------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Radio interview
Re: NOMINATED FOR PROJECT CENSORED AWARD
Interceptor Hits Target In Navy Anti-Missile Test
Pentagon hails success of first flight test
Too Close for Comfort
Indian Point Reactor
DOE's Planned Atomic Plant Worries South Carolina's Hodges
America's Chaotic Road to War

MILITARY
Front Lines
For Afghan City's Needy, The Relief Is Slow to Come
Afghans reported to have seized Kashmiri arms cache
U.S. Account of a Battle With Taliban Is Disputed
Afghans: US Forces Killed Wrong People
Cheney asserts: Arafat getting weapons for PA from Iran
Pentagon Official From Enron in Hot Seat
Was Rainbow Farm Another Waco?
Pakistan Addicts Harbor Opium Hopes
New Delhi Marks a Holiday With the Army Out of Town
India Vows to Crush Terror, No Change in Kashmir
Iran Calls for Peace With Iraq
Iraq's Aziz arrives in China after Russia visit
Female Bomber Strikes Scarred Shopping District in Jerusalem
Woman Bomber Kills Israeli, Self in Jerusalem
Mexican Vows Investigation Into 'Dirty War'
Border Guards Prevent Escapes Into Pakistan
Tough Lessons in a Free Press
Russia and Azerbaijan Plan Deal
Chechen leader to keep power as long as Russian troops remain
RUSSIAN FORCES CRIMINAL ACTIVITY IN CHECHNYA UNCHECKED
Top Russian generals killed in chopper explosion over Chechnya
China Changes Approach in Espionage Incident
Ex-Operative Writes of Decline at C.I.A.
Iran demands UN play greater role in Afghanistan, Mideast
Special Forces Wage Secret Afghan War
U.S. Troops Won't Exit Pakistan, General Says
Pentagon Plans New Command For U.S.
Special Forces Wage Secret Afghan War

POLICE / PRISONERS
On Detainees, U.S. Faces Legal Quandary
What Would Hippocrates Do?
Australian Aboriginal asks court to spear policeman
Rumsfeld Says Captives Will Not Be Prisoners of War

ENERGY AND OTHER
Lawsuit Threatens, but Cheney Refuses to Name Energy Advisors
Cheney: Won't Turn Over Energy List
Finite Wonders
Nanotech research showing great progress
An Economic Forum Moves to Manhattan

ACTIVISTS
Australia Refugees on Hunger Strike
From Aryan Nations Compound To Idaho College's Peace Park
Aussies Rally in Support of Refugees



-------- NUCLEAR


-------- depleted uranium

Radio interview

From: "judmet2001" <metni7@hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002

My name is Jawad Metni, I produced the DU documentary "Downwind". You can now view QuickTime clips on the web-site at www.pinholepictures.com.

On another note, a producer from WBAI Pacifica morning talk show, Wake Up Call has contacted me to help find an expert, eloquent DU spokesperson for an upcoming show on DU.

It is preferable that this person is in NYC for the interview, but they can also patch in a telephone interview.

Any suggestions out there? The producer's name is Rosalie (she didn't leave a last name). The other person interviewed on the show will be Dr. Siegart Gunther. The air date is soon, Monday, January 29th.

Last minute, but a great opportunity.

Jawad Metni Pinhole Pictures.

----

Re: NOMINATED FOR PROJECT CENSORED AWARD

From: "Piotr Bein" <piotr.bein@imag.net>
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 22:17:50 -0800

[Full article referred to can be found at January 20, 2002 "Activists" - http://prop1.org/nucnews/2002nn/0201nn/020120nn.htm#activists]

I wish to dwell on the reference to the radioactivity that was detected at the Pentagon site after the Sep 11 attacks. See excerpt below.

Questions:

1. Why was Mr. Bill Bellinger suspecting DU to be the source of radiation? Did EPA test the site?

2. Why would Mr. Bellinger indicate that "americium 241 could also be scattered around the crash site"? Did EPA test the site and detect transuranics?

3. What was the source of the radiation, if it came from DU: - Ducrete (trademark of Starmet Corporation) concrete used to shield Pentagon from radiation in case of nuclear attack by an enemy of the USA?

- DU counterwieights of the plane that crashed into the building?

- other?

4. Was Mr. Bellinger unconcerned about contamination by DU because he believes in the ICRP model of irradiation and is not familiar with the "2001 ECRR" report, for example?

Piotr Bein ==

NOMINATED FOR PROJECT CENSORED AWARD

Depleted uranium: devastation at home and abroad by Leuren Moret

SAN FRANCISCO BAY VIEW
November 7, 2001
http://www.sfbayview.com/frontpp.htm#a2

[snip]

After the Sept. 11 attacks [...] The EPA, the FBI, and other federal agencies, including HMRU (Hazardous Materials Response Units), USAR teams, the local fire department and the Virginia HAZMAT were notified, and an investigation began at the Pentagon.

A pile of rubble from the crash was found to be radioactive, but EPA official Bill Bellinger of the agency's Region III Environmental Radiation Monitoring Office was unconcerned when contacted by Diane D'Arrigo from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. Bellinger indicated that it was probably depleted uranium and mentioned that americium 241 could also be scattered around the crash site. He was convinced that depleted uranium is not radiologically toxic, but commented that it is more of a hazard when aerosolized.

-------- missile defense

Interceptor Hits Target In Navy Anti-Missile Test

Associated Press
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40942-2002Jan25?language=printer

An interceptor rocket launched from a Navy ship smashed into a dummy missile high over the Pacific last night in the latest test in the Pentagon's plans to shield America from long-range missiles.

The military fired the dummy missile from Hawaii at 9 p.m. EST and the interceptor rocket from the USS Lake Erie in the Pacific at 9:08 p.m., Pentagon spokesman Maj. Mike Halbig said. The interceptor's "kinetic warhead" slammed into the dummy missile and destroyed it at 9:18 p.m. more than 300 miles northwest of Hawaii, Halbig said.

The Pentagon had delayed the test for four hours to let a military medical evacuation flight cross the test area to land at the base at Pearl Harbor.

The missile exercise was the latest in a series of tests the Pentagon is conducting to develop several ways to shoot down long-range missiles fired at the United States. President Bush announced last year that the United States would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans such defense systems.

Critics of the program in Congress and the arms control community say missile defense is unrealistic and overly expensive, arguing that the few countries with the technology to threaten the United States could find ways to defeat missile defenses.

Friday's planned test was the first to send an interceptor fired from a ship at sea into space to collide with a dummy missile. Other tests have used interceptor rockets launched from land.

The latest test was designed so the anti-missile "kinetic warhead" was virtually guaranteed to smash into the dummy missile. Officials said the intent of the test was to evaluate the interceptor's guidance systems, not to determine whether whether a ship-based interceptor could knock out an enemy missile under realistic conditions.

Advantages of a ship-based anti-missile system would include the ability to move around to counter a threat from virtually anywhere in the world. Having anti-missile rockets aboard Navy ships also would eliminate the need to base them in another country.

"There's global coverage, and it's very flexible," said Chris Myers, director of missile defense programs for Pentagon contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. in Morristown, N.J.

Lockheed Martin makes the Aegis radar systems aboard the Lake Erie and 56 other Navy warships. The Aegis system helps guide the anti-missile rocket to its target.

----

Pentagon hails success of first flight test of US sea-based missile defenses

Sunday January 27, 2:42 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020126/1/2d0h0.html

The Pentagon hailed what it called the "successful flight test" of a sea-based missile defense system at a Pacific range, with officials insisting that the trial was in full compliance with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM).

"The Missile Defense Agency and the (US) Navy conducted a successful flight test in the continuing development of a Sea-Based Midcourse (SMD) Ballistic Missile Defense System" at a Pacific test range near the Hawaiian island of Kauai late Friday, a Pentagon statement said.

The USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser stationed several hundred kilometers (miles) offshore, tracked a target missile with Aegis Spy-1 radar, then fired an SM-3 interceptor missile at it, officials said.

The test marked the first launch of the newly-developed Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) booster from a ship into space with a prototype warhead designed to intercept and destroy a warhead outside the earth's atmosphere.

The target missile was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands on western Kauai at 9:00 pm Washington time (0200 GMT Saturday).

The interceptor missile was launched eight minutes later, and an intercept occurred ten minutes after, at 9:18 pm (0218 GMT), the Pentagon said.

The test "met its objective,"pentagon spokesman Air Force Major Michael Halbig said. But officials said that the goal of the test was not an interception, but to gather data.

Elements of the SM-3 had already been tested on the ground.

"The primary objective of this test was to evaluate SM-3 fourth-stage Kinetic Warhead guidance, navigation, and control," according to the Pentagon statement.

"Extensive engineering evaluation data was collected for analyses in preparation for future flight tests," it said.

Friday's test was the fourth in a planned series of nine developmental tests flights for the Sea-Based missile defense system.

The program may soon receive a fresh infusion of funds, as President George W. Bush has pledged to seek the largest hike in defense spending in 20 years in the next fiscal year.

On Wednesday, he said he would request 48 billion dollars in fresh funds for the defense budget, bringing it to more than 366 billion dollars -- a 15 percent increase.

"A few days from now I will go before Congress to report on the state of the union, and lay out my priorities for the coming year and beyond. These priorities reflect a single, overarching commitment: To enhance the security of America and its people," Bush said in his weekly radio address Saturday.

"America must not rest until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated," vowing to seek more precision weapons, missile defenses, high-tech equipment and pay raises for soldiers.

The test Friday was delayed by four hours to allow a navy ship on a medical evacuation mission to pass through a restricted zone around the test range in the Pacific, Pentagon officials said.

Officials said the test was in keeping with the 1972 ABM treaty because the target was a short-range missile.

"This test is in full compliance with the ABM treaty. Absolutely," US Air Force Major Cathy Reardon said.

The treaty bars testing and development of sea-based, mobile land-based, air-based and space-based missile defenses against intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The United States notified Russia last month that it intends to withdraw from the ABM treaty in six months to pursue unrestricted development of missile defenses. But the Pentagon has pledged not to violate the treaty in the meantime.

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

Too Close for Comfort

by Peter Bradford,
January 27, 2002,
OnEarth. Winter 2002
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/02win/nuclear1.asp

Most Americans are finding it harder than ever to take their local nuclear power plants for granted. A former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner forecasts a cloudy future for an industry that suddenly looks vulnerable -- in more ways than one.

n the years after Hiroshima but before nuclear power, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) created a committee to evaluate the radiation dangers of nuclear power plants. With no experience to guide it, the committee -- seeking to make plants inherently safe -- recommended that power reactors be sited far from cities. Its chair, Edward Teller, went so far as to suggest building them underground. These conservative approaches collided with economic reality. With oil and coal inexpensive, utilities would not undertake the cost of building new power plants underground or far from their urban power consumers. Instead, massive concrete containment domes became the primary safeguard. A 1957 AEC study concluded that a catastrophic accident breaching the containment might cause 3,400 "early" deaths and 43,000 serious injuries. Nevertheless, among the first sites licensed by the AEC were Indian Point, twenty-five miles north of New York City, and Dresden, close to Chicago.

As reactors grew larger, containment alone no longer sufficed. Cooling and pressure suppression systems were added. The AEC, later the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), still had to assure "adequate protection of the public health and safety." However, the ideal of inherent safety had been displaced by a less reliable safeguard: government's ability to predict. The commission undertook to sort possible events from impossible events. Some events that might defeat the safety systems were considered impossible, and therefore, plant owners were not required to defend against them. The deliberate crashing of a large, fully fueled passenger plane was among these impossible events.

On September 11, American Airlines Flight 11 flew down the Hudson River, directly over Indian Point on its way to the World Trade Center. The wind blew north to south that morning.

eptember 11 demands fundamental reassessment of several aspects of nuclear regulation. The inevitable uncertainty, controversy, and expense -- forces that have prevented the ordering of any new U.S. nuclear power plants since 1978 -- are not good news for the industry.

Until September 11, the industry had been celebrating remarkably improved economic performance and a political resurgence. The Bush administration, especially the vice president, had supported the construction of new plants using safer designs -- so safe, it was said, that containment would not even be necessary. Now, new U.S. plants seem remote. As potential investors and potential neighbors see the National Guard dispatched to nuclear power sites, as no-fly zones are established overhead, and as antiaircraft guns are installed at nuclear facilities in Europe, yesterday's Edward Teller sounds wiser than today's Dick Cheney.

A few times in the five-decade history of nuclear power, some event once deemed impossible has taken place, forcing fundamental change, great expense, and the abandonment of plants already built. In 1974, India tested a nuclear weapon using materials provided, for peaceful purposes, by the United States and Canada. President Ford then ordered the deferral of U.S. programs for nuclear fuel reprocessing and fast breeder reactors, which would make bomb material more accessible. President Carter later canceled them outright.

In 1975, a technician with a lighted candle started a fire that disabled most of the safety systems at the Brown's Ferry plant in Alabama. Expensive reengineering of fire protection and other systems followed. The changes wrought by Brown's Ferry paled, however, beside the changes that followed Three Mile Island in 1979. The required modifications cost billions of dollars, and many plants were canceled.

In short, events that change what the NRC calls the "design basis accident" can have significant consequences for the nuclear industry. While September 11 involved nothing nuclear, its implications for the "design basis terrorist event" are dramatic.

First, the vulnerability of nuclear plants to large aircraft must be reassessed. Soon after the World Trade Center attacks, the NRC claimed that nuclear reactor containments would withstand similar impacts. That assertion is indefensible. The NRC -- though not some power plant owners -- has now abandoned it and says that it can't predict the outcome. For that matter, neither can terrorists. Containment failure does not automatically mean radiation release, and radiation release does not automatically mean catastrophe. Uncertainty may be enough to cause terrorists to go elsewhere. But uncertainty does not allow the NRC to assure "adequate protection of the public health and safety."

The NRC will also have to reexamine its assumptions about truck bombs, armed attack, and sabotage from within; about the transportation of nuclear waste; about terrorists' ability to acquire nuclear weapons through power reactor programs abroad. In all of these categories, it will have to update its safety assumptions to include attacks by large trained groups willing to become martyrs. Furthermore, the commission can no longer permit the kinds of shortcomings it has tolerated in the past, such as the several recent instances in which nuclear plants failed their security drills.

The industry and the NRC need to make substantial changes at all nuclear power plants. Everyone who has flown since September 11 has some sense of the practical meaning of increased security: more safety, but also more regulation, more delay, more expense. Plants will have to hire more people, install more checkpoints, build more barriers. Plants long since completed may have to make substantial design modifications. None of this comes cheap. Even the related public hearings will be expensive and contentious. Moreover, the costs can no longer be rolled into monopoly electric rates. Most power plants must now compete for their customers, and higher costs will mean lower profits.

As it happens, the law that provides nuclear power's insurance framework -- and sets an upper liability limit for a catastrophic accident -- is up for renewal. Having just spent billions to revive the airline industry, Congress might show some skepticism about further open-ended exposure to unforeseeable events.

Yet there is still strong sentiment in Congress for reauthorizing the liability law without change. Unfortunately, much of the energy debate on Capitol Hill is dominated by arguments that amount to "The facilities are safe because they are needed" or "No chain is weaker than its strongest link" or "The unknowable can be stated with certainty."

So the unforeseeable event of one decade becomes the nightmare of the next, one almost-rational step at a time. An enemy sufficiently resourceful and determined could convert today's nuclear power plants to weapons. Perhaps that vulnerability can be corrected. If not, the plants -- which are replaceable, though at some cost -- should close.

Peter Bradford served as a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as chair of the New York and Maine utility regulatory commissions. He teaches energy policy at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

-------- new york

Indian Point Reactor

New York Times
January 27, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/opinion/L27NUCL.html

To the Editor:
Re "Nuclear Reactors as Terrorist Targets" (editorial, Jan. 21):

You acknowledge that nuclear plants were not designed to withstand Sept. 11-type attacks, but call the movement to shut down the Indian Point reactor pending security upgrades "an overreaction." This is inconsistent.

Although Indian Point's owner asserts that its 3.5-foot-thick concrete containment domes could survive a jumbo jet attack, the engines could penetrate up to six feet of reinforced concrete. The test you cite of a much smaller aircraft that did not damage a concrete wall on impact proves nothing, since the wall was not attached to the ground and was displaced nearly six feet. The test report said "the major portion of the impact energy went into movement of the target and not in producing structural damage."

You also did not note the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's recent confirmation that 46 percent of nuclear plants have exhibited security weaknesses that could have enabled terrorists to gain access and cause a meltdown.

EDWIN S. LYMAN Scientific Director
Nuclear Control Institute
Washington, Jan. 24, 2002

-------- south carolina

DOE's Planned Atomic Plant Worries South Carolina's Hodges

COAST TO COAST
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A02
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44067-2002Jan26?language=printer

The federal government this past week announced plans to build a $3.8 billion plant in South Carolina that could bring as many as 500 jobs to the area. But Gov. Jim Hodges (D) is not exactly rejoicing: The plant will process plutonium, and he is concerned the state could be left saddled with other states' excess supplies of the deadly atomic material.

The Bush administration wants to ship 34 metric tons of plutonium from the nation's nuclear weapons facilities to South Carolina's Savannah River Site, a major weapons producer during the Cold War. The plan, which requires congressional approval, would involve converting the material into fuel for use by nuclear power plants in the Carolinas.

In a meeting on Thursday, however, the day after the announcement, Hodges asked U.S. Department of Energy officials for written guarantees that there would be "a long-term commitment to this project," said Hodges spokeswoman Cortney Owings. He also wants a detailed timetable of when the plutonium would leave the state. Hodges is concerned, Owings said, that a changing political climate could leave the new fuel-processing facility underfunded and the state left holding the excess plutonium.

Owings said DOE officials had not yet signed the "memorandum of agreement" Hodges requested, but she added, "We remain hopeful." She said Hodges still intends to stand behind his pledge to halt the plutonium shipments at the state's borders until the reassurances are provided.

"That's still the governor's pledge," she said, "and he will do whatever it takes to keep South Carolina safe."

-- Sue Anne Pressley

-------- us politics

America's Chaotic Road to War
Bush's Global Strategy Began to Take Shape in First Frantic Hours After Attack

By Dan Balz and Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26?language=printer and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43708-2002Jan26?language=printer

First in a series

Tuesday, September 11

Shortly after 9:30 p.m., President Bush brought together his most senior national security advisers in a bunker beneath the White House grounds. It was just 13 hours after the deadliest attack on the U.S. homeland in the country's history.

Bush and his advisers sat around a long table in the conference room of the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC. Spare and cramped, the bunker was built to withstand a nuclear attack, with sleeping berths and enough food for a few people to survive for several days.

"This is the time for self-defense," he told his aides, according to National Security Council notes. Then, repeating the vow he had made earlier in the evening in a televised address from the Oval Office, he added: "We have made the decision to punish whoever harbors terrorists, not just the perpetrators."

Their job, the president said, was to figure out how to do it.

That afternoon, on a secure phone on Air Force One, Bush had already told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that he would order a military response and that Rumsfeld would be responsible for organizing it. "We'll clean up the mess," the president told Rumsfeld, "and then the ball will be in your court."

Intelligence was by now almost conclusive that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, based in Afghanistan, had carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the aides gathered in the bunker-the "war cabinet" that included Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and CIA Director George J. Tenet-were not ready to say what should be done about them. The war cabinet had questions, no one more than Rumsfeld.

Who are the targets? How much evidence do we need before going after al Qaeda? How soon do we act? While acting quickly was essential, Rumsfeld said, it might take up to 60 days to prepare for major military strikes. And, he asked, are there targets that are off-limits? Do we include American allies in military strikes?

Rumsfeld warned that an effective response would require a wider war, one that went far beyond the use of military force. The United States, he said, must employ every tool available-military, legal, financial, diplomatic, intelligence.

The president was enthusiastic. But Tenet offered a sobering thought. Although al Qaeda's home base was Afghanistan, the terrorist organization operated nearly worldwide, he said. The CIA had been working the bin Laden problem for years. We have a 60-country problem, he told the group.

"Let's pick them off one at a time," Bush replied.

The president and his advisers started America on the road to war that night without a map. They had only a vague sense of how to respond, based largely on the visceral reactions of the president. But nine nights later, when Bush addressed a joint session of Congress, many of the important questions had been answered.

Meeting in secret, often several times each day, Bush and his advisers deliberated, debated and ultimately settled on a strategy that is still emerging, an unconventional and risky worldwide war against terrorism. This series of articles is an inside account of what happened from Sept. 11 to Sept. 20, based on interviews with the principals involved in the decision-making, including the president, the vice president and many other key officials inside the administration and out. The interviews were supplemented by notes of NSC meetings made available to The Washington Post, along with notes taken by several participants.

This contemporaneous account is inevitably incomplete. The president, the White House staff and senior Cabinet officers responded in detail to questions and requests. But some matters they refused to discuss, citing national security and a desire to protect the confidentiality of some internal deliberations.

6:30 a.m.

The President in Florida: Disbelief and Determination

President Bush rose early the morning of Sept. 11, and went for a four-mile run around the golf course at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort on Longboat Key, Fla., where he was staying.

On Bush's schedule that day was what White House aides call a "soft event"-reading to about 16 second-graders in Sandra Kay Daniels's class at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota. The night before, Bush had dined with his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former governor Bob Martinez and other state Republicans. It was a relaxed evening, full of joking and talk about politics, including some handicapping of Jeb Bush's possible opponents in his 2002 reelection campaign.

Bush's motorcade left for the school at 8:30 a.m. As it was arriving, pagers and cell phones alerted White House aides that a plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Bush remembers senior adviser Karl Rove bringing him the news, saying it appeared to be an accident involving a small, twin-engine plane.

In fact it was American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 out of Boston's Logan International Airport. Based on what he was told, Bush assumed it was an accident.

"This is pilot error," the president recalled saying. "It's unbelievable that somebody would do this." Conferring with Andrew H. Card Jr., his White House chief of staff, Bush said, "The guy must have had a heart attack."

That morning the president's key advisers were scattered. Cheney and Rice were at their offices in the West Wing. Rumsfeld was at his office in the Pentagon, meeting with a delegation from Capitol Hill. Powell had just sat down for breakfast with the new president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, in Lima. Tenet was at breakfast with his old friend and mentor, former senator David Boren (D-Okla.), at the St. Regis Hotel, three blocks from the White House. Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was halfway across the Atlantic on the way to Europe. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was bound for Milwaukee. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, on the job for just a week, was in his office at FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue.

At 9:05 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boeing 767, smashed into the South Tower of the trade center. Bush was seated on a stool in the classroom when Card whispered the news: "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack."

Bush remembers exactly what he thought: "They had declared war on us, and I made up my mind at that moment that we were going to war."

A photo shows Bush's face with a distant look as he absorbed what Card had said. He nodded and resumed his conversation with the class. "Really good," he said before excusing himself and returning to the holding room. "These must be sixth-graders."

9:30 a.m.

The Secretary of State in Peru: 'Go Tell Them We're Leaving'

In Lima, Powell abruptly ended his breakfast with the Peruvian president after getting word of the second strike on the trade center and made plans to return to Washington. "Get the plane," he told an assistant. "Go tell them we're leaving." He had a seven-hour flight, with poor phone connections, ahead of him.

At the St. Regis Hotel, aides hurriedly approached Tenet's table next to a window overlooking K Street. "Mr. Director, there's a serious problem," one of them said.

Through much of the summer, Tenet had grown increasingly troubled by the prospect of a major terrorist attack against the United States. There was too much chatter in the intelligence system and repeated reports of threats were costing him sleep. His friends thought he had become obsessed. Everywhere he went, the message was the same: Something big is coming. But for all his fears, intelligence officials could never pinpoint when or where an attack might hit.

"This has bin Laden all over it," Tenet said to Boren. "I've got to go."

He had another reaction in the first few minutes, one that raised the possibility that the FBI and the CIA had not done all that they could to prevent the terrorist attacks from taking place.

"I wonder," Tenet was overheard to say, "if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training." He was referring to Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been detained in August after attracting suspicion when he sought training at a Minnesota flight school.

Moussaoui's case was very much on Tenet's mind. The previous month, the FBI had asked the CIA and the National Security Agency to run phone traces on Moussaoui, already the subject of a five-inch-thick file in the bureau.

At 9:30 a.m. the president appeared before television cameras, describing what had happened as "an apparent terrorist attack" and "a national tragedy." He appeared shaken, and his language was oddly informal. He would chase down, he said, "those folks who committed this act."

Bush also said, "Terrorism against our nation will not stand." It was an echo of "This will not stand," the words his father, President George H.W. Bush, had used a few days after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990-in Bush's opinion, one of his father's finest moments.

"Why I came up with those specific words, maybe it was an echo from the past," Bush said in an interview last month. "I don't know why. . . . I'll tell you this, we didn't sit around massaging the words. I got up there and just spoke."

9:32 a.m.

The Vice President in Washington: Underground, in Touch With Bush

Secret Service agents burst into Cheney's West Wing office. "Sir," one said, "we have to leave immediately." Radar showed an airplane barreling toward the White House.

Before Cheney could respond, the agents grabbed the vice president under his arms-nearly lifting him off the ground-and propelled him down the steps into the White House basement and through a long tunnel that led to the underground bunker.

Meanwhile, American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 that had taken off from Dulles International Airport, turned away from the White House and flew back across the Potomac River, slamming into the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m.

In the tunnel below the White House, Cheney stopped to watch a television showing the smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center towers, heard the report about the plane hitting the Pentagon and called Bush again. Other Secret Service agents hustled Rice and several other senior White House officials included in an emergency contingency plan into the bunker with the vice president.

Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, summoned by the White House to the bunker, was on an open line to the Federal Aviation Administration operations center, monitoring Flight 77 as it hurtled toward Washington, with radar tracks coming every seven seconds. Reports came that the plane was 50 miles out, 30 miles out, 10 miles out-until word reached the bunker that there had been an explosion at the Pentagon.

Mineta shouted into the phone to Monte Belger at the FAA: "ý'Monte, bring all the planes down." It was an unprecedented order-there were 4,546 airplanes in the air at the time. Belger, the FAA's acting deputy administrator, amended Mineta's directive to take into account the authority vested in airline pilots. "We're bringing them down per pilot discretion," Belger told the secretary.

"[Expletive] pilot discretion," Mineta yelled back. "Get those goddamn planes down."

Sitting at the other end of the table, Cheney snapped his head up, looked squarely at Mineta and nodded in agreement.

Over the Atlantic, Shelton ordered his plane to return to Washington. But he couldn't get approval from air traffic controllers, who were diverting all planes, even the one used by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was ready to defy the controllers, figuring it was easier to ask later for forgiveness, when his deputy called to say he had obtained the necessary clearance.

In his Pentagon office, Rumsfeld felt the huge building shudder. He looked out his window, then rushed out toward the smoke, running down the steps and outside where he could see pieces of metal strewn on the ground. Rumsfeld began helping with the rescue efforts until a security agent urged him to get out of the area. "I'm going inside," he said, and took up his post in the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon war room.

Pentagon officials ordered up the airborne command post used only in national emergencies. They sent up combat air patrols in the Washington area and a fighter escort for Air Force One. They also ordered AWACs radar and surveillance planes airborne along the East Coast and, fearing another round of attacks, along the West Coast as well.

Commanders worldwide were ordered to raise their threat alert status four notches to "Delta," the highest level, to defend U.S. facilities. Rumsfeld raised the defense condition-signaling U.S. offensive readiness-to DefCon 3, the highest it had been since the Arab-Israeli war in 1973. U.S. officials also sent a message to the Russians, who were planning a military exercise not far from Alaska, urging them to rethink their plans.

After Bush's statement at Booker Elementary School, his motorcade raced back to Sarasota Bradenton International Airport. As Bush boarded Air Force One, a Secret Service agent, showing a trace of nervousness, said, "Mr. President, we need you to get seated as soon as possible."

The plane accelerated down the runway and then almost stood on its tail as it climbed rapidly out of the airport. It was 9:55 a.m.

9:55 a.m.

The Vice President in the Bunker: 'Should We Engage?' 'Yes.'

Once airborne, Bush spoke again to Cheney, who said the combat air patrol needed rules of engagement if pilots encountered an aircraft that might be under the control of hijackers. Cheney recommended that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any such civilian airliners-as momentous a decision as the president was asked to make in those first hours. "I said, 'You bet,'ý" Bush recalled. "We had a little discussion, but not much."

Bush then talked to Rumsfeld to clarify the procedures military pilots should follow in trying to force an unresponsive plane to the ground before opening fire on it. First, pilots would seek to make radio contact with the other plane and tell the pilot to land at a specific location. If that failed, the pilots were to use visual signals. These included having the fighters fly in front of the other plane.

If the plane continued heading toward what was seen as a significant target with apparently hostile intent, the U.S. pilot would have the authority to shoot it down. With Bush's approval, Rumsfeld passed the order down the chain of command.

In the White House bunker, a military aide approached the vice president.

"There is a plane 80 miles out," he said. "There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?"

"Yes," Cheney replied without hesitation.

Around the vice president, Rice, deputy White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, tensed as the military aide repeated the question, this time with even more urgency. The plane was now 60 miles out. "Should we engage?" Cheney was asked.

"Yes," he replied again.

As the plane came closer, the aide repeated the question. Does the order still stand?

"Of course it does," Cheney snapped.

The vice president said later that it had seemed "painful, but nonetheless clear-cut. And I didn't agonize over it."

It was, "obviously, a very significant action," Cheney said in an interview. "You're asking American pilots to fire on a commercial airliner full of civilians. On the other hand, you had directly in front of me what had happened to the World Trade Center, and a clear understanding that once the plane was hijacked, it was a weapon."

Within minutes, there was a report that a plane had crashed in southwestern Pennsylvania-what turned out to be United Flight 93, a Boeing 757 that had been hijacked after leaving Newark International Airport. Many of those in the PEOC feared that Cheney's order had brought down a civilian aircraft. Rice demanded that someone check with the Pentagon.

On Air Force One, Bush inquired, "Did we shoot it down or did it crash?"

It took the Pentagon almost two hours to confirm that the plane had not been shot down, an enormous relief. "I think an act of heroism occurred on board that plane," Cheney said. Later, reports of cell phone conversations before the plane crashed indicated that some passengers had fought with the hijackers.

In a national emergency, a secret "continuity of government" plan is supposed to protect the country's constitutional leadership. It designates which officials should be taken to the underground bunker at the White House, which Cabinet members should be taken to secure locations, and where to move congressional leaders.

Senior administration officials were given briefings on the procedures shortly after Bush was inaugurated and some had toured the White House bunker. But others who were told to go to the bunker Sept. 11 had no idea where to find it and still others who should have been on the list were left off until they received authorization. Some Cabinet security details initiated plans to protect and move agency officials; some did not.

In the early confusion that day, there was a series of frightening but ultimately false reports: A plane was down near Camp David and another was down near the Ohio-Kentucky border; a car bomb exploded outside the State Department; an explosion near the Capitol, fires on the Mall and at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building; a plane heading at high speed toward Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex.

Secret Service agents ordered the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building evacuated at 9:45 a.m., first telling staffers there to file out in an orderly way, then screaming at them to run as fast as they could across Pennsylvania Avenue to Lafayette Park on the other side. At one point, some women were told to remove their shoes so they could run faster. Some staffers were advised to remove the White House identification from around their necks so they couldn't be singled out by possible snipers outside the White House gates.

Other than those officials taken by the Secret Service into the White House bunker, no one knew where to go, what to do or how to communicate with one another.

In the bunker, conditions were not ideal. There were secure video links to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies and military installations, but no way to broadcast on television from the bunker, no way to link government officials to the public. For a time, no one could make the audio on the TV sets work.

Capitol Hill was more chaotic. From the bunker, Cheney officially implemented the emergency continuity of government orders, which provided for evacuating the third and fourth in the line of presidential succession-Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and the president pro tem of the Senate, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who chose to go home. Other top leaders on Capitol Hill were forced to improvise. "We had no plan and we certainly had trained with no plan," said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). Capitol Police ordered an evacuation of the building shortly after the Pentagon was hit, but no one had instructions on where to go. Gephardt went to his home nearby. Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) went to the Capitol Police headquarters near Union Station, then joined some of his staff at a nearby town house. Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) also was taken to the police headquarters but decided it was unwise for the leaders to be clustered in a nonsecure facility. He asked to be taken to Andrews Air Force Base.

Many cell phones weren't working because the system was overburdened. For more than an hour, Daschle's staff did not know where he was. Rank-and-file lawmakers didn't have guidance from their leaders or from Capitol Police. It was not until late in the morning or early in the afternoon that orders were given to remove Daschle, Lott, Gephardt and other members of the leadership to a secure location outside Washington.

When they arrived for the trip at the West Front of the Capitol, Gephardt recalls an "unimaginable" scene: helicopters ringed by black-suited SWAT teams carrying automatic weapons, as other SWAT team members looked down from atop the Capitol.

At the secure location outside Washington, there were too few phone lines for the congressional leaders. Communication with Cheney was frustrating. Coordinating with lawmakers left behind in Washington was difficult, sometimes contentious.

Many members had drifted back to Capitol Police headquarters. Desperate for information, they set up a conference call with their sequestered leaders. During one call, a small group of House members demanded that the speaker order everyone back for a late-day session in the Capitol as a show of defiance. Over the speaker phone, Rep. Doug Ose (R-Calif.) said it would be an act of cowardice if lawmakers did not hold a session that day.

The leaders agitated to get out of their bunker and back to Washington, but Cheney resisted. Terrorist threats persisted and there was no way to guarantee their security, he said. Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) protested. We're a separate branch of government-why do we need the approval of the White House, he complained.

"Don," the vice president replied, "we control the helicopters."

10:32 a.m.

The President on Air Force One: 'Still a Threat to Washington'

Cheney called Bush on Air Force One, on its way from Florida to Washington, to say the White House had just received a threat against the plane. The caller had used its code word, "Angel," suggesting terrorists had inside information. Card was told it would take between 40 minutes and 90 minutes to get a protective fighter escort up to Air Force One.

Bush told an aide that Air Force One "is next." He was in an angry mood. "We're going to find out who did this," he said to Cheney, "and we're going to kick their asses."

Air Force One was still en route to Washington when Cheney called again at 10:41 a.m. This time, he urged Bush not to return. "There's still a threat to Washington," the vice president said. Rice agreed, and had told the president the same thing.

There was little debate or discussion. Cheney was worried the terrorists might be trying to decapitate the government, to kill its leaders. Bush agreed.

Within minutes, those on board the president's plane could feel it bank suddenly and sharply to the left, its course now westerly toward Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. It was within easy range, and once there food and fuel could be loaded and the president could have access to its more sophisticated communications systems.

The threat to the plane turned out to be false. Someone inside the White House had heard a threat to Air Force One, perhaps in a phoned-in call, and passed it up the line using the code word "Angel." Others thought the threatening caller had used the code word. It took days for the incident to be sorted out and weeks before the White House publicly acknowledged it.

As Air Force One headed to Barksdale, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the White House, seeking to speak with the president. Rice took the call instead. The Russian president told Rice the Russians were voluntarily standing down their military exercise as a gesture of solidarity with the United States.

News reports portrayed Washington as shut down, the Capitol and the White House evacuated, federal agencies emptied out, the streets under patrol. In their underground bunker, Cheney and the others began to worry that the rest of the country and capitals around the world would assume that the U.S. government was not functioning.

White House counselor Karen P. Hughes was at her home in Northwest Washington when she received a page telling her that "Angler" was trying to reach her. "Angler?" she wondered, before realizing it was the code name for the vice president, a devoted fly fisherman.

Cheney asked her to begin working on a presidential statement that could be delivered as soon as Bush landed at Barksdale. Cheney's wife Lynne, who had been brought to the bunker by the Secret Service, and his counselor, Mary Matalin, also went to work on it.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was drafting a statement on Air Force One as it neared Barksdale and called Hughes for consultation. One phrase drew an instant response. "This morning we were the victims of . . ." Fleischer read from the text.

"Wait a minuteýwe aren't the victims of anything," Hughes interjected. "We may have been the targets, we may have been attacked, but we are not victims."

Bush had insisted that he be the first to speak for the government. But his team in Washington grew increasingly frustrated with the time it would take for him to reach Barksdale and appear before the cameras. Hughes considered giving an interview to the Associated Press to reassure the public that the government was working. She tried to reach the president through the White House signal operator.

"Ma'am, we can't reach Air Force One," the operator said.

11:45 a.m.

The President in Louisiana: Reassuring a Nation

Air Force One arrived at Barksdale, where it was immediately surrounded by military personnel wearing green fatigues, flak jackets and helmets, and bearing automatic weapons. Reporters were told they could say only that the president was at "an unidentified location in the United States."

Bush soon spoke to his wife, first lady Laura Bush, who was in a secure location, for a second time that day and touched base with Cheney again.

"I think it's important for the people to see the government is functioning, because the TV shows our nation has been blasted and bombed," the president told Cheney. "Government is not chaotic. It's functioning smoothly." He described the attackers as "faceless cowards" and said America had to prepare for "a new war" against this new enemy.

By 12:16 p.m., the FAA command center reported that U.S. airspace had been cleared of all commercial and general aviation aircraft; only military and lifeguard flights were airborne. Twenty minutes later, according to the red digital clock in the conference room near the Barksdale base commander's office, Bush entered, looking grim. Reporters in the room noted that his eyes were red-rimmed. It had been more than three hours since Bush or any senior official had said anything publicly.

When Bush finally appeared on television from the base conference room, it was not a reassuring picture. He spoke haltingly, mispronouncing several words as he looked down at his notes. When he got to the last sentence, he seemed to gain strength. "The resolve of our great nation is being tested," he said in even tones. "But make no mistake: We will show the world that we will pass this test."

His remarks were fed by the media pool to the networks, causing a short delay before the nation could see the commander in chief. The entire statement consisted of just 219 words, and the president took no questions from reporters.

Shortly after 1:30 p.m., Air Force One took off for Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where there were secure facilities that would allow the president to conduct a meeting of his National Security Council in Washington over a video link.

On the plane, Bush expressed his irritation over being away from the White House. "I want to go back home ASAP," he told Card, according to notes of the conversation. "I don't want whoever did this holding me outside of Washington."

Some aides recall Bush saying he would return to Washington later in the day, unless there was some extraordinary new threat. The senior Secret Service agent aboard Air Force One told Bush the situation was "too unsteady still" to allow his return.

"The right thing is to let the dust settle," Card said.

As he was leaving Barksdale, Bush made another round of calls, including one to Rumsfeld expressing shock over the damage at the Pentagon. "Wow, it was an American airliner that hit the Pentagon," Bush said. "It's a day of national tragedy, and we'll clean up the mess, and then the ball will be in your court and Dick Myers's court to respond."

Air Force General Richard B. Myers was slated to become the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in three weeks.

2:36 p.m.

The President on Air Force One: A 'Comforting Call'

En route to Offutt, the president reached his father on the phone. His aides left him alone in the cabin.

"Where are you?" Bush recalled asking his father.

The former president said he and his wife, Barbara, were in Milwaukee, on their way to Minneapolis.

"What are you doing in Milwaukee?" the president inquired.

"You grounded my plane," the former president said.

It was, said Bush, "a comforting call."

"I told him, 'We're going to be fine.' I said I knew exactly what we need to do, the team is functioning well."

2:50 p.m.

The President in Nebraska: National Security Council Meets

Air Force One landed at Offutt. Before leaving his plane, Bush repeated to his lead Secret Service agent, "We need to get back to Washington. We don't need some tinhorn terrorist to scare us off. The American people want to know where their president is."

The president was driven the short distance to the U.S. Strategic Command headquarters and was ushered into the secure command center, a cavernous room with multi-story video screens and batteries of military personnel at computer terminals hooked into satellites monitoring activities around the globe. As Bush arrived, they were tracking a commercial airliner on its way from Spain to the United States. It was giving out an emergency signal, indicating it might be hijacked.

Bush remembers a voice booming out from a loudspeaker. "Do we have permission to shoot down this aircraft?"

"Make sure you've got the I.D.," the president responded. "You follow this guy closely to make sure."

It was another false alarm.

At 3:30 p.m. Bush convened the day's first meeting of his National Security Council; the others were piped in by secure video links from various command centers in Washington.

CIA Director Tenet reported that he was virtually certain bin Laden and his network were behind the attacks. A check of the passenger manifests of the hijacked flights had turned up three known al Qaeda operatives on American Airlines Flight 77, which had struck the Pentagon.

One of them, Khalid Al-Midhar, had come to the CIA's attention the previous year, when he traveled to Malaysia and met with a key al Qaeda suspect in the 2000 terrorist bombing of the USS Cole. The FBI had been informed about Al-Midhar and he had been put on a watch list, but he had slipped into the United States over the summer and the bureau had been looking for him since. Tenet said al Qaeda was the only terrorist organization in the world that had the capability to pull off such well-coordinated attacks. And, he said, intelligence monitoring had overheard a number of known bin Laden operatives congratulating each other after the strikes. He said information collected before Sept. 11 but only now being processed indicated that operatives had expected something big. But none of it specified the day, time or place of the attacks in a way that would have allowed the CIA or FBI to preempt them.

"Get your ears up," the president told Tenet and the others. "The primary mission of this administration is to find them and catch them."

Cheney voiced concern that more hijacked planes could be out there.

Tenet said that since all the attacks had taken place before 10 a.m., that was probably it for the day but there was no way to be sure.

FBI Director Mueller expressed concerns that investigators still did not know how the terrorists had penetrated airport security. Tenet said it was essential to know this before flights resumed.

"I'll announce more security measures, but we won't be held hostage," Bush insisted. "We'll fly at noon tomorrow," he said, although it took three more days for commercial flights to resume and then only on a reduced schedule.

Someone mentioned that New York officials had asked whether they should urge people to go back to work the next day, particularly those working in banks and the financial markets.

"Terrorists can always attack," Rumsfeld said. "The Pentagon's going back to work tomorrow."

People in New York should go back to work, the president said. "Banks should open tomorrow, too."

Bush asked about coming back to Washington, although he had already told his traveling party that he would fly back immediately after the video conference. Cheney suggested the president return and make a statement at Andrews, but the Secret Service still insisted that it was not safe.

"I'm coming back," Bush said.

As the meeting was ending Bush said, "We will find these people. They will pay. And I don't want you to have any doubt about it."

The American public had seen Bush only twice during the day, both times in less than ideal circumstances. In the White House bunker, Bush's advisers felt someone had to appear in public to provide information about what the government was doing to deal with the crisis.

Cheney was the logical candidate, but one administration official said there were concerns that his appearance would remind people of then-Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, who on the day President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, came into the White House briefing room and declared, "As of now, I am in control here."

Instead, Hughes was deputized to make a statement, which she did from the FBI building, since the Secret Service refused to allow the press into the White House briefing room. Hughes described a government still functioning, but took no questions.

As Air Force One headed for Washington, the president placed a sympathy call to Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, whose wife, Barbara, had been killed in the plane that smashed into the Pentagon. Bush then conferred with Hughes. He wanted to make a short address to the nation that night from the Oval Office.

The president's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, working from home, had e-mailed Hughes a rough draft, which she substantially reworked, based on her conversation with Bush.

One sentence in the draft from Gerson read, "This is not just an act of terrorism. This is an act of war." That squared with what Bush had been saying all day, but he told Hughes to take it out. He was not ready to talk publicly about going to war.

"Our mission is reassurance," Bush told her.

"One of the things I wanted to do was, I wanted to calm nerves," Bush said in the interview. "I wanted to show resolve, and I wanted the American people to know a couple of thingsýone that this was an unusual moment, but that we will survive, and we'll win.

"But I didn't want to add to the angst of the American people yet, I guess is a good way to describe that. I felt like I had a job as the commander in chief to first, not be warlike, but to be moreýas good as I could to be firm, but to be as comforting as possible, in a very difficult moment for the country."

Bush said in the interview that he was seeking to reassure the country "that I was safe . . . not me, George W., but me the president; reassuring that our government was functioning, and that we're going to take care of the American people; reassuring that those who did this would be brought to justice. In other words, there had to be some sense of balance in the speech. On the other hand, I also knew I had plenty of time to make warlike declarations, which happened the next morning."

6:34 p.m.

The President in Washington: Formulating a Policy

Air Force One landed at Andrews. On his way back to the White House, his Marine One helicopter flew over the Pentagon to give the president a first-hand look at the damage. At the White House, he went to the small study off the Oval Office to confer with Rice, Hughes, Card, Fleischer and others about the speech.

Gerson had gone back to the campaign speech on national defense that Bush made in 1999 at The Citadel, in which he said that those who sponsored terrorism or attacks on the United States could count on a "devastating" response. In the draft text Gerson sent to Hughes that day, he had written, "We will make no distinction between those who planned these acts and those who permitted or tolerated or encouraged them."

"That's way too vague," Bush complained, proposing the word "harbor" as an alternative. In final form, what the White House came to call the Bush Doctrine was put this way: "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

The declaration was a huge step for the administration. Although he had talked about the idea in the campaign and aides had been working for months on a new policy for dealing with al Qaeda, Bush had never enunciated his anti-terrorism policy as president. What he outlined that night from the Oval Office committed the United States to a broad, vigorous and potentially long war against terrorism, rather than a targeted retaliatory strike. The decision to state the policy that night was made without consulting most of his national security team, including Cheney and Powell.

Rice asked whether he wanted to make that kind of far-reaching declaration in a speech designed mostly to reassure the nation. "You can say it now or you'll have other opportunities to say it," she told him.

"What do you think?" he asked.

She said she favored including it that night. First words matter more than almost anything else, she thought.

"We've got to get it out there now," Bush said.

Bush then went down into the White House bunker, where he gave his wife a hug and conferred with Cheney before going back upstairs to freshen up for the speech.

Back in the West Wing, aides were still debating whether the president should make a firmer statement about America being at war. Hughes told them she was confident she knew where Bush stood on that issue but agreed to have it aired one more time. Her deputy, White House communications director Dan Bartlett, was given the assignment to speak to Bush directly.

The president had just come out of the bedroom and was putting on a different necktie when Bartlett arrived. He told Bush he was carrying a proposed change to the text.

"What?" Bush said. "No more changes."

Bartlett showed him the proposed language.

"I've already said no to that," Bush said.

Bartlett returned to the West Wing. "Thanks," he said to Hughes. "You can take the message next time."

Bush spoke for approximately seven minutes from the Oval Office. "A great people has been moved to defend a great nation," he said, closing with a statement of resolve. "America has stood down enemies before and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in the world."

At 9 p.m., Bush met with his full National Security Council, followed roughly half an hour later by the meeting with a smaller group of key advisers who would become his war cabinet.

Powell, back in Washington from Peru, described the immediate diplomatic tasks: dealing with Afghanistan and its ruling Taliban, which harbored bin Laden, and neighboring Pakistan, which had closer ties to the Taliban regime than any other nation.

"We have to make it clear to Pakistan and Afghanistan this is showtime," Powell said.

"This is a great opportunity," Bush said, adding that the administration now had a chance to improve relations with other countries around the world, including Russia and China. It was more than flushing bin Laden out, he indicated.

Cheney raised the military problem of retaliating against al Qaeda's home base, noting that in Afghanistan, a country decimated by two decades of war, it would be hard to find anything to hit.

Bush returned to the problem of bin Laden's sanctuary in Afghanistan. Tenet said they must deny the terrorists that sanctuary by targeting the Taliban as well. Tell the Taliban we're finished with them, he urged.

Discussion turned to whether bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Taliban were the same. Tenet said they were. Bin Laden had bought his way into Afghanistan, supplying the Taliban with tens of millions of dollars.

Rumsfeld said the problem was not just bin Laden and al Qaeda but the countries that supported terrorismýthe point of the president's address that night.

"We have to force countries to choose," the president said.

11:08 p.m.

The President at the White House: 'We Think It's Bin Laden'

After the meeting had ended and Bush had returned to the residence, he and his wife were awakened by Secret Service agents. The agents rushed them downstairs to the bunker because of a report of an unidentified plane in the area. Bush was in running shorts and a T-shirt as he made his way down the stairs, through the tunnel and into the bunker. It proved to be a false alarm, and the Bushes returned to the residence for the rest of the night.

Like his father, Bush tries to keep a daily diary of his thoughts and observations. That night, he dictated:

"The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."

"We think it's Osama bin Laden."

"We think there are other targets in the United States, but I have urged the country to go back to normal."

"We cannot allow a terrorist thug to hold us hostage. My hope is that this will provide an opportunity for us to rally the world against terrorism."

Staff researchers Jeff Himmelman and Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.


-------- MILITARY

Front Lines

New York Times
January 27, 2002
By ANDREA KANNAPELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/weekinreview/27WARS.html

MIDEAST It was a bloody week, with Israel's army taking over the city of Tulkarm in the West Bank and conducting a raid on what it called a bomb-making laboratory in nearby Nablus, killing four members of Hamas. Then, in the first attack on Jerusalem since Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, called for a cease-fire last month, a Palestinian opened fire with an M-16, killing 2 and wounding 20. A Palestinian, described by Israelis as a Hamas leader and by Palestinians as a relative of a Hamas leader, was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike in Gaza. And then a suicide bomber attacked in Tel Aviv, injuring more than two dozen people - and setting off Israeli airstrikes in the West Bank and Gaza.

President Bush strongly criticized Mr. Arafat, saying he was "enhancing terror" with a boatload of smuggled arms intended for use against Israel's leadership. It appeared to be the first time an American official had accused Mr. Arafat of direct involvement in the arms shipment, smuggled from Iran and seized by Israel three weeks ago.

AFGHANISTAN The fighting isn't over. In the most intense battles in weeks, U.S. forces struck against two Taliban leadership compounds north of Kandahar. At least 15 Taliban were killed, and 27 were taken prisoner.

Reports of both Iranian arms shipments into two northwestern provinces, Helmand and Herat, added to suspicions of an organized effort to destabilize western Afghanistan intended to undercut the authority of the U.S.-backed interim government.

A United Nations official who left his job monitoring tensions between Afghan warlords suggested that the international security force in Kabul, expected to number 5,000, should be expanded across the country and strengthened to as many as 35,000. And during a visit by the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, Hamid Karzai, the interim government's leader, made his strongest indication yet that he would allow a peacekeeping force to operate nationwide.

Mr. Karzai's government began to get some money to work with. Bills printed in Moscow in 1996, and held there ever since, were delivered to Kabul and immediately put to good use: 219,000 civil servants got their first pay in six months, totaling some $8 million.

The United States released its freeze on $217 million in Afghan assets, while Britain released its on $79 million. And an international meeting in Tokyo on how to economically rebuild Afghanistan yielded pledges of $4.5 billion over the next five years.

THE PRISONERS A Defense Department photograph of shackled prisoners at Guantánamo Bay kneeling before American soldiers with their heads and eyes covered prompted protests about humiliation and psychological torture from the British, German and Dutch governments and the European Union, and it also inflamed longstanding concerns that the United States answers only to itself in international matters.

The U.S. began a media counteroffensive, with the defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, holding a long news conference to say the prisoners in the photograph had just arrived from Afghanistan, and were about to be placed inside their 8-by-8-foot chain-link cells. Still, with 158 of the base's 160 cells occupied, the Pentagon stopped further transfers, and Mr. Rumsfeld decided to examine the base in person. The Pentagon began flying in reporters from British, French, German and Australian news organizations.

John Walker Lindh, the 20-year-old found fighting with the Taliban, was returned to the United States and appeared, shaved and shorn, before a federal district court in Virginia, where he quietly said he understood the charges against him: conspiring to kill Americans in Afghanistan and supporting terrorist groups. His team of five lawyers suggested their defense would be built on the notion of an innocent abroad, inadvertently drawn in to Al Qaeda's terror network.

AL QAEDA The 13 men arrested in Singapore recently have described a well-organized terror network stretching across Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, and perhaps reaching into Australia, that may have rivaled the capabilities of Al Qaeda's web of agents in Europe. As in Europe and the U.S., the members led outwardly normal lives, arousing no suspicion, but they had plans to blow up the embassies of the United States, Israel, Australia and Britain, investigators say.

PAKISTAN-INDIA A flurry of diplomacy reduced tensions between the two nations, but India, which like Pakistan has nuclear weapons, successfully tested an intermediate-range missile that could expand its ability to deliver a nuclear warhead.

Gunmen opened fire on the American Center in Calcutta, killing four policemen. The U.S. was wary of calling it a terrorist attack, especially after a Dubai-based gangster, Aftab Ansari, said he ordered it to revenge the killing of a friend by Indian police. India blamed a terrorist group in Pakistan.

-------- afghanistan

For Afghan City's Needy, The Relief Is Slow to Come
With Aid Focused on Rural Areas, Urban Poor Go Unnoticed

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42746-2002Jan26?language=printer

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Jan. 26 -- They dwell in caves with child-size doorways along a thousand unnamed, twisting, mud-walled alleys that honeycomb this ancient city.

But every time word spreads that another relief agency is passing out free flour, tea, stoves or blankets, thousands of needy people emerge from their lairs and converge on the spot, followed by a stream of donkey carts whose enterprising drivers know their hungry clients will not be able to lug the heavy sacks home.

Some are widowed mothers who have become permanent beggars, haunting every giveaway site in their billowing veils and besieging relief workers with insistent pleas and grasping hands. Others are working families whose homes were destroyed in the recent bombing or who fled the city during American airstrikes and are now trying to piece together already precarious lives.

In a country plagued for two decades by almost constant warfare and the absence of a functioning economy, poverty is rampant. But while international aid agencies struggle to help hundreds of thousands of rural Afghans displaced by years of drought, the plight of the urban poor often goes unnoticed.

Here in Kandahar, a city of about 400,000, they remain largely hidden from view, their numbers too high and too transient to count, especially since the chaotic flurry of human flight impelled by U.S. bombing in October and November and the subsequent collapse of the ruling Taliban.

In the past two weeks, several international relief agencies have distributed dozens of truckloads of food and supplies to more than 4,000 families in the city -- perhaps 25,000 people. It is nowhere near enough, and every emptied truck is trailed by hundreds of disappointed supplicants.

"The poor are too many, and the material is too little," said Abdul Turabi, an official with Islamic Relief, an aid agency here with branches worldwide. "Afghanistan is like a broken body with no eyes, no arms and no legs. People need everything, and we cannot give them that."

Virtually every family has a terrible tale of woe to tell, often tracing the brutal contours of recent Afghan history through a decade of war with Soviet forces, more years of civil conflict and religious repression, and the U.S. bombing that damaged several neighborhoods and left hundreds dead or wounded.

The story of Din Mohammed, 35, an illiterate laborer, is typical. He has not worked in months. His house, which was near the home of Mohammad Omar, the Taliban's leader, was destroyed by U.S. bombs in November; the family now lives in a borrowed room.

"I don't want to beg. I want to find a job, but there aren't any," said Mohammed, unloading a wheelbarrow full of donated flour, tea, sugar and beans he had just trundled home across the city because he could not afford to pay for a donkey cart. "We are lucky the bombs didn't kill us, but everything we had was burned up."

Mohammed's problems did not begin two months ago. His widowed mother, Zakiroh, has only one leg; the other was amputated in 1989 after it was struck by a Soviet rocket and turned gangrenous before she could reach a hospital. His wife, Akhtar, has only one eye; the other was struck by bomb shrapnel when she was 5. She has borne four children, but three died as infants.

Now Akhtar, 20, provides the family's only income by hand-embroidering men's tunics at home. Each one takes her two weeks and brings in the equivalent of $50, which is just enough to buy food and supplies for the next half-month.

"The work goes slowly, because of my one eye," she explained shyly, her face half-hidden behind a veil. "I try to keep my family fed and clean, but it is hard. Last week I had to borrow [50 cents] to pay for laundry soap."

The plight of Kandahar's countless widows is even more desperate. Hundreds of them call out competing litanies of suffering as they clamor for official attention at food distribution sites, clutching at exasperated aid workers with one hand and clutching their veils with the other.

Their sons were killed in the fighting; their daughters have married and fled to Pakistan. The Taliban would not let them work, and the new government has no jobs to offer. Their in-laws have abandoned them; their relatives are stingy.

"My husband died in the Russian war. My son-in-law was killed in the American bombing, and now my daughter is a widow, too. We are nine people in one house, and we have nothing," said Sardar Bibi, 40, who wept as she huddled with a dozen other widows outside the office of Mercy Corps, an international relief agency. Three other women cut her off, each vying for attention.

Relief officials said they try to determine which families are the neediest in each community, asking local religious leaders for guidance and sending in household survey teams who work in pairs to ensure that no private deals are struck between individual families and unscrupulous employees. Arguments are common, and a violent brawl was reported last week when one neighborhood faction suspected that another was being favored with extra ration cards.

"If we ask one person who is poor in the area, he will mention only his relatives," said Turabi, the Islamic Relief official. "It is more accurate if we ask many people. If you have two people talking privately, everyone will suspect they are negotiating. Our strategy is to discuss it with the whole community, if possible."

Not everyone in need of assistance is destitute. Thousands were breadwinners until the weeks of conflict that brought down local Taliban forces disrupted their jobs or businesses. Some houses damaged in the bombing were sturdy, well-appointed dwellings whose owners have steady employment but little savings with which to repair their shattered ceilings and crumbled walls.

Asif Khan, 30, owns a thriving family business that sells knives, horseshoes and other tools of Kandahar's simple trades. His six-room house was badly damaged in the bombing, and he estimates it will cost him more than $500 to repair -- a princely sum for the father of seven, whose extended family of 21 shares his home.

Just behind Khan's house, located near a military facility, the homes of a half-dozen poorer families were reduced to rubble by stray bombs. This week, children scampered over the ruins while their parents picked through the debris for salvageable items. Down the alley, a dozen homes survived, but jagged cracks ran across their ceilings and walls.

"We ran away from the bombs, and when we came back we found the house full of holes," said Bibi Jan, 35, who supports eight children by baking bread for her neighbors.

"We are happy the Taliban have gone, because they beat people and wouldn't let us go to the bazaar," she said, her hands caked with white flour. "But couldn't the Americans come back and build us one nice room?"

----

Afghans reported to have seized Kashmiri arms cache

Sunday January 27, 5:37 AM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-86217.html

KABUL - Afghan security forces have seized an arms cache of a Kashmiri militant group in a village close to the Pakistani border, Radio Afghanistan reported on Saturday.

Hand grenades, anti-personnel mines, mortar shells and many rounds of ammunition belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba group were found in the Zarkano district of Kunar province, located along the border north of the Khyber Pass, it said.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of two Kashmiri militant groups Pakistan has banned after India accused them of staging an attack on New Delhi's parliament on December 13, killing 14 people. The other group is Jaish-e-Mohammad.

Both groups were based in Pakistan, which says it supports Kashmiri Muslims opposed to Indian rule but does not supply them with arms or funds.

During the five-year reign of the fundamentalist Taliban, who were driven from Kabul last November, Kashmiri militants were reported to have been trained in guerrilla fighting in Afghanistan.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is listed as a terrorist group by the United States and its ex-leader, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, is on the list of India's 20 most wanted men.

Pakistani authorities have detained Saeed and dozens of other Lashkar activists, saying they posed a threat to public order.

--------

THE ARMIES
U.S. Account of a Battle With Taliban Is Disputed

New York Times
January 27, 2002
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/international/asia/27RAID.html

CHNARTU, Afghanistan, Jan. 26 - Officials and residents near a town that was raided by United States forces early Thursday morning denied today that any of the people killed or captured were members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda as the Pentagon has claimed.

"There was a rumor coming from Kandahar that there were Al Qaeda" in the area, said the local governor, Jan Muhammad Khan, "but there were none." Mr. Khan was interviewed in his compound at Tareenkot, the capital of Oruzgan Province, which is about 80 miles north of Kandahar.

On Thursday, the Pentagon reported the most intense fighting in recent weeks in Afghanistan, saying that American troops had killed 15 fighters and captured 27 others during a predawn raid on Hazar Qadam.

The next day, military officials in Washington said the Pentagon raid had uncovered one of the largest ammunition depots to survive the American air campaign, including a half-million bullets for small arms, 400 mortar rounds and 300 rocket- propelled grenades. They also said that those people seized were "relatively senior" members of the Taliban

Mr. Khan, who was jailed by the Taliban and recently appointed governor by Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, said today that about 60 people had been killed in the raid, including some of his own men who were guarding weapons seized from the Taliban a month ago.

Soldiers under Mr. Kahn said they had found no Taliban left in the region or on the road to Hazar Qadam, which, along with the town itself, is under their control.

Habib Ullah, a commander based in this region, said four people from Chnartu were killed in the raid, none of whom were affiliated with the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

While many rank-and-file Taliban members have simply switched sides, many of the officials in this region come from committed anti- Taliban forces.

Muhammad Kader Agha, 30, a truck driver who was spending the night here insisted that none of the people killed were former Taliban members. "No, no, no. These were all new people," adding that "there were no Taliban in the area."

Mr. Agha said he was awakened early Thursday morning in Hazar Qadam by the sound of helicopters and ran to the roof of his home where he watched some 300 yards away a gunfight between United States forces and people in two compounds.

One of the compounds, he said, housed the district government offices and the other was a school where other government workers were staying. Mr. Agha said the two groups had been involved in a dispute over food supplies. He said the school was also being used to store vehicles and weapons that had been taken from residents in the area after the Taliban fled.

He said the helicopters took off about half an hour after the shooting ended, and within minutes of their departure both compounds were hit with bombs or missiles. He added that he went to the battle site later and saw what he estimated were 60 to 65 dead. An additional 27 were missing, he said, and presumed taken by the American forces.

With American air support, Oruzgan Province was wrested from the Taliban in October by troops loyal to Mr. Karzai, who is scheduled to meet with President Bush on Monday in Washington. Oruzgan is dominated by the Popalzai, which is Mr. Karzai's tribe. Residents say that since the October action, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have had no presence near Tareenkot, the provincial capital.

Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban's fugitive leader, was born in the province and the black or white turbans favored by the Taliban are the traditional headgear of the province. Gunmen in the province today are indistinguishable from Taliban fighters.

On the road to Tareenkot, which is littered with the twisted wreckage of pickup trucks and utility vehicles and the graves of their passengers, hit during the American airstrikes, it is not uncommon to spot bands of armed men who look like Taliban fighters, but whose allegiance is unclear.

Nonetheless, the road is under the control of men loyal to Afghanistan's new interim government as are the villages along the road to Hazar Qadam, where Afghanistan's national tricolor flag waves.

United States Special Forces operate under a cloak of strict secrecy in Afghanistan, where they depend on local intelligence to hunt remaining Qaeda and Taliban leaders. That intelligence, however, is often unreliable in a country with poor roads and virtually no telecommunications, outside of a few big cities, aside from the odd satellite telephone.

--------

Afghans: US Forces Killed Wrong People

January 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghanistan.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Distraught villagers trekked to Kandahar on Sunday to complain to Afghan authorities that Army Special Forces killed innocent people in a raid last week.

The delegation from the remote town of Khas Uruzgan pleaded its case to provincial officials as Prime Minister Hamid Karzai traveled Sunday to Washington, where he is expected to discuss military operations.

The villagers said they set out on the 100-mile journey just hours after Wednesday night's attack, in which Pentagon officials said about 15 people were killed, 27 captured and a large number of weapons destroyed during a raid on a Taliban arms depot.

Villagers, however, claimed U.S. forces bombed their town hall and clinic, and killed and arrested men loyal to Afghanistan's U.S.-backed interim leader, Hamid Karzai.

``I'm here to talk to these people working for the American Army,'' said Zainullah, a town council member who like many Afghans uses only one name. ``The people they have (captured), they are working for Hamid Karzai. If they arrest them, they should arrest me.''

Karzai was expected to discuss the ongoing military campaign in his meetings with President Bush and congressional leaders, though it was not known whether he would raise the Special Forces attack.

Karzai told Afghan television he would ask that the multinational security force guarding his government in the Afghan capital be expanded into the rest of Afghanistan. ``This is the determination of the Afghan people,'' he said.

The visit is Karzai's first to Washington since he assumed leadership of his war-shattered nation's interim government last month. Karzai will also address the U.N. Security Council and visit the wreckage of the World Trade Center in New York.

U.S. Army spokesman Maj. A.C. Roper said Sunday that the villagers' reports ``are not consistent with our intelligence.''

``Our soldiers are well trained. They're judicious and prudent in their use of force,'' Roper said. ``This war is fluid. It's an ever-changing battlefield.''

However, U.S. officials have acknowledged problems in gathering reliable intelligence in a country with a tradition of shifting loyalties.

``They were not Taliban. Not one was Taliban,'' said Zainullah, the town councilor. ``It's impossible.''

Yusuf Pashtun, an aide to Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha, also said the town's government building and clinic were attacked.

Kandahar officials presented the U.S. military with a list that villagers provided of some of the missing and have asked for confirmation of whether they were arrested, Pashtun said.

``This could have been a mistake, a situation of wrong information,'' Pashtun said.

But the aide also said three former senior Taliban officials were staying not far from the scene of the attack: former health minister Mullah Abbas Akhund and two aides to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Pashtun said Agha told the villagers that if they had arrested the Taliban themselves, the raid never would have happened.

The Taliban were ``living within a few kilometers of their town, how come you had not a chance to arrest them?'' he quoted the governor as saying.

Despite the ouster of the Taliban and the routing of al-Qaida, many key figures from both organizations remain at large, including Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Omar.

On Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney said he believes both bin Laden and Omar are still in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. He was skeptical of reports that bin Laden may be dead.

``We haven't seen him, obviously, in the flesh recently, and he's been very quiet. He hasn't released any videos or made any public pronouncements. But I think, if he were dead, there'd be more indications of it than we've seen,'' Cheney told ``Fox News Sunday.''

Also Sunday, American and anti-Taliban forces found a cache of rocket-propelled grenades and Soviet-made ordnance close to the Kandahar airfield, according to Command Sgt. Maj. Iuniasolua Savusa of the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade.

The weapons, which will be destroyed, were thought to have been recently hidden there, he said.

In other developments:

-- Former Afghan king Mohammad Zaher Shah is preparing to return to Kabul by March 21 and may be accompanied on the trip from Rome by Prime Minister Karzai, an aide to the king said. The king hasn't been to Afghanistan since his 1973 ouster. He will eventually convene a council to pick a new government succeeding Karzai's interim administration.

-- Marjan the lion was to be buried Monday at the Kabul Zoo, where he suffered the torments of war and injuries from a grenade thrown by an Afghan guerrilla. The one-eyed lion, who became the symbol of the country's deprivations, was found dead in his cage Saturday morning.

-- The editor of the Kabul Weekly newspaper, Fahim Dashty, formally launched the publication Sunday and said he believes it will test the interim government's stated commitment to media freedom.

-------- arms sales

Cheney asserts: Arafat getting weapons for PA from Iran

By News Agencies,
Tuesday, January 29, 2002 Shvat 16, 5762
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=122283&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney suggested Sunday that Yasser Arafat and his aides are working with Iran and the terrorist group Hezbollah to get weapons for his Palestinian Authority.

Cheney's comments followed remarks by U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Anthony Zinni, over the weekend, that Arafat is "an unreformed liar". Speaking in Washington, Zinni also compared him to a Mafia boss akin to New York Mafioso Carlo Gambino.

Zinni also compared the Palestinian security service leaders to Mafia bosses who boast about their weapons and the number of people they have killed.

In contrast, Zinni described Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in warm terms, called him a "Papa-Bear" who had aided him during his mission to the region.

Although Cheney said he wasn't sure whether Arafat went to Iran first or vice versa, the vice president asserted, "I know where he acquired the weapons. He did acquire the weapons from Iran."

"The really disturbing part of this, of course, is that there are a lot of places he could go in the Arab world if he were looking for support and sustenance or for help in moving the peace process forward," Cheney told Fox News Sunday.

"Clearly, he hasn't done that. What he's done is gone to a terrorist organization, Hezbollah, and a state that supports and promotes terrorism, that's dedicated to ending the peace process, Iran, and done business with them," he said.

Cheney also raised questions about Arafat's knowledge of a boatload of weapons from Iran that was seized earlier this month by Israeli commandos.

"Arafat has not acknowledged responsibility, but based on the intelligence we've seen, the people that were involved were so close to him it's hard to believe that he wasn't involved," Cheney said.

"The latest example of the escalating violence in the Middle East, much of it prompted by Palestinian suicide bombers, raises serious questions whether Mr. Arafat is in fact really interested in moving forward with the peace process," Cheney said. "Arafat must take the first step to prove he is making an effort to quell the violence and bring peace to the region," he added.

"He must aggressively rout out the infrastructure of the terrorist organizations in Palestine and arrest those known to plan or support such acts," he said. "Arafat must do everything he could, make a 100 percent good-faith effort to put an end to terrorism. So far he hasn't done that."

In an interview on PBS's "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" over the weekend, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell reiterated President George Bush's remarks that Arafat must take measures to rout out terror. Powell stated that, "This is in some ways a moment of truth for Chairman Arafat."

-------- business

Pentagon Official From Enron in Hot Seat
Questions Raised About Army Secretary White and Possible Conflicts of Interest

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43944-2002Jan26?language=printer

Thomas E. White Jr. was installed last year as secretary of the Army in large part because the Bush administration wanted to bring business expertise to the military. As an 11-year executive with Enron Corp. and a 23-year Army veteran, White seemed to fit the bill.

Now, his corporate experience -- his role at Enron and a key subsidiary, Enron Energy Services (EES) -- is raising questions of possible conflicts of interest and of how much he knew about potential accounting lapses at Enron.

White, 58, left Enron Energy Services as vice chairman last May for the Pentagon post. In his first major speech as secretary, he vowed to step up privatization of utility services at military bases. EES, which made its money selling energy services before Enron declared bankruptcy Dec. 2, had been seeking to contract with the military.

Public Citizen, a liberal watchdog group, is charging that was a conflict of interest and wants White to testify before Congress on any potential conflicts of interest as well as his knowledge of Enron's business practices. In addition, Public Citizen would like White to more fully explain 29 meetings and phone calls with senior Enron officials that he participated in after he became Army secretary. White has said the conversations were with "personal friends" about "Enron's deteriorating financial conditions." A senior House Democrat, Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), also wants White to testify, about Enron and related issues.

Former employees are meanwhile alleging accounting irregularities at EES at a time when White was vice chairman. No one has linked White directly to any questionable accounting practice. White and EES chairman Lou Pai were moved aside, former employees allege, to make way for a new management team that would clean up the way thousands of contracts for energy services were handled.

Taken together, the questions and allegations are presenting a perception problem for White, a retired brigadier general and decorated Vietnam veteran involved in ambitious efforts to bring about the transformation of the armed services.

"The Enron thing sounds so terrible that it's just one of these things that if you clam up, you look bad," said Andrew Bacevich, a Boston University professor, and a fan of White who, like White, was a commander of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment.

White has had little public comment about Enron beyond saying that it was a "tragedy." He has said he suffered "significant personal losses" in selling his entire portfolio of Enron stock, for $12 million, last year. He did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

In the Army, White was on the fast track. A 1967 graduate of West Point, he was a natural leader, first in his class to make general. Everyone who knew him in the Army was convinced he was headed for the top, to become a three- or four-star general. "He was a star," said retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark. "The very best the Army had."

People were not surprised when, after a brilliant career with the 11th ACR -- the illustrious "Blackhorse" unit in the front-lines of the Cold War -- Gen. Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, picked White in 1989 as his executive assistant. He was Powell's "alter ego," said Harlan Ullman, a retired naval officer and friend of both. "It is a job that requires tremendous political sophistication."

Then one day in 1990, White got a very attractive offer from Enron. It was a seven-figure package, a friend said. "For somebody who's in the Army making $100,000 a year . . . it's just an offer he couldn't refuse. He surprised a lot of his Army friends. He got out." Ullman wanted to try to talk White into staying. "Don't waste your time," Powell told him. "I've already tried."

In 1990, White, the son of a Detroit bus driver and a homemaker, joined Enron as a vice president of Enron Operations Corp. In quick succession, he became chairman and chief executive officer of Enron Power Corp., chairman and CEO of Enron Operations Corp., chairman and CEO of Enron Ventures Corp. He was also responsible for Enron Engineering and Construction Co., which built pipelines and power plants in India, including Dabhol; China; and many other countries. He became EES vice chairman in 1998. Through a small, but what some thought potentially lucrative, division, Enron Federal Solutions, EES focused on winning government contracts in energy management.

In December 1998, the Pentagon issued a directive to shift control of base utilities to private hands. EES, with White's help, won the first contract in 1999, worth $25 million over 10 years, to provide energy to Fort Hamilton in New York. Enron hired a Washington lobbyist, paying him $60,000 in 2000 to pursue military base utility privatization.

EES entered nine more bids, none of which succeeded. At confirmation hearings, White told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he would recuse himself from any decisions involving Enron. He also promised to fully divest his Enron holdings.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich) has raised questions about White's financial ties to Enron in a letter to the Office of Government Ethics, copied to White, according to a Levin spokesman. Levin's office would neither release the letter or White's reply, nor comment on the reply.

Tyson Slocum, research director at Public Citizen, said the mere fact that White held at least $25 million in Enron stock at the time he took the Army appointment posed a "huge" conflict of interest. "The military uses 70 percent of the federal government's electricity," he said. "That would represent a $2 billion windfall, if private companies were to get into that market."

Last March, EES decided it would pursue contracts only to provide energy to military bases, not to provide equipment or manage their power plants, spokeswoman Peggy Mahoney said. Enron has succeeded in none of its bids and has made no subsequent bids, she said.

It remains unclear how much White, as EES vice chairman, knew about the firm's accounting practices. "His primary focus was supporting [contract] origination with big customers, schmoozing and rainmaking," said Glenn Dickson, an EES director laid off in December. "Obviously, we closed a lot of big deals while he was involved."

Contracts at EES have also been criticized for failing to adequately protect the company from unnecessary risks. "I've been at Enron a long time and I've never in my life seen a more complicated contract than theirs," said a former high-level Enron executive who worked at EES.

In late 2000 and early 2001, after the electricity crisis in California, EES suffered big losses as energy prices spiked, former employees said. One former manager, Margaret Ceconi, sent Enron board members a memo in August alleging that more than $500 million in losses were being hidden in the firm's massive Wholesale Services Group. She alleged the transactions made EES look more profitable to investors.

The memo, first reported last week by the Houston Chronicle, did not allege that White knew of or approved the loss reassignment, which she also reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Her attorney said it is unclear whether anyone inside Enron or at the SEC acted on her complaints.

Though there is no evidence he knew of the "segment allocation" highlighted by Ceconi, White was EES's second in command and his compensation depended on the firm's fortunes. "Tom White and Lou Pai in my humble opinion are definitely responsible for the fact that we sold huge contracts with little thought as to how we were going to manage the risk or deliver the service," Dickson said.

In early 2001, a new management team took over at EES, former employees said. "The company suspected that there were serious issues on some of these contracts, so they brought in some of the wholesale guys who were ultimately more adept than Tom was at valuing commodity contracts," said the former high-level EES executive. "Tom's a very smart man. But he never projected himself out as being a risk-management expert at a company."

Staff reporter Joe Stephens and staff researchers Madonna Lebling, Lynn Davis and Margaret Smith contributed to this report.

-------- drug war

Was Rainbow Farm Another Waco?
Marijuana Advocates Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm Sensed the Government Was Out To Get Them. And Then They Were Dead. Was Rainbow Farm Another Waco?

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page F01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37976-2002Jan25.html

VANDALIA, Mich. - At the entrance to Rainbow Farm, a strand of yellow police tape flaps in the cold Michigan wind and a dead brown bouquet sits beside a sign that reads, "In Loving Memory of Tom & Rollie."

At the base of a flagpole a few yards up the driveway, there's another sign left by supporters of Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm: "Wake Up -- Who's Next? You?"

"After Tom and Rollie were killed, we found a Rainbow Farm flag on the ground here and it looked like there was a bullet through it," says Trena Moss, a local plumber and friend of Crosslin and Rohm. "We put up an American flag, upside down."

Fat flakes of snow are falling from a bleak gray sky on what's left of the Rainbow Farm campground. Snow covers the fields where thousands of campers gathered for the annual pro-marijuana festivals -- Hemp Aid and Roach Roast. It covers the stage where aging '60s stars rocked out -- the Byrds and Big Brother and the Holding Company. It falls on the foundations of a half-dozen buildings burned to the ground during a five-day siege last summer -- an armed standoff that started after police arrested Crosslin and Rohm for growing pot, then took Rohm's 12-year-old son away from him and prepared to seize the farm as a public nuisance.

Snow also covers the spot where Crosslin, 46, was shot through the forehead by an FBI sharpshooter and the place beneath a scraggly pine tree where Rohm, 28, was killed 12 hours later by a Michigan State Police sniper who put a bullet right through Rohm's rifle butt and into his chest, splattering blood over the camouflage paint on his face.

Trena Moss stands in the falling snow and tells a story about the time country singer Merle Haggard played a gig at one of the farm's pro-pot festivals. "Tom told me that when Merle came here, he said to Tom and Rollie, 'I can't believe they haven't killed you boys yet.' Rollie laughed real hard at that."

A Place in the Country

"In a way," says local attorney Dan French, "it's our own little Waco."

The fatal endgame played out last Labor Day weekend, but the tension had been building during years of scrapping between the local law enforcement apparatus and the two marijuana activists.

It began back in the early '90s, when Grover "Tom" Crosslin bought the 34-acre farm and an adjoining 20-acre wood near Vandalia, a hog-farming town of a few hundred people in southwest Michigan, about 30 miles north of Elkhart, Ind.

Crosslin grew up in Elkhart, a city famous for its RV factories. When he got out of high school, he became a truck driver, got married in his teens and divorced a couple of years later. He started a successful business installing flagpoles and then began buying run-down properties in Elkhart, fixing them up, and selling or renting them. He did good work, winning an award from Elkhart's Historical and Cultural Preservation Commission in 1995.

Crosslin loved to smoke dope, his friends say, and when he got stoned, he'd launch into loud libertarian rants about how the government had no right to tell people what they can or can't smoke. He used to toke up with his construction crews after work. One of his workers was Rolland Rohm, a quiet, easygoing guy with long blond hair and a big, happy laugh. Rohm had fathered a son at 15 and was briefly married. Soon, Tom and Rollie became a couple.

Crosslin bought the farm in Vandalia as a place where he and Rohm could escape their urban life in Elkhart. They loved to pick blueberries, fish in the pond and just stroll the hills with their dog, Thai Stick.

In the mid-'90s, Crosslin bankrolled Rohm's legal battle to gain custody of his son, Robert, who was then about 6 years old. When Rohm won that fight, the two men began raising the boy in Vandalia.

"Robert loved being with his dad -- the father-son relationship was just incredible," says Tammy Brand, 32, a neighbor whose son Dairik was Robert's best friend. The kids played baseball on a team coached by Brand's husband and they frequently stayed at each other's houses. "Robert was here two or three nights a week and Dairik was over there the same amount. I felt just as comfortable with him being there as here. It was not an unsafe environment."

Brand would have been upset if Crosslin and Rohm had smoked marijuana around her son but they never did, she says. "They kept it to themselves."

Crosslin continued developing real estate in Elkhart and one day he visited Sondra Mose-Ursery, Vandalia's part-time mayor, to ask about real estate prospects there. He overheard her taking a phone call from a poor woman begging for clothes for her kids. He seemed surprised to learn of poverty in Vandalia, she recalls, and he immediately took her out to Kmart to buy Christmas presents for the town's poor kids.

"He bought trains and dolls and trucks," she says. "He was like a kid going shopping, a person going back to childhood."

He also gave her a $5 bill for each kid on her Christmas list. He spent over a thousand dollars that day, she recalls, and he didn't want any credit for it.

But Vandalia's secret Santa also exhibited a violent streak. On April 19, 1995 -- the day of the Oklahoma City bombing -- he was arrested for assault in a local bar. These days, Crosslin's supporters claim he was defending himself against gay-bashers. But at the time, witnesses told police a different story: Crosslin was ranting about the bombing and denouncing the evil federal government when a woman told him to shut up. He cursed her and when she stood up to protest, he shoved her. Then he darted behind the bar, grabbed the bartender's club and hit her with it before the owner wrestled him to the floor.

He pleaded guilty to an assault charge and served several months in the Cass County jail.

When he got out, his anti-government views had hardened. He channeled his anger into the movement to legalize marijuana. He turned Rainbow Farm into a campground and began holding pro-pot festivals every Labor Day and Memorial Day weekend.

"Rainbow Farm supports the medical, spiritual and responsible recreational uses of marijuana for a sane and compassionate America," he wrote on the farm's Web site. As for the war on drugs, he added: "We consider this a war on us and we are fighting back."

Instant Flashback

If you got stoned enough at one of Tom and Rollie's festivals -- and thousands of people did -- you might think you'd traveled through time and ended up at Woodstock.

Up onstage, the Byrds or Big Brother or some local band would be jamming. Out in the field, where 3,000 people from all over the Midwest were camped out, a group called Granola Funk cooked up big batches of free veggies and performed puppet shows for the kids. Vendors sold everything from corn dogs to handblown glass hash pipes. At the farm's store, called "The Joint," you could buy a cappuccino or a bong. And sometimes Crosslin stood at the gate, handing out free rolling papers.

Meanwhile, on one of the campground's hills, they would set up the "Naked Hippie Slide" -- basically just a piece of plastic covered with soapy water -- and people would strip off their clothes and slide down it, while spectators laughed uproariously.

"The first time I went out there," says Melody Karr, 37, who volunteered in the children's tent at festivals, "I said, 'Wow! Hippies really do exist! I heard they'd died out.' "

But the festivals weren't just a stoned giggle or a chance for Crosslin to make some money. They had a serious political purpose -- proselytizing for Michigan lawyer Greg Schmid's "Personal Responsibility Amendment," designed to decriminalize marijuana. Schmid set up booths, where he gathered signatures on petitions to get the amendment on the Michigan ballot. Between the rock bands, Schmid, Crosslin and other activists exhorted the crowd to register to vote, sign the petition and get involved in the movement.

"Rainbow Farm was the conduit for people interested in marijuana law reform," Schmid says. "The best petitioners I met, I met through Rainbow Farm."

Lots of folks loved the Rainbow Farm festivals but Scott Teter was not one of them.

Teter, 39, is Cass County's conservative Republican prosecutor. Elected in 1996, he won a reputation for being tough on deadbeat dads. When he learned that a lot of local teenagers were having babies, he put up billboards that said, "If your sex partner is under 16, they won't be when you get out of prison" -- a move that earned him an appearance on the "Today" show.

Teter first learned of problems at the Rainbow Farm festivals in 1997, when local cops got complaints about noise and litter. He wrote a letter to Crosslin, saying, as he recalls, "You need to police your gatherings."

In 1999, Teter heard reports of blatant dope-smoking at the festivals and he wrote a second letter to Crosslin, officially warning him that if he permitted drug use on his land, the property could be seized by the county as a public nuisance.

That threat angered Crosslin, who fired back a long, pugnacious reply: "I have discussed this with my family and we are all prepared to die on this land before we allow it to be stolen from us. How should we be prepared to die? Are you planning to burn us out like they did at Waco, or will you have snipers shoot us through our windows like the Weavers at Ruby Ridge? Maybe the Govenor [sic] can call in the National Guard for another Kent State . . . "

'Head-Butting'

Teter huddled with state and county cops to figure out how to handle the festivals. They quickly agreed that sending cops to make dope busts in a crowd of 3,000 potheads was not the best option.

"It's not worth starting a war," Teter says.

So they devised a plan that combined harassment with surveillance. Police patrolled the roads leading to the festivals, stopping cars on any pretext and searching them for dope. Undercover cops infiltrated the festivals, buying drugs, and the state police rigged up an RV with a hidden periscope camera and videotaped all sorts of antics, including the Rainbow Farm security guards smoking joints.

Meanwhile, Teter filed suit to stop the festivals under an ordinance that required permits for gatherings of more than 500 people. Crosslin fought the suit on a technicality that exempted nonprofit groups from the ordinance. He claimed the festivals were sponsored by an obscure Ohio-based nonprofit with a grant to study hemp -- and he won.

A year later, Teter filed suit again, alleging that the nonprofit was no longer registered with the state. But by the time the case came to court, it was registered. Crosslin had hand-carried the paperwork through the bureaucracy. And he won again.

"It was head-butting," Tammy Brand says, referring to the feud between the campground and the authorities. "This head-butting went on for years. What it reminded me of was the Dukes of Hazzard versus Boss Hogg."

On April 20, 2001, Rainbow Farm held another festival and the next day, Konrad Hornack, a 17-year-old who'd attended the festival, died when the car he was driving hit a school bus in a nearby town. Police said he had marijuana in his bloodstream.

After that, Teter decided to use another weapon against the farm, the same weapon the feds once used against Al Capone -- taxes.

A woman who'd worked at the Joint told police that Crosslin was paying some employees off the books. Teter passed that information to the Michigan Treasury Department, which obtained a warrant to search the farm for tax records.

Early on the morning of May 9, some 30 state police officers dressed in combat fatigues and black ski masks raided Rainbow Farm, rousing sleeping staffers and campers and pointing guns in their groggy faces.

That show of force was necessary, Teter says, because of Crosslin's pugnacious 1999 letter: "There was at least the possibility that he'd do what he said and attempt to harm officers."

Crosslin didn't do that but he did scream at the cops, curse them, call them Nazis and worse. Rohm, typically, was much quieter. The police claim they found him in the farmhouse basement, trying to stash 300 pot plants into garbage cans. Upstairs, the cops found more pot and a couple of loaded rifles.

Teter charged Crosslin and Rohm with manufacturing marijuana, running a drug house and possession of firearms while committing a felony. He also charged Crosslin with possession of guns by a convicted felon.

Both men faced more than 20 years in prison. And Teter wasn't done with them yet.

Crossing the Rubicon

After Crosslin and Rohm were released on bail, the prosecutor got a court order forbidding festivals on Rainbow Farm. He also filed papers to seize the farm as a public nuisance. And he worked with the county to remove Robert from his father's custody for "neglect secondary to criminal behavior."

One day, Robert didn't come home from school. Children's Protective Services had grabbed the 12-year-old off the playground. After a hearing the next day, he was placed with a foster family in a nearby town -- a foster family headed by a retired policeman.

Rohm was devastated. "Rollie had tears in his eyes," says Brand. "The man had lost his son. He felt helpless and hopeless."

Now, the two men not only faced decades in prison, but they were also likely to lose their land and they'd already lost Robert.

"Tom was defiant but Rollie was scared," says Dori Leo, the lawyer who handled their criminal cases.

Leo, a former Chicago prosecutor, felt that Teter was too hard on the men, particularly Rohm. "He had the owner of the farm in his grasp, so why be so tenacious about Rollie?" she asks.

"I took an oath when I took this office to enforce the law as it's written, not as I want it to be," Teter says. "There isn't a let-them-do-it option."

Crosslin was enraged that the government could seize his land and take Rohm's son. He was determined to fight back. Ignoring the court order, he held a festival on the farm in mid-August. It wasn't much of a gathering -- only a few dozen people showed up and two of them were undercover cops.

The cops told Teter that Crosslin offered them a hit on his pot pipe. Teter returned to court and asked the judge to revoke the two men's bond. The judge scheduled a bail-revocation hearing for Aug. 31.

For Crosslin, that was it. He had no intention of going to jail, he told friends, and if the government seized his land, he'd make sure there was nothing left on it.

"I'm going to die on my farm, not in prison," he told Doug Leinbach, a former manager of Rainbow Farm.

During the last week of August, Crosslin and Rohm drew up identical handwritten wills, leaving all their possessions -- including the farm and several other properties -- to Rohm's son. Then they started giving away stuff, letting the hippies who hung around the campground help themselves to whatever they wanted from the Joint.

As their court date approached, Crosslin left a note in an old brick house he was renovating in downtown Vandalia:

"The action we must take now is not what we wanted. We would have prefered [sic] a peaceful end to the drug war. . . . No longer are we talking peace. The Government must be stopped. Scott Teter knew what was coming. . . . Our police no longer serve and protect us. We need protection from peopel [sic] we hired to protect us. . . . Let the battle begin."

The First Shot

Buggy Brown had just finished milking the cows when he saw a column of smoke coming from Rainbow Farm.

It was the morning of Friday, Aug. 31, the day Crosslin and Rohm were due in court. Brown, 35, is a thin, thoughtful man with a goatee and a ponytail, an old toking buddy of Tom and Rollie who worked at a farm just down the road.

Spotting smoke, he hustled over to Rainbow Farm and saw that the VIP room -- the little building where bands waited to go onstage -- was burning. He saw Rohm and asked him what was going on. Rollie didn't say much, except "It's time."

That sounded ominous. Brown whipped out a pipe and he and Rohm shared a few tokes.

Then Brown left, went to a nearby farm and called the police, telling them that the fire was contained and it might be best if they didn't go out to Rainbow Farm. The cops took that to mean they might be ambushed and they set up roadblocks to seal off the area.

At the courthouse, Dori Leo waited for her clients. Teter told her that fires were blazing at Rainbow Farm and they both drove out there. Leo volunteered to go talk to her clients but the police wouldn't let her -- too dangerous, they said.

Instead, Brown brought Leo's cell phone up to the farmhouse, which had no phone. She talked to both men briefly before they sent the phone back. "Tom was just ranting and raving about the government," she says, "whereas Rollie was asking questions about the situation he was in. He was scared."

Hovering above the farm was a helicopter from WNDU-TV in South Bend, Ind. Eric Walton was shooting fire footage for the evening news when the station radioed and told him and his pilot to leave because the cops said somebody was shooting at them. Back in South Bend, they found a bullet hole in the tail of the chopper, about two feet from the gas tank.

After completing his afternoon milking, Brown returned to the farmhouse. By now Crosslin and Rohm were dressed in camouflage uniforms and carrying rifles. More buildings, including the Joint, were burning.

"We sat on the back porch and watched the store burn," he says.

He smoked a bowl with Rohm -- Crosslin wasn't smoking -- and then he left, with a message from Crosslin for the TV people:

Sorry about the helicopter. It was blue and white and looked like a cop chopper.

The FBI Arrives

The next morning, a Saturday, Brown bought breakfast at McDonald's and took it up to Rainbow Farm. The three men ate and smoked some weed and shot the breeze.

That's the way it went for the next two days. Brown visited several times a day, carrying messages back and forth. At one point, Crosslin said he wanted to talk to the media. The cops nixed the idea, saying if Crosslin wanted to talk to anybody he should talk to them. But he didn't want to talk to cops. In fact, when they set up loudspeakers and started talking to him, somebody shot at the speakers from the house.

Inside the house, Crosslin and Rohm were calm, watching TV, taking showers, smoking weed, Brown says. "Rollie was the same old Rollie, extremely mellow," he says. "Tom was composed but firm. He had a purpose -- to protect his property. You're not talking about people who had lost it."

Outside, the state police had brought in an armored personnel carrier borrowed from the Michigan National Guard. On Sunday, the FBI arrived, more than 50 strong, summoned to the scene because the helicopter shooting was a federal crime.

"We were strictly in a defensive position," says John Bell, head of the FBI's Detroit office, who was in command. "There were no offensive moves made. We were just trying to contain the situation."

The FBI and the state police agreed to take turns, each guarding the area for 24 hours. On Sunday afternoon, the state police left and the FBI took over. Bell sent three FBI SWAT teams, each composed of three sharpshooters, to take positions inside Rainbow Farm. Camouflaged, they lay in the woods all night, armed with rifles, keeping an eye on the farmhouse.

On Monday morning, Brown arrived and found that Crosslin and Rohm had a visitor. Brandon Peoples, a local 18-year-old, had wandered onto the farm and was sitting calmly in the living room.

On that visit, Crosslin agreed to accept a phone and Brown brought one in. Crosslin told the FBI that he and Rohm wanted to speak to Rohm's son. The FBI refused.

"This is a boy of some tender years," Bell explains. "We weren't about to put him on there without having some knowledge of what they would be confronting this kid with."

That angered Crosslin. He cursed the cops, hung up and sent Brown back out with the phone.

Not long after that, Crosslin left the house, carrying his rifle, followed by Peoples. They walked through the woods -- right past one of the FBI's hidden SWAT teams -- and entered a neighbor's farmhouse, where they picked up some food and a coffee maker. They walked back into the house, then realized they'd forgotten the coffeepot. They returned to the neighbor's house, got the coffeepot and headed back.

They stopped in the woods to rest at a campsite for a moment. Then, according to Bell, Crosslin spotted one of the FBI agents lying on the ground about 20 feet away, and he raised his rifle to his shoulder.

When he did that, two agents fired, one of them shooting Crosslin through the forehead, killing him instantly.

"He died before he hit the ground," says Bell.

Peoples fell, too, fragments of Crosslin's skull and brain splattered across his face. Perhaps he could confirm or deny the FBI account of the shooting, but he refuses to talk to reporters.

Negotiation

Crosslin was carrying a walkie-talkie when he was shot. The FBI picked it up, called Rohm, told him his buddy would not be coming back.

They kept up contact with Rohm for a while but then he stopped responding. "Rollie, pick up the radio," they called. But they got no answer.

"There were times," Bell says, "when it seemed like he'd fallen asleep."

After dusk, the FBI's 24-hour shift ended and the state police took over, sending their own SWAT teams to take up positions on the farm. It began to rain, hard.

Rohm agreed to accept a telephone and the state police drove up to the house in the armored personnel carrier and threw a phone toward the porch. Rohm retrieved it and began talking.

Around 10 that night, Rohm's son Robert called Tammy Brand, the mother of his best friend. "Tom is dead," he told her, crying. "Don't let them kill my dad."

She promised to try to help and she drove to the nearest police barricade. A couple dozen protesters -- most of them friends of Crosslin and Rohm -- stood in the rain holding soggy signs. When Brand approached the cops, they pointed rifles at her. For 45 minutes, she begged them to talk to her. Finally, she was called into a police car. Crying, she told the cops about the call from Robert and she offered to go to the farmhouse -- or at least talk to Rollie on the phone. They declined her offer.

"They said it would just cause more emotional turmoil," she says.

At about 1 or 2 in the morning, Rohm talked to Dori Leo on the phone, asking questions about how much jail time he faced. That was a good sign, she thought: "When somebody asks you questions about the future, you figure he thinks he's got a future."

But when he asked to speak to his son, she started to worry, figuring he wanted to say goodbye.

Somewhere around 3 a.m., Rohm stopped talking and the cops decided to shake him up a little, says Lt. Mike Risko of the state police. They fired a 37mm "dummy round" -- a piece of hard rubber -- at the house, smashing a window. Rohm picked up the phone and asked why they were shooting. They started negotiating again and at 3:45 Rohm agreed to surrender at 7 if the cops would bring Robert. They agreed.

"I went home thinking, 'We've got this pretty well wrapped up,' " Risko says.

But shortly after 6 a.m., the cops spotted a fire blazing in the farmhouse. At 6:31 Rohm walked out, dressed in camouflage fatigues, his face masked with camouflage paint, and crouched between two pine trees.

The cops drove toward Rohm and the burning house in the armored personnel carrier. As they got close they were blinded by the smoke. Two cops stuck their heads out of the top of the vehicle in order to see better, Risko says, and Rohm raised his rifle to his shoulder and pointed it at them. At that moment, two state police snipers fired from 150 yards away.

One missed. The other shot through the stock of Rohm's rifle and into his chest, killing him.

Continuing Controversy

Crosslin and Rohm are dead now, but the controversy over Rainbow Farm lives on.

The official investigation into the killing of the men was conducted by Scott Teter. He concluded that the deaths were "justifiable homicide."

John Bell agrees. "This is probably nothing more than suicide-by-cop," he says. "I'm convinced that these guys were at the end of their rope and they wanted to die and if they took a couple of police officers with them, that was okay."

Leo isn't convinced. "What do we do with an animal that's out of control? We shoot it with a tranquilizer," she says. "The police were lying in wait. They saw my clients coming and going in the house and walking the property. They had opportunities to either maim or tranquilize them. Why wasn't that done? They were lying in wait, waiting for the right moment to kill them."

Grover Crosslin, Tom's father, is more blunt: "He was murdered, I'd say."

He feels the same about Rohm's death: "They burned the house down to get him out and when he came out, they shot him."

Crosslin has hired a lawyer and plans to file a wrongful-death suit.

That won't be the only legal proceeding in this case. Teter still plans to go forward with his efforts to seize Rainbow Farm as a public nuisance, despite the fact that the men who once operated it are dead.

In his will, Tom Crosslin left the farm to Robert Rohm. Now, Teter says, he's worried that the boy -- or somebody else -- might turn the place into a memorial to Crosslin and Rohm and continue holding pro-pot festivals.

"What better way to talk about their cause than to stand on their graves and reminisce about them?" he says. "It would give them a great platform and they'd be out here doing the same things they did for the last six years."

--------

Pakistan Addicts Harbor Opium Hopes

January 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Opium.html

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) -- Abdul Karim's a tailor by training, but his fellow heroin addicts call him ``The Doctor'' for his skill at finding their veins.

One by one, they come to him with their drugs -- low-grade heroin, homemade cocktails of morphine and other pharmaceuticals. They roll down their trousers, throw back their robes and wait for Karim to load his syringe with their poisons and pump them into their thighs.

Soon, they're too high to care that Karim uses the same syringe over and over -- and that by sharing it, they're at grave risk of falling victim to the wave of AIDS infections sweeping Pakistan.

``It keeps me away from grief and sorrows,'' said Karim, 35, who turned to heroin after he was fired from a sewing factory.

The resurgence of the opium trade in Afghanistan worries drug enforcers in Pakistan, where addicts are eager to get their hands once again on high-grade heroin from across the border.

Brig. Riazullah Khan Chib, a senior official with Pakistan's Anti-Narcotics Force, says the danger is not only more addicts but also more cases of AIDS.

A relatively small percentage of people -- 200,000 in the country of 140 million -- are known to have contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, many of them through intravenous drug use. But testing is spotty and experts fear many more are infected.

With funding scarce and illiteracy rates in Pakistan higher than 50 percent, educating addicts and others who know little about the deadly disease is difficult.

``We are trying our best to rehabilitate drug addicts,'' Chib said. ``But this is not an easy task and can't be accomplished without society's help and involvement.''

Heroin of high quality used to be cheap and plentiful in Pakistan. But supplies began to dry up after the Taliban seized power in 1996 and banned the cultivation of poppies from which heroin is derived.

Karim and other addicts who congregate on a trash-heaped back street in the eastern city of Lahore turned to less potent substitutes, injecting them for maximum effect.

``Fine quality heroin was available,'' said Misal Khan, 61. ``But that's all past. Now there's none of that stuff around.''

With the ouster of the Taliban by U.S.-backed opposition forces, however, Afghan farmers are again growing poppies -- despite a ban on drug trafficking by the interim post-Taliban government.

Karim and hundreds of other addicts in Lahore live amid stinking heaps of garbage on the street and a park near the city's stately 17th century Shahi Mosque. Dressed in rags, they huddle in small groups, swapping jokes, curses and syringes. Some have lived there for 20 years.

To feed their habit, many must beg or steal. Although the heroin sold on Lahore's streets is not as pure as it used to be, it is more expensive. A daily dose costs 80 cents, more than enough for a good meal.

Police occasionally round up addicts but say they don't have the facilities to hold them. Recently, five addicts were found dead among the trash, killed by cold.

-------- india

New Delhi Marks a Holiday With the Army Out of Town

By Rama Lakshmi
The Washington Post
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44075-2002Jan26?language=printer

NEW DELHI, Jan. 26 -- India held its annual Republic Day celebration today amid unprecedented security and fears of terrorist attacks, with more than 65,000 police and paramilitary forces guarding the streets of the capital, vastly outnumbering spectators.

Six weeks after gunmen attacked the Parliament building here, India deployed commandos, sharpshooters, minesweepers and bomb squads to ensure that Republic Day events were uneventful. Snipers were positioned on rooftops, security bunkers lined the parade route and a half-dozen antiaircraft guns were set up in what officials called the heaviest security ever mounted here.

The army was conspicuous in its absence. Since the attack on Parliament, which India blamed on groups based in neighboring Pakistan, the military has massed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, along with heavy artillery and missile batteries, along the Pakistani border in the largest mobilization in 30 years. As a result, the Indian army did not take part in the Republic Day parade for the first time since India became independent 53 years ago.

"Our first aim is to guard the border, and that's the job we are busy doing right now," said Col. Shruti Kant, a senior army spokesman. "We have saved about 4,000 troops for the border by not taking part in the parade this year."

Commentators on state television noted the soldiers' absence during a live broadcast of the parade.

"We are missing the army today," said one, "but we all know why they are not here. They have to be alert on the border so that all of us can carry on with our lives and freedom."

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, offered in a message to India today to take up a request by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the two countries "engage in a serious and sustained dialogue" and to "commence together a journey of peace and progress.

"Pakistan desires to establish tension-free and good neighborly relations with India," Musharraf said in his message to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Usually a grandiose show and a display of military muscle, the Republic Day parade marks the anniversary of the adoption of India's constitution. The country's top leaders, officials and foreign dignitaries were present, but the number of spectators was estimated at only 8,000. Some of them expressed disappointment that the parade was missing its traditional high point.

"Republic Day is about tanks and guns and soldiers," said Bhishambar Trivedi, 43, a bank clerk who brought his children to the parade. "But the country is passing through a difficult time. I would rather the soldiers fight the terrorists at the border than march down Delhi."

India displayed the Agni II missile, a new version of which was test-fired Friday, and people clapped enthusiastically. The biggest cheers erupted when bravery awards were given to the families of those who died defending the Parliament building during last month's attack. Fourteen people died in the fight, including the five attackers.

Today's heightened security extended beyond the parade route. Airspace in an 18-mile radius around the airport was sealed off for six hours, and no planes were allowed to take off or land. All trains were halted for two hours.

Security also was increased in all other major Indian cities, reflecting concern stemming not only from the attack on Parliament but also from Tuesday's shooting incident outside the U.S. cultural center in Calcutta, where gunmen killed five police officers and injured 20 other people.

--------

India Vows to Crush Terror, No Change in Kashmir

January 27, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-southasia-india.html

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee vowed on Sunday to crush terrorism, saying there had been no change on the ground in rebellion-torn Kashmir despite Pakistan's promise to crack down on Islamic militants.

His comments came as police in Indian-ruled Kashmir reported attacks from suspected Muslim militants and an exchange of fire between Indian and Pakistani forces.

Vajpayee, who has ordered the biggest military build-up in decades along the border with Pakistan, said terrorism directed against India will not be tolerated.

``To make us a target of terrorism, and we do not give an appropriate response, that is not possible,'' he said, a day after Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had called for talks between the two countries to end their military standoff.

``We will uproot terrorism from our soil,'' Vajpayee said in a speech to the National Cadet Corps, where school students are given basic military training.

India, incensed by an attack on its parliament last month which it blamed on Pakistan-based guerrillas, has said Islamabad must cut off support to rebels fighting its rule in Kashmir before a de-escalation could take place on the border.

The two countries have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over the disputed region.

``We are faced with the challenge of terrorism from outside, and from within the country, we have to defend our internal security, we have to make our borders inviolable,'' Vajpayee said.

India's hard-line Home (interior) Minister Lal Krishna Advani said he had not seen any change in Kashmir since Musharraf's landmark speech on January 12 denouncing terrorism in all its forms.

``It has been 15 days now, we have not seen any evidence on the ground so far as India is concerned and so far as Jammu and Kashmir is concerned,'' he told Star Television network.

Musharraf, greeting Vajpayee on India's Republic Day anniversary on Saturday, said Pakistan was ready to begin a serious and sustained dialogue with its giant neighbor to defuse tensions along their border, stretching from Kashmir to the Arabian Sea.

Police in Indian-ruled Jammu and Kashmir said five security personnel were wounded when suspected Muslim militants attacked an Indian paramilitary camp.

In a separate attack, rebels raided a policeman's house in the territory, killing his wife and son, they said.

The police said a civilian was killed when Pakistani forces fired on Indian posts on the international border in the Ramgarh sector, 40 miles from Jammu, the winter capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir.

In another incident, they said four people, including two Indian soldiers, were injured by mortar and machine gun fire from Pakistan's troops in the Nowshahra sector, 110 miles from Jammu.

The Indian and Pakistani armies exchange mortar and small arms fire almost daily in Kashmir.

DEMAND TO END SUPPORT

New Delhi has specifically demanded that Islamabad make good its promise to crack down on Islamic militancy by closing off the routes along which guerrillas enter Kashmir from Pakistan and hand over 20 men it accuses of carrying out terrorists acts.

``Handing over of those 20 would be an instant thing, that's not been done, not only not been done, there have been a number of contradictory statements,'' Advani said.

Pakistan has detained hundreds of religious extremists, shut down their offices and denounced terrorism in all its forms. It has said it will not return any Pakistani nationals sought by India but has been less adamant about the Indians on the list.

The Times of India reported on Sunday that guerrilla activity on the military control line dividing Kashmir between the two nuclear rivals had gone up in January compared with same month in the last two years.

There was no reported infiltration of militants into India's side of Kashmir in January 2000 and 2001, but 14 guerrillas had died in the current while trying to cross from Pakistan.

The newspaper did not give figures on whether there had been any change in infiltration patterns in Kashmir since Musharraf's speech this month in which he banned five Islamic groups, including two operating in Kashmir.

More than 30,000 people have died since a revolt erupted in Muslim-majority Kashmir in late 1989. Separatists put the toll closer to 80,000.

India controls about 45 percent of Kashmir, Pakistan holds just over a third and China the rest.

-------- iran

Iran Calls for Peace With Iraq

January 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Iraq.html

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iranian President Mohammad Khatami warned ``foreigners'' against interfering with Iraq's territorial integrity, state-run Tehran television reported on Sunday.

Khatami did not elaborate, but the comment was an apparent reference to the threat of U.S.-led forces attacking Iraq -- Washington's longtime foe -- as part of the war against terrorism.

Khatami's comments were made following talks with visiting Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri.

Iran and Iraq, which share a 800-mile border, host rebels fighting each other's government. A 1980-88 war between the two Muslim nations killed or wounded more than 1 million people before a U.N.-brokered cease-fire ended the bloodshed.

On Sunday Sabri and Khatami called for a resumption of peaceful relations. Sabri said the time has come for both countries to forget the past and work for permanent peace and cooperation.

Sabri's four-day visit, which ends Monday, comes on the heels of Iran's recent release of 697 Iraqi soldiers. Iraq said it had released to Iran 50 Iranian prisoners.

-------- iraq

Iraq's Aziz arrives in China after Russia visit

Sunday January 27, 12:51 PM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-86255.html

BEIJING - Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz arrived in China on Sunday, the state-run Xinhua news agency said, after a trip to Russia where he sought support in his country's confrontation with the United States.

The visit comes amid threats by the United States to use force against Iraq if it refuses to allow the return of United Nations arms inspectors, who left Iraq in 1998 complaining they were being prevented from performing their duties.

Xinhua did not say whom Aziz would meet in Beijing, nor say how long he would stay. It said only that bilateral relations "and other issues of common concern" would be on the agenda.

The Foreign Ministry declined to give details of his schedule.

U.S. President George W. Bush has warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein he would face the consequences if U.N. inspectors were not allowed to return to Baghdad, triggering speculation Washington could target Iraq in its war on terrorism following the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities.

The dispatch of inspectors, intended to determine whether Baghdad held chemical and biological weapons, was part of U.N. actions against Iraq undertaken after the 1991 Gulf War.

The action, authorised by U.N. Security Council resolution 681, also included economic sanctions against Iraq.

Following talks with Aziz, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Thursday that Moscow was opposed to any U.S. military operation against Iraq and it wanted sanctions against the nation to be lifted.

Beijing has also been sympathetic to Iraq's demand for abolition of the sanctions. China, like Russia, is a member of the U.N. Security Council.

The United States wants "smart sanctions", which would cut the list of goods requiring U.N. approval before reaching Iraq, while tightening controls over imports deemed usable for military purposes.

U.S. warplanes patrolling "no-fly zones" imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War bombed an anti-aircraft site on Thursday, the third such attack this week.

U.S. and British warplanes have patrolled the zones in northern and southern Iraq since the war and are challenged periodically by anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles.

-------- israel / palestine

Female Bomber Strikes Scarred Shopping District in Jerusalem

New York Times
January 27, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/international/middleeast/_27CND-MIDE.html

JERUSALEM, Jan. 27 - A Palestinian bomber triggered an explosion that resounded throughout Jerusalem today, killing herself and an 81-year-old man and injuring 113, most of them lightly.

If the bomber intended to die, she was the first female suicide bomber to strike in Israel since such attacks began here in 1994, the police said.

The blast scattered burning body parts across Jaffa Road and sent a cloud of swirling dust and circling pigeons into the air, witnesses said. The attack was steps from where a Palestinian gunman raked the same area with semiautomatic gunfire on Tuesday, killing two and injuring 20.

"Where's my wife?" cried Ariel Ohayon, 30, who was sobbing as he searched through the pandemonium of injured people, shattered glass and shouting police officers minutes after the explosion. "My wife disappeared and I don't know where she is." A rescue worker directed him to a nearby hospital.

As he investigated the blast site, Jerusalem's police chief, Mickey Levy, suffered a heart attack and was helped to the hospital, where he underwent surgery. He was likely to make a full recovery within days, the police said.

In all, the police said, at least 113 people were injured, two of them seriously and five of them moderately.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which followed by two days the last suicide bombing, in Tel Aviv on Friday. That earlier attack wounded two dozen people.

In last Tuesday's shooting attack here, the gunmen killed two women and injured about 20 others before being shot dead by police.

Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority condemned today's bombing and called on the United States to send its envoy, retired General Anthony C. Zinni, to the region without delay. But the Bush administration, which is weighing possible sanctions against the Palestinian Authority, has suspended General Zinni's efforts here, saying that Mr. Arafat was doing too little to fight terrorism.

At the bomb site, Jerusalem's mayor, Ehud Olmert, blamed Mr. Arafat for the bombing. "He is directly, individually and specifically responsible," he said, accusing the Palestinian leader of "inspiring the atmosphere" for terrorism.

At about 12:15 this afternoon, First Sergeant Vladimir Fishman of the Jerusalem police was on patrol on Jaffa Road, passing behind a truck across the street from the shoe store of Freiman and Bein. He dashed to the scene. "The whole area was scorched," he said. "And I saw a body with a leg missing. There was also a head, that did not belong to that body." The body, he said, "was in flames."

Some store owners on the block, just below the intersection with King George Street, had just replaced windows broken in last Tuesday's gun attack, only to see them shattered again today. "This is life?" asked one such shopkeeper, Edmund Barocher. "This is a way to live?"

The blast threw him into the air inside his shoe store, Mr. Baracher said, but he did not venture out to see the destruction. "Who's got the strength anymore?" he asked.

--------

Woman Bomber Kills Israeli, Self in Jerusalem

January 27, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-mideast.html

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An attacker police suspected was a Palestinian woman detonated explosives in Jerusalem's main shopping street on Sunday, killing herself and an elderly Israeli and wounding more than 100, Israeli police said.

The Jaffa Road attack was the third on an Israeli city center in under a week, raising the specter of new retaliation.

It was also likely to increase Israeli and U.S. pressure on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to do more to rein in militants behind the mounting wave of bloodshed.

``This attack this morning is just one more instance that proves that there is no effective control of the terrorist attacks that are being launched against Israel,'' U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on the ``Fox News Sunday'' program.

Israeli police said the bomber and an 81-year-old Israeli man were killed, but the circumstances of the attack were not immediately clear. The bomb might have exploded prematurely. They said 111 people were wounded, two of them seriously.

Police said they believed the bomber was a Palestinian woman.

``We are not calling her a suicide bomber, just a bomber. She is not an innocent bystander. There is a host of possibilities regarding how the bomb went off,'' a police spokesman said.

If confirmed, it would be the first suicide bombing carried out by a woman in Israel. It was the first fatal bombing carried out by a woman in a 16-month Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

``We've had intelligence warnings on women suicide attackers, albeit not recently,'' Deputy Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra told Reuters.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

CYCLE OF RETRIBUTION

The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack and called on Washington, which last week postponed a truce mission by envoy Anthony Zinni, to send him back without delay.

Two days ago a Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and wounded 25 people in Tel Aviv. On Tuesday, a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli women on Jaffa Road, near the scene of Sunday's bombing. Police shot him dead.

After Friday's blast, President Bush told reporters: ``I am disappointed in Yasser Arafat. He must make a full effort to rout out terror in the Middle East.''

Asked about Israeli retaliation, Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said: ``The military will bring its recommendations for the approval of the political echelon.''

Israeli jets fired missiles on Friday at Palestinian security targets, wounding two Palestinians in retaliation for Friday's suicide bombing. An Israeli missile strike on Thursday followed the shooting attack that killed the two Israeli women.

TOUGH TALK

Gold said that, instead of heeding Bush's call to crack down on terrorism, Arafat had publicly expressed his desire to become a martyr for the Palestinian cause and called for jihad, or holy struggle, for an independent state.

On Saturday, the Palestinian Authority urged militants to stop their anti-Israeli attacks. After Sunday's bombing, it said: ``The Palestinian leadership strongly condemns the suicide attack against Israeli civilians in Jerusalem.''

Later on Sunday, the Palestinian Authority issued arrest warrants for three security officers named by Israel as suspects in an attempt to smuggle a shipload of weapons to Palestinian areas, the Wafa news agency said. One officer has been detained in the West Bank and the other two are abroad.

On the ``This Week'' program on the U.S. ABC television network, Cheney harshly criticized Arafat for denying knowledge of the ship, which was seized by Israeli commandos in the Red Sea on Jan 3. ``We don't believe him,'' Cheney said.

The tough talk in Washington about Arafat drew praise from Israel and a call for U.S. sanctions against the besieged Palestinian leader.

Israeli Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar said Sharon would ask Bush at a White House meeting on February 7 to impose sanctions such as putting Arafat's personal security force on the State Department list of terrorist groups.

Arafat has been confined by Israeli tanks to his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah since a wave of anti-Israeli attacks in December.

``I'm afraid that these American statements will be understood by Sharon as a green light to escalate the aggression,'' Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said.

At least 821 Palestinians and 248 Israelis have been killed in the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that began in September 2000 after peace negotiations deadlocked.

-------- mexico

Mexican Vows Investigation Into 'Dirty War'
Military to Be Focus of Probe Of Killings, Disappearances

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42756-2002Jan26?language=printer

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 26 -- A newly appointed special prosecutor vowed today to stand up to Mexico's powerful military and pledged to prosecute any soldiers and officers found to be involved in hundreds of disappearances and unsolved murders during the "dirty war" of the 1970s and 1980s.

Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, 54, a law professor and former civil servant in the Mexican attorney general's office, said in an interview that "it is not a question of them [the military] wanting to cooperate; they have to."

Former members of the military, the police and security forces are widely believed to have been behind hundreds of cases of torture and disappearances during the government's "dirty war" against leftist activists. Some of those who disappeared were members of armed groups responsible for killing soldiers and police; others were simply poor farmers, students or teachers.

For decades the military was a closed institution that answered public questions about its actions with silence. Thus, many Mexicans doubt that a well-meaning academic can bring justice to the unsolved horrors of the past.

But Carrillo Prieto -- speaking in his office, guarded by a police officer with a machine gun -- said the military would cooperate with him and wanted its reputation cleared. He said he was aware of the "enormous expectations" placed on him since his appointment earlier this month, and of the skepticism that painful issues "frozen in the years of authoritarianism" could now be resolved.

President Vicente Fox, who took office 13 months ago after unseating the party that ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century, has vowed to "shine a light on parts of our past that are still covered with darkness."

Carrillo Prieto said that no one, not even former presidents, would be beyond prosecution. There has been much focus on what role, if any, Luis Echeverria, who was president from 1970 to 1976, played in the government-ordered killings. While the prosecutor said he had no plans to question Echeverria, he said he would do so if that was where his investigation leads.

"I don't think a former president would risk having two, or a hundred, agents take him by the arm and bring him in" for questioning, said Carrillo Prieto, who said he would send the security forces after those who did not cooperate voluntarily.

He also said that now-disbanded special police units would be a target of his investigation but might prove a more difficult target than the military. In a sign of how difficult his task will be, Carrillo Prieto several times invoked the name of Giovanni Falcone, the famed Italian magistrate whose prosecutions were credited with breaking the Sicilian Mafia. Falcone was assassinated in a 1992 car bombing.

Carrillo Prieto, a compact, energetic man, said he understood that there were "dangerous tentacles and underground forces" who did not want the sins of Mexico's past to come to light. Mexico's military and former members of its security forces have been suspected in ongoing political violence and murders, including the killing in October of a leading human rights lawyer, Digna Ochoa y Placido.

"We have to do our work with calculated risks; we can't be dreamers or naive," Carrillo Prieto said. "We have to be protected. But it is certain that this cause cannot be stopped. If something were to happen to me, another prosecutor would be named." He said it might be difficult to find enough evidence to obtain criminal convictions in many of the cases. But he said his office intended to pursue "each and every case" as far as it could go: "We'll do all we can possibly do -- but leave the impossible to God."

Carrillo Prieto has a personal stake in the issue. His cousin was a guerrilla who disappeared in 1974 and was presumed killed. Her body was never found.

Carrillo Prieto noted that some of those who disappeared were responsible for killing soldiers and police officers. "They knew they weren't going to Boy Scout camp," he said.

He said those deaths should be properly investigated as well. "There will be justice for all," he said. "If it's otherwise, just one side, then it's only vengeance."

After decades of denials, the government in November acknowledged for the first time that soldiers, police and other government security agents were involved in at least 275 of the 532 cases on record. A government report said that at least 74 officials from 37 government agencies were involved.

Fox's appointment of Carrillo Prieto, the author of a book on torture, was controversial. Critics said that because of his relatively low-profile career as a law professor and government lawyer, he lacked the political stature and investigative experience necessary to take on powerful institutions such as the traditionally untouchable military.

They said his service as a lawyer at the Mexican Interior Ministry, which controlled many of the police and security agencies implicated in the disappearances, made him suspect. "He was an official in the institution that postponed this probe for decades," said Edgar Cortez, a Jesuit priest who heads the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center. "The history of special prosecutors in Mexico is not good. All of them have failed."

Carrillo Prieto rejected such criticism. He said he was qualified precisely because he has never been a political appointee. He said high-ranking former officials, including ex-presidents, ex-attorneys general or former judges could all be tainted.

"Who? Who could do it?" he asked. "[U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan?"

-------- pakistan

THE FRONTIER
On a Barren, Icy Peak, Border Guards Prevent Escapes Into Pakistan

New York Times
January 27, 2002
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/international/asia/27STAN.html

CHAPRI BASE CAMP, Pakistan, Jan. 25 - A two-hour scramble up a trail of crumbling rock, frozen mud and snow leads to an old hunting shelter that a dozen Pakistani soldiers have turned into a two-room headquarters here.

From a barren promontory on this wild northwestern border, 10,000 feet high in a tribal area that had long rejected Pakistan's army and laws, the soldiers watch the surrounding hills, ready to shoot or to try to capture anyone trying to sneak across from Afghanistan.

Other troops simply pause at this hut for breath and hike seven more hours into the thin, frigid air to tent camps along the crest of the White Mountains that mark the border. They stay on the icy peaks, often at elevations of more than 14,000 feet, for eight days at a time, with orders to scour the intervening valleys in constant five-hour patrols.

Down the other side of the peaks is the cave-riddled region called Tora Bora, where the Americans bombed for weeks in pursuit of Osama bin Laden and sent hundreds of his Qaeda fighters fleeing. The soldiers here still hear the rumble of American warplanes, prowling Afghanistan's jagged border zone for remnants of enemy forces.

The troops here, the first Pakistani soldiers ever to enter this border region, are charged with preventing the escape of Al Qaeda or Taliban forces. Their officers were anxious to counter any impression that Pakistan might have slackened off the task.

"I'm sure that no one could get across this border," said Lt. Sher Ayaz, field commander of the mountain base. "We are patrolling around the clock, and it is not possible."

It is impossible to certify how tight the seal has been. Hundreds of bedraggled Arab and other fighters were captured early on, but in this part of the border, at least, none have been sighted in the last few weeks.

But the arduous efforts of the 4,000 troops assigned to guard the border across the northwest tribal zone are plain to see. Up on the high peaks, the soldiers have to heat snow with burning twigs for drinking water and to endure the frigid winds. Helped by local tribesmen who serve as guides, they carry rifles, binoculars, night- vision goggles and satellite phones.

The border search reflects a sharp turn in Pakistan's foreign policy after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, when Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, ended the country's support of the Taliban.

The entry of army troops into this border zone may also prove to be a turning point in Pakistan's domestic history, officials say, as the government makes its strongest push ever to extend authority into the fiercely independent tribal areas.

The 19th-century British colonial authorities granted autonomous legal status to the Pashtun Muslim tribes of the northwest. Those tribes had long been known for their harsh codes of male honor, blood feuds and aversion to outside control, as well as their generous hospitality and their jirgas, or decision-making assemblies of male elders.

Many had close links with Afghan groups, and with their walled mud houses, turbaned men and burka- clad women, their settlements resemble the ones across the border.

When Pakistan was formed in 1947, the northwestern border tribes kept their special legal status. Most criminal cases, for example, are handled by a tribal jirga rather than by the national police and laws. Tribal chiefs have shared power with officials of the national government.

The border zones remained off limits to the police and the military, allowing rampant smuggling of guns, drugs and electronic goods and the cultivation of opium poppies.

Many tribal groups are militantly Islamic, too, and had sent men to fight alongside the Afghans against the Soviets. After Sept. 11, thousands of tribesmen, especially from the Bajaur and Mohmand districts, defied the authorities and rushed to fight again, against the Americans.

So when the United States began pressing Pakistan to close the Afghan border, the government faced a delicate challenge. Initially, existing border guards and tribal militias were ordered to patrol. But in December, with the intense American bombing of the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan, General Musharraf decided to send army troops to Pakistan's tribal border zone for the first time ever.

The task was made easier, local people say, by the appointment of Lt. Gen. Ali Muhammad Jalim Aurakzai as northwestern army commander. The commander, who has a tribal background, convened a grand jirga that persuaded tribal leaders to acquiesce, officials say.

The army, in turn, promised to send mostly Pashto-speaking troops and began medical assistance, road building and other activities to benefit the local people, said Maj. Muhammad Amir Uppal, an army spokesman.

Within 24 hours of that grand jirga, the first troops were flown by helicopter onto the border ridges. But after the initial weeks, all supplies have been lugged up the mountains by porters and mules, and the soldiers have had to hike to their posts.

The Chapri base camp is in the Kurram agency, which historically is more developed and has better ties with the government than several neighboring tribal areas. In the nearby Khyber agency, an official said, some tribes opposed the army's entry, and as a result several leaders have been detained.

More than tribal pride is at stake: the presence of the army and outside law could threaten lucrative smuggling and other illegal activities. The interests of tribal leaders and political agents who have personally profited in the past, political experts say, may also be diverging from the interests of the tribal people.

Now, with an imperative to get firmer control over the border, General Musharraf's government has started a campaign to, as officials benignly describe it, bring the tribal areas "into the mainstream." The government is offering the carrot of more development funds and more representation in the national legislature, as well as the stick of more stringent law enforcement.

Such talk has prompted angry reactions from some tribal leaders.

Last week, thousands gathered just south of Peshawar in the town of Darra to protest against encroachments on tribal independence.

Sayed Yusuf Hussain, the chief of the Bangash tribe here in the Kurram agency, said he had been asked to join that demonstration but refused. "I told them that they are just doing this to protect their illegal activities," he said. "It's people with interests in arms, drugs and fake currency that are protesting. I don't think the tribesmen are supporting them."

"We are treating the Pakistani Army like our guests," he said, making clear that important boundaries of sovereignty remain. "We want to be in the national mainstream. But I would never want anyone to interfere with our jirga system," he added, referring to the Islamic justice meted out by the tribal meetings. "It's fair, speedy and economical."

One local tribesman who did not seem overly concerned is Muhammad Taqi, a gray-bearded man who does not know his own age and who this weekend was cutting scrub oak branches along the trail below the Chapri base camp, for use as cooking fuel. He has made money as a guide and porter for the troops, he said. His face lit up when asked if he was aware of the $25 million reward the United States has offered for the capture of Mr. bin Laden.

"I saw those pamphlets that the Americans dropped, and I've been looking all over for Osama," he said. "But maybe my luck isn't so great this time," he added with a laugh.

-------- propaganda wars

Tough Lessons in a Free Press
Sensitive Officials Plead for More Flattering Coverage

Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A19
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42751-2002Jan26?language=printer

KANDAHAR, Jan. 26 - It was an object lesson in both the refreshing honesty and the raw sensitivities of a brand new government, trying to behave like an open democracy but thrown into apoplectic fury by unflattering media depictions of its leaders.

Several nights ago, an adviser to the governor of Kandahar province stormed into a local hotel full of foreign journalists. Shaking with rage, he poured out a jumble of complaints about negative articles in the American press, especially one that had described the governor, a gruff former militia commander, as eating sloppily and swearing at an aide.

He pleaded with the journalists to be kind to the fledgling government's image, and he reminded them that unlike the collapsed Taliban regime, which had imposed draconian restrictions on foreign media, the country's new authorities had thrown Afghanistan open to reporters and placed virtually no limits on their coverage.

Then, according to witnesses, he turned on the journalists' Pakistan-based translators. In a torrent of undisguised wrath, he accused them of being anti-Afghanistan and pro-Taliban, of deliberately misleading the foreigners and of trying to paint the new government in a poor light. Finally, he demanded that they all leave the country within 24 hours.

The charges were outrageous but revealing. In a single incident, the entire rancorous history of Afghan-Pakistani relations came to the surface: the manipulation and arming of Afghan militias by Pakistan in the early 1990s, the more recent support for the Taliban by Pakistani intelligence agencies, the years of Big-Brother meddling by a powerful neighbor that contributed to a generation of devastation and death.

The next day, in a quiet, carpeted suite in the governor's office, a more diplomatic provincial official apologized to a group of journalists who had come to protest. He tried to smooth things over, explaining that the government was new, unpracticed and sensitive about its image abroad. He agreed that summarily ejecting the interpreters was unfair, and he pledged to resolve the issue in a more reasonable way.

"We are like an infant that has barely been born," said the official, Yusuf Pashtun. "We are weak, and we cannot afford these blows. We are in a precarious situation, and we need to develop trust and forge national unity, not be the cause of disunity."

At that point, a half-dozen interpreters who had been quietly seething in a corner spoke up. They argued with injured passion, pointing out that most of them were Afghans who, like many of the country's new officials, had spent years as refugees in Pakistan. They had relatives here and they spoke the local dialect. They were here to help, not to defame.

Pashtun listened and nodded politely, and the tensions were defused. It had been an extraordinary moment of honest emotional debate and mutual learning -- a microcosm of the new Afghanistan as a work in progress and of a government struggling to overcome the bitter, paranoid legacy of a long, dark era dominated by repression, bloodshed and skulduggery.

It was, in many ways, a tiny lesson in democracy.

For foreign journalists staying in Kandahar, dealing with the U.S. military forces and intelligence agencies based here has been a far more frustrating experience.

Out at the Kandahar airport, where more than 3,000 U.S. troops and an unknown number of Special Forces, CIA and FBI agents are based, briefings for visiting reporters are limited to 15 minutes a day, and information is minimal. There is no way to telephone the base from the city, and no access to the compound except once a day.

The base also houses Taliban and al Qaeda detainees, groups of whom are periodically loaded onto planes, shackled and hooded, and flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Journalists are not allowed to interview or photograph them, a restriction military officials say they imposed to protect the detainees' privacy.

At first, press officers at the base gave a daily update of the number of detainees who had arrived or been flown out. But this week, after a flurry of press reports that John Walker Lindh, the American captured with Taliban forces in Mazar-e Sharif, had arrived here for transfer to the United States, the officers announced they had been ordered to give no more information about any detainees, period.

The activities of the U.S. Special Forces and intelligence agents are equally off-limits: no names, no photos, no comment. On the base, dozens of anonymous men stroll the grounds in semi-military garb, pistols strapped to their thighs. Outside, bearded Americans dressed in Afghan robes and caps keep a low but omnipresent profile, discreetly accompanying Afghan officials and troops on local missions.

This week, however, their authority over local officials became startlingly evident. At the city jail, which journalists had been visiting without restrictions, a photographer was welcomed by a familiar Afghan guard, but then encountered an armed American who demanded that he obtain permission from a higher authority and refused to let him enter the facility.

The same day, a convoy of provincial Afghan officials headed out from Kandahar, traveling to a ceremony in the nearby city of Maiwand. There they were scheduled to welcome new authorities and preside over a formal handing-over of weapons collected from local gunmen. It was an ideal photo opportunity and a potential public relations boon for the new government.

But when several vehicles full of foreign journalists tried to follow them, they were roughly ordered to stop by several Afghan troops who threatened to shoot them if they continued on. The troops said they were under orders on behalf of several U.S. Special Forces members, who were accompanying the convoy and did not want to be covered or identified in the press.

Later, the adviser from the Kandahar governor's office visited the journalists' hotel. He apologized for the troops' threatening actions, but said the governor's office had no choice but to defer to the requests of the Special Forces, whose role here is to bolster government security in a still uncertain and potentially hostile environment.

"We would love to have you at our ceremony. It would be a great thing for us to show the world," he told a group of foreign journalists who had gathered around him in a hotel corridor, complaining angrily about the incident. "But to be honest, right now we need the Special Forces more than we need you."

-- Pamela Constable

-------- russia

Russia and Azerbaijan Plan Deal

By Vladimir Isachenkov
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, January 27, 2002; 3:55 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44562-2002Jan27?language=printer

MOSCOW -- Azerbaijani President Geidar Aliev said Saturday that his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin helped forge a partnership that would allow the two ex-Soviet republics to reach a long-stalled deal on dividing sectors of the Caspian Sea.

"We agreed to begin work on drawing a median line between Russia and Azerbaijan," Aliev said at a news conference.

Use of Caspian resources, including what are believed to be the world's third-largest oil deposits, was defined by treaties between Iran and the Soviet Union. After the 1991 Soviet collapse, five littoral countries laid conflicting claims to its riches.

Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakstan say the seabed should be divided into national sectors while the water should be available for common use - a strategy that would leave Iran with the smallest sector. Iran wants to divide the seabed equally, and Turkmenistan appears to favor a compromise between the two proposals.

Russia and Azerbaijan both have signed bilateral deals with Kazakstan to draw a line between their respective sectors of the Caspian. Once Russia and Azerbaijan reach such an agreement, "use of the Caspian mineral resources will be fully solved between our three nations," Aliev said.

He wouldn't predict how long it would take to negotiate a comprehensive Caspian settlement.

"We must continue work to reach agreement among all the Caspian states," Aliev said. "I think that we will be able to achieve that, but it's difficult to say how long it would take."

A twice-canceled Caspian summit is planned for later this year in Turkmenistan.

Despite similar approaches to the Caspian settlement, Russia and Azerbaijan have been unable to reach a deal because of disputes in other areas. "Relations between our two nations haven't always been smooth in the past decade," Aliev said.

In the past, Azerbaijan has accused Russia of siding with Armenia in the 14-year conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. At a meeting earlier Saturday, Aliev told Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov that Moscow could play a "decisive" role in its settlement.

Nagorno-Karabakh, backed by Armenia, drove Azerbaijani troops out and seized adjacent areas in a 1988-1994 war that killed more than 30,000 people and drove 1 million from their homes. The conflict remains unresolved.

Another source of controversy between Russia and Azerbaijan was the fate of the Gabala radar station built by the Soviet military to track missiles in the southern hemisphere. After the Soviet collapse, Azerbaijan grudgingly allowed Russia to continue using the station, which is considered a key part of Russia's early warning system, but its dubious legal status has long been a sore point in relations.

On Friday, Putin and Aliev signed an agreement envisaging that Russia would pay dlrs 7 million in annual rent for the Gabala station. In an apparent compromise, it also agreed to pay another dlrs 31 million over the next five years in back rent.

The agreement allows Russia to post 1,500 servicemen at the station to operate and guard it. Azerbaijani air defense troops will also guard it. It says that Russia may share information received by the radar with Azerbaijan, which guarantees its confidentiality.

"We now have relations of strategic partnership," Aliev said.

----

Chechen leader to keep power as long as Russian troops remain

Sunday January 27, 1:11 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020126/1/2d09e.html

Aslan Maskhadov, whose mandate expires on Sunday, will remain the president of Chechnya as long as Russian troops are deployed in the breakaway republic, his spokesman said.

Maskhadov was elected for a five-year term on January 27, 1997 in between the two most recent wars the Kremlin has waged in Chechnya.

"If the armed forces of another state, in this case the Russian Federation, are on Chechen territory, no presidential or parliamentary elections can be held," the spokesman, Mayerbek Vachagayev, told Moscow Echo radio Saturday.

The Russian army swept into Chechnya in October 1999 on what Moscow called an anti-terrorist campaign that followed a series of bombings in Russia in which almost 300 people died.

The campaign played a large part in winning Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, the Russian presidency.

The head of Russia's central electoral commission said Saturday that the mandate of Maskhadov, whom Moscow now refuses to recognise, "expired long ago, he ended it himself by his own acts."

However Sergei Yushenkov, a liberal member of Russia's lower house of parliament said: "independently of the fact that the presidential mandate of Aslan Maskhadov is expiring, he remains the legitimate president."

Yushenkov said on Moscow Echo radio that no election could be held in a country at war.

In a statement sent to AFP in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia, where thousands of Chechen civilians have taken refuge, several separatist leaders called on the West to help find a solution to end the war.

"You who are developed countries, where freedom is an essential element of the constitution, you should understand that Aslan Maskhadov is the only person who can actually speak in the name of the Chechen people," they said.

Talks have been held between Russian officials and representatives of the Chechen presidency, but the Kremlin has refused all contact with Maskhadov himself.

The head of the UNHCR refugee agency Ruud Lubbers, during a visit to the region, denied Maskhadov was a "terrorist", saying that he was a key figure in resolving the Chechen conflict.

----

RUSSIAN FORCES CRIMINAL ACTIVITY IN CHECHNYA UNCHECKED

By Derk Kinnane Roelofsma
United Press International
1/26/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=25012002-123344-3200r

WASHINGTON -- Russian troops in Chechnya are killing civilians in a campaign of executions and looting that takes place alongside military operations aimed at destroying separatist forces, the New York Times reported Friday. Chechen police officers, employed by the pro-Moscow administration in the north Caucasus republic, told the Times that Russian Interior Ministry units, known by their acronym, Obron, have been scouting neighborhoods during mine-sweeping operations for residents who appear to have money or property worth stealing.

At night, the soldiers return in armored personnel carriers and burst into the houses, stealing household goods and killing witnesses, Chechen police investigators said.

Military and civilian prosecutors refuse to bring criminal cases against Russian troops.

In Moscow, the Interior Ministry, the Defense Ministry and prosecutors declined to comment to the Times on the charges.

A typical case is that of Magomed H. Vakhidov, once mayor of Urus-Martan, just south of Grozny. He fled Chechnya when the present war with Russia broke out in September 1999; a year later he sought and received an amnesty to return home. But at 3 a.m. on July 20, 2001, a squad of Russian soldiers fired smoke grenades into his home and then burst in and arrested him, according to the documents.

Russian military authorities denied taking him into custody. On July 31, his body was found in the gardens of a state farm, badly mutilated from torture, electric shock, knife wounds and burns from a blowtorch.

Russian officials routinely attribute such killings to rebels. But, as one Chechen police official noted, "the rebels do not travel in armored personnel carriers."

In addition to reported abuses by Interior Ministry forces, regular Russian Army troops continue to inflict punitive raids on Chechen towns and villages.

Chechen police investigators say they are afraid to approach Russian military prosecutors, who must approve any contact with the soldiers.

Earlier this month, a senior official of the Russian-aligned Chechen administration, Ruslan Yunusov, a veteran of the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan, was shot dead by Russian troops in front of military police headquarters when he tried to arrest Russian soldiers suspected of wounding one of his officers.

The Russian army and police in Chechnya are so brutal, says Georgi M. Derluguian of Northwestern University, because the servicemen, from generals to soldiers at roadblocks, have been utterly de-professionalized, demoralized, and frustrated. In a paper prepared for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank, Derluguian says, the Russians come to regard their mission as a private, profit-making opportunity.

With the Bush-Putin honeymoon that began on Sept. 11 now over, the United States has resumed criticizing Russian conduct in Chechnya to Moscow's displeasure

Thursday Russia accused the State Department of taking an unfriendly step in receiving Ilyas Akhmadov, the Chechen separatist's foreign minister, the day before. The separatists have been battling the Russians since 1999. Before that there was a two-year war that ended in 1996 with a Russian withdrawal in defeat.

The Russians consider resistance to their rule in Chechnya to be the work of terrorists with links to Osama bin Laden. The United States accepts that some Chechen warlords are linked to international Islamist militants, but Washington has repeatedly urged Moscow to seek an end to the fighting through talks with Aslan Maskhadov. Not considered an Islamist extremist, Maskhadov was elected Chechnya's president in 1997 in an election that had the Kremlin's approval.

Last November, Maskhadov briefly met Viktor Kazantsev, President Vladimir Putin's representative to southern Russia, at a Moscow airport for the only peace talks since the fighting began. Nothing came of the talks and since then the situation in Chechnya has worsened with an increased numbers of civilians disappearing and of Russian troops killing civilians in mopping up operations.

On Wednesday in Strasbourg, France, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a forum for debating human rights abuses, adopted a resolution saying that some progress on human rights had been made in Chechnya and that a positive change of attitude was noticeable in the way the Russian Federation sees the conflict.

One of the sponsors of the resolution, Lord Judd, told PACE that voting for sanctions on Russia would be an admission of the assembly's inability to be effectively persuasive through cooperation and dialogue.

The Russian delegate, Dmitri Rogozin, dismissed the idea of a peace process with the separatist leaders as tantamount to negotiating with Osama bin Laden.

--

PUTIN SIGNS MILITARY MODERNIZATION PROGRAM

RUSSIA -- President Vladimir Putin signed a military modernization program that will see the introduction of advanced weapons by 2010, a senior official said Thursday.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said the plan calls for the introduction of new fifth-generation fighter jets, a new combat helicopter, tanks, armored vehicles, new warships and submarines.

Without revealing exact dates or production targets, Klebanov said certain advanced weapons would be delivered to the armed forces by 2010, while others would take longer to develop before eventually reaching the military.

The armed forces demanded a sharp increase in spending on a much-needed modernization program to replace obsolete Soviet-era weapons. It is unclear if the plan will ever be implemented in full.

According to the well-informed Kommersant business daily, spending of some 2.1 trillion rubles (around $70 billion) is envisioned for the plan, with almost half the financing coming from arms exports.

Just a day earlier, Russia's newly appointed air force chief Col.-Gen. Vladimir Mikhailov said strategic bombers would be upgraded to carry new precision-guided missiles.

Mikhailov's predecessor, Gen. Anatoly Kornukov, who is retiring, told Russian news agencies he had signed an order to begin production of top-quality precision weapons for the strategic air forces.

Military experts believe the new so-called smart missile, classified as the X-101, is in essence an air-to-surface cruise missile with an upgraded automatic guidance system.

Kornukov also said the new, long-range S-400 Triumph air defense missile would enter production by 2003.

Unlike Russia's S-300 missile system, the new missile will be able to shoot down stealth-capability aircraft as well as missile warheads on final approach.

Russia has significantly stepped up its arms exports effort, signing major contracts for weapons delivery to such customers as China and India, and scoring sales in markets that had been all but abandoned since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Last year, Russia's arms exports jumped by 20 percent, reaching a value of $4.4 billion, official figures show. The proven ability of Russia's vast military-industrial complex to produce quality armaments and earn ever-increasing profits is now seen by Russia's generals and admirals as an encouraging sign that the new modernization plan may become more than just a wish list as profits are plowed back into research and development of once-frozen projects.

----

Top Russian generals killed in chopper explosion over Chechnya

Sunday January 27,
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020127/1/2d2lp.html

Several top Russian military commanders, including an interior ministry general overseeing the North Caucasus region, died when their helicopter exploded over Chechnya.

Interior ministry General Mikhail Rudchenko, who oversees the southern Russian adminstrative region, and his deputy identified only as General Davydov, died in the explosion Sunday.

The Interfax news agency said that preliminary evidence showed that the explosion was the result of "an act of terrorism," suggesting an attack by Chechen rebels. Other lower-ranking officials on board the Mi-8 helicopter included colonels Oriyenko, Stepanenko, and Trafimov, Interfax said.

ITAR-TASS separately reported that 11 people were on board the chopper, which went down around 11:30 am (0830 GMT) when it was flying over Chechnya's northern Nadterechny region, which fell under Russian control at the start of the 28-month Chechen war.

The chopper's apparent downing coincided with the five-year anniversary of the election of separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov as president, whose term officially expired Sunday.

If the crash was indeed caused by rebel forces, it would represent one of the Chechen rebels' most astounding attacks against Russian troops in the war, with fighting degenerating into deadly guerrilla warfare in the past two years.

The Russian army swept into Chechnya in October 1999 on what Moscow called an anti-terrorist campaign that followed a series of bombings in Russia in which almost 300 people died.

The campaign played a large part in winning Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, the Russian presidency.

-------- spy agencies

China Changes Approach in Espionage Incident

New York Times
January 27, 2002
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/international/asia/27CHIN.html

BEIJING, Jan. 26 - Last April when an American spy plane collided with a Chinese jet over international waters near China's coast, China's state press was filled with angry rhetoric and its people with indignation. "World Cop Stop the Arrogance," screamed the China Defense News, "Americans, You Are Too Hegemonic," blazed the Global Times - headlines typical of that time.

But this week, the Chinese barely made a peep after a new, perhaps even more shocking, set of espionage revelations came to light: President Jiang Zemin's newly delivered Boeing 767 had been surreptitiously loaded with dozens of listening devices while its interior was being outfitted last year in San Antonio.

In its first issue after the story was reported in the foreign media and on the Internet, The Global Times's lead headline was "Bush's Advance Team Is Coming," on a story about the president's much anticipated visit here. Internet chat rooms this week buzzed with talk of pop stars and rumors of stalkers' injecting pedestrians with AIDS-infected blood. At the Chinese Foreign Ministry, officials were distinctly low-key, noting that the bugging, which they called "a stupid action," would have no effect on President Bush's trip to China that begins Feb. 21.

China's relationship with the United States has been changing dramatically, in tone if not substance, in the last eight months, and the most recent espionage accusations have served as a barometer of that shift.

"I don't know if I'd be so vain as to say the Chinese learned from events of last April," said Adm. Joseph W. Prueher, who was the American ambassador here when the planes collided last spring. "But I think there is now a desire to prevent every event from becoming a crisis and to handle conflict in a less volatile way."

Although the first months of the Bush administration last year were marked by intense hostility between the countries, since last summer Mr. Jiang has increasingly reached out to the United States, supporting its military action in Afghanistan.

There are many pragmatic reasons for such a change, from China's hope that a more conciliatory tone would help promote its views on the divisive issue of Taiwan, to its desire to avoid the distraction of international crises as it is prepares to host the Olympics in 2008 and to meet obligations as a new member of World Trade Organization. Last spring when the planes collided, China was still tensely waiting to see if it would get the Olympics or be invited to join the trade body.

Perhaps equally important, political analysts here said, is that Mr. Jiang is trying to make his mark as the architect of a new type of foreign policy so that he can stay central to China's politics even after he must formally step down next year.

And so, two similar espionage events dropped into separate contexts have produced markedly different reactions. The country's change of heart seems complete and dramatic because the central government still controls the media and, to a large extent, outward expressions of public opinion.

The Ministry of Propaganda instructed newspapers and news shows not to report on the incident, and almost all have complied. Following that cue, Internet chat room operators, who are required to monitor postings, said they had been editing out most critical comments about the event to avoid trouble with the government.

In the face of such limited coverage, many Chinese are only dimly aware of the revelation. Those who know about it, mostly intellectuals and college students, say they are upset but not irate. They note that the United States has been more friendly to China of late, and it is still unclear who bugged the plane - although the assumption on the street here is that Americans did.

"I think much of the anger is there just like last time, but now it's unacceptable and there's no way to show it," said one media commentator. He added that "anything that happens in next few months is going to be handled in low-key way because of the current political dynamic."

The most immediate pressure comes from Mr. Bush's planned visit, an important meeting for Mr. Jiang.

Mr. Jiang has angered many people here by actively supporting the United States in its war against terrorism, even sending Chinese diplomats last fall to press the American cause with Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. With such approaches, Mr. Jiang has wooed the Bush administration to a somewhat more moderate position on China, analysts and diplomats said.

"There's a mutual need for each other, and the Chinese want a good atmosphere for Bush's visit, possibly hoping that he'll say something to support China's position on Taiwan," said Gao Chaoquan, acting editor of China's most influential policy magazine, Strategy and Management.

Also, political analysts here say that President Jiang has made a constructive relationship with the United States a central theme of his foreign policy, and he hopes that success on that front will allow him to continue political life after he retires. Next year, he is expected to become head of Central Military Commission, where his influence will partly depend on his ability to make himself indispensable.

Although the United States preferred a later date for President Bush's visit, Mr. Jiang insisted on a meeting early in the year so that he would have time before his retirement for a high-profile return visit to Washington in the fall, a Chinese journalist said. "He wants to make himself central to foreign policy so that he'll be able to stay on like Deng Xiaoping," said one Chinese political analyst. "And he knows that if he makes this into too much of an incident, he may not get to go to the U.S."

More generally, with war and recession now consuming much of the world, neither China nor the United States can afford to engage in the kind of showdown that occurred after the spy plane collision.

The kind of extensive, ultra-patriotic media coverage that came on the heels of that incident could gin up popular anger that would be difficult for China's leaders to modulate.

"My roommates were quite angry. They felt America was up to its old tricks and nothing had changed," said Chen Xing, a computer student at Beijing University. But he said that the reaction was "not nearly as intense" as the one last April.

"Since there is no media coverage, people can see this is not the same kind of issue," he said. "Since it involves leaders and the military, it's not just the media - everyone knows that it wouldn't be sensible to say too much."

For one thing, any public rendition of the tale would make the Chinese military look either silly or corrupt, because it was supposed to provide 24-hour security for the plane while it was in San Antonio.

It would also emphasize the little- known news that Jiang Zemin had purchased an expensive foreign aircraft with a fancy imported interior. One posting on Beijing University's electronic bulletin board latched onto that fact, asking: "Why buy a Boeing? Isn't a domestically made Bee-2 good enough?"

Many in China who recalled intense fury over the plane collision feel little right now. "I think everyone can see that the relationship between China and the U.S. is better now," said Fu Xiaobin, a graduate student. "I don't think people's basic views have changed, but since 9/11 the U.S. has been talking to China and the countries are finding a new shared interest."

--------

Ex-Operative Writes of Decline at C.I.A.

New York Times
January 27, 2002
By ADAM CLYMER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/international/27SPY.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 - A veteran Central Intelligence Agency field operative has charged that before Sept. 11 the agency had largely been out of the spy business for years, not hiring new agents and avoiding delicate inquiries for fear of embarrassing itself, other nations or the White House.

The only way to defeat terrorism, writes Robert Baer in "See No Evil," published this month, is for the C.I.A. "to once again go out and start talking to people - people who can go where it can't, see what it can't and hear what it can't." The agency must "let those who know how to learn secrets perform their jobs, no matter how murky the swamp is."

While Mr. Baer wrote that he was not sure the nation was prepared for the agency to "walk down that path and stay on it," he said in an interview this week that things had indeed changed at the C.I.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "They are hiring retirees to go out in the field" in large numbers, he said.

While C.I.A. censors blacked out many names and titles, the book, which was completed in November, spells out in great detail operations that Mr. Baer ran in India, Lebanon, Tajikistan and Iraq, as well as other unidentified nations during his 21- year career. He retired in 1997.

He said in the interview that he was surprised at how much he had been allowed to publish and speculated that perhaps his manuscript was seen by the directorate of operations as "a recruiting poster for the C.I.A.," or at least for the kind of agency he and some in operations wanted.

A spokeswoman for the C.I.A. said on Thursday that the agency would not comment on the book.

Mr. Baer also told how Donald Fowler, who was chairman of the Democratic National Committee, sought his help in 1995 in getting access to President Bill Clinton for Roger Tamraz, a Lebanese businessman seeking support for a Caspian Sea pipeline project. Mr. Baer said he gave them no help.

He described his involvement with an attempted coup in Iraq in March 1995, an effort that achieved some surprising military victories but ended in failure. He said he appealed for the American backing that the rebels sought, but was given a cold shoulder by Washington, which did not believe they could succeed.

The outbreak of the coup - which involved a defecting Iraqi major general and collaborators in three army combat units, various Kurdish forces and Ahmed Chalabi and his opposition Iraqi National Congress - was reported a few days later in the international press. The plans were known in Washington before the coup began. But when Mr. Baer reported the rebels' first successful attacks, in which they captured thousands of prisoners and some artillery, he writes, C.I.A. officials did not believe him because they had no confirming satellite pictures.

He said he told his boss at headquarters in Langley, Va.: "There's a real live war going on up here. In another week, there will be no V Corps" of the Iraqi Army.

"No one here," he was told, cared "about the Kurds."

At other points, the book put out by Crown Publishers reports less dramatic cases of C.I.A. unwillingness to act. In 1983, in a country he did not name, Mr. Baer said he sought to bug an office maintained by Abu Nidal, then a leading terrorist organization. His station chief refused, saying: "This country is important to the United States. No one wants to risk alienating it by undertaking a risky operation."

In 1984, Mr. Baer writes, the same official refused to pass on to Washington a tip he had picked up in Lebanon that an American was about to be kidnapped. It turned out to be William Buckley, the C.I.A. station chief.

In 1986, Mr. Baer writes, the C.I.A. office in Bonn refused to talk to a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria, a group that wanted to assassinate President Hafez al-Assad, "for fear of irritating the Germans." He met the man himself, but C.I.A. officials in Bonn did not follow up. He said that after Sept. 11, "the F.B.I. came calling to tell me that one of the Syrian's associates was a suspect" in the network behind the terrorist attacks.

In 1988, he took over an agent in Paris who was pleased to see him because his previous handler had paid no attention to documents he offered and spent time trying to convert him to her church. One of her converts, a C.I.A. administrative officer, spent business hours handing out church leaflets. But Washington advised the Paris station chief not to interfere with the administrative officer's First Amendment rights.

Mr. Baer said he was also ordered not to put a telephone tap on a suspected Iranian intelligence station or three Abu Nidal students studying as guests of France.

At that time, he complained, "The C.I.A. was in the process of closing up shop overseas." After the Pan Am 103 bombing, he discovered that "Bonn didn't have a single Middle Eastern agent to run down leads - neither an Arab nor an Iranian. For that matter, it didn't have a single Muslim agent in all of Germany's enormous Islamic community," nor a single source in "the Frankfurt airport to say whether anything suspicious had occurred before 103's feeder flight departed," carrying the bomb that blew up Pam Am 103.

When Mr. Baer left Tajikistan in 1995, he was not replaced by someone with the necessary language skills to cultivate an agent close to the Islamic chieftain Abdullah Nuri, who fought the Russians in Afghanistan and subsequently arranged a meeting between Iranian officials and Osama bin Laden intended to plan anti-American acts.

Nor, Mr. Baer charged, did the C.I.A. bring in anyone who could debrief the refugees from Afghanistan, whom he called "a gold mine of information." The C.I.A. was no longer interested in Afghanistan, he said. Later that year, he writes, "There wasn't a single reporting agent in any one of the eight posts I supervised in Central Asia and the Caucasus."

In the future, Mr. Baer said in the interview, "We're just going to have to take some more risks. Occasionally we're going to get caught. I'd rather have a diplomatic incident than to have to bomb somebody."

-------- un

Iran demands UN play greater role in Afghanistan, Mideast

Sunday January 27
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020127/1/2d2i7.html

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wound up a two-day visit to Iran, whose leaders urged the United Nations to be more active with regard both to the Afghanistan question and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Iran's top officials pledged their backing for the new Afghan interim goverment, while firing off verbal salvos at the heavy US presence in Afghanistan.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, met Annan later Saturday and lambasted the United States "war on terror," which triggered the November collapse of Afghanistan's Taliban regime and has planted a US beachhead in Central Asia.

Khamenei derided US "military scheming" and insisted the war on terror be "the fruit of a collective international decision under the auspices of the United Nations."

The fiery ideologue also branded the US espionage agency, the CIA, which had agents on the ground this fall in Afghanistan, as "a terrorist organisation."

He exhorted Annan to rise up against the United States' policies.

"The UN must battle all this, and if you, secretary general, take on this struggle ..., your name will go down in history," he said.

Earlier in the day, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, speaking at a press conference with Annan, denied allegations that Iran was pumping weapons to eastern Afghan warlords and pointed the finger at the United States.

However, Annan, who had issued a stern warning against foreign meddling in Afghanistan, deftly side-stepped the sensitive topic.

"We have no independent information," he said when asked about the reports.

Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Thursday reiterated accusations that Iran was "distributing arms among local commanders to achieve its nefarious designs" in Afghanistan.

The repeated claims by Kandahar authorities of Iranian interference prompted US President George W. Bush to issue a warning to Tehran earlier this month not to destablise the interim government.

The conduct of Iran, which has pledged nearly 600 million dollars to its eastern neighbour, is judged crucial to the survival of the new Afghan regime.

For his part, Kharazi stressed his country was cooperating "with the Afghan central interim government for the reconstruction and stabilisation of all Afghanistan."

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami broached with Annan the latest violence in the Middle East.

He accused Israel of seeking to "use" the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington to tighten its noose around the Palestinians by branding their 16-month uprising as terrorism.

"As I have already told some Western leaders, I hope the United States and the West will not fall in the Israeli whirlwind," he said.

He again denied Israeli accusations "corroborated by the United States" against Iran in the Karine A affair, a ship which Israel seized in the Red Sea's international waters and which it said was carrying Iranian weapons to the Palestinians.

Khatami added that "lasting peace and security in the Middle East cannot be achieved with good intentions, but by restoring the Palestinians' rights.

-------- us

Special Forces Wage Secret Afghan War

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, January 27, 2002; 4:05 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46035-2002Jan27?language=printer

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- They are the secret warriors in America's hidden war: CIA and Special Operations forces who ride into battle on pickup trucks, dune buggies and helicopters.

As the U.S.-led campaign evolves from a seen-on-TV bombing campaign to a cave-by-cave hunt for al-Qaida and Taliban holdouts, covert U.S. agents and troops are increasingly fighting the key battles.

But the Pentagon keeps details of this war secret. Only rarely - as with a Special Forces raid on Taliban forces this week - is a some light shed on their operations. Even conventional U.S. forces also on the ground in Afghanistan are kept in the dark.

Troops from conventional units stationed at the airport here refer to the special forces as "the alphabet guys" - bearded warriors hidden behind sunglasses. Official military statements rarely mention them.

The "alphabet guys" tag apparently originated because many of the troops were linked to the CIA.

In Kandahar, Afghan provincial official Khalid Pashtun half-apologized this week for his gunmen's threats to shoot news photographers - at the behest, the gunmen said, of camera-hostile Special Forces whom the reporters were trailing. "We need them more than we need you," Pashtun told journalists. "What can we do? Which would you choose?"

No U.S. soldier relayed the threat directly to any of the reporters and it was impossible to tell whether Pashtun embellished the instructions. However, the incident shows the close contact between Special Forces and Afghan allies and the lengths to which both go to keep operations secret.

Covert U.S. forces, including the Army Green Berets or Special Forces, are known as Special Operations forces and drawn from all three armed services. They are spearheading operations against what Afghan leaders say are hundreds of fugitive Taliban and al-Qaida.

Army Special Forces led one of the largest such operations on Wednesday, flying by helicopter to raid what the Pentagon says appeared to be Taliban military compounds in the north. The Pentagon reported about 15 enemy fighters killed and 27 captured. One American soldier was wounded.

Villagers, however, claimed U.S. forces bombed their town hall and clinic, and killed and arrested innocent people and men loyal to Afghanistan's U.S.-backed interim leader, Hamid Karzai.

But the Army called the raid a success - one of many, it said, for the in-and-out Special Forces.

"I think it's safe to say this war has been anything but conventional," Army spokesman Capt. Tony Rivers said at the Kandahar base Saturday.

Speaking of the covert forces, Rivers said, "In my opinion, they're the most significant reason for the success we've had in this war."

That success, however, has not been complete. Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks, remains at large, as does Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S.-led Afghan campaign, said Saturday that sending more conventional troops would not have increased the military's chances of catching bin Laden.

"The tactics in this operation were just the right tactics," Franks said. He invoked the bogged-down 1980s Soviet campaign in Afghanistan. "One does not want to commit mistakes that have been committed by other people in the past."

Special Operations forces are believed to number at least in the hundreds in Afghanistan. No U.S. official will give a firm number, citing security. These commandos - whose troops are hand-picked, better trained and equipped than ordinary infantrymen - were created for just the kind of fast, small-scale operations under way in Afghanistan.

CIA paramilitaries, working under the agency's Special Activities Division, operate alongside U.S. military, Afghan allied forces, or alone.

Franks and others have emphasized intelligence over blunt force in the campaign. Some CIA contacts no doubt date back to association with Afghan guerrilla fighters during the war against Soviet invaders. The United States and its allies secretly armed and trained Afghan resistance fighters.

But by their nature, little information on their work is reaching the public. For example, the briefings at the U.S. base at Kandahar airport have to do mostly with efforts to secure and run the base - the trials of getting a working water system in place are a running serial.

Covert forces, meanwhile, slip in and out of the Kandahar base without fanfare, dressed in black fleece jackets and khakis, weapons strapped to their legs or slung on their backs.

Some have beards, even Afghan shawls, pulling them up over their face when cameras come near. Pale skin and big builds - in contrast to scrawny, hungry Afghan fighters - often give them away in the field.

At Kandahar, a beat-up hangar on a far end of a runway holds their aircraft. A futuristic-looking buggy in non-reflective black carries some out of the gates.

The men themselves go to lengths to protect their identities. Reporters have repeatedly accused Special Operations forces of setting local gunmen against them when journalists trail the operatives or the Afghan officials they often accompany.

"Don't worry, they won't kill you," one Special Forces agent told an AP photographer in December, as tribal fighters near the mountains of Tora Bora shook down a group of photojournalists for their cameras and other gear. The Pentagon has refused to comment on the incident.

Some interactions are cordial, when limited to banter.

Americans often learn of covert operations only when something goes wrong - as the crash this week of two unmanned Predator drones. The U.S. surveillance planes have seen heavy use in Afghanistan, including by the CIA, which has dispatched some armed with missiles on their wings to attack Taliban and al-Qaida targets.

The crash of a Marine resupply flight last week cast light on what appears to be a center of special operations at central Afghanistan's Bagram airfield. Two Marines died.

Military officials at Bagram were tightlipped about just who was being resupplied.

"Was it a Special Forces group?" a reporter asked.

"You can draw your own conclusions," a military spokesman replied.

----

U.S. Troops Won't Exit Pakistan, General Says

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43273-2002Jan26?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 26 -- The top U.S. commander of the Afghan war effort said today that tensions between nuclear powers India and Pakistan will not prompt a shift of U.S. troops stationed at Pakistani bases.

"I have not, and I will not, move our forces away from Pakistan, even though there are those who continue to talk about the crisis that exists between Pakistan and India," said Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks during a tour of the region. "We're going to continue to work in cooperation with Pakistan and remain hopeful that diplomacy solves the issue."

Over the past month, India and Pakistan have moved many of troops and much weaponry to their border, raising fears that the regional rivals might go to war for the fourth time since 1947. On Friday, India test-fired a missile in what was described here as a provocation.

The Indo-Pakistani standoff comes at a time when the United States has been using some Pakistani military bases for its war in Afghanistan. But Franks said that in his meeting today with Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and in conversations with military leaders, no one brought up the subject of how long U.S. troops would remain in Pakistan or suggested sharing bases with Pakistani troops being put at the ready because of the border dispute with India.

"What I have seen is continuing cooperation by the Pakistani military, as well as civil authorities here, to permit us the staging of assets. There has been no change to that," Franks said. "We have not discussed at all the duration of those activities."

"I believe what will happen is the military-to-military relationship in the future will grow," he said. Signs are growing that the United States is planning a long-term presence in and around Central Asia, to the reported discomfort of Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.

Franks also disputed reports that Saudi Arabia wants the United States to say how long it will keep troops stationed on its soil.

"All I can say is, I have seen, myself, no evidence of a request by the government of Saudi Arabia that the security relationship we have with Saudi Arabia be changed in any way," Franks said.

----

Pentagon Plans New Command For U.S.
Four-Star Officer Would Oversee Homeland Defense

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42765-2002Jan26?language=printer

The Pentagon has decided to ask the White House for approval to set up a new four-star command to coordinate federal troops used to defend North America, part of an intensified effort to bolster homeland security, defense officials said.

The move was prompted by the new domestic security demands placed on the military after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Bush administration's declared war on terrorism.

Although the Pentagon has regional commanders in chief, known as CINCs, who are responsible for Europe, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and South Asia, none exists for U.S. forces in the United States and Canada. The proposed change would give a single four-star officer authority over such domestic deployments as Air Force jets patrolling above U.S. cities, Navy ships running coastal checks and Army National Guard troops policing airports and border crossings.

Before September, military leaders had resisted the idea of a homeland CINC (pronounced "sink"), reflecting a traditional aversion to -- and legal limits on -- the use of federal armed forces for domestic law enforcement. Opposition also existed outside the Pentagon on both the political left and right, with civil libertarians and right-wing militia groups alike warning against military forces encroaching on areas traditionally considered the responsibility of civilian emergency response, law enforcement and health agencies.

But in recent months, as military air, sea and land patrols pressed into action by the Pentagon have answered to several four-star commanders, the Defense Department's top military officers have come to accept the need for streamlining the chain of command.

Earlier opposition from such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union has also waned, although concerns persist about possible "mission creep" and the risk that any military forces deployed around the country could end up threatening individual rights.

Initially, the military chiefs had argued for assigning the homeland defense mission to one of two commands already headquartered in the United States -- either the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado, which is responsible for protecting U.S. skies, or the Joint Forces Command in Virginia, which has been charged with guarding the maritime approaches to North America and the land defense of the continental United States. The thinking was that setting up an entirely new command would entail needless additional bureaucracy and expense.

But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has settled on creating a new command rather than loading an existing one with additional responsibilities, according to four officials in different branches of the Pentagon familiar with the plan. Currently, the general who heads NORAD also runs the U.S. Space Command, which oversees the nation's military satellites and computer networks. The admiral who leads the Joint Forces Command is in charge of developing new ways the different services can fight together, and he serves as head of NATO's North Atlantic region.

"All the chiefs and CINCs have seen the plan and have signed on to it, although it has not yet been briefed to the president," a senior military officer said yesterday. "Everyone is moving down the track toward realizing it."

Defense officials also said that the geographic responsibilities of the new command would likely extend beyond U.S. borders to the rest of North America. Among other advantages, this would facilitate the transfer of the air defense mission from NORAD, which is operated jointly with Canada.

"It's not going to be just a homeland defense command," another official said. "It's going to be a command that has responsibility beyond homeland defense."

But many of the details for implementing the new command structure have yet to be worked out, including where it would be located, what it would be called, who would lead it and exactly which functions it would take from existing CINCs.

"There's still the hope this new command can be created without a net increase in headquarters staff across all the CINC-doms," the senior officer said.

Another official said: "It's going to take time to work out how you go about moving responsibilities from this or that CINC to this new command. This particular review will go ahead and establish the command, and then we'll lay out a series of considerations over the course of the next several months to make it all happen."

Responsibility for coordinating federal activities in homeland defense rests with Tom Ridge, who heads the White House's Office of Homeland Security, which was set up after the Sept. 11 attacks. While the new Pentagon command would doubtless have links to Ridge's office, it would formally fall in a separate chain of authority running from the president through the secretary of defense to those federal troops enlisted in the homeland effort.

Historically, Pentagon planning for dealing with the consequences of terrorist attacks has relied heavily on local and regional organizations -- including the police, firefighters, medics and hazardous-material teams -- taking the lead. Only as a matter of last resort were federal troops to be summoned to help.

Even with the increased domestic role thrust on the armed forces in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, senior defense officials say they would prefer to avoid making federal troops permanent fixtures at airports and elsewhere.

Pentagon authorities contend that state and local agencies should handle the bulk of homeland security responsibilities while federal forces stay focused on trouble spots abroad.

"The problem is concurrency," Army Secretary Thomas E. White said in an interview last week. "No one has let us out of our obligations in Kosovo, in Bosnia, in the Sinai, in Korea. The Army is fully deployed in 100 different countries, supporting our regional commanders in chief. And we are hard-pressed to do that which the Army is principally organized to do. So we don't need to volunteer for any other tasks."

White said defense officials are hoping to begin pulling National Guard troops off security duties at the nation's airports in the next 60 to 90 days, turning the work over to the new Transportation Security Administration.

Roughly 6,000 troops are stationed at more than 400 airports across the country as part of the effort to deter terrorists and reassure the public about the safety of air travel.

Defense officials are also evaluating whether to scale back the combat air patrols over Washington, New York and more than two dozen other cities now that airports and commercial airline companies have instituted stronger safeguards.

Legal barriers to sending the armed forces into U.S. streets have existed for more than a century under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. That law was prompted by President Ulysses S. Grant's use of federal troops to monitor the elections in the former Confederate states. The act prohibits military personnel from searching, seizing or arresting people in the United States.

Some exceptions exist, allowing military forces to suppress insurrections or domestic unrest or to assist in crimes involving nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Since Sept. 11, several prominent lawmakers -- including Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the ranking minority member on the Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), another committee member -- have called for revising the act. But congressional opinion on the matter is divided, and senior Pentagon officials have expressed little interest in any fundamental legislative overhaul.

The move to establish a homeland CINC, officials said, is part of a broader series of geographical and other adjustments being proposed in a number of regional commands under what the Pentagon calls the Unified Command Plan. "This does not finish something," a senior official said. "It actually starts a process of examining how you might" streamline the commands.

--------

Special Forces Wage Secret Afghan War

January 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Secret-War.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- They are the secret warriors in America's hidden war: CIA and Special Operations forces who ride into battle on pickup trucks, dune buggies and helicopters.

As the U.S.-led campaign evolves from a seen-on-TV bombing campaign to a cave-by-cave hunt for al-Qaida and Taliban holdouts, covert U.S. agents and troops are increasingly fighting the key battles.

But the Pentagon keeps details of this war secret. Only rarely -- as with a Special Forces raid on Taliban forces this week -- is a some light shed on their operations. Even conventional U.S. forces also on the ground in Afghanistan are kept in the dark.

Troops from conventional units stationed at the airport here refer to the special forces as ``the alphabet guys'' -- bearded warriors hidden behind sunglasses. Official military statements rarely mention them.

The ``alphabet guys'' tag apparently originated because many of the troops were linked to the CIA.

In Kandahar, Afghan provincial official Khalid Pashtun half-apologized this week for his gunmen's threats to shoot news photographers -- at the behest, the gunmen said, of camera-hostile Special Forces whom the reporters were trailing. ``We need them more than we need you,'' Pashtun told journalists. ``What can we do? Which would you choose?''

No U.S. soldier relayed the threat directly to any of the reporters and it was impossible to tell whether Pashtun embellished the instructions. However, the incident shows the close contact between Special Forces and Afghan allies and the lengths to which both go to keep operations secret.

Covert U.S. forces, including the Army Green Berets or Special Forces, are known as Special Operations forces and drawn from all three armed services. They are spearheading operations against what Afghan leaders say are hundreds of fugitive Taliban and al-Qaida.

Army Special Forces led one of the largest such operations on Wednesday, flying by helicopter to raid what the Pentagon says appeared to be Taliban military compounds in the north. The Pentagon reported about 15 enemy fighters killed and 27 captured. One American soldier was wounded.

Villagers, however, claimed U.S. forces bombed their town hall and clinic, and killed and arrested innocent people and men loyal to Afghanistan's U.S.-backed interim leader, Hamid Karzai.

But the Army called the raid a success -- one of many, it said, for the in-and-out Special Forces.

``I think it's safe to say this war has been anything but conventional,'' Army spokesman Capt. Tony Rivers said at the Kandahar base Saturday.

Speaking of the covert forces, Rivers said, ``In my opinion, they're the most significant reason for the success we've had in this war.''

That success, however, has not been complete. Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks, remains at large, as does Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S.-led Afghan campaign, said Saturday that sending more conventional troops would not have increased the military's chances of catching bin Laden.

``The tactics in this operation were just the right tactics,'' Franks said. He invoked the bogged-down 1980s Soviet campaign in Afghanistan. ``One does not want to commit mistakes that have been committed by other people in the past.''

Special Operations forces are believed to number at least in the hundreds in Afghanistan. No U.S. official will give a firm number, citing security. These commandos -- whose troops are hand-picked, better trained and equipped than ordinary infantrymen -- were created for just the kind of fast, small-scale operations under way in Afghanistan.

CIA paramilitaries, working under the agency's Special Activities Division, operate alongside U.S. military, Afghan allied forces, or alone.

Franks and others have emphasized intelligence over blunt force in the campaign. Some CIA contacts no doubt date back to association with Afghan guerrilla fighters during the war against Soviet invaders. The United States and its allies secretly armed and trained Afghan resistance fighters.

But by their nature, little information on their work is reaching the public. For example, the briefings at the U.S. base at Kandahar airport have to do mostly with efforts to secure and run the base -- the trials of getting a working water system in place are a running serial.

Covert forces, meanwhile, slip in and out of the Kandahar base without fanfare, dressed in black fleece jackets and khakis, weapons strapped to their legs or slung on their backs.

Some have beards, even Afghan shawls, pulling them up over their face when cameras come near. Pale skin and big builds -- in contrast to scrawny, hungry Afghan fighters -- often give them away in the field.

At Kandahar, a beat-up hangar on a far end of a runway holds their aircraft. A futuristic-looking buggy in non-reflective black carries some out of the gates.

The men themselves go to lengths to protect their identities. Reporters have repeatedly accused Special Operations forces of setting local gunmen against them when journalists trail the operatives or the Afghan officials they often accompany.

``Don't worry, they won't kill you,'' one Special Forces agent told an AP photographer in December, as tribal fighters near the mountains of Tora Bora shook down a group of photojournalists for their cameras and other gear. The Pentagon has refused to comment on the incident.

Some interactions are cordial, when limited to banter.

Americans often learn of covert operations only when something goes wrong -- as the crash this week of two unmanned Predator drones. The U.S. surveillance planes have seen heavy use in Afghanistan, including by the CIA, which has dispatched some armed with missiles on their wings to attack Taliban and al-Qaida targets.

The crash of a Marine resupply flight last week cast light on what appears to be a center of special operations at central Afghanistan's Bagram airfield. Two Marines died.

Military officials at Bagram were tightlipped about just who was being resupplied.

``Was it a Special Forces group?'' a reporter asked.

``You can draw your own conclusions,'' a military spokesman replied.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

On Detainees, U.S. Faces Legal Quandary
Most Experts Say Al Qaeda Members Aren't POWs but Taliban Fighters Might Be

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42731-2002Jan26?language=printer

The State Department is urging the administration to formally declare that the al Qaeda and Taliban fighters detained at the Guantanamo Bay naval base are covered by the Geneva Conventions, officials said yesterday. However, the Justice Department and the White House counsel's office say the detainees aren't prisoners of war and should not be covered by the conventions, the officials said.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is taking the position that the United States should refrain from conferring POW status on the detainees but nevertheless should accord them the protections of the Geneva Conventions. The officials said he has taken that position because he wants to ensure that irregular U.S. military forces captured in battle are covered by the conventions and treated humanely.

Human rights activists and some European officials have demanded in recent weeks that the U.S. government declare the detainees prisoners of war. The clamor escalated in recent days, prompting Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to offer an impassioned defense of the U.S. policy, and the treatment of the prisoners, last week.

The Washington Times reported yesterday that Powell wants the detainees to be declared POWs, but an administration official said the Times story was based on a draft memo and that Powell's position was misstated because of "a misunderstanding among the lawyers." State strongly opposes POW status, the officials said.

International law experts outside the government say that to comply with the Geneva Conventions, U.S. officials need to hold hearings into who is a POW.

Human rights advocates contend that the Bush administration should provisionally designate all the detainees as POWs before any hearings begin, but the administration has refused to do so.

Legal experts say U.S. military officials may be resisting because they don't want to elevate the detainees to POW status and risk compromising future arguments that they aren't POWs. A provisional designation could also create a legal precedent that terrorists are to be considered prisoners of war, and restrict the U.S. military's leeway in interrogating the detainees, they said.

While the administration considers how to deal with the prisoners, a number of experts in international law say that most of the al Qaeda detainees probably do not deserve to be labeled prisoners of war under the conventions.

But a loose consensus has emerged among many legal specialists, as well as a number of critics and defenders of the U.S. military's treatment of the 158 detainees, that many of the captured Taliban fighters likely could be declared POWs after hearings on their cases.

The stakes of the decision are considerable: POWs must be repatriated or charged at the end of a conflict (although it is unclear when the war against al Qaeda specifically or terrorism in general would be declared over). Non-POWs can be held for longer periods, though not indefinitely.

Under the Geneva Conventions of 1949, designation as a POW confers dozens of privileges on a captured soldier. He should have access to musical instruments and canteen privileges, for example; is required to give only his name, rank and serial number during interrogations; and must be held in housing comparable to the barracks of the capturing army's soldiers. Prisoners of war must even be paid salaries under the conventions: $5 a month for sergeants, $45 for generals.

A number of experts say the United States appears to be on safe ground -- legally and strategically -- if it argues that the al Qaeda fighters it is holding are not POWs.

Michael Glennon, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said members of al Qaeda will likely fail to meet a key requirement of the Geneva Conventions for POWs: that they "conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war."

"Al Qaeda's sworn purpose of killing American civilians places them at odds with the customs of war," and therefore appears to disqualify most of them from POW designation, he said.

The status of irregular or guerrilla military forces, such as al Qaeda, is murkier under international law than the rights of soldiers fighting for a legitimate government. Essentially, four criteria must be met for captured irregulars to qualify as POWs.

In addition to requiring fighters to do battle "in accordance with the laws and customs of war," combatants must "be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates," wear a uniform with "a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance" and "carry arms openly."

Neither al Qaeda combatants nor Taliban fighters apparently ever wore uniforms, but this may not prove to be decisive, lawyers said. Although the Pentagon declared during the early months of the Vietnam War that the Viet Cong did not deserve POW status, in part because they usually wore indistinctive black garb, military officials later reversed themselves and granted captured Viet Cong soldiers POW standing.

Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters at times apparently carried concealed arms, such as during the prison uprising in Mazar-e Sharif, when captured combatants with grenades hidden in their clothes killed Northern Alliance soldiers and a CIA officer.

The Pentagon "seems to have a valid argument" in making its anticipated contention that al Qaeda members must not be deemed POWs, said Sean Murphy, an international law professor at George Washington University.

In 1949, when the Geneva Conventions governing POWs were drawn up, the world community agreed that groups such as the anti-Nazi French partisans in World War II and Greek communist guerrillas -- movements that in legal terms could be described as resembling al Qaeda -- did not qualify for POW classification.

In 1977, the U.S. government opposed a United Nations resolution that would have declared various captured guerrilla and insurgent forces to be POWs. The idea never caught on, and only a few dozen governments ratified the U.N. plan.

One sign of the general consensus is that even the advocacy group Human Rights Watch is expressing agreement.

Because al Qaeda members don't wear insignia or abide by the rules of war, "we think . . . a tribunal probably would decide al Qaeda members don't meet the POW requirements," said Tom Malinowski, a Human Rights Watch representative in Washington. "But the Taliban probably would be entitled to POW status. If you're fighting for the regular armed forces of a nation, you're entitled to POW status."

The U.S. military has avoided calling the detainees POWs, designating them instead as "unlawful combatants." Yet U.S. officials say they are giving them "treatment consistent with" the Geneva Conventions.

Glennon said it is vital that in determining who is a POW, officials examine each captive's case instead of considering them in groups. If group membership were the test, then, for example, all German Air Corps captives in World War II could have been denied POW status because a few of their squadrons bombed civilian targets in England, Glennon said.

"That," he added, "can't be right."

London-based Amnesty International has not taken a formal stand on the POW question, but officials with the human rights group say they believe al Qaeda fighters qualify as POWs because they were at times intermingled with regular Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

"Until proven otherwise, we think even members of al Qaeda, if captured in combat with Taliban fighters, should qualify as POWs," said Alistair Hodgett, a Washington spokesman for the group. A number of other human rights activists have joined Amnesty International's position.

"Any Taliban or al Qaeda combatants captured by the U.S. clearly are prisoners of war," Makau Mutua, an international law professor at the University of Buffalo, said in a statement. "Prisoners of war are defined by the Geneva Conventions as any opposing combatants. They are identified as such if they fight within a structured command. . . . It is deceitful for the U.S. to seek to circumvent the law" by mislabeling them, he added.

Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers reporting to military commanders connected to a government are ordinarily considered POWs. U.S. officials are considering denying the Taliban fighters POW status because it could be argued that the Taliban regime, recognized diplomatically by only three other nations, did not constitute a valid government.

Rumsfeld acknowledged the issue last week when he told reporters that "lawyers must sort through legal issues with respect to . . . whether or not the Taliban should be considered what the documents apparently refer to as a, quote, 'high contracting party,' or in plain English, I think, 'a government.' "

But some legal experts said it is irrelevant whether other nations diplomatically recognize an opposing regime. During the Korean War, for instance, neither the United Nations nor the United States recognized the Beijing regime diplomatically, but they treated captured Chinese soldiers as POWs.

----

[To reply - mailto:OPED@washpost.com ]

What Would Hippocrates Do?
When the State Calls, It's a Tough Question

By M. Gregg Bloche
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page B02
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41299-2002Jan26?language=printer

Last month, when a would-be suicide bomber tried to ignite his sneakers aboard a flight from Paris to Miami, two physicians subdued him with sedatives. Many acclaimed the two as heroes -- for good reason. According to passengers, the 6-foot-4-inch Richard Reid bit and punched those who fought to stop him, and it seemed as if he might break free. As a physician, I hope I would have had the quickness of wit to do what these doctors did.

But another recent case has left me wondering whether syringe-wielding doctors should become warriors in the campaign against terror: A few weeks ago, the first planeload of al Qaeda prisoners left Afghanistan for Cuba, guarded by military medical personnel with tranquilizers at the ready.

I'm troubled by reports that drugs are part of the Pentagon's security plan for the al Qaeda detainees. U.N. rules governing the treatment of prisoners and the conduct of military medical personnel forbid use of medication for non-therapeutic purposes. These rules reflect the universal sense that the tools of care should not be used as tools of war.

Surely the prisoners aboard the flight to Guantanamo Bay,shackled, hooded and outnumbered 2-to-1 by their guards, could have been safely managed without medicines as restraints. The traditional tools of high security -- isolation, handcuffs, even stun guns for emergencies -- are virtually foolproof when properly used. Medical means have a place only as a life-saving last resort.

There are things that doctors must not do, though others in society are empowered to do them. This notion goes back at least to the time of Hippocrates. Some state purposes go too far toward compromising doctors' primary role, as caretakers with a singular commitment to the sick. Waging war, guarding prisoners and administering criminal punishment are among these things. They are legitimate for the state, but they are not the province of physicians.

Yet increasingly, public officials are asking doctors to serve national security and criminal justice purposes. Last month, the Supreme Court allowed government physicians to forcibly medicate Russell E. Weston Jr., the accused Capitol Hill shooter, to make him competent to stand trial for killing two policemen. Weston, a schizophrenic who thinks space satellites control the direction of time, refused antipsychotic medication for an understandable reason. If convicted, he could face a death sentence, and hissymptoms may beall that stands in the way of a trial.

Never before had the justices approved the drugging of a defendant against his will for the sole purpose of making him competent for trial. But the use of medical skills for state purposes is a long-simmering issue. Courts routinely require doctors to detain people who threaten violence to others. Psychiatrists opine on defendants' competence to stand trial and to be executed. Physicians advise prison officials on methods of capital punishment and assist in executions by lethal injection.

The medical community is wrestling with the question of when to act on the state's behalf and when to say no. This dilemma arises from an uncomfortable truth -- physicians have a divided loyalty, to their patients and to their country. Medical societies and ethics authorities are trying to draw lines, but the question is too important to be left in their hands. We as a nation need to make hard choices about what we, as patients and as citizens, expect from physicians.

Ethics bodies and public officials are at odds over how the lines should be drawn. Codes of ethics in the United States and abroad condemn physician participation in capital punishment. Ethics rules hold that doctors should not pronounce death or prescribe lethal chemicals at executions. Yet statutes and regulations in many states assign these tasks to physicians.

To some degree, courts, criminal justice authorities and the U.S. military have accepted the premise that activities legitimate for the state are inappropriate for physicians. Police don't ask doctors to give drugs to help in the questioning of criminal suspects. Nor do police or the military use medications to quell riots or kill enemy troops in battle. And when, 10 years ago, an INS doctor drugged a Nigerian asylum-seeker against his will to deport him aboard a commercial airliner, she was widely criticized for acting improperly.

In war, medical personnel enjoy unique protections. The Geneva Conventions and protocols governing armed conflict bar attacks on ambulances, hospitals and health workers. But international law requires, as the price for this protection, that medical personnel not join in the fight. Were doctors to take up arms, as combatants or, say, POW guards, they would make themselves attractive as targets, jeopardizing the protections the law affords for war's wounded and sick.

The idea that there are some things the state should not ask doctors to do, even if the state itselfcan do them lawfully, isn't just a Western notion. In 1979, Pakistan's leaders imposed Islamic law and asked surgeons to cut off the limbs of convicted criminals. The country's medical association told its members to say no, and the government failed to find a single surgeon willing to perform punitive amputations.

When, if ever, should doctors put their know-how to use for national security, criminal punishment or other state purposes? Traditional medical ethics offers a simple answer: Never. "In every house where I come," the Hippocratic Oath proclaims, "I will enter only for the good of my patients." But would we have wanted the doctors aboard American Airlines Flight 63 last month to refuse to sedate Reid? Surely not, and medical ethics must make more allowance for the reality that clinical methods used in this way can, at times, save lives and make us more secure.

The tension between patients' needs and public purposes is a painful subject in American medicine. In the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment, clinical researchers withheld treatment from a group of African American men for decades to study the disease's devastating course. In the 1950s and '60s, military and CIA physicians exposed unknowing Americans to radiation and mind-altering drugs for national security-related research purposes.

At hearings held in 1999 and 2000 to consider whether Weston should be medicated, his prison physician acknowledged the tension between the state's purposes and her therapeutic role. I was a consultant for the defense, which also called me as a witness on the ethics of forcible medication. Testifying for the prosecution was Weston's psychiatrist, Sally Johnson. She conceded that her main purpose was to make Weston competent to stand trial -- and that therapeutic success could lead to a death sentence. Yet she and the prosecution denied any conflict between her duties to Weston and the justice system.

By framing her clinical role in narrow, biological terms, unconnected to Weston's personal fate, Johnson sought to steer clear of the obvious conflict between Weston's and the government's interests: "I see him as suffering from a mental illness that requires treatment for alleviation of his symptom picture," she said, "and I feel no conflict in providing that treatment to him."

Tension between our patients' interests and society's expectations is pervasive. It's something we physicians don't like to admit. Years ago, as a hospital-based resident in psychiatry, I faced this conflict each time I was called to manage a patient's violent or angry outburst. I felt pressure to calm the staff's fears with a shot of a strong sedative like Valium or Thorazine to the offending patient. I also felt the urge to rationalize this as a therapeutic response to a medical problem.

Like Johnson caring for Weston, I wanted to think of myself as a doctor, there for the good of my patients, and not as an enforcer of the social peace. But, like Johnson, I was both.

It is a good thing for doctors to feel queasy about such conflicts. The certainty that one is doing the right thing puts doctors at higher risk for doing the wrong thing, especially in institutional settings where there is a high risk of human rights abuse.

Existing codes of medical ethics say almost nothing about how individual physicians should mediate between medicine's therapeutic and caring purposes and the profession's public responsibilities. We're left, instead, with the Hippocratic promise of undivided loyalty to our patients. It's a promise that disregards the social benefits of medical know-how, and it's a promise that the profession routinely breaks.

Public officials, physicians and citizens deserve clarity concerning the use of medicine for national security and other state purposes. Medical organizations have begun to craft rules of conduct for health professionals with duties to the state. Government officials and the public should play a role in preparing such guidelines, if society is to accept them. And courts should take concerns about medical conflicts more seriously than they have so far.

The ethic that animates these rules should preserve doctors' main role, as trustworthy caretakers and champions for the sick. To use the tools of care as instruments of state security, we had better have compelling reasons.

Gregg Bloche is a professor of law at Georgetown University and co-director of the Georgetown-Johns Hopkins Program in Law and Public Health.

----

[How does this eye-for-an-eye differ in spirit from Bush's? et]

Australian Aboriginal asks court to spear policeman

Sunday January 27, 6:19 AM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-86220.html

SYDNEY - An Aboriginal leader has asked an Australian court to spear a police chief to death for putting out a sacred fire, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

In the writ before the High Court in Canberra, Aboriginal elder Darren Bloomfield alleges Detective Superintendent Brian Hepworth "desecrated a fire ceremony" and also tried to run him over in a police car, the Sydney Morning Herald said.

"(He should be) tried under white law and then handed over to us under our law where he would be speared to death," Bloomfield said in the petition to the court.

The incident occurred last July when police moved in after the Aboriginal tent embassy on the lawns of the old parliament house in Canberra held a fire ceremony.

The makeshift embassy this weekend celebrates 30 years since it began as a beach umbrella in 1972 and grew into a small tent village to highlight Aboriginal land claims.

The embassy was repeatedly torn by police and by 1975 had ceased to be a permanent feature. But in 1992, it was revived to draw attention to sovereignty claims by Australia's 300,000 indigenous people and other issues.

A police spokeswoman said an internal investigation had been conducted into the allegations but the results could not be made public while a court case was in progress.

----

Rumsfeld Says Captives Will Not Be Prisoners of War

January 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Rumsfeld.html

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Sunday ruled out any possibility of granting prisoner of war status to the suspected terrorists held in a makeshift prison on this U.S. Navy base.

``They are not POWs. They will not be determined to be POWs,'' Rumsfeld told reporters accompanying him on his first visit to the detention facility, a hot and dusty camp amid scrub brush and rock.

The Bush administration considers the captured fighters to be ``unlawful combatants'' and ``detainees'' rather than prisoners of war because they don't represent a recognized government and their method of terror violates internationally accepted laws of warfare.

The distinction is significant because under the Geneva Conventions, written after World War II, a POW has certain legal rights that would govern the U.S. military's interrogations of the detainees and would require that they be released when the hostilities in Afghanistan are over.

If there is any ambiguity about whether a captive should be considered a prisoner of war, the Geneva Conventions say a special three-person military tribunal should be convened to decide.

Rumsfeld said that is irrelevant at Guantanamo Bay.

``There is no ambiguity in this case,'' he said.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that officials agree the detainees aren't prisoners of war. But administration lawyers are debating whether the Geneva Conventions, which have provisions that deal with unlawful combatants, apply in this case.

``These are the worst of a very bad lot,'' Cheney told ``Fox News Sunday. ``They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans, innocent Americans, if they can, and they are perfectly prepared to die in the effort. And they need to be detained, treated very cautiously, so that our people are not at risk.''

The detainee issue is likely to come up Monday at the regularly scheduled National Security Council meeting, which President Bush attends, a senior administration official said.

Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveled to the detention facility, known as ``Camp X-Ray,'' by plane, boat and bus, accompanied by four senators: Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, and Republicans Ted Stevens of Alaska and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

They came to get a firsthand look at the facilities and procedures used in handling the 158 prisoners being detained in 8-foot-by-8-foot, open air cells.

Feinstein and the other senators told reporters after touring the camp that they agreed with the Bush administration's handling of the prisoners and saw nothing to suggest mistreatment.

Inouye, in fact, said they are being treated ``in some ways better than we treat our people.''

Feinstein said she once worked at a California prison and has visited many others around the world. To those abroad who have suggested the Guantanamo Bay prisoners have been treated improperly she said, ``Take another look.''

As members of a Navy construction battalion pounded away on wood and corrugated metal roofs for new holding cells, Rumsfeld walked through the camp and saw many of the detainees in their cells.

Reporters who accompanied Rumsfeld from Washington were kept about 100 yards away from the camp, close enough to see prisoners -- some wearing white towels on their heads -- moving about in their cells.

Rumsfeld, dressed in olive green dress slacks and blue open-neck dress shirt, told reporters that as he walked by a row of cells he could hear some of the captured fighters speaking to each other. Members of his party said none were seen gesturing toward him or giving any indication they recognized him.

The defense secretary got a look at five small, newly erected buildings on the perimeter of the camp that soon will be used for prisoner interrogations. The questioning so far has been done in a tent adjacent to the cells.

Rumsfeld also met with representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross at the camp. He said they told him that any information from Red Cross interviews of prisoners would be released to the U.S. government only on condition that the government not make it public.

Last week, Rumsfeld halted the transfer of prisoners from Afghanistan, citing a shortage of cells. On Sunday, he said he was considering when to begin building more permanent facilities. He did not say when transfers from Afghanistan would resume, but other officials said it would be soon.

Rumsfeld said the purpose of the trip was not to investigate the treatment of the captured al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, although some U.S. allies have raised questions about it. He said he came mainly to thank the U.S. troops guarding the prisoners and to meet with their commanders.

``I have absolutely full confidence in the way the detainees are being handled and treated,'' Rumsfeld said. ``It is a tough job,'' he added, noting that al-Qaida has vowed to kill Americans anywhere and wherever possible. The United States blames al-Qaida and its leader Osama bin Laden for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

``These are among the most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.''


-------- OTHER

-------- energy

Lawsuit Threatens, but Cheney Refuses to Name Energy Advisors

January 27, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-enron-cheney.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite the threat of an unprecedented lawsuit, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday he would not give congressional investigators internal documents related to development of the administration's energy plan, including additional information on Enron Corp.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has been seeking more information about contacts between industry and the Bush administration's energy task force, headed by Cheney.

On the ``Fox News Sunday'' program, Cheney said the long-standing debate with the GAO was being revived by Democrats hoping to capitalize on the collapse of energy giant Enron.

``Now what's happened is we've come back around, as a result of the Enron corporate collapse, some of the Democrats on the Hill are trying to re-energize this and try to turn it into some kind of political debate,'' Cheney said.

``The fact is, Enron didn't get any special deals,'' he added on the ABC ``This Week'' program.

Cheney said the dispute involved investigators' requests, at the urging of Democrats, for ``a listing of everybody I meet with, of everything that was discussed, any advice that was received, notes and minutes of those meetings.''

``It would make it virtually impossible for me to have confidential conversations with anybody ... You just cannot accept that proposition without putting a chill over the ability of the president and vice president to receive unvarnished advice.

``The net result of that is to weaken the presidency and the vice presidency,'' he added on ABC.

CONSIDERING SUIT

Comptroller General David Walker, head of the GAO, said he would decide this week whether to file suit to force the White House to turn over the information, which he said would be the first such action against a federal agency.

Walker says Congress and the GAO have a right to information on the task force because it was funded with taxpayers' money.

But Cheney said the GAO did not have the authority to demand such information.

``Their jurisdiction extends to agencies created by statute. That's not me,'' he told the Fox program. ``I'm a constitutional officer. And the authority of the GAO does not extend in that case to my office.''

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Cheney's decision was ``unfortunate.''

``It may be a matter of principle, but it's also a matter of law,'' the South Dakota Democrat told CBS' ``Face the Nation.''

``If this has to be resolved in the courts, I think that that may be the only recourse. The General Accounting Office is on solid ground in demanding that these records be turned over. The American people have a right to know what the facts are.''

The energy plan announced in May called for more oil and gas drilling and a revived nuclear power program. It contained many provisions sought by Enron.

The White House has revealed that Cheney or the energy task force staff met six times last year with Enron representatives but has refused to provide other details on how the administration's policy was crafted.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi told CBS, ''I can assure you they are not hiding anything.''

Houston-based Enron, once ranked No. 7 on the Fortune 500 big businesses list, filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Dec. 2, hammering investors, eliminating thousands of jobs and raising questions about its ties to President Bush.

Walker began his pursuit of the energy task force last spring at the request of Rep. Henry Waxman of California and Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, both Democrats.

----

Cheney: Won't Turn Over Energy List

The Associated Press
Sunday, January 27, 2002; 12:28 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45434-2002Jan27?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday he will not give congressional investigators a list of business leaders he met with while formulating the administration's energy policy.

Cheney said providing such a list would harm his ability to receive advice in the future - a stand that could prompt a congressional lawsuit seeking to force disclosure.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle called Cheney's stance "unfortunate."

"The American people have a right to know what the facts are," Daschle said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "I think the administration needs to open up, to be willing to be forthcoming with all the information regarding these circumstances."

At issue are meetings Cheney or members of his energy task force held with officials of energy firms, including the now-collapsed Enron Corp. while the energy policy was being formed last year. Cheney spoke on the same day a New York Times/CBS News Poll showed a majority of Americans believe the administration is hiding something or lying about its dealings with Enron.

Cheney said his office already has given investigators numerous financial and other records.

What he won't turn over, despite demands by investigators and Democratic congressmen, is "a listing of everybody I meet with, of everything that was discussed, any advice that was received, notes and minutes of those meetings," Cheney told "Fox News Sunday."

"Now, that would be unprecedented in the sense that that's not been done before. It's unprecedented in the sense that it would make it virtually impossible for me to have confidential conversations with anybody," he said.

"You just cannot accept that proposition without putting a chill over the ability of the president and vice president to receive unvarnished advice."

David Walker, the head of the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has said he will decide next week whether to file a lawsuit to force the White House to turn over documents on the meetings.

Cheney said the GAO is a "creature of Congress" whose authority does not extend to the White House. "I'm a constitutional officer, and the authority of the GAO does not extend in that case to my office."

Daschle suggested Congress could take action beyond the GAO probe. "We will analyze just what our options are, what prospects there would be for Congress asserting itself," he said, without elaborating.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card agreed with Cheney that the administration's ability to have confidential talks with advisers should be fiercely guarded.

"I believe very strongly in protecting the privilege of the president" on recommendations that may not come out in public domain, he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Cheney said the administration's stance is the same as it was last August, when investigators sought similar information. The GAO eventually backed off.

"What's re-energized it now is the question of Enron and some efforts by some of my Democratic friends on the Hill to try to create a political issue out of what's really a corporate issue," Cheney added on ABC's "This Week."

"What Enron's all about is a corporate collapse, maybe malfeasance in office, and that will be dealt with. ... But if the principle was valid last August, the collapse of Enron should not be permitted to undermine the principle," he said.

Though the administration has refused to reveal the inner workings of the energy panel for nearly a year, Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott said "everybody knows what happened" inside.

And, he said, "the proof is in the pudding" - the administration developed a plan that balances the need for new domestic petroleum production with conservation programs, upgrading energy transmission infrastructure and alternative fuels, he said.

Environmental groups and many Democrats said the Bush plan, large portions of which passed the House in August, were tilted to benefit the energy industry. The plan would allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offer tax breaks and incentives totaling $33.5 billion over 10 years, mostly earmarked to a wide range energy producers including coal, oil, and nuclear industries.

-------- environment

Finite Wonders
'The Future of Life' by E.O. Wilson

Reviewed by Steven Johnson
Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page BW08
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35151-2002Jan24?language=printer

THE FUTURE OF LIFE
By E.O. WilsonKnopf. 229 pp. $22

In 1988 researchers identified a tiny bacterium, Prochlorococcus, that floats in open ocean water, using the sun's energy to reproduce itself. This might seem like an obscure taxonomic advance, cataloguing yet another bit player in the pageantry of life, but it turns out that with Prochlorococcus there is considerably more than meets the eye. Scientists now believe that Prochlorococcus cells number up to 200,000 per milliliter of water and play an essential role in the larger ecosystem of the planet's oceans. They may turn out to be the most abundant organism on the face of the earth -- unknown to us until little more than a decade ago.

The discovery of Prochlorococcus illustrates one of the fundamental precepts of E. O. Wilson's latest stately work of environmentalist activism, The Future of Life. While Wilson can paint doomsday scenarios with the best of them, his message here goes beyond the more familiar warning about mankind destroying the natural world: What should trouble us just as much, he argues, is that we have no idea what we're destroying. If one of the planet's most widespread organisms -- and one central to the complex web of energy flows that sustain all life -- showed up on our radar just now, imagine what other vital treasures are vanishing every day, as the planet's great hotbeds of biodiversity are ploughed and paved over.

Wilson has analyzed the forces behind that carnage before, in The Diversity of Life and in the conclusion to his seminal Consilience. The engine of destruction is driven by two primary pistons. First, the neo-Malthusian specter of runaway population numbers: "The pattern of human population growth in the twentieth century was more bacterial than primate," he writes. "When homo sapiens passed the 6-billion mark we had already exceeded by as much as a hundred times the biomass of any large animal species that ever existed on the land. We and the rest of life cannot afford another hundred years like that." The second factor is the increasing energy consumption of that population: the "environmental footprint" of land required to supply the needs of each individual. Because the citizens of industrialized countries tend to prefer foods that are higher on the energy pyramid than those preferred by developing or rural economies (eating meat instead of grain), the planet's average footprint grows larger as nations industrialize.

Wilson calls the narrowing gap outlined by these two trajectories "the bottleneck": Continue the population growth on its current path, raise energy consumption around the world to Western levels, and by 2100 we'll need four more planet Earths to sustain life as we know it. And along the way, we'll destroy millions of lifeforms we never got the chance to know.

If you accept these numbers -- as the scientific establishment today appears to -- the argument for reversing the trend would appear to be self-evident, but Wilson, ever the reasoned Southern gentleman, chooses to make the case anyway, from three distinct perspectives. There is the matter of the bottleneck itself: We're not likely to stumble across four new Earths in the next century, so we might as well figure out a way to live with the one we have. There is the spiritual connection to nature itself, the ethics of preserving the wild world for its own sake, because it is more vast and more ancient than our SUVs and cheeseburgers, and likely to outlast us in the end, if we don't find a way to live alongside it.

Then there is the opportunity cost of destroying the hotbeds of biodiversity -- principally the tropical rainforests of Africa and the Americas. These ecosystems are a veritable pharmacopia of undiscovered medicines and foods, teeming with life that we have only begun to catalog. Wilson tells the story of the poison dart frog of Central and South America, whose back secretes a deadly toxin isolated by researchers in the early 1970s. When administered in much smaller doses, the toxins proved to be a remarkably effective and nonaddictive painkiller, particularly after chemists at Abbott Labs manipulated the compounds of the original toxin, creating a new product dubbed ABT-594.

While the poison dart frog, in Wilson's words, was helping to "launch a major new initiative in pharmaceutical research," its natural habitat was almost destroyed by deforesting. When the original researchers returned to collect more samples for extensive testing, they were able to find only one milligram of the substance. Had they returned a few years later, the poison dart frog might have been gone for good.

The Future of Life oscillates between a rueful account of the planet's bleak prospects and a case for qualified hope. Wilson has sounded apocalyptic notes before, but here his dark prognosis collides intriguingly with one of his other trademark theories: evolutionary psychology, the notion of an essential, genetically wired human nature forged on the savannahs of Africa millions of years ago, during the formative years of the genus Homo.

If nothing else, this book should serve as the ultimate rebuttal to critics who find Wilson's sociobiological work to be an apology for the status quo. At the same time, however, his sociobiology also offers a sobering connection between the present state of the environment and the more remote past of our species: The destructive ecological behavior that Wilson reviles is also, in his framework, embedded into the hardware of the human psyche. We are not forest-dwellers by nature, and so when we encounter a forest, we have an almost instinctive desire to clear it. "Human instinct can and does wreak havoc on the natural world," Wilson writes. "Finding themselves surrounded by forests that once covered most of the Earth's habitable land, Neolithic peoples set out ten thousand years ago to convert them into cropland, pasture, corrals, and scattered woodlots. What they could not chop down, they burned. Successive generations, their populations growing, continued the process until today only half the original cover is left. They needed the food, of course; but there is another way of looking at the relentless deforestation. People then as now instinctively wanted the ancestral habitat. So they proceeded to create savannas crafted to human needs."

Wilson remains convinced that these instincts can be overcome, and in The Future of Life he outlines -- in more detail than he has in his earlier books -- a path to salvation. Part of his proposal relies on traditional preservation strategies, focused on the remaining centers of biodiversity in tropical forests and shallow marine habitats. (Wilson claims that these regions could be saved with a $30 billion investment.) The 10 years since he published The Diversity of Life have made him even more convinced that nongovernmental organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy -- which have shifted emphasis from marquee species such as whales and bald eagles to more ecosystemic pursuits -- can play a key role in saving the planet. In recent years, the Nature Conservancy has outbid would-be developers in purchasing a number of key properties, including Pacific atolls, Mexican wetlands and an island of old-growth forest in the Florida Keys.

Wilson is also keen on the possibilities of bioprospecting: the strategy of encouraging native populations to see their local biodiversity as a long-term asset worth preserving. "In 1992 a pair of economic botanists demonstrated that single harvests of wild-grown medicinals from two tropical forest plots in Belize were worth $726 and $3,327 per hectare respectively, with labor costs thrown in. By comparison, other researchers estimated per-hectare yield from tropical forest converted to farmland at $228 in nearby Guatemala and $339 in Brazil." The rainforests are teeming with undiscovered variations on the poison dart frog, which means that both indigenous people and giant multinationals have an incentive to keep them intact, even if you don't factor in the larger contribution they make to the planet's well-being.

The Future of Life makes it clear once again that Wilson is one of our most gifted science writers -- capable both of dissecting the intricate life forms concealed in rainforest topsoil and explaining the macroeconomic issues behind population growth. Readers of his earlier books may recognize some riffs in The Future of Life, albeit presented here with updated numbers and a more developed economic account of environmental issues. But even if there are echoes of his earlier work here, given the stakes involved, Wilson's call for long-term environmental thinking is a refrain well worth repeating. ý

Steven Johnson is the author of "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software."

-------- health

Nanotech research showing great progress

By Scott R. Burnell
UPI Science News
1/27/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=25012002-093104-9377r

LAS VEGAS, Nev., Jan. 25 (UPI) -- While the idea of molecule-sized motors and entire chemical labs the size of a computer chip sounds like science fiction, such things are already taking shape in research labs around the world.

The latest examples of microelectromechanical systems or MEMS were on display this past week at a conference in Las Vegas. Co-sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Robotics and Automation Society, MEMS 2002 delved into the latest research on devices ranging from a small computer chip down to a few molecules in size. Scientists expect the technology to provide breakthroughs in several areas, including medicine, computers and robotics in the next few years.

Yogesh Gianchandani, a professor of electrical and computer engineer at both the University of Wisconsin and the University of Michigan, co-chaired the conference and served on its technical program committee. The IEEE had good reason to put him at the forefront of the meeting, since the MEMS industry has consulted him several times on how to design and build such devices.

The National Science Foundation awarded Gianchandani its Career Award in 2000, based on more than 15 years' work in integrated circuit design and fabrication. His research has looked at how microscopic sensors, mechanical components and integrated systems can fit into a wide range of applications.

He worked with Xerox and Microchip Technology before becoming a research fellow at the University of Michigan, and has published more than 50 papers concerning chipmaking and MEMS. He sat down with United Press International on the last day of MEMS '02 to discuss the conference's results.

--

Q. Congratulations are in order for a successful conference. From the statistics, it's obvious interest in the field is certainly growing rapidly.

A. Thanks. If you include the people who walked in over the past couple of days, we have about 700 registered attendees ... which is a very substantial record for the conference, and since it's in a negative (economic) year we're very, very gratified.

Q. At some point it becomes difficult to differentiate between MEMS, which is more at the micron (millionths of an inch) scale, and nanotechnology, when you're getting down to nanometers (billionths of an inch) or even Angstroms. What would you say is a good general-purpose dividing line between the two, or is there one?

A. I don't know if there is one. I guess you could pick a dividing line of dimension, since nanotechnology is a few orders of magnitude smaller, but I like to look at it somewhat differently. MEMS technology is still linked to chip manufacturing technology. (Process) limits allow this to go down to about a tenth of a micron, so down to that dimension we can still use the batch manufacturing techniques that are used for integrated circuits. With nanotechnology you need some other approaches, and that might be one way to distinguish between them, and that might be a more meaningful distinction than dimension.

Q. In the conference's first presentation, we heard about a nanoscale motor based on biological molecules. When we start talking about using protein molecules for motors, then we're down into the tens of nanometers; that would seem to indicate another step of technology necessary to do that on a more meaningful scale than simply assembling things in the lab.

A. There are many important constraints that remain to be fulfilled. They're trying to create arrays of those things now. When you get that small, you have to have a technology that will allow you to locate these motors at the positions you want them. You have to have testing techniques to ensure they're working, calibration techniques. (Researchers) have also mentioned that, at this point, these motors are only working in liquids, so it's going to be a significant challenge to power these things, since the liquid serves as the fuel transportation medium. We're some years away from seeing that particular device, but it's hard to predict the future. I don't want to be in that business, because some clever person might find a niche application for it, and might find a way to accommodate it into existing fabrication techniques.

Q. Many of the presentations here, both oral and in the poster sessions, have focused on individual devices as opposed to an overall system. There was an "electronic fountain pen," which seemed to be a fully integrated system, but what kind of conclusions can be drawn from the fact that a lot of the presentations seem to be at the discrete device stage as opposed to more of an integrated system?

A. In order to develop a system, you typically develop the individual devices first. You may also have a system that incorporates three existing blocks and one new block, then the paper would and should focus on the new block, and I think you're seeing an artifact of that. You're seeing the fact that these are the first things people have to attack, because these devices are the first aspect of research people focus on; it's the biggest unknown.

Q. This year, we've seen a couple of presentations on more complete systems. Is it reasonable to think that once MEMS 03 rolls around, we'll see even more presentations on full systems? Are we to the point where the problems dealing with the individual devices are being solved, and we can move on to systems integration?

A. That's happening on a continuous basis; we don't have to wait for MEMS 03 to do that. The question is, will it get reported? And if it's reported, will the challenges that were addressed in systems integration be suitable for presentation at this conference, from the point of interest for our attendees? For example, hypothetically, there may be a closed-loop system that has a conventional control scheme that uses a new kind of sensor and new kind of actuator. We'd like to hear about the sensor and actuator, and there may be people here who'll benefit from hearing about the control system, but that will be up to the technical program committee to make that decision.

Q. There have been a number of very interesting papers, but from a technical standpoint, what presentations particularly caught your eye?

A. I wouldn't pick out a single presentation, but I have to tell you this: We have a very low acceptance rate for this conference. Each year, we find the quality of the submissions gets better and better, the standard keeps rising as we see the field maturing. It's so obvious as you see the papers year after year, and I think the attendees know it. Everything that you see here has been through the wringer, so I wouldn't single one out.

Q. Is there anything else about the conference or the technology we should mention?

A. Given what we've seen at this conference, we should expect commercial interest to continue to grow, as more of these devices come out of the research labs and into production. We hope that will continue.

-------- imf / world bank

An Economic Forum Moves to Manhattan

New York Times
January 27, 2002
By STEPHANIE STROM with LOUIS UCHITELLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/business/27FORU.html?pagewanted=all

TO show support for New York in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, moved his annual jamboree here this year from its traditional home in Davos, Switzerland.

But the sojourn of the forum - an unparalleled gathering of world leaders, celebrity chief executives, academics, writers and other movers and shakers that begins on Thursday - from the quiet ski resort perched on the slopes of the Alps to the mean streets of Manhattan also mirrors a sharp shift in the global psyche.

Holding the forum in Davos, a secluded playground for European vacationers and, on occasion, the idle rich, would have sent the wrong message. Not only has globalization been cast by terrorists as the cause of many ills, but also it may be the culprit behind the synchronized slowdown of the world economy, the first global downturn since the oil crisis of the 1970's.

"More than anything else, the issues discussed this year will be addressed more somberly," said Robert D. Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (news/quote) International. "I think when historians look at the 1990's, they will look at it as a period of irrational exuberance in many respects. The cold war was over. Western economies grew at a rapid rate. Stock markets were doing extremely well. And there was a feeling almost of invulnerability. A new sense of realism has descended on us, and we realize we're all in peril."

From its inception 31 years ago, when 440 people attended and almost no one noticed, to now, when thousands participate and thousands more wish they had been invited, the forum has become an icon of globalization for both its admirers and the legions of detractors who decry its embrace of free trade, deregulation and market capitalism.

The protests against the forum have actually enhanced its credibility, although they have never approached the scale and fury of those that derailed the World Trade Organization's meetings in Seattle in 1999 and in Genoa, Italy, last year.

Davos was difficult to get to and to infiltrate; Manhattan is not. But many protesters say they will be staying away, afraid that any confrontation with the New York City police, who have become heroes since the September attacks, would damage their image. "Don't get me wrong, I am extremely supportive of the people who will be protesting in New York," said John Sellers, executive director of the Ruckus Society, a human rights group in San Francisco that has helped organize protests against global trade. "But I don't trust the media to make us look anything but ugly and unreasonable, particularly when we'd be standing across the barricades from New York's finest, the heroes of Sept. 11."

Instead, Mr. Sellers and others will head for an "anti" forum, the World Social Forum, to be held at the same time as its economic nemesis but in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Its organizers expect as many as 50,000 people to attend.

Thanks to Mr. Schwab's canny sense of what makes for a good mix of people, however, some of the protesters will be working both sides of the barricade. In recognition of the antiglobalization protests, and to enliven five days of forum sessions on television, the Swiss impresario has reached out to people like Sara Horowitz, executive director of Working Today, and Peter Brey, secretary general of the Terre des Hommes Foundation, whose groups push for labor rights, better schools, health care and other social benefits in third-world countries.

Reflecting the sweeping, often touchy-feely aspect of many sessions, Ms. Horowitz said, "One panel I am on is about religion and what is the mission behind social entrepreneurial efforts, and how you inject moral values into what we all do."

Like Mr. Brey, she will shift between the panel sessions at the Waldorf-Astoria and the protests on Park Avenue outside.

The forum is unlike the other targets of protesters - the International Monetary Fund, for example, and the World Bank - in that its role as a private policy broker is overshadowed by its appearance. To outsiders, the gathering seems little more than a five-day cocktail party or, worse, a shadow world government.

But while conceding the remarkable social potential of the event, participants say the forum affords the opportunity to reach out to headline-makers from the worlds of business, government, culture and politics.

OU get as much out of it as you put into it," said Flemming R. Jacobs, a Dane who is head of the NOL Group, a shipping and logistics management company based in Singapore. "In the past, there have been wall-to-wall panels on a wealth of really different issues, and in some instances, it has been difficult to choose one over the other. I try to make as many as possible and then grab a cup of coffee with some of the more interesting personalities. It is interesting how approachable everybody is."

Still, the serious side of the forum pales next to the star power of the attendees, and in the past, special e- mail kiosks have enabled more plebeian participants to connect, quickly and easily, with the most powerful.

This year, Bill Gates, the Microsoft (news/quote) founder and chairman, can mix it up with a rival, Nobuyuki Idei, chairman and chief executive of Sony (news/quote). Kim Dae Jung, the president of South Korea, can exchange views with Thomas Klestil, the president of Austria, and Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan.

LL this comes with a cost, of course. Mr. Schwab gets most of the organization's income from corporations, which pay annual fees of $17,647 plus $7,353 for each person attending. American companies have gradually become the biggest source of this corporate revenue, and their executives often get prominent billing at forum events.

But entertainment is never ignored. Daniel Boulud, perhaps the reigning prince of the New York gastronomic scene, whose restaurants - Restaurant Daniel, Café Boulud and db Bistro Moderne - will no doubt be mobbed by forum participants, will be the host of a panel called "Tell Me What You Eat . . ." exploring the clues that food offers about culture and national identity.

And a host of other luminaries, ranging from Alec Baldwin, Quincy Jones and Jenny Holzer to Elie Wiesel and Francis Fukuyama, will also be roaming the convention halls, as they have in the past.

"I think you go for the same reason you go to parties - to see a lot of people you only get to see when you go to parties, because you're too busy with work and traveling all the time," said Joichi Ito, founder and chief executive of Neoteny, a technology investment company in Tokyo, who is looking forward to stealing a few moments with John Gage, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems (news/quote). "The forum is the only time I can get to see all these busy people in one place and have business meetings and get new ideas."

This will be Mr. Ito's second forum, in part because he misunderstood the proper protocol for getting an invitation. "I kept getting invited to all of the regional conferences," he said, referring to the smaller conclaves Mr. Schwab convenes in various locales around the globe throughout the year. "I was insulted because I wanted to be invited to the forum in Davos, but then someone from Klaus's organization pulled me aside and explained that it was only by attending some of the regional conferences that you get invited to the annual conference."

He was glad to hear that New York was a temporary venue for the forum. "There's something kitsch about hanging out with rich and famous people in a ski resort in Davos," he said. "There's nothing kitsch about hanging out with rich and famous people at the Waldorf-Astoria."

Indeed. Insiders tend to refer to the forum simply as "Davos." "Waldorf" or "Manhattan" just don't have quite the same ring.

But many are hoping that the forum's Manhattan excursion will rejuvenate the gathering. Several participants last year grumbled that it had lost its focus and become too much of a media circus. The issues discussed and the ideas engendered were lost in the news of who was having lunch with whom and which corporate chieftain was the best skier.

"My first year, two years ago, was a real winner," Mr. Jacobs said. "It was full of enthusiasm, speed, lots of new ideas. Last year, I walked away with less inspiration and fewer ideas."

In recent years, questions have been raised about Mr. Schwab's management of the organization's finances, and last year the Swiss, who have always viewed the forum as a bit of a nuisance, complained that their tax dollars were being siphoned off to provide extra security from protesters while crime rates in Zurich were rising.

The sideshows, in other words, overtook the main event. "The decision to move it to New York was incredibly controversial," said Esther Dyson, the technology consultant and head of Edventure, who has her pick of conferences but always attends the forum. "It had reached the pinnacle, and the move to New York could be a mess or it could reset it and give it new life. It needs to be given a new life. It was successful, but it really wasn't headed anywhere. It'll change now."

There is at least one sign that the forum will regain some of its luster as a serious venue for promoting the exchange of ideas. Saudi Arabia plans to send a delegation of some 50 princes, high-ranking officials and other dignitaries to undertake a charm offensive in the wake of the terrorist attacks, said Hassan Yassin, a Saudi businessman and former head of the Saudi Information Office in Washington.

"Holding the forum in New York is a very good way to show that what happens to America is of concern to all of the international community, including Saudi Arabia," Mr. Yassin said. "New York is the central unit of the world economy, and any harm done to it has tentacles that reach out around the world."

After the forum, the Saudis plan to fan out across the country in an effort to mend fences and repair their country's tattered image here. "Unfortunately, there were Saudi citizens among those who attacked America," Mr. Yassin said. "We want to show we are not all siblings of those terrorists."

R. SCHWAB, for his part, says context and timing as much as change of venue will make this forum different from those of the last few years. "I think this time people feel we are living in a new world, and it's the first big meeting of global decision makers since Sept. 11," he said. "People this year expect to come out with a vision, or at least some signposts, for what this new world will be."

Many participants agree, predicting that Sept. 11 and, to a lesser extent, the global economic slowdown will dominate the discussions and restore the forum's heft.

"There are so many new issues that didn't exist last year," said Jeffrey E. Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management and a former under secretary of commerce. "Is America wallowing in its own obsessions or are our preoccupations shared by the world? How can we reconcile economic weakness with a show of foreign-policy strength? And what is the answer to the question of whether government is re-emerging as a more powerful force dominating world markets or is it a temporary phenomenon?"

That sort of issue is what will draw Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Rodrik, a globalization expert and a critic of traditional globalization theories, sees the forum as another venue for the debate - a debate he sees gradually incorporating the protesters' views.

"Even those who fundamentally disagree with the ideas being propounded by the antiglobalization groups," he said, "have to appear that they are paying lip service to them and you will see that at the Waldorf."


-------- activists

Australia Refugees on Hunger Strike

By Mike Corder
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, January 27, 2002; 8:57 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44990-2002Jan27?language=printer

WOOMERA, Australia -- Chanting "Free the refugees!" hundreds of people demonstrated outside detention centers in Australia on Sunday as more illegal immigrants joined a hunger strike to protest their confinement.

"Shame on you, shame on your system!" one protester shouted at an immigration worker at the Maribyrnong detention center in Melbourne. "Look at you, like a Nazi soldier!"

Demonstrators tried to scale a fence around the Melbourne detention center, and also staged protests outside centers in Sydney and Port Hedland.

"It is necessary to show those poor people inside there are views in the Australian community that are not the views of the government," said protester John Martyn in Melbourne.

Paul Boylan, a lawyer representing many detainees, said about 200 more people had joined the hunger strike at a detention center in the Outback settlement of Woomera, bringing the total to about 370 detainees, including children. Most are Afghans, and dozens have sewed their lips together.

The government put the total number at 181, but admitted more refugees were joining the protest at other detention centers.

Four children involved in the hunger strike remained hospitalized Saturday, along with a refugee who climbed onto the roof of a building and leaped onto a coil of razor wire.

Seventeen of the immigrants began refusing food at the Port Hedland detention center in the north of Western Australia state, while another four joined in at Curtin camp, also in Western Australia, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs said.

At the Maribyrnong detention center, 35 detainees - half the center's population - were on hunger strike, refugee advocates said.

Boylan defended the stepped-up measures. "Gandhi changed the government of India by doing this," he said.

About 175 of the protesting detainees have not eaten for nearly two weeks. They are growing increasingly weak as dehydration and temperatures up to 104 degrees take their toll, lawyers representing them said.

The protesters are demanding that the government speed up their asylum claims and move them out of Woomera, a former missile testing base on a hot, dusty plain 1,120 miles west of Sydney.

Five other children are still on hunger strike at the detention center, along with 162 men and 14 women, the immigration department said. It said 35 detainees, including one child, had their lips sewn as part of the protest.

"They say, 'This is a big cage and we're treated like animals,'" said attorney Tirana Hassan, one of a group of lawyers representing about half of the 800 illegal immigrants currently being held at Woomera.

A guard also was hospitalized after being hit on the head by a rock thrown by an asylum seeker. His injuries were not considered serious.

Prime Minister John Howard has refused calls to soften the government's policy of detaining all illegal immigrants in camps like the one at Woomera until their asylum applications are processed - which can take up to three years.

About 3,000 illegal immigrants, mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and southern Asia are currently in detention in Australia.

Howard says conditions in the five detention centers are deliberately harsh to act as a deterrent to other people considering trying to sneak into Australia.

The United Nations and human rights groups have condemned the policy.

There were no demonstrations Sunday at Woomera. Most people in this community of less than 1,000 people have little sympathy toward the asylum seekers and dislike the detention center, though it provides jobs for about 200 townspeople.

----

From Aryan Nations Compound To Idaho College's Peace Park

COAST TO COAST
Washington Post
Sunday, January 27, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44067-2002Jan26?language=printer

The abandoned compound at Hayden Lake in northern Idaho, where Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler and his white supremacist disciples marched with shaved heads and Nazi flags, has been donated to a local college and will become a "peace park."

When the skinheads were around, television crews flocked to the region, branding Idaho as a haven for hatemongers.

But things change. Butler and his group were run out of the state two years ago by Victoria Keenan and her son Jason Keenan, who sued over being held at gunpoint by Aryan Nations thugs.

The Keenans won a $6.3 million judgment. Butler and his crew were forced into bankruptcy.

The lakeside property was bought by Gregory Carr, founder of the Prodigy computer company; he gave it to North Idaho College last week. The fire department burned the barracks, watchtowers and buildings to the ground, leaving just grass and trees.

"I would like to give the land a chance to rest and heal for a while," said college President Michael Burke of any future plans. "It's had a particularly ugly past, and we want to give it chance to heal, and give the community a chance to let this memory fade."

-- William Booth

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Aussies Rally in Support of Refugees

By Mike Corder
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, January 27, 2002; 12:11 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45385-2002Jan27?language=printer

WOOMERA, Australia -- Hundreds of sympathizers rallied Sunday outside immigrant detention centers in Australia, shouting "Free the refugees!" as more asylum seekers joined a hunger strike to protest their captivity.

"Shame on you, shame on your system!" one protester shouted at an immigration worker at the Maribyrnong detention center in Melbourne. "Look at you, like a Nazi soldier!"

Demonstrators tried to scale a fence around the Melbourne detention center and staged protests outside centers in Sydney and Port Hedland.

"It is necessary to show those poor people inside there are views in the Australian community that are not the views of the government," said protester John Martyn in Melbourne.

Paul Boylan, a lawyer representing many detainees, said about 200 more people had joined the hunger strike at a detention center in the Outback settlement of Woomera, bringing the total to about 370 detainees, including children. Most are Afghans, and dozens have sewed their lips together.

The government put the total number at 181, but admitted more refugees were joining the protest at other detention centers.

The protesters are demanding that the government speed up their asylum claims and move them out of Woomera, a former missile testing base on a hot, dusty plain 1,120 miles west of Sydney.

With the government unlikely to meet their demands and the hunger strikers unwilling to end their protest, there are fears some of the refugees could die.

Four children involved in the hunger strike remained hospitalized Saturday, along with a refugee who climbed onto the roof of a building and leaped onto a coil of razor wire.

Seventeen of the immigrants began refusing food at the Port Hedland detention center in the north of Western Australia state, while another four joined in at Curtin camp, also in Western Australia, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs said.

At the Maribyrnong detention center, 35 detainees - half the center's population - were on hunger strike, refugee advocates said.

About 175 of the protesting detainees have not eaten for nearly two weeks. They are growing increasingly weak as dehydration and temperatures up to 104 degrees take their toll, lawyers representing them said.

Five other children are still on hunger strike at the detention center, along with 162 men and 14 women, the immigration department said. It said 35 detainees, including one child, had their lips sewn as part of the protest.

Prime Minister John Howard has refused calls to soften the government's policy of detaining all illegal immigrants in camps like the one at Woomera until their asylum applications are processed - which can take up to three years.

About 3,000 illegal immigrants, mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and southern Asia are currently in detention in Australia.

Howard says conditions in the five detention centers are deliberately harsh to act as a deterrent to other people considering trying to sneak into Australia.

The United Nations and human rights groups have condemned the policy.

There were no demonstrations at Woomera. Most people in this community of less than 1,000 people have little sympathy toward the asylum seekers and dislike the detention center, though it provides jobs for about 200 townsfolk.


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