliban, since members of both sides come from the same Pashtun ethnic group. As in Tora Bora, where Afghans showed little interest in searching for Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda members, Americans might face the same difficulties in Baghran in their pursuit of Mullah Omar.
This morning, in an apparent effort to pressure the Afghans to send troops to Baghran, American officials showed Mr. Shirzai's commanders surveillance photographs of weapons depots in the region, said Lalai Abdullah, a commander for Mr. Shirzai. Indeed, the addition today of more Special Forces soldiers seemed to reassure some Afghan commanders about the mission in Baghran.
If the marines were sent there, their mission would be to help the Afghan militias encircle the Taliban holdouts, thereby pressuring them to surrender or flushing them into the open where they could be more easily attacked by American warplanes. The marines would also be available to seize Mullah Omar if he tried to flee.
At the same time, Special Forces ground spotters could direct air attacks using the same kinds of laser- and satellite-guided bombs that proved effective in routing Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in northern and eastern Afghanistan. "If there is fighting, the Americans will help us, just as they have been doing," Mr. Khan said. "They will use their G.P.S.'s and satellite phones to call bombs from airplanes."
Military officials also reported today that an unmanned Global Hawk reconnaissance aircraft crashed in Pakistan early Sunday while returning to its base there, military officials said. The officials said the crash was not the result of enemy fire, and was probably caused by a mechanical failure.
Until the crash, the military had operated two of the experimental spy planes over Afghanistan.
--------
THE PRISONERS
Fighters Were Lured to Afghanistan by Islam, Holy War, or the Promise of Escape
New York Times
January 1, 2002
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/01/international/asia/01PRIS.html
SHIBARGHAN, Afghanistan, Dec. 29 - Over the coming weeks, as American investigators question hundreds of foreign and Afghan Taliban prisoners here, they will be trying to find out how militant Islamic movements around the world fit into a network that created international terrorists.
They will find quite a mix of people among the foreign prisoners who came to fight for the Taliban or for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda movement. Their individual stories indicate that it was not so much a grand design that brought them together as the simple and broad appeal that Afghanistan under the Taliban and militant Islam held for young Muslims around the world.
A majority of the 3,500 prisoners being held in the prison at Shibarghan are young men, in their 20's and early 30's. Apart from the Pakistanis, who arrived in large groups, they came in ones and twos, on individual journeys to study Islam and fight the jihad, or holy war.
More than 2,000 of the prisoners are Afghans, of whom only the commanders will probably be of interest to the United States. More than 700 are Pakistani, with smaller numbers from other countries of the Islamic world: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Sudan, Morocco, Iraq, the Muslim republics of Russia, and the countries of Central Asia. Despite assertions by the Afghans that there were many people from Russia's separatist Chechnya region fighting for the Taliban, there is not one Chechen among the prisoners.
There are those who got caught up in the war by accident or were press- ganged into fighting. And there are young recruits who had been in Afghanistan only a few months when the war began. Some are fervently religious and say they still want to die a martyr's death in a holy war. Others say they soon realized that the Taliban were not what they had expected, and the jihad they came to fight turned out not to be a holy war, but a battle against fellow Muslims.
Then there are the young men who came from former Soviet countries, the Muslim republics of Russia, the countries of the Caucasus, the Central Asian states, as well as China - places where fervent Muslims have experienced police harassment and even severe repression. They say they came to live in Afghanistan to study and practice Islam freely, but some clearly took up arms as well.
They are the prisoners here who appear most afraid - frightened by the threats of their Afghan guards that they will be sent back to their home countries to face execution, and fearful of America's new relationship with repressive governments like the one in Uzbekistan. They say they hope to ask the very Afghan government that has jailed them for political asylum.
Muhammad Ibrahim, 22, a young Moroccan, lived the life of an immigrant with his family in Italy for five years. Speaking in French as he stood shivering in the muddy prison yard at Shibarghan, he said he came to Afghanistan five months ago after problems with his father caused him to leave home. A friend who had been to Afghanistan suggested that they go there. "He said there would be no problem finding work, and I thought `Why not?' " he said.
When they got to Afghanistan, via Pakistan, Mr. Ibrahim spent a month in Kabul and then was sent to Kunduz. "We were given training to use a Kalashnikov," he said. "A man from Yemen taught us." He added that the Yemeni was among the 200 prisoners who died in the uprising in November at the Qala Jangi fort, where many of the foreign fighters had been imprisoned.
"There were some very serious fighters among us but they were all killed in Qala Jangi," he said. For Mr. Ibrahim, life in Afghanistan with the Taliban had already proved a disappointment. "I just sat on the front line - I did not fight for three months," he said. "There was nothing much else to do. I was here just because I had a problem with my family. There is nothing to say about the Taliban. In the end they were a big catastrophe."
Abdul Salam, a 17-year-old from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, worked in a store. A friend in Riyadh persuaded him to go with him to Afghanistan to fight the jihad, he said. Now barefoot and shivering in thin cotton clothes, Mr. Salam said he left without telling his family where he was going. "He was a friend, a merchant, he worked in an Islamic organization," Mr. Salam said of his friend. "He died in Kunduz."
The two of them took a plane from Riyadh to Dubai, then to Karachi, Pakistan, and then overland into Afghanistan. It was just at the time of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which Mr. Salam said he believed were wrong. "It is not good what they did, because they killed civilian people," he said.
Nevertheless he was set on going to Afghanistan to fight a holy war. "I was here only two months, one month in Kabul and one month in Kunduz," he said. He went through basic weapons training, he said, but never did any real fighting. "Everyone comes here to learn to use a Kalashnikov," he said. He said he came because he was told that the people the Taliban were fighting were Russian proxies, "and they must be killed."
Haji Umar, 39, has spent most of his time in Afghanistan in prison. A trader and father of four from Tartarstan in Russia, he said he came to Afghanistan in August of last year to find a place to settle and live. "I just wanted to come and live here," he said. "I used to do business here." He is a religious man who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca and said he wanted to live in a country where Islam was the law. "I wanted to live under Shariat law," he said. His homeland, like other Muslim republics in Russia, is only nominally Islamic, and Tartars and other Muslims in Russia often experience prejudice, police harassment and even violence.
So Mr. Umar smuggled himself over the border into Afghanistan, to the town of Kunduz. Foreign volunteers who arrived in Afghanistan were apparently sent to Kunduz for training, but when Mr. Umar turned up on his own, the Taliban officials did not believe his story.
They took him into custody, held him in Kabul for seven months and took the $2,000 he had with him. They told him he could go free only if he went to the front line to fight. "I did not want to fight," he said.
-------- biological weapons
Broken Promise
Salt Lake Tribune,
January 1, 2002
http://www.sltrib.com/01012002/public_f/Public_f.htm
I was surprised and disappointed to learn about the U.S. Army's use of anthrax in recent years at Dugway Proving Ground. It is especially upsetting to learn that live anthrax bacteria and spores were shipped between Dugway and Fort Detrick, Md., no doubt passing through Salt Lake City en route.
The recent experiences in New York City, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. tell us that fleeting aerosol exposures, perhaps to only a few spores, can result in pulmonary anthrax and death. Although to my knowledge no cases of inhalation anthrax have ever been diagnosed in this city, I can tell you that this disease hasn't been looked for, and there certainly have been unexplained deaths here due to rapid pulmonary failure in the past 10 years.
A number of professionals from the medical community here at the University of Utah and other local hospitals traveled to Dugway in late 1990 or early 1991. As I recall, the purpose of the meeting there was to inform local physicians about the proposed use of biologic agents at Dugway. The Army had good reason to use these agents in testing a device intended to detect chemical and biological agents on the battlefield.
During that meeting, Army officials assured us that no BL-5 agents -- those, like anthrax and smallpox that posed the greatest risk of infection and therefore required the most vigorous isolation -- would be handled at Dugway. Rather, these agents were to be handled at Ft. Detrick, the only BL-5 facility available to the U.S. Army. Certainly, Army officials said nothing about growing up anthrax and sending it through the mail! In not informing members of the medical community or the public the Army broke its promise.
JOHN D. KRIESEL, M.D. Division of Infectious Diseases University of Utah School of Medicine Salt Lake City
----
Dugway Under PR Pressure as Maker of Weapons-Grade Anthrax
Tuesday, January 1, 2002,
BY BRENT ISRAELSEN
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.sltrib.com/01012002/utah/163451.htm
Photo: http://www.sltrib.com/01012002/images/dugway.jpg
For three decades now, Dugway Proving Ground in Utah's west desert has been all about defending the United States against biological and chemical weapons, known in the military's lexicon as "bugs and gas."
Today, however, the FBI is investigating whether Dugway's efforts at countering biological warfare were the means used against this country in an act of terrorism.
The FBI wants to know whether bacteria or technology from Dugway -- the 800,000-acre Army base 70 miles southwest of Salt Lake City -- contributed to the anthrax-by-mail terrorism that followed Sept. 11.
So far, the evidence is circumstantial. But if a link were found, it would come as a devastating footnote to Dugway's role in U.S. military history, a role that has ebbed and flowed through a world war, the Cold War and numerous crises, including the latest wars in the Middle East.
Though the FBI has said little about its probe of Dugway, revelations that the base has routinely shipped anthrax around the country and has produced it in a dry, "weaponized" form have caused a stir among Utah officials and activists.
They also have raised questions about the quiet demise of a state review committee established to monitor biological testing at Dugway. (See accompanying story on Page A-5.)
Dugway's story began in 1942 at the height of World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt withdrew 127,000 acres of public land in Utah's west desert and deeded it to the War Department for a variety of weapons testing.
Amid concerns about Japan's and Germany's biological and chemical programs, Dugway a year later began testing offensive biological and chemical weapons.
After the war, the facility lay dormant until 1950, the year the United States entered the conflict against communist North Korea, which was backed by America's Cold War nemeses, the Soviet Union and China.
Over the next 20 years Dugway would become the premier field testing site for the biological warfare program, based at Fort Detrick, Md.
Dugway -- which now contains some of the Army's most sophisticated laboratories and an undisclosed supply of the most dangerous known germs -- would play host to the nation's top biologists and chemists, who conducted thousands of classified experiments for offensive and defensive uses of biological and chemical agents.
The experiments involved animal and human subjects. Only during the past 20 years has the nature of many of those experiments come to light. For example, in July 1955, 20 members of the Seventh-Day Adventist faith, pacifists and conscientious objectors who nevertheless wanted to do something for their country, were deliberately exposed to Coxiella burnetii, the bacteria that causes Q-fever.
Later that year, the same germ was dispersed from F-100 fighter jets over the Dugway desert. One pilot fell ill after he climbed out of his plane before it was decontaminated.
Dugway's mission was reinvigorated when the Kennedy administration dramatically increased spending on biological research and development. A command center for the nation's biological field testing was established at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City.
With the nation divided over the Vietnam War and scientists increasingly concerned about biological and chemical weapons proliferation, President Richard Nixon ended all testing and development of such weaponry in 1969.
Three years later, the United States and Soviet Union joined more than 100 other nations in signing a treaty banning biological and chemical weapons. The Army shifted Dugway's mission to one of researching and developing the so-called defensive measures allowed under the treaty. Germs were still produced in U.S. labs, but the Army said they were only intended to test detection equipment, protective gear, vaccines and decontamination.
With advances in genetic engineering in the 1980s, Dugway scientists warned the government about the potential for germs to be highly concentrated into forms that could be deployed as weapons with relative ease, says the new book Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War, by three New York Times reporters.
The Reagan administration became increasingly worried that the Soviet Union was developing such "superbug" capabilities.
In 1985, the Army proposed to develop a Biosafety Level 4 facility at Dugway capable of testing deadly germs, such as the Ebola virus, for which there are no known cures. Under intense opposition from Utahns, including then-Gov. Norm Bangerter and the congressional delegation, the Army downgraded it to a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory, which can test only germs for which there is a vaccine or cure.
Dugway's military value was enhanced in August 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Iraq was capable of massive biological attack and the Army found itself ill-equipped to detect biological agents, let alone keep American troops safe from the germs.
One of the most troublesome agents in Iraq's arsenal was anthrax. Dugway announced in January 1991 it would begin anthrax testing to counter the Iraqi threat. In subsequent months, the Army added to its testing regime the germs that cause Q-fever, plague and food poisoning.
Though the Gulf War was soon over, U.S. officials believed they had only narrowly dodged a biological bullet. Testing on more than a dozen deadly germs was conducted in the mid-1990s, primarily to perfect a "biological chemical mass spectrometer," a device that would detect bugs and gas on the battlefield.
The germs -- which include the pathogens that cause bubonic plague, encephalitis and botulism -- are stored in a large freezer inside a heavily guarded Dugway laboratory. Critics dubbed the freezer "Pandora's Ice Box."
Utah officials apparently were unaware at the time that one of the germs being tested was a dry, or "weaponized," form of anthrax, that had not been produced in the United States since Nixon's 1969 ban.
In May 1998, Dugway opened the 32,000-square-foot Lothar Salomen Life Sciences Test Facility, a $23 million laboratory named for a biochemist who worked at Dugway from 1964 to 1989. Also dedicated that month was the $36 million Melvin Bushnell Materiel Test Facility for chemical weapons defense.
Dugway's biological testing went on relatively unnoticed until news reports out of Washington, D.C., indicated the strain of anthrax used in the terrorism campaign was the same as that used in a handful of military facilities, most notably Dugway.
For the first time in more than a decade, Dugway is in a public-relations mess, this time over its production, use and handling of a weapons-grade biological agent.
"We never thought the government made weaponized anthrax since 1969 and suddenly we find out they've been making it for years," said Barbara Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York at Purchase.
Steve Erickson, spokesman for Downwinders, said his watchdog group is likely to increase its scrutiny of Dugway to see that it is safe for Utahns as well as in compliance with the biological weapons ban. "[The Dugway-anthrax revelation] appears to me to be an escalation," Erickson said. "For them to be admitting that they produced anthrax and shipped it around, that's a first."
-------- business
Bush yanks "blacklisting" for federal contractors
REUTERS
January 1, 2002
Story by Andy Sullivan http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13884/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The Bush Administration will no longer consider a business' record of environmental, tax or labor abuses when handing out federal contracts, overturning a rule put in place on former president Bill Clinton's last day in office.
The move means government officials will not have to take into account a company's history when awarding billions of dollars' worth of federal business.
The "blacklisting" rule, widely opposed by business groups, was put into place on Jan. 19 by then-President Clinton, a Democrat, after years of development.
President Bush, a Republican, suspended the rule in April while his administration reviewed it. The decision on Thursday revokes the rule permanently.
The rule stated that businesses must have a satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics and must comply with environmental, tax, labor, antitrust and consumer-protection laws in order to win federal contracts valued over $100,000.
The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council, which oversees government contracts, said contracting officials could use the rule to make arbitrary decisions.
Existing laws already require contractors to have a solid record of integrity and ethics and government officials already have the authority to make judgment calls, the council said in a notice in the Federal Register.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised the move, saying the rule would have subjected businesses to more paperwork and left them vulnerable to rumors or smear campaigns.
"Mere allegations of wrongdoing could prevent a business from winning a federal contract," said Randel Johnson, a vice president for labor and employee benefits at the chamber.
"Government agents could have wielded virtually unlimited power under this rule," he added.
The AFL-CIO, an organization of labor unions, issued a strongly worded statement condemning the move.
"It is hypocritical for the Bush Administration, a strong proponent of individual responsibility in the area of law enforcement, to look the other way when corporate contractors violate laws enacted to protect the public," the statement said.
Businesses that took in $38 billion in federal contracts were cited with more than 5,000 violations of health in safety laws in one year, according to a congressional study cited by the AFL-CIO.
-------- indonesia
Bombs rock Indonesia on New Year's Eve
By Sukino Harisumarto
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
January 1, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/01012002-012549-7456r.htm
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan. 1 (UPI) -- Explosions aimed at preventing New Year celebrations killed at least one person in Indonesia Tuesday and injured several others.
Police reported four blasts from various parts of the country. Bombs were also hurled into the churches in eastern Sulawesi province where more than 1,000 people have been killed in Christian-Muslim clashes during the last three years.
Police said one man was killed in the capital, Jakarta, while throwing a bomb at a crowd celebrating the New Year. The other bomber ran away.
Attacks in Sulawesi have continued despite a Dec. 20 peace accord aimed at ending religious violence in the province.
Despite the attacks, both Muslim and Christian militants are surrendering their weapons to police, authorities said.
At least 16 people were killed on the Christmas Even last year in a string of bomb attacks on Indonesian churches.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of police patrolled Indonesia's main cities on New Year's Eve to prevent fireworks accidents.
Traditionally, millions of people jam the streets of Jakarta and other big cities, setting off deafening firecrackers.
Alarmed by the fire in Lima, Peru, which killed more than 300 people on Saturday, police in Indonesia decided not to allow uncontrolled fireworks display on New Year's Eve.
They were helped by heavy rain that began Sunday night and continued pouring till early Tuesday, dampening the spirit of the fireworks enthusiasts.
The rains, however, caused at least 12 deaths in northern Sumatra province and left thousands others homeless.
-------- iran
Iran denies contacts with bin Laden group
Tuesday January 1, 7:34 PM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-81432.html
TEHRAN - Iran has denied a U.S. press report that Tehran may have had contacts with members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, newspapers reported on Tuesday.
"Iran's clear position on the phenomenon of terrorism, the Taliban and the al Qaeda group indisputably proves that such claims and reports are baseless and false," the daily Iran News quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi as saying.
Asefi was reacting to the New York Times report that emissaries for fugitive Islamic militant bin Laden had contacted Iranian agents in the mid-1990s in an effort to form an anti-American alliance.
The U.S. newspaper said that, according to U.S. intelligence reports, the Iranian agents had made clear they were willing to meet bin Laden in Afghanistan. But it said it was unclear whether such a meeting ever took place.
Just as their intelligence officers were considering whether to meet bin Laden, the Iranian government was moving to oppose the Taliban movement, which had just gained control of Afghanistan, The Times reported.
Bin Laden is suspected of masterminding the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities that killed more than 3,000 people.
Iran condemned the attacks, but it also denounced the subsequent U.S. military strikes against Afghanistan.
The United States and Iran severed relations after the 1979 Islamic revolution and have had hostile relations since.
-------- nepal
Nepali soldiers kill 11 Maoist rebels
Tuesday January 1, 10:11 AM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-81381.html
KATHMANDU - Eleven Maoist rebels have been killed in gun battles with soldiers in Nepal, the Himalayan kingdom's Defence Ministry said on Monday.
Nine guerrillas were gunned down on Sunday in Banke, 500 km (310 miles) west of Kathmandu and two others were killed in separate clashes also in western Nepal, the ministry said.
Troops arrested 16 rebels in different parts of the kingdom and seized a large number of weapons and ammunition, it said.
Nepal ordered its troops last month to flush out rebels who want to topple the constitutional monarchy and set up a one-party communist republic.
More than 2,200 people have been killed since the Maoist rebellion started in early 1996.
-------- nigeria
At least 20 killed in attack on Nigerian village
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-81459.html
LAGOS - More than 20 people were killed and scores injured in a reprisal attack on a central Nigerian village by ethnic Hausa-Fulani militiamen, police said on Tuesday.
Police said more than 3,000 ethnic Hausa-Fulani herdsmen had now been evacuated to military barracks as tension mounted in the region.
More than 50 heavily-armed militiamen attacked Dagwom Turu village in Jos South local government area of Plateau State on Sunday, police said.
They said it appeared to be a reprisal attack for the killing of ethnic Hausa-Fulani in religious riots in September, when more than 500 people were killed in three days of Christian-Muslim fighting in the city of Jos, the Plateau state capital, and surrounding districts.
"More than 3,000 Fulanis in the area have been evacuated to the Rukuba army barracks," state police spokesman Ali Yusuf told Reuters by phone from Jos.
"This is to protect them from reprisal attacks by the villagers as well as to prevent them from regrouping to carry out any further attacks on the village or other nearby villages," he said.
"At least 15 people were killed and scores wounded after some armed Fulanis invaded Dagwom Turu village," the police spokesman said.
"Some of those injured died in hospital, bringing the death toll to more than 20 so far," Yusuf said. "It was a revenge attack by Fulani settlers who were probably trying to avenge the losses they suffered in the September fighting in Jos."
POLICE RECOVER WEAPONS
Yusuf said the invaders were repelled by villagers and security agents, adding most of the dead were ethnic Hausa-Fulani, police said.
"In a swift move by the joint security task force, the bandits were pursued into the Vom hills and about eight of them were gunned down by soldiers of the Three armoured division," the Plateau state government said in a statement carried in national dailies on Tuesday.
"If we had not acted promptly, the outcome would have been more serious," Yusuf said, adding that security in the area had been beefed up to prevent a further breakdown of law and order.
Three sophisticated military rifles, locally-made guns, machetes, bows and arrows, Islamic literature and charms were among items recovered from the militia, police said.
They said they were yet to ascertain whether the militia planned similar attacks on other Christian villages in the state.
A complex cycle of ethnic and religious bloodletting has gripped Nigeria since the end of military rule in 1999.
The influence of the Hausa-Fulani, one of Nigeria's main tribes, is a source of resentment among the indigenous peoples in the central state, but the groups had managed to co-exist peacefully until last September.
Since the September religious riots relations between the indigenous peoples, who are mainly Christian or animist, and the Muslim Hausa-Fulani, have remained hostile.
-------- pakistan / india
Car bomb blast in Pakistani port city wounds eight
Tuesday January 1, 2002
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-81415.html
KARACHI - A car bomb blast outside a recreational club wounded eight people in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, police and hospital staff said on Tuesday.
Police said the low-intensity bomb exploded at 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday, and had also damaged several cars parked outside the club which houses sports facilities and restaurants.
Doctors said none of the victims was seriously hurt.
There was no claim of responsibility for the blast and police said they had no information on who planted the bomb.
"We are investigating... I can't say anything more right now," a senior police official said.
Pakistan has recently been grappling with a mounting law and order problem and a rise in sectarian violence.
Hundred of people have been killed in recent years in clashes between militants from the majority Sunni and minority Shia Muslim sects, which disagree over the interpretation of some beliefs.
The blast came during a period of high tension between Pakistan and neigbouring India over Indian accusations that Pakistan supports Muslim rebels fighting Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
----
India offeres peace talks to Pakistan
By Harbaksh Singh Nanda
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
January 1, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/01012002-124503-9194r.htm
NEW DELHI, Jan. 1 (UPI) -- Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee offered Tuesday to hold peace talks with neighboring Pakistan.
In a New Year message, Vajpayee said he was willing to talk if Islamabad puts an end to cross-border terrorism in India.
"India does not want war. India has never been an aggressor in her long history," Vajpayee said.
He urged the rulers in Islamabad, "Shed your anti-India mentality and take effective steps to stop cross-border terrorism, and you will find India willing to walk more than half the distance to work closely with Pakistan to resolve, through dialogue, any issue, including the contentious issue of Jammu & Kashmir."
Meanwhile, suspected Islamic rebels have shot and killed five Hindus in India's strife-torn Kashmir region. The massacre took place within hours of India offering peace talks.
Vajpayee's offer of talks came at a time when the two neighbors are engaged in the biggest ever-military build up in the last two decades.
War clouds are looming large over the region with New Delhi saying Pakistan hasn't done enough to contain anti-India terrorists operating from its territory.
The Indian prime minister also warned Pakistani to give up its delusion that it can separate Kashmir from India. Disputed between them since 1947, India's only Muslim majority state of Kashmir has already caused two wars between India and Pakistan. A 12-year old separatist Islamic uprising in the valley also has caused thousands of deaths.
"India does not want (another) war but we have a sovereign right to defend ourselves against cross-border terrorism, which is a proxy war that is already thrust on us," said Vajpayee.
He accused Pakistan of fomenting terrorism in India after it failed to get Kashmir in previous wars.
Vajpayee said the Dec. 13 attack on the Indian parliament was "an attack on our sovereignty, on our national self- respect, and it was a challenge to our democratic system."
"The outrage of Dec. 13 has breached the limit of the nation's endurance," he warned.
He also asked the Indians to be prepared for any eventuality if all peace efforts fail.
India blames two Pakistan-based terrorists groups for the Dec. 13 attack and has asked Islamabad to rein in the groups.
Pakistan has frozen the assets of these two groups and arrested their leaders, along with dozens of militants. India, however, says this is not enough and urges Pakistan to take further action against the militants.
India also blames Pakistan of bank rolling the insurgency in Kashmir, a charge Islamabad denies. Pakistan says it only provides "moral and diplomatic support" to the insurgents it describes as "Islamic freedom fighters."
--------
India Talks Peace, Pakistan Says Situation Explosive
January 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-india-pakistan.html
NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - India Tuesday offered peace talks if Pakistan dropped its ``anti-Indian mentality'' but Islamabad said New Delhi was still massing forces and the situation remained ``highly explosive.''
Despite fears of war, the nuclear rivals renewed a 1991 pact not to attack each other's nuclear facilities.
In a new year message to his nation, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said he did not want war and would consider talks on disputed Kashmir -- at the heart of the latest tensions -- but only when Pakistan acted against cross-border terrorism.
Pakistan said British Prime Minister Tony Blair planned a peacemaking visit to both countries next week, while accusing India of continuing its military build-up along the border.
India denied the charge, saying its defensive build-up was ''more or less complete.''
``It is still highly explosive and dangerous,'' said an army official in Pakistani-held Kashmir's capital, Muzaffarabad.
``Any small incident could lead to the situation becoming out of control.''
FEARS OF WAR
Both sides say they want to avoid war but launched their biggest troop build-up in almost 15 years, scaled back diplomatic ties and cut transport links after India blamed Pakistan-based Kashmir separatists for a December 13 attack on its parliament.
The stand-off has raised fears of a fourth war between the nuclear rivals, who have already gone to war twice over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.
In his message, Vajpayee said India did not want another war.
``I say to them: 'Shed your anti-India mentality and take effective steps to stop cross-border terrorism, and you will find India willing to walk more than half the distance to work closely with Pakistan to resolve, through dialogue, any issue, including the contentious issue of Jammu and Kashmir,'' he said.
Indian officials said the opposing armies exchanged mortar and machinegun fire overnight across the cease-fire line in Kashmir.
Troops are on alert along the neighbors' more than 1,900-mile border almost three weeks after the parliament attack.
India blames the attack, in which 14 people were killed, on two of around a dozen Pakistan-based Kashmir separatist groups.
The first change in temperature came when India opened the way to talks and welcomed Pakistan's clampdown on the two groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.
Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf are due in Nepal this week for a summit of South Asian leaders although a top Indian official, who did not want to be identified, later Tuesday ruled out one-on-one talks at that venue.
``There's no chance of talks,'' said the official. ``Even (foreign minister) Jaswant Singh will not hold talks with (Pakistani foreign minister) Abdul Sattar.''
The official said leaders of the two countries would, however, not avoid each other during the Jan. 4-6 summit.
In a sign there was at least some contact between the sides, India's foreign ministry announced the joint renewal of the 1991 deal not to target nuclear institutions.
``India and Pakistan today, through diplomatic channels, simultaneously at New Delhi and Islamabad, exchanged lists of nuclear installations and facilities,'' the ministry said.
WEST WEIGHS IN
Pakistan has detained a founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Police also said they had raided offices of Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and detained two dozen people. Pakistan had earlier detained Jaish leader Maulana Azhar Masood.
President Bush, who had weighed in personally to push for talks and press Pakistan to wipe out the two groups he has branded terrorists, called Musharraf's moves ``a good sign.''
``He's cracking down hard and I appreciate his efforts,'' Bush said. ``Terror is terror and the fact that the Pakistani president is after the terrorists is a good sign.''
Pakistan said Tuesday British Prime Minister Tony Blair would visit Pakistan and India next week for talks.
However, the new year has not brought an end to the violence in Kashmir, mainly Hindu India's only Muslim-majority state.
Five Hindu civilians, including two children, were shot dead in an attack blamed on Muslim separatists, Indian police said. Two soldiers were killed in a rare attack in neighboring Punjab state Tuesday in a raid also blamed on separatists.
Vajpayee sounded a cautionary note, saying the country could face more attacks in a lengthy war on terrorism.
``One should neither expect a quick and painless victory nor despair if more terrorist strikes take place.''
-------- panama
Panamanians fear foreign rebels
January 1, 2002
By Juan Zamorano
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020101-35524.htm
JAQUE, Panama - Arriving in helicopters and carrying machine guns, police are beefing up patrols in the remote villages of Panama's southern border amid reports that Colombian rebels and paramilitary gunmen are hiding there.
National Chief of Police Carlos Bares said officials don't want to clash with the Colombians - just to make sure the area is secure.
"We want them to take the problems of their country and leave us in peace," he said.
Panamanians living along the border are nervous. Teachers in Biroquera, with more than 300 residents, abandoned their classrooms for a while, and farmers are afraid to leave their houses.
In the late 1990s, a right-wing paramilitary group from Colombia killed several people in the village of Bongo.
Colombian Marxist guerrillas are suspected to have been behind a nighttime attack last year on Nazaret that killed a little girl and wounded several people.
In Biroquera, residents have been worried since police reported finding a guerrilla camp a few miles away.
Messages have been found scribbled on tree trunks: "Panamanian police, come and get us," one challenged.
The government of Panama, which has no army, has sent more than 200 police officers to Jaque and surrounding villages.
About 40 officers are reinforcing Biroquera.
The added police encouraged teachers to return to schools in Biroquera Nov. 26 to finish out the school year.
Officers recently searched Jaque looking for undocumented residents, a difficult task because the region is home to hundreds of Colombian refugees from their country's 37-year-old civil war, which causes thousands of deaths each year.
-------- russia
Terrorists are terrorists
January 1, 2002
Embassy Row
James Morrison
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020101-4522019.htm
Russia has accused the U.S. ambassador in Moscow of applying a double standard by distinguishing between foreign terrorists and domestic "freedom fighters" in the separatist region of Chechnya.
"Terrorists, wherever they are located, remain terrorists and must be viewed as such and not as freedom fighters," Vladimir Rushailo, Russia's national security adviser, told Moscow's Interfax news agency.
"We should not set double standards in defining terrorism and terrorists," he added.
Mr. Rushailo's comments on Sunday reflected Russian sensitivity to U.S. criticism of the war in Chechnya, where Muslim rebels are fighting for independence. Russia has strongly supported the United States in the war on terrorism since Islamic extremists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Mr. Rushailo was reacting to statements last week by Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, who called on Russia to open peace talks with Chechen rebels. Russia opened an anti-terrorist campaign against Chechen guerrillas after several apartment-building bombings in 1999.
Mr. Vershbow told the Echo Moscow radio station, "Russia must find a political solution to this conflict."
The ambassador also said the United States has been trying to cut off financial support for Chechen rebels by outlawing certain fund-raising groups.
"We have made some progress in cutting off financial support for the foreign terrorists ... operating here," he said.
Mr. Vershbow drew a distinction between foreign mercenaries and ethnic Chechens fighting for independence.
"Clearly, those who have chosen to take up arms against Russian authority can't simply be destroyed by military means," he said. "That is proving to be a blind alley."
To contact James Morrison, call 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@washingtontimes.com.
-------- spy agencies
Kandahar spy chief in talks to get Taliban's Omar
Tuesday January 1, 2002
By Sayed Salahuddin
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-81429.html
KABUL - The intelligence chief of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar said on Tuesday he was in talks with local fighters in a neighbouring province to try to persuade them to hand over fugitive Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Haji Gullalai said he believed the cleric, who founded the fundamentalist militia in 1994, was hiding in next-door Helmand province, but said he could not give an exact location for the recluse who surrendered his powerbase of Kandahar to anti-Taliban Pashtun tribal forces on December 7.
"We have told them to give us Omar, but no ultimatum has been issued," he told Reuters by satellite phone from the city where the Taliban began their sweep to power seven years ago.
"We have two intentions: to disarm irresponsible people and to get Omar, who is a criminal, for the Afghan people and for the whole world," he said.
He said he and his allies had gathered a force of thousands of fighters from Kandahar and among locals and these forces were ready to mount an attack to try to capture Mullah Omar if he was not handed over.
"We are trying to explain to the locals to resolve the issue and that the use of force will bring destruction and casualties," he said.
Mullah Omar, 42, who lost one eye fighting the Soviets during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation, was believed to be hiding in the mountains around Baghran -- a remote area in the north of southern Helmand province, about 160 km (100 miles) north of Kandahar, Gullalai told Reuters last month.
A senior U.S. Defense Department official said in Washington on Monday that intelligence showed Mullah Omar could be at Baghran as U.S. forces closed in.
He is the most wanted man in Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden, the accused masterminded of the September 11 suicide airliner attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and sliced into the Pentagon killing about 3,000 people.
Mullah Omar is believed to still command widespread loyalty in the southern ethnically Pashtun areas of Afghanistan.
However, his Taliban movement crumbled in the face of the blistering U.S. aerial bombardment launched on October 7 and accompanied by attacks by Northern Alliance forces on the ground.
Many of his commanders decided either to switch to the winning side -- a not infrequent occurrence over centuries of Afghan conflict -- or flee and save their lives.
Mullah Omar finally abandoned Kandahar on December 7 after lengthy negotiations with the tribal foes encircling the city.
He fled Kandahar with some 500 fighters -- as well as forces of bin Laden's al Qaeda network, Gullalai said last month.
He said in the interview that Mullah Omar would be hanged if he was captured.
"He sold out the country, he sold out our people," he told Reuters in December. "He has no place to hide."
-------- un
Syria, four others to join U.N. council
World Scene
January 1, 2002
Washington Times
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020101-24469560.htm
UNITED NATIONS - The powerful U.N. Security Council takes in five new members, including Syria, today to replace five nations whose two-year terms have expired.
The five new members are Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico and Syria, a country on the U.S. list of states sponsoring terrorism. They are taking seats vacated by Bangladesh, Jamaica, Mali, Tunisia and Ukraine.
Current council members Colombia, Singapore, Mauritius, Ireland and Norway hold seats until January 2003.
The United States, Britain, Russia, France and China are permanent members of the Security Council.
-------- us
Defense Department responsible for military site cleanup
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Washington Times,
January 1, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020101-61032696.htm#4
In his Dec. 28 Op-Ed column comparing the Spring Valley and Times Beach, Mo., environmental cleanup projects, "Spring Valley blues," Syd Gernstein bases his point on inaccurate information about the Spring Valley project. Given the concerns of the community and the complexity of this project, it is important to provide a more complete picture for your readers.
Spring Valley is a former military site. As such, its cleanup is the responsibility of the Department of Defense, not the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Defense Department uses the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to clean up former military sites. The EPA and the D.C. Department of Health are active partners with the Corps in the Spring Valley project, but the responsibility for that work and for the decisions made lie with the Corps' Baltimore District engineer, in whose district Spring Valley lies. This has been true since the Corps first became involved at the site in February 1993.
Furthermore, we have used chemical "moon suits," as Mr. Gernstein calls them, and we have ordered evacuations of Spring Valley households at certain times and certain places during the course of the project. We also have used protective metal structures over suspected burial locations and many other safety precautions appropriate to such a project. These decisions were not based on the affluence of the residents, but on ensuring their safety and the safety of our workers.
This type of long-after-the-fact criticism of decisions that were made with the best information available at the time is common with long-term projects. In the past 20 years, our knowledge of how to protect people from chemical hazards has increased greatly. In our commitment to protecting human health and the environment, we apply that knowledge as we address the hazards associated with past Defense Department activities in Spring Valley.
MAJ. MICHAEL D. PELOQUIN
Deputy district engineer for Spring Valley
Baltimore District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Baltimore
--------
U.S. Marines Deploy on Afghan Intelligence Sweep
January 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-military-marines.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Combat-ready U.S. Marines have launched intelligence-gathering sweeps outside Kandahar, Afghanistan, military officials said Tuesday, amid what appeared to be a stepped-up hunt for Osama bin Laden and ousted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The anti-Taliban intelligence chief in Kandahar, Haji Gullalai, said his forces were closing in on Omar and as many as 1,500 die-hard Taliban fighter who may be protecting him near the town of Baghran in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, 100 miles northwest of Kandahar.
Gullalai told Reuters he had asked villagers in Helmand to hand Omar over.
``We have told them to give us Omar, but no ultimatum has been issued,'' he said. ``We have two goals: to disarm irresponsible people and to get Omar, who is a criminal for the Afghan people and the whole world.''
He said he and tribal allies had assembled a force of up to 2,000 fighters and they were ready to try to capture the fugitive if he was not handed over.
The Marines conducting the sweeps Tuesday were not participating in the hunt for Omar in Baghran, according to the U.S. Central Command, which is running the military campaign that began Oct. 7.
``That's not their mission,'' said Army Col. Rick Thomas, a spokesman for the Tampa, Florida-based command. The precise location of the latest Marine sweeps, which began Monday, was not disclosed.
An unspecified number of Marines were hunting for clues at a spot thought to have been occupied by Taliban or bin Laden's al Qaeda fighters. ``It's a place that was occupied by al Qaeda or Taliban so we're looking for whatever they may have been left behind,'' Thomas said, adding that the Marines were in full combat gear.
SUSPECTED SITES BEING PROBED
Col. Andrew Frick, commander of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said there were a number of suspected sites where Taliban fighters may have holed up since the fall of Kandahar, their last bastion, to U.S.-backed Afghan forces on Dec. 7.
``We've been asked at various times in the last two weeks to go out and take a look at these different sites, either to verify that there was Taliban there and exploit the site or to either verify that there was nothing there,'' he said at a briefing in Kandahar aired by CNN.
Monday, a senior Defense Department official said there had been a ``fairly consistent body of intelligence'' suggesting Omar may be near Baghran, in the north of Helmand province.
Omar is second only to bin Laden on Washington's list of most-wanted men from the Afghan campaign. The U.S. launched its campaign in response to the Sept. 11 attacks that killed about 3,300 people in the United States.
In an interview with CNN in Kandahar, Gul Agha Shirzai, the U.S.-backed governor of Kandahar, said he had given an ultimatum to about 1,500 Taliban fighters in the Baghran area to lay down their weapons.
CNN said a Marine convoy, including a dozen light armored vehicles, half a dozen high-mobility ``Humvee'' military vehicles and an oversized truck packed with Marines, had rumbled out of the Marines' Kandahar base early Tuesday and are expected back by Wednesday morning.
ABC's ``World News Tonight'' quoted unnamed senior military officials as saying communications had been intercepted by the United States from Iran within recent days that suggested bin Laden was still alive.
ABC said a caller in the intercepted communications, who used a code name to refer to bin Laden, said he should be kept off television because he looked sick and his appearance was demoralizing to his followers.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Violence mars New Year's Eve in northern France
Tuesday January 1, 8:11 PM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-81435.html
STRASBOURG - Youths clashed with police and torched cars in Strasbourg and a blast injured eight people in the wine-producing village of Barr as violent incidents marred New Year's Eve festivities in northern France.
Police said four officers were injured by lead shot fired from an air rifle in a southern suburb of Strasbourg. One of them, severely wounded in the eye, was to undergo an operation.
Police arrested the gunman and 29 others. More than 600 police were deployed to contain the violence, which has become a New Year's Eve tradition in the city's poor suburbs.
Separately, two explosions marred the festivities in normally peaceful Barr, 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Strasbourg, the local government office said.
The first, around 10 p.m. (2100 GMT), destroyed an electrical transformer and damaged a telephone exchange, depriving some homes of electricity and phone lines for several hours.
In the second incident of the night, eight people were slightly injured when a device exploded shortly after 3 a.m. near a dance hall, shattering windows and destroying part of the roof. Some 70 people had to be evacuated.
A homemade device exploded in the same village on Saturday, destroying a telephone booth and prompting officials to cancel planned New Year's Eve festivities.
In the village of Sand, south of Strasbourg, a gendarme was slightly injured by a gunshot during a patrol. The man who fired the shot was arrested.
-------- terrorism
Zawahiri Urged Al Qaeda to Let Fighters Escape For Jihad's Sake
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 1, 2002; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46577-2001Dec31?language=printer
In a book smuggled out of Afghanistan last month, the man considered second in command of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network wrote that when faced with military defeat, "the movement must pull out as many personnel as possible to the safety of a shelter," to continue the fight at another time and place.
In what U.S. intelligence officials call his "last will," Ayman Zawahiri wrote that "if the entire movement, or part of it, faces a situation where the noose is being tightened around it and its collapse is a matter of days or hours," some of its key members must escape. That way, he suggested, those who remain behind can fight to the death without fear that their cause will die with them.
The treatise, filling 100 pages, is perhaps the most clear window yet into the thinking of al Qaeda's leaders as they faced U.S. bombs and Afghan fighters this fall. They appear to have done just what Zawahiri urged, leaving some of their followers to die in caves and forests while others -- possibly including bin Laden and Zawahiri -- fled over the mountains into Pakistan.
Zawahiri gave the book to a close aide, who carried it through Pakistan to England, according to Asharq al-Awsat, an Arabic-language newspaper in London that published it in early December. The U.S. government's Foreign Broadcast Information Service recently completed a translation.
Zawahiri's final chapters, which he apparently wrote in a cave near Kandahar during early December, repeat many of the themes bin Laden voiced in a videotape shown last week by the Qatar-based television network al-Jazeera. Bin Laden, appearing pale and haggard, called on his followers to continue to attack America no matter what his fate.
Despite reports in mid-December that Zawahiri and members of his family had been killed, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday the status of al Qaeda's No. 2 leader was uncertain. As for bin Laden, he said, there is "nothing to show him dead -- and some indicators that other al Qaeda members think he is alive."
U.S. officials also described as "quite a find" a hard disk from an IBM desktop computer used by al Qaeda officials and first described yesterday by the Wall Street Journal. A Journal reporter purchased the desktop, along with a Compaq laptop, for $1,100 from a Kabul computer merchant who said he had obtained the machines from a looter after a November air raid on an al Qaeda office.
Among the hundreds of memos on the machine were documents showing al Qaeda's interest in chemical weapons and its involvement in the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of Afghanistan's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, according to the newspaper.
"We have picked up some computers with similar material," a U.S. intelligence official said. "Normally they tried to take them with them or destroy them, but the [Wall Street] Journal one was authentic."
In the preface to his book, Zawahiri wrote that he hopes "to spend whatever is left of [my] life in serving the cause of Islam in its ferocious war against the tyrants of the new Crusade," a term that echoed President Bush's first characterization of the war against terrorism.
Zawahiri, a physician who ran the militant group Egyptian Jihad until fleeing Egypt to join up with bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998, noted that he was writing the manuscript "while being a wanted man, a fugitive." What he feared above all, he indicated, was capture.
"Once the door of the cell is closed, the prisoner will wish that he had spent his entire life without a shelter rather than endure the humiliation of captivity. The toughest thing about captivity is forcing the mujahid [Islamic fighter] under the force of torture to confess about his colleagues, destroy his movement with his own hands, and offer his and his colleagues' secrets to his enemies."
Like bin Laden, Zawahiri said the goal of the jihad, or holy war, was to establish a religious state throughout the Islamic world and "reinstate its fallen caliphate [a single leader] and regain its lost glory."
Zawahiri repeated bin Laden's instruction that the U.S. economy is a crucial target, but he suggested that the first goal should be to strike Americans and Jews "in our [Muslim] countries."
Zawahiri also wrote that if Muslim countries crack down on al Qaeda, the movement must convince citizens in those countries that "the masters in Washington and Tel Aviv are using the regimes to protect their interests and to fight the battle against the Muslims on their behalf."
Another aim of the jihad movement, Zawahiri stressed, is to "come closer" to ordinary Muslims by establishing "one of its wings to work with the masses, preach, provide services for the Muslim people, and share their concerns through all available avenues for charity and educational work." That appears to reflect the relative success of such groups as Hamas and Hezbollah, which have conducted terrorist operations while also running schools and medical clinics.
In an apparent reference to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Zawahiri wrote, "If the successful operations against Islam's enemies and the severe damage inflicted on them do not serve the ultimate goal of establishing the Muslim nation in the heart of the Islamic world, they will be nothing more than disturbing acts, regardless of their magnitude, that could be absorbed and endured, even if after some time and with some losses."
----
Terror Watch, 1944
By Tom Wheeler
Tuesday, January 1, 2002; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46828-2001Dec31?language=printer
Fifty-seven years, almost to the day, before terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, residents of London were sitting down to dinner when an explosion suddenly and without warning shook the china. On Staverley Road in West London, neighbors looking down the block saw a peaceful group of homes suddenly and quietly disappear.
Only after a crater of death and destruction had replaced the homes did the neighbors hear an explosion, followed by what seemed like a loud bang. There had been no air raid sirens that early-September day, no rumble of bombers overhead and no telltale buzz like the V-1 rocket's to announce the presence of danger. A new German weapon, the V-2, was hitting London, and its sole purpose was terror.
The missile's ballistic trajectory not only made it indestructible as it fell from the stratosphere but also made it silent; it relied only on gravity to pull it back to earth at a rate faster than the speed of sound. If you heard its sonic boom, you knew you were a survivor. The victims never heard a whisper.
Terrorism is the "propaganda of the deed," and the V-2 fit the definition perfectly. Designed to destroy British morale by silently raining death, the V-2 at the same time buoyed German morale with the promise of a new weapon to turn back a tide of war that had been running against the Fatherland.
From a military perspective the V-2 was an ineffective weapon. The total weight of all the bombs delivered by all 1,190 V-2s launched against England was less than that delivered by one average British bombing mission over Germany. What's more, production of each missile redirected scarce material, took as long as production of a half-dozen fighter planes and cost 20 times as much as a V-1 "buzz bomb."
But the V-2 had an advantage not possessed by any other weapon: silent, long-range terror. "The angel of death is abroad in the land, only you can't hear the flutter of its wings," Winston Churchill told his War Cabinet.
As we deal with our own 21st century terror, the experience of the British people and their leaders in dealing with the terrorism of the V-2 reaches out to us across the years. The experience both informs us and provides solace as we deal with terror from the sky and wonder what comes next. As in the attacks at the World Trade Center, the V-2s targeted civilian populations. And, as in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the attacks had a psychological effect on those untouched by the weapon itself.
The devastation wrought by the V-2 missiles was less than that visited on the British by either the Blitz or the V-1, yet its psychological effect was greater. The knowledge that there was no defense against the V-2, coupled with the total absence of warning and its random nature, rattled a population that had survived the Blitz with a stiff upper lip. Home front morale dropped sharply.
The terror also had an impact on England's leaders. Upon becoming prime minister four years earlier, Churchill commented that it seemed as though he had been preparing for the job all his life. Throughout the war, he dealt rationally with horrors he well understood. The silent terror of the V-2, however, was beyond the scope of his traditional understanding, and Churchill ranted and raged at its new dimension.
Bringing his unquenchable desire for action to the matter, yet confronted by something outside his experience, Churchill flew off in multiple directions, some of which did not reflect his normal solid judgment. Questioning the resolve of his countrymen, Churchill wrote to the secretary of state for air, "Why were the 30-40 tons of bombs dropped 'by the Robot' doing so much damage [to morale] when two or three thousand tons were dropped on Berlin or Munich and the German people seemed to get away with it alright?"
Such ranting escalated into rage. "I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would pay us to use poison gas," Churchill wrote. "I should be prepared to do ANYTHING that would hit the enemy in a murderous place. . . . We could drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany in such a way that most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention. I do not see why we should have all the disadvantages of being gentlemen while they have the advantages of being the cad."
As his rage grew, Churchill even considered biological warfare; specifically, dropping anthrax bombs on Germany. Ultimately (and fortunately), it was Churchill's good judgment that prevailed.
Here again, history's message is relevant for us today. The response to the V-2 terror attacks was not retribution, nor was it a definitive single stroke. The Allies, it was determined, would apply progressively growing pressure designed to first mitigate the threat and then eliminate it. The missile assembly sites were targeted for continuing bomber attack, as were the launch sites in Holland. This, of course, pulled strategic assets from other purposes and cost hundreds of aircraft and thousands of air crew lives. On the ground, the progress of Allied troops across the Low Countries was directed, in part, to capturing launch sites and ultimately to pushing the missiles back to a point where Britain was beyond their range.
The response to the V-2 terror took time, was costly and did not eliminate the ghost weapons falling on England. In his "History of the Second World War," however, Churchill heralded the policy's success: "Our counter-measures confined the attack to four or five hundred rockets a month, shared between London and the Continent, compared with an intended rate of nine hundred." The rockets that did fall cost 2,754 Britons their lives, wounded 6,523 people and destroyed 20,000 homes (with more than a half-million more damaged). The terror could be mitigated, but it could not be stopped until those who promoted it were stopped.
Churchill and his War Cabinet faced an unseen and silent terror that changed the rules of engagement, just as have President Bush and his advisers. Churchill considered options that would have brought horror to a new low, but in the end tempered judgment prevailed. The most significant message for the mass of Americans, however, is the example of the British people. Their history delivers to us the clear and unequivocal message that we are not alone, that others have experienced similar physical and psychological terror and that, far from just surviving, they triumphed.
The writer is president of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, and the author of "Take Command: Leadership Lessons from the Civil War."
[So how about the Daisy Cutter (Afghanistan), the depleted uranium artillery (Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Iraq), the "smart bombs"? Does use of these weapons place U.S. allies in terrorist boots? et]
-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Enron to sell two new wind power plants
Reuters
1/1/2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13869/story.htm
NEW YORK - A judge on Friday approved Enron Corp.'s $310 million sale of two assets, as the humbled energy trading giant seeks to reorganize within Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Enron Wind Development Corp. will sell two newly completed wind power generating plants in West Texas, Indian Mesa and Clear Sky, for $175 million to integrated utility American Electric Power Co. Inc.
Enron Canada Power Corp. has agreed to sell its interest in electricity generated by the Sundance power generation plant in Alberta, Canada for C$215 million ($135 million) to a partnership of of AltaGas Services Inc. and the TransCanada Energy unit of TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. . Enron noted in court papers, filed on Dec. 21, that only 23 of its 3,500 units are part of the bankruptcy filing and that offers continue to come in for non-debtor assets. They include turbines, power plant projects, emission credits issued by California air districts and oil and gas exploration and development interests.
Other sales still being negotiated by Enron include those of Enron LNG Power Atlantic Ltd. to an undisclosed buyer for $266 million and of Enron Oil & Gas India Ltd. to British oil and gas producer BG Group Plc for $388 million, according to court filings.
----
AEP buys Texas wind project from Enron Wind
January 1, 2002
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13867/story.htm
NEW YORK - American Electric Power (AEP) said Monday it acquired the 160-megawatt (MW) Indian Mesa Wind Power Project in West Texas from Enron Wind Corp. of California for $175 million.
Under the terms of the agreement, AEP will fulfill previously announced power supply arrangements with City Public Service (CPS), the municipal electric utility for San Antonio, Texas. CPS will buy all the power generated from the plant, enough to power 54,000 Texas homes, under long-term agreements, AEP said in a statement. Enron Wind, a subsidiary of collapsed energy trading group Enron Corp. , will continue to provide operations and maintenance services at the plant, located near Iraan, Texas, 45 miles east of Fort Stockton.
An AEP spokesman told Reuters that Enron Wind was not named in the recent bankruptcy filing by Enron Corp.
The addition of the Indian Mesa project adds to the recently completed 150-MW Trent Mesa Wind Project, also in West Texas and furthers the company's goal of enhancing the renewable portion of its overall generation portfolio, Dwayne Hart, senior vice president of business development for AEP subsidiary, AEP Energy Services said.
The acquisition will be funded internally, AEP said, but the company intends to seek project financing at a later time.
The company said the acquisition will be accretive to earnings, but did not elaborate. The project, completed this month, was developed and built by Enron Wind, a fully-integrated wind power company that also supplied wind turbines to the Trent Mesa project.
Columbus, Ohio-based AEP provides retail electricity to more than 7 million customers worldwide.
-------- energy
White House energy plan far from being implemented
by Tom Doggett,
REUTERS
January 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13866/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S Congress adjourned without passing key parts of the Bush administration's energy plan, but the White House has also fallen short in implementing the changes it called for in a new national energy policy.
A special White House task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney unveiled back in May the administration's energy plan with much fanfare and controversy.
Of the 105 recommendations in the plan, 85 of them could be implemented by the White House and various government agencies under the administration's control, while the other 20 recommendations needed congressional approval.
The administration has implemented 20 of the recommendations it has authority over and the other 65 proposals are "well under way," said White House spokeswoman Clair Buchan.
Even though the administration has implemented only one in four of the energy plan's recommendations it was responsible for, Buchan said the White House was, "very pleased with the progress that we're making on the administration front."
The White House has said the country's energy problems, including declining oil production, were many years in the making and can not be solved overnight.
"This is a long term, long-range national energy policy," Buchan said. "We've succeeded in focusing national attention on the importance of developing a comprehensive national energy policy."
Among the parts of the energy plan implemented by administration was a presidential directive ordering federal agencies to use less energy and expanding the "Energy Star" program that puts consumer labels on energy saving appliances to include ceiling fans, Buchan said.
She said the administration was disappointed it was not able to look sooner at higher fuel requirements for cars and sports utility vehicles, as called for under the energy plan. Congress lifted in December its multi-year prohibition on raising mileage standards.
Still, the Transportation Department has said it could not significantly increase fuel efficiency requirements for vehicles until the 2005 model year.
Separately, allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a key part of the White House plan to boost domestic energy supplies, has so far failed to win approval from Congress.
The Republican-led House of Representatives passed a broad energy bill in August that adopted much of the White House plan, including opening the Arctic refuge to oil firms.
But the Democratic-controlled Senate will wait to take up an energy bill in late January after its holiday recess, but the legislation keeps the refuge closed to drilling.
While Congress has not implemented much of the White House energy plan, a review of the proposed policy changes shows the administration has also had some hits and misses.
The Energy Department met a key goal of addressing California's electricity problems, as called for under the plan, by reaching a $300 million deal with energy companies to remove a major bottleneck in the state's electric transmission system.
But the department failed to write a comprehensive electricity deregulation bill and present it to Congress that would promote competition and ensure reliability of the nation's grid.
The Environmental Protection Agency long ago missed a 90-day deadline to determine whether ease rules should be eased that require power plants and oil refineries to install pollution equipment.
EPA says the report, which was due in August, will be released soon.
EPA has also failed to propose legislation to establish a emissions trading credits and other market-based programs to reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury from power plants, although the agency is still working on that plan.
At the Interior Department, the agency did its part to increase renewable energy supplies like wind and solar by holding a conference on the issue in late November.
But the department will not make recommendations to the White House until sometime during the first half of 2002 on how boost renewable energy use.
-------- environment
In Dirt, Water and Hogs, Town Got Its Fill of PCBs
Unknowing Residents Have Little Left but Lawsuits
Tuesday, January 1, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46744-2001Dec31?language=printer
ANNISTON, Ala. -- The first time the man from Monsanto Co. knocked on Ruth Mims's door, he announced that her hogs were trespassing on company property. "We'll give y'all 24 hours to move those hogs," he warned her. She panicked. She had no room for hogs in her little yard.
But the man knocked again a few minutes later. Tell you what, he told Mims. We'll buy the hogs for $25 a head, plus a pint of white corn liquor. Mims didn't drink, but Christmas was coming and she was short on cash, so she said yes.
That was in December 1970. It wasn't until Mims told that story in federal court last April that she saw Monsanto's secret "Hog Analysis Results" from 30 years earlier. The company had dissected some hogs from the west Anniston area and found PCB levels as high as 19,000 parts per million. There were no legal limits then, because the idea that PCBs could end up in hogs was pretty new, but that would be more than 90,000 times the legal maximum in some states today.
"Nobody ever told me!" Mims shouted in an interview. "I used to eat them hogs!"
Mims, a 70-year-old retired seamstress who still lives in her childhood home, is a community matriarch with a no-nonsense manner. She was the star witness for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought against Monsanto by 1,600 Anniston residents. According to testimony last spring, her blood had one of the highest PCB levels ever recorded for someone who had never worked with PCBs, and her yard had PCB levels that qualified for an emergency cleanup. Monsanto settled the case for about $40 million -- including $32,000 for Mims -- shortly after she took the stand.
Her story, in many ways, is the story of west Anniston, the story of life in a contaminated zone.
In the modest neighborhood tucked between Coldwater Mountain and an industrial corridor, children spent their lives outdoors. Mims used to walk along dirt roads, letting dust kick up between her toes. She used to splash and catch tadpoles in the Monsanto drainage ditch that ran behind her house. Her family raised cattle that drank from the ditch, and grew sweet potatoes, cabbage and squash in the moist land alongside.
They had a mud hole, too, for Alabama clay.
"I think most everyone in that neighborhood ate clay dirt," Mims testified. "Once you would start eating it, you came to crave it."
In 1996, Mims found out that her neighborhood, and her bloodstream, was saturated with PCBs. Now her community is emptying out, reprising in slow motion the evacuations of Love Canal, N.Y., and Times Beach, Mo.
And now she wonders: Did PCBs have something to do with six of her 13 siblings dying in childhood? Two other sisters died of cancer as adults; another lost both breasts to cancer. Mims is not exactly the picture of health, either. She can barely walk. She needs a nebulizer to help her breathe, though she has never smoked. She has high blood pressure, too. She lives on $392 a month from Social Security, and she can't afford all her medications.
"I was exposed to PCBs from the time I was born into the world right up until today," Mims said. "It's scary. It's like a death sentence."
But there are sicker 70-year-olds, which raises a question that company attorneys were too polite to ask Mims directly, but not too polite to hint at: If PCBs are so awful, why is she still alive? "Ms. Mims lives closer to our plant than anybody," attorney Jere White said in court. "Ms. Mims is the one who had the highest level of PCBs in her blood. But Ms. Mims does not make a claim for having any present diagnosed injury caused by PCBs."
Neither did any of the other plaintiffs in her case, or in any of the other cases Monsanto has settled. Instead, they filed "body burden" claims, citing their fears that their exposures could cause problems in the future. Why, Mims asks, would Monsanto have gone to such lengths to cover up its activities in Anniston if PCBs were harmless?
"I can't prove PCBs made me sick," Mims said. "But I know it in my bones."
Unless, she said, Monsanto's mercury made her sick.
Now she's hoping that a lawyer -- perhaps Johnnie Cochran, who drew one of the largest crowds ever seen in Anniston when he spoke to potential clients in August -- will file a mercury case. She says the $18,000 she cleared from the PCB case after paying taxes and her attorneys isn't enough for a new home. And after 70 years on McDaniel Road in west Anniston, Mims wants out.
"It's not a neighborhood anymore," she said. "It's just an empty place with PCBs."
-- Michael Grunwald
----
U.S. orders $340 mln California Superfund cleanup
REUTERS
January 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13882/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government on Friday said it reached a $340 million settlement with 161 companies for the cleanup of a Superfund site in California, one of the largest actions in the program's 21-year history.
The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency acted to clean up a 190-acre landfill in Monterey Park that accepted industrial and municipal waste between 1948 and 1984, according to a Justice Department news release.
Cleanup efforts have been ongoing on the site since 1984, and EPA has issued two prior clean-up orders, the release said.
Superfund created by Congress in December 1980 to give the federal government broad authority to clean up the nation's worst toxic waste dumps.
The U.S. EPA administers the program.
----
Israel Warned Against Pollution
January 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Mediterranean-Sea.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Environmental groups criticized Israel on Tuesday for a plan to dump treated factory wastewater into the Mediterranean Sea.
For decades, factories have been discharging untreated waste into the Kishon River, which empties into the Mediterranean at Haifa Bay north of Tel Aviv. But the Environment Ministry banned the practice beginning Tuesday.
As part of a master plan to clean up the polluted river, a bypass pipe would be built to carry factory wastewater with certain types of salts directly to the sea.
Environmental groups said the ministry had failed to research possible harm to plant and animal life in the sea.
``There are organic wastes, poisons and metals in that water,'' said Sharon Shemesh-Rosenbaum, a spokeswoman for the Israeli branch of Greenpeace. ``We don't trust the factories to let only salts flow through the pipe into the sea.''
The ministry said it is studying the environmental affect to determine the length of the bypass and a best location to minimize harm to the sea.
Officials believe ``releasing the effluent into the depths of the sea will not damage the quality of the sea water,'' a ministry statement said.
About 700,000 cubic feet of untreated water were being dumped daily into the Kishon River. As of Tuesday, all wastewater must be treated before it is discharged.
The push to clean up the Kishon began in 2000 when it was revealed that 40 out of 750 divers of an elite navy unit, who had carried out diving exercises in the river, contracted cancer.
The Kishon River and Haifa Bay are lined with chemical factories, which have been dumping their waste into the waterway for decades.
Greenpeace also criticized Israel for allowing the heavy pollution of the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv, which also flows into the Mediterranean Sea.
-------- health
State Urges Checking for Radon;
1 in 3 Utah Homes Tested at Risk
BY JUDY FAHYS
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Tuesday, January 1, 2002
http://www.sltrib.com/01012002/utah/163459.htm
Radon mitigation worker Jonathan Salomon installs a ventilation fan in the basement floor of a home in Sandy to disperse the carcinogenic gas. (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune) http://www.sltrib.com/01012002/images/radon.jpg
Here is a 2002 New Year's resolution that offers Utah homeowners enduring health benefits and costs little time or expense: Take a home radon test.
It is especially important because sampling has found worrisome levels of cancer-causing radon gas in about one-third of Utah homes tested. It is also an idea state and federal environmental officials will be pitching this month, National Radon Awareness Month, as a way to reduce lung cancers blamed on the mysterious pollutant.
"The bottom line is we just need people to test [their homes]," said John D. Hultquist, the state government's sole radon officer.
In Utah, environmental officials have estimated there are 60 deaths a year from radon exposure. Nationally the toll ranges from 7,000 to 30,000, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency projecting about 14,000 radon-related deaths a year. By comparison, about 20,000 people die each year in drunk-driving accidents.
Lisa Roller was surprised by high readings at the old Midvale home she and her husband were buying in the summer of 1998. The first test showed levels more than triple what is considered safe. A follow-up test by the Rollers and a third by a professional radon contractor confirmed the troublesome findings.
The Rollers and the seller split the cost of a $1,500 radon removal system.
"It's hidden," Roller said of the system. "You can't see it but it has got a fan that goes constantly." The fan sends the radon outdoors.
Her advice about the mitigation system: "I would say it was worth the piece of mind you get from having it."
The media campaign zeroes in on public ignorance of radon. It features an Emmy-winning television commercial in which people on the street respond -- awkwardly -- to a radon quiz.
An odorless, colorless gas, radon is the radioactive byproduct of the natural breakdown of uranium. Radon is found everywhere in air and water. But it poses an increased risk of lung cancer for those who spend lots of time in homes, schools and other buildings with high concentrations of radon gas that has leached up from the soil.
When radon molecules interact with living cells, they sometimes damage a gene, the same one associated with lung cancer in smokers. In fact, smokers who live in homes with high radon levels face a lung cancer risk about 15 times greater than nonsmokers living with the same levels.
The only way to know if there is a radon problem is to test for it.
A simple home test kit, which monitors air for a few days, costs about $10 from the Utah Safety Council or local home-improvement stores. Professional contractors use a longer-term test and charge about $150.
Levels below 4 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) of air are considered normal. Experts generally advise that results of 4 pCi/L, or above, warrant retesting.
One home's low radon reading does not necessarily mean the house next door will register the same. And, while the central Utah community of Beaver, for instance, has produced the highest readings in Utah, a Sandy or Logan home can have high levels, too.
Based on the state's analysis of 4,428 tests so far in Utah, about one-third reflect worrisome levels of radon -- levels higher than 4 pCi/L. The state's radon Web page (http://www.deq.state.ut.us/EQRAD/RADON.htm) allows residents to examine the results statewide, by county and by ZIP code.
The Utah Safety Council's Rebecca Decker, coordinator of the radon program, said those who live, say, in a building's third floor or above generally do not need to test.
Homeowners will find the test procedures simple. They just need to set up the test monitor -- resembling a paper bag -- indoors for a few days, then send it to the testing lab. Results come in the mail within a few weeks.
"It's great because they are so simple," she said. "Anyone can do them without messing up."
Just 10 percent of homeowners surveyed realize they need to test, although about 70 percent report knowing something about radon, Hultquist said. Ten of Utah's 42 school districts have been spot-checked for radon.
Meanwhile, the state is stepping up its programs to train Realtors and builders about the potential problems with the gas.
For more information, Utahns can contact the state office at 536-4255 or the National Radon Hot Line at 1-800-SOS-RADON.
-------- activists
Human wall urged to prevent war in S. Asia
January 1, 2002
UPI
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/01012002-061053-6851r.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 1 -- Afghan women on Tuesday have urged peace lovers in India and Pakistan to form a human wall along their border and prevent their troops from fighting each other.
In a message sent to peace groups in both the nations, the Revolutionary Association of Women from Afghanistan has suggested that "all peace groups in South Asia should get together to prevent this war."
"If we allow it to happen, it is the innocent people on both sides who will suffer," said RAWA. "The fact that both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons, makes it even more important to work for peace."
RAWA urged peace groups in India and Pakistan to "gather at least 6,000 people on each side of the border who should sit there as long as the troops are there, too."
"They should tell the two governments that their troops can only march across the border over their dead bodies," the message said.
RAWA has been struggling for women's rights in Afghanistan for more than 25 years. Several of its leaders, including the founder Meena, have been killed by the former communist, Mujahedin and Taliban rulers of Afghanistan unwilling to give equal rights to women in this tribal society.
It works from offices in Pakistan but has presence in all major Afghan cities, too.
"Time is running out. It is up to the anti-war forces in Pakistan and India to do their utmost not to allow 'their' governments to resort to war," said RAWA.
"We suggest that all anti-war organizations and personalities in India and Pakistan should get together to organize this peace march. They have to send a strong message to their governments that they do not want a nuclear war in the region."
----
British green activist heads for U.S. trial
REUTERS
January 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13880/story.htm
LONDON - A British environmental activist was due to fly to the United States on Saturday to face trial for disrupting a test of the controversial U.S. missile defence system in California in July.
Bill Nandris, 32, from North London and who works for Greenpeace, is one of 17 protesters from several countries being charged with conspiracy to violate a safety zone.
The defendants, who allegedly tried to delay the test-firing of a missile interceptor system by riding inflatable boats into a zone of the Pacific Ocean where the test was due to take place, face up to six years in prison.
Greenpeace say Nandris and nine other non-U.S. protestors spent six days in jail after their arrest before being bailed to return to face charges. One activist, from India, was held for 10 days after prosecutors alleged his passport was faked.
Nandris told Reuters that though he could not be extradited from Britain to face the charges he was determined to return to the US to stand up for his beliefs.
"We want to have our day in court. First of all to air the missile defence issue and secondly because these are unwarranted and very severe charges for a peaceful protest," Nandris said.
"I feel I have to stand up and clear my name and I still feel strongly about the issue. The missile defence system will encourage a new nuclear arms race," he said.
"The tests are illegal under international law and they break long standing treaties. I feel that it undermines efforts over the last 30 years to avoid the nuclear threat."
Nandris admitted to being apprehensive about the trial.
"I'm worried about having to go to jail and how it's going to affect my family and friends. It's quite a scary thought."
"I'm confident that the jury will be fair and will be able to distinguish between peaceful protesters and an actual threat to the United States," Nandris said.
Greenpeace has called Bush's missile defence plans "one of the single greatest threats to the world", and says they will lead to a new nuclear arms race.
Protesters have dubbed the programme "Son of Star Wars" after the original Strategic Defence Initiative pioneered by President Ronald Reagan. Bush, citing what he calls a growing ballistic missile threat from countries like North Korea, Iraq and Iran, is eager to deploy a multilayered shield including missiles launched from ships and lasers fired from modified Boeing 747 aircraft.
The trial of the activists is due to start on January 8.
----
FEAST OF THE INNOCENTS IN D.C. - AN ACCOUNT
We have just returned from the Feast of the Innocents retreat in DC. There was a fantastic attendance this year, around 90 adults and 30 kids - good friends from DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, North Carolina and Maine. Many seemed pleased to return to St. Stephen and the Incarnation after a hiatus of many years. In fact, many who came to this church as young people for their first retreat were now returning with grown children.
The theme of the retreat was one of grieving, expressing fear and then building hope together as community. We spent more time in prayer and reflection than we are usually able to squeeze into these busy days. We were able to share together two ritual prayers by Joann Macy along with three longer evening prayers.
Phil Berrigan, Kenji Warren and Susan Crane shared a presentation about what it meant to be in prison during the events of September 11th and the beginning of this war. There was the added joy of the baptism of Maura Rider-O'Neil by Phil on Saturday afternoon.
On the Feast of the Innocence we attempted to hold a funeral procession to the south entrance of the Pentagon. We were stopped at a checkpoint under a bridge and held an hour vigil there. Brandon Passmore from The Little Flower Catholic Worker Farm and Joan Gregory from the Peter Maurin Farm Catholic Worker Farm, were arrested for going beyond the check-point. They were released with tickets for "admittance to property" and a court date of March 15.
Saturday we held a vigil in front of the White House. Sixteen people risked arrest by remaining stationary in the "Picture Postcard Zone", but were not arrested. The rest of the community sang, read the leaflet, and did street theater directly in front of those risking arrest. It was a beautiful witness (albeit not welcomed by the tourists) added to by the peace petition written by the children during the retreat. They asked people to sign a petition stating that President Bush should take a time-out because he is hurting people.
On Sunday, we went to the National Cathedral to vigil during the mass. Over a dozen people went inside the Cathedral to stand for the mass. Outside, we passed out fliers explaining that there would be people standing, because the church should be taking a stand against the war. It was from the Cathedral that President Bush spoke during the national day of mourning and there is a red, white and blue wreath of flowers donated by the President hanging in the sanctuary. Through out the mass all but one of the people standing were removed, either for speaking out or simply for standing. At least two people were forcibly removed and, for quite some time, it appeared that five of them were being arrested. However, at the end of the mass everyone was released without so much as a citation. Barbara Reed was allowed to remain standing throughout the service. She was able to present the fliers from Friday and Saturday's vigils during the offertory. She also sent a message that read, "Our community has witnessed at the Pentagon and the White House during the Feast of the Holy Innocents. We offer these gifts of nonviolent witness for peace and the reconciliation of all people everywhere".
It was a beautiful witness and a good way to conclude the retreat of faith and resistance.
----
Israeli army breaks human chain around Jerusalem's walls
By Claire Snegaroff
Agence France-Presse
January 1, 2001
http://www.jordantimes.com/tue/news/news2.htm
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM - An ambitious human chain that Palestinian and Christian groups had planned to form around Jerusalem's Old City walls Monday in protest against Israel's occupation failed to gather enough people, largely because thousands were blocked at an Israeli checkpoint.
Instead hundreds of protestors, mostly foreigners demonstrating their solidarity with the Palestinians, formed a smaller chain around the Church of St Anne inside the city walls, singing and listening to speeches by pacifist organisers.
Israeli troops blocked some 2,000 demonstrators at a military checkpoint in Bethlehem to the south of Jerusalem as they attempted to march to the occupied Palestinian city to join the human chain, which needed around 5,000 people to encircle the medieval Turkish stone walls.
In the event, only a few hundred made it after the incident at Bethlehem and after having failed to enlist Israeli peace activists in the action.
Some of those in the Old City had pinned olive twigs to their clothes while others wore armbands with the word "international oberserver" on them.
Many have come as part of a month-long action by activists from France, Britain, the United States, the Netherlands and Italy, accusing their governments of having failed to protect the Palestinians from Israel's military might.
They are demanding the deployment of international observers in the Palestinian territories, which Israel has consistently opposed.
Their demonstrations have often been dispersed by Israeli occupation soldiers using tear gas and warning shots.
"It's frustrating not to be able to put together a human chain, but there are not enough of us," said Catherine Shammas, a French activist.
Those blocked at the Bethlehem checkpoint were addressed by the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah.
"We are here to tell Israelis and Palestinians that we want to continue life and that Israel has to recognise the Palestinian people's right to live in peace and security," Sabbah told the crowd.
"We are here to tell Israelis and Palestinians that we want to continue life and that Israel has to recognise the Palestinian people's right to live in peace and security," Sabbah told the crowd.
The demonstration was also marked by a lack of Israeli pacifists.
A member of the Tayush movement, which brings Jews and Arabs together, said that cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians had become more complicated since the start of the Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, 15 months ago.
He said most Palestinian peace movements were boycotting their Israeli counterparts.
The only previous human chain around the the walls of was formed in 1989 by both Palestinians and Israelis.
The march to Jerusalem from Bethlehem was meant to signify the "opening" of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, who have been denied access by the Israeli occupation army's blockade of the Palestinian territory since the Intifada started in September 2000.
"We opened up nothing at all," said Claude Abu Samra, a French woman living in Ramallah. "The only Palestinians here are those from Jerusalem."
On a makeshift stage where a group of musicians play rhythmic tunes, one of the organisors told the small crowd the police had forbidden an attempt to form a human chain because a right-wing demonstration was starting nearby.
Disappointed organisors contented themselves instead with dancing around a Palestinian flag.
----
Ten People Arrested for Ringing in the New Year with a Peace Presence at Y-12 National Security Complex
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JANUARY 1, 2002
http://www.commondreams.org/news2002/0101-01.htm
OAK RIDGE, TN - January 1 - At 8:00am January 1, 2002, ten Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance activists entered the Y-12 National Security Complex to reclaim the nuclear weapons production facility for peace. Carrying flags, candles and symbols of peace, they made a commitment to work for peace and an end to nuclear weapons production in the coming year. They were arrested by the Oak Ridge city police, charged with misdemeanor trespass and released.
Below is the statement the group read on the property.
WE RECLAIM THIS LAND FOR PEACE
We are a community of people committed to nonviolence. We are here at the dawn of a New Year bringing candles to light a path toward a world free from the threat of nuclear annihilation. We plant the flags of peace to claim the Y-12 National Nuclear Weapons Production Facility (Y-12 National Security Complex) as a facility for disarmament.
By declaring 2002 a "war year", President Bush has made it clear that US terrorism abroad will not stop with Afghanistan. President Bush has abandoned the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty and the US government boycotted the United Nations Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Review Conference.
While the President has pledged to substantially cut our nuclear stockpiles, the Department of Energy has received billions of tax dollars to rebuild the US nuclear weapons complex, in order to increase production of nuclear weapons.
We demand that US tax dollars now budgeted for nuclear weapons be redirected so that people will have necessary food, decent and affordable housing, quality education, adequate medical care and life-giving jobs.
The threat of annihilation cannot be the basis of any foreign policy. Peace is built by respecting the rights and dignity of all people and acting as a partner within the global community. We are making a committed stand for peace so that future generations, worldwide, will enjoy freedom of speech, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Participants: Kate Berrigan, 20, Oberlin, OH; Paloma Galindo, 35, Knoxville, TN; Ann Hablas, 76, Jacksboro, TN; Erik Johnson, 57, Maryville, TN; Rebecca Johnson, 22, Washington, DC; Mary Denis Lentsch, 64, Chattanooga, TN; Tim Mellon, 45, Oak Ridge, TN; Laurel Paget-Seekins, 21, Oakland, CA; Sarah Ruth Saunders, 20, Lake Orion, MI; Shelley Wascom, 42, Lake City, TN
CONTACT: Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance Tim Mellon 865 483 8202
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