------- Index of Articles


NUCLEAR
Allies Unperturbed By U.S. Nuclear List
World Reacts to U.S. Nuclear Plan
Foul Play From the Yenisei to Yucca
China "Deeply Shocked" Over Pentagon Secret
Iranian President Rebukes Bush
Official says Israel has nuclear stocks on Golan Heights
US Nuclear Option Nothing New for Seoul
CIA: Missile Threat Growing
Russia Says Slow Progress in U.S. Nuclear Arms Talks
CIA: Missile Threat Growing
Ridge Urges Use of Alert System
Bunker bomb will bust test ban
Nuclear Policy
America's first strike 'strategy' - a weapon of conquest
Nuclear Arms for Deterrence or Fighting?
Powell defends nuclear planning
Nuclear Plan Meant to Deter
How Nuclear Bombs Work
50 Facts About U.S. Nuclear Weapons
Call for New Breed of Nuclear Arms Faces Hurdles
Officials: US Nukes Must Be on Ready
Fusion Experiment Sparks an Academic Brawl
Bush's New Nuclear Weapon Plan: A Shot at Nonproliferation
Cheney: Keep Weapons From Terrorists
Global cop's tactics are wearing thin
Bush Expands Commitment of U.S. to Global War on Terror
U.S. Tries to Dampen Fear Abroad on Policy

MILITARY
Saying Battle Is Effectively Over, U.S. Sends Troops Back to Base
U.S. resists putting GIs among warlords
Taliban and War Deliver a Double Blow to Villagers
Who are the US military slaughtering in eastern Afghanistan?
China denounces visit
Taiwan's Defense Minister In Landmark Visit to U.S.
Senator Talks of Bioterrorism Risk
The Big Guys Work For The Carlyle Group
FEDERAL CONTRACTS
Contract for Orbital Sciences
Lockheed Workers in Ga. Reject Contract Offer
More Jobs at Their Command
China condemns US global military expansion following Sept 11
Defying Threats, Colombians Cast Ballots
Feature: Coca -- chew, sip or nibble
Traffic in hash, heroin subsides
Saddam's rusting arsenal
Blair girds Britons to strike Iraq
Mideast Allies Warn U.S. Not to Attack Iraq
US pursues ex-generals to topple Iraq leader
Israel Finds Suspected Bomb Factory
Arafat Free to Leave Ramallah
Papua New Guinea Soldiers Mutiny Over Cutbacks
Philippines Gets Unmanned Spy Planes
Titan 2 launch date moved back
Opinion columns on Kodiak Launch Complex
Pilot believed alive, held in Iraq
Put Up Yer Nukes: The Pentagon's Nuclear Dreams
Peacekeeping Office May Shut Down
Hundreds of U.S. troops have arrived in Yemen
Army reins access to weapons papers
Ashcroft's rhetorical jihad on Islam
Explosive Story
Do Freedom of Information Act Files Prove FDR Had Foreknowledge

POLICE / PRISONERS
Missiles Used for World Cup Defense
British Police to 'Stop and Search' More Crime Suspects
Zimbabwe - Court orders extension of ballot
Death Penalty Foes See Progress in Ill.

ENERGY AND OTHER
Talk of New Drilling Raises Doubts on Alaska Pipeline
ARMY CORPS REFORM BILL AIMS TO AID ENVIRONMENT
Study: Stem Cells Have Few Mutations
Project Censored: FLUORIDE, TEETH AND THE ATOMIC BOMB
China Report Criticizes U.S. Human Rights Record
CIA OPERATING WITH FREE HAND
Study: Rights Activists More Oppressed Since Sept. 11
World Bank Officials Defend Record

ACTIVISTS
MARCH ON WASHINGTON, APRIL 20
War 'playing into al-Qaeda's hands'
Revealed Nuclear Policies Are a Sign of Bad Faith
Canadian Mainstream TV to Air Roundtable of Experts
More Nuclear Weapons only leads to greater nuclear terrorist possibilities




-------- NUCLEAR

Allies Unperturbed By U.S. Nuclear List
Iranians, Russians Criticize Report

By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 11, 2002; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5824-2002Mar10?language=printer

MOSCOW, March 10 -- Reports that the United States is reexamining where to target its nuclear arsenal drew a subdued response this weekend, with some European leaders dismissing the project as routine military planning.

The strongest reaction came from Iran, identified in a 56-page report with six other countries as a possible nuclear adversary. While the Iranian government did not comment, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani accused the United States of trying to frighten other countries into submission.

"America thinks that if a military threat looms large over the head of these seven countries, they will give up their logical demands," Rafsanjani told the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The Tehran Times newspaper, which is close to Iran's hard-liners, said the report "indicates that the U.S. administration is going to wreak havoc on the whole world in order to establish its hegemony and domination."

A draft U.S. presidential directive currently under review identifies China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria as countries more likely than in the past to require the U.S. military to draw up plans for nuclear weapons use. The possibility of nuclear war with Russia, the only country whose nuclear arsenal rivals that of the United States in size, was considered less likely than in the past.

The British Foreign Office and the Italian defense minister characterized the report as ordinary military strategizing. "Military forces from time to time evaluate their long-term programs even when it is hypothetical," Antonio Martino, the Italian minister, told the ANSA news agency. A NATO spokesman said it was too soon to comment.

Libya's African affairs minister, Ali Abd Salam Turiki, told reporters in Cairo he found the report hard to believe. "I don't think this is true," he said, according to the Associated Press. "I don't think America is going to destroy the world."

The military blueprint shows that the United States still sees Russia as a geopolitical rival and wants to weaken it, said Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, a former top Defense Ministry official who often voices the views of the military's conservative wing.

"It's about time Russian politicians realized this and stopped having illusions that Washington wishes Moscow well," Ivashov said.

One leading Russian lawmaker with ties with the Kremlin accused the Bush administration of intimidation tactics. "They've brought out a big stick -- a nuclear stick -- that is supposed to scare us and put us in our place," said Dmitri Rogozin, chairman of the international affairs committee of the lower house of parliament.

Vyacheslav Nikonov, president of the Politika foundation that analyzes political trends, said drawing up contingency plans for a nuclear war with Russia was an unseemly gesture for a country that says it is Russia's friend.

"If Americans are interested in cooperating with Russia in the anti-terrorist operation, if they mean to continue cooperation along the periphery of Russian borders, if they mean to sharply reduce strategic weapons, Bush's directive is a very negative signal, which I think will be perceived accordingly by the Russian leadership," he said.

----

World Reacts to U.S. Nuclear Plan

By Beth Gardiner
Associated Press Writer
Monday, March 11, 2002; 11:29 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7973-2002Mar11?language=printer

LONDON -- Most governments responded gingerly Monday to the Pentagon's new study on using nuclear weapons, but China said it was "deeply shocked" and critics in many countries worried it could destabilize an already uncertain world.

The U.S. Defense Department has sent Congress a classified report outlining the possible use of nuclear weapons against countries that possess or are developing weapons of mass destruction. The "nuclear posture review" identified seven nations: China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia and Syria.

China's Foreign Ministry on Monday demanded the United States explain the report, and spokesman Sun Yuxi told the official Xinhua News Agency that "China, like other countries, is deeply shocked" to be in the group of seven.

"The U.S. side bears the responsibility to make an explanation on this matter," Sun was quoted as saying.

Sun said China and the United States have an agreement not to target each other with nuclear weapons and said China's small nuclear arsenal didn't threaten any other nation.

"Countries with nuclear weapons should undertake unconditionally not to be the first to use them, and not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear state or nuclear-weapon-free regions," Sun said.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said such a review "can cause only regret and concern."

"And not only Russia's concern, but the concern of the entire international community," he said. "Such plans can only destabilize and exacerbate the situation."

Iran - tagged by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil" - offered an immediate angry response.

Government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh compared the United States to terrorists and said the report showed that America would never observe international laws on the use of nuclear weapons, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

"The Islamic Republic believes that the era of using force to push forward international relations is long past, and those who resort to the logic of force follow exactly the same logic as terrorists, although they are in the position of power," the news agency said.

Other countries named in the U.S. report were silent.

The Iraqi newspaper Babil, owned by President Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Odai Hussein, reported on the U.S. move without comment. Officials also said nothing.

Japan, the only country ever to be hit by nuclear weapons, said it opposes the use of weapons of mass destruction but was otherwise tightlipped about the U.S. report.

"We are not in a position to say anything about it because the document is classified," said a senior Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified.

Other U.S. allies were similarly reserved.

German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Antje Leendertse said the Bush administration had not told Germany about the report, but she said the government was satisfied with the administration's insistence that it does not plan to use nuclear weapons against any country.

Australia's Defense Ministry on Monday played down the report as routine military planning, echoing comments a day earlier from the British Foreign Office and the Italian minister of defense.

Catherine Fitzpatrick, a spokeswoman for Australian Defense Minister Robert Hill, said Australia was satisfied that the U.S. stance was the latest in a series of broader strategic reviews, not a guide on nuclear targeting.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson dismissed the news as unconfirmed press leaks, saying reports on the policy review were unreliable and declining to comment.

Outside governments, however, some opposition figures, military experts and media worried the U.S. shift would threaten world stability.

"America thinks that if a military threat looms large over the head of these seven countries, they will give up their logical demands," IRNA quoted former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying.

Dmitry Rogozin, a leading Russian lawmaker with close ties to the Kremlin, accused Washington of deliberately organizing the leak of the report's contents to intimidate Russia at a time of strain in U.S.-Russian ties. Relations, which had improved dramatically after Sept. 11, have recently been marred by trade disputes.

----

Foul Play From the Yenisei to Yucca

By Matt Bivens,
Monday, Mar. 11, 2002.
The Moscow Times
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2002/03/11/007.html

Having problems with nuclear waste? From Krasnoyarsk to Kansas, the solution is: just change the rules.

The Nuclear Ministry, or Minatom, has long dreamed of importing spent nuclear fuel for cash. Never mind that a State Duma deputy two weeks ago waltzed into a Siberian spent fuel facility via a gaping hole in the fence, took pictures and left unchallenged. Minatom still plans a lucrative business turning Russia into the world's nuclear pay toilet.

Few like the idea. In 2000, 2.5 million Russians signed petitions demanding a national referendum on it. Officials threw out 600,000 signatures, for "offenses" such as abbreviating the word "street" in a signer's address. Environmentalists tried again, and on Feb. 21, they were again stiffed: Officials in Krasnoyarsk, presented with 100,000 signatures, agreed to look at only 40,000 and then rejected 36,000 as invalid.

But is this just "Russia's rocky transition to democracy?" Or is it, as the Russian environmental group Ecodefense! says, evidence "democracy and nuclear energy cannot exist at the same time and place"?

Even as Siberia's bureaucrats were trashing signatures, President George W. Bush was announcing a historic decision to ship America's nuclear waste to a hole in Nevada. Twenty years ago, Congress had directed the Energy Department, (the U.S. Minatom) to find a place for such a dump. And recognizing that man-made waste containers corrode with time, Congress insisted the dump's geology be uniquely suited to holding hot waste on its own in case of leaks. Scientists suggested carving a depository out of salt, which keeps water out, or granite, which holds it in.

Over the years since, the Energy Department has spent $3.6 billion studying Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and has pretty much proven the site unsuitable. The mountain is made of volcanic tuff riddled with cracks and fissures -- more a leaky sieve than a granite bowl. Over the past 20 years, there have been more than 620 earthquakes above 2.5 on the Richter scale (i.e., strong enough that you'd feel the ground shake and think "earthquake") within a 80-kilometer radius.

One quake in 1992 registered 5.6 and cracked walls and windows at the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain field office. Warnings don't come much more bluntly than that, short of a burning bush in the desert that cries out, "Thou shalt not bury all the nuclear waste here!"

Four dormant volcanoes are nearby, so scientists are grudgingly studying what would happen if lava blasts up through thousands of tons of radioactive waste. ("Grudgingly" because it's a highly unlikely scenario.) Selected for study because it seemed arid (and because Nevada is a political weakling), Yucca has turned out to be quite wet underground. Water moves through and under the mountain more rapidly and unpredictably than initially thought (and Nevada's cities depend on underground drinking water).

It's almost beyond parody: Asked to pick a place to bury nuclear waste, who says, "there's earthquakes and volcanoes and it leaks and drips -- it's perfect"? The Congressional emphasis on geology had outlawed exactly this scenario. So in December, after 17 years with one set of rules, the Bush administration slyly issued a new set: No longer was it judging a geological site. Now it was judging an entire waste-storage package, in which some hair-raisingly expensive feats of engineering were plugged into computer models to mask the site's bad geology. Apparently whether it's Moscow or Moscow-on-the-Potomac, the rule is: If you can't win a fair fight, don't fight fair.

Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is a Washington-based fellow of The Nation Institute [www.thenation.com].

-------- china

China "Deeply Shocked" Over Pentagon Secret

Report: FM Spokesman
Xinhuanet
2002-03-11
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2002-03/11/content_311552.htm

BEIJING, March 11 (Xinhuanet) -- The Chinese government is deeply shocked over news that the U.S. Defence Department has outlined the possible use of nuclear weapons against countries including China, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said here Monday.

China demands an explanation from the U.S. side about the issue, Sun said when answering a question from the press on the Los Angeles Times' recent report that the Pentagon has informed the U. S. Congress in a secret report of its plan which includes the possible use of nuclear weapons against China and six other countries in emergency situations.

"Like many other countries, China is deeply shocked by this report," Sun said, "the U.S. side bears the responsibility to make an explanation on this matter."

China is a peace-loving country and poses no threat to any other nation, Sun said.

"China has always held that nuclear weapons should be comprehensively prohibited and thoroughly destroyed," he said.

"Countries with nuclear weapons should undertake unconditionally not to be the first to use them, and not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states or nuclear-weapon-free regions," he said.

The spokesman noted the fact that China and the United States have in place an agreement not to target each other with nuclear weapons.

"Any Cold War mentality goes against the global trend of peace and development through cooperation, and is doomed to failure," he added.

-------- iran

Iranian President Rebukes Bush

By Vanessa Gera
Associated Press Writer
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8633-2002Mar11?language=printer

VIENNA, Austria -- Iran's president rebuked President Bush on Monday for his "axis of evil" comments, suggesting they revealed an appetite for war in Washington.

Countries that make such statements against Iran are "powers who want to have war," President Mohammad Khatami said as he began a three-day visit to Austria.

"States shouldn't describe their opponents as evil but should fight the real evil, which is poverty, injustice, terrorism and violence," he said.

Iran has not been linked to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but the United States has long accused the country of sponsoring terrorism worldwide and of secretly developing nuclear weapons, charges Iran has denied. The CIA says Iran probably will have missiles capable of reaching the United States by 2015.

In Bush's Jan. 29 State of the Union address, he singled out Iran, Iraq and North Korea as part of an "axis of evil arming to threaten the peace of the world." He promised to choke off any programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, saying such arms might be given to terrorists.

Asked what he thought of Bush's comments, Khatami said: "I don't let myself be moved by daily insults. I'll let history be my judge."

Austrian President Thomas Klestil also criticized Bush's remarks.

"I don't agree with this view, Austria doesn't agree with this view and the European Union doesn't agree with this view either," Klestil said.

Khatami is considered a moderate by Austria and other European Union nations. However, opponents of the current government say Khatami is just as repressive as other fundamentalist Iranian leaders.

On Monday, hundreds of Iranians gathered in a square downtown to protest Khatami's visit. They said Austria's reception of Khatami strengthens the hand of Iran's hard-liners now in control in Tehran.

"Austrian leaders have blood on their hands for inviting him," said one protester, Nadereh Majdpour, who traveled from her home in Berlin to demonstrate. She said she had been imprisoned for four years and tortured for taking part in a pro-democracy protest in Iran 20 years ago.

The demonstration was organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a Paris-based group that bills itself as Iran's parliament-in-exile. A spokesman for the group, Firouz Mahvi, said hundreds more had hoped to join the protest, but were prevented entry into the country by Austrian officials.

-------- israel

Official says Israel has nuclear stocks on Golan Heights

11/03/2002
Gulf News Online
By A Staff Reporter
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=43680

Abu Dhabi | Israel has stocked nuclear products on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and set up advanced radar systems that can reach several Arab countries, a former Syrian official said yesterday.

Ahmed Al Haj Ali, former aide to Syria's culture minister, said Israel has secretly hidden nuclear waste and products in 18 different sites on the strategic Golan plateau.

"Israel has also set up early warning systems that extend beyond Syrian borders to Iraq and other Arab states," he said in a lecture at the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up in Abu Dhabi.

"Israel is bracing for war at a time when the Arabs are preparing for peace," the political analyst and author added.

Ali paid tributes to President His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan for his firm support of Arab causes, including Syria, Iraq and Palestinians.

He urged Arab states to mend fences with Iraq and unite against Israel's hostile intentions and its ongoing aggression against Palestinians.

"Arab leaders, who will hold their summit in Beirut this month, are urged to unify their stands and overcome their differences to shoulder their responsibilities in this delicate stage," he said.

-------- korea

US Nuclear Option Nothing New for Seoul

By Oh Young-jin
Korea Times Staff Reporter
2002/03/11 17:58
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/times/200203/t2002031117580140110.htm

South Korea perceives the reported U.S. contingency plan to use nuclear weapons against North Korea as an extension of the ``nuclear umbrella'' Washington has provided for Seoul and its allies since the Cold War era, Seoul officials said yesterday.

``Korea was under U.S. protection against ideological foes during the bygone Cold War period, when nuclear weapons were the strongest deterrent the U.S. had,'' a government official said. ``I see it as an extension of that strategy in the post-Cold War era.''

The official said that for years, Seoul and Washington have issued joint communiqué after their annual defense ministers' meeting, which includes U.S. pledge to protect Korea even if it meant using nuclear weapons.

However, the official said that he had no knowledge about any consultations made between Seoul and Washington regarding the nuclear contingency plan or Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that was reported by Los Angeles Times last week.

Presidential press secretary Park Sun-sook told reporters that the government was in the process of verifying the LA Times report but declined to comment whether the two countries had consulted with each other about the contents of the NPR.

Seoul officially declined to elaborate on this report, because of the sensitivity involving nuclear weapons. As a matter of fact, some Seoul officials fear that it would anger Pyongyang and further cool inter-Korean relations, while others predict that the North might use it to justify the resumption of its suspended nuclear weapons development.

According to LA Times, the Bush administration gave a report on the NPR to Congress in January, naming seven countries as potential targets for its nuclear retaliation. The seven include the North, Iran and Iraq, the three countries Bush called the ``axis of evil,'' together with Russia, China, Syria and Libya.

The official said that the U.S. contingency plan doesn't conflict with the proclamation to make the Korean peninsula free from nuclear weapons in the early 1990s, around which juncture the U.S. is said to have pulled its nuclear arsenal out of the southern half of the peninsula.

``The plan doesn't envision bringing back nuclear weapons into the country permanently but raises a possibility of their use against a North Korean attack, when and if it takes place,'' the official said.

-------- missile defense

CIA: Missile Threat Growing

By Carolyn Skorneck
Associated Press Writer
Monday, March 11, 2002; 7:08 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10126-2002Mar11?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- The biggest U.S. risk from nuclear, biological or chemical weapons is from terrorists more likely to use a truck than a missile, a CIA official says. The missile threat, though, is greater than ever.

"The probability that a missile with a weapon of mass destruction will be used against U.S. forces or interests is higher today than during most of the Cold War, and it will continue to grow as the capabilities of potential adversaries mature," Robert D. Walpole told a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee panel on Monday.

But there is an even greater threat that such a weapon will be delivered without benefit of a missile "because nonmissile delivery means are less costly, easier to acquire, more reliable and accurate," he said.

Such weapons also "can be used without attribution," he said, referring to the fact that a missile can be traced back to the country that launched it.

"The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have demonstrated that our enemies can strike American soil directly without having to put the time and money into a ballistic missile with a return address," said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the committee's international security and proliferation panel.

The hearing came on the six-month anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

As part of the missile threat assessment, the intelligence agencies boosted their estimate of the threat from Iran, finding it poses the same level of threat as North Korea during the next 15 years, Walpole said.

"The United States most likely will face ICBM threats from North Korea and Iran, and possibly Iraq - barring significant changes in their political orientations," said the national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs.

Walpole called this a "significant" change from an earlier assessment that Iran was a probable threat - less of a danger than North Korea, but still greater than Iraq.

Foreign countries build shorter-range weapons intending to use them, while they develop intercontinental missiles for reasons of prestige and to deter attacks, Walpole said.

Asked by Akaka about foreign attempts to foil a U.S. missile defense system, Walpole said, "A simple way to do that is to deploy more missiles" than any such system can handle.

Russia and China are the foreign countries with the most missiles.

However, Russia's arsenal is expected to decline to fewer than 2,000 warheads by 2015 - even without any arms control efforts - unless Moscow significantly increases funding for them, he said.

Among other countries, Walpole said:

-China is expected to boost its ballistic missile arsenal, fearing its existing weapons could be easily wiped out. It has only 20 silo-based ICBMs that can reach the United States, and the intelligence community expects China to convert to a mobile force more likely to survive an attack.

-North Korea, with hundreds of short-range Scuds as well as No Dong missiles that can fly 800 miles, is developing a longer-range Taepo Dong-2 missile despite its agreement to cease flight testing until 2003.

A two-stage Taepo Dong-2 could carry a significant payload to Alaska, Hawaii and parts of the continental United States. With a third stage, it could reach all of North America. North Korea is thought to have produced two nuclear weapons, and it has chemical and biological weapons programs.

-Iran has several hundred short-range missiles and some medium-range missiles, and it is firmly committed to missile development. Assistance from Russia, China and North Korea is "critical," but Iran alone could develop an ICBM. An ICBM test launch is unlikely for the next few years.

-Iraq "probably retains a small, covert force of Scud-variant missiles with conventional, chemical and biological warheads," and wants a long-range missile. U.N. resolutions limit it to missiles with a range of under 100 miles. If the restraints were weakened, Iraq might resume production of missiles with ranges of 400-560 miles.

-------- russia

Russia Says Slow Progress in U.S. Nuclear Arms Talks

March 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-russia-usa.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's defense minister was quoted as saying on Monday that talks with Washington on cutting strategic nuclear arsenals were encountering difficulties, putting in doubt a deadline of clinching a deal by a May summit.

Sergei Ivanov, quoted by Itar-Tass news agency in Ireland while on his way to the United States, said differences between the two sides hinged on U.S. insistence that only deployed warheads, and not those put in storage, be taken into account.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, issued a statement saying the summit between Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush would take place from May 23-26, with talks in Moscow to be followed by an informal meeting in St. Petersburg, Putin's home town.

The Kremlin statement said the summit would ``develop constructive and mutual advantageous relations and...strengthen joint action on key international issues, including disarmament and non-proliferation and the joint fight against terrorism.''

Ivanov, speaking during a stopover at Shannon, said the talks ``were making slow progress'' and declined to make any forecasts on whether the May deadline would be met.

``Let's just see. I will engage in no guessing. A whole series of experts' meetings lies ahead, (but) I do not expect that we can agree on a final text in two or three days. That is impossible,'' he said. ``I cannot say that we will make it. But neither can I say that we will fall short of our May goal.''

Both Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush have pledged to slash strategic nuclear arsenals of between 6,000 to 7,000 to a figure lying somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000. But differences have remained over U.S. suggestions that some warheads could simply be put into storage.

-------- terrorism

CIA: Missile Threat Growing

March 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Threat.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The biggest U.S. risk from nuclear, biological or chemical weapons is from terrorists more likely to use a truck than a missile, a CIA official says. The missile threat, though, is greater than ever.

``The probability that a missile with a weapon of mass destruction will be used against U.S. forces or interests is higher today than during most of the Cold War, and it will continue to grow as the capabilities of potential adversaries mature,'' Robert D. Walpole told a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee panel on Monday.

But there is an even greater threat that such a weapon will be delivered without benefit of a missile ``because nonmissile delivery means are less costly, easier to acquire, more reliable and accurate,'' he said.

Such weapons also ``can be used without attribution,'' he said, referring to the fact that a missile can be traced back to the country that launched it.

``The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have demonstrated that our enemies can strike American soil directly without having to put the time and money into a ballistic missile with a return address,'' said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the committee's international security and proliferation panel.

The hearing came on the six-month anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

As part of the missile threat assessment, the intelligence agencies boosted their estimate of the threat from Iran, finding it poses the same level of threat as North Korea during the next 15 years, Walpole said.

``The United States most likely will face ICBM threats from North Korea and Iran, and possibly Iraq -- barring significant changes in their political orientations,'' said the national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs.

Walpole called this a ``significant'' change from an earlier assessment that Iran was a probable threat -- less of a danger than North Korea, but still greater than Iraq.

Foreign countries build shorter-range weapons intending to use them, while they develop intercontinental missiles for reasons of prestige and to deter attacks, Walpole said.

Asked by Akaka about foreign attempts to foil a U.S. missile defense system, Walpole said, ``A simple way to do that is to deploy more missiles'' than any such system can handle.

Russia and China are the foreign countries with the most missiles.

However, Russia's arsenal is expected to decline to fewer than 2,000 warheads by 2015 -- even without any arms control efforts -- unless Moscow significantly increases funding for them, he said.

Among other countries, Walpole said:

--China is expected to boost its ballistic missile arsenal, fearing its existing weapons could be easily wiped out. It has only 20 silo-based ICBMs that can reach the United States, and the intelligence community expects China to convert to a mobile force more likely to survive an attack.

--North Korea, with hundreds of short-range Scuds as well as No Dong missiles that can fly 800 miles, is developing a longer-range Taepo Dong-2 missile despite its agreement to cease flight testing until 2003.

A two-stage Taepo Dong-2 could carry a significant payload to Alaska, Hawaii and parts of the continental United States. With a third stage, it could reach all of North America. North Korea is thought to have produced two nuclear weapons, and it has chemical and biological weapons programs.

--Iran has several hundred short-range missiles and some medium-range missiles, and it is firmly committed to missile development. Assistance from Russia, China and North Korea is ``critical,'' but Iran alone could develop an ICBM. An ICBM test launch is unlikely for the next few years.

--Iraq ``probably retains a small, covert force of Scud-variant missiles with conventional, chemical and biological warheads,'' and wants a long-range missile. U.N. resolutions limit it to missiles with a range of under 100 miles. If the restraints were weakened, Iraq might resume production of missiles with ranges of 400-560 miles.

--------

Ridge Urges Use of Alert System

March 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Ridge-Terror-Alerts.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge plans to recommend on Tuesday that states adopt a five-color system of warnings -- red the most urgent -- that will more precisely alert law enforcement and the public to possible terror and what to do.

The new system comes partly as a response to public complaints that the four broad terror alerts issued so far by the government raised alarm without providing useful guidance.

Each color will mean that conditions including credibility of sources and specificity of warning have been met, said officials familiar with the plan. Federal, state and local officials will be empowered to issue alerts. In the highest alert situations, the government will try to inform law enforcement first, then the public immediately afterward.

Ridge, a former Pennsylvania governor, will not try to require that state and local governments adopt the new system. But most state governments seem pleased by the flexibility of the proposal and are likely to employ it, officials said.

In the new system, green will be the lowest status, followed by blue, yellow, orange and red as the perceived dangers intensify, officials said.

Each alert type will be accompanied by recommendations on how government agencies and the public should respond.

Many recommendations, he said, are simply common sense. For example, if a federal monument appeared threatened, authorities would bolster security at the site.

The public would in some instances be given guidance as well. An example would be urging fans to arrive at a sports event early if security was heightened.

Ridge said Monday the multistage alert system will provide ``a common vocabulary'' of danger to help communities respond to threats.

Ridge, speaking to the National League of Cities, sought to bring local officials on board with the proposal, designed to provide more specific guidance when the government determines there is a new threat of terrorism.

``I think this model has built-in flexibility that states were looking forward to,'' said George Vinson, the special adviser on state terrorism to California Gov. Gray Davis. California was one of a handful of states that contributed to Ridge's effort to assemble a new alert system.

Ridge promised the new advisories would be easy to understand.

The government will begin using the new system after its formal announcement, Ridge said. It will be subject to a 45-day comment period, after which it could be revised.

He also said the federal government will suggest standards for how states and local communities should respond to each threat level.

Ridge urged local officials to prepare their own anti-terrorism plans and disregard the turf battles that historically have hampered coordination among different communities and levels of government. Planning at the local level should be fused with that at the county, regional and state levels, Ridge said.

``Unless we work together so that we have a seamless strategy through the states and down to the local government,'' Ridge said, ``I'm afraid we won't be as strong as we need to be to confront what I consider to be a permanent condition that we as a country need to accept as a fact of life.''

Associated Press writer Scott Lindlaw contributed to this story.

Office of Homeland Security: http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland
National League of Cities: http://www.nlc.org

-------- treaties

Bunker bomb will bust test ban

Julian Borger in Washington
Monday March 11, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0%2C3604%2C665345%2C00.html

Months before the September 11 attacks the Pentagon was formulating a nuclear posture review, part of a nuclear-weapons policy that is almost certain to collide with the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT). The review is the work of a group of radical defence strategists appointed in the early days of the Bush administration. They include Stephen Younger, a former head of weapons research at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratories who wrote a policy paper in 2000 advocating the development of a new generation of low-yield nuclear "bunker-busting bombs".

On September 1 he was made director of the defence threat reduction agency, responsible for anticipating future dangers to national security.

The other members of the team are Stephen Hadley, now deputy national security advisor, Steve Cambone, special assistant to the defence secretary, and Robert Joseph, senior director for proliferation strategy at the White House.

They jointly wrote a National Institute for Public Policy paper last year which echoed Mr Younger's arguments, portraying a nuclear bunker-buster as an ideal weapon against the nuclear, chemical or biological weapons stockpiles of rogue nations such as Iraq.

Under the tutelage of Donald Rumsfeld, the new strategists argue that such a weapon will not deter a rogue regime if it is so big that the enemy can be fairly sure that the US will not use it.

As Mr Rumsfeld said last year, the US nuclear arsenal would not deter Saddam Hussein "because he knows a US president would not drop a 100-kilotonne bomb on Baghdad".

Deterrence would only work, so the argument runs, if the US had "mini-nukes" it might actually consider using.

The nuclear posture review calls for development of these weapons to begin as early as next month, bringing forward the day when one of the new generation of tactical nuclear weapons will have to be tested, in violation of the CTBT.

Although the Senate refused to ratify the CTBT the US, which signed it six years ago, has abided by its principles. But Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz have made it clear that they see such cold war treaties as unwanted burdens of another age, preventing new strategic thinking.

"It is just a matter of time until they start testing again, and that's going to create an international firestorm," said Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Last year, the administration commissioned a study on how quickly mothballed nuclear test sites in the Nevada desert could be put back in action. General John Gordon, head of the national nuclear security administration promised he would work to improve their readiness.

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

Nuclear Policy

From: "vcolley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002

If you want to know what's in the Nuclear Policy Review and who is powerful in military circles ikn Washington, go the web site of the National Insitute for Pubic Policy and look at the publication, Ratoinale and REquirements for US Nuclear Forces. It is downloadable in pdf format.

http://www.nipp.org/publications.php

The New York Times articles of March 10 and 11 show that the Nuclear Posture Review closely tracks this public report written by former officials, nuclear weapons scientists, etc

----

THE DOOMSDAY DOCTRINE
America's first strike 'strategy' - a weapon of conquest

Behind the Headlines by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
March 11, 2002

If ever there was any doubt about the moral depravity of our leaders, then the news that the Bush administration has ordered the US military to "prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries" should put the question to rest permanently. I tremble as I write this, whether in anger or fear is hard to tell. What we are dealing with, here, is a psychopathic clique of demented killers who pose the greatest threat to human survival since the Black Plague. As long as they remain in power, we are - all of us - in mortal danger. Think I'm exaggerating for effect? Not this time....

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME

The circumstances under which the US will heretofore consider using the nuclear stick are, we are told, three-fold. The first - as a response to nuclear, biological, or chemical attack - has long been assumed, although in the context of the "war on terrorism" it takes on new significance. In the old days, there was never any question as to the potential source of such a devastating first strike: the Soviet Union was the only candidate. But in the shadowy world of international terrorism, in which the enemy is untethered to any territory, the question of whom to retaliate against becomes a detective story especially prone to expert manipulation. We have seen, already, how the War Party tried to use the anthrax scare to pin the blame on Iraq, although we haven't heard much from them on that score since the FBI announced it was probably one of our own scientists. Perhaps they'll have better luck next time, for when it comes to our perpetual "war on terrorism," there's always going to be a next time....

A GREEN LIGHT FOR SHARON

Aside from Russia and China, the traditional targets of the cold war era, the list of countries that might one day glow in the dark includes the "axis of evil" - Iraq, Iran, North Korea - and also, incredibly, Syria and Libya. The key to understanding the inclusion of these last two is the revelation, in the leaked document, that the US military has been told to prepare the nuke option in case of an all-out Arab-Israeli war. Here is the second circumstance in which we will wield the nuclear stick: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will be allowed to conduct a pogrom in Palestine and create a Greater Israel under the protection of a US nuclear umbrella. The portions cited in the Los Angeles Times refer to the nuclear option as an American response to an Iraqi assault on Israel. By including Syria, however, the message the administration is sending - and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they leaked this report themselves - is all too clear: Israel must be given a free hand, or else....

Of course, it is entirely unnecessary to make such a threat, since everybody knows that Israel has nukes of its own - and is much more likely to use them than we are. I find it hard to believe, even now, that George W. Bush would give the order to nuke the entire Middle East, but Sharon would nuke it all and beyond if he believed Israel's survival was at stake. What the US is really saying, with this second criterion, is that they don't mind if Sharon takes the initiative and spares them the trouble.

A LEAK SPRUNG FROM THE TOP?

Thirdly, this manifesto of nuclear madness rendered by an anonymous team of Dr. Strangeloves essentially states that we will use nuclear weapons just as we damn well please, no longer as a last resort when our national survival is at stake, but to put down regional revolts on the farthest frontiers of our global empire. In short, as a response to "surprising military developments," nukes will now be used as weapons of conquest. Let's say we invade Iraq, and the war starts to go badly, perhaps because other Arab countries enter the fray and US troops are caught in a general conflagration, a replay of what happened at that Marine barracks in Beirut only on a much larger scale. According to the new policy, in that case we can always nuke 'em into submission. Indeed, the mere threat is enough to at least temper the thought of resistance, which is another reason I tend to think this "leak" was sprung from the top.

OSAMA AND THE SPACE ALIENS

I just don't buy the explanation for this new Doomsday Doctrine trotted out by anonymous "analysts" cited in the Times news story, which sees it as a possible response to the development of some new super-weapon by a "rogue state":

"Analysts said the report's reference to 'surprising military developments' referred to the Pentagon's fears that a rogue regime or terrorist group might suddenly unleash a wholly unknown weapon that was difficult to counter with the conventional U.S. arsenal."

Is Iraq busy developing space-based particle beams so that Saddam can pulverize American cities with the touch of a button? Does Al Qaeda have the help of space aliens, whom they have converted to Islam? What planet are these people living on? Hello! Earth calling self-appointed experts: the terrorists have already unleashed a weapon difficult to counter with the conventional US arsenal - and there's a big empty hole in downtown Manhattan because of it.

WACKED TO THE MAX

The piece by William M. Arkin - the apparent recipient of this sensational leak - in the Sunday Los Angeles Times makes the point that the new doctrine is a measure of how much this administration has been "shaken" by 9/11. Traumatized is more like it, and the result - as often occurs - is a state of insanity.

THE FIRST TIME AS TRAGEDY, THE SECOND AS PURE HORROR

Arkin goes on to make the point that "officials are looking for nuclear weapons that could play a role in the kinds of challenges the United States faces with Al Qaeda." By this is meant "bunker-busters" that could collapse the deep caves where bin Laden's troops are holding out, and the development of technology that would, somehow, make "surgical" nuclear strikes possible. We are told that "everything's changed" post-9/11, and that this isn't Vietnam, but I recall a little phrase - an echo of a bitter reproach from a bygone era - about destroying the village in order to save it. If we amend that to nuking the Middle East in order to save Israel, then it seems we are indeed fated to live through the same horror again - only, this time, it's going to be a lot worse.

STRATEGIC INFLUENCE

But this line of argument - that the Doomsday Doctrine is seriously meant to combat Al Qaeda and its allies worldwide - so misconstrues the nature of the terrorist challenge that it seems downright suspicious. Might this "leak" have been the first major project of the supposedly aborted "Office of Strategic Influence"? Certainly the public exposure of America's first-strike scenario achieves one of the goals of the "war on terrorism" - to instill fear and trembling in our enemies. That it also instills the same degree of fear in our friends is a consequence the ideologues who run our foreign policy are likely to embrace in the name of a proud "unilateralism."

PUSHING THE PANIC BUTTON

Yet, beneath this imperial demeanor, and the self-conscious arrogance of American policymakers, is an equally self-conscious sense of vulnerability, an undercurrent of weakness. For all of our triumphalist cries of "Victory! Victory!" in taking the war to the enemy in Afghanistan, the US is still very much on the defensive. If we take seriously the number of urgent alerts issued by various government agencies, warning of imminent terrorist attacks in the very heart of the Imperial metropolis, then it could well be this sudden disclosure is a measure of the administration's desperation - a disturbing indication that panic has set in.

THE REAL WAR

In terms of its propaganda value, the "nuke 'em" doctrine would be aimed at an international audience: putting the Arab world, and Europe, on notice that we'll poison the region for generations unless they submit. (Think, for a moment, how close Libya is to France.) On the other hand, that we'll retaliate with nukes is cold comfort to most Americans - or, at least, to those of us who are still sane. As we queue up at airports, and take in the news that terrorist alerts will now be color-coded, the reality of this war is all too clear: the nature of the battlefield rules out nukes altogether. In fighting the real war against Al Qaeda - sealing our borders and rooting out the terrorists in our midst, and internationally - nuclear weapons are laughably useless.

THE PARABLE OF THE RING

Remember, also, that, as in the case of the airliners that hit the WTC and the Pentagon, these, too, could conceivably be turned on their makers.

"One ring to rule them all, One ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie."

Someone has written a book claiming that J. R. R. Tolkien is "the author of the century," and as I contemplate the developing crisis the poetic leitmotif of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings plays in my head, background music to the unfolding tragedy. Remember that, in Tolkien's epic, the mere possession of the Ring - the ultimate weapon - is the wearer's undoing. For that kind of power induces madness: not anything so mild as mere megalomania, but a really unique form of hubris - one that makes for a unique vulnerability.

In Tolkien's famous fantasy trilogy, the Fellowship of the Ring - a multicultural team representing all the races of earth: human, half-human, and half-divine - arises to challenge the Dark Lord of Mordor. As orcs and other half-men swarm over the Shire and ravage Rivendell, home of the Elves, the Fellowship goes on the offensive and takes the battle to Mordor, overcoming the most horrendous obstacles on the way. Finally cornering the Dark Lord in his den, a brave hobbit faces down the Evil One with the courage not to use the One Ring but to destroy it once and for all - and with it the evil dream of absolute Power that possessed Sauron.

IN SEARCH OF GANDALF

I'm afraid, however, that there is no Fellowship, no Frodo, no Sam Baggins, and, sadly, no Gandalf. We could use a wizard right about now. For nothing else, other than divine intervention of the most direct kind, can possibly avert the disaster that is coming. In Tolkien's story, a couple of simple hobbits brought the Dark Lord down, and Mordor was defeated. In the real world, however, we are faced with quite a different plot-line, at least so far. The Dark Lord is triumphant, and now he is so confident of victory that he is showing his true face in all its brutal ugliness. As our jet-fighters rip through the Afghan sky, screeching like the Nazgul, and our leaders threaten to nuke the cradle of human civilization, it is clear what country is Mordor and who is Sauron in the real world.

DISSIDENTS OR DISINFO?

The leaking of this Doomsday Document is significant in two possible ways, one, as I have said, it was done deliberately - a scenario I can't quite bring myself to believe - or, more likely, the deed was done by a group of dissidents within the government, who are taking the long-brewing factional war within the administration to the world public. If the latter, then the decision to do so must have been taken under extreme circumstances that we can only imagine: for the consequences, internationally, are grave indeed.

THE NEW 'ISOLATIONISM'

This stunning news radically isolates the US from all of its allies, not just among the Arabs - who are no doubt unsurprised by further proof of this administration's infinite capacity for treachery - but the French, the British, the Germans, the Italians, the Turks, indeed any and all nations geographically close to the announced potential targets of our nuclear wrath.

PERIL IN THE PACIFIC

The Japanese, who each year commemorate the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with growing resentment, have every right to hate us for even suggesting a repeat performance next door in Korea. Another explicit threat contained in the Doomsday Document - that the US would use nuclear weapons in defense of Taiwan against China - doesn't help, either.

With Koizumi poised to make painful reforms in Japan's teetering economy, at America's behest, the idea that the Americans would willingly sacrifice the whole region in a nuclear conflagration in order to face down a challenge to their unquestioned hegemony undermines American interests in the region. The rise of anti-American sentiment could bring down the reformists - in which case the fall of the Japanese economy would be so precipitous as to take the Americans down with it.

EUROPEAN IMBROGLIO

But it is in Europe where the exposure of this Doomsday Doctrine will give a huge impetus to growing anti-Americanism. The rather prosaic left-wing variety, which is all too familiar in its aristocratic disdain for vulgar American capitalists, is too boring to capture the imagination of the masses. But on the European Right, the idea that the Americans would send a cloud of radioactive debris falling, like rain, from Tuscany to Wales, in order to save Israel is sure to induce a paroxysm of pure rage. This startling news is bound to throw the conservatives who vote for the mainstream right-wing parties, in France, the Low Countries, Italy, Austria, and Spain, into a panic. The nice middle class people who voted for, say, Berlusconi, who are usually pro-American, are not going to be all that pleased by the prospect of the nuking of Libya, whose shoreline practically kisses the tip of the Italian boot. In Britain, dissent in the Labor Party over Blair's support for a war on Iraq is already noisy: indeed, this kind of unilateralism basically renders NATO and Atlanticism irrelevant. That could lay the basis for a Tory nationalist reaction based on the sudden realization, by at least some in the Conservative leadership, that 'those damn Yanks don't really care about us, do they?'

MORAL BANKRUPTS RULE US

The moral bankruptcy of our rulers has never been made plainer. Americans would do well to contemplate the implications. If they'll do this to achieve their foreign policy goals, if they'll unleash the nuclear genie and bid it build an empire, perhaps killing tens of thousands - even millions - in the process, then what won't they do? Steal an election? Cancel an election? Circumscribe the Constitution? Frame up and jail their political enemies? Shut down the free media and establish a dictatorship? If they are now willing to consider nuking the entire Middle East, then God is dead and all is permitted.

----

NEWS ANALYSIS
Nuclear Arms for Deterrence or Fighting?

New York Times
March 11, 2002
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/international/11ASSE.html

LONDON, March 10 - The Pentagon's new blueprint on nuclear forces has raised the question whether the Bush administration is lowering the threshold for using nuclear arms.

In its Nuclear Posture Review, the Pentagon cites the need for new nuclear arms that could have a lower yield and produce less nuclear fallout. The weapons, the Pentagon said, could be designed to destroy underground complexes, including stores of chemical and biological arms. The targets might be situated in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya or North Korea, a reorientation away from cold war scenarios involving Russia.

But the classified Pentagon review has ignited a new and vitally important nuclear debate. Unlike much of the arms-control discussions in recent years, this dispute is not over the number of weapons the United States needs; it is over the more fundamental issue of the circumstances in which they might be used.

Should the purpose of nuclear weapons in a post-cold-war world be essentially to deter a nuclear attack on the United States? Or should nuclear weapons be developed for fighting wars, including conflicts with nonnuclear adversaries?

Critics fear that by calling for the development of more effective nuclear weapons, the Pentagon is making the unthinkable thinkable, blurring the distinction between nuclear weapons and conventional arms.

[The reaction overseas to the policy shift was predictably harsh, with a Russian legislator asking if Americans "have somewhat lost touch with the reality in which they live." Article, Page A8.]

"Throughout the nuclear age, the fundamental goal has been to prevent the use of nuclear weapons," said Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy specialist at the Brookings Institution. "Now the policy has been turned upside down. It is to keep nuclear weapons as a tool of war- fighting rather than a tool of deterrence. If military planners are now to consider the nuclear option any time they confront a surprising military development, the distinction between nuclear and nonnuclear weapons fades away."

The Pentagon, for its part, argues that in a world full of unexpected threats and rogue states, it needs a broader array of options. It describes nuclear and nonnuclear weapons as "offensive strike systems" that can be used separately or combined in an attack. Such systems are a key pillar of a "new triad" of offensive, defensive and military-industrial resources.

"Composed of both nonnuclear systems and nuclear weapons, the strike element of the new triad can provide greater flexibility in the design and conduct of military campaigns to defeat opponents decisively," the review says. "Nonnuclear strike capabilities may be particularly useful to limit collateral damage and conflict escalation. Nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack (for example, deep underground bunkers or bioweapons facilities). Nuclear and nonnuclear strike systems can attack an enemy's war- making capabilities and thus contribute to the defeat of the adversary and the defense of the United States and its security partners."

The review, though not a contingency plan for actual use of nuclear weapons, is meant to guide decisions about their role, development and deployment over the next decade.

Throughout the cold war, nuclear weapons had an enormous role in American military planning. The Pentagon not only built a formidable strategic arsenal to deter a nuclear attack on the United States; it also reserved the right to use nuclear weapons to deter a Warsaw Pact attack on Europe. The Pentagon deployed a vast array of nuclear arms, from ocean-spanning missiles to nuclear mines and depth charges. The Kremlin did much the same.

But as the cold war waned, so did the notion that nuclear weapons could be used to fight a war. The United States and Russia withdrew their tactical nuclear weapons from Europe and from their fleets. While Washington did not formally give up its option to make the first use of nuclear weapons against a Warsaw Pact attack, it cast the use of such weapons as a last resort.

With the end of the cold war, the need for nuclear weapons seemed to fade further. Arms control advocates pushed for radical cuts in the American and Russian arsenals and for taking nuclear-tipped missiles off alert, though hard-liners insisted that there was still a need for nuclear arms.

With the Nuclear Posture Review, President Bush appears to have a foot in each camp. He has embraced the call for deeper cuts in strategic arms, though the reductions he is seeking are probably not much deeper than the Clinton administration had in mind when changes in procedures for counting nuclear weapons are taken into account.

But Mr. Bush's Pentagon has also pushed for new and more usable nuclear weapons. At same time, it are working hard to improve conventional weapons. In effect, the Pentagon is urging the development of an arsenal in which nuclear weapons could be used against an adversary's nonnuclear forces, while promoting the development of conventional arms that could be used against nuclear targets.

The potential blurring of those roles, critics fear, would eliminate the firebreak between nuclear and conventional war. Some specialists also argue that it sends a message to third world powers that nuclear weapons are militarily useful.

"By emphasizing the important role of nuclear weapons, the Pentagon is encouraging other nations to think that it is important to have them as well," said Robert S. Norris, a nuclear weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Today, senior Bush administration officials sought to dampen the criticism. They argued that the Nuclear Posture Review was a mere policy document, not an operational plan, and that the decision to develop dramatically new types of weapons had not yet been made.

"This is prudent military planning, and it is the kind of planning I think the American people would expect," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on the CBS News Program "Face the Nation," adding, "We are not developing brand new nuclear weapons, and we are not planning to undergo any testing."

Vice President Dick Cheney, who arrived in London late tonight at the beginning of a long tour of allied nations, "will put it in context and in perspective," Secretary Powell said.

The Pentagon review, however, clearly points to important changes by touting the need for new variable- yield or reduced-yield nuclear weapons, and improved targeting systems so they could be rapidly used in war.

"Greater flexibility is needed with respect to nuclear force and planning than was the case during the cold war," the review said. "Nuclear attack options that vary in scale, scope and purpose will complement other military capabilities."

----

Powell defends nuclear planning

From combined dispatches
March 11, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020311-12640408.htm

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday a classified Pentagon report reviewing U.S. options for the use of nuclear weapons was simply "sound, military, conceptual planning" and not a precursor to any imminent U.S. action.

Mr. Powell discussed the secret document on the CBS "Face the Nation" program after the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that the Defense Department study outlined a contingency plan to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries - China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria.

The New York Times reported yesterday that the Nuclear Posture Review provided to Congress Jan. 8 also called for developing new nuclear weapons that would be better suited for striking targets in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya.

Mr. Powell confirmed that the study had virtually eliminated Russia as a nuclear nemesis, reflecting the post-Cold War environment, and was focused now on the new threat facing the United States - rogue states developing weapons of mass destruction.

"All that study said ... is that this class of nations - Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea - are developing the kinds of weapons of mass destruction that should be troubling to all of us."

Mr. Powell added, however, that "we should not get all carried away with some sense that the United States is planning to use nuclear weapons in some contingency that is coming up in the near future. It is not the case."

"What the Pentagon has done with this study is sound, military, conceptual planning, and the president will take that planning and he will give his directions on how to proceed," he said.

President Bush's national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, also downplayed the significance of the reports.

"No one should be surprised that the United States worries a great deal about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Miss Rice told NBC's "Meet the Press." "The only way to deter such a use is to be clear that it would be met with a devastating response. That is the basis of this report."

The Los Angeles Times, in first outlining the official list of potential target countries, said the three contingencies listed for possible use of the weapons were "against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack; in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons," or "in the event of surprising military developments."

"The report says the Pentagon should be prepared to use nuclear weapons in an Arab-Israeli conflict, in a war between China and Taiwan, or in an attack from North Korea on the south. They might also become necessary in an attack by Iraq on Israel or another neighbor," the Times said.

Mr. Powell denied the administration was recommending development of "new nuclear weapons" or further testing.

"We are not," he said. "What we are looking at, and what we have asked the Pentagon to do, is to see whether or not ... we might want to modify or update or change some of the weapons in our inventory to make them more effective."

Reactions from some of the targeted nations ranged from silence or unconcern by governments to defiance by unofficial commentators.

Libya's African affairs minister, Ali Abd al-Salam al-Turki, told reporters in Cairo he found the report hard to believe.

"I don't think this is true," he said. "I don't think America is going to destroy the world."

----

Nuclear Plan Meant to Deter
Defense: Newly revealed contingencies are designed to make clear that biological and chemical attacks "would be met with a devastating response," Rice says.

By DAVID G. SAVAGE,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 11, 2002
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-031102nukes.story

WASHINGTON -- U.S officials on Sunday defended the Pentagon's contingency plans for expanded use of nuclear weapons, saying the intent is to deter other nations from using biological or chemical weapons against Americans.

The Bush administration wants to "send a very strong signal to anyone who might try to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States," National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"The only way to deter such a use is to be clear it would be met with a devastating response," she said.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described the policy as "prudent military planning," not a plan for imminent attack.

"There are nations out there developing weapons of mass destruction. Prudent planners have to give some consideration as to the range of options the president should have available to him to deal with these kinds of threats," Powell said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

The White House was responding to a Los Angeles Times story Saturday that revealed that the Pentagon has drawn up plans that arms control experts say could signal a reversal of a decades-long policy of relegating nuclear weapons to a last resort.

Responding to new threats since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration now wants to consider using nuclear weapons to respond to biological and chemical attacks, as well as nuclear strikes, on the U.S. or its allies. They also are contemplating using smaller weapons that can better target new challenges faced in war zones: deeply dug caves and reinforced bunkers.

Arms control advocates warn that such moves could destabilize world relations by encouraging other nations to develop such weapons, but some conservative analysts say the Pentagon must prepare for a changed world, where dozens of countries, and some terrorist groups, have secret weapon programs.

The classified Pentagon report cited five nations--Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria--as posing a new level of threat to the United States that could require a nuclear response. The report also cites nuclear powers Russia and China but makes clear that Russia is no longer considered a U.S. adversary.

The disclosure of U.S. nuclear contingency planning could complicate diplomacy efforts by Vice President Dick Cheney, who arrived in London on Sunday for a 10-day, 12-nation swing through Europe and the Middle East to discuss with allies the next phase of the U.S.-led war against terrorism.

Administration officials went out of their way Sunday to assert that military planners have not targeted any nation for a nuclear attack but rather are preparing for how to respond if others resort to weapons of mass destruction.

"Right now, today, not a single nation on the face of the Earth is being targeted by an American nuclear weapon on a day-to-day basis," Powell said.

Powell worried that the leak of the Pentagon report will "get the international community upset."

"We should not get all carried away with some sense that the United States is planning to use nuclear weapons in some contingency that is coming up in the near future," he said. "It is not the case."

In fact, Rice said the report's big news is that Russia is no longer considered an enemy. "This is a report that recognizes that, thanks to our new strategic relationship with Russia, the likelihood of nuclear war with Russia is less likely now than at any time and that we can indeed reduce our nuclear forces by two-thirds and intend to do that whether Russia does or not."

Two U.S. senators on the Armed Services Committee confirmed that military planners are thinking more broadly about possible use of nuclear weapons.

"Originally, much of our nuclear policy was predicated on nuclear versus nuclear," said Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), referring to the Cold War era, when the U.S. squared off with the Soviet Union.

"Now, with the advent of these other weapons of mass destruction, the purpose of the report was to think through our policy, given the growing number of types of weapons of mass destruction," said Warner, the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

Appearing with him on CNN, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said the leak of the Pentagon planning report might serve as a warning to potential adversaries.

"Frankly, I don't mind some of these renegade nations who we have reason to believe are working themselves to develop nuclear weapons--and I'm thinking of Iraq and Iran and North Korea here--to think twice about the willingness of the United States to take action to defend our people and our values and our allies," he said.

White House officials made clear that the term "weapons of mass destruction" referred not just to nuclear bombs but also to chemical and biological weapons. Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, included "high explosives" in his definition of the term.

The Pentagon report "simply states our deterrence posture, of which nuclear weapons are a part," Myers said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

"This preserves for the president all the options that a president would want to have in case this country or our friends and allies were attacked with weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, biological, chemical or, for that matter, high explosives," Myers said.

"This is all about deterrence," he added. "We certainly hope to deter other actors in this world from taking steps with weapons of mass destruction that could have devastating effects on our population and the population of our friends and our allies."

The classified report, called the Nuclear Posture Review, was prepared after the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. It was sent to Congress on Jan. 8.

The report marks the first time an official list of potential targets has been revealed. It describes a series of scenarios that could call for U.S. use of nuclear weapons, including a Chinese attack on Taiwan, a North Korean attack on South Korea or an Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbors.

News of the Pentagon's planning was met with amazement and anger in foreign capitals, according to news reports.

Dmitry Rogozin, a leading Russian lawmaker, said the U.S. report was intended to intimidate Moscow. "They've brought out a big stick, a nuclear stick that is supposed to scare us and put us in our place," Rogozin said in a TV interview.

In Cairo, Libyan official Ali Abd Al-Salam al-Turiki said he found it hard to believe the U.S. was contemplating using nuclear weapons. "I don't think this is true," he said. "I don't think America is going to destroy the world."

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How Nuclear Bombs Work

by Craig C. Freudenrich, Ph.D.
mailto:comments@howstuffworks.com
http://www.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-bomb.htm/printable

You have probably read in history books about the atomic bombs used in World War II. You may also have seen fictional movies where nuclear weapons were launched or detonated (Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove, The Day After, Testament, Fat Man and Little Boy, The Peacemaker, just to name a few). In the news, while many countries have been negotiating to disarm their arsenals of nuclear weapons, other countries such as India and Pakistan have been developing nuclear weapons programs.

We have seen that these devices have incredible destructive power, but how do they work? In this edition of HowStuffWorks, you will learn about the physics that makes a nuclear bomb so powerful, how nuclear bombs are designed and what happens after a nuclear explosion.

Physics of Nuclear Devices Nuclear bombs involve the forces, strong and weak, that hold the nucleus of an atom together, especially atoms with unstable nuclei (see How Nuclear Radiation Works for details). There are two basic ways that nuclear energy can be released from an atom:

Nuclear fission - You can split the nucleus of an atom into two smaller fragments with a neutron. This method usually involves isotopes of uranium (uranium-235, uranium-233) or plutonium-239. Nuclear fusion -You can bring two smaller atoms, usually hydrogen or hydrogen isotopes (deuterium, tritium), together to form a larger one (helium or helium isotopes); this is how the sun produces energy.

In either process, fission or fusion, large amounts of heat energy and radiation are given off.

Designs of Nuclear Bombs To build an atomic bomb, you need:

A source of fissionable or fusionable fuel A triggering device A way to allow the majority of fuel to fission or fuse before the explosion occurs (otherwise the bomb will fizzle out)

The first nuclear bombs were fission devices, and the later fusion bombs required a fission-bomb trigger. We will discuss the designs of the following devices:

Fission bombs (in general) Gun-triggered fission bomb (Little Boy), which was detonated over Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 Implosion-triggered fission bomb (Fat Man), which was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 Fusion bombs (in general) Teller-Ulam design of a hydrogen fusion bomb, which was test-detonated on Elugelap Island in 1952

Fission Bombs A fission bomb uses an element like uranium-235 to create a nuclear explosion. If you have read How Nuclear Radiation Works, then you understand the basic process behind radioactive decay and fission. Uranium-235 has an extra property that makes it useful for both nuclear-power production and nuclear-bomb production -- U-235 is one of the few materials that can undergo induced fission. If a free neutron runs into a U-235 nucleus, the nucleus will absorb the neutron without hesitation, become unstable and split immediately.

This figure shows a uranium-235 nucleus with a neutron approaching from the top. As soon as the nucleus captures the neutron, it splits into two lighter atoms and throws off two or three new neutrons (the number of ejected neutrons depends on how the U-235 atom happens to split). The two new atoms then emit gamma radiation as they settle into their new states (see How Nuclear Radiation Works). There are three things about this induced fission process that make it interesting:

The probability of a U-235 atom capturing a neutron as it passes by is fairly high. In a bomb that is working properly, more than one neutron ejected from each fission causes another fission to occur. This condition is known as supercriticality.

The process of capturing the neutron and splitting happens very quickly, on the order of picoseconds (1*10E-12 seconds).

An incredible amount of energy is released, in the form of heat and gamma radiation, when an atom splits. The energy released by a single fission is due to the fact that the fission products and the neutrons, together, weigh less than the original U-235 atom.

The difference in weight is converted to energy at a rate governed by the equation e = m * c^2. A pound of highly enriched uranium as used in a nuclear bomb is equal to something on the order of a million gallons of gasoline. When you consider that a pound of uranium is smaller than a baseball and a million gallons of gasoline would fill a cube that is 50 feet per side (50 feet is as tall as a five-story building), you can get an idea of the amount of energy available in just a little bit of U-235.

In order for these properties of U-235 to work, a sample of uranium must be enriched . Weapons-grade uranium is composed of at least 90-percent U-235.

In a fission bomb, the fuel must be kept in separate subcritical masses, which will not support fission, to prevent premature detonation. Critical mass is the minimum mass of fissionable material required to sustain a nuclear fission reaction. This separation brings about several problems in the design of a fission bomb that must be solved:

The two or more subcritical masses must be brought together to form a supercritical mass, which will provide more than enough neutrons to sustain a fission reaction, at the time of detonation. Free neutrons must be introduced into the supercritical mass to start the fission. As much of the material as possible must be fissioned before the bomb explodes to prevent fizzle.

To bring the subcritical masses together into a supercritical mass, two techniques are used:

Gun-triggered Implosion

Neutrons are introduced by making a neutron generator. This generator is a small pellet of polonium and beryllium, separated by foil within the fissionable fuel core. In this generator:

1.The foil is broken when the subcritical masses come together and polonium spontaneously emits alpha particles.

2.These alpha particles then collide with beryllium-9 to produce beryllium-8 and free neutrons.

3.The neutrons then initiate fission.

Finally, the fission reaction is confined within a dense material called a tamper, which is usually made of uranium-238. The tamper gets heated and expanded by the fission core. This expansion of the tamper exerts pressure back on the fission core and slows the core's expansion. The tamper also reflects neutrons back into the fission core, increasing the efficiency of the fission reaction.

Gun-Triggered Fission Bomb The simplest way to bring the subcritical masses together is to make a gun that fires one mass into the other. A sphere of U-235 is made around the neutron generator and a small bullet of U-235 is removed. The bullet is placed at the one end of a long tube with explosives behind it, while the sphere is placed at the other end. A barometric-pressure sensor determines the appropriate altitude for detonation and triggers the following sequence of events:

1.The explosives fire and propel the bullet down the barrel.

2.The bullet strikes the sphere and generator, initiating the fission reaction.

3.The fission reaction begins.

4.The bomb explodes.

Little Boy was this type of bomb and had a 14.5-kiloton yield (equal to 14,500 tons of dynamite) with an efficiency of about 1.5 percent. That is, 1.5 percent of the material was fissioned before the explosion carried the material away.

Implosion-Triggered Fission Bomb Early in the Manhattan Project, the secret U.S. program to develop the atomic bomb, scientists working on the project recognized that compressing the subcritical masses together into a sphere by implosion might be a good way to make a supercritical mass. There were several problems with this idea, particularly how to control and direct the shock wave uniformly across the sphere. But the Manhattan Project team solved the problems. The implosion device consisted of several subcritical masses of plutonium-239 surrounded by high explosives within a sphere of uranium-238 (tamper). When the bomb was detonated, this is what happened:

The explosives fired, creating a shock wave.

The shock wave propelled the plutonium pieces together into a sphere.

The plutonium pieces struck a pellet of beryllium/polonium at the center.

The fission reaction began.

The bomb exploded.

Fat Man was this type of bomb and had a 23-kiloton yield with an efficiency of 17 percent. These bombs exploded in fractions of a second. The fission usually occurred in 560 billionths of a second.

Fusion Bombs Fission bombs worked, but they weren't very efficient. Fusion bombs, also called thermonuclear bombs, have higher kiloton yields and greater efficiencies than fission bombs. To design a fusion bomb, some problems have to be solved:

Deuterium and tritium, the fuel for fusion, are both gases, which are hard to store. Tritium is in short supply and has a short half-life, so the fuel in the bomb would have to be continuously replenished. Deuterium or tritium has to be highly compressed at high temperature to initiate the fusion reaction.

First, to store deuterium, the gas could be chemically combined with lithium to make a solid lithium-deuterate compound. To overcome the tritium problem, the bomb designers recognized that the neutrons from a fission reaction could produce tritium from lithium (lithium-6 plus a neutron yields tritium and helium-4; lithium-7 plus a neutron yields tritium, helium-4 and a neutron). That meant that tritium would not have to be stored in the bomb. Finally, Stanislaw Ulam recognized that the majority of radiation given off in a fission reaction was X-rays and that these X-rays could provide the high temperatures and pressures necessary to initiate fusion. Therefore, by encasing a fission bomb within a fusion bomb, several problems could be solved.

Teller-Ulam Design of a Fusion Bomb To understand this bomb design, imagine that within a bomb casing you have an implosion fission bomb and a cylinder casing of uranium-238 (tamper). Within the tamper is the lithium deuterate (fuel) and a hollow rod of plutonium-239 in the center of the cylinder. Separating the cylinder from the implosion bomb is a shield of uranium-238 and plastic foam that fills the remaining spaces in the bomb casing. Detonation of the bomb caused the following sequence of events:

1.The fission bomb imploded, giving off X-rays.

2.These X-rays heated the interior of the bomb and the tamper; the shield prevented premature detonation of the fuel.

3.The heat caused the tamper to expand and burn away, exerting pressure inward against the lithium deuterate.

4.The lithium deuterate was squeezed by about 30-fold.

5.The compression shock waves initiated fission in the plutonium rod.

6.The fissioning rod gave off radiation, heat and neutrons.

7.The neutrons went into the lithium deuterate, combined with the lithium and made tritium.

8.The combination of high temperature and pressure were sufficient for tritium-deuterium and deuterium-deuterium fusion reactions to occur, producing more heat, radiation and neutrons.

9.The neutrons from the fusion reactions induced fission in the uranium-238 pieces from the tamper and shield.

10.Fission of the tamper and shield pieces produced even more radiation and heat.

11.The bomb exploded.

All of these events happened in about 600 billionths of a second (550 billionths of a second for the fission bomb implosion, 50 billionths of a second for the fusion events). The result was an immense explosion that was more than 700 times greater than the Little Boy explosion: It had a 10,000-kiloton yield.

Consequences of Nuclear Explosions The detonation of a nuclear bomb over a target such as a populated city causes immense damage. The degree of damage depends upon the distance from the center of the bomb blast, which is called the hypocenter or ground zero. The closer one is to the hypocenter, the more severe the damage. The damage is caused by several things:

A wave of intense heat from the explosion Pressure from the shock wave created by the blast Radiation Radioactive fallout (clouds of fine radioactive particles of dust and bomb debris that fall back to the ground)

At the hypocenter, everything is immediately vaporized by the high temperature (up to 500 million degrees Fahrenheit or 300 million degrees Celsius). Outward from the hypocenter, most casualties are caused by burns from the heat, injuries from the flying debris of buildings collapsed by the shock wave, and acute exposure to the high radiation. Beyond the immediate blast area, casualties are caused from the heat, radiation, and fires spawned from the heat wave. In the long-term, radioactive fallout occurs over a wider area because of prevailing winds. The radioactive fallout particles enter the water supply and are inhaled and ingested by people at a distance from the blast.

Scientists have studied survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings to understand the short-term and long-term effects of nuclear explosions on human health. Radiation and radioactive fallout affect those cells in the body that actively divide (hair, intestine, bone marrow, reproductive organs). Some of the resulting health conditions include:
Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea
Cataracts
Hair loss
Loss of blood cells

These conditions often increase the risk of:
Leukemia
Cancer
Infertility
Birth defects

Scientists and physicians are still studying the survivors of the bombs dropped on Japan and expect more results to appear over time.

In the 1980s, scientists assessed the possible effects of nuclear warfare (many nuclear bombs exploding in different parts of the world) and proposed the theory that a nuclear winter could occur. In the nuclear-winter scenario, the explosion of many bombs would raise great clouds of dust and radioactive material that would travel high into Earth's atmosphere. These clouds would block out sunlight. The reduced level of sunlight would lower the surface temperature of the planet and reduce photosynthesis by plants and bacteria. The reduction in photosynthesis would disrupt the food chain, causing mass extinction of life (including humans). This scenario is similar to the asteroid hypothesis that has been proposed to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs. Proponents of the nuclear-winter scenario pointed to the clouds of dust and debris that traveled far across the planet after the volcanic eruptions of Mount St. Helens in the United States and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.

Nuclear weapons have incredible, long-term destructive power that travels far beyond the original target. This is why the world's governments are trying to control the spread of nuclear-bomb-making technology and materials and reduce the arsenal of nuclear weapons deployed during the Cold War.

For more information on nuclear bombs and related topics, check out the links on the next page.

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50 Facts About U.S. Nuclear Weapons

The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project,
The Brookings Institution (September 1999)
http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/50.HTM

- Except where noted all figures are in constant 1996 dollars -

1. Cost of the Manhattan Project (through August 1945): $20,000,000,000

SOURCES: Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., The New World: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Volume 1, 1939/1946 (Oak Ridge, Tennessee: U.S. AEC Technical Information Center, 1972), pp. 723-724; Condensed AEC Annual Financial Report, FY 1953 (in Fifteenth Semiannual Report of the Atomic Energy Commission, January 1954, p. 73)

2. Total number of nuclear missiles built, 1951-present: 67,500

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project

3. Estimated construction costs for more than 1,000 ICBM launch pads and silos, and support facilities, from 1957-1964: nearly $14,000,000,000

Maj. C.D. Hargreaves, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Ballistic Missile Construction Office (CEBMCO), "Introduction to the CEBMCO Historical Report and History of the Command Section, Pre-CEBMCO Thru December 1962," p. 8; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Ballistic Missile Construction Office, "U.S. Air Force ICBM Construction Program," undated chart (circa 1965)

4. Total number of nuclear bombers built, 1945-present: 4,680

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project

5. Peak number of nuclear warheads and bombs in the stockpile/year: 32,193/1966

Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons Databook Project

6. Total number and types of nuclear warheads and bombs built, 1945-1990: more than 70,000/65 types

U.S. Department of Energy; Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons Databook Project

7. Number currently in the stockpile (1997): 12,500 (8,750 active, 2,500 hedge/contingency stockpile, 1,250 awaiting disassembly)

Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons Databook Project

8. Number of nuclear warheads requested by the Army in 1956 and 1957: 151,000

History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons, July 1945 Through September 1977, Prepared by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy), February 1978, p. 50 (formerly Top Secret)

9. Projected U.S. nuclear warheads and bombs after completion of the START II reductions in 2003: 5,000

U.S. Department of Defense; Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons Databook Project

10. Additional warheads the military wants to hold in inactive reserve to "hedge" against future threats: 2,500

U..S. Department of Defense; Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons Databook Project

11. Largest and smallest nuclear bombs ever deployed: B17/B24 (~42,000 lbs., 10-15 megatons); W54 (51 lbs., .01 kilotons, .02 kilotons-1 kiloton)

Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons Databook Project

12. Peak number of operating domestic uranium mines (1955): 925

Nineteenth Semiannual Report of the Atomic Energy Commission, January 1956, p. 31

13. Fissile material produced: 104 metric tons of plutonium and 994 metric tons of highly-enriched uranium

U.S. Department of Energy

14. Amount of plutonium still in weapons: 3 metric tons

Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons Databook Project

15. Number of thermometers which could be filled with mercury used to produce lithium-6 at the Oak Ridge Reservation: 11 billion

U.S. Department of Energy

16. Number of dismantled plutonium "pits" stored at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas: 12,067 (as of May 6, 1999)

U.S. Department of Energy

17. States with the largest number of nuclear weapons: New Mexico (2,450), Georgia (2,000), Washington (1,685), Nevada (1,350), and North Dakota (1,140)

William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Joshua Handler, Taking Stock: Worldwide Nuclear Deployments 1998 (Washington, D.C.: Natural Resources Defense Council, March 1998)

18. Total known land area occupied by U.S. nuclear weapons bases and facilities: 15,654 square miles

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project

19. Total land area of the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and New Jersey: 15,357 square miles Rand McNally Road Atlas and Travel Guide, 1992

20. Legal fees paid by the Department of Energy to fight lawsuits from workers and private citizens concerning nuclear weapons production and testing activities, from October 1990 through March 1995: $97,000,000

U.S. Department of Energy

21. Money paid by the State Department to Japan following fallout from the 1954 "Bravo" test: $15,300,000

Barton C. Hacker, Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing, 1947 -1974, University of California Press, 1994, p. 158

22. Money and non-monetary compensation paid by the the United States to Marshallese Islanders since 1956 to redress damages from nuclear testing: at least $759,000,000

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project

23. Money paid to U.S. citizens under the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act of 1990, as of January 13, 1998: approximately $225,000,000 (6,336 claims approved; 3,156 denied)

U.S. Department of Justice, Torts Branch, Civil Division

24. Total cost of the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program, 1946-1961: $7,000,000,000

"Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program," Report of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, September 1959, pp. 11-12

25. Total number of nuclear-powered aircraft and airplane hangers built: 0 and 1

Ibid; "American Portrait: ANP," WFAA-TV (Dallas), 1993. Between July 1955 and March 1957, a specially modified B-36 bomber made 47 flights with a three megawatt air-cooled operational test reactor (the reactor, however, did not power the plane).

26. Number of secret Presidential Emergency Facilities built for use during and after a nuclear war: more than 75

Bill Gulley with Mary Ellen Reese, Breaking Cover, Simon and Schuster, 1980, pp. 34- 36

27. Currency stored until 1988 by the Federal Reserve at its Mount Pony facility for use after a nuclear war: more than $2,000,000,000

Edward Zuckerman, The Day After World War III, The Viking Press, 1984, pp. 287-88

28. Amount of silver in tons once used at the Oak Ridge, TN, Y-12 Plant for electrical magnet coils: 14,700

Vincent C. Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Bomb, U.S. Army Center for Military History, 1985, pp. 66-7

29. Total number of U.S. nuclear weapons tests, 1945-1992: 1,030 (1,125 nuclear devices detonated)

U.S. Department of Energy

30. First and last test: July 16, 1945 ("Trinity") and September 23, 1992 ("Divider")

U.S. Department of Energy

31. Estimated amount spent between October 1, 1992 and October 1, 1995 on nuclear testing activities: $1,200,000,000 (0 tests)

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project

32. Cost of 1946 Operation Crossroads weapons tests ("Able" and "Baker") at Bikini Atoll: $1,300,000,000

Weisgall, Operation Crossroads, pp. 294, 371

33. Largest U.S. explosion/date: 15 Megatons/March 1, 1954 ("Bravo")

U.S. Department of Energy

34. Number of islands in Enewetak atoll vaporized by the November 1, 1952 "Mike" H-bomb test: 1

Chuck Hansen, U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History, Orion Books, 1988, pp. 58-59, 95

35. Number of nuclear tests in the Pacific: 106

Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons Databook Project

36. Number of U.S. nuclear tests in Nevada: 911

Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons Databook Project

37. Number of nuclear weapons tests in Alaska, Colorado [1 and 2], Mississippi and New Mexico [1, 2 and 3]: 10

Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons Databook Project

38. Operational naval nuclear propulsion reactors vs. operational commercial power reactors: 129 vs. 108

Adm. Bruce DeMars, Deputy Assistant Director for Naval Reactors, U.S. Navy; Nuclear Regulatory Commission

39. Current number of attack (SSN) and ballistic missile (SSBN) submarines: 80 SSNs and 18 SSBNs

Adm. Bruce DeMars, Deputy Assistant Director for Naval Reactors, U.S. Navy

40. Number of high level radioactive waste tanks in Washington, Idaho and South Carolina: 239

U.S. Department of Energy

41. Volume in cubic meters of radioactive waste resulting from weapons activities: 104,000,000

U.S. Department of Energy; Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

42. Number of designated targets for U.S. weapons in the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) in 1976, 1986, and 1995: 25,000 (1976), 16,000 (1986) and 2,500 (1995)

Bruce Blair, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

43. Cost of January 17, 1966 nuclear weapons accident over Palomares, Spain (including two lost planes, an extended search and recovery effort, waste disposal in the U.S. and settlement claims): $182,000,000

Joint Committee on Atomic Energy Interoffice Memorandum, February 15, 1968; Center for Defense Information

44. Number of U.S. nuclear bombs lost in accidents and never recovered: 11

U.S. Department of Defense; Center for Defense Information; Greenpeace; "Lost Bombs," Atwood-Keeney Productions, Inc., 1997

45. Number of Department of Energy federal employees (in 1996): 18,608

U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Worker and Community Transition

46. Number of Department of Energy contractor employees (in 1996): 109,242

U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Worker and Community Transition

47. Minimum number of classified pages estimated to be in the Department of Energy's possession: 280 million

A Review of the Department of Energy Classification Policy and Practice, Committee on Declassification of Information for the Department of Energy Environmental Remediation and Related Programs, National Research Council, 1995, pp. 7-8, 68.

48. Ballistic missile defense spending in 1965 vs.1995: $2,200,000,000 vs. $2,600,000,000

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project

49. Average cost per warhead to the U.S. to help Kazakhstan dismantle 104 SS-18 ICBMs carrying more than 1,000 warheads: $70,000

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project; Arms Control Association

50. Estimated 1998 spending on all U.S. nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs: $35,100,000,000

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project

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Call for New Breed of Nuclear Arms Faces Hurdles

New York Times
March 11, 2002
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/international/11WEAP.html

The Pentagon's call for a new generation of nuclear arms promises a bounty of new work for the nation's aging nuclear arms enterprise, but the undertaking would be extremely difficult, experts said yesterday.

The coast-to-coast enterprise, run by the Department of Energy and employing thousands of the nation's best scientists, has been weakened in recent years by charges of spying and mismanagement, reduced demand for its services after the cold war and substantial drops in jobs, capabilities and prestige.

The top labs - Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia - have recently sought new challenges to work on the design of warheads, most especially ones robust enough to penetrate solid rock and hardened concrete to demolish enemy bunkers buried deep underground.

Stephen M. Younger, then at Los Alamos and now at the Pentagon, wrote a paper in June 2000 that stirred debate. He said that the nation needed to develop a new class of nuclear arms that would have low explosive yields but burrow deep. "With precision delivery," he said, "many hard targets might be able to be defeated."

Dr. Younger also said that small arms might cause "reduced collateral damage," or less accidental destruction beyond the intended target.

In a new report whose secret details were disclosed publicly over the weekend, the Pentagon has now endorsed such weapons, laying out a military rationale for their development and bringing the start of such research closer to reality.

But even if development work is approved, translating it into new weapons could face numerous hurdles of technology and politics, experts said yesterday.

First, a small nuclear device, perhaps smaller in explosive power than the Hiroshima bomb, is not necessarily easy to build. Nuclear arms can be enormously complex and fragile - akin to personal computers - and making them sturdy enough to explode only after smashing through layers of solid rock and concrete could prove a daunting task.

"It's not clear that there's much additional technology that could be developed to increase the effectiveness against underground targets," said Dr. Frank von Hipple, a physicist who advised the Clinton administration and now teaches science policy at Princeton University.

The Pentagon's goal, he said, is apparently to make a less powerful version of the nation's current nuclear bomb for penetrating into the earth, the B-61-11.

But small size, the experts said, does not necessarily free nuclear weapons of complicating side effects, contrary to the implications of Dr. Younger's "reduced collateral damage" argument.

Robert W. Nelson, a physicist who consults for the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, has recently contended that no earth-penetrating weapon can burrow deep enough to contain the ensuing blast and radioactivity.

"The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout," Dr. Nelson wrote last year.

Another hurdle is the nation's atomic enterprise itself, which has shrunk enormously in size and lost major parts of its manufacturing prowess. A decade ago, it employed nearly 100,000 people in 13 states and cost more than $10 billion a year to operate. Now it is much smaller and less capable.

"They're trying to bring it back to a semblance of what it was during the cold war," said Robert S. Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that monitors trends in nuclear arms development.

A final hurdle could be political, experts agreed. Today, the nations of the world observe a ban on underground nuclear explosions. The absence of such blasts is seen as a brake on the development of new kinds of nuclear arms, which usually must be exploded to test their reliability.

The United States has conducted no nuclear explosions at its underground test site in the Nevada desert since September 1992, when a worldwide moratorium on such blasts began to go into effect. Setting off such explosions again would probably ignite a political firestorm, experts said, and could create a chain reaction of arms races.

"The threshold would be lowered to anybody else who wants to do it," said Dr. von Hipple of Princeton. "The Indians and Pakistanis might be the first out of the box, and the Chinese not far behind. Maybe the Russians would follow. The ban could fall apart very quickly."

Nuclear experts are divided on whether the design of new earth- penetrating warheads would require explosive tests. Dr. von Hipple said it was conceivable that an old nuclear design meant to withstand sharp blows - say, one for an atomic artillery shell - might be adapted to fashion an earth-penetrating warhead of low explosive power.

Dr. Younger, now director of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, has argued that earth- penetrating designs are possible without explosive testing. But Dr. Nelson of the Federation of American Scientists has disagreed, as do other experts.

"It's generally held that if you make a new design, you have to test," said Dr. Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

A final consideration is the consequences of actually using such arms, said Dr. von Hipple.

"We would have violated a taboo we've had in place since Nagasaki," he said. "With our enormous conventional superiority, that would be the ultimate in stupidity and self destructiveness. By using nuclear weapons, we would make it permissible for others to use them against us."

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Officials: US Nukes Must Be on Ready

March 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Nuclear.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Administration officials insist the United States does not plan to use nuclear weapons, but they say President Bush must be prepared to do so to deter attacks involving weapons of mass destruction.

``We all want to make the use of weapons of mass destruction less likely,'' national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday. ``The way that you do that is to send a very strong signal to anyone who might try to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States that they'd be met with a devastating response.''

Secretary of State Colin Powell noted that the United States has never ruled out using nuclear weapons against a nuclear-armed enemy, a policy he said should deter any would-be attacker.

``We think it is best for any potential adversary out there to have uncertainty in his calculus,'' Powell said.

Rice, Powell and military and congressional leaders were responding to weekend reports that the Pentagon has told Congress it is studying the possible use of nuclear weapons against countries that may threaten the United States.

The classified ``nuclear posture review'' sent to Congress says the Pentagon is developing contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against countries that are developing weapons of mass destruction.

The report identified seven nations: China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia and Syria.

On television talk shows Sunday, administration officials sought to walk a line between asserting America's willingness to use nuclear weapons and calming the public and allies troubled by suggestions the United States might be moving closer to employing them.

The issue was especially sensitive on a day when Vice President Dick Cheney began a 12-country tour that includes stops in a number of Arab states certain to be upset about the targeting of Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Powell said on CBS' ``Face the Nation'' that the report emerged from ``prudent'' planning that must ``give some consideration as to the range of options the president should have available to him to deal with those kinds of threats.''

``Right now, today, not a single nation on the face of the earth is being targeted by an American nuclear weapon on a day-to-day basis,'' Powell said.

``We should not get all carried away with some sense that the United States is planning to use nuclear weapons in some contingency that is coming up in the near future,'' he said. ``It is not the case.''

Powell acknowledged the military was considering whether to ``modify or update or change'' current nuclear weapons to meet new threats.

Rice said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that the report emphasizes efforts to make the use of nuclear arms less likely through improved intelligence and conventional weapons.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed that the report is ``not a plan.''

``This preserves for the president all the options that a president would want to have in case this country or our friends and allies were attacked with weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, biological, chemical or, for that matter, high explosives,'' Myers said on CNN's ``Late Edition.''

Sen. John Warner of Virginia, senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would ask the administration Monday to clarify its position. He and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., a fellow committee member, painted the document as an outline of options for Bush.

``Frankly, I don't mind some of these renegade nations (thinking) twice about the willingness of the United States to take action to defend our people and our values and our allies,'' Lieberman said.

But, he added on CNN: ``It's very important for the American people or people around the world not to overreact to the news stories.''

News of the report did trigger some consternation and disbelief overseas.

Libya's African affairs minister, Ali Abd al-Salam al-Turiki, told reporters in Cairo he found the report hard to believe.

``I don't think this is true,'' he said. ``I don't think America is going to destroy the world.''

Dmitry Rogozin, a leading Russian lawmaker with close ties to the Kremlin, accused Washington of deliberately leaking word of the report to intimidate Russia. ``They've brought out a big stick -- a nuclear stick that is supposed to scare us and put us in our place,'' he said on NTV television.

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

-------- tennessee

Fusion Experiment Sparks an Academic Brawl

By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 11, 2002; Page A10

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5592-2002Mar10?language=printer

A small glass cylinder sits at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Partly filled with a form of acetone, the cylinder is closed at the bottom and at the top, with openings for a vacuum pump. A device that converts electricity into mechanical energy is stuck to the glass and sends sound waves into the acetone.

A neutron generator sits nearby, to fire tiny particles into the liquid in time with the sound waves.

The setup is smaller than most coffee makers, but the experiment being conducted with it rocked the world of physics last week and set off a quarrel among scientists that was the academic equivalent of a barroom brawl.

Rusi Pesi Taleyarkhan at Oak Ridge said that the small glass structure replicated the nuclear fusion reactions that occur inside the sun and the stars, and that those reactions had previously been simulated on Earth only with gigantic particle accelerators, highly radioactive substances and the hydrogen bomb.

While those systems have relied on powerful energy sources to slam atoms of hydrogen together, Taleyarkhan said he achieved the same effect by using a small force that was intensely concentrated.

"It's the old karate chop effect," Taleyarkhan said. "If you increase the rate of change, it results in a more intense shock. You can use the same energy over a short time and crack a brick, when otherwise you would just be pushing it."

A report on the experiment conducted by scientists at Oak Ridge, Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York and the Russian Academy of Sciences was published in the respected journal Science -- against the advice of at least three scientists who reviewed the paper for the journal:

"I reviewed the paper twice, I rejected it twice," said William Moss, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

"I told Science you can't publish it because it's not right," said Lawrence Crum, a physicist with the Applied Physics Lab of the University of Washington at Seattle.

"They say it was subject to stringent peer review, but does that mean it passed peer review?" asked Seth Putterman, a physicist with the University of California at Los Angeles, who also rejected the article.

As the accusations and allegations increased, Taleyarkhan's supporters fought back. Russ George, a California scientist who has worked for many years on alternative energies, said the three critics were Taleyarkhan's competitors.

"They are not happy that they are beaten to the prize," said George, formerly a visiting scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and at the Stanford Research Institute. "They have so much to gain by having Taleyarkhan fail."

The idea of "tabletop" fusion, using substances that are widely available, cheap and safe, has long been a tantalizing dream in nuclear physics. By tightly controlling nuclear reactions, energy could be generated for ordinary civilian use, instead of for the uncontrolled explosions used for war and destruction.

Conventional nuclear reactors do release controlled energy that can be used for civilian purposes, but they use highly radioactive substances, generate dangerous wastes and carry the risks of meltdown.

The Oak Ridge experiment, by contrast, used substances that are cheap and safe and, if Taleyarkhan is correct, managed to produce heat as intense as that in the sun's interior in a small area for a few trillionths of a second.

Because these "explosions" were invisible to the eye, researchers searched for telltale signs -- chiefly for neutrons and tritium, another form of hydrogen. Taleyarkhan's group said they found both.

A second group of Oak Ridge scientists looked for the neutrons and couldn't find them, whereupon Taleyarkhan examined their data and concluded that they had made mistakes in their analysis. Many scientists will try to replicate the experiment, and Taleyarkhan said he will help them set up their experiments.

While the technique used -- sonoluminescence -- has long been known, Taleyarkhan's group developed some novel improvements. When sound waves are sent through some liquids, they set up fluctuations in pressure.

Taleyarkhan's neutron generator "seeded" especially large bubbles in the liquid.

As the pressure changed from a powerful vacuum -- which caused the bubbles to expand -- to a powerful region of high pressure, the bubbles imploded with great force, creating the kind of heat that Taleyarkhan believes forced atoms of a form of hydrogen together.

Scientists disagreed on almost every aspect of the "bubble fusion" experiment. Putterman said the Oak Ridge researchers may have detected tritium that was not produced in the experiment. "My concern was they've got tritium contamination in their lab," he said.

But Lee Riedinger, deputy director for Science and Technology at Oak Ridge and Taleyarkhan's boss, said: "The tritium signal seems impressive. I cannot see anything wrong with the tritium signal."

Riedinger himself was worried about the neutron signal. He asked a second group at Oak Ridge to look for the particles, and became concerned when they could not. "Scientists look at the same results and have different opinions," Riedinger concluded ruefully.

He said he plans to get the two groups together and move the experiment from the Engineering Science and Technology building to the physics building at Oak Ridge, which is better designed for experiments involving the detection of sub-atomic particles.

Kenneth Suslick, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said he and Putterman would try to replicate the experiment using a laser instead of the neutron generator to seed the bubbles. In this way, he said, scientists would be sure that any neutrons they detected were not produced by the neutron generator.

As with everything else, even this could prove controversial. Richard Lahey, a professor of engineering at Rensselaer and Taleyarkhan's co-author, said that lasers wouldn't work very well.

He said scientists used neutrons to seed the bubbles because the neutrons produced at the end of the experiment could themselves seed new bubbles, thus setting up a chain reaction, which is essential if the technique is ever to produce usable energy.

"I would say there is a 50-50 chance that fusion events did occur," said Don Steiner, a former scientist at the Oak Ridge fusion program and now director of nuclear engineering and engineering physics at Rensselaer.

"Both experimental setups [at Oak Ridge] were not ideal," he said. "Both groups would admit [that] if they had open resources and could set up their definitive experiment, it would be different than the ones conducted."

He estimated that 20 to 30 labs in the United States could replicate the experiment.

Riedinger said he hopes scientists could give the public a verdict in six months.

-------- us politics

Bush's New Nuclear Weapon Plan: A Shot at Nonproliferation

THE NATION - Capital Games,
by David Corn
03/11/2002
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=27

After George W. Bush's tough talk about the "axis of evil" unnerved allies--and forced the Administration to dispense assurances it was not about to go halfcocked after Iran, Iraq and North Korea--the White House has once again supplied the international community reason for the jitters, thanks to its new Nuclear Posture Review. The classified report, first revealed by The Los Angeles Times and then front-paged by The New York Times, is the Pentagon's master plan for developing and deploying nuclear weapons. The document, which lists contingencies in which nuclear arms might be used, notes that the United States might have to resort to nuclear weapons during "an Iraqi attack on Israel, or its neighbors, or a North Korean attack on South Korea or a military confrontation over the status of Taiwan." (The latter, of course, would be a confrontation with China.) The report also states, "Iran, Syria and Libya are among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential or unexpected contingencies" that would require "nuclear strike capabilities," and it states that the United States could launch a nuclear assault to destroy stocks of weapons of mass destruction, such as biological and chemical arms.

The report certainly will not bolster Bush's image abroad, for it will cause people to wonder if--shades of Ronald Reagan!--this administration is planning for winnable nuclear wars against nations that do not possess nuclear weapons. This leak will also probably cause headaches for Vice President Dick Cheney when he travels to the Middle East this week. He'll want to talk war on terrorism, and the heads of state might be more interested in his ideas about targeting nuclear weapons in their neighborhood. The report is also the latest step in what seems to be a Bush administration campaign to undermine a key foundation of the international nuclear nonproliferation order.

The prospect of using--or preparing to use--nuclear weapons against nations that do not possess them has long been a delicate matter. Nobody expects the Pentagon not to plan for the horrific possibility of nuclear war with another nuclear-armed state. But since 1978 the United States has tried to reassure the world that (more or less) it would not launch nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear-weapon nation. The point of this declaration was to encourage non-nuclear states to sign and abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Washington would have a difficult time pressing other nations to forego nuclear weapons, if it reserved the right to blast these countries with its own nuclear arsenal.

This US position--known as "negative security assurances" in arms-control parlance--came with loopholes. Here's how Secretary of State Warren Christopher described it in 1995: the United States "will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons except in case of an invasion or any other attack on the United States, its territories, its armed forces or other troops, its allies, or on a state towards which it has a security commitment, carried out or sustained by such a non-nuclear-weapon state in association or alliance with a nuclear-weapon state." That is, if a non-nuclear state that has signed the NPT finds itself in an armed conflict with the United States on its own (without being in league with a nuclear-weapon state), then the United States could not hurl nuclear bombs at it.

Now for the rub: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and North Korea have each signed the NPT. Which means that in a mano-a-mano war against, say, Iraq, U.S. war-managers could not go nuclear.

This policy restriction has been a sore point for conservatives for years. Several weeks before the Nuclear Posture Review earned headlines, John Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, took a significant, but little-noticed, swipe at negative security assurances. In an interview with Arms Control Today magazine, Bolton, for years a right-wing opponent of many arms treaties, was asked if Warren Christopher's 1995 statement remained the policy of the Bush administration. Bolton replied, "I don't think we're of the view that this kind of approach is necessarily the most productive." He noted that the administration's emphasis was not "on the rhetorical" but on "the actual change in our military posture," which would be "embodied in the outcome of the Nuclear Posture Review."

The interviewers from Arms Control Today pressed him, asking, "So, right now, the Bush administration would not make a commitment to non-nuclear-weapon states...that it would not use nuclear weapons?" Bolton answered: "I don't think we have any intention of using nuclear weapons in circumstances that I can foresee in the days ahead of us. The point is that the kind of rhetorical approach that you are describing doesn't seem to me to be terribly helpful in analyzing what our security needs may be in the real world, and what we are doing, instead of chit-chatting is making changes in our force structures." (Making changes? You bet.)

In his responses, Bolton did not acknowledge the role of negative security assurances in the NPT process. It was as if he believed such statements were nothing more than conversational niceties. Which might be true from the perspective of other nations. But if these nations are going to be encouraged by such statements from Washington, then these declarations have great value.

Bolton is the Bush administration's key person--its soul--on arms control issues, and his remarks seemed to mark an abrupt turn-about in a long-standing policy on a highly sensitive topic. But the administration tried to dance its way out of the corner. Shortly after the interview, during the daily briefing of State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, a reporter asked Boucher to explain Bolton's comments and wondered, "Are you now prepared to nuke un-nuked countries?" Boucher claimed "Bolton was reiterating...a policy that the United States government has had since the 1970s." This was exactly wrong. Bolton had dismissed that policy. Then Boucher repeated the statement that Christopher had issued in 1995. So policy reversed was unreversed.

But maybe not. Boucher added a caveat, noting that the U.S. "will do whatever is necessary to deter the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, its allies, and its interests." He asserted that "those kind of statements have been made repeatedly since the 1970s," and he quoted a 1996 remark from then-Defense Secretary William Perry, who said that if the United States was attacked by chemical weapons, "we could have a devastating response without the use of nuclear weapons, but we would not forswear that possibility."

In covering for Bolton and claiming nothing had changed, Boucher appeared to have stretched the weapons-of-mass-destruction loophole. He was not only saying, as Perry did, that nuclear weapons could be used in retaliation after a chemical weapons attack against the United States; he was warning that nuclear arms might be used preemptively to prevent such an attack. And that is indeed the policy contained in the new Nuclear Posture Review. If the United States has (or says it has) reason to believe a non-nuclear-weapon state is amassing biological weapons for use against the United States, then that country qualifies for the nuclear hit list.

Bolton, despite Boucher's spin, was indeed speaking for an administration that does not see merit in declaring we-won't-nuke-the-un-nuked in order to enhance nonproliferation efforts. As Bush's disregard of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty demonstrated, this crowd is drawn more to unilateral force decisions than to multilateral nonproliferation endeavors. The more worrisome portions of the Nuclear Posture review may only be what-ifs. But in nuclear diplomacy, what-ifs and words do count. The Bush administration's new weapon plan is a shot against the nations he has rhetorically targeted but also a strike against governments and diplomats that take nuclear nonproliferation seriously.

----

Cheney: Keep Weapons From Terrorists

The Associated Press
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7638-2002Mar11?language=printer

LONDON -- Vice President Cheney says the world must prevent a "potential marriage" between terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.

Cheney spoke to reporters today in London on the start of his ten-day trip to Israel and several Arab countries to discuss the next phase of the war on terrorism. He was joined by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Cheney says it's clear from intelligence gathered in Afghanistan that al-Qaida terrorists are "aggressively seeking" to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction.

Blair says there's "no doubt" that hostile leaders like Iraq's Saddam Hussein have gotten such weapons. But he and Cheney say no specific decisions have been made about countering that threat.

Cheney also responded to concerns about a Pentagon report outlining America's future nuclear strategy. The vice president says the report discusses "broad questions" and doesn't mean the U.S. is planning any pre-emptive strikes.

----

Global cop's tactics are wearing thin

Sydney Morning Herald,
March 11, 2002
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0203/11/opinion/opinion1.html#top

America's allies are increasingly worried about the giant's changing psyche, writes Hamish McDonald.

When George Bush was on his first visit to China as America's President in November, he made a point of "sharing with" his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, "how faith changed my life and how faith contributes to the life of my country".

One can only speculate what went through the mind of the veteran Chinese communist, who ascended to power as part of the post-Tiananmen crackdown on incipient democratic reform. Quite possibly, he might have wondered if American foreign policy was being imbued with yet another wave of missionary zeal, heightened by the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Six months after those attacks, it is not only Chinese communists (whose status in Washington had in any case changed from "partner" to "competitor" with the incoming Bush Administration) who are worried about the changing American psyche, and its worldwide effects.

Take the less predictable example of the European Union's Foreign Affairs Commissioner, Chris Patten - previously a leading British conservative and then the governor who tweaked China's nose before the handover of Hong Kong - who recently raised concern about the United States shifting into "unilateral overdrive".

Leaders in Europe and Japan - if not in Canberra, where Bush has brought a kind of me-too American bilateralism - are appalled at the increasing readiness of Washington to walk away from foreign treaties and international regimes.

The list now includes the Kyoto protocol on global warming, the international criminal court for serious crimes against humanity, the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, nuclear test bans, new protocols on biological and chemical weapons inspections, and even, with the Guantanamo Bay camp for al-Qaeda suspects, the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. It may soon include the United Nations' approach to Iraq, if the Security Council raises too many quibbles about a new showdown with Saddam Hussein.

In place is a tendency that John Chipman, director of London's International Institute of Strategic Studies, calls "hyper-intervention". American foreign policy is now marked by two features, Chipman says. One is a willingness to go beyond the traditional aim of changing the foreign policy of other problematic powers, to changing their domestic policies. He cites the admonition by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to Pakistan to insist on secular content in the country's network of Kranic schools, or madrassahs.

Another is the centrality of military force in American foreign policy. It is the task of American allies to clean up afterwards - "We don't do nation-building" being a frequent refrain.

Although often drowned out in the flag-waving reaction to September 11, there are many Americans who worry about this, too. When senior career officials in the US State Department talk about the dangers of leaving "black holes" like Afghanistan or Somalia unattended, they are reminding their colleagues in other parts of Washington of the fact.

As Harvard historian Paul Kennedy recently noted in the London Observer, not all Americans agree that the United States is now the unchallenged No 1 and everyone else has to accept that fact.

He sees a range of Americans with international contacts and interests who worry that America is not practising what it preaches. "They worry that we are isolating ourselves from most of the serious challenges to global society, and that, increasingly, our foreign policy consists merely of sallying forth with massive military heft to destroy demons like the Taliban, only to retreat again into our air bases and boot camps," Kennedy wrote.

But right now, it is a massive extension of US military power that's most obvious, across the reaches of Central Asia to countries such as Georgia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan that were previously regarded as the geopolitical spheres of the great land-powers Russia and China, who have chosen not to try disputing it.

Possibly, with the use of spy satellites, missile-firing robot aircraft and long-range air attacks, we are seeing America's maritime ascendancy starting to be transferred into space - leaving no part of the Earth too remote for intervention.

We are also seeing the war against terrorism used to break some shibboleths in the post-World War II order. Japanese naval ships are patrolling the Arabian Sea in support of American operations, and a Japanese battalion is joining the peacekeeping force in East Timor. German special forces have been in action at Gardez and other German troops will soon take the lead role in Afghanistan's international force.

Not that Washington is now appealing for allies, or "burden-sharing". Being allowed to participate directly in its military campaign is a privilege for the fully "inter-operable".

Some of the less-well-equipped volunteers are kept well out of the way, such as in patrolling American air space. Phase two of the war on terrorism, against Iraq, will be quite exclusive.

Yet it may be this ascendancy is temporary. The fighting around Gardez may show that air power is less than decisive, and that only hard combat on the ground ultimately counts.

The Russian and Chinese quietude fits longer-term strategies to balance American power.

Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, has chosen not to fight the unopposable, as his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, often tried to do, but to embrace the West and draw new strength from it.

Russian exports of highly sophisticated weapons - to China, India, some South-East Asian countries and Iran - will narrow the technology advantages of America and its close allies.

China had already pulled in its horns earlier last year after the accidental downing of the American EP-3 spy aircraft near Hainan, in the interests of pursuing the high economic growth it sees as the ultimate creator of strategic power.

Yet China seems unlikely to reverse its support for North Korea's sick regime or to permanently cut off its long-standing missile technology exports to Pakistan and the Middle East.

It also seems implausible that American global dominance, especially if wielded with the kind of hypocrisy embedded in last week's steel tariff hike, would not engender resistance.

The forms this could take might be even more bizarre than the growth of al-Qaeda among the Islamic countries regarded as most friendly to the United States.

--------

Bush Expands Commitment of U.S. to Global War on Terror

New York Times
March 11, 2002
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/politics/11CND-PREX.html

WASHINGTON, March 11 - President Bush declared today that the United States was willing to train and provide military aid to "governments everywhere" in the fight against terrorism and for what he made clear would be battles beyond Afghanistan.

In a somber speech of war on the South Lawn of the White House that marked the sixth month since the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush significantly expanded the commitment of the United States to a global campaign against terrorism, saying that America would "actively prepare" other nations for the fight. Mr. Bush said for the first time that the United States would send 150 military trainers to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, where he said terrorists working with Al Qaeda operate in the Pankisi Gorge near the Russian border.

"I have set a clear policy in the second stage of the war on terror: America encourages and expects governments everywhere to help remove the terrorist parasites that threaten their own countries and peace of the world," Mr. Bush said. "If governments need training, or resources to meet this committment, America will help."

The president's remarks were his most definitive description of the next phase in the campaign against terrorism and come at a time when Democrats have demanded a further explanation of the administration's goals.

Mr. Bush did not mention Iraq by name, but seemed to suggest that action is inevitable against a regime that the administration believes is developing weapons of mass destruction. "Terrorist groups are hungry for these weapons, and would use them without a hint of conscience," Mr. Bush said. "America is now consulting with friends and allies about this greatest of dangers, and we're determined to confront it."

The president added that "our coalition must act deliberately, but inaction is not an option."

Mr. Bush's remarks, delivered on a brilliant, unseasonably cold morning with the Washington diplomatic corps and the flags of 179 nations behind him, were far different in tone than those he made as a kind of lone American wolf against terrorism in his State of the Union address on Jan. 29. Today Mr. Bush reached out to the allies, praising them as a "mighty coalition of civilized nations" as his administration prepares the diplomatic groundwork for what it calls "regime change" in Iraq.

Mr. Bush specifically thanked 16 nations by name, from Great Britain to Uzbekistan, and did not distinguish between deaths of allied and American troops. "Each life taken from us is a terrible loss," Mr. Bush said. "We have lost young people from Germany, and Denmark, and Afghanistan, and America. We mourn each one."

--------

U.S. Tries to Dampen Fear Abroad on Policy

New York Times
March 11, 2002
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/international/11REAC.html

WASHINGTON, March 10 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that there was no cause for international alarm over a secret Pentagon policy review that identifies countries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea as potential targets for future American nuclear attacks.

Secretary Powell and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were among the top foreign policy and national security aides who took to the Sunday television news programs to tamp down fears among European groups and Middle Eastern leaders that the disclosure of the administration's ambitious nuclear plans suggested that an American nuclear attack was in the works as a part of the war on terrorism.

"We should not get all carried away with some sense that the United States is planning to use nuclear weapons in some contingency that is coming up in the near future," Secretary Powell said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation." "It is not the case. What the Pentagon has done with this study is sound, military, conceptual planning and the president will take that planning and he will give his directions on how to proceed."

General Myers said on the CNN program "Late Edition": "This is, again, not a plan. This preserves for the president all the options that a president would want to have in case this country or our friends and allies were attacked with weapons of mass destruction."

Few governments offered a public response as news of the report emerged over the weekend. The two nuclear powers listed as potential adversaries, Russia and China, made no official comment, but the unofficial response was frequently caustic.

"I think this will be shocking to most people here," said Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Relations at Qinghua University in China. "The Bush administration seems determined to go back toward a cold war strategy."

Among those who took the reports at face value, the reaction echoed the blunt assessment of one top Russian legislator. Since Sept. 11, the legislator said, Americans "have somewhat lost touch with the reality in which they live."

That notion of a new American unpredictability flowed through many of the foreign responses.

One expert said the disclosure was likely to prove a severe embarrassment to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who has given blanket support to the American antiterror strategy.

"Finding out now that at the same time Britain was doing that, Pentagon planners were considering the possibility of having to use nuclear weapons against Iran must make Tony Blair feel that Britain's position has been seriously undermined," said Menzies Campbell, the foreign affairs spokesman for Britain's Liberal Democrat party and a member of Parliament.

Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in London today for talks with Mr. Blair, the first stop of a swing through Europe and the Middle East.

In Syria, another county listed as a potential target, Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said his nation would complain to the United Nations Security Council should the reports prove true. But the head of the country's Strategic Studies Institute, Haitham al-Keilani, dismissed the Pentagon report as a move to intimidate America's foes in the Middle East during a period of exceptional regional turmoil.

Iraq was typically defiant today, saying the United States is fixated not on controlling weapons of mass destruction, but on eliminating the government of Saddam Hussein. In Iran, the cabinet spokesman, Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, said at a news conference that the United States was "capable of attacking any country," but that Iran did not currently regard itself as a direct target.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Saying Battle Is Effectively Over, U.S. Sends Troops Back to Base

New York Times
March 11, 2002
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/international/asia/11AFGH.html?pagewanted=all&position=bottom

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, March 10 - American commanders cautiously declared today that the crux of the battle against enemy fighters in much of the Shah-i- Kot Valley was effectively at an end, and ordered about 400 soldiers back to base aboard a wave of CH-47 Chinook and CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters.

Given previous setbacks in hunting down remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, American military spokesmen were not ready yet to say that the 2,100-member American-led force had achieved victory after nine days of the biggest ground action of the war.

But all the signs, including the exhausted but jubilant soldiers returning, profanely triumphant at blows inflicted on the enemy, pointed to a seemingly hopeless situation for a dwindling band of perhaps a few hundred Islamic militants holed up in caves and other pockets of resistance.

"The battle is not over, the battle is not won," said Maj. Bryan Hilferty, command spokesman for American forces in Afghanistan, speaking to reporters at this old Soviet air base on the plateau north of Kabul, 110 miles from the battlefield.

But he said the "major battle ended three or four days ago," after American commanders, jolted by stronger than expected enemy resistance and eight American combat deaths in the first 72 hours, increased the American and Afghan ground troops in the valley and pounded enemy positions from the air with B- 52's, AC-130 gunships and carrier- based aircraft.

"If I were an Al Qaeda guy, I wouldn't go out for a pizza," Major Hilferty said. "I'd stay home and dig deep. I wouldn't walk down the middle of the valley."

He noted that hundreds of enemy soldiers had already been killed, but said those remaining still numbered "in the hundreds, though we don't know for sure."

To eliminate them, he said, American commanders may rotate fresh troops into the battle to replace those withdrawn today, or even send some of those who came out back to other positions in the valley.

Accordingly, he said, "Anaconda continues," a reference to the American code name, taken from the deadly snake that encircles and stifles its prey.

Similar confidence flowed from top Pentagon figures, who appeared on the Sunday morning television news shows in the United States a few hours after the troop pullback was completed.

Gen. Richard C. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appearing on CNN, described the remaining Taliban and Qaeda fighters at Shah- i-Kot as "quite widely dispersed," and even hinted that the battle had opened the way to the eventual end of American combat operations in Afghanistan. "Six months from now, you can envisage that our major effort in Afghanistan may be over," he said.

The returning soldiers, mostly from the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, N.Y., came home with their commanders confident that the battle would mark the decisive moment in a successful war.

Senior officers in Afghanistan say Shah-i-Kot, where the remaining American forces are mainly from the 101st Airborne Division and the Special Forces, marks a last stand for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, at least in the sense of being able to muster a force concentrated and armed well enough to fight a tough battle over more than a week against American troops and air power.

A senior military officer in Washington said that for the first time in the battle, small groups of Qaeda and Taliban fighters were trying to escape. But most of those fighters have been killed, the officer said, because few, if any, have been willing to surrender.

"One of the reasons we want to go in here is not just to eradicate the Taliban and the Al Qaeda, but also to gain information," General Myers said, "so we'd like some of them to surrender so we can get our hands on them and interrogate them."

As the helicopters touched down, troops, splashed with mud, their faces burned by long exposure to sun and snow in the thin air of a battlefield that rises above 10,000 feet, poured onto the taxiway, weighed down by 150-pound backpacks and bristling weapons.

While many seemed at the far edge of fatigue after eight days of sleeping in the open in temperatures around 25 degrees, they exulted at what they described as an increasingly desperate situation for the enemy, as well as their own survival after what was, for most, their first combat experience.

Their tented camp beside the airfield, deep in mud after several days of rain, resounded to whoops and hollers of "Lawdie, lawdie, we're home!" high-fives and thumbs-up.

Friends separated on the mountain hugged each other in reunion and traded unprintable accounts of what they had shouted at Taliban and Qaeda fighters as they loosed mortars, rockets and machine-gun fire on enemy positions and called in bombing strikes on enemy bunkers and caves.

Though most enemy fighters probably speak little English, the expletives, with references to Sept. 11 and those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, probably needed little translation.

Second Lt. Christopher Blaha, from Great Neck, N.Y., slumping outside the tent he shares with soldiers from his 28-man rifle platoon, described spending three nights in the open without sleeping bags after commanders redrew the battle plan.

His platoon and troops from the First Battalion of the division's 87th Infantry Regiment landed in the mountains with only small blankets and no rubber bed mats, he said, and at night they huddled together for warmth on three inches of snow. When they awoke, their water bottles were frozen.

But Lieutenant Blaha, 24, said he went to the battle with a particular motivation, the memory of two friends from Great Neck who died when the World Trade Center collapsed: Andrew Stergiopoulos, 23, a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, and Jonathan Ielpi, 29, a New York City firefighter.

He said he wrote the name of Mr. Stergiopoulos, whom he had known since high school, on every grenade he carried to the battlefield, and had thoughts of both men in his mind when the platoon came under mortar and antiaircraft fire almost as soon as it reached the battle zone last Sunday evening.

The lieutenant, a former investment analyst who joined the army only 13 months ago, said the platoon returned the fire before he radioed for an air strike on the enemy mortar position about 2,500 yards away across the valley. Within five minutes, he said, a B-52 dropped a cascade of bombs, scoring a direct hit on the mortar position, ending all sign of movement.

"Perhaps I shouldn't say it," he continued, "but there was definitely a vindictive side to it, and the thought that I should go back to the families of those two guys and tell them everything I saw here, and everything I did."

Using a reporter's satellite telephone to call his mother, Joan, at her Great Neck home, Lieutenant Blaha first had to explain where he was, because the army had laid down strict secrecy rules after the Mountain Division moved to Afghanistan from Uzbekistan two weeks ago.

"Hey, Mom, we just came out," he said, referring to the Shah-i-Kot battle. "I guess you know where we've been, you must have seen it on CNN. All the guys came out O.K., which is good."

Then he added, referring to his older brother, a former Mountain Division soldier who lives in San Jose, Calif., "Tell Jack I called in a B-52 strike on a mortar position."

Surprise at the tenacity of the Taliban and Qaeda fighters was almost universal among the soldiers. As they trudged to the mess tent for their first real meal in more than a week, they told of enemy fighters standing up in full view to fire at the Americans, then running back into bunkers and caves.

One soldier told of calling a bombing strike on a mortar position, then seeing the fighters open up again with mortars from the same position.

Another told of men armed only with Kalashnikov rifles running into the open to fire at attack helicopters.

Many of the soldiers, like Lieutenant Blaha, spoke of priming themselves for the battle by thinking of the victims of Sept. 11. Specialist Chad Fuller, 22, from Potsdam, N.Y., recalled being on a training exercise near Fort Drum when the news of the Sept. 11 attack came, and watching another soldier's miniature television as the towers fell. At Shah-i- Kot, he said, "I was always thinking of that, and of the families of the people who went down."

"Because of that, it feels real good to have been part of this operation," he said, "to feel that we've made a difference.

"And you know what? I guess I'm a veteran now."

Reminders of Sept. 11 are everywhere on the Bagram base.

On the airfield, several of the all- black top-secret helicopters flown by the Army's 160th Special Aviation unit, known as Nightstalkers, carried logos of the New York City Police and Fire Departments. At a tented chapel, services today included moments of silence for the victims of the attacks and for the eight American serviceman who died in Shah-i- Kot.

The 10th Mountain's chaplain, Lt. Col. Frederick Hoadler, from Wilder, Idaho, recalled the eight servicemen.

"In the past week, guys that I have stared in the eyes, and won't be staring at again, are gone," he said. He added a prayer for the Americans and others still fighting, asking that God give them "courage and strength and the hearts of lions."

Colonel Hoadler then turned to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, saying, "We pray for our enemies, so that God may show them a different way to conduct their lives, the way that we have been inspired to conduct ours."

----

U.S. resists putting GIs among warlords

By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 11, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020311-74457100.htm

The United States faces growing pressure to approve an increase in U.N. peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan as rival warlords continue to undermine the interim government of Hamid Karzai.

Amid such pressures, the Bush administration continues to rule out any direct involvement of U.S. combat troops in peacekeeping, leaving the present U.N. force of about 4,500 troops under British control.

In addition, Gen. Richard B. Meyers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that the United States is unlikely to sign off on an expansion of peacekeeping troops beyond the capital of Kabul.

"I don't think that's something for the U.S. to allow," Gen. Meyers told CNN yesterday.

He also said the United States would continue to limit its role in peacekeeping to "some logistics and with a few liaison personnel."

Since the Karzai government was installed in December, the United States has kept its troops focused on hunting down and destroying remnants of al Qaeda and the Taliban - a mission underscored by more than a week of fighting in the icy mountains of eastern Afghanistan's Paktia province.

But with the battle in Paktia winding down and U.S. troops yesterday beginning a withdrawal from the area, ethnic rivalries once again surfaced to challenge Mr. Karzai's government.

A top local commander demanded that hundreds of mainly ethnic Tajik reinforcements sent by Mr. Karzai be withdrawn from the mainly Pashtun area of the battle. "We propose to Mr. Hamid Karzai to instruct the newcoming troops to go back to their places of origin," commander Mohammad Ismail told reporters in the provincial capital of Gardez yesterday.

"We take this opportunity to state that the issue of Paktia be purely left to the people of Paktia," he said.

The standoff in Paktia illustrated the dilemma facing Mr. Karzai throughout much of Afghanistan: Local warlords continue to rule with their private armies.

Washington argues that the best solution to ethnic rivalries is to build a national, multiethnic Afghan army.

"The question is: Do you want to put your time and effort and money into the International Security Assistance Force - take it say from 5,000 to 20,000 people?" Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said.

"Another school of thought, which is where my brain is: Why put all the time and effort and money in that?" Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters during a visit to Nevada late last month.

The Bush administration is considering:

•Allowing U.S. forces to act in a limited peacekeeping role, perhaps by mediating disputes between rival warlords.

•Beefing up the present 4,500-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), as the peacekeeping force is formally known. The force now consists of troops from Britain and 17 other nations excluding the United States.

•Training a future Afghan national army to deal with the warlords.

''We're sure that the right thing to do is to have an Afghan national army," said Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Within the Bush administration, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is said to be the most supportive of increasing the peacekeeping force, but only as a temporary measure to keep warlord fighting in check for the next year or two while a national army is being trained.

Despite potential problems posed by local warlords, a senior Bush administration official said plans to rebuild the shattered country remain on track.

"There's been a history of warlord conflict in Afghanistan," said the official, who asked not to be named.

"We went into this aware of the threat. We went into this with a sober, realistic recognition of the complicated, bloody history of Afghanistan that allowed al Qaeda to establish its base.

Ethnic and tribal rivalries have plagued the Karzai government almost from the moment it took power in December.

Factional fighting left dozens dead in Paktia province months before the present battle between U.S. troops and enemy fighters.

More than 60 people died Dec. 20 when U.S. jets attacked a convoy of tribal elders as they traveled to Kabul for the inauguration of Mr. Karzai - an attack reportedly triggered by a rival tribal leader who told the Americans that the convoy was full of al Qaeda leaders.

Fighting broke out again in Paktia in late January, when a shura, or local tribal council, objected to Mr. Karzai's choice of warlord Bacha Khan as governor.

After about 60 people died in fighting, Mr. Karzai agreed last month to withdraw his candidate and allow another local warlord, Taj Mohammed Wardak, to be governor.

In the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, under the control of warlord Gul Agha, traders complain that they are not safe if they travel to the western city of Herat, which is under the control of another warlord, Ismail Khan.

U.N. officials say ethnic Pashtuns are fleeing Mazar-e-Sharif in the north, in fear of troops loyal to warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek.

Gen. Dostum's forces have also clashed in the north with rival warlord Mohammed Atta, an ethnic Tajik, even though the two had joined forces in the Northern Alliance to drive the Taliban from power.

Afghanistan consists of a maze of ethnic groups.

Mainly in the south and east are Pashtuns, who make up about 38 percent of the population. Pashtuns have historically played a dominant leadership role in Afghanistan and retain ethnic ties to about 8 million Pashtuns across the border in Pakistan. Tajiks in the north and northeast comprise about 25 percent of the population, while Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and Turkmen in the northwest form about 11 percent of the population.

The Shi'ite Muslim Hazaras in central Afghanistan make up about 15 percent, with smaller ethnic groups accounting for the rest.

Afghan tribal and political leaders at a U.N.-sponsored council in Bonn last fall chose Mr. Karzai, primarily because he was an ethnic Pashtun with links to Afghanistan's exiled former king, the Americans and the anti-Taliban resistance based in Pakistan.

But the next three top government posts went to the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance: Abdullah Abdullah as foreign minister, Mohammed Fahim as defense minister and Yunus Qanuni as interior minister.

Initially Gen. Dostum felt excluded and refused to back the Karzai government. He relented when offered the post of deputy defense minister.

Still, Gen. Dostum remains in his stronghold of Mazar-e-Sharif, keeping his distance from Kabul.

The Karzai government was shaken when a mob stormed a plane at Kabul airport last month and beat to death the Cabinet minister for transportation and tourism, Abdul Rahman.

Reports said the mob was angry after waiting in the cold for flights to the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, but Mr. Karzai accused Cabinet-level officials in his own government of the killing.

Because pockets of resistance exist in places such as Paktia province, there is more tension over which warlord controls the area than elsewhere in Afghanistan, the Bush administration official said.

"We don't see that kind of tension in Herat," which is under the undisputed control of Ismail Khan.

In the north, including the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, "three established warlords came together to control Mazar. It's a positive sign, but we are realistic," the official said.

Afghanistan's envoy to Washington, Haroun Amin, said in an interview that while his country has traditionally been decentralized, the way to get back to that loose federation is through the central government of Mr. Karzai.

"Initially, when the [U.S.] campaign started in Afghanistan, there was a sense of helping out certain 'warlords,' to dislodge the Taliban," Mr. Amin said.

"That created a tendency that did not enhance the central government, which does not have full authority over all quarters of Afghanistan," he said. "The policy of our administration is to enhance the central authority by channeling all [aid] efforts through Kabul.

Afghanistan functioned as a loose confederation of local leaders until 1979, when the Soviets tried to create a strong central regime and override the local leaders, said Larry Goodson of Bentley College in Waltham, Mass.

The Taliban made the same mistake, said Mr. Goodson, author of "Afghanistan's Endless War" and an associate professor of international studies at Bentley.

"Afghanistan has never been a strong state. It has never, at least not in the last 100 years, had a powerful government in Kabul that really controlled what happened out in the provinces and the countryside.

"And to a certain extent, no matter what we would try to do, it won't have one in the near future."

"Ultimately," he said, "the United States will have to say some warlords are OK and some are the bad guys."

• This article is based in part on wire service reports.

----

THE BOMBING
Taliban and War Deliver a Double Blow to Villagers

New York Times
March 11, 2002
By BARRY BEARAK
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/international/asia/11VILL.html

SHEIKH NOOR, Afghanistan, March 10 - First there is the smoke from the bomb, lifting off the mountains, roaming into the blue sky. Then comes the noise, an abrupt boom. Finally the rumble arrives, pulsing through the ground from three miles away.

This village is a fine and dreadful place to watch the American air attack. Sher Baz Khan, an old man with a wrinkled face, a white beard and a regretful pair of eyes was watching intently today. It was his home being destroyed.

"That bomb landed on Sher Khan Khel," he said, seeing the smoke from his village and awaiting the noise and the rumble. "I wonder what is left of our possessions."

Not much, most likely. That was to be expected.

Two and a half months ago, a handful of retreating Taliban soldiers visited a cluster of mountain villages collectively known as Shah-i- Kot and including Sher Khan Khel, Babal Khel, Marzak, Kay Khel and Noor Khel. They wanted to live there, instead of the people who did.

"They told us that we should go and they would stay," Mr. Khan said. "They told us that Shah-i-Kot will be bombed by the Americans and if we stayed, we would probably be killed and they would not be responsible for our deaths."

More Taliban were hiding nearby in the mountains, as were Pakistanis, Arabs and others. They favored Shah-i-Kot as a place to make a stand. In the 1980's, it had been home to a mujahedeen base during the war against the Russians, making it hallowed ground.

Besides, it was well tucked into the snow-blanketed peaks, close to the border with Pakistan, close to dozens of donkey trails that could be used as escape routes.

The desperate interlopers, demanding control, were not entirely ungenerous. They gave some of the 700 people of Shah-i-Kot a sheep. Others received bus fare.

Six weeks ago, most of the villagers left.

"Many people went to Pakistan or to relatives in the town of Zarmat," Mr. Khan said. "I came here to Sheikh Noor with my family, all 22 of us. I think it was a mistake."

The village of Sheikh Noor is but three miles from the combat between the American-led coalition and remnant elements of the Taliban and Al Qaeda - close enough that the sound of the bombs punctuates the time, shatters the windows, frightens the children.

"We all thought we would be returning to our homes soon," Mr. Khan said. "We left our clothes and our animals and our food. At least I did. That too was a mistake."

As he talked, he, like most others in Sheikh Noor, looked east to the mountains, where every now and then the puffs of smoke foretold the sound and the rumble. Occasionally, American helicopters flew near the mountains, then swooped away.

"War, I think, is terrible," Mr. Khan said.

Today, Sheikh Noor was as near to the combat as an outsider could go. Just a half mile closer, a reporter and photographer were stopped at a checkpoint.

A man approached their vehicle. He introduced himself as a "military person," though he was dressed in a tan stocking cap, black vest and corduroy shirt. He said he was an American citizen, though he also said he had been born in Afghanistan.

"Only two kinds of people pass here, prisoners and people involved in the fighting," he said. "Journalists are not permitted. It is the policy of the U.S. government."

The reporter and photographer were ordered out of their vehicle, the command enforced by 2 Americans and 12 Afghans, all pointing rifles in a position ready to fire.

"As part of our normal procedure, we must search you for arms," said the man in the stocking cap, who was amiable and courteous. He told one of the Afghans to do so.

It was a thorough search. Pockets were emptied. The Afghan seemed alarmed by a stick of lip balm, studying it for a minute or so.

The man in the stocking cap grew impatient at this. When similar scrutiny was applied to a writing implement, he said: "Come on, it's a pen. Pens are good things."

As the journalists drove away, there was more smoke and more booms coming from the mountains. They, like Mr. Khan, would wonder what was left.

----

Who are the US military slaughtering in eastern Afghanistan?

By Peter Symonds
11 March 2002
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/afgh-m11_prn.shtml

In what is being billed as the largest battle of the war in Afghanistan, a US-led force has over the last week killed an estimated 500 fighters near Gardez in the eastern Paktia province. The US and allied troops have suffered minimal casualties in an unequal contest, in which Kalashnikovs and mortars have been pitted against the latest American hi-tech weaponry, including attack helicopters, precision-guided munitions and thermobaric bombs, designed to suck oxygen from defensive cave complexes.

US commanders have openly gloated over the one-sided slaughter. "On Tuesday we caught several hundred of them with RPGs and mortars heading towards the fight. We bodyslammed them and killed hundreds of those guys," Major General Frank Hagenbeck commented. Describing another incident, a senior defence official told the Washington Post: "About 100 to 200 Al Qaeda ran out of the caves, probably thinking we were going to bomb them inside. We rolled in on them with A-10s [heavily-armed warplanes designed to attack tank columns]."

US military spokesmen routinely refer to the enemy as "Al Qaeda and Taliban holdouts"-a description that is uncritically parroted in the international media. When, despite the preponderance of weaponry arraigned against them, the opposition fighters offered stiff resistance, they became "hard-core Taliban" and "terrorist fighters," said to be bolstered by hundreds of Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks. Associated Press reported: "In the hallways of the Pentagon, the Al Qaeda men fighting and dying in the frigid mountains of eastern Afghanistan are called 'dead-enders'."

No evidence is offered for any of these assertions-other than the fact that the US military machine has encountered opposition. The enemy is designated "Al Qaeda" and "terrorist" to maintain the fiction that the fighting in eastern Afghanistan has a link to the September 11 attacks and to justify the slaughter taking place. US Vice-President Richard Cheney ruled out any negotiations with the opposition. The only way to end the threat, he said, "is to get the terrorists before they launch more attacks against us."

A number of reports from Gardez point to a different story, however. An article in the Los Angeles Times, for instance, explained that those fighting American troops were being led by Saifur Rahman Mansour, who "to many [was] a home-grown hero," rather than a close associate of Osama bin Laden. Thought to be about 40, Rahman is the son of a former Paktia governor and fought with US-backed Mujaheddin groups against the Soviet installed regime in Kabul in the 1980s.

Like many of local militia commanders among the Pashtun tribes in the south and east of Afghanistan, Rahman threw in his lot with the Taliban. The Islamic extremist movement expanded rapidly in the mid-1990s not primarily by defeating opposing militia units but either by buying them off or winning support for their vision of an Islamic state as the alternative to the existing chaos. Once the US compelled Pakistan to end its support for the Taliban, effectively choking off funds and arms, the patchwork of alliances with Pashtun tribal leaders and militia commanders swiftly disintegrated.

Afghan officials in Gardez, whose current allegiances lie with the US and its puppet administration in Kabul, all know Rahman. Some fought alongside him during the 1980s as part of the anti-Soviet Mujaheddin which sheltered in cave complexes in the Shahi Kot Valley where the fighting presently is taking place. They pay tribute to his tenacity as a fighter and question the purpose of the US-led Operation Anaconda. As Abdul Mutin, commander of a US-allied militia, admitted: "There are some people who say: 'Saifur Rahman is a nice person. Why must we fight him.'"

Safi Ullah, spokesman for the provincial shura or administrative council, commented: "He is famous in his native place, among his people, and now people don't really like him because he has stood against the interim government. The shura of Gardez asked him in the first days after the fall of the Taliban to surrender and not to gather people around him against the government. But he did anyway."

Negotiations broke down amid claims that Rahman was sheltering Al Qaeda fighters-a loose term applied to any foreigners, including hundreds of inexperienced youth from Pakistan and the Middle East who flocked to defend the Taliban regime last year. Up to the last, Rahman insisted that he was harbouring no foreigners and called on the Gardez shura to send a delegation to check on his claim. As even the Los Angeles Times noted, "[T]here remains considerable ambiguity about how much of the force resisting the Americans is Al Qaeda members and how much of it is simply local Afghans."

Local mercenaries

The US has tacitly admitted that Rahman has local support by the manner in which Operation Anaconda has been organised. Unlike the previous offensive in the Tora Bora areas, the offensive has been led by US troops backed by special operations troops from France, Germany, Australia, Canada and Norway, with Afghan militia playing a largely secondary role.

In the weeks preceding the operation, the US hired around 500 Afghan soldiers from outside the area and trained them in neighbouring Logar province. Paid $200 a month to fight under US direction, these unemployed Afghan youth received rudimentary instruction in basic military tactics and the use of a single weapon. After their first exercise, these mercenaries were thrown into battle as cannon fodder in support of US and allied troops. One wounded Afghan Khial Mohammed told reporters: "Our command was really bad; the American command was really bad."

Other Afghan troops were sent from the north-Tajiks and Uzbeks-creating tensions with the local Pashtun population. Most of the local militia commanders, including those recognised by the Kabul administration of Hamid Karzai, were deliberately sidelined. General Ziauddin, the chief military commander in Gardez complained: "The Americans don't consult with us." When he moved his troops towards the rear lines to provide reinforcements, he was ordered to withdraw and not to "interfere" in the battle.

Far from being a battle to root out "hardened terrorists" or "Al Qaeda holdouts," all the signs point to Operation Anaconda being directed primarily at crushing a local Afghan militia leader who has considerable local sympathy. An article in the Washington Post noted: "Even if just a minority, though, [Rahman] Mansour's support in the region remains potent, and some Afghan officials say they believe that residents are secretly helping to resupply Al Qaeda forces around Shahi Kot with food and weapons."

These and similar comments in other articles point to the real reasons for targeting a huge US military offensive against Rahman. As well as being bound up with plans by the Bush administration to extend its "war on terrorism" to other countries, Operation Anaconda is designed to shore up the Karzai government by sending a message to other local warlords not to challenge its shaky rule. A classified CIA report leaked to the press in late February warned that Afghanistan could descend into chaos unless steps were taken to restrain competition between rival militias and control ethnic and tribal tensions.

But there are also other concerns about the growing local resentment to US military operations, particularly among the Pashtun tribes in southeastern Afghanistan. Scores of civilians have died and many more have been injured in US bombing and Special Forces attacks. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld finally admitted last month that a raid on two compounds had killed at least 16 men loyal to the Kabul administration. He then dismissed any suggestion that future operations would be more carefully planned by declaring: "I don't think it is an error" and ruling out any disciplinary action.

An incident reported in the Washington Post gives an indication of the growing hostility among Afghans to the US military presence. The newspaper's reporter described a crude propaganda exercise conducted in Gardez aimed at encouraging people to provide the US military with information about the whereabouts of "Al Qaeda forces". Patriotic music blared out from a stand while officials handed out leaflets urging residents to look out for "hardline enemies of freedom and independence" and "to join hands together and point out their hiding places".

The leaflet offered informants a $4,000 reward-a fortune in war torn Gardez. But as the Washington Post commented: "[P]ushing the play button on a tape deck and handing out leaflets announcing reward money are easier than genuinely changing the culture of an area that has long identified with the Islamic radicals who ran Afghanistan until last fall. Some people took one look at the handouts and tore them up, rejecting the notion of turning in their neighbours.... Residents seemingly hostile to the idea were not willing to say so to an American journalist. They simply scowled and walked away."

The fear is that, whatever his own motivations, a figure like Rahman could become the focus for the accumulating hostility against the US and the government of Hamid Karzai. The aim of Operation Anaconda is not only to brutally eliminate the threat but to intimidate and terrorise any other political opposition.

-------- arms sales

China denounces visit

Embassy Row by
James Morrison,
March 11, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020311-80756968.htm

China was so angry about a Taiwanese official's visit to the United States that it summoned U.S. Ambassador Clark T. Randt to warn about potential damage to U.S.-Chinese relations.

Assistant Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong last week told Mr. Randt of China's "serious" objections to the visit by Tang Yao-ming, defense minister of the Republic of China (Taiwan), who was invited to attend a defense contractors' conference in Florida beginning today.

Mr. Zhou said the visit will "damage both Chinese-U.S. relations and relations across the Taiwan Strait" between China and Taiwan, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

He said Washington's decision to grant Mr. Tang a visa was an "open violation" of agreements between the United States and China.

Mr. Tang is expected to meet Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz during the visit to St. Petersburg, Fla.

The conference is sponsored by defense contractors Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky.

----

Taiwan's Defense Minister In Landmark Visit to U.S.

Reuters
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5826-2002Mar10?language=printer

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., March 10 -- Taiwan's defense minister, Tang Yiau-ming, arrived in Florida today to attend a conference on arms sales, becoming the first Taiwanese defense minister to make other than a transit stop in the United States for at least 22 years.

Tang told reporters at the conference site in Tampa Bay that he did not plan to discuss specific weapons purchases such as the four Kidd-class destroyers in the pipeline, diesel-electric submarines or P-3 maritime anti-submarine aircraft.

Instead, he said through an interpreter, he would discuss "procurement policy in general," now that the Bush administration has begun to treat Taiwan more like any other customer for U.S.-built weapons.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly are also due to give keynote speeches to the three-day, closed-door conference, billed as a "defense summit" by its private organizers.

Tang was the first Taiwanese defense minister to get a U.S. visa to attend such a session since at least 1979, when the United States switched diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing.

China has condemned the visa and said it would damage U.S.-Chinese relations. Beijing strongly opposes arms sales to Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province.

-------- biological weapons

Senator Talks of Bioterrorism Risk

March 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Frist-Bioterrorism.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Bill Frist said Sunday the nation is underprepared to deal with the potential threat from more than 10 countries believed to have active biological weapons programs.

``We are not unprepared but we are underprepared,'' he told leaders attending a National League of Cities conference.

The Tennessee Republican, the only physician in the Senate, told the municipal officials their role is ``ultimately most important'' in combatting the increased risk of bioterrorism.

``It is your role at the level of dealing with your communities where you can respond in a coordinated way that is so critical,'' Frist said.

He said state and local communities will receive $1.1 billion from the federal bioterrorism preparedness budget this year, increasing to $1.6 billion next year.

However, he added that coordination among public health official, emergency medical responders and law enforcement agencies is just as important as the money

-------- business

The Big Guys Work For The Carlyle Group

By Melanie Warner
Fortune.com
3-11-02
http://www.fortune.com/indext.jhtml?channel=print_article.jhtml&doc_id=206684

Are you the sort of person who believes in conspiracies--the Trilateral Commission secretly runs the world, that sort of thing? Well, then, here's a company for you. The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C., buyout firm, is one of the nation's largest defense contractors. It has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs a few important people. Maybe you've heard of them: former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we're just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just left the SEC, also work for Carlyle. As do former British Prime Minister John Major and former Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let's see, are we forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too.

The firm also has about a dozen investors from Saudi Arabia, including, until recently, the bin Laden family. Yes, those bin Ladens. Is it any wonder that Internet sites with names like paranoiamagazine.com are rife with stories about Carlyle's shadowy, corrupt global network? And it's not just wackos. "Be careful," a tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley wrote in an e-mail when he learned I was doing a story on Carlyle. "The rabbit hole runs really deep on this one.''

Leaving aside the conspiracies for a moment, what exactly does the Carlyle Group do? Start with the basics: It's one of the world's largest and most powerful private-equity investment firms, meaning it buys and sells privately held companies and divisions of large public companies for big profits. Founded in 1987 (and named after the favorite New York hotel of the firm's first investors, the Mellon family), Carlyle has raised a total of $14 billion from investors in just the past five years--more than any other private-equity firm has attracted in the same period, except the Blackstone Group and CSFB Private Equity. Profits, too, have been pretty terrific. Not counting the standard 20% cut that goes to Carlyle's partners and managing directors, the firm's average annual rate of return has been 36%.

It's quite a success story, and to understand how Carlyle pulled it off, FORTUNE spent a month and a half peeking down that rabbit hole. One conclusion seems clear: While most of the conspiracy theories are amusingly overblown, this is a firm that's been built on the backs of Bush and other big shots who have lent Carlyle their names, their golden networks of friends in high places, and their insights into how government works. It wasn't until Carlucci joined, for instance, that Carlyle really took off. Founded by David Rubenstein, a lawyer who worked as an aide in the Carter White House, Bill Conway, a former CFO at MCI, and Dan D'Aniello, a former finance executive for Marriott, Carlyle early on invested in a motley assortment of deals--buying an airline-catering business, a health-food chain, and a biotech firm, for example. In 1990, Carlucci got the trio interested in the $150-billion-a-year U.S. defense industry, making introductions to companies that would turn into some of Carlyle's most lucrative investments. Rubenstein quickly realized the wisdom of recruiting a former Secretary of Defense and followed it up with a former Secretary of State, then a former White House budget director, and on and on.

The revolving door has long been a fact of life in Washington, but Carlyle has given it a new spin. Instead of toiling away for a trade organization or consulting firm for a measly $250,000 a year, former government officials can rake in serious cash by getting equity cuts on corporate deals. Several of the onetime government officials who have hooked up with Carlyle--Carlucci, Baker, and Darman, in particular--have made millions. Carlyle isn't the only organization doing it: Metropolitan West Financial in Los Angeles recently hired Al Gore to help with tech deals and make introductions overseas, for example. But Carlyle, which pioneered the idea, seems more adept at it than any other firm.

Unlike other private-equity groups, Carlyle concentrates on companies funded by the government, such as defense contractors, or those affected by government regulation, such as telecommunications firms, and then hires people with relevant government experience. As the company once put it in a brochure, "We invest in niche opportunities created in industries heavily affected by changes in governmental policies." Doing so, of course, raises the ultimate rabbit-hole question: Is Carlyle's approach just a smart twist on good old business networking or a step over the line into an ethical twilight zone in which the public trust is broken?

Half a mile from the White House, inside nondescript offices sparsely adorned with generic depictions of ships and ducks, co-founder Rubenstein sits with his hands folded on a table so shiny you can see your reflection. Next to him sits Chris Ullman, Carlyle's first-ever full-time PR person. Habitually wary of media attention, Rubenstein and his partners agreed to rare interviews with FORTUNE. That's because since Sept. 11 the firm has been under unusual fire. First there was the bin Laden thing. Shafig bin Laden, one of Osama's many brothers and a Carlyle investor, was in attendance at a Carlyle conference at a Washington hotel on that infamous day. As the media were quick to point out, this meant that George H.W. Bush was working for a firm that was helping to make the bin Ladens money. Even though the wealthy Saudi family has reportedly cut all ties to Osama, the press lambasted Carlyle.

The firm has since given the bin Ladens back their money, some $2 million, but controversy lingers. Sept. 11 and its aftermath also created the appearance of further conflicts of interest--namely, that while his son is in the Oval Office directing the war effort and proposing the largest increase in defense spending since Ronald Reagan, Bush is working for a firm that, through various investments, has become the nation's 14th-largest defense contractor. "It destroys the office of the presidency no less, in my view, than having sex with an intern," says Larry Klayman, director of the watchdog group Judicial Watch. On top of all that, there's the unfolding Enron saga and the likely passage of the campaign-finance-reform bill, which suddenly make it look bad for businesses to have too many friends in Washington.

It's no surprise, then, that Rubenstein is anxious to downplay the roles of Carlyle's famous people and to dispel the aura of mystery surrounding the firm. "The word I hate most is 'secretive,' " says Rubenstein, whose wry countenance and shock of white hair suggest a less rubbery version of Steve Martin. Rubenstein insists that all Bush does for Carlyle is give speeches to investors and that it is silly to think of him whispering in his son's ear about how to help Carlyle's companies.

On the whole, Rubenstein says, the big names at Carlyle do a lot less than most people think. "We don't lobby the government," he says, echoing a claim made by other partners interviewed by FORTUNE. He insists that if Carlyle is at all remarkable, it's because of the firm's innovative approach to private equity, its great returns, and its global ambitions--not because it happens to employ a few famous people. "Out of the 500 people at the firm, we have maybe eight or nine who served in government. The rest are your typical Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton MBAs, who do all the same things they do at other firms,'' says Rubenstein. (In fact, the number of former government big shots is 12, but who's counting?)

The conspiracy theorists like to imagine that Bush, Baker, and Major are jetting around the world cutting deals and making money for companies owned by Carlyle, but after nearly two dozen interviews with CEOs of current and former Carlyle companies and people familiar with Carlyle's business, it seems clear that this really isn't happening. What Bush & Co. actually do is far less pernicious but clearly valuable to Carlyle--they help raise money. Every year Rubenstein sets up scores of lunches and dinners around the world intended to woo new investors and gratify existing ones. As you might imagine, people like Bush, Baker, and Major are a huge draw. "If you call and say you're doing a dinner with Jim Baker or with George Bush, and could they please attend, chances are people are going to show up," explains a former employee, who, like all ex-Carlyle staffers I talked to, didn't want his name used. In the mid-'90s, for instance, Baker introduced Rubenstein to members of the royal family in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; since he left Parliament last year, Major has been opening doors to big money in Europe and Canada. The allure of a former President is particularly irresistible. At Carlyle's annual investor meetings, CEOs and money managers line up to have their pictures taken with Bush.

For his camera mugging and speech giving, Bush is paid "in line with market rates,'' says Rubenstein. That would mean about $100,000 per speech, so if Bush makes five or six speeches a year, as Rubenstein claims, then the former President is earning at least $500,000 annually from Carlyle, not including the money he makes investing in deals. Rubenstein declines to specify which companies Bush has put money into, except to say that as a rule, they have nothing to do with the U.S. government.

There's no doubt that without these stars Carlyle would not have been able to raise as much money as it has. The firm's impressive returns and Rubenstein's seemingly inexhaustible energy and willingness to spend 300 days a year traveling have certainly played a role, but it's the bigwigs who draw crowds and really leave an impression. Their names on Carlyle brochures and their faces at Carlyle events give the firm a patina of power and credibility. "David's a brilliant fundraiser," says a source formerly associated with Carlyle. "What he's done so masterfully is traffic on the impression that the connections they have from these guys can bring them many valuable deals."

In the case of Carlucci, that impression happens to be true. The deals he's brought in total close to $2 billion in profits. There were Magnavox and GDE, makers of top-secret electronics gear, and Vought, an aircraft-parts manufacturer, all of which Carlyle bought and sold within two years, netting $300 million, $109 million, and $140 million, respectively.

Carlyle today is mostly associated with the defense industry, and one of the things Rubenstein and his partners would like to get across is that they invest in other things too. In fact, the firm owns stakes in everything from European automotive-parts manufacturers to Silicon Valley startups and Japanese DSL companies; roughly 25% of its profits last year came from real estate. But if you follow the money, it leads straight back to defense, which is where the greatest chunk of Carlyle's profits have come from. Today defense accounts for about 10% of the firm's total investments, but in the early days it was 60%.

The firm's biggest score to date also involved a military contractor--United Defense, which went public in November, turning Carlyle's $130 million investment into $900 million. But the story of United Defense's latest coup also shows why Carlyle will probably never be seen as just another shrewd investment firm.

Last spring, when United Defense was feverishly pitching the Crusader, one of its new products, to the Department of Defense, Jacques Gansler, then in charge of acquisitions at the Pentagon, got a call from across the Potomac. It was Frank Carlucci, and according to Gansler, he wanted to know how Gansler felt about the Crusader, a controversial self-propelled artillery system that many inside the Pentagon felt was out of sync with plans for a lighter, more mobile Army. "I think he [Carlucci] wanted to make sure I was personally involved and that it wasn't going to be one of these things that got pushed down the bowels of the system,'' says Gansler, who has known Carlucci since the Reagan Administration and occasionally sees him at D.C. social events. As it turned out, Gansler was no fan of the Crusader and told Carlucci as much, ending that conversation. But Gansler thinks that had he been a fan, Carlucci "definitely would have wanted to make sure I was involved.'' It wasn't the first time Carlucci had had a conversation with a member of the Pentagon brass on behalf of a Carlyle company. In the early '90s, when Carlyle owned GDE, Carlucci drove over to Bethesda, Md., and met with, among others, Major General Raymund O'Mara, who was head of the Defense Department's Defense Mapping Agency, then a big GDE customer.

Carlucci acknowledges both conversations but asserts that neither constitutes lobbying. In O'Mara's case, he points out that GDE already had business from the mapping agency; in the case of Gansler, Carlucci says his call did nothing to advance the Crusader's cause. Nor, he says, did any of his interactions with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during that time. The two men have known each other since their days on Princeton's wrestling team. The Rumsfelds have been to the Carluccis' for dinner and on several occasions have offered their ski house in Taos, N.M., to Carlucci and his wife, Marsha. It certainly would be easy for Carlucci to strike up a conversation over cocktails about the Crusader or some other Carlyle-related matter, but Carlucci says he never does that. "In light of our friendship, I'm particularly cautious about not discussing Carlyle business with him. In fact, I have never mentioned the word 'Crusader' in his presence," he says. All this may well be true. Yet it certainly can't hurt if it's known throughout the Pentagon that you are good friends with the Secretary of Defense. The Crusader, incidentally, is on the 2003 defense budget, making it likely that the Pentagon will ultimately buy 480 of the artillery systems for $5 billion.

There's no question that Carlyle does occasionally make calls to the government on behalf of its companies. They may not be hard-sell lobbying calls, but making introductions to influential people is often just as effective. One company Carlyle funded recently through its venture fund hopes to tap into the firm's government connections. Indigo Systems, a maker of infrared-camera technology in Santa Barbara, has an interest in seeing the laws restricting exports of U.S.-made infrared technology lifted or amended. Indigo's technology goes into tiny cameras that manufacturers are starting to place in cars. These cameras "see'' objects out of the range of the headlights and display them on a digital monitor. "The automotive industry is not centered on the U.S. today, and if our product is going to become a standard item on cars, I've got to have access to a global marketplace,'' says CEO Tim Fitzgibbons. During the five months it took Indigo and Carlyle to put together a deal, the two sides talked about ways Carlyle could help open doors within the government. "If somebody at Carlyle says to whoever is chairing a committee, 'We wish you would listen to these guys, we're invested in them, and they've got a good point,' then that says a lot. As opposed to me landing in D.C. and trying to get appointments, which is damn near impossible,'' says Fitzgibbons. Indigo's camera technology also has lots of security applications, and the company would like to get a slice of next year's $38 billion federal budget allocated for homeland security. "Carlyle certainly can't influence the outcome, but they can at least get us an audience,'' says Fitzgibbons.

Besides opening doors, fundraising, and marketing, there is another advantage to getting ex-government honchos to join your firm, and that's investment insight. Carlucci didn't help companies like Magnavox, GDE, and Vought win any defense business, but he brought these firms to Carlyle because of connections he'd made with defense contractors while at the Pentagon. And as a former Defense Secretary just a few years out of the job, he knew how to evaluate the companies. It was the end of the Cold War and Pentagon budgets were way down, but Carlucci knew big money was still going to be spent on certain programs. He figured that highly classified electronic equipment--such as the boxes for analyzing radar imagery and the battlefield radios made by Magnavox, as well as the digital mapping technology for cruise missiles made by GDE--was going to be very valuable as the Pentagon tried to make the Armed Forces smarter. Later, when Carlyle invested in Elgar Electronics in 1996, Carlucci looked favorably on something that scared off other investors. Says Elgar CEO Ken Kilpatrick: "Other people questioned what would happen if our business of selling automatic testing equipment to the Navy would go away. But Carlyle understood that the Navy was committed to this program and that it was just in the middle of it." Carlyle sold Elgar in 1998 for a profit of $100 million.

Carlucci downplays the extent of his insight by saying that top analysts like Loren Thompson at the Lexington Institute know just as much as he does about defense spending, and maybe more. Certainly people like Thompson are quite knowledgeable and have networks of contacts at the Pentagon, but they don't belong to the same high-level coterie that a former Secretary of Defense does. They don't, for instance, go to lunches like the one Rumsfeld gave a little over a year ago where former Pentagon heavyweights like Carlucci, William Cohen, Caspar Weinberger, William Perry, and Dick Cheney all chatted and mingled. "Cabinet-level people are a small fraternity who all stay in touch,'' says a former Carlyle staffer. "Once they've reached that global 50,000-foot view, they tend to stay there.''

Though defense has been Carlyle's most fruitful area to date, Carlucci and the firm's current head of defense investing, Alan Holt, don't have plans to do many deals this year. Wars are such an obvious bonanza for defense contractors that prices get bid up, and Carlyle thinks they're too high now. Fortunately, there are lots of other opportunities on the horizon. Carlyle recently launched its first energy fund in partnership with Riverstone Holdings; it is also in the process of putting together an asset-management group, headed by the former treasurer of the World Bank, that will invest in other private-equity funds. With the help of former SEC chief Levitt, Rubenstein is setting up a financial services fund. There's also telecom, which has the biggest team of people devoted to it of any area at Carlyle. "There are dramatic restructurings in the telecom and media business going on right now, and the one thing they have in common is that they're all driven at some point by government action,'' says former FCC boss Kennard--who, like Levitt, is a Democrat, which shows that Carlyle can be bipartisan.

Rubenstein started recruiting Kennard to be a managing director in Carlyle's telecom group as soon as he left the commission last year, and ultimately won out over lots of other bidders. He was quite a catch. Kennard knows everyone who's anyone in telecom and has extensive contacts at regulatory agencies around the world. Could telecom be Carlyle's new defense? Rubenstein doesn't like to put in it those terms, but he's hoping for big returns. Looking at what Carlyle and its star-studded team have been able to do in the past, would you bet against him?

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[It's so distressing to see how much money is being spent on the killing machine. Don't be fooled into thinking this means prosperity. et]

FEDERAL CONTRACTS

States News Service
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5767-2002Mar10?language=printer

Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Linthicum Heights won a contract worth up to $487 million from the Air Force for engineering services and technical support of the F-16 aircraft and radar systems.

Exxon Mobil Fuels Marketing Co. of Fairfax won a $398.43 million contract from the Defense Energy Support Center for jet fuel.

Tessada & Associates Inc. of Newington won a $117.61 million contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for logistics, administrative and scientific information.

Booz Allen & Hamilton Inc. of McLean won a share of an $85 million contract from the Department of the Interior for scientific, engineering and technical support services.

DynCorp of Alexandria won a share of an $85 million contract from the Interior Department for scientific, engineering and technical support services.

Strategic Analysis Inc. of Arlington won a share of an $85 million contract from the Department of the Interior for scientific, engineering and technical assistance and administrative support services.

Systems Planning Corp. of Arlington won a share of an $85 million contract from the Department of the Interior for scientific, engineering and technical assistance and administrative support services.

Paradigm Solutions Corp. of Rockville won a contract worth up to $47.15 million from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms for software maintenance support services.

TRW Systems of Fairfax won a $43.75 million contract from the Army for designing and deploying an automated travel manager system for the Defense Department.

Bell-Boeing Joint Program Office of Patuxent River won a $36 million contract from the Navy for the MV-22 engineering and manufacturing development program.

Technical Resources International Inc. of Bethesda won a $28.93 million contract from the National Cancer Institute for drug development support.

Anteon Corp. of Fairfax won a $27.26 million contract from the Navy for Aegis configuration management.

VSE Corp. of Alexandria won a $25.4 million contract from the Coast Guard for engineering logistic support services and training and technical assistance for foreign military sales.

Booz Allen & Hamilton Inc. of McLean won an $18.25 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency for Resource Conservation and Recovery Act enforcement assistance.

Kellogg Brown & Root of Arlington won a $16 million contract from the Navy for construction of a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

TechLaw Inc. of Chantilly won a $15.88 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency for conservation enforcement assistance.

Lockheed Martin of Bethesda won a contract worth up to $23 million from the Missile Defense Agency for development and integration of the battle management, control and communications services. It also won a $15.12 million contract from the Navy for procurement of 16 upgrade kits for the P-3C aircraft.

Government Scientific Source of Vienna won an $11.48 million contract from the Defense Supply Center for a selection of a distributor for the laboratory integrated delivery system program.

General Dynamics Electronic Systems of Suffolk won an $11.17 million contract from the Navy for services for the formulation and analysis of joint operational concepts for the Joint Forces Command in Suffolk.

Planning Systems Inc. of Reston won a $9.97 million contract from the Navy for technical services in support of meteorologic and oceanographic programs.

Sierra Management & Technologies Inc. of California won a $9.85 million contract from the Navy for logistics plans, policies and data analysis.

Turn Key Office Solutions LLC of Arlington won a $9 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.

Forrester Construction Co. of Rockville won an $8.3 million contract from the Navy for design and construction of bachelor enlisted quarters at Andrews Air Force Base.

CCI Inc. of Alexandria won an $8.16 million contract from the Navy for logistics plans, policies and data analysis support services.

Smith Management Construction Inc. of Columbia won a $7.99 million contract from the Navy for construction of a squadron operation facility.

DynCorp of Reston won a $7.9 million contract from the General Services Administration for research, systems development, training, program integration and management support to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Safety Kleen Inc. of Laurel won a $7.35 million contract from the National Institutes of Health for furnishing comprehensive chemical and low-level radioactive waste management and disposal services.

Siemens Enterprise Networks of Reston won a $7.1 million contract from the National Archives & Records Administration for upgrading voice and data networks.

VSE Corp. of Chesapeake won a $6.09 million contract from the Navy for engineering and technical services.

Tecnico Corp. of Chesapeake won a $5.93 million contract from the Navy for engineering and technical services.

Bell-Boeing Joint Program Office of Patuxent River won a contract worth up to $5.72 million from the Navy for long-term preservation and storage of 19 V-22 aircraft until safety changes are developed and implemented.

Dimensions International Inc. of Alexandria won a $5.53 million contract from the Army for research services.

C2 Technologies Inc. of Falls Church won a share of a $4.8 million contract from the Transportation Department for technical training support.

MJF Strategies LLC of McLean won a $2.5 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.

CALIBRE Services Inc. of Alexandria won a $2.25 million contract from the General Services Administration for environmental services.

SenSy Tech Inc. of Newington won a $1.27 million contract from the Navy for antenna assemblies for periscopes.

Global Analytics Inc. of Orange won a $1.25 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.

Fairchild Defense Co. Inc. of Germantown won an $884,519 contract from the Air Force for aircraft components.

Litton Advanced Systems Inc. of College Park won an $806,547 contract from the Navy for receiver-converters.

General Physics Corp. of Columbia won a $700,596 contract from the Army for contract awards.

Automated Sciences Group Inc. of Arlington won a $470,925 contract from the Army for infrared instrumentation system mission support, operations and maintenance.

Dimensions International Inc. of Alexandria won a $401,020 contract from the Army for research services.

Logicon Technology Solutions of Herndon won a $384,000 contract from the Army for operations and maintenance services.

Technical Products Group Inc. of Marion won a $264,800 contract from the Navy for radomes.

ORC/MACRO of Calverton won a $239,186 contract from the Education Department for data services.

Mandex Inc. of Fairfield won a $224,928 contract from the Navy for circuit-card assemblies.

Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. of Newport News won a $194,000 contract from the Navy for buying and installing data acquisition systems on ships.

Comptech Corp. of Rockville won a $165,770 contract from the Army for torque converters and speed changers.

Aireco Supply Inc. of Savage won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products.

United States Ballistic Engineering Inc. of Falls Church won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products.

Yale Sportswear Corp. of Federalsburg won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for athletic and recreational equipment.

Special Operations Group Inc. of Woodbridge won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products.

Advanced Technology & Research Corp. of Burtonsville won a $100,000 contract from the Office of Naval Research for research.

AccuTech Systems Inc. of Rockville won a $96,076 contract from the National Institutes of Health for maintenance of the alarm monitoring systems.

AEPCO Marine of Virginia Beach won a $95,423 contract from the Navy for repairs to the USS Nassau.

Dowty Aerospace Corp. of Sterling won a $95,000 contract from the Navy for control modules.

Zel Technologies LLC of Hampton, Va., won an $89,497 contract from NASA for transforming the Fourier spectrometer geo-stationary imaging system for the Indian Ocean.

General & Mechanical Services LLC of Annapolis won an $83,500 contract from the Agricultural Research Service for furnishing and installing two new air-cooled chillers.

Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. of Newport News won a $78,100 contract from the Navy for dry-docking services.

BAE Systems Applied Technologies of Rockville won a $64,788 contract from the Navy for repairing radio transmitters.

Richcon Inc. of Chesapeake won a $59,351 contract from the Coast Guard for rehabilitating the interior of buildings in San Diego.

Grambro Healthcare of Brentwood won a $56,400 contract from the Department of Veterans Affairs for acute hemodialysis nursing services.

S&S Graphics Inc. of Laurel won a $52,920 contract from the Government Printing Office for printing veterans history project kits.

The contracts listed were awarded by the federal government to companies and other vendors in Virginia, Maryland and the District. For more information, contact states2001@aol.com or call Myron Struck, managing editor, at 202-628-3100, ext. 266.

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Contract for Orbital Sciences

Washington Post
Around the Region
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5776-2002Mar10?language=printer

Orbital Sciences of Dulles has won a contract with Boeing to develop, test and produce ground-based boost vehicles for the U.S. ballistic missile defense system. The contract is valued at $900 million or more over eight years.

Orbital's contract will include a $400 million development and test phase from 2002 to 2006 and, if plans are approved, a $535 million production, deployment and support phase, from 2003 or 2004 through 2010.

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Lockheed Workers in Ga. Reject Contract Offer

By Kirstin Downey Grimsley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6371-2002Mar11?language=printer

Lockheed Martin Corp. workers in California last night approved a three-year contract, but 2,300 workers at the company's Marietta, Ga., plant rejected their proposed contract and headed for the picket lines at midnight.

It would be the first strike action against a defense plant during wartime since the Vietnam War.

About 78 percent of the Marietta workers voted to reject the contract and 82 percent voted to go on strike. The results came after eight hours of voting at a union hall two miles from the Marietta plant, where F-22 jet fighters and C-130J military transports are built. About 100 workers prepared to head to the picket lines at the sprawling facility's half-dozen entrance gates.

"They're ready," said Bob Wood, an official of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union. "It's a fight they are ready to fight. There was a big cheer when the vote was announced."

A Lockheed spokesman said the company also was ready.

"We have a contingency plan, and we're prepared," Lockheed spokesman Jim Fetig said. "The plant will be open."

The contract terms were reportedly similar at all three plants, including wage increases of 4 percent the first year and 3 percent in each subsequent year, a $1,000 ratification bonus and a new company-paid vision plan, according to a company memo being circulated at the Marietta plant, but workers in Marietta, which has been hit hard by downsizing and outsourcing, had been seeking more job-security assurances. Workers there earn an average of $23 an hour.

"No one's job is guaranteed here, none of us, not even mine," said Sam Grizzle, a Lockheed spokesman in Georgia. "We've given them our best and final offer, and we hope they take it."

In the past decade, the number of union jobs at the Marietta plant has dropped from 7,000 in 1990 to 2,700 this year, union officials said, even as Lockheed has captured a number of prime defense contracts, including the $200 billion effort to build nearly 3,000 Joint Strike Fighter warplanes.

"We're just saying no now," said Carl Mason, 64, who works on the surface structure of planes at the plant. "If we don't strike now, we'll lose our jobs anyway. This is just not fair to the working people here."

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More Jobs at Their Command
Military Personnel Find Many Companies Welcome Them to the Civilian World

By Dina ElBoghdady
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5242-2002Mar10?language=printer

Steve Nagy is learning to market his "likability," to smile more often, to introduce himself as Steve. Not Captain Nagy.

After 11 years in the Marine Corps, none of it comes naturally. Likability and smiles generally do not help you climb the military ladder, Nagy said. But as the 35-year-old delves into the private sector for the first time, he flashes his pearly whites often, even though he is jittery.

"It's fear of the unknown," said Nagy, who lives in the Baltimore area. "Will I be able to take off my uniform, put on a suit and succeed?"

To hear some corporate recruiters tell it, Nagy should have no problem. While reluctance among employers to hire career military officers persists in some quarters, there are signs that corporate America is increasingly eager to hire military folks because of their expertise and leadership abilities. The Washington area is especially fertile ground for corporate recruiters because of its concentration of highly trained and educated military personnel, recruiters say.

Nagy has applied to Home Depot Corp.'s two-year management training program. The Atlanta-based retailer, which plans to open 200 stores nationwide this year, hopes to attract at least 20 percent of the people in the program from the military.

"There's this incredible lack of knowledge within the private sector about what the military's talent pool brings to the table," said Alfred Schreiber, president and co-founder of U.S. Alliance Group, a recruiting firm with offices in Crystal City and New York that specializes in matching employers with military personnel.

Home Depot is using U.S. Alliance Group and other recruiters to find military talent. "We hope that many companies will say if it's good enough for Home Depot, it's good enough for us," Schreiber said.

Home Depot's initiative was beefed up recently by chief executive Robert L. Nardelli, who recently joined the retailer from General Electric Co., another corporate giant known for its emphasis on military recruiting.

Rick Kennedy, spokesman for GE Aircraft Engines, said GE began a big push to hire junior officers in the early 1990s. His division, based in Cincinnati, has about 300 young former military officers earning $50,000 or more. The division employs about 26,000 people worldwide.

Home Depot and GE are not alone. Last week, about 18 companies attended a job fair in Alexandria geared toward job seekers looking to leave the military. The Lucas Group, an Atlanta recruiting firm that sponsored the event, holds such meet-and-greet sessions every six weeks at the Sheraton Suites in Alexandria.

The Retired Officers Association, a nonprofit group in Alexandria, plans a similar job fair on May 1 at the Washington Convention Center. Last year's event attracted 160 employers and about 1,500 military men, women and their spouses, the association said.

It's no wonder. About 270,000 people nationwide leave the military every year, several recruiters said.

Companies do not always pigeonhole them into the obvious defense consulting or contracting jobs, many corporate and professional recruiters say. Nevertheless, because the military has such a diverse population, not everyone has an equal chance of landing a good corporate job.

Even officers of higher rank do not necessarily stand a good chance of landing jobs well-suited to their experience, said Wesley Poriotis, chairman of the Center for Military and Private Sector Initiatives, a nonprofit foundation inNew York. Poriotis, who also runs a recruiting firm in New York, paints a less rosy picture of the job prospects coming out of the military than many of his counterparts.

For one year starting in 1994, Poriotis mailed questionnaires to 17,000 military personnel in all four branches of the military to solicit their experience as they moved into the private sector.

About 54 percent responded. The results: About 84 percent of those who submitted résumés to prospective employers did not get job offers; 67 percent got no interviews. About 80 percent of those who found jobs earned less than $20,000 a year.

Poriotis presented the findings in 1995 to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which he said hired him to do the survey.

"People who transitioned out of the military were aliens in their own country," Poriotis said, adding that not much has changed since 1995.

Corporate attitudes are steeped in the Vietnam era and its stereotypes, Poriotis said. It does not help, he added, that only 1 in 6 Americans under age 65 has served in the military or that the military, in his opinion, does not adequately train its members in basic civilian job-seeking skills.

Earl Connor of Springfield said he never sensed any bias in the job market when he retired from the Air Force in 1987 after 21 years of service. But then again, he never sent out any résumés.

Though Connor landed some job interviews through buddies, he never pursued the opportunities.

An industrial and systems engineer by training, Connor was ready to leave behind the regimented lifestyle of the military and take a stab at something new.

At age 45, at the suggestion of a neighbor, Connor bought a Kwik Copy Printing franchise with his wife, Mary, in Alexandria. Connor, 60, said he has no regrets.

"I got to a point in my life where I felt like operating independently and not having to work for somebody," Connor said. "It's a freer position in life."

Wesley H. Schmidt, on the other hand, started job searching when he retired from the Navy as a commander in 1993 after 22 years of service.

Schmidt, 54, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, said he did all the wrong things on some job interviews. He wore his uniform, a no-no by conventional thinking, he said. He crammed his suitcase full of his credentials: his résumé, his master's thesis, and even his fitness reports. Now he knows that all he really needed was two résumés and a pen, he said.

"People are afraid of the transition and they grab the first lifeline that's thrown at them," Schmidt said. "I didn't want to settle."

Schmidt resisted the easy-to-land defense-contractor jobs, choosing instead to work as a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch & Co.'s Alexandria office for two years and then as an executive in Asia for Techtronic Industries Co., which makes household appliances and power tools.

Now he's back in Alexandria, looking for the next opportunity.

Buzz Buse of the Retired Officers Association said the biggest hurdle for military people entering the civilian world is dropping military-speak and explaining in layman's terms how their skills can fit into an organization.

"It shouldn't be up to the employer to figure out what these people have done during their military years," Buse said. "It's up to the people to make sense of it all."

Another common mistake is that some are accustomed to the regimented career path that the military offers, said Bryan Zawikowski, head of the military division of the Lucas Group, which has a Herndon office. So they are inclined to ask prospective employers questions such as, "Where are you going to put me in five years?"

"A better question is, 'How can I make a contribution to the company?' " Zawikowski said. "This is the private sector. There is a profit motive here."

Temple Farrell of Stafford, Va., said she realizes that the corporate giants are a more lucrative place to be. But after 12 years in the Marines, Farrell said she was not convinced that corporate America was a secure place.

Farrell, 30, entered the military straight out of high school. But she figured she could not advance much further without doing a tour of duty that would pull her away from her husband and her two young sons, Dominic and Nathaniel.

So she left the military in February for a civilian job at a defense-related government agency. She is flirting with the idea of working for a private defense contractor, but she was rattled by constant news of cutbacks in the civilian realm.

"In my mind, I think, 'Gosh, they lay people off,' " Farrell said. "If I stay in the government, I won't make much money but there is growth potential and it seems a little more secure. There just seems to be less likelihood of a layoff."

-------- china

China condemns US global military expansion following Sept 11

AFP Beijing,
March 11, 2002
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/110302/dLFOR36.asp

China on Monday broke with its policy of refusing to condemn the increased US global military presence following September 11, saying the expansion of Washington's "so-called security interests" presented a threat to the world.

The criticism, in a scathing report assessing the United States' record on human rights, marks a rare note of discord from China's general support for the US-led military response to the terrorist attacks six months ago.

"The United States has built many military bases all over the world, where it has stationed hundreds of thousands of troops, violating human rights everywhere in the world," said the lengthy document, issued Monday by China's cabinet, the State Council.

"Today, the United States has expanded its so-called security interests to almost every corner of the world," it continued.

China has previously been at pains to avoid commenting on the US's deployment of troops following September 11 to Central Asian countries on its own borders such as Afghanistan.

The "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2001" -- a riposte to recent US State Department condemnations of China's record -- contains an entire section lambasting US military might.

It is the third year in the row Beijing has countered American criticisms by taking the United States to task for its own internal problems, but the first time this has been extended to include US military actions.

Using language reminiscent of turbulent Sino-US ties before September 11, the chapter says the United States "ranks first in the world in wantonly infringing upon the sovereignty of, and human rights in, other countries".

Evidence cited for this ranged from the scale of American military spending to the use of depleted uranium weapons and alleged crimes committed by US servicemen abroad.

The section also resurrected the collision last April between a US surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea, in which a Chinese pilot died, saying this "aroused great indignation" within the country.

Relations between Beijing and Washington dipped to a low point in the aftermath of the collision. They have improved following China's support for the response to US September 11 and two subsequent visits to China by US President George W. Bush, with both countries seemingly keen to gloss over traditional irritants such as human rights.

However, Monday's report is a clear sign that below the surface, Washington's criticisms still rankle greatly.

The document, using a broad definition of human rights to include such things as racism, poverty, crime and violence portrayed in the media, is clearly aimed as a response to the US criticisms of China earlier this month.

The report "urges the United States to give up its hegemonic practice of creating confrontation and interfering in the internal affairs of others by exploiting the human rights issue," a report by the state Xinhua news agency said.

The US document concluded that China committed "numerous and serious abuses" of human rights in 2001, including arbitrary arrest, torture and the repression of religion and of minorities in Tibet and the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region.

China's human rights record "remained poor", the State Department concluded in a scathing 70,000-word catalogue of abuses, immediately rejected as "unreasonable" by Beijing.

-------- colombia

Defying Threats, Colombians Cast Ballots
Congressional Poll Seen as Key Test

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 11, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5547-2002Mar10?language=printer

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 10 -- Millions of Colombians defied threats of violence today to cast ballots in congressional elections that political leaders here described as a test of the durability of the country's democracy at a time of rising guerrilla war.

Colombia's largest rebel group prevented voting in at least 15 towns by burning ballots and blocking access to polling stations. But those problems, while widely dispersed geographically, affected only a fraction of polling places across the country. International observers characterized the vote, overseen by more than 100,000 troops, as largely free and fair.

"Because of the serious problems this country has, we were expecting far more violent acts," said Santiago Murray, head of the Organization of American States electoral observer mission. "We strongly condemn these acts [that did occur], and we hope that the international community will join in that condemnation."

The voting concluded a treacherous campaign for more than 3,000 candidates seeking a spot in a new congress, which could help decide central questions about the conduct of Colombia's war. After nearly four decades, the war now involves two Marxist-oriented guerrilla groups battling the government and a growing right-wing paramilitary force, which fights the rebels on the same side as the army.

The vote comes two weeks after the collapse of President Andres Pastrana's three-year peace process with the 18,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's largest rebel group. The campaign featured broad voter intimidation, candidate assassinations and kidnappings, and candidates clandestinely fielded by the armed groups. Pastrana urged Colombians this week not to be "blackmailed" by the violence. After casting his ballot this morning in the capital, he said the vote "is to demonstrate to pessimists that we, too, can hold elections."

The long lines of voters in the cities and wide voter participation in some rural war zones suggested a spirit of civil defiance against armed groups that have threatened to overwhelm the Western Hemisphere's second-oldest democracy. Although final numbers were not available, election analysts said turnout appeared to be slightly higher than predicted.

More than 200 polling stations in areas of guerrilla influence were moved to the relative safety of nearby cities, but in other guerrilla strongholds voters appeared to be signaling their anger with the rebels.

In San Vicente del Caguan, the largest city inside a former government-sanctioned guerrilla safe haven created for peace talks, voters turned out in large numbers despite a FARC call for a boycott. Early returns there showed that the leading senate candidate was Jorge Eduardo Gechem Turbay, whose kidnapping last month by the FARC led to the collapse of peace negotiations.

The voting also served as a dry run for presidential elections in May. And it appeared to bode well for hard-line candidate Alvaro Uribe Velez, who has surged to a huge lead in the presidential race by advocating a more aggressive military policy against the guerrillas. He has suggested organizing 1 million civilians into armed militias, expanding defense spending, and inviting foreign troops to help end the long-running war. His favored candidates appeared to win a large share of the 268-seat congress.

-------- drug war

Feature: Coca -- chew, sip or nibble

By Shihoko Goto
UPI Senior Business Correspondent
3/11/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=11032002-041328-4917r

CUZCO, Peru, March 11 (UPI) -- Amid hawkers offering bulky hand-knit sweaters and hotel owners promising a cheap but restful place to bunk for the night, a tiny old woman in an Andean dress that has certainly seen better days accosts tourists straight off the plane at Cuzco airport, armed with handfuls of green leaves.

At first glance, they look like leaves from an apple tree and seem innocuous enough. Show even the remotest interest in them, and the woman eagerly demonstrates how to chew the green stuff, thrusting several leaves at the same time into one cheek and munching with gusto.

The problem, though, is that they are coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine. Bringing them back to the United States or most other industrialized nations would be a criminal offence, and guidebooks on Peru repeatedly warn tourists not to bring them back as novel gifts for friends back home.

But the books don't caution visitors not to try the leaves whilst in the Andes. In fact, most actively encourage tourists to have a chew, and with good cause.

For most tourists heading for Machu Pichu, Cuzco in southeastern Peru is their first stop to get to the lost city of the Incas. The catch is, though, that Cuzco is at the heart of the Peruvian Andes at an altitude of 11,300 feet. To be sure, that is less than half the peak of Mount Everest in Nepal, but for the average tourist flying into the city from sea level, it is quite an adjustment to make. So much so that two out of three visitors allegedly suffer from bouts of altitude sickness.

There is not much one can do to alleviate the severe headaches and nausea that result from the lack of oxygen in places high up, except perhaps chewing on the coca leaves and having cups of coca tea as one waits for the body to acclimatize to the new thin-air condition.

A few chomps on the bitter leaves get the saliva flowing and induces a slight numbing sensation, while the aroma from a mug full of the leaves topped with hot water is oddly soothing. A small bag of leaves, enough for about seven cups of tea, can be purchased for about a dollar (3 soles).

And for those who may be less adventurous, Peruvians have elevated coca leaves to a culinary art form. At the gift shop of a former monastery now converted into a museum in the former Incan capital, visitors can purchase a bag of gooey green caramel-like candy made with coca leaves for just under $2 (6 soles) in a hand-sewn pouch, and chocolates filled with a soft, green coca center at about 20 cents (0.5 soles) a pop. Admittedly, neither is particularly tasty to a food snob, but they both do stave off the queasiness from altitude sickness.

Coca leaves, in short, are as much a way of life and a food staple to those high up in the Andes as are corn and potatoes. In fact, after a few days in the region, the sight of young children chewing on the leaves and selling them on the streets ceases to register in the mind at all.

Certainly, chewing coca is a centuries-old tradition. The Incas jealously guarded the leaves, with the royal family having tight control over the distribution of the plant for consumption. When the Spanish conquistadors invaded the country in 1511, they tried to ban coca leaves altogether. But when they discovered that the enslaved Incas worked for longer hours without food or rest when chewing the leaves, the Spanish decided to continue encouraging harvesting the plant, which continues to this day.

Yet, the production of coca leaves has plagued the Peruvian economy, keeping the country from realizing its growth potential, and destroying its environment at the same time. While neighboring Colombia is the world's biggest producer of cocaine, Peru remains the single-largest provider of coca leaves, providing the raw ingredient to nearly two-thirds of cocaine in the world with an estimated 250 tons per year, according to a finding by the American University in Washington.

Many analysts also argue that the country's coca exports far outnumber its total exports of all legal goods combined.

In its wager to crack down on drug trafficking, the United States invested $77.5 million two years ago to set up a base in the Amazon jungle, at an undisclosed location. The objective has been to train Peruvian armed forces to capture drug traffickers. While the crackdown has reportedly led to a large number of arrests and a decline in cultivation of the product, eradicating coca fields altogether is no easy matter.

Precisely because U.S. anti-drug operations in neighboring Colombia have been successful over the past few years, the price of coca has been rising steadily, and many Peruvian farmers have apparently returned to harvesting the crop.

The White House reported that it spends more than $2.5 billion each year in the battle against drugs, including $731 million in the Andean region alone. Its efforts to eradicate coca production in Peru had been regarded as particularly successful until 2000, as production declined steadily for the five years in a row from 233,168 acres to 84,474, according to the U.S. State Department.

But with over half the adult population out of work in a country that continues to be mired in poverty, the steady rise of coca prices lures many farmers back into harvesting the pricey cash crop, particularly when there is no other lucrative alternative. Resorting to coca plants, however, starts up a vicious circle as farmers more often than not use the slash-and-burn technique, which destroys all other preexisting vegetation. Moreover, the coca plant apparently extracts vital mineral deposits from the soil, making crop rotation in the future impossible.

The Peruvian government has said that it will contribute $100 million this year and next to encourage farmers to grow alternative crops. The challenge for President Alejandro Toledo's government will not only be to encourage the production of other produce, but to lower coca prices further on the global market.

----

Traffic in hash, heroin subsides

By Eli J. Lake
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020311-80838760.htm

New intelligence data show a significant drop in the flow of heroin from Afghanistan to Europe, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy said in Washington yesterday.

"We have seen a significant decrease in heroin and hashish from Afghanistan to Europe since the American military campaign started in October," Mr. Passy said in an interview.

Bulgaria is strategically situated in the center of the three main Balkan drug smuggling routes from southwest Asia to Europe and as such is in a prime position to monitor the heroin trade from Afghanistan to Western Europe.

Last September, the government in Sofia announced a new mobile drug enforcement unit to search cars at random. The country also signed a customs cooperation agreement with Macedonia last year to share information on drug trafficking.

Before Oct. 12, when American and British forces began Operation Enduring Freedom, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan was the world's second-largest heroin supplier.

The Taliban banned poppy cultivation in areas it controlled in December 2000, but large amounts of opium were believed to have been stockpiled. Cultivation in southern Afghan provinces has increased in recent months.

Released last month, the State Department's latest report on international narcotics says "there were widespread reports of a resumption of cultivation in Nangarhar, Helmand, Kandahar and Oruzgan provinces" by the end of last year.

Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told reporters on Feb. 25 that the United States was pursuing a strategy in Afghanistan to persuade farmers in those regions to plow under their poppy crops.

Since September 11 in particular, the Bulgarian government has stepped up cooperation with U.S. intelligence authorities in a number of ways. It was one of the first European countries to check the list of names and organizations presented by a Treasury task force of individuals linked to the al Qaeda network.

"We found many of these individuals transited through Bulgaria, but few stayed," one senior Bulgarian officials said.

This official told UPI there is regular intelligence-sharing on the drug trade with U.S. authorities.

This information is critical for the U.S. drug war because, as Mr. Passy said, "Bulgaria is the main filter for drugs coming into Europe." Of the 2.2 tons of illegal narcotics seized by Bulgaria's Custom service between early 2001 and November of last year, 1.5 tons were heroin.

Mr. Passy this week will meet with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, key congressional leaders, the National Security Council and the Pentagon to make the case that his country should be selected to join NATO.

-------- iraq

Saddam's rusting arsenal
Morale among Iraqi troops is questionable

By Jonathan Marcus
BBC Defence Correspondent
Monday, 11 March, 2002, 17:16 GMT

More than a decade after its retreat from Kuwait and eventual defeat at the hands of a US-led coalition, Iraq's armed forces are at an even greater relative disadvantage compared with those of the United States.

On paper Iraq still retains what seems like an impressive military arsenal.

It has troops, equipment that may include a small number of Scud-type missiles, and a reasonably effective air-defence system that is used regularly against patrolling US and British warplanes.

But this is, in many ways, a wasting and increasingly obsolete arsenal.

Iraq has not been able to modernise its armed forces or to obtain sufficient spare parts to keep all its equipment in service.

So the ball-park figures have to be treated with caution.

Huge undertaking

Training for ground forces has continued, but Iraq's pilots have been greatly restricted in their flying due to the US-imposed northern and southern no-fly zones.

Iraq's air defences, while quite capable of shooting down Western aircraft, probably do not have the regional, or certainly the national level of co-ordination that they had before the invasion of Kuwait.

Washington may yet look for other ways to destabilise Saddam's regime.

An invasion would be a huge military undertaking.

US forces would have to be gathered in the region and such a build-up would take time and require local support.

Unequal struggle

But if President George W Bush is determined to engage Iraq militarily, this would be an even more unequal struggle than when his father was in the White House.

The war in Afghanistan has shown the extraordinary advances in terms of information-gathering systems and targeting available to the US military.

The morale of Iraqi forces must also be in question.

Some elements - like the armoured units of the Republican Guard might offer stiff resistance - but they would bear the brunt of the US effort.

Large portions of the Iraqi forces simply ran away or surrendered during Operation Desert Storm.

Chemical weapons

And American military pundits believe that next time around - if there is a next time - the Iraqis will have to contend with the military equivalent of a hurricane.

What is still unclear is whether Iraq has a significant chemical or biological weapons capability that it could deploy against an invading force.

Pentagon chiefs have to take such an eventuality into account in their planning.

President Saddam Hussein might regard such weapons as usable in a doomsday scenario should he be on the verge of being forced from office.

But such a step would not change the outcome of such a struggle and would, at a stroke, prove one of America's reasons for engaging Saddam's regime in the first place.

----

Blair girds Britons to strike Iraq

By Al Webb
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 11, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020311-16089276.htm

LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will host Vice President Richard B. Cheney in London today, has begun a major campaign to prepare the British public for military strikes aimed at toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Blair has warned that without early action, "we may find out too late the potential for destruction" that Iraq possesses. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has meanwhile cited evidence that Baghdad is again working on a nuclear bomb and has missiles capable of hitting targets across the Middle East.

The government is preparing a dossier that sources close to the prime minister say will prove that Iraq has developed nuclear armaments beyond the blueprint stage, that it already possesses other weapons of mass destruction, and that it actively supports international terrorism - possibly including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization.

The dossier is expected to provide the "convincing evidence" that British leaders seek to persuade their European allies - and their own people - of the need for military action against Iraq. Britain produced a similar dossier last fall to make the case that Osama bin Laden was personally responsible for the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.

Mr. Blair is expected to present the papers to President Bush next month during a visit to the president's Texas ranch that almost certainly will focus on Iraq policy.

Mr. Blair may also give Mr. Cheney a look at the material when he visits the prime minister's No. 10 Downing Street office today on his way to the Middle East.

Mr. Cheney will also visit Kuwait, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Turkey, Oman, Jordan, Israel and Yemen. He is expected to gauge support for tough action against Iraq and study ways to end the mounting violence between Israel and the Palestinians.

So far, the Blair-Straw rhetoric has won virtually no support from Britain's allies in Europe - some of whom are even questioning their own role in the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. There is also a risk of a major rebellion within the ranks of the prime minister's ruling Labor Party.

Political sources say at least one Cabinet minister has threatened to resign if Britain joins the United States in an attack on Iraq, and others are reported agonizing over the prospect.

Meanwhile, 52 members of Parliament, many of them Mr. Blair's Laborites, have signed a motion expressing "deep unease" about the prospect of British involvement in a war against Saddam's regime.

Tam Dalyell, a respected Labor Member of Parliament, dismissed the idea of a new air war against Iraq as "preposterous." Fellow Labor legislator Alan Simpson objected to "signing up to a war which is really George Bush's warfl a war that did not carry the sanction of other members of the international community."

Legislator Alice Mahon signaled what could become the key concern of British voters who already have given Mr. Blair two terms in office: "No evidence has ever been produced that Iraq wants to attack this country." She also accused the United States of "blatant warmongering."

What has caught Parliament off guard is an apparent U-turn by Mr. Blair since November, when he was urging caution about spreading the war on terrorism to Iraq.

Britons at large also are showing signs of disenchantment. An opinion poll published in the Mail on Sunday showed that of those surveyed, fewer than half supported a combat role in Iraq. Similar polls had shown 75 percent support for British involvement alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The prime minister may have already closed off any retreating from his tough new stance on Iraq. As one British diplomat put it, "Blair has associated himself so closely with the war on terrorism that it is too late to get cold feet now."

In a speech last week to Commonwealth leaders in Australia, Mr. Blair said that for 10 years the world ignored conditions in Afghanistan not unlike those currently in Iraq. "It may have been better, in retrospect, if we had had the foresight to deal with it earlier."

He carried the theme further in a commentary published in London's Express newspaper: "If we fail to continue to restrain Saddam Hussein, what is already a volatile situation in the region could easily become a world crisis."

He insisted that Saddam "is continuing his chemical and biological weapons programs, and is developing the long-range missiles to deliver them."

In an article penned for The Times newspaper in London, Mr. Straw warmed to the subject. Those Iraqi missiles already are in violation of a 90-mile limit imposed by the United Nations and can hit targets "as far away as the United Arab Emirates and Israel," he wrote.

In addition, he said that "there is evidence of increased efforts to procure nuclear-related material and technology, and that nuclear research has begun again. Without the controls we have imposed, Saddam would have a nuclear bomb by now. ...

"We cannot allow Saddam to hold a gun to the heads of his own people, his neighbors and the world," Mr. Straw wrote. "Let no one - especially Saddam - doubt our resolve."

----

Mideast Allies Warn U.S. Not to Attack Iraq
Leaders of Jordan, Turkey Say Move Against Hussein Could Destabilize Region

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5422-2002Mar10?language=printer

CAIRO, March 10 -- Jordan and Turkey warned the United States today that a military strike against their neighbor Iraq could destabilize the region and undermine the economies of two of Washington's closest allies in the Muslim world.

The warnings from two countries whose cooperation would be essential for any attack on Iraq came as Vice President Cheney flew to London to begin a 10-day trip to the Middle East to bolster support for the campaign against the al Qaeda terrorist network.

The comments by Jordan's King Abdullah and Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit represent a growing consensus among regional leaders that the risks of an attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein far outweigh any threat he may pose. In contrast to the coalition built during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, this opposition could greatly complicate any assault.

President Bush has labeled Iraq part of an "axis of evil" along with Iran and North Korea and has said it must face unspecified consequences if it does not allow U.N. inspectors back into the country to determine whether it possesses or is developing weapons of mass destruction.

"An attack on Iraq will seriously affect Turkey. . . . Turkey's economy is resting on very sensitive balances," including a $16 billion International Monetary Fund bailout, Ecevit said in an interview on state-run television.

"While the Iraq issue hangs over us like some kind of nightmare, you can't expect much new investment to come to Turkey," Iraq's neighbor to the West, he said.

Ecevit said he planned to discuss his concerns about an attack on Iraq "very openly" with Cheney when the vice president visits Turkey on March 19. U.S. planes stationed at Turkey's Incirlik Air Base would likely be involved in any large-scale assault on Iraq, and the country could also serve as a base for Iraqi opposition groups.

Jordan likewise could serve as a host for dissident Iraqi politicians planning a new government. Cheney is scheduled to visit Amman on Tuesday. He was preceded there today by Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, who briefed Abdullah on recent talks with the United Nations about the possibility of allowing weapons inspectors to return -- a development that could forestall a U.S. attack.

Abdullah said afterward that "striking Iraq represents a catastrophe to Iraq and the region in general and threatens the security and stability of the region," the official PETRA news agency reported. The king "stressed Jordan's rejection of using force against Iraq," the agency said.

Cheney is likely to hear a similar refrain throughout the region as he tours nine Arab countries, Israel and Turkey -- the highest-level U.S. visit to the Middle East since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

While Bush has indicated a willingness to pursue efforts against Hussein without the help of a coalition, regional officials and diplomats have become increasingly vocal in arguing that the safer strategy is to continue containing Iraq and allowing the Hussein government to atrophy.

Though hardly enamored of Hussein -- many Arab officials agree the region would be better off without him -- they are wary of the reaction any U.S. military action would spark in their countries, especially at a time when U.S. bombers are still active in Afghanistan and when Israel and the Palestinians remain at violent odds.

Arab leaders are also worried about Iraq's potential response, and the possibility that the country could fracture along ethnic lines -- leaving Turkey with a new Kurdish state on its border that might spark unrest among its own Kurds, and leaving mainly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia with an area to its north susceptible to Iranian-style Shiite militancy.

Iraq, under the U.N. oil-for-food program, has rebuilt trade ties with many countries in the region, and in the case of Jordan, supplies all of the country's petroleum, essentially for free.

Opposition to a military campaign against Iraq was a key theme of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's recent trip to the United States, and such a campaign also has been openly opposed by Saudi Arabia's leaders.

----

US pursues ex-generals to topple Iraq leader
Overtures raise Pentagon dissent

By Anthony Shadid, Globe Staff,
3/11/2002
Boston Globe

WASHINGTON - The CIA and State Department have begun aggressively courting exiled Iraqi generals in Europe and the United States whom they see as key to overthrowing President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, US officials and Iraqi dissidents said.

The overtures - which have irked some in the Pentagon - have intensified since January, when President Bush declared that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were part of ''an axis of evil'' and US officials stepped up their anti-Iraq rhetoric. In recent weeks in Washington, US officials have met with two former generals - Fawzi Shamari, a Shiite officer, and Najib Salhi, a former Republican Guard commander. In London, they met with a third, Wafiq Sammarai, a one-time chief of military intelligence who fled Iraq in 1994.

The meetings were meant to explore what the officers might do to help topple the Hussein government and how the military would respond to his overthrow.

The CIA has stepped up contacts with another key figure, Nizar Khazraji, a former Iraqi chief of staff who lives in exile in Denmark and is thought to maintain ties with officers inside Iraq, opposition officials say.

Al-Hayat, a leading Arabic newspaper based in London, reported that Khazraji was the leading candidate on a US-generated list of more than 55 dissident officers to serve as ''an Iraqi Karzai,'' a reference to the US-backed interim Afghan government of Hamid Karzai. The officers on the list are all Sunni Muslims, like Hussein.

The State Department denies that report, saying it is premature. But it has described the meetings as crucial to its efforts to broaden support for overthrowing a regime actively opposed by three administrations.

''Certainly any regime change is going to have to draw on military elements already inside,'' a State Department official said on condition of anonymity.

Not everyone in Washington, however, sees wisdom in the State Department and CIA overtures. Dissent is not surprising given the history of disagreement between the State Department and the Pentagon over how to proceed on Iraq.

The Pentagon critics complain that the latest overtures are undermining support for the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group that has received $12 million in US funds.

In early January, the State Department cut off funding for the Iraqi National Congress, declaring that the organization was unable to account for millions of dollars it had already received. After several weeks, the payments resumed as the organization promised to improve its accounting.

The Iraqi National Congress enjoys substantial support in Congress and the Pentagon but is often treated with disdain by the State Department and CIA.

''What I have seen in recent weeks is a desperate effort by opponents of the INC to find an alternative,'' said Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration official who serves as chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board. ''I think it's foolish and short-sighted.''

Perle fears that the State Department and CIA efforts send a mixed message to the region. ''It seems to me very damaging, and it creates confusion,'' he said.

The debate goes to the heart of a long-standing dispute over how to shape anti-Iraq policy, which has demonstrated few if any successes since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

For years, the Iraqi National Congress - a nominal umbrella for the Iraqi opposition - has served as a centerpiece of US efforts to oust Hussein.

Its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, is seen in Washington as a charismatic and effective lobbyist. But within the fractious Iraqi opposition, he remains a divisive figure, derided by some detractors as autocratic and arrogant.

The Iraqi National Congress and its US backers tout Chalabi as a potential leader of post-Hussein Iraq. But as a Shiite Muslim, like many of Hussein's opponents in southern Iraq, he is handicapped in recruiting officers from the army, which is dominated by Sunnis. His ties to the military are also limited by his long absence from Iraq: He left the country in 1958.

A former defense official who monitored Iraq said: ''The INC has a fairly effective lobby around town and in certain circles in the Pentagon and certain members of Congress on the Republican side. But it has no standing whatsoever in the intelligence community or at State.''

That view was echoed by Edward S. Walker, who oversaw the Middle East at the State Department during the Clinton administration.

''The INC is incapable of doing anything. The INC is not representative of the broad opposition. The INC has been infiltrated by Iraqi intelligence by all reports that I have seen. And there's just a significant group of Iraqis in opposition who won't follow that lead,'' he said.

It retains its supporters, however, particularly among hawks at the Pentagon like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Perle is another. He has outlined a plan - reminiscent of Afghanistan - that combines bombing with US forces assisting the opposition. A government would be set up in territory wrested from Hussein, and his army would be encouraged to revolt.

''I don't think we'd have to defeat Saddam's armies; I think Saddam's armies would defeat Saddam,'' he told the Hoover Institution last month.

Few outside the Pentagon, though, say the Iraqi National Congress could fulfill that role, and in recent weeks, State Department and other US officials have stepped up their efforts to recruit the support of the former Iraqi generals.

Salhi, formerly a senior commander in the army and Republican Guard who fled Iraq by way of the Kurdish-controlled north in 1995, has received much of the attention. The State Department calls the contact ''pretty fairly regular'' - the most recent an hourlong meeting Tuesday.

''Before there were ongoing meetings,'' an Iraqi opposition official said on condition of anonymity. ''But in the past two or three weeks, they've been more serious than before. They're trying to build another INC.''

While Iraq has a Shiite Muslim majority, Sunni Muslims dominate the military and security services, and Salhi is seen as a link to high-ranking officers who would prove key to any overture to the Iraqi army. Salhi himself has said he detects a new tone in dealings with the administration.

''I heard very encouraging words from them,'' he told the Globe. He said he promised to attend a meeting that the State Department is seeking to organize in Europe this spring that will draw former military officers.

Another key figure is Sammarai, who moved to London five years ago. He said he met a US official and a diplomat from the Embassy in January in talks that focused on how the Iraqi military would respond to change.

''They wanted to know how we see the Iraqi Army after Saddam,'' he said.

The figure believed to be supported by the CIA is Khazraji, who defected to Jordan in 1996. Iraqi dissidents say there was a move to bring him to the United States after Sept. 11. But plans were scuttled by an inquiry in Denmark over allegations of war crimes under his watch, particularly the military's use of poison gas against Kurds in Halabja in 1988, they say. Khazraji has denied responsibility, saying Hussein and a cousin ordered the attack. US officials say they remain interested in what he can offer.

''Certainly there's every reason to belive he still has connections inside Iraq,'' a State Department official said. ''That's his strength. Does that mean he's the next Karzai? No, that's not what I'm saying.''

Whitley Bruner, a former CIA station chief in Baghdad, met Khazraji earlier this year at the former general's home outside Copenhagen. But Bruner told the Globe that ''there was absolutely no involvement with the US government at all,'' and the CIA declined to comment on its attitude toward Khazraji.

The United States is not alone in courting Iraqi generals. On Tuesday, for example, Ben Bradshaw, the junior British foreign office minister, met in London with Iraqi opposition forces. It was reportedly the first opposition meeting with a British minister in two years.

''He asked about the possibility of a military coup, defection of army officers, movements within the military. All the questions are about the military,'' said Hamid Bayati, a spokesman for a Shiite opposition group.

The strategy has its backers, and many see the former generals as key to any inroads into an institution that Hussein jealously watches.

''They're sort of a liaison to the actual power,'' said the former defense official, ''the guys who have the tanks or the guns.''

-------- israel / palestine

Israel Finds Suspected Bomb Factory

By Laurie Copans
Associated Press Writer
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6750-2002Mar11?language=printer

DHEISHE REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank -- The Israeli army blew up a two-story building containing a suspected bomb lab southeast of this refugee camp as reporters looked on.

Having taken over the Palestinian-controlled area two days earlier, troops in five armored personnel carriers set out Sunday to plant 264 pounds of explosives in the basement of the home where the army said roadside bombs were made.

The alleged lab was run by Yehieh Dahamshe, a leading member of the Al Aqsa Brigades, a militia linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

Before the blast, reporters were shown the alleged bomb lab. In the small, dank room strewn with clothes and debris, apparently from Friday's army raid, soldiers pointed out a large gas burner, a bowl of powder they described as material for making explosives and large containers of what they said was nitric acid.

Part of a refrigerator motor found outside the door was to be the container for a roadside bomb against troops entering the area, soldiers said. A mine could be plainly seen near the stairs leading down to the basement.

The tour with journalists - one of several in recent days - appeared to be the army's attempt to explain its increased military activity in Palestinian areas. The United States and Europe have harshly criticized the army operations as excessive and urged Israel to show restraint.

The army says its incursions into Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip the past week were attempts to root out militants and thwart attacks against Israelis, which have escalated in recent days. The Palestinians say military operations only stoke anger and provoke more attacks.

In the worst spate of violence since fighting erupted in September 2000, more than 120 Palestinians and more than 50 Israelis have been killed during the first 10 days of March.

No suspected militants were captured during the army's incursion into the Dheishe area near Bethlehem but the bomb workshop and two arms caches were uncovered, the army said. Four mortar shells, 12 homemade guns and three anti-tank missiles were among the weapons found.

Two armored personnel carriers roared and stuttered their way south from the outskirts of Jerusalem to just outside the Dheishe camp some six miles away.

Curious Palestinians in villages along the way emerged on patios overlooking the streets to watch the armor rumble by. In one vehicle, a soldier stood in clear view in the open hatch, his finger on the trigger of his rifle.

At the suspected lab, soldiers with faces painted in brown and green camouflage emerged from the APCs holding Uzi submachine guns. Several shots were fired at them at one point but the troops returned fire and the shooting ceased. No injuries were reported on either side.

To evacuate residents before the blast, soldiers banged on the door of one stone home next to the targeted building. Four women with headscarves, one carrying a baby, and 10 children emerged from the back door. They ran away from the troops, the little children looking back occasionally as their mothers, walking quickly, yanked their arms.

Nearby, posters praising the bravery of Palestinian militants killed in fighting against Israel hung on the metal doors of the Palestinian Rental Car Co.

Soldiers led a tour of the six-room building containing the alleged lab. In one room with peeling walls, a half-full milk bottle sat on a table.

In the corner near two beds, a stack of pillows and blankets were toppled over. A poster of a Palestinian man holding an automatic rifle - a tribute to a militant killed fighting Israel - hung over one bed.

After the soldiers planted several explosives in different rooms, their fuses crisscrossing the hallway near a pile of dirty diapers, the reporters were led to a nearby hill to view the explosion.

The powerful blast sent sparks into the air and a huge cloud of smoke over the surrounding homes.

---------

Arafat Free to Leave Ramallah; Israel Continues Offensive

New York Times
March 11, 2002
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/international/11CND-MIDE.html

JERUSALEM, March 11 - The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat is free to travel without restriction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel announced today. But Mr. Arafat will still have to apply for permission to travel abroad, an announcement by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said.

Mr. Arafat has been restricted to Ramallah since December, much of the time in his compound, around which Israelis dropped many shells in the past week.

The lifting of the restrictions on Mr. Arafat was the second critical concession by Mr. Sharon toward a cease-fire. On Friday Mr. Sharon announced that he was easing his earlier insistence that there must be seven days of calm before he would start negotiating a cease-fire, following a blueprint laid out by Washington.

Just before today's announcement, Israeli forces continued to move against Palestinians. Five

Palestinians, including a 17-year-old boy, were reported killed.

Before dawn dozens of Israeli armored vehicles soldiers entered the West Bank town of Qalqilya.

The governor of Qalqilya, Mustafa Malki, said Israeli helicopters fired missiles at several security installations and that two people, a policeman and a civilian, were killed and five wounded.

Israeli troops also moved deeper into the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem and seized the Palestinian police station in the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

In Dheisheh, Israeli troops ordered all men between the ages of 15 and 45 to report to the large yard of a tile factory at the outskirts of the camp. More than 200 men stood in line, their hands on their heads and stripped to the waist.

Just south of the town of Beit Jalla, near the town of Yatta, Israeli soldiers opened fire on a car trying to maneuver around a road barrier, killing a 17-year-old boy and wounding three other passengers, Ibrahim Fakouseh, who was in the vehicle, told The Associated Press.

In Gaza, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man near the border fence with Israel, the army said.

In the Bureij camp, Israeli troops exchanged fire with Palestinian security forces, and a Palestinian civilian was killed, doctors said. Army bulldozers uprooted nearby olive and citrus groves, residents said.

Mr. Sharon's decision to lift the travel restrictions on Mr. Arafat came after the Palestinian leader had met Israel's condition of arresting all the suspects in the killing of an Israeli cabinet minister.

The gestures by the prime minister seemed clearly intended to facilitate the mission of the American peace envoy, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who arrives this week to try to wrench the Israelis and Palestinians apart after the most violent spate in bitter fighting that has continued virtually unabated for 17 months.

In a speech to soldiers in which he acknowledged that his decisions had been difficult and would be lambasted by hard-liners in his cabinet, Mr. Sharon indicated that a cease-fire had become his first priority.

"This isn't a withdrawal or me folding," he said. "This is exactly my job. The first mission I see before my eyes is to reach a cease-fire, which is why I chose this way."

Mr. Sharon also made clear on Sunday that he did not intend to let up the fighting while negotiations got started for a cease-fire. Just before midnight, heavy shelling erupted in Bethlehem, and residents of the Dheisheh refugee camp said by telephone that they had come under heavy fire.

Since March 1, Israeli forces have waged a new campaign in Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, occupying the crowded, teeming neighborhoods in Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Gaza and Bethlehem and searching them house to house.

Dheisheh, with 10,000 residents, had been ringed for three days, reducing all Bethlehem to a virtual ghost city as most residents stayed off the streets.

Mr. Sharon indicated that the restrictions on Mr. Arafat would not be lifted immediately, because of the suicide attack in Jerusalem.

But he acknowledged that Mr. Arafat had met the conditions the Israelis had set when the last of the suspects in the killing of the far-right cabinet minister, Rehavam Zeevi, was arrested on Friday by the Palestinian Authority.

"I said once they were arrested, I would let him leave," Mr. Sharon said. "Once you achieve your demands, you must carry out your commitments."

The United States probably joined in seeking his release, because his presence at an Arab League summit meeting in Beirut on March 27 is considered critical for the success of a Saudi proposal to promise Israel normal diplomatic relations with the Arab world in exchange for a full withdrawal from occupied territories.

The problem for Mr. Sharon was that he had written Mr. Arafat off as a negotiating partner and had bottled him up in Ramallah in the hope that he would be overthrown.

Only last week, Mr. Sharon had ordered the toughest raids of his administration, declaring that only ever-mounting casualties would bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table.

But as the death toll soared, and as Israel came under one terror blow after another, the Israeli public began to turn on Mr. Sharon. So did the Bush administration, which finally abandoned its hands-off stance and intervened, indirectly suggesting that Mr. Sharon had gone too far.

Today Secretary Powell made it clear that when General Zinni, a retired Marine, begins his mission this week, he expects the violence to decline.

"Both sides understand," the secretary said, that General Zinni is coming "not just to go back and forth between Ramallah and Jerusalem, and so let's hope we can see this violence start to decline, and General Zinni will be in a better position to start doing his work."

Now Mr. Sharon faces the prospect of dealing once again with his nemesis, Mr. Arafat, and of acknowledging that Israel's tactics have not succeeded.

He also faces the wrath of hard-liners in his government, which began today with threats from Avigdor Lieberman, a far-right immigrant from the Soviet Union, to pull his two ministers out of the cabinet.

But centrist members praised the prime minister. "Today is the day Sharon says reality will dictate his actions," said Roni Milo of the Center Party.

To which Mr. Sharon replied: "I am aware of the criticism, and I am willing to face it and tell you all, that as the person elected to head this battle, I have the responsibility to take all the necessary steps in order to reach the goal, which is now a cease-fire. We did not fold our flag or lower our head during these days, and even now, at these hours, there is a heavy battle in progress. I want to tell you that this battle will continue."

In the speech, the usually hawkish prime minister sounded at times dejected, and at times bitter.

"At times I think I am blamed for everything, even the destruction of the Second Temple," he said. "This isn't a `surrender' and it isn't a `folding,' but rather the essence of this government's perseverance over a long period of time. As I said earlier, we are in the midst of a harsh battle, which dictates we all stand united, together, and put aside all differences, complaints or criticism."

-------- pacific

Papua New Guinea Soldiers Mutiny Over Cutbacks

By REUTERS
March 11, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-papua-mutiny.html

PORT MORESBY (Reuters) - About 100 Papua New Guinean soldiers have mutinied, seizing control of one of the country's main barracks in protest at plans to retrench 1,500 soldiers, the PNG defense commander said on Monday.

Brigadier General Peter Ilau called on the soldiers at Moem Barracks in East Sepik, which houses some of the country's crack troops, to surrender their arms and return to barracks.

``I want to warn soldiers that the actions taken thus far are completely unlawful and punishable with severe consequences,'' Ilau told a news conference in the capital Port Moresby.

Local media reported the soldiers mutinied on Saturday morning, breaking into the armory and burning down two buildings, including the communications center which has cut the barracks off from the rest of the country.

There were no reports of injuries in the barracks outside the town of Wewak on the country's northern coastline, some 500 miles from the capital Port Moresby.

Papua New Guinea last year said it would retrench 2,000 soldiers, about half the force, as part of tough financial cutbacks aimed at rescuing the country's troubled economy.

A mutiny in the country's Murray Barracks defense headquarters in the center of Port Moresby in March 2001 forced the government to postpone its cutback plans.

The rebellion in the center of the capital had raised fears of a repeat of the violence that hit Port Moresby in 1997, when troops rebelled over the secret hiring of South African mercenaries to be sent to secessionist-wracked Bougainville Island.

That rebellion led to the downfall of the then government.

Last December, Defense Minister Kilroy Genia announced the government would retrench 1,500 soldiers from March.

The first batch of retrenchments began this month.

Defense force commander Ilau said he was deeply saddened by the latest rebellion, but stressed he was still in control of the defense forces around the country. There were no signs of unrest at other barracks.

Ilau said the Moem mutiny was a result of poor leadership by commanders at the barracks who had not properly informed the troops of the retrenchment plans. ``Sadly, this unit has had bad leadership for some time,'' he said.

There was no immediate comment from Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta regarding the latest army rebellion.

Despite the rugged country's wealth in natural resources, including oil, gold and copper, most of Papua New Guinea's 4.7 million people live subsistence lives in small jungle villages.

-------- philippines

Philippines Gets Unmanned Spy Planes

March 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Philippines-US-Troops.html

ZAMBOANGA, Philippines (AP) -- The U.S. military has shipped unmanned spy planes to the Philippines to take part in anti-terrorism training exercises aimed at wiping out a group holding two Americans, officials said Monday.

The Gnat UAVs -- which are similar to the Predator drones being used in Afghanistan -- would give ``that extra edge'' to the Philippine military, said Maj. Cynthia Teramae, spokeswoman for the U.S. contingent.

Teramae said more than one UAV arrived Sunday and will be stationed at the Philippine air force base in Zamboanga. She declined to give an exact number.

The UAVs are for surveillance and intelligence gathering during the six-month exercise in this southern port city and on nearby Basilan island, Teramae said. Thousands of Filipino soldiers and 660 U.S. troops, including 160 from U.S. special forces, will take part, observing front-line troops but not joining combat.

Teramae said the exercise -- called Balikatan, or ``Shoulder-to-Shoulder'' in English -- is part of Operation Enduring Freedom -- Philippines, a name that gives credence to claims that the Philippines has become the a major front of the U.S.-led war against terrorism.

Enduring Freedom was launched after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and targeted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.

Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, who have been linked to al-Qaida, are holding an American missionary couple and a Filipino nurse hostage.

Martin and Gracia Burnham of Wichita, Kan., are believed to be held on Basilan island, where the rebels move them through the jungle at night to avoid Philippine troops. The couple has been held for nine months.

Philippine military spokesman Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan said last week there is a ``big chance'' the hostages would be rescued using sophisticated U.S. communications and surveillance equipment.

Teramae said the unmanned planes were contracted by the U.S. Department of Defense at the request of the Philippine government and will be operated solely by the contractors, U.S.-based Sanders Aviation Research Group.

The Gnat UAV is a predecessor to the Predator, which is a medium-altitude, long-endurance drone used for reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition.

Teramae said the UAVs will ``work in concert'' with U.S. P3 Orion aircraft conducting surveillance flights over Basilan.

-------- space

Titan 2 launch date moved back

By Janene Scully
Santa Maria Times Staff Writer
http://www.santamariatimes.com/display/inn_news/news03.txt

VANDENBERG AFB -- An oft-delayed Titan 2 rocket and its problem-plagued military weather satellite will step aside so a civilian mission can go first.

Col. Randy Odle, Defense Meteorological Satellite Program director at Los Angeles Air Force Base, confirmed that one Titan 2 rocket at Space Launch Complex-4 West has been destacked so another can be put in its place.

Destacking the Titan 2 rocket, which had been on the pad since October 2000, comes after Air Force officials assessed the status of both the DMSP craft and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite. Both are weather satellites, with DMSP primarily serving military troops and the NOAA craft providing data to civilian weather forecasters.

The NOAA launch has been delayed several times, a ripple effect from the overdue DMSP mission.

The Lockheed Martin-built DMSP was suppose to launch in January 2001, but an assortment of problems kept it earthbound. A launch date last month was called off when crews spotted a leaky thruster valve on the satellite.

Rather than a quick fix, officials will perform more extensive repairs to ready the satellite for flight.

"We have very high confidence that DMSP F-16 will launch in late fall -- October or November," said Odle, adding technicians are in the process of switching out the satellite's propulsion system. "Everything is looking good."

Officials had to wrestle with a unique storage problem since the removed Titan 2 rocket had come seconds from liftoff and had already been fueled with highly toxic Aerozine-50 fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer.

"While those propellants were detanked and purged a year ago, the Titan 2 will be stored in a different facility than the vehicle assembly building," the Air

Force said in a written statement.

Meanwhile erecting the next Titan 2 rocket won't start until early April so crews at SLC-4 can perform routine corrosion control and other maintenance work.

The NOAA-M spacecraft is at the Lockheed Martin plant in Sunnyvale, and is now tentatively planned for shipment in late April to Vandenberg, where it will be processed at a NASA facility in preparation for a June 25 launch.

Staff writer Janene Scully can be reached at (805) 739-2214 or by e-mail at janscully@pulitzer.

--------

Opinion columns on Kodiak Launch Complex

From: "Andrew Hund" <axh69@po.cwru.edu>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002

Here are the Point Counterpoint opinion columns from todays Anchorage Daily News. First is the Kodiak Rocket Launch Information Group's Stacy Studebaker, then a column by Kodiak's Senator Alan Austerman.
http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/777261p-829431c.html
http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/777260p-829429c.html

Stacey A. Fritz Coordinator
No Nukes North
PO Box 84997
Fairbanks, AK 99708
(907) 457 - 5230 info@nonukesnorth.net www.nonukesnorth.net

-------- spy agencies

Pilot believed alive, held in Iraq

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 11, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020311-40815350.htm

U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained new information indicating Iraq is holding captive a U.S. Navy pilot shot down during the Persian Gulf war, The Washington Times has learned.

British intelligence provided the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) with the new information several months ago, and intelligence officials said it could assist in the ongoing investigation into the fate of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher.

Cmdr. Speicher was declared killed in action in 1991 after his F-18 Hornet was shot down over Iraq. But last year he was re-classified as "missing in action" by the Pentagon, based on information from an Iraqi defector.

According to U.S. intelligence officials, the British intelligence information was based on an additional intelligence source - someone who had been in Iraq and said he had learned that an American pilot is being held captive in Baghdad.

The British report stated further that only two Iraqis were permitted to see the captive American pilot: the chief of Iraq's intelligence service, and Uday Hussein, son of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The new intelligence has led some Pentagon officials to believe Iraq is holding Cmdr. Speicher prisoner.

One U.S. official said the new agent offered to identify the exact location in Baghdad where the American is being held and also offered to obtain a photograph of the prisoner.

A defense official said the new information is not related to an earlier report from an Iranian pilot who was repatriated recently to Iran and said that he had seen an American held prisoner in Iraq. "That was checked out, and the intelligence community didn't find anything about it," the defense official said.

President Bush has been briefed on the new intelligence on Cmdr. Speicher and the likelihood of an American POW in Baghdad is being factored into U.S. policy toward future operations against Iraq, the officials said.

DIA spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Jim Brooks said the Speicher case is "an active investigation." The agency "investigates and continues to investigate all reports regarding the Speicher case." He declined to comment further on specific reports on the case.

A White House spokesman could not be reached for comment.

It could not be learned if the Bush administration is taking steps to contact the Iraqi government about Cmdr. Speicher.

However, U.S. intelligence agencies are continuing to gather information on the case, the official said.

The CIA sent a notice to Congress Feb. 4 saying it had obtained new intelligence related to Cmdr. Speicher and is expected to provide more information in a briefing that could come as early as this week, one official said.

A U.S. intelligence report from March 2001 stated: "We assess that Iraq can account for Cmdr. Speicher but that Baghdad is concealing information about his fate."

The report, ordered by the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated that Cmdr. Speicher "probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis."

The report stated that Cmdr. Speicher's aircraft was shot down by an Iraqi jet firing an air-to-air missile, and that the jet crashed in the desert west of Baghdad.

An unclassified summary of the report, "Intelligence Community Assessment of the Lieutenant Commander Speicher Case," was obtained by The Times.

The intelligence community report said that after the Gulf war cease-fire, Cmdr. Speicher was not among the 21 U.S. military personnel released, nor were his remains returned.

The new intelligence information bolsters an earlier report from an Iraqi national. In 1999, an Iraqi defector reported to U.S. intelligence officials that he had taken an injured U.S. pilot to Baghdad six weeks after the Gulf war began. He identified Cmdr. Speicher in a photograph as the pilot.

Based on the defector report and pressure from Sen. Robert C. Smith, New Hampshire Republican, the Navy changed Cmdr. Speicher's status from killed in action to missing in action on Jan. 11, 2001.

The intelligence community report stated that during an investigation of the crash site in 1995, Iraqi officials provided investigators with a flight suit that appeared to be the one worn by Cmdr. Speicher. The flight suit had been cut.

The intelligence report concluded that the pilot "probably survived the crash of his F/A-18."

"We assess Lt. Cmdr. Speicher was either captured alive or his remains were recovered and brought to Baghdad," the report said.

Mr. Bush has called Iraq one of three "axis of evil" states, and there have been intelligence reports indicating Iraq may have supported the September 11 attacks.

The government of the Czech Republic monitored a meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Mohamed Atta, regarded by U.S. investigators as a ringleader for the September 11 attacks.

Senior Pentagon policy-makers have said Iraq should be the next target for U.S. anti-terrorism operation.

Cmdr. Speicher was the pilot of a Navy F-18 jet that was shot down by enemy fire on Jan. 17, 1991, the first day of combat operations in the Gulf war.

Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney said during a news conference that same day that the pilot had been killed, and the Navy declared Cmdr. Speicher killed in action five months later.

The intelligence community report said that Iraq's government learned that the pilot was declared dead and as a result felt it probably did not have to account for him at the end of the war.

At first the Pentagon believed Cmdr. Speicher's aircraft was hit by either a ground- or air-fired missile and broke up in flight.

But the aircraft was later found intact and its canopy was found some distance from the crash, a sign the pilot had ejected.

The CIA also was told about the capture of an American pilot in the early 1990s but dismissed the information as coming from an unreliable agent, the officials said. The agency later acknowledged its dismissal was an error, U.S. officials said.

-------- us

Put Up Yer Nukes: The Pentagon's Nuclear Dreams

Bill Berkowitz,
WorkingForChange.com,
March 11, 2002
AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12588

A political bombshell blew up in the faces of Pentagon officials this past weekend when the Los Angles Times revealed contingency plans for using nuclear weapons to attack seven countries. Is the Pentagon on steroids? One nuclear arms expert told the Times that "Dr. Strangelove is clearly still alive in the Pentagon."

This story appears to be bigger than the Pentagon's ill-advised idea of creating an Office of Strategic Influence -- or as John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine put it, the Office of Strategic Lying.

The LA Times report, coupled with a mid-February report in the San Jose Mercury on how the United States proposes to deal with cyberterrorism, makes one question whether the contingency thinking/planning going on in Washington is a product of testosterone run amok. Perhaps these folks have too much time on their hands!

In an article headlined "U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms," LA Times reporter Paul Richtor writes: "The Bush Administration has directed the military to prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries and to build smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations, according to a classified Pentagon report."

Unlike some other recent administration schemes, this time around Congress cannot claim that it is in the dark. "The secret report," says Richtor, was given to Congress on Jan. 8, and it contends that "the Pentagon needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria."

Richtor: "It says the weapons could be used in three types of situations: against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack; in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; or "in the event of surprising military developments."

The phrase "surprising developments" is ambiguous. It leaves the nuclear option door open to just about anything that might be considered a "surprising development." And, as we have seen since September 11, all sorts of things have surprised the government. The terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- surprise. Anthrax sent to several Congressmen -- surprise. The kidnap and killing of journalist Daniel Pearl -- surprise. The recent remobilization of Al Qaeda and Taliban troops -- surprise.

You get the point. None of these events were either expected by or preventable by the Pentagon. They were all surprises. Pentagon cooks up nuclear nightmare -- this time the surprise is on us!

Some nuclear arms experts find the prospects chilling. "This is dynamite," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear arms expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "I can imagine what these countries are going to be saying at the U.N." John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, told the Los Angeles Times: "They're trying desperately to find new uses for nuclear weapons, when their uses should be limited to deterrence. This is very, very dangerous talk."

On Sunday morning, March 10, Secretary of State Colin Powell told CBS News' "Face the Nation" that there was "less than meets the eye and less than meets the headline with respect to the story. We are always reviewing our options," he said, adding that the Nuclear Posture Review in question was required by Congress.

Powell, who it seems has been out of the loop or reading from the wrong script several times since the beginning of the "war on terrorism," added: "We should not get all carried away with some sense that the United States is planning to use nuclear weapons in some contingency that is coming up in the near future," Powell added. "It is not the case. What the Pentagon has done with this study is sound, military, conceptual planning and the president will take that planning and he will give his directions on how to proceed."

Rumsfeld's Early Warning

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's support for the nuclear option comes as no surprise. In a mid-September appearance on ABC's This Week, Sam Donaldson asked Rumsfeld: "Can we rule out the use of nuclear weapons?" Rumsfeld responded: "You know, that subject -- we have an amazing accomplishment that's been achieved on the part of human beings. We've had this unbelievably powerful weapon, nuclear weapons, since what 55 years now plus, and it's not been fired in anger since 1945. That's an amazing accomplishment. I think it reflects a sensitivity on the part of successive presidents that they ought to find as many other ways to deal with problems as is possible."

Donaldson: "I'll have to think about your answer. I don't think the answer was no."

Rumsfeld: "The answer was that that we ought to be very proud of the record of humanity that we have not used those weapons for 55 years. And we have to find as many ways possible to deal with this serious problem of terrorism. And if, Sam, you think of the loss of human life on Tuesday and then put in your head the reality that a number of countries today have other so-called asymmetrical threat capabilities - - ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, cyber warfare -- these are the kinds of things that are used in this era, the 21st century. And a germ warfare attack anywhere in the world would bring about losses of lives not in the thousands but in the millions."

Rumseld's revelations square with the thinking of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful right-think Washington, DC-based think tank. Jack Spencer, a Heritage defense analyst, said, "We need to have a credible deterrence against regimes involved in international terrorism and development of weapons of mass destruction." He told the Times that the contents of the report did not surprise him and represent "the right way to develop a nuclear posture for a post-Cold War world."

Military Response to Cyberterrorism

Now to the other disturbing, and less publicized story. In mid-February in an article headlined "White House expert says U.S. may retaliate with military if terrorists try online attacks," the San Jose Mercury reported that "The United States might retaliate militarily if foreign countries or terrorist groups abroad try to strike this country through the Internet," this according to the White House technology adviser Richard Clarke.

Clarke told a Senate hearing on cyberterrorism that "We reserve the right to respond in any way appropriate: through covert action, through military action, any one of the tools available to the president.'' Clarke also named several countries where cyber-attacks might emanate from. He said that Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China, Russia and other countries "already are having people trained in Internet warfare. So you have your basic "axis of evil" countries looped together with China and Russia, two countries consistently praised by the president for their support in the "war on terrorism." Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising; the playing field for "war on terrorism" allies and enemies is a continually shifting landscape.

Clarke refused to specify what type of attack might lead to a military response. He told reporters "that's the kind of ambiguity that we like to keep intentionally to create some deterrence." Should there be a concern over cyberterrorism? Absolutely. According to the White House budget office, the government will spend about $2.7 billion this fiscal year on computer and network security, a figure projected to rise to $4.2 billion in the 2003 federal budget. In its first report to Congress on computer information security, the budget office reported that "many agencies have significant deficiencies in every important area of security."

Back in September, when Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) cast the only vote against giving the president a blank check in his war on terrorism, I doubt that she was prescient enough to foresee either of these two contingency plans. Despite her resounding victory in the March 5 Democratic primary, Ms. Lee took the heat from so-called patriots across the country -- she received death threats, ugly email, was branded a traitor by right-wing ideologues and for a short while, became the number one "poster child" for the conservative movement. (She's since been replaced by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.)

These days, her lone dissenting voice once again sounds like the voice of reason.

Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer who chronicles right-wing movements for WorkingforChange.com, where this article originally appeared.

----

Peacekeeping Office May Shut Down

March 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Peacekeeping.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army is considering closing its Peacekeeping Institute, the only arm of the military devoted entirely to preparing for and analyzing U.S. peacekeeping missions around the globe.

``My concern is, what message does this send to the world?'' Col. George Oliver, director of the institute, said in a telephone interview Monday. ``It's going to say that the U.S. military doesn't really care about peacekeeping.''

The institute was created in July 1993 to guide the Army's thinking on how to conduct peacekeeping, to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of specific missions and to promote Army exchanges with international organizations involved in peace operations.

Just three months after its creation, a peacekeeping effort in Somalia that had evolved into a manhunt turned suddenly bloody on the streets of Mogadishu. Two Army Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, 18 U.S. soldiers were killed and the Clinton administration quickly ended the mission.

Since then the U.S. military has taken on other, more successful missions to keep the peace in Bosnia and Kosovo. Peacekeeping has been a major focus of Army operations over much of the past decade -- to the detriment, some argue, of soldiers' training for combat operations.

The possibility of closing the Peacekeeping Institute does not mean the Army would stop doing peacekeeping missions. But in the view of those who want to keep it open, eliminating the institute would undercut the United States' ability to contribute to stability in the Balkans and elsewhere in the world.

``It is the Army's job to fight and win the nation's wars, but it is the nation's job to build and maintain stable and lasting peace,'' Kenneth Bacon, president of Refugees International, wrote in a letter last week to Army Secretary Thomas White.

Bacon, a former assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said the institute's work has contributed to the success of peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo by making the Army better prepared for the missions.

Oliver said the possibility of closing down the Peacekeeping Institute, with a staff of 10 people and a yearly budget of about $200,000, was raised as part of a broader Army effort to reduce staff at the Army War College, where the institute resides with other support offices such as the Military History Institute.

No final decision has been made, Army officials said.

The contemplated reductions stem from an effort by White to move more uniformed personnel out of desk jobs and into the field -- a goal shared by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who says the military is doing too many tasks not directly related to preparing for war.

Rumsfeld has been outspoken about his reluctance to get the military involved in more peacekeeping. He has said the peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo, while succeeding at preventing a return to civil war, are inadvertently creating an unhealthy dependence by the host countries on foreign troops.

With that view in mind, Rumsfeld has argued that in Afghanistan it would be better for the Afghans to use their own armed forces to keep the peace, rather than rely on U.S. or other foreign armies. To enable Afghanistan to develop a viable national army, Rumsfeld has spoken favorably of using U.S. troops to train the Afghans so that in the long run they can provide their own security.

Oliver, the Peacekeeping Institute's director, said in the telephone interview that while he's concerned about losing the institute he will support whatever decision is made.

``I personally believe that eliminating this institute will hurt the Army in the long run and will hurt the nation in the long run,'' he said.

Some in Congress share his view.

In a letter to White last week, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., and Rep. James Leach, R-Iowa, wrote that the Peacekeeping Institute was an ``invaluable education and training resource'' for the Army.

``Our present involvement in Afghanistan illustrates the need for robust documentation, lessons learned and institutional memory in the emerging field of peace operations,'' they wrote.

On the Net:

Peacekeeping Institute -- http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usacsl/divisions/pki/default.htm

-------- yemen

Hundreds of U.S. troops have arrived in Yemen

WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://216.26.163.62/2002/ss_yemen_03_10.html

LONDON - U.S. soldiers have been sent to Yemen to help in a search-and-destroy operation against Al Qaida insurgents, Arab diplomatic sources said.

The sources said 200 to 400 American soldiers arrived in Sanaa over the last two weeks and are taking up positions in the northern and eastern parts of the country.

The London-based Al Hayat daily reported that most of the U.S. troops are under the supervision of the CIA. The newspaper said the U.S. military force is meant to help Yemen track and capture Al Qaida insurgents.

The regime of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has denied reports that up to 600 U.S. troops have entered the country, Middle East Newsline reported. But Yemeni government sources acknowledged that at least 100 U.S. military trainers are meant to arrive in the country to help direct the effort against Al Qaida.

The reports come on the eve of a 10-day Middle East tour by U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney. Cheney is expected to visit 12 countries, including Yemen, in an effort to bolster Arab cooperation against Al Qaida and its Islamic allies as well to form a coalition against Iraq.

Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. military personnel have been deployed in Yemen. Rumsfeld said Washington intends to prevent Al Qaida from converting Yemen into its next base of operations.

"People ask why we're in Yemen," Rumsfeld said. "My answer is, would you like Yemen to become the next Afghanistan? I think nobody wants that to happen, and goodness knows the Yemeni government does not. "

On Friday, a senior U.S. defense official voiced concern that Al Qaida insurgents are fleeing to Yemen. The official pointed to the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden in October 2000, an attack attributed to Saudi fugitive Osama Bin Laden.

"Given it's Bin Laden's father's historical homeland, it is another place where we think Al Qaida members might flee," the official said.

-------- propaganda wars

Army reins access to weapons papers

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020311-19489084.htm

The Army has tightened controls over the public release of documents pertaining to stocks of weapons of mass destruction, an internal memo shows.

The new directive comes amid media inquiries into Defense Department facilities that house the deadly anthrax virus. It also comes during a general crackdown by the Bush administration on the publication of material that could help an enemy build and deliver mass-death weapons.

Army commands in the United States and around the world had enjoyed flexibility in acting on requests for information under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

But in a Feb. 11 memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, the Army tells personnel not to release the information until the Department of the Army reviews the request and the documents to be released.

"When processing the request, if a decision is made that certain documents are releasable under the FOIA, please forward the initial request and the documents identified as releasable to this office for further review prior to releasing the information," says the memorandum from the Army's Records Management and Declassification Agency at Fort Belvoir. "We are not telling you not to release any requested documentation dealing with this topical material. We are saying that it should not be released without our review."

Historically, local commanders have had wide latitude to release records under the information law. Some Army personnel privately expressed fears the memo is an effort to cut down on the flow of information to the media and researchers at a time when Army weapons labs are suspected of being the source for the anthrax that killed five persons.

But Bush administration officials said in interviews that the memo is not an effort to foil reporters, but rather a precaution against releasing weapons information that could help terrorists.

"It was totally precautionary," said one official. He said the White House in mid-February put out guidance to make sure the government did not release sensitive weapons information. "We're not trying to keep anything from anybody," the official said.

This official said that since the Feb. 11 memo went out, no command has yet to ask permission to release material on weapons of mass destruction. The Army's Records Management and Declassification Agency is a repository for reams of classified and sensitive documents.

The memo is titled, "Release of Information Concerning Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction." It was sent throughout the Army chain of command, from the Army secretary at the Pentagon to commands across the globe.

An Army spokesman at the Pentagon said the memo "is probably more benign than it looks."

"The objective is to release information, not hold it," the spokesman said. "It's just the effort of a huge, and sometimes unwieldy, organization to have some kind of record of what is going out on an extremely sensitive topic at this time."

Reporters have used FOIA to obtain federal documents that track the transfers of anthrax strains from one lab to another.

The Bush administration earlier this year began a program to cut down on the amount of publicly available information on biological agents and other weapons of mass destruction. For example, it is recalling thousands of technical documents and asking scientists to limit what they disclose in research reports.

The Army owns anthrax strains for research into vaccines that would protect service members from a biological attack. Some investigators believe the anthrax enclosed in letters mailed to media and politicians originated from a government lab.

The Ames strain that killed the five persons has been used by the government for more than 20 years in biological-defense testing.

----

Ashcroft's rhetorical jihad on Islam

Nat Hentoff
March 11, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020311-28606534.htm

A brief comment by the attorney general at the end of a radio interview with syndicated columnist Cal Thomas has reverberated strongly: "Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you."

James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute in Washington, wrote to President Bush, saying that if Mr. Ashcroft "did not make the remarks, he should clarify the situation and repudiate the comments." Otherwise, said Mr. Zogby, the attorney general "should publicly apologize and meet with Arab and Muslim-American leaders to discuss measures he should take to make amends to the Muslim community and to all Americans."

And, in a Feb. 13 editorial, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said, "If Ashcroft believes - on a deeply personal, and usually safely hidden, level - that all Muslims practice this kind of radicalism that al Qaeda and the September 11 hijackers embrace, he could not only unfairly target hosts of innocent people, he could also steer the hunt for terrorists in thousands of wrong directions. Although this may not have been Mr. Thomas' intent, he has provided the nation a glimpse of Ashcroft that gives us pause."

Although our views are not always consonant, Cal Thomas and I have been friends for many years and I can attest that he is chronically incapable of spinning. He always tapes his interviews, but this remark by Mr. Ashcroft came after Mr. Thomas had packed up his tape recorder. Accordingly, Cal read it back to the attorney general and his communications director during the interview in Mr. Ashcroft's office. They did not change Mr. Ashcroft's language.

The White House later called Mr. Thomas and asked if he had that comment on tape. Mr. Thomas said he did not, but that he had checked it with Mr. Ashcroft when it was made. Mr. Thomas then took umbrage when a White House press spokeswoman said: "Our understanding is that Mr. Thomas misquoted Mr. Ashcroft."

Then, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Ralph Boyd said in a letter to Mr. Zogby: "We can assure you that the remarks . . . do not accurately reflect the attorney general's views."

That response, says Mr. Zogby, is "not a clear repudiation of the remarks," and as those remarks "have circulated on the web, we have seen an increase in hate mail . . . including statements of support for the views attributed to Attorney General Ashcroft." Among them: "Kill The Godless Arabs!"; "I wholeheartedly agree with Attorney General Ashcroft. Islam is a nation that is sending murderers throughout the world to kill and maim innocent people."

Mr. Zogby emphasizes that the Bush administration and the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division have "done an exemplary job in encouraging Americans to remain united and fight intolerance of any kind. But the words attributed to the attorney general threaten to derail the progress and healing that has begun and could send a signal to some that discrimination against Muslims is OK. We urge the president to deal with this situation."

Mr. Thomas has known Mr. Ashcroft for many years as a fellow Christian. In that now-renowned interview, Mr. Thomas assumed that Mr. Ashcroft, as a man who has been in public life for many years, knew he would be quoted, including the statement he volunteered after the tape machine had been stopped. "He knew he was talking to a journalist," Mr. Thomas told me.

Mr. Ashcroft is not only a passionate Christian, he is also clearly devoted to securing this nation from terrorists. But his zeal - particularly his attack on constitutional rights and liberties in the USA Patriot Act and subsequent unilateral incursions - reminds me of Justice Louis Brandeis' concern that the "the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding."

In 1771, Sam Adams wrote in the Boston Gazette: "Power makes men wanton . . . It intoxicates the mind; and unless those with whom it is entrusted are carefully watched," such men will not govern the people "according to the known laws of the state."

The attorney general should contemplate the impact of his remarks - and the effects of some of his actions on our civil liberties.

Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Washington Times. His column runs on Mondays.

---

Explosive Story

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5894-2002Mar10?language=printer

Time magazine got a load of publicity last week for its red-cover story on the dangers of terrorism.

"For a few harrowing weeks last fall, a group of U.S. officials believed that the worst nightmare of their lives -- something even more horrific than 9/11 -- was about to come true," it began. "In October an intelligence alert went out to a small number of government agencies . . . that terrorists were thought to have obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal and planned to smuggle it into New York City." The story's fallout included such banner headlines as the New York Post's "TERROR 'PLOT' TO NUKE N.Y. REVEALED."

But another part of the AOL Time Warner empire has blown a hole in that story. CNN quoted unnamed federal officials as saying that the source of the nuclear tale is a "fabricator" with "delusions of grandeur." One official told CNN that "the only scandal here is that the Defense Intelligence Agency ever used this guy as a source of anything."

Time Washington Bureau Chief Michael Duffy notes that Time's own piece said the source of the tale, code-named Dragonfire, was "mercurial" and of "undetermined" reliability, and that no such bomb materialized.

"I think we handled it fine," Duffy says. "At least two different agencies of the federal government took the threat quite seriously."

The point, says Duffy, is how authorities deal with such ominous threats: "What you're seeing in the CNN story is continued finger-pointing between agencies about sources and methods. If I'd had that, I would have put that in the story, too."

--------

Do Freedom of Information Act Files Prove FDR Had Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor?

An Interview with Robert B. Stinnett
Independent Institute,
March 11, 2002
By Douglas Cirignano
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/020311Cirignano.html

On November 25, 1941 Japan's Admiral Yamamoto sent a radio message to the group of Japanese warships that would attack Pearl Harbor on December 7. Newly released naval records prove that from November 17 to 25 the United States Navy intercepted eighty-three messages that Yamamoto sent to his carriers. Part of the November 25 message read: "...the task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow..."

One might wonder if the theory that President Franklin Roosevelt had a foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack would have been alluded to in this summer's movie, Pearl Harbor. Since World War II many people have suspected that Washington knew the attack was coming. When Thomas Dewey was running for president against Roosevelt in 1944 he found out about America's ability to intercept Japan's radio messages, and thought this knowledge would enable him to defeat the popular FDR. In the fall of that year, Dewey planned a series of speeches charging FDR with foreknowledge of the attack. Ultimately, General George Marshall, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, persuaded Dewey not to make the speeches. Japan's naval leaders did not realize America had cracked their codes, and Dewey's speeches could have sacrificed America's code-breaking advantage. So, Dewey said nothing, and in November FDR was elected president for the fourth time.

Now, though, according to Robert Stinnett, author of Simon & Schuster's Day Of Deceit, we have the proof. Stinnett's book is dedicated to Congressman John Moss, the author of America's Freedom of Information Act. According to Stinnett, the answers to the mysteries of Pearl Harbor can be found in the extraordinary number of documents he was able to attain through Freedom of Information Act requests. Cable after cable of decryptions, scores of military messages that America was intercepting, clearly showed that Japanese ships were preparing for war and heading straight for Hawaii. Stinnett, an author, journalist, and World War II veteran, spent sixteen years delving into the National Archives. He poured over more than 200,000 documents, and conducted dozens of interviews. This meticulous research led Stinnet to a firmly held conclusion: FDR knew.

"Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars," was Roosevelt's famous campaign statement of 1940. He wasn't being ingenuous. FDR's military and State Department leaders were agreeing that a victorious Nazi Germany would threaten the national security of the United States. In White House meetings the strong feeling was that America needed a call to action. This is not what the public wanted, though. Eighty to ninety percent of the American people wanted nothing to do with Europe's war. So, according to Stinnett, Roosevelt provoked Japan to attack us, let it happen at Pearl Harbor, and thus galvanized the country to war. Many who came into contact with Roosevelt during that time hinted that FDR wasn't being forthright about his intentions in Europe. After the attack, on the Sunday evening of December 7, 1941, Roosevelt had a brief meeting in the White House with Edward R. Murrow, the famed journalist, and William Donovan, the founder of the Office of Strategic Services. Later Donovan told an assistant the he believed FDR welcomed the attack and didn't seem surprised. The only thing Roosevelt seemed to care about, Donovan felt, was if the public would now support a declaration of war. According to Day Of Deceit, in October 1940 FDR adopted a specific strategy to incite Japan to commit an overt act of war. Part of the strategy was to move America's Pacific fleet out of California and anchor it in Pearl Harbor. Admiral James Richardson, the commander of the Pacific fleet, strongly opposed keeping the ships in harm's way in Hawaii. He expressed this to Roosevelt, and so the President relieved him of his command. Later Richardson quoted Roosevelt as saying: "Sooner or later the Japanese will commit an overt act against the United States and the nation will be willing to enter the war."

To those who believe that government conspiracies can't possibly happen, Day Of Deceit could prove to them otherwise. Stinnett's well-documented book makes a convincing case that the highest officials of the government-including the highest official-fooled and deceived millions of Americans about one of the most important days in the history of the country. It now has to be considered one of the most definitive-if not the definitive-book on the subject. Gore Vidal has said, "...Robert Stinnet has come up with most of the smoking guns. Day Of Deceit shows that the famous 'surprise' attack was no surprise to our war-minded rulers..." And John Toland, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Pearl Harbor book, Infamy, said, "Step by step, Stinnett goes through the prelude to war, using new documents to reveal the terrible secrets that have never been disclosed to the public. It is disturbing that eleven presidents, including those I admired, kept the truth from the public until Stinnett's Freedom of Information Act requests finally persuaded the Navy to release the evidence."

What led you to write a book about Pearl Harbor?

Stinnett: Well, I was in the navy in World War II. I was on an aircraft carrier. With George Bush, believe it or not.

You wrote a book about that.

Stinnett: Yes, that's right. So, we were always told that Japanese targets, the warships, were sighted by United States submarines. We were never told about breaking the Japanese codes. Okay. So, in 1982 I read a book by a Professor Prange called At Dawn We Slept. And in that book it said that there was a secret US Navy monitoring station at Pearl Harbor intercepting Japanese naval codes prior to December 7. Well, that was a bombshell to me. That was the first time I had heard about that. I worked at The Oakland Tribune at that time....So I went over to Hawaii to see the station to confirm it. And, then, to make a long story short, I met the cryptographers involved, and they steered me to other sources, documents that would support all of their information. And so that started me going. My primary purpose was to learn about the intercept procedures. And so I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Navy because communications intelligence is very difficult. It's a no-no. They don't want to discuss it. But the Navy did let me, gave me permission to go to Hawaii and they showed me the station....So that started me on it. And then I would ask for certain information, this is now, we're talking about in the 1980's, the late 1980's. And they're very reluctant to give me more information. I'm getting a little bit.

Historians and government officials who claim that Washington didn't have a foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack have always contended that America wasn't intercepting and hadn't cracked Japan's important military codes in the months and days preceding the attack. The crux of your book is that your research proves that is absolutely untrue. We were reading most all of Japan's radio messages. Correct?

Stinnett: That is correct. And I believed that, too. You know, because, Life magazine in September 1945, right after Japan surrendered, suggested that this was the case, that Roosevelt engineered Pearl Harbor. But that was discarded as an anti-Roosevelt tract, and I believed it, also.

Another claim at the heart of the Pearl Harbor surprise-attack lore is that Japan's ships kept radio silence as they approached Hawaii. That's absolutely untrue, also?

Stinnett: That is correct. And this was all withheld from Congress, so nobody knew about all this.

Until the Freedom of Information Act.

Stinnett: Yes.

Is this statement true?-If America was intercepting and decoding Japan's military messages then Washington and FDR knew that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor.

Stinnett: Oh, absolutely.

You feel it's as simple as that?

Stinnett: That is right. And that was their plan. It was their "overt act of war" plan that I talk about in my book that President Roosevelt adopted on October 7, 1940.

You write that in late November 1941 an order was sent out to all US military commanders that stated: "The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act." According to Secretary of War Stimson, the order came directly from President Roosevelt. Was FDR's cabinet on record for supporting this policy of provoking Japan to commit the first overt act of war?

Stinnett: I don't know that he revealed it to the cabinet. He may have revealed it to Harry Hopkins, his close confidant, but there's no evidence that anybody in the cabinet knew about this.

I thought you wrote in your book that they did...That some of them were on record for...

Stinnett: Well, some did. Secretary of War Stimson knew, based on his diary, and also probably Frank Knox, the Secretary of Navy knew. But Frank Knox died before the investigation started. So all we have really is Stimson, his diary. And he reveals a lot in there, and I do cite it in my book...You must mean his war cabinet. Yes. Stimson's diary reveals that nine people in the war cabinet-the military people-knew about the provocation policy.

Even though Roosevelt made contrary statements to the public, didn't he and his advisors feel that America was eventually going to have to get into the war?

Stinnett: That is right. Well, his statement was, "I won't send your boys to war unless we are attacked." So then he engineered this attack-to get us into war really against Germany. But I think that was his only option. I express that in the book.

Who was Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum and what was his connection to the Pearl Harbor attack?

Stinnett: He worked for Naval intelligence in Washington. He also was the communications routing officer for President Roosevelt. So all these intercepts would go to Commander McCollum and then he would route them to the President. There's no question about that. He also was the author of this plan to provoke Japan into attacking us at Pearl Harbor. And he was born and raised in Japan.

McCollum wrote this plan, this memorandum, in October 1940. It was addressed to two of Roosevelt's closest advisors. In the memo McCollum is expressing that it's inevitable that Japan and America are going to go to war, and that Nazi Germany's going to become a threat to America's security. McCollum is saying that America's going to have to get into the war. But he also says that public opinion is against that. So, McCollum then suggests eight specific things that America should do to provoke Japan to become more hostile, to attack us, so that the public would be behind a war effort. And because he was born and raised in Japan, he understood the Japanese mentality and how the Japanese would react.

Stinnett: Yes. Exactly.

Has the existence of this memo from Commander McCollum ever been revealed to the public before your book came out?

Stinnett: No, no. I received that as pursuant to my FOIA request on January 1995 from the National Archives. I had no idea it existed.

FDR and his military advisors knew that if McCollum's eight actions were implemented-things like keeping the Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor, and crippling Japan's economy with an embargo-there was no question in their minds that this would cause Japan-whose government was very militant-to attack the United States. Correct?

Stinnett: That is correct, and that is what Commander McCollum said. He said, "If you adopt these policies then Japan will commit an overt act of war."

Is there any proof that FDR saw McCollum's memorandum?

Stinnett: There's no proof that he actually saw the memorandum, but he adopted all eight of the provocations-including where he signed executive orders...And other information in Navy files offers conclusive evidence that he did see it.

The memo is addressed to two of Roosevelt's top advisors, and you include the document where one of them is agreeing with McCollum's suggested course of action.

Stinnett: Yes, Dudley Knox, who was his very close associate.

The "splendid arrangement" was a phrase that FDR's military leaders used to describe America's situation in the Pacific. Can you explain what the "splendid arrangement" was?

Stinnett: The "splendid arrangement" was the system of twenty-two monitoring stations in the Pacific that were operated by the United States, Britain, and the Dutch. These extended along the west coast of the United States, up to Alaska, then down to Southeast Asia, and into the Central Pacific.

These radio monitoring stations allowed us to intercept and read all of Japan's messages, right?

Stinnett: Absolutely. We had Japan wired for sound.

You claim that the "splendid arrangement" was so adept that ever since the 1920's Washington always knew what Japan's government was doing. So to assert that we didn't know the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor would be illogical?

Stinnett: That is correct.

Your book claims that in 1941 Japan had a spy residing in the Japanese consulate in Honolulu.

Stinnett: Japan secreted this spy-he was a Japanese naval officer-in Honolulu. He arrived there in March 1941 under an assumed name, and he was attached to the Japanese consulate there. But when the FBI checked on him they found out he was not listed in the Japanese foreign registry, so they were suspicious immediately. They put a tail on him. And then the spy started filing messages to Japan that we were intercepting. This was in a diplomatic code now. And so the FBI continued to tail him, and so did Naval intelligence.

Naval intelligence, the FBI, and Roosevelt knew this man was spying on the fleet in Pearl Harbor, and they let the espionage go on. The policy of FDR's government then was to look the other way and let Japan prepare itself for attacking us?

Stinnett: That's right. That is correct. He was providing a timetable for the attack.

The spy was even sending bomb plots of Pearl Harbor?

Stinnett: Yes. From March to August he was giving a census of the US Pacific fleet. Then starting in August he started preparing bomb plots of Pearl Harbor, where our ships were anchored and so forth.

And Roosevelt even saw those bomb plots, right?

Stinnett: Yes, that is correct.

You claim that twice during the week of December 1 to 6 the spy indicated that Pearl Harbor would be attacked. According to a Japanese commander, the message on December 2 was: "No changes observed by afternoon of 2 December. So far they do not seem to have been alerted." And on the morning of December 6 the message was: "There are no barrage balloons up and there is an opportunity left for a surprise attack against these places." These messages were intercepted by the Navy, right? Did Roosevelt know about these messages?

Stinnett: They were intercepted. That is correct. They were sent by RCA communications. And Roosevelt had sent David Sarnoff, who was head of RCA, to Honolulu so that this would facilitate getting these messages even faster. Though we were also intercepting them off the airways, anyway. And on December 2 and on December 6 the spy indicated that Pearl was going to be the target. And the December 2 message was intercepted, decoded, and translated prior to December 5. The December 6 message...there's really no proof that it was...it was intercepted, but there's all sorts of cover stories on whether or not that reached the President. But he received other information that it was going to happen the next day, anyway.

You saw the records of those intercepts yourself?

Stinnett: Yes. I have those.

And all these other messages that the Navy was constantly intercepting showed exactly where the Japanese ships were, that they were preparing for war, and that they were heading straight for Hawaii. Right?

Stinnett: That's right. Our radio direction finders located the Japanese warships.

You say Roosevelt regularly received copies of these intercepts. How were they delivered to him?

Stinnett: By Commander McCollum routing the information to him. They were prepared in monograph form. They called it monograph....it was sent to the President through Commander McCollum who dispatched it through the naval aide to the President.

On page 203 of the hardcover edition of your book it reads, "Seven Japanese naval broadcasts intercepted between November 28 and December 6 confirmed that Japan intended to start the war and that it would begin in Pearl Harbor." Did you see the records of those intercepts yourself?

Stinnett: Yes. And also we have new information about other intercepts in the current edition that's coming out in May 2001....There's no question about it.

According to Day Of Deceit, on November 25 Admiral Yamamoto sent a radio message to the Japanese fleet. Part of the message read: "The task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow..." What's the proof that the record of that intercept exists? Did you see it yourself? Again, did Roosevelt know about it?

Stinnett: The English version of that message has been released by the United States, a government book. The Japanese version-the raw message-has not been released by the U.S. I have copies of the Station H radio logs-a monitoring station in Hawaii. They prove that the Navy intercepted eight-three messages that Yamamoto sent between November seventeenth and twenty-fifth. I have those records, but not the raw intercepts, eighty-six percent of which have not been released by the government...As far as Roosevelt, early in November 1941 Roosevelt ordered that Japanese raw intercepts be delivered directly to him by his naval aide, Captain Beardall. Sometimes if McCollum felt a message was particularly hot he would deliver it himself to FDR.

Late on December 6 and in the very early morning hours of December 7 the United States intercepted messages sent to the Japanese ambassador in Washington. These messages were basically a declaration of war-Japan was saying it was breaking off negotiations with America. At those times, General Marshall and President Roosevelt were shown the intercepts. When FDR read them he said, "This means war." When the last intercept was shown to Roosevelt it was still hours before the Pearl Harbor attack. In that last intercept Japan gave the deadline for when it was breaking off relations with the U.S.-the deadline was the exact hour when Pearl Harbor was attacked. FDR and Marshall should have then sent an emergency warning to Admiral Kimmel in Pearl Harbor. But they acted nonchalantly and didn't get a warning to Kimmel.

Stinnett: Yes. This is a message sent from the Japanese foreign office to the Japanese ambassador in Washington DC. And in it he directed....it broke off relations with the United States and set a timetable of 1:00 PM on Sunday, December 7, eastern time.

Which was the exact time that Pearl Harbor was bombed.

Stinnett: That's right. So they realized, with all their information, this is it. And then General Marshall, though, sat on the message for about fifteen hours because he didn't want to send...he didn't want to warn the Hawaiian commanders in time....he didn't want them to interfere with the overt act. Eventually they did send it but it didn't arrive until way after the attack.

Roosevelt saw it too. They should have sent an emergency warning to Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii, right?

Stinnett: That's right. But you see they wanted the successful overt act by Japan. It unified the American people.

This seems like a classic case of higher-ups doing something questionable, and then getting the people below them to take the blame for it. Admiral Husband Kimmel was in charge of the fleet in Pearl Harbor, and he was demoted and took the blame for the attack. Was that justified?

Stinnett: No, it was not. And Congress, you know, last October of 2000 voted to exonerate him because the information was withheld from them. That's very important. But it was subject to implementation by President Clinton who did not sign it. But at least Congress filed it, made the finding.

You claim that Admiral Kimmel and General Short-who headed up the army in Hawaii-were denied by Washington of the information that would have let them know the attack was coming. In what ways were Kimmel and Short denied intelligence?

Stinnett: Well, they were just cut off...They were not told that the spy was there, and they were not given these crucial documents, the radio direction finder information. All this information was going to everybody but Kimmel and Short. That's very clear.... At one point Kimmel specifically requested that Washington let him know immediately about any important developments, but they did not do that.

Kimmel was given some information, because two weeks before the attack he sent the Pacific fleet north of Hawaii on a reconnaissance exercise to look for Japanese carriers. When White House military officials learned of this what was their reaction?

Stinnett: Admiral Kimmel tried a number of occasions to do something to defend Pearl Harbor. And, right, two weeks before the attack, on November 23, Kimmel sent nearly one hundred warships of the Pacific fleet to the exact site where Japan planned to launch the attack. Kimmel meant business. He was looking for the Japanese. His actions indicated that he wanted to be thoroughly prepared for action if he encountered a Japanese carrier force. When White House officials learned this, they directed to Kimmel that he was "complicating the situation"....You see, the White House wanted a clean cut overt act of war by Japan. Isolationists would have charged FDR was precipitating Japanese action by allowing the Pacific fleet in the North Pacific...So, minutes after Kimmel got the White House directive he canceled the exercise and returned the fleet to its anchorage in Pearl Harbor...That's where the Japanese found it on December 7, 1941.

The White House was handcuffing Kimmel? They wanted him to be completely passive?

Stinnett: That is right.

FDR did send a war warning to Kimmel on November 28. Was that enough of a warning?

Stinnett: Well, that was a warning, but also in there they directed Admiral Kimmel and all the Pacific commanders to stand aside, don't go on the offensive, and remain in a defensive position, and let Japan commit the first overt act. That's right in the message, and it's in my book. And Admiral Kimmel, the message he received, it was repeated twice....stand aside and let Japan commit the first overt act, the exact wording is in my book.

Your book makes it abundantly clear that FDR and his advisors knew Japan was preparing for war, and knew that Japan was eventually going to attack. But can it be said that FDR knew that the attack was going to take place specifically on the morning of December 7 at Pearl Harbor? Stinnett: Yes.....Absolutely.

Through the radio intercepts.

Stinnett: Through the radio intercepts. Right. Both military and diplomatic.

Did America's ambassador in Japan, Ambassador Joseph Grew, have any indications that Japan was planning a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?

Stinnett: The information is that he did. I do quote him in the book, and he warned Washington to be on the alert because he couldn't give them the last minute information.

Well, according to your book Ambassador Grew had a reliable source in the Japanese embassy tell him that Japan was planning the attack, and then Grew sent dire warnings to the White House that an attack on Hawaii was a very real possibility.

Stinnett: Yes, well, he was the first one to-after President Roosevelt adopted this eight action memo-Ambassador Grew learned about the Pearl Harbor attack in January1941. And then Commander McCollum was asked to evaluate this, and he said, "Oh, there's nothing to it."-even though it was his plan!

He was being disingenuous, McCollum.

Stinnett: Yea. Exactly.

On December 5 the Navy intercepted a message telling Japanese embassies around the world to burn their code books. What does it mean when a government is telling its embassies to burn their code books?

Stinnett: That means war is coming within a day or two.

That's common knowledge in the military. And the military officials in Washington saw this intercept and the meaning of it wasn't lost on them.

Stinnett: Yes. That's right.

FDR and Washington also knew that Japan had recalled from sea all its merchant ships. What does that mean?

Stinnett: It's known in government and the military that if a nation recalls its merchant ships then those ships are needed to transport soldiers and supplies for war.

So, in your opinion, if there had been no Pearl Harbor, then would America ever have ended up dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Stinnett: Well, that's what the survivors, the families of those who were killed at Pearl, and other people say. They claim that if there hadn't been Pearl Harbor there would have been no Hiroshima. But, of course, that's a "what if" question. And I don't know how to answer it.

One could only speculate on that. But it seems in a way Hiroshima and Nagasaki were maybe retribution for Pearl Harbor.

Stinnett: I think it was more really to bring a close to the war. You know, I was out there at the time, and, frankly, I...we were subject to kamikaze attacks, they were attacking our carriers, and about half of our carriers were knocked out as of July 1945, so, personally, I was very pleased with the atom bombing because that ended the war. It probably saved my life.

If what you're saying is true, then Pearl Harbor is a prime example of government treating human beings like guinea pigs. Yet, you, yourself, don't disparage and don't have a negative view of FDR.

Stinnett: No, I don't have a negative view. I think it was his only option to do this. And I quote the chief cryptographer for the Pacific fleet, who said, "It was a pretty cheap price to pay for unifying the country."

That cryptographer, Commander Joseph Rochefort, was a confidant of McCollum's. He worked closely with Kimmel in Pearl Harbor. It could be argued that Rochefort was the closest one to Kimmel who was most responsible for denying Kimmel of the vital intelligence. And he did make that statement. But do you agree with that? A lot of people would be offended and angered by that statement. A lot of people wouldn't agree with it.

Stinnett: A lot of people would not, but I think under the cirumstances this was FDR's only option. And, of course, this was sort of used in the Viet Nam War, you know. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was based on a provocation aimed at the North Vietnamese gunboats-something like that. That's how President Johnson got The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed through the Congress. There was a provocation.

Apparently, it's a military strategy, but the families-obviously-of the people who get killed when a military uses this strategy wouldn't agree with it.

Stinnett: Oh, right. I know. Oh, when I speak about this with the families they just start crying about it, you know. They're terribly upset....But, you know, it was used by President Polk in the Mexican War in 1846. And also by President Lincoln at Fort Sumter And then also, as I say, another example is Viet Nam, this Gulf of Tonkin business.

It could be a traditional military philosophy, the idea that a military has to sometimes provoke the enemy to attack, sacrifice its own soldiers, so as to unify a country for war.

Stinnett: I think so. I think you could probably trace it back to Caesar's time.

How much in your book has never been revealed to the public before?

Stinnett: The breaking of radio silence. The fact that the Japanese ships did not keep silent as they approached Hawaii....The breaking of Japanese codes-I mean the full proof of it. Military codes, I want to emphasize that....And also McCollum's eight action memo-that's the whole heart of my book. If I didn't have that it wouldn't be as important. That is the smoking gun of Pearl Harbor. It really is.

Your research seems to prove that government conspiracies can exist. In your view, how many people would you say ultimately knew that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor, but kept quiet about it and covered it up before and after the event?

Stinnett: I cite about thirty-five people there in the book that most certainly knew about it. And it's probably more than that.

It also seems like a classic Washington cover-up. In your book you use the phrase "Pearl Harbor deceits". Ever since the attack there have been missing documents, altered documents, people being disingenuous, and people outright perjuring themselves before the Pearl Harbor investigation committees. Correct?

Stinnett: That is right. Absolutely. And you know the Department of Defense has labeled some of my Pearl Harbor requests as B1 National Defense Secrets, and they will not release them. I say that in the book. Janet Reno would not release them to me.

And all the official Congressional Pearl Harbor committees were denied and weren't privy to all this revealing information?

Stinnett: That's right. They were cut out, also.

A lot of people probably don't want to believe that a president would let something like Pearl Harbor happen. Have you gotten any criticism for contending that FDR had a foreknowledge of the attack?

Stinnett: Yes. I get about a seventy percent approval rating. From, you know, comments, news media, radio, and all that. And there's about thirty percent just don't accept this....But the nitty-gritty questions are fine to me. You know, the people who are attacking me, what they are really quoting from is 1950 information. They don't have the 1999 or 2000 information....

The information you put out in your book. You're talking about new things here.

Stinnett: That's right. And this thirty percent, I feel they just don't want to accept it, or they regard FDR as an icon who brought Social Security, and all that. But he also unified this country, and we were able to stop Hitler, you know, and the holocaust, and everything else that was going on. So, you could also say that this was a victory for President Roosevelt.

But it seems under our system of government if President Roosevelt felt it was an emergency to go to war with Germany then he should have come before the American people and the Congress and explained it and convinced us that we had to go defeat Hitler.

Stinnett: Well, you see that was the problem. The strong isolation movement. Eighty percent of the people wanted nothing to do with Europe's war. And, you know, German submarines were sinking our ships in the North Atlantic. That did not rouse the American public. Nobody gave a damn. The USS Ruben James was a destroyer that was sunk, and lost a hundred lives about a month before Pearl Harbor. And there were other ships, merchant ships, and other ships in the North Atlantic that were sunk or damaged. But no one cared about it. I think the American people thought that Roosevelt was trying to provoke us into the German war, or Europe's war. They didn't want anything to do with that. But, you see, Commander McCollum was brilliant. He fashioned this-it was a real PR job-he got Japan to attack us in a most outrageous manner that really did unite the country.

A lot of people would probably be of the opinion that it wasn't so brilliant. The families of the three thousand people who were killed and injured at Pearl Harbor probably wouldn't think it was brilliant.

Stinnett: I know, I know. You see, that's the argument today.

But if this is true, then you agree with what FDR did?

Stinnett: I do. I don't see what other option he had.

Because a lot of the tone in your book seems to be questioning and disagreeing with Roosevelt's actions.

Stinnett: Well, I disagree with the way he treated Admiral Kimmel and General Short, letting them hang out to dry.

Kimmel and Short were cut off from the intelligence loop.

Stinnett: They were cut off. And Congress, you know, last October, the Senate and the House, found that they were cut off. They made the finding. That would have never happened five years ago. Or ten, twenty years ago

It happened because of the Freedom of Information Act?

Stinnett: I think so. And the Short and Kimmel families have credited my book with getting that through Congress.

Did you ever read Clausen's book? Colonel Henry Clausen was part of a Pearl Harbor investigation of November 1944. He wrote a book that was published in 1992 that claimed FDR didn't have a foreknowledge of the attack.

Stinnett: Well, you know, I read that. But I fault Colonel Clausen because he had access to all of these military intercepts and he did not bring them out. And I think that was a crime for him to have done that. He should have been court-martialed for that.

You infer in your book that at one point Clausen was probably trying to cover up for General Marshall's actions of December 6 and 7.

Stinnett: I think so. You know, he was acting on the behalf of the Secretary of War. He had carte blanche with these intercepts.

When was he acting on behalf of the Secretary of War?

Stinnett: Well, Clausen was authorized by Secretary of War Stimson to conduct the Pearl Harbor investigation in November 1944. He traveled to the Hawaiian monitoring stations and interviewed cryptographers but failed to obtain any evidence or testimony concerning the intercepts the Navy was making prior to December 7. So when Congress opened its Pearl Harbor investigation in November 1945 there were no pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese naval intercepts available. Clausen was told by Stimson to get the intercepts, but he didn't do it.

Did you ever talk with Clausen? Did he criticize you?

Stinnett: He died. I tried to contact him. He was an attorney in San Francisco, and I did write him but he would never answer me. I wanted to ask him why he didn't obtain the intercepts. His book doesn't address that major issue. He didn't return my calls, and he never answered my letters. I guess he just didn't want to be exposed to this. Clausen was obviously a part of the conspiracy that kept the pre-Pearl Harbor intercepts from Congress and the American public.

What kind of attention did your book get from the mainstream media? Did it get as much attention as you thought it would?

Stinnett: Most of the mainstream print media has given Day Of Deceit very fine reviews. That includes The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, et al. Mainstream TV has not been forthcoming. The exceptions have been C-Span, PAX TV, and local television stations. Neither ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, or Fox News have carried a word. C-SPAN carried ninety minutes of me discussing the book with a crowd of one hundred-fifty people. That was arranged by independent.org-The Independent Institute, a major, progressive think tank in Oakland, California.

Why do you think the information in your book is important?

Stinnett: It's important because it reveals the lengths that some people in the American government will go to deceive the American public, and to keep this vital information-in our land of the First Amendment-from the people. And that's against everything I believe in

*Robert B. Stinnett is a Media Fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California, has worked as a journalist for the Oakland Tribune and the BBC, and is the author of the book, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (revised paperback edition, Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 2001). Please also see Robert Stinnett's article, "December 7, 1941: A Setup from the Beginning" (Honolulu Advertiser, December 7, 2000) and his presentation, "Pearl Harbor: Official Lies in an American War Tragedy?", before the Independent Policy Forum. Click here to order copies of this Independent Policy Forum transcript, audio tape, video, and/or the book, Day of Deceit.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Missiles Used for World Cup Defense

The Associated Press
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9198-2002Mar11?language=printer

SEOUL, South Korea -- Two French-made, portable land-to-air missiles will be deployed outside South Korean stadiums during World Cup games to prevent possible terrorist attacks.

Military jets will patrol the skies over the stadiums during the tournament, air force spokesman 1st Lt. Kim Ki-ho said Monday. The air force will make sure jet noise does not affect matches, he said.

The security plans are the latest in a series of measures being planned by South Korea officials to safeguard their portion of the tournament, to be played from May 31 to June 30.

Five French special police force members arrived in Seoul on Monday for five days of joint training with their South Korean counterparts. It will include hostage rescue operations.

South Korean police will make a return visit to the French special police forces headquarters near Paris next month. France was host to the 1998 World Cup.

The U.S. team will play its three first-round matches in South Korea. South Korea has set up an anti-terrorism unit and imposed no-fly zones for non-air force planes over World Cup stadiums and nuclear power plants during the tournament.

----

British Police to 'Stop and Search' More Crime Suspects

By REUTERS
March 11, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-crime-britain.html

LONDON (Reuters) - The British government told police Monday to ``stop and search'' more suspects on the streets in a crime-busting move that critics say is racist.

The government hopes an increase in random searches will cut street crime and restore public confidence, even if critics say the powers could be used to intimidate ethnic minorities.

Home Secretary (interior minister) David Blunkett said he wanted a ``stop and search program that has the confidence of the police and the confidence in the police by the community.''

Worried by a surge in violent street crime and stung by police complaints that the legal system makes it hard to convict criminals, Blunkett is trying to change the perception that the ruling Labor party is soft on crime.

Opponents of his order fear that the police, particularly in London, may abuse their power by singling out young blacks.

Home Office data show black people are five times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.

London's Metropolitan Police force has come under close scrutiny since being branded ``institutionally racist'' in a 1999 inquiry into its handling of the murder of black London teen-ager Stephen Lawrence, stabbed to death by a gang six years earlier.

It has since worked hard to clean up its image, reducing the number of ``stop and search'' actions and insisting that a culture change had swept through its ranks.

Last year, police in England and Wales stopped and searched some 853,000 people, down 17 percent on 2000.

Blunkett said Monday he wanted to reverse that trend. ``Used in a targeted, intelligence-led way, stop and search can be particularly effective against street robbery, gun crime and drug dealing,'' he said in a statement.

Michael Eboda, editor of the black newspaper New Nation, disagreed, saying he considered stop and search to be a ``an incredibly inefficient way of cracking down on crime.''

``The problem is that when you harass innocent individuals -- and we have to remember that 82 percent of those who are stopped and searched have actually done nothing wrong -- then all you do is alienate those people,'' Eboda told BBC radio.

----

Zimbabwe - Court orders extension of ballot

By Ravi Nessman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020311-12180430.htm

HARARE, Zimbabwe - The high court ordered the government yesterday to extend voting by a day in Zimbabwe's bitterly contested presidential election, as long lines snaked from polling booths even after the voting deadline had passed.

About an hour after the ruling, however, 60 riot police charged into a polling station in the capital, Harare, chasing away 2,500 to 3,000 people waiting to cast their ballot, said an opposition observer too frightened to give his name.

Police locked the Glen Norah polling station and then moved into the street, threatening anyone who approached to vote.

Opposition officials said they had won a voting extension from Judge Ben Hlatshwayo for the entire country. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told opposition lawyers last night he would file an urgent appeal with the Supreme Court.

The election pits former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai against President Robert Mugabe, who faces the most serious challenge yet to his 22-year rule.

The campaign and voting have been plagued by violence and charges that ruling-party militants intimidated the opposition and tried to rig the vote. The government denies the charges and says the voting has been fair.

It was not clear when elections results would start to emerge.

The opposition has accused Mr. Mugabe's party, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), of putting too few polling stations in Harare, where opposition support is strong, and more elsewhere in the country, where the ruling party holds sway. Voting delays also have been caused by a high voter turnout and a disorganized voting system.

Harare has more than 14 percent of the nation's registered voters, yet it was assigned fewer than 3 percent of the polling booths - far fewer than in the last election.

The opposition had asked for voting, which was scheduled for Saturday and yesterday, to be extended by two days.

"The polling days should be extended, especially in Harare. If the authorities refuse to extend, it would be a tragedy for this country," said Mr. Tsvangirai, 50, Mr. Mugabe's most competitive challenger since the country's independence in 1980.

Learnmore Jongwe, spokesman for Mr. Tsvangirai's party, Movement for Democratic Change, welcomed the judge's decision.

"We understand that [Mr. Mugabe´s party] is not considering extending, and clearly this is how the elections are being rigged. This is one way of rigging elections, as you are denying the people their vote," Mr. Jongwe said.

Minutes before the court ruling, Tobaiwa Mudede, registrar general in the election directorate, said there would not be an extension, adding that by noon yesterday 2.5 million of Zimbabwe's 5.6 million registered voters had already cast ballots.

"It is not our wish or intention to have an extension," Mr. Mudede said. "The whole country has voted, but about 10 polling stations in Harare are still going on. ... I think things went very well."

Voters throughout the capital vowed not to leave until they had cast ballots. A half-dozen riot police with bayonets on their rifles in one Harare township patrolled several thousand voters who waited in a slow-moving line after the 7 p.m. voting deadline lapsed.

-------- death penalty

Death Penalty Foes See Progress in Ill.
Governor's Pledge to Review All Cases Called Latest Sign of Shifting Sentiment

By Kari Lydersen
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, March 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5456-2002Mar10?language=printer

CHICAGO -- Darby Tillis knew he was innocent of the 1977 murder and robbery he was convicted of, but he resigned himself to taking his death row sentence "like a man." Then reality set in.

"You're hit by the stench of Pinesol, feces, urine, body odor, sick odor," Tillis said over the weekend. "You are in the Death House. You are treated like a contaminated piece of meat to be disposed of."

Tillis, who has since been exonerated, joined a gathering of death penalty opponents at DePaul University over the weekend to strategize about how to abolish what they view as a flawed law and to celebrate recent victories. In Illinois in particular, they have much to celebrate.

One week before the conference, Gov. George Ryan (R) said he will review the cases of all 159 inmates on the state's death row, and possibly commute some or all of the sentences to life in prison, before he leaves office in January.

The governor imposed a moratorium on executions two years ago. His announcement last week was just the latest step in a shift in public and political sentiment about the death penalty in the state. The moratorium will remain in effect pending the results of a study on the death penalty by a 14-member commission appointed by Ryan. Ryan's spokesman, Dennis Culloton, said the report is scheduled to be released this spring.

Death penalty opponents, who once felt like a tiny minority of "voices in the wilderness," according to Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty, now feel that the weight of public opinion and legislative support is shifting to their side.

"I'd rather have somebody angry than have an innocent person killed," Ryan said March 2 at a capital punishment conference at the University of Oregon. "If government can't get this right, it ought not be in the business of passing such final, irreversible judgment."

If Ryan commutes the sentences of death row inmates, the inmates could not be executed even if the death penalty is reinstated under a future governor.

"This was a very courageous thing for the governor to do," said Anthony Porter, 42, who was released in 1999 after 17 years on death row on a murder conviction. Porter was released largely due to the efforts of Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess and his students, whose work has led to the release of at least four other inmates.

Illinois is one of 38 states that permit the death penalty. Since 1977, Illinois has released 13 people from death row and executed 12. Ryan has joined death penalty opponents in identifying incompetent lawyers, jailhouse snitches and insufficient testing of evidence as serious flaws in the process leading up to many death sentences.

In the past year, the governor also has vetoed two pieces of legislation that would have expanded the death penalty: an anti-terrorism bill and a bill that would have permitted the death penalty for gang-related murders. This year a bill named for Richard Cunningham, a lawyer and death penalty opponent who was killed in March 2001 by his mentally ill son, was introduced in the state legislature. The bill would replace the death sentence with life without possibility of parole.

"There is a growing public skepticism toward the death penalty," Bohman said. "The coalition has been around 25 years. At first we were just a few people holding vigils outside executions. Now it's exciting to learn that we're not alone. We've come a tremendous distance from when the death penalty could be used to torpedo a politician's candidacy, if they opposed it, to where politicians are supporting the moratorium."

Ryan continues to enjoy widespread support for his efforts and has been lauded by the likes of Cardinal Francis George; Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.); Sister Helen Prejean, the inspiration for the movie "Dead Man Walking"; and actor Mike Farrell.

Even pro-death penalty groups have expressed support or tolerance for Ryan's announcement.

"It's a step further than the moratorium," said Thomas Kirkpatrick, president of the Chicago Crime Commission, a civilian watchdog group. "There are plenty of people there who are clearly guilty. It's not a question of people being dragged innocently to their deaths. Political cynics will suggest it's the governor's attempt to defray attention from his other problems by getting favor with the humanitarian lobby. But while we traditionally support the death penalty, we agree with considering these issues that have been brought up."

"Reviewing those cases is part of the governor's job description," said John Gorman, spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office, which has frequently pushed for the death penalty. "There have been exonerations, but we believe the overwhelming number of cases that come through the system are handled appropriately."

Gary Gauger, a former death row inmate who was wrongfully convicted of killing his parents, said that although he supports the possible commutations, he wants more than that.

"No one wants to kill an innocent man," he said. "But you're also not doing an innocent man any favors when he's in prison for life for something he didn't do."


-------- ENERGY AND OTHER

-------- energy

Talk of New Drilling Raises Doubts on Alaska Pipeline

New York Times
March 11, 2002
By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/national/11PIPE.html

LIVENGOOD, Alaska - More than 13 billion barrels of oil have coursed down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline since it opened in 1977, and still the oil comes - from the Arctic Ocean, across the tundra, through mountains and forests and over or under hundreds of rivers and streams, south to the Gulf of Alaska through the 800-mile-long, 4-foot- wide pipe.

But even as Congress discusses a plan for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that could yield billions of gallons more, another debate is looming as the pipeline approaches the end of its 30-year lease on federal, state and native lands.

Regulators are examining whether the aging structure can be safely operated beyond that period. At the same time, with two big spills in the pipeline caused by sabotage, including one a few weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the regulators are also wondering about something else: how vulnerable is the structure to attack?

Though down from a peak of two million barrels a day in the late 1980's, the pipeline still moves a million barrels a day, nearly a fifth of the country's domestically produced oil. The North Slope has enough oil to keep the pipeline busy for years, and perhaps for decades if Congress yields to President Bush's desire to open the Arctic refuge to drilling.

The company that operates the structure, the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, says that though some engineers thought the pipeline would operate for 25 to 30 years there is no reason to impose such a deadline.

"Bit by bit, piece by piece, we can maintain it virtually forever," said Elden Johnson, an engineer on the pipeline and one of its designers.

The pipeline spills, the company likes to say, represent just 0.0000025 percent of the oil delivered - less than a teaspoon in a swimming pool.

But with the pipeline constantly subjected to corrosion, shifting in the permafrost and other factors that could damage the pipe or the 78,000 vertical pilings that support it, environmental groups and some current and former pipeline workers, express fear that its relatively good safety record may not hold.

"With proper maintenance, yes, the pipeline could last forever," said Ross Coen, executive director of the Alaska Forum for Environmental Responsibility. "But are they really willing to spend billions of dollars for maintenance when there may not be all that much oil left to send down the pipeline?"

In 1999, six employees of the company who did not give their names wrote to federal officials arguing that neglect and maintenance cuts on the pipeline could lead to disaster.

"It won't be a single gasket, or valve, or wire, or procedure, or person that will cause the catastrophe," wrote the employees, who said they all had at least 10 years of experience on the pipeline. "It will be a combination of small, perhaps seemingly inconsequential events and conditions that will lead to the accident that we're all dreading and powerless to prevent."

The Anchorage Daily News, the state's biggest newspaper, though an editorial proponent of drilling in the Arctic, has raised concerns about aging equipment on the pipeline and elsewhere in the Alaskan oil fields.

"There's a pattern here that looks chillingly close to the inattention and neglect that preceded the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989," the newspaper said in November.

Alyeska said that the pipeline was designed to minimize spills or damage from sabotage. Computers can shut the line down if an unexpected drop in pressure is detected, limiting the size of any spill.

But the pipeline's vulnerability was demonstrated here last Oct. 4, when, authorities say, Daniel Carson Lewis, 37, fired his hunting rifle at the pipeline, causing a leak that forced 6,800 barrels (about 285,600 gallons) onto the tundra and that has cost at least $7 million to clean up. Mr. Lewis was convicted on a federal weapons charge.

The incident caused the second- largest spill in the pipeline's history. It was the first time that bullets had punctured the double-steel-walled pipeline, though it has been fired at at least 50 times, according to company records. The largest spill took place in 1978, shortly after the pipeline opened, when vandals blew up a section, spilling 700,000 barrels of oil. No one was ever arrested.

Although the October incident was not considered a terrorist act, officials fear that the pipeline is an inviting target. In testimony to Congress, R. James Woolsey, a former director of central intelligence, said the pipeline could be "easily disrupted" and posed "a very vulnerable situation indeed."

Alyeska says it will not discuss specific security measures. Though it conducts regular ground and helicopter inspections, the company concedes that there is no way to monitor every foot of the pipeline.

Alaska's budget problems recently raised a new concern. Officials said they had to cut back operation of the Dalton Highway security checkpoint, near the Yukon River north of here, from 24 hours a day to 12. The highway parallels the pipeline for much of the way to the North Slope.

The Joint Pipeline Office in Anchorage, a consortium of state and federal agencies that oversees pipeline operations, says its safety and security record is good.

"This is probably the most monitored pipeline in the world," said Rhea DoBosh, a spokeswoman for the office. "The pipeline is being operated safely, and it is in good shape."

A report released by the office recently generally praised Alyeska's response to the October shooting.

But Richard Fineberg, an environmental consultant in Fairbanks, said the report went too easy on the repair operation. Among other things, he said, it should not have taken 36 hours for crews to stop oil from coming out of the bullet hole.

"The authors of this toothless report are clearly too close to see the forest for the oil-blackened trees they were supposed to protect," he said.

-------- environment

ARMY CORPS REFORM BILL AIMS TO AID ENVIRONMENT

March 11, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-11-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, Three U.S. senators have introduced a bill to reform the operations of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The legislation aims to increase the Corps' transparency and accountability, ensure fiscal responsibility, balance economic and environmental interests, and allow greater public involvement in the Corps' projects.

Senator Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, joined Senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, and Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, in introducing the Corps of Engineers Modernization and Improvement Act of 2002 (S 1987).

"I want to make sure that Wisconsin and other states receive all of the benefits the Corps could offer," Feingold said. "I want a reformed Corps of Engineers, one that no longer fails to produce predicted benefits, one that stops costing the taxpayers more than the Corps estimated, one that does not have unanticipated environmental impacts, and one that builds in an environmentally compatible way. This bill will help the Corps do a better job - the job that the taxpayers and the environment deserve."

The Corps has a backlog of projects that will take more than $50 billion in taxpayer dollars to complete, and it proposes more projects every two years. Two independent watchdogs, the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Army Inspector General, have determined that the agency has a bias toward large construction projects, and has on at least one occasion manipulated data to deceive Congress about the costs and benefits of a proposed project.

The reform bill would force the Corps of Engineers to reevaluate outdated projects and reduce future problems by making it more difficult for the Corps to propose projects to Congress that would cause more harm than good. The measure bars the Corps from including any economic benefits derived from the destruction of wetlands as it calculates a project's value, and requires local boosters of Corps managed projects to pay a larger share of the projects' costs.

The bill would require the Corps of Engineers to demonstrate an economic benefit of $1.50 for each tax dollar spent, up from the current 1:1 ratio. The measure would require independent peer review of all Corps analyses, and scrutiny by independent experts before the Corps could submit expensive or controversial proposals to Congress for authorization and funding.

Long standing projects would also undergo increased scrutiny. The bill would require the Corps to reevaluate projects that have been on the books for more than a decade, but that still are not built, to ensure that they meet modern project criteria.

Environmental groups applauded the measure, saying it would help put an end to the Corps' practice of justifying proposals to Congress with faulty or self serving environmental and economic analyses, and would require greater economic returns for the investment of tax dollars.

"The Corps has wasted millions of dollars on projects that destroy the environment while failing to produce promised economic benefits," said Melissa Samet, senior director for water resources at the conservation group American Rivers.

"Billions of federal taxpayer dollars have been spent on questionable projects that destroy America's wetlands and degrade our rivers and coastal areas," added Lois Schiffer, the National Audubon Society's senior vice president for public policy. "It's time to put the brakes on the senseless destruction of aquatic wildlife habitat."

-------- genetics

Study: Stem Cells Have Few Mutations

March 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Stem-Cells.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Embryonic stem cells develop a relatively small number of mutations and these can be detected by screening, according to a study that researchers say supports the eventual use of stem cells to treat disease.

In a study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that mouse embryonic stem cells were actually more genetically stable than were some adult cells.

``Everybody has assumed that the embryonic stem cell had a mutation rate,'' said Jay A. Tischfield, a researcher at Rutgers University and a co-author of the study. ``We show that it is actually lower than what you find in the adult cells.''

Peter J. Stambrook, a cell biologist at the University of Cincinnati and a co-author of the study, said that the most common embryonic stem cell mutation found in the mice was the deletion of a chromosome that is replaced by a second copy of the remaining chromosome. Although the numerical balance of chromosomes is restored by the replacement, the mutation can increase the risk of tumor formation.

But this type of mutation is quickly spotted in routine laboratory screening of cells, he said.

``It is actually very easy to screen for this mutation and you could then eliminate cells that have undergone this process,'' said Stambrook.

Embryonic stem cells are the master cells for development. They form within a few days of conception and are the primordial cells for all the tissues in the body. Many scientists believe these cells, grow in the laboratory, can be coaxed to transform into liver, heart and other cells that can be used to renew ailing organs.

Many people oppose research with human embryonic stem cells because to isolate them requires the death of an embryo. President Bush last summer issued regulations that would forbid federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research except for cell colonies that already existed. The result is that only about 78 cell colonies are available for federally funded research.

This has prompted widespread research on embryonic stem cell mutations, a key problem in learning how to use the cells for therapy.

``Our study defines one of the problems that can be screened for in embryonic stem cells,'' said Tischfield. The mutation found in the cells ``does not present an insurmountable problem'' in developing ways to use stem cells against disease, he said.

``By knowing what kind of problems that you can find, it allows you to check for them,'' he said.

Stambrook noted, however, that the chromosome deletion mutation seems to increase in frequency as a colony of stem cells ages.

``These events accumulate as one maintains these cells in culture,'' he said.

Larry Goldstein, a cell biologist at the University of California, San Diego, said the finding that mutations accumulate in a cell culture suggests that it is unlikely that the 78 cell colonies approved for federal funding will be enough to develop medical treatments.

``This paper highlights an issue that we have known about,'' he said. ``Because of the accumulation of mutations in cell lines that have been in culture for a long time, the 78 cell lines are not likely to be maximally beneficial'' for medical treatments.''

Dr. Clive Svendsen, a stem cell researcher at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin, said the Tischfield-Stambrook study ``points out something important to we need to be aware of'' in studying human embryonic stem cells and their possible medical application.

But he noted that mouse stem cells are known to be more prone to mutation than are human stem cells and that what is found in mice often does not apply to humans.

``Now it's important for those working with human cells to look for these chromosome mutations and to perform some of the same experiments on human cells,'' said Svendsen.

On the Net:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org/

-------- health

Project Censored: FLUORIDE, TEETH AND THE ATOMIC BOMB

BY JOEL GRIFFITHS AND CHRIS BRYSON,
Waste Not #414
http://www.fluoridealert.org/WN-414.htm

Introduction*: The following article was commissioned by the Christian Science Monitor in the spring of 1997. Despite much favorable comment from editors, and full documentation, the story remains unpublished by the Monitor. By any yardstick, this report was an award-winning scoop for any national paper. The report offers a glimpse into the history of fluoride, a bio-accumulative toxic that Americans ingest every day. The authors, Griffiths and Bryson, spent more than a year on research. With the belief that the information should be withheld no longer, the authors gave their report to Waste Not, and others, with a short note: "use as you wish."

The science of fluoridating public drinking water systems has been, from day one, shoddy at best. As we learn from this report, the basis of that science was rooted in protecting the U.S. Atomic bomb program from litigation. Americans have been convinced that fluoride will save their teeth and we drink more fluoridated water than any other nationality on earth. We learned about the dirty politics involved in the science and selling of fluoridation to a trusting public. We spent three months researching fluoride which resulted in the longest newsletter we've ever produced: Waste Not # 373. We learned that fluoride is a poison that accumulates in our bones. It has been associated with cancer in young males; osteoporosis; reduced I.Q.; and hip fractures in the elderly, to name a few. George Orwell would have been dazzled by the promotion of this toxic by dental and public health officials and concurrently, the avoidance of this issue by the environmental community. We think it has a lot to do with the sordid 50-year history of the promotion of fluoridation by the U.S. Department of Public Health and the American Dental Association. Rather than acknowledge the accumulating evidence of fluoride's threat to human health, they have en-trenched themselves in a position that has produced tactics that include the harassment of scientists and dentists who speak out.

*this introduction is taken from Waste Not #414 (September 1997) where the article was first published. The article went on to be nominated as the year's 18th most censored story in the 1998 Project Censored Series.

Some fifty years after the United States began adding fluoride to public water supplies to reduce cavities in children's teeth, declassified government documents are shedding new light on the roots of that still-controversial public health measure, revealing a surprising connection between fluoride and the dawning of the nuclear age.

Today, two thirds of U.S. public drinking water is fluoridated. Many municipalities still resist the practice, disbelieving the government's assurances of safety.

Since the days of World War II, when this nation prevailed by building the world's first atomic bomb, U.S. public health leaders have maintained that low doses of fluoride are safe for people, and good for children's teeth.

That safety verdict should now be re-examined in the light of hundreds of once-secret WWII documents obtained by Griffiths and Bryson --including declassified papers of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. military group that built the atomic bomb.

Fluoride was the key chemical in atomic bomb production, according to the documents. Massive quantities of fluoride-- millions of tons-- were essential for the manufacture of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. One of the most toxic chemicals known, fluoride rapidly emerged as the leading chemical health hazard of the U.S atomic bomb program--both for workers and for nearby communities, the documents reveal.

Other revelations include:

- Much of the original proof that fluoride is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists, who had been secretly ordered to provide "evidence useful in litigation" against defense contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program were not over radiation, but over fluoride damage, the documents show.

- Human studies were required. Bomb program researchers played a leading role in the design and implementation of the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoridating public drinking water--conducted in Newburgh, New York from 1945 to 1956. Then, in a classified operation code-named "Program F," they secretly gathered and analyzed blood and tissue samples from Newburgh citizens, with the cooperation of State Health Department personnel.

- The original secret version--obtained by these reporters--of a 1948 study published by Program F scientists in the Journal of the American Dental Association shows that evidence of adverse health effects from fluoride was censored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) --considered the most powerful of Cold War agencies-- for reasons of national security.

-- The bomb program's fluoride safety studies were conducted at the University of Rochester, site of one of the most notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War, in which unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium. The fluoride studies were conducted with the same ethical mind-set, in which "national security" was paramount.

- The U.S. government's conflict of interest--and its motive to prove fluoride "safe" -- has not until now been made clear to the general public in the furious debate over water fluoridation since the 1950's, nor to civilian researchers and health professionals, or journalists.

The declassified documents resonate with a growing body of scientific evidence, and a chorus of questions, about the health effects of fluoride in the environment.

Human exposure to fluoride has mushroomed since World War II, due not only to fluoridated water and toothpaste, but to environmental pollution by major industries from aluminum to pesticides: fluoride is a critical industrial chemical.

The impact can be seen, literally, in the smiles of our children. Large numbers of U.S. young people--up to 80 percent in some cities--now have dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive fluoride exposure, according to the U.S. National Research Council. (The signs are whitish flecks or spots, particularly on the front teeth, or dark spots or stripes in more severe cases.)

Less-known to the public is that fluoride also accumulates in bones --"The teeth are windows to what's happening in the bones," explains Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry at St. Lawrence University (N.Y.). In recent years, pediatric bone specialists have expressed alarm about an increase in stress fractures among U.S. young people. Connett and other scientists are concerned that fluoride --linked to bone damage by studies since the 1930's-- may be a contributing factor. The declassified documents add urgency: much of the original proof that low-dose fluoride is safe for children's bones came from U.S. bomb program scientists, according to this investigation.

Now, researchers who have reviewed these declassified documents fear that Cold War national security considerations may have prevented objective scientific evaluation of vital public health questions concerning fluoride.

"Information was buried," concludes Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, former head of toxicology at Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, and now a critic of fluoridation. Animal studies Mullenix and co-workers conducted at Forsyth in the early 1990's indicated that fluoride was a powerful central nervous system (CNS) toxin, and might adversely affect human brain functioning, even at low doses. (New epidemiological evidence from China adds support, showing a correlation between low-dose fluoride exposure and diminished I.Q. in children.) Mullenix's results were published in 1995, in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal.

During her investigation, Mullenix was astonished to discover there had been virtually no previous U.S. studies of fluoride's effects on the human brain. Then, her application for a grant to continue her CNS research was turned down by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), where an NIH panel, she says, flatly told her that "fluoride does not have central nervous system effects."

Declassified documents of the U.S. atomic-bomb program indicate otherwise. An April 29, 1944 Manhattan Project memo reports: "Clinical evidence suggests that uranium hexafluoride may have a rather marked central nervous system effect.... It seems most likely that the F [code for fluoride] component rather than the T [code for uranium] is the causative factor."

The memo --stamped "secret"-- is addressed to the head of the Manhattan Project's Medical Section, Colonel Stafford Warren. Colonel Warren is asked to approve a program of animal research on CNS effects: "Since work with these compounds is essential, it will be necessary to know in advance what mental effects may occur after exposure...This is important not only to protect a given individual, but also to prevent a confused workman from injuring others by improperly performing his duties." (See copy of memo).

On the same day, Colonel Warren approved the CNS research program. This was in 1944, at the height of the Second World War and the nation's race to build the world's first atomic bomb. For research on fluoride's CNS effects to be approved at such a momentous time, the supporting evidence set forth in the proposal forwarded along with the memo must have been persuasive.

The proposal, however, is missing from the files of the U.S. National Archives. "If you find the memos, but the document they refer to is missing, its probably still classified," said Charles Reeves, chief librarian at the Atlanta branch of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, where the memos were found. Similarly, no results of the Manhattan Project's fluoride CNS research could be found in the files.

After reviewing the memos, Mullenix declared herself "flabbergasted." She went on, "How could I be told by NIH that fluoride has no central nervous system effects when these documents were sitting there all the time?" She reasons that the Manhattan Project did do fluoride CNS studies --"that kind of warning, that fluoride workers might be a danger to the bomb program by improperly performing their duties--I can't imagine that would be ignored"-- but that the results were buried because they might create a difficult legal and public relations problem for the government.

The author of the 1944 CNS research proposal was Dr. Harold C. Hodge, at the time chief of fluoride toxicology studies for the University of Rochester division of the Manhattan Project. Nearly fifty years later at the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, Dr. Mullenix was introduced to a gently ambling elderly man brought in to serve as a consultant on her CNS research--Harold C. Hodge. By then Hodge had achieved status emeritus as a world authority on fluoride safety. "But even though he was supposed to be helping me," says Mullenix, "he never once mentioned the CNS work he had done for the Manhattan Project."

The "black hole" in fluoride CNS research since the days of the Manhattan Project is unacceptable to Mullenix, who refuses to abandon the issue. "There is so much fluoride exposure now, and we simply do not know what it is doing," she says. "You can't just walk away from this."

Dr. Antonio Noronha, an NIH scientific review advisor familiar with Dr. Mullenix's grant request, says her proposal was rejected by a scientific peer-review group. He terms her claim of institutional bias against fluoride CNS research "farfetched." He adds, "We strive very hard at NIH to make sure politics does not enter the picture."

Fluoride and National Security

The documentary trail begins at the height of WW2, in 1944, when a severe pollution incident occurred downwind of the E.I. du Pont du Nemours Company chemical factory in Deepwater, New Jersey. The factory was then producing millions of pounds of fluoride for the Manhattan project, the ultra-secret U.S. military program racing to produce the world's first atomic bomb.

The farms downwind in Gloucester and Salem counties were famous for their high-quality produce -- their peaches went directly to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Their tomatoes were bought up by Campbell's Soup.

But in the summer of 1943, the farmers began to report that their crops were blighted, and that "something is burning up the peach crops around here."

Poultry died after an all-night thunderstorm, they reported. Farm workers who ate the produce they had picked sometimes vomited all night and into the next day. "I remember our horses looked sick and were too stiff to work," these reporters were told by Mildred Giordano, who was a teenager at the time. Some cows were so crippled they could not stand up, and grazed by crawling on their bellies.

The account was confirmed in taped interviews, shortly before he died, with Philip Sadtler of Sadtler Laboratories of Philadelphia, one of the nation's oldest chemical consulting firms. Sadtler had personally conducted the initial investigation of the damage.

Although the farmers did not know it, the attention of the Manhattan Project and the federal government was riveted on the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret documents obtained by these reporters. After the war's end, in a secret Manhattan Project memo dated March 1, 1946, the Project's chief of fluoride toxicology studies, Harold C. Hodge, worriedly wrote to his boss Colonel Stafford L. Warren, Chief of the Medical Division, about "problems associated with the question of fluoride contamination of the atmosphere in a certain section of New Jersey. There seem to be four distinct (though related) problems," continued Hodge;

"1. A question of injury of the peach crop in 1944."

"2. A report of extraordinary fluoride content of vegetables grown in this area."

"3. A report of abnormally high fluoride content in the blood of human individuals residing in this area."

"4. A report raising the question of serious poisoning of horses and cattle in this area."

The New Jersey farmers waited until the war was over, then sued du Pont and the Manhattan Project for fluoride damage -- reportedly the first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program. (Read article on lawsuit in the Philadelphia Record, Oct. 18, 1946).

Although seemingly trivial, the lawsuits shook the government, the secret documents reveal. (Read the documents at http://www.fluoridealert.org/deepwater.htm). Under the personal direction of Manhattan Project chief Major General Leslie R.Groves, secret meetings were convened in Washington, with compulsory attendance by scores of scientists and officials from the U.S War Department, the Manhattan Project, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture and Justice Departments, the U.S Army's Chemical Warfare Service and Edgewood Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, and du Pont lawyers. Declassified memos of the meetings reveal a secret mobilization of the full forces of the government to defeat the New Jersey farmers:

These agencies "are making scientific investigations to obtain evidence which may be used to protect the interest of the Government at the trial of the suits brought by owners of peach orchards in ... New Jersey," stated Manhattan Project Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B. Rhodes, in a memo c.c.'d to General Groves.

27 August 1945

Subject: Investigation of Crop Damage at Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey To: The Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Pentagon Building, Washington D.C.

"At the request of the Secretary of War the Department of Agriculture has agreed to cooperate in investigating complaints of crop damage attributed... to fumes from a plant operated in connection with the Manhattan Project."

Signed, L.R. Groves, Major General U.S.A

"The Department of Justice is cooperating in the defense of these suits," wrote General Groves in a Feb. 28, 1946 memo to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy.

Why the national-security emergency over a few lawsuits by New Jersey farmers? In 1946 the United States had begun full-scale production of atomic bombs. No other nation had yet tested a nuclear weapon, and the A-bomb was seen as crucial for U.S leadership of the postwar world. The New Jersey fluoride lawsuits were a serious roadblock to that strategy.

"The specter of endless lawsuits haunted the military," writes Lansing Lamont in his acclaimed book about the first atomic bomb test, "Day of Trinity."

In the case of fluoride, "If the farmers won, it would open the door to further suits, which might impede the bomb program's ability to use fluoride," said Jacqueline Kittrell, a Tennessee public interest lawyer specializing in nuclear cases, who examined the declassified fluoride documents. (Kittrell has represented plaintiffs in several human radiation experiment cases.) She added, "The reports of human injury were especially threatening, because of the potential for enormous settlements -- not to mention the PR problem."

Indeed, du Pont was particularly concerned about the "possible psychologic reaction" to the New Jersey pollution incident, according to a secret 1946 Manhattan Project memo. Facing a threat from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to embargo the region's produce because of "high fluoride content," du Pont dispatched its lawyers to the FDA offices in Washington, where an agitated meeting ensued. According to a memo sent next day to General Groves, Du Pont's lawyer argued "that in view of the pending suits...any action by the Food and Drug Administration... would have a serious effect on the du Pont Company and would create a bad public relations situation." After the meeting adjourned, Manhattan Project Captain John Davies approached the FDA's Food Division chief and "impressed upon Dr. White the substantial interest which the Government had in claims which might arise as a result of action which might be taken by the Food and Drug Administration."

There was no embargo. Instead, new tests for fluoride in the New Jersey area would be conducted -- not by the Department of Agriculture -- but by the U.S. Army's Chemical Warfare Service because "work done by the Chemical Warfare Service would carry the greatest weight as evidence if... lawsuits are started by the complainants." The memo was signed by General Groves.

Meanwhile, the public relations problem remained unresolved -- local citizens were in a panic about fluoride.

The farmer's spokesman, Willard B. Kille, was personally invited to dine with General Groves --then known as "the man who built the atomic bomb" -- at his office at the War Department on March 26, 1946. Although he had been diagnosed with fluoride poisoning by his doctor, Kille departed the luncheon convinced of the government's good faith. The next day he wrote to the general, wishing the other farmers could have been present, he said, so "they too could come away with the feeling that their interests in this particular matter were being safeguarded by men of the very highest type whose integrity they could not question."

In a subsequent secret Manhattan project memo, a broader solution to the public relations problem was suggested by chief fluoride toxicologist Harold C. Hodge. He wrote to the Medical Section chief, Col. Warren: "Would there be any use in making attempts to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents of Salem and Gloucester counties through lectures on F toxicology and perhaps the usefulness of F in tooth health?" Such lectures were indeed given, not only to New Jersey citizens but to the rest of the nation throughout the Cold War.

The New Jersey farmers' lawsuits were ultimately stymied by the government's refusal to reveal the key piece of information that would have settled the case --how much fluoride du Pont had vented into the atmosphere during the war. "Disclosure... would be injurious to the military security of the United States," wrote Manhattan Project Major C.A Taney, Jr. The farmers were pacified with token financial settlements, according to interviews with descendants still living in the area.

"All we knew is that du Pont released some chemical that burned up all the peach trees around here," recalls Angelo Giordano, whose father James was one of the original plaintiffs. "The trees were no good after that, so we had to give up on the peaches." Their horses and cows, too, acted stiff and walked stiff, recalls his sister Mildred. "Could any of that have been the fluoride ?" she asked. (The symptoms she detailed to the authors are cardinal signs of fluoride toxicity, according to veterinary toxicologists.)

The Giordano family, too, has been plagued by bone and joint problems, Mildred adds. Recalling the settlement received by the Giordanos, Angelo told these reporters that "my father said he got about $200."

The farmers were stonewalled in their search for information, and their complaints have long since been forgotten. But they unknowingly left their imprint on history -- their claims of injury to their health reverberated through the corridors of power in Washington, and triggered intensive secret bomb-program research on the health effects of fluoride. A secret 1945 memo from Manhattan Project Lt. Col. Rhodes to General Groves stated: "Because of complaints that animals and humans have been injured by hydrogen fluoride fumes in [the New Jersey] area, although there are no pending suits involving such claims, the University of Rochester is conducting experiments to determine the toxic effect of fluoride."

Much of the proof of fluoride's safety in low doses rests on the postwar work performed by the University of Rochester, in anticipation of lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury.

Fluoride and the Cold War.

Delegating fluoride safety studies to the University of Rochester was not surprising. During WWII the federal government had become involved, for the first time, in large-scale funding of scientific research at government-owned labs and private colleges. Those early spending priorities were shaped by the nation's often-secret military needs.

The prestigious upstate New York college, in particular, had housed a key wartime division of the Manhattan Project, studying the health effects of the new "special materials," such as uranium, plutonium, beryllium and fluoride, being used to make the atomic bomb. That work continued after the war, with millions of dollars flowing from the Manhattan Project and its successor organization, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). (Indeed, the bomb left an indelible imprint on all U.S. science in the late 1940's and 50's. Up to 90% of federal funds for university research came from either the Defense Department or the AEC in this period, according to Noam Chomsky's 1996 book "The Cold War and the University.")

The University of Rochester medical school became a revolving door for senior bomb program scientists. Postwar faculty included Stafford Warren, the top medical officer of the Manhattan Project, and Harold Hodge, chief of fluoride research for the bomb program.

But this marriage of military secrecy and medical science bore deformed offspring. The University of Rochester's classified fluoride studies -- code- named Program F -- were conducted at its Atomic Energy Project (AEP), a top-secret facility funded by the AEC and housed in Strong Memorial Hospital. It was there that one of the most notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War took place, in which unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium. Revelation of this experiment in a Pulitzer prize-winning account by Eileen Welsome led to a 1995 U.S. Presidential investigation, and a multimillion-dollar cash settlement for victims. (Read Eileen Welsome's account of the U. of Rochester's Medical Experimentation at http://www.fluoridealert.org/p-files.htm)

Program F was not about children's teeth. It grew directly out of litigation against the bomb program and its main purpose was to furnish scientific ammunition which the government and its nuclear contractors could use to defeat lawsuits for human injury. Program F's director was none other than Harold C. Hodge, who had led the Manhattan Project investigation of alleged human injury in the New Jersey fluoride-pollution incident.

Program F's purpose is spelled out in a classified 1948 report. It reads: "To supply evidence useful in the litigation arising from an alleged loss of a fruit crop several years ago, a number of problems have been opened. Since excessive blood fluoride levels were reported in human residents of the same area, our principal effort has been devoted to describing the relationship of blood fluorides to toxic effects."

The litigation referred to, of course, and the claims of human injury were against the bomb program and its contractors. Thus, the purpose of Program F was to obtain evidence useful in litigation against the bomb program. The research was being conducted by the defendants.

The potential conflict of interest is clear. If lower dose ranges were found hazardous by Program F, it might have opened the bomb program and its contractors to lawsuits for injury to human health, as well as public outcry.

Comments lawyer Kittrell: "This and other documents indicate that the University of Rochester's fluoride research grew out of the New Jersey lawsuits and was performed in anticipation of lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury. Studies undertaken for litigation purposes by the defendants would not be considered scientifically acceptable today, " adds Kittrell, "because of their inherent bias to prove the chemical safe."

Unfortunately, much of the proof of fluoride's safety rests on the work performed by Program F Scientists at the University of Rochester. During the postwar period that university emerged as the leading academic center for establishing the safety of fluoride, as well as its effectiveness in reducing tooth decay, according to Dental School spokesperson William H. Bowen, MD. The key figure in this research, Bowen said, was Harold C. Hodge-- who also became a leading national proponent of fluoridating public drinking water. Program F's interest in water fluoridation was not just 'to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents,' as Hodge had earlier written. The bomb program needed human studies, as they had needed human studies for plutonium, and adding fluoride to public water supplies provided one opportunity.

The A-Bomb Program and Water Fluoridation

Bomb-program scientists played a prominent -- if unpublicized -- role in the nation's first-planned water fluoridation experiment, in Newburgh, New York. The Newburgh Demonstration Project is considered the most extensive study of the health effects of fluoridation, supplying much of the evidence that low doses are safe for children's bones, and good for their teeth.

Planning began in 1943 with the appointment of a special New York State Health Department committee to study the advisability of adding fluoride to Newburgh's drinking water. The chairman of the committee was Dr. Hodge, then chief of fluoride toxicity studies for the Manhattan Project.

Subsequent members included Henry L. Barnett, a captain in the Project's Medical section, and John W. Fertig, in 1944 with the office of Scientific Research and Development, the Pentagon group which sired the Manhattan Project. Their military affiliations were kept secret: Hodge was described as a pharmacologist, Barnett as a pediatrician. Placed in charge of the Newburgh project was David B. Ast, chief dental officer of the State Health Department. Ast had participated in a key secret wartime conference on fluoride held by the Manhattan Project, and later worked with Dr. Hodge on the Project's investigation of human injury in the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret memos.

The committee recommended that Newburgh be fluoridated. It also selected the types of medical studies to be done, and "provided expert guidance" for the duration of the experiment. The key question to be answered was: "Are there any cumulative effects -- beneficial or otherwise, on tissues and organs other than the teeth -- of long-continued ingestion of such small concentrations...?" According to the declassified documents, this was also key information sought by the bomb program, which would require long-continued exposure of workers and communities to fluoride throughout the Cold War.

In May 1945, Newburgh's water was fluoridated, and over the next ten years its residents were studied by the State Health Department. In tandem, Program F conducted its own secret studies, focusing on the amounts of fluoride Newburgh citizens retained in their blood and tissues - key information sought by the bomb program: "Possible toxic effects of fluoride were in the forefront of consideration," the advisory committee stated. Health Department personnel cooperated, shipping blood and placenta samples to the Program F team at the University of Rochester. The samples were collected by Dr. David B. Overton, the Department's chief of pediatric studies at Newburgh.

The final report of the Newburgh Demonstration Project, published in 1956 in the Journal of the American Dental Association, concluded that "small concentrations" of fluoride were safe for U.S.citizens. The biological proof -- "based on work performed ... at the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project" -- was delivered by Dr. Hodge.

Today, news that scientists from the atomic bomb program secretly shaped and guided the Newburgh fluoridation experiment, and studied the citizen's blood and tissue samples, is greeted with incredulity.

"I'm shocked -- beyond words," said present-day Newburgh Mayor Audrey Carey, commenting on these reporters' findings. "It reminds me of the Tuskegee experiment that was done on syphilis patients down in Alabama."

As a child in the early 1950's, Mayor Carey was taken to the old firehouse on Broadway in Newburgh, which housed the Public Health Clinic. There, doctors from the Newburgh fluoridation project studied her teeth, and a peculiar fusion of two finger bones on her left hand she had been born with. Today, adds Carey, her granddaughter has white dental-fluorosis marks on her front teeth.

Mayor Carey wants answers from the government about the secret history of fluoride, and the Newburgh fluoridation experiment. "I absolutely want to pursue it," she said. "It is appalling to do any kind of experimentation and study without people's knowledge and permission."

Contacted by these reporters, the director of the Newburgh experiment, David B. Ast, says he was unaware Manhattan Project scientists were involved. "If I had known, I would have been certainly investigating why, and what the connection was," he said. Did he know that blood and placenta samples from Newburgh were being sent to bomb program researchers at the University of Rochester? "I was not aware of it," Ast replied. Did he recall participating in the Manhattan Project's secret wartime conference on fluoride in January 1944, or going to New Jersey with Dr. Hodge to investigate human injury in the du Pont case--as secret memos state? He told the reporters he had no recollection of these events.

A spokesperson for the University of Rochester Medical Center, Bob Loeb, confirmed that blood and tissue samples from Newburgh had been tested by the University's Dr. Hodge. On the ethics of secretly studying U.S citizens to obtain information useful in litigation against the A-bomb program, he said, "that's a question we cannot answer." He referred inquiries to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), successor to the Atomic Energy Commission.

A spokesperson for the DOE in Washington, Jayne Brady, confirmed that a review of DOE files indicated that a "significant reason" for fluoride experiments conducted at the University of Rochester after the war was "impending litigation between the du Pont company and residents of New Jersey areas." However, she added, "DOE has found no documents to indicate that fluoride research was done to protect the Manhattan Project or its contractors from lawsuits."

On Manhattan Project involvement in Newburgh, the spokesperson stated, "Nothing that we have suggests that the DOE or predecessor agencies -- especially the Manhattan Project -- authorized fluoride experiments to be performed on children in the 1940's."

When told that the reporters had several documents that directly tied the Manhattan Project's successor agency at the University of Rochester, the AEP, to the Newburgh experiment, the DOE spokesperson later conceded her study was confined to "the available universe" of documents. Two days later spokesperson Jayne Brady faxed a statement for clarification: "My search only involved the documents that we collected as part of our human radiation experiments project -- fluoride was not part of our research effort.

"Most significantly," the statement continued, relevant documents may be in a classified collection at the DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory known as the Records Holding Task Group. "This collection consists entirely of classified documents removed from other files for the purpose of classified document accountability many years ago," and was "a rich source of documents for the human radiation experiments project," she said.

The crucial question arising from this investigation is: Were adverse health findings from Newburgh and other bomb-program fluoride studies suppressed? All AEC-funded studies had to be declassified before publication in civilian medical and dental journals. Where are the original classified versions?

The transcript of one of the major secret scientific conferences of WW2--on "fluoride metabolism"--is missing from the files of the U.S. National Archives. Participants in the conference included key figures who promoted the safety of fluoride and water fluoridation to the public after the war - Harold Hodge of the Manhattan Project, David B. Ast of the Newburgh Project, and U.S. Public Health Service dentist H.Trendley Dean, popularly known as the "father of fluoridation." "If it is missing from the files, it is probably still classified," National Archives librarians told these reporters.

A 1944 WW2 Manhattan Project classified report on water fluoridation is missing from the files of the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project, the U.S. National Archives, and the Nuclear Repository at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The next four numerically consecutive documents are also missing, while the remainder of the "MP-1500 series" is present. "Either those documents are still classified, or they've been 'disappeared' by the government," says Clifford Honicker, Executive Director of the American Environmental Health Studies Project, in Knoxville, Tennessee, which provided key evidence in the public exposure and prosecution of U.S. human radiation experiments.

Seven pages have been cut out of a 1947 Rochester bomb-project notebook entitled "Du Pont litigation." "Most unusual," commented chief medical school archivist Chris Hoolihan.

Similarly, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by these authors over a year ago with the DOE for hundreds of classified fluoride reports have failed to dislodge any. "We're behind," explained Amy Rothrock, FOIA officer for the Department of Energy at their Oak Ridge operations.

Was information suppressed? These reporters made what appears to be the first discovery of the original classified version of a fluoride safety study by bomb program scientists. A censored version of this study was later published in the August 1948 Journal of the American Dental Association. Comparison of the secret with the published version indicates that the U.S. AEC did censor damaging information on fluoride, to the point of tragicomedy.

This was a study of the dental and physical health of workers in a factory producing fluoride for the A-bomb program, conducted by a team of dentists from the Manhattan Project.

- The secret version reports that most of the men had no teeth left. The published version reports only that the men had fewer cavities.

- The secret version says the men had to wear rubber boots because the fluoride fumes disintegrated the nails in their shoes. The published version does not mention this.

- The secret version says the fluoride may have acted similarly on the men's teeth, contributing to their toothlessness. The published version omits this statement.

The published version concludes that "the men were unusually healthy, judged from both a medical and dental point of view."

Asked for comment on the early links of the Manhattan Project to water fluoridation, Dr Harold Slavkin, Director of the National Institute for Dental Research, the U.S. agency which today funds fluoride research, said, "I wasn't aware of any input from the Atomic Energy Commission." Nevertheless, he insisted, fluoride's efficacy and safety in the prevention of dental cavities over the last fifty years is well-proved. "The motivation of a scientist is often different from the outcome, " he reflected. "I do not hold a prejudice about where the knowledge comes from."

After comparing the secret and published versions of the censored study, toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix commented, "This makes me ashamed to be a scientist." Of other Cold War-era fluoride safety studies, she asks, "Were they all done like this?"

Archival research by Clifford Honicker

Joel Griffiths is a medical writer in New York City, author of a book on radiation hazards and numerous articles for medical and popular publications. Joel can be contacted at 212-662-6695. Chris Bryson holds a Masters degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and has worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation, The Manchester Guardian, The Christian Science Monitor and Public Television. Chris can be contacted at 212-665-3442.

Waste Not # 414 Published 48 times a year. Editors: Ellen & Paul Connett, 82 Judson Street, Canton NY 13617. Tel: 315-379-9200. Fax: 315-379-0448. Email: wastenot@northnet.org

-------- human rights

China Report Criticizes U.S. Human Rights Record

By REUTERS
March 10, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-rights-china-usa.html

BEIJING (Reuters) - China issued its annual report on human rights in the United States on Monday, accusing Washington of turning a blind eye to abuses in its own land while criticizing other countries for theirs.

The report by the Information Office of the State Council, China's cabinet, listed evidence of police abuses, poverty, racial discrimination and lack of personal safety in the United States, the official Xinhua news agency said.

It also accused Washington of ``wantonly infringing'' on the sovereignty of other nations through military operations and stationing U.S. forces overseas, Xinhua said.

And it criticized the administration of President Bush for withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gases.

China releases the report every year in response to a State Department report on global human rights conditions, which usually accuses China of widespread abuses. The U.S. report came out last week.

``Once again the United States, assuming the role of 'world judge of human rights' has distorted human rights conditions in many countries and regions in the world, including China, and accused them of human rights violations, all the while turning a blind eye to its own human rights-related problems,'' the Chinese report said.

``In fact it is right in the United States where serious human rights violations exist.''

Human rights is one of the most sensitive issues in relations between China and the United States.

Washington has urged Beijing repeatedly to protect civil liberties and religious freedom. China rejects U.S. criticism and says it is more important to protect its 1.3 billion people's rights to food, shelter and clothing.

----

CIA OPERATING WITH FREE HAND;
POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS RISE

March 11, 2002
American Free Press
(formerly The Spotlight)
Christopher Petherick
http://www.americanfreepress.net

Washington, DC -- Has a Bush order following 9-11, which takes the cuffs off of US intelligence, led to a rash of assassinations around the world? Some astute international observers believe so.

A Bush administration's new directive removing constraints set by previous administrations on how US intelligence operates around the world has brought condemnation from human rights groups. At the same time, a rash of assassinations of maverick rebel leaders in the past few months has some international observers asking to what extent were US spooks involved? Were they doing teh dirty work in return for support of corporate interests and America's expanding war on terror?

The latest occurred on Feb 22 when the longtime leader of the anti-communist Angolan guerilla group, UNITA, Dr Jonas Savimbi was killed by Angolan army units.

The elusive Savimbi founded UNITE 36 years ago and had fought to take power in Angola since the cuontry gained independence from Portugal in 1975.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Savimbi was the darling of the West. UNITA was regularly supplied militarily by the United States through South Africa to combat the comunist-backed goernment headed by President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

However, in the early 1980s with the threat of communism over, Washington began distnacing itself from Savimbi, while cozying up to the Angolan government which sought American assistance in tracking Savimbi down.

On Sept 26, 1993, President Bill Clinton quietly signed Executive Order 12865 concerning "the unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the Unied States constituted by the actions and politics of [UNITA]." That executive order imposed strict sanctions on UNITA, closing properties owned by UNITA members adn locking all exports from the rebel group.

But the United States, unwillingly to openly acknolwedge its abrupt policy change, began sowing confusion and covering up its about face in regard to Savimbi.

In a 1999 article, Voice of America reported, "A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity," said "Washington has refused to provide help -- despite its professed desire for closer ties with the Marxist government in Luanda ... The reason is simple: The Clinton administration does not want to be party to getting Mr Savimbi killed."

As recently as Sept 24, 2001, Bush upheld the ongoing sanctions against America's former ally, stating: "Because of our continuing international obligations and the prejudicial effect that discontinuation of the sanctions would have on prospects for peace in angola, the national emergency declared on sept 26, 1993 ... must continue in effect beyond Sept 26, 2001."

Some have pointed tothe apparent convienience of Bush's scheduled Feb 26 meeting with the leader of the oil and diamond rich country following the killing of Savimbi as evidence of a quid pro quo.

The BBC reported that Bush had scheduled the meeting with the Angolan president, along with the presidents of Mozambique and Botswana, "before the political landscape of Angola changed with the deth of Savimbi, who led the rebel movement agaisnt the Luanda government for more than 26 years." ...

MORE KILLINGS

According to some, Savimbi's killing could be one of many post Cold War loose ends US intelligence would like to see wrapped up./

In a lengthy series of reports, Washington Post reporters Bob woodward and Dan Balz detailed talks held by the Bush administration following 9-11 on the proper US response to the terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Woodward and Balz reported that CIA Director George Tenet gave Bush a top secret report, titled "Worldwide Attack Matrix," listing individuals and groups the CIA had targeted in 80 countries. Tenet reportedly wanted authorization from the president to pursue the assassinations of individuals either directly or through US proxies.

according to Wayne Madsen, a former intelligence officer at the National Security Agency: "In Bush's 'New World Order,' social activists and progresive leaders everywhere are now within the crosshairs of the CIA and its local notorious surrogates."

Accordingto Madsen, with teh CIA's vast black budget and resources, luck quickly ran out for a number of world's troublesome rebel leaders.

On Dec 23, 2001, Chief Bola Ige, the minister of justice and attorney general of NIgeria, was assassinated by unknown gunmen.

Ige had reportedly become a thorn in the side of international oil companies operating in Nigeria, complaining they were robbing the people and had polluted the country.

A hired mercenary group from Alexandria, VA, Military Professional Resource International, with ties to US intelligence, was responsible for overseeing security for oil companies and training Nigerian forces. It's been speculated that MPRI provided its technical expertise in the killing.

On Jan 22, Indonesia's KOPASSOS troops, trained by US intelligence and military, killed the commander of the Free Aceh movement, Abdullah Syafi.

Shortly before Syafi's killing, rebel leaders claimed that Syafi was mailed a letter containing a microchip supplied by Western intelligence that allowed Indonesian troops to trail him.

According to Madsen, "the operation has all the earmarks of teh CIA, which can rely on National Security Agency satellites to track microchip transponders."

On Feb 11 in India, Benjamin Hrangkhawl, a leader of the National Liberation Front of Tripura, a Christian separatist group, was shot and killed by Indian law enforcement.

Indian law enforement characterized the assassination of Hrangkhawl as "a major success."

----

Study: Rights Activists More Oppressed Since Sept. 11

March 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-rights-defenders.html

PARIS (Reuters) - Governments around the world are using the fight against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States to justify persecution and oppression of those who defend human rights, a report said Monday.

Civilians standing up for human rights are increasingly viewed with suspicion and discredited by some governments which equate their causes with those of terrorists, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders said.

``The international fight against terrorism is used by certain states to legitimize their own policy of neutralizing all forms of opposition and political challenge,'' the Observatory said in a statement accompanying its 2001 report.

It referred specifically to speeches made by Russian President Vladimir Putin since Sept. 11 and the recent adoption in many countries of specific laws tightening security.

Putin has been a staunch supporter of the war on terrorism launched by President Bush in the wake of the September attacks and has drawn comparisons with Russia's two-year war in its rebel Chechnya province.

The Observatory, run by the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights League and Geneva's World Organization Against Torture, detailed 400 cases of citizens in over 80 countries persecuted for tackling the system.

``The defenders are ... hounded, harassed, arrested, even executed by the authorities or private groups,'' it said.

The Observatory highlighted individual cases and groups of people targeted around the world, including union members in Colombia, journalists in the Democratic Republic of Congo and ex-Soviet CIS countries and gay rights activists in India.

One of the cases it looked at was that of a Tunisian judge who wrote an open letter to President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali criticising the country's lack of judicial independence and was later removed from his post.

It also detailed heavy-handed tactics employed by the authorities in Sudan, where 15 human rights lawyers were harassed and arrested without charge last year, with some being tortured while held in horrific conditions.

-------- imf / world bank

World Bank Officials Defend Record

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 11, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-World-Bank-Aid.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Brushing aside criticism from Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and others, the World Bank said Monday that over the past 50 years it has done more good than harm in helping poor countries develop their economies.

But a study of the bank's successes and failures of the past 50 years suggests there have been some ``significant shortcomings and failures,'' particularly in Africa.

The study, conducted at the request of O'Neill, will be presented next week at a U.N. meeting on financing for development in Monterrey, Mexico that President Bush and other world leaders will attend.

O'Neill has said that making new loans to poor countries from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank is loading them down with debt. The Bush administration is proposing that up to 50 percent of future World Bank assistance to the world's poorest countries be in the form of grants that do not have to be repaid.

Asked about the new World Bank report evaluating its activities, O'Neill said Monday he had not yet seen it but was looking forward to reading it.

``I would be delighted to have demonstrated facts that show that we've been greatly successful and I hope that I will find them in this report,'' O'Neill told reporters, adding, ``For a very large fraction of the world population, people still living under a dollar a day, that doesn't seem to me like 50 years worth of success.''

The bank on Monday sought to use the study to boost public support for its policies and to call for an increase in aid. It released a 10-page summary that mostly listed successes, saying its loans sparked ``rapid development'' in China, India, Mozambique, Uganda, Poland and Vietnam. It said every $1 billion in development loans it makes now lifts 434,000 people out of dire poverty, an improvement of more than 60 percent oe study said. ``To develop ideas, the bank has to take some risks, and some failures are inevitable. What is essential is to learn from those failures. The bank has tried to do so.'' In general, the summary says, the bank's policies have contributed to a ``rapid, if uneven'' improvement in the living standards of people in poor countries.

The summary says African countries were at least partly responsible for their economic decline. ``Countries that have not grown rapidly - in Africa and elsewhere - have often failed to make progress on key features of the investment climate,'' it says.

``For example, they may have achieved macroeconomic stability but not social stability; or they may have lowered trade barriers but not built the basic infrastructure necessary for international trade; some have done none of these things.''

The World Bank has proposed that wealthy nations double their spending on foreign aid to help poor countries by $40 to $50 Billion a year.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn said last week that while ``budgetary realities may make it impossible to double aid over night, rich countries ought to endorse a phased in increase --``say an additional $10 billion a year for the next five years, building to an extra $50 billion in year five.''

On the Net:
World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org


-------- ACTIVISTS

MARCH ON WASHINGTON, APRIL 20

From: "Green Party of Ohio" <secretary@ohiogreens.org>
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 6:59 AM

The Green Party of the United States, as a participant in the 9-11 Emergency National Network, calls for all able Greens to participate in the upcoming March on Washington, April 20, 2002.

Visit the Green Party of the U.S. 9-11 Crisis page: http://www.gp-us.org/911.html

Register to Join the March on Washington for Peace and Justice: http://www.gp-us.org/call_register.html

----

War 'playing into al-Qaeda's hands'
The war could be "deeply counter-productive"

By BBC News Online
Alex Kirby
Monday, 11 March, 2002, 08:04 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1865000/1865999.stm

Two British scholars say the US strategy for defeating al-Qaeda is in fact having the opposite effect.

They describe the military response to the terrorism of 11 September as "deeply counter-productive".

Broadening the war on terror from Afghanistan to Iraq, they believe, could provoke Baghdad into first use of chemical or biological weapons.

Endless conflict, they argue, will be the consequence of meeting terror with violence.

The two academics are Professor Paul Rogers, of Bradford University's peace studies department, and Dr Scilla Elworthy, director of the Oxford Research Group (ORG).

Six months on from the attacks on the US, the ORG has published their appraisal of what has been achieved, entitled Never-ending War?: Consequences of September 11.

The authors say antagonism towards the US from al-Qaeda and its allies had been developing for more than a decade, fuelled by the politics of the Gulf region after the 1991 war against Iraq.

The Gulf holds two-thirds of the world's known oil reserves: US dependence on imported oil rose from 12.5% of consumption in 1970 to 60.9% in 2000.

'Unacceptable control'

The report notes "a widespread belief that the US... [is] exerting an unacceptable control over the Gulf states because of its determination to maintain security of oil supplies".

It contrasts this with an American focus on seeing al-Qaeda "simply as fundamentalists acting from motives of sheer hatred for the US and all it stood for".

In Afghanistan itself, the authors say, Russia has now regained significant influence as a consequence of the war.

They add that far more people, many of them innocent, have died there from the war's direct and indirect effects than in the attacks on New York and Washington.

And they also say that the FBI believes the war has robbed al-Qaeda of only 30% of its capabilities.

The authors say al-Qaeda's aims are to evict Western troops from the Gulf and to replace Saudi Arabia's rulers "with what would be considered a legitimate Islamic regime".

It would have expected the US to respond with great force after 11 September, and to increase its troops in the Middle East and south-west Asia substantially, inciting further anti-American feeling.

This is just what has happened, with sizeable US forces now in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and an initial deployment in Georgia.

Iraqi threat

The authors add: "Moreover, in a development that must be hugely welcomed by the al-Qaeda network, the US has developed a much stronger support for the Sharon Government in Israel."

So the report says al-Qaeda is "substantially capable of further action", and US support for Israel is producing "a widespread anti-American mood".

To attack Iraq "should be expected to lead to the use of any weapons of mass destruction that the regime might be able to muster", with great risk to US forces, Gulf state civilians and Israel.

The report concludes that no state can promote a global economy while at the same time acting exclusively in its own perceived interest.

Nor can the world afford the double standards which allow United Nations Security Council members to have nuclear weapons, but nobody else.

The authors conclude: "Unless core issues of marginalisation and disempowerment are addressed, the end result of responding to terror with violence will be increased support for groups like al-Qaeda, and an expanded cycle of violence."

----

Revealed Nuclear Policies Are a Sign of Bad Faith To Rest of the World

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
11 March 2002
From: Carah Lynn Ong <research@napf.org>
Research and Publications Director,
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

On 9 March, reports surfaced in major US media that the US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) released on 9 January contains contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against seven states: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Russia and China. It also reportedly contains plans to develop and deploy new "earth-penetrating" nuclear weapons and to accelerate the time it would take to resume full-scale nuclear testing. Using nuclear weapons against other states or developing new nuclear weapons would directly violate US obligations to pursue the elimination of nuclear weapons under Article VI of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

At the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the US, along with the other state parties to the treaty, committed themselves to an "unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate nuclear weapons and to a diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies. Even if the US does not pursue the plans outlined in the NPR, as Secretary of State Colin Powell and other top military and government officials are claiming, the provocative rhetoric could unravel the non-proliferation regime.

"The fact that the US is developing contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states will certainly be viewed as a sign of bad faith by most of the world and will do serious damage to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," said David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation."

Weapons of mass destruction and missile proliferation do pose a legitimate threat not only to US security, but also to international security. However, unilateral US threats to use nuclear weapons, in conjunction with developing and deploying missile defenses, as a means of countering these threats is likely to provoke rather than prevent proliferation. A much better option would be for the US to take the lead on negotiations for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery.

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has issued an international appeal that has now been signed by over 100 prominent individuals, including 38 Nobel Laureates. The Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity and All Life calls upon the US and other nuclear weapons states to take the following practical steps as a means to preserve the non-proliferation regime and achieve the complete elimination of nuclear weapons:

- De-alert all nuclear weapons and de-couple all nuclear warheads from their delivery vehicles.

- Reaffirm commitments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

- Commence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement.

- Declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and policies of No Use against non-nuclear weapons states.

- Reallocate resources from the tens of billions of dollars currently being spent for maintaining nuclear arsenals to improving human health, education and welfare throughout the world.

The full text of the Appeal and list of prominent signers is available on the website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at http://www.wagingpeace.org.

Carah Lynn Ong Director of Research and Publications Tel: (805) 965-3443 Cell: (805) 453-0255 Fax: (805) 568-0466 Email: research@napf.org

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1 Santa Barbara, California 93108-2794 USA

Tel: 805-965-3443 Fax: 805-568-0466 Email: research@napf.org Http://www.wagingpeace.org Http://www.nuclearfiles.org http://www.mbmd.org Http://www.abolition2000.org

----

Canadian Mainstream TV to Air Roundtable of Experts, Gov't Official, Discussing US Gov't Complicity in 9-11 Attacks

by Greta Knutzen,
FTW Staff Writer
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002
From: mruppert@copvcia.com

5 Airdates for One Hour Special Featuring Mike Ruppert on Canadian TV

TORONTO - Michael C. Ruppert, editor and publisher of From The Wilderness, raised more than a few eyebrows, during a televised debate, when he presented a scathing indictment of US government complicity in the attacks of September 11. The program, produced by Vision TV, is estimated to reach 7 million North American homes. Vision TV Insight presents the special one-hour long edition of Mediafile, entitled "9/11 Roundtable," that will air on Thurs., Mar. 14, at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET on the Vision TV network.

Special added screenings have been scheduled for Mar. 15 at 7 AM and 1 PM and for Saturday Mar. 16 at 8 PM. All times are Eastern Standard Time.

Six months after the attacks of September 11, the official explanation of events has been left largely unchallenged by mainstream North American media. The producers of Vision TV Insight have taken bold steps aimed at challenging the status quo, reminding us that the media does have a duty to inform and challenge its audience. The programme "9/11 Roundtable," follows on the heals of Vision TV's Medialfile host, Barrie Zwicker's controversial six-part commentary which boldly examined the official narrative of the events of September 11 and found it to be "frankly implausible." Zwicker's series touched a nerve. The positive response it received indicates that there is a growing audience that does indeed want answers to the questions exposed by the official explanation of events of September 11 and its aftermath.

The groundswell of opposition to the official narrative of 9/11 is reflected by Ruppert's increasingly popular lecture series, bourgeoning FTW subscription lists and massive sales of his video, "The Truth and Lies about 9/11." Increasing numbers of people in all walks of life, are clearly eager for alternative analysis of the events of September 11 and unwilling to accept the official narrative any longer.

"9/11 Roundtable," hosted by executive producer Rita Deverell, provides a forum for a long overdue yet refreshingly frank debate focusing on the question, what really happened on September 11? Ruppert faces an influential Canadian panel including Ron Atkey Q.C., former chairman of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the agency responsible for CSIS (the Canadian intelligence community), journalist-educator Peter Desbarats, and ethicist Phyllis Creighton. Ruppert's insightful analysis challenged the panel to tackle thorny issues such as the relationship between illicit drug trade, oil and U.S. foreign policy; the long history between the bin Laden and Bush families; questions raised by the actions and inaction of the U.S. government prior to, and on, September 11; and the lack of plausibility and logic in the U.S. governments official explanation of those events.

"9/11 Roundtable," provides a valuable alternative to the passive and subservient post-9/11mainstream media coverage and deserves audience attention. Transcripts of the show and Zwicker's controversial series can be obtained from http://www.visiontv.ca/programs/insight/insight.htm

Panel bios:

Peter Desbarats was the Dean of Journalism at the University of Western Ontario from 1981-97. He sat on the Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia and was later appointed as the Maclean Hunter Chair of Communications Ethics at Ryerson University.

Ron Atkey Q.C. was a former Conservative Solicitor General and minister in the government of Joe Clark. From 1984-89, he was the first chairman of he Security Intelligence Review Committee, the agency responsible for CSIS (the Canadian secret service).

Phyllis Creighton serves on the Health Canada board on reproductive technologies. She is a council member of the International Peace Bureau, the oldest peace organization in the world. She was a member of the group that produced "Just War? Just Peace!," an educational resource for the Anglican and Lutheran churches.

----

More Nuclear Weapons only leads to greater nuclear terrorist possibilities

Medical Association for Prevention of War, Australia - mapw@mapw.org.au
Press Release
11 March 2002
www.mapw.org.au

MAPW supports our US affiliate - Physicians for Social Responsibility PSR - in being particularly disturbed by provocative rhetoric and unilateral threats to sovereign nations from the US within its 'Nuclear Posture Review' (NPR), made outside the framework of international law and without the support of the international community. The classified document - leaked in full two days ago to the LA Times - foresees US nuclear weapons possession and production throughout the 21st century. This would be in direct breach of US legal obligations under article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the key legal instrument governing nuclear disarmament.

In 2000, 187 governments committed to a 13 point plan towards nuclear weapon elimination. Under the NPT, governments called for the unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of nuclear arsenals. The US and Australia both committed to this pledge.

"Nuclear weapon proliferation only increases the ability of terrorists to obtain nuclear devices. There are ~ 36 000 nuclear warheads and 1 400 tonnes of plutonium stocks in the world - some unaccounted for already. Increasing this amount will do little for the world's security," said Giji Gya, Executive Officer for the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW).

"Former military officials and nuclear experts worldwide recognise that nuclear deterrence is ineffective in addressing nuclear dangers - as was shown in the Canberra Commission's report to the UN in 1997. It would be in Australia's security interests to distance itself from the increasingly irresponsible US nuclear policy," she said.

Australian peace, environment and social justice groups across Australia today urged the Government to distance itself from any US nuclear war fighting plans. This includes Australia's 'hosting' of the US base of Pine Gap near Alice Springs. Pine Gap would play an important role in any US nuclear operation in the South Pacific hemisphere.

Australia's timidity in disarmament efforts since 1997 has dismayed Australian disarmament advocates. "It is time for the Australian Howard Government to provide the moral leadership necessary to help fast-track global nuclear disarmament," said Dr Susan Wareham, national President of the Medical Association for Prevention of War. "Australia is in serious danger of breaching it's own international treaty obligations by continuing to support the US stand on this latest nuclear proliferation strategy," she said.

For further information contact: Giji Gya 0413 594 717

National Office: P.O. Box 1379, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia - Ph: +61 0413 594 717 Fax: +61 3 9427 7920


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