Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Malaysian Soldiers blame lung and kidney ailments on Balkans stint
Lithuania says EU must fund n-plant closure
Soccer-World-Japan boosts nuclear plant security
Official: US - Russia Relations Good
US Wants Better Russia Nukes Count
U.S. - Russia Nuclear Treaty Highlights Bush Trip
Nuclear Reductions: Menace Still Looms
Boyce McDaniel, Atom-Bomb Pioneer, Dies at 84
Nuclear Reactor Could be Restarted After 17 Year Shutdown
Board Votes to Restart Nuclear Reactor in Alabama
TVA OKs Restarting Ala. Reactor
US House panel to investigate FirstEnergy nuke plant
S.C. Gov. Seeks End to Plutonium
Energy secretary admits that nuclear waste will pile up
US energy secretary sees Senate OK of Yucca site
Abraham: Yucca Not Enough for Waste
Bush Seeks to Deflect Questions About Warnings Over Sept. 11
Official: US-Russia Relations Good
White House slams hijack 'politics'
MILITARY
Allies Begin New Sweep in Afghanistan
Somalia Wants Help Against Invasions
India Vows to Stand Up to 'Terrorism'
Iraq said reconsidering inspections
Arafat gives in to call for elections
Obeying 'a holy duty' to kill
Congress Endorses NATO Expansion
NATO Chief Concerned by Transatlantic Military Gap
War Feared Along Kashmir Border
Putin: Russia Won't Join NATO
Britain Names Woman New Spy Chief
U.S. Fires Opening Salvo at UN on Global Court
China Lifts Blocks on Some Western News Sites
POLICE / PRISONERS
Prosecutors rebut judge on executions
1999 Report Warned of Suicide Hijack
Foreboding Increased, but No Single Agency Had All the Clues
Post-9/11, Questions About Security at Electric Plants
1999 Report for CIA Foresaw Al Qaeda Plane Attack
Excerpts From National Security Adviser's Statement
For years, signs suggested 'that something was up'
ENERGY AND OTHER
Italy green power output set to climb - Enel
Lieberman to Seek Subpoena on White House's Enron Contacts
California Could Save $28 Billion, Protect Environment
Debate on Human Cloning Turns to Patents
UN Attacks Guatemala Demilitarization as Too Slow
U.N. Urges Saudis to End Floggings, Amputations
ACTIVISTS
Students paint nuke disaster picture
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Malaysian Soldiers blame lung and kidney ailments on Balkans stint
Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA),
May 17, 2002
http://www.irna.com/en/world/020517134313.ewo.shtml
Kuala Lumpur, May 17, IRNA -- More than 20 Malaysian soldiers, who did a stint as United Nations peacekeepers during the Balkan conflict of 1996 say they are suffering from chronic lung and kidney diseases brought on by exposure to depleted-uranium ammunitions used by American forces in Bosnia.
They want the Malaysian government to undertake an investigation into their illnesses, which they believe may have been caused by too much exposure to the radioactive material, while on duty in the Balkans, the leading Malay-language daily Utusan Malaysia reported on Friday.
War veteran Major Zainudin Wahin, 50, speaking on their behalf, said many of his colleagues were suffering from chronic lung and kidney diseases.
"These two diseases may be common in this part of the world but we are told that many soldiers from other countries, who had served in Bosnia suffered similar ailments on their return from duty," he was quoted as saying.
"This has been an old issue in the West but unfortunately our soldiers were ignorant of the effects of radiation on their health."
Major Zainudin, who is now retired, spoke to newsmen after filing his complaint with the Complaints Bureau of the Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's ruling United Malay National Organisation (Umno) Youth wing.
He said he believed his illness and that of his fellow peacekeepers could have been caused by depleted-uranium ammunition used by American forces in the Balkans.
Reports indicate American aircraft fired more than 30,000 depleted-uranium rounds against Serbian targets during NATO's 1999 campaign in Kosovo and about 10,000 such rounds in Bosnia in 1994-95.
Depleted uranium is twice as heavy as lead. It is used in ammunition to penetrate armour and in shielding for military vehicles and equipment.
Major Zainudin claimed that 23 Malaysians serving with NATO in the Balkans suffered from cancer because of exposure to depleted uranium and eight of them had subsequently died.
He himself is suffering from kidney failure and has to go to China for a kidney transplant at a cost of RM150,000 (US$39,500).
-------- europe
Lithuania says EU must fund n-plant closure
Story by Bryan Bradley
REUTERS LITHUANIA:
May 17, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16001/story.htm
VILNIUS - Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said yesterday he expected the European Union to foot the entire 2.4 billion euro ($2.19 billion) bill for closing the country's Soviet-built nuclear plant.
Lithuania hopes to reach an agreement with the EU by July on the Ignalina nuclear power plant, which was built by the Soviets in the 1980s and shares the same design as Ukraine's disastrous Chernobyl plant.
"(The EU) should cover all the costs, from various sources, putting that into both its budget until 2006 and its budget after 2006. This is a European problem, not Lithuania's problem," Brazauskas told Reuters in an interview.
Funding the enormous costs of shutting down Ignalina, which produces 70 percent of the Baltic state's electricity, is the main obstacle to closure and is the subject of on-going talks with Brussels.
The EU considers Ignalina's two reactors unsafe because of their Chernobyl-like design and demands a commitment for full closure by 2009 as a condition for Lithuania to end accession talks this year in order to join in 2004.
The Baltic state has already agreed to close the first reactor by 2005. The second reactor was originally designed to run out in 2017 but parliament earlier this week said a 2009-2015 timeframe for closure was technically possible.
Brazauskas made clear this was not a retreat from its demand that Brussels pay the costs.
"In any case (the second reactor) must be closed between 2009 and 2015. Maybe the EU is open to discuss one year or another," Brazauskas said.
"But that doesn't change the principle. In some form it has to be said: how much from one EU fund or another, how much direct financing, how much from Lithuania."
He said part of the financing might be "commercial" and noted Lithuania has its own decommissioning fund, with some 160 million litas (46 million euros) collected since 1992.
But this is a drop in the ocean compared to the 2.4 billion euro the government recently estimated full closure will cost.
"So we don't say 'all' categorically, but all the costs must be covered," he said.
HARSH WORDS FOR VILNIUS
Last month the European Union's top energy official turned her fire on Lithuania, accusing it of unfairly demanding the EU pay the vast sums needed to decommission Ignalina.
"The Lithuanian prime minister said Lithuania was not going to spend anything on decommissioning Ignalina I or II... It was going to cost 4.0 billion euros ($3.56 billion) and either we stumped up or tough luck," European Commissioner in charge of energy policy Loyola de Palacio said.
"If this is the kind of thing they say before they are in the EU, what will they say after they are in?" she added.
De Palacio said at the time she wanted a mandatory safety standard for the whole EU to be applied just as strictly to the countries, mainly from eastern Europe, which want to join the EU.
The European Commission has so far proposed annual funding of 70 million euros from 2004-2006 for Ignalina's closure, and committed 40 million euros to an international fund which offers a total 203 million euros for closure efforts through 2005.
-------- japan
Soccer-World-Japan boosts nuclear plant security
REUTERS JAPAN:
May 17, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16003/story.htm
TOKYO - Japanese police are to form special security squads to surround nuclear power plants as part of their anti-terrorism precautions during the World Cup, Kyodo news agency said yesterday.
The squads will be made up of riot police trained in firearms control and who are already posted at various police headquarters, Kyodo quoted officials of the National Police Administration as saying.
They will take charge of security for over half of Japan's 34 nuclear-related facilities in 16 prefectures during the month-long tournament that is being co-hosted by Japan and South Korea.
Japan had already stepped up its security measures for nuclear power plants after the September 11 attacks on the United States, deploying riot squads from regional police bureaux around the country.
However, a new framework had to be created because those riot squads will also be on duty during the World Cup as part of anti-hooligan measures.
In a bid to fend off attacks by extremists, the FBI will also send agents to Japan to advise on security, U.S. and Japanese sources said this week.
But Japanese police appear more concerned with hooloigans.
With tens of thousands of fans due to arrive within days, police have extended the use of chemical sprays, originally limited to Tokyo police, nationwide.
They said 18,000 spray devices had been distributed - mainly to regions where matches will be held - to prevent assaults and deal with soccer hooligans.
Japanese police have warned there will be zero tolerance for troublemakers and plan to mobilise the largest number of officers ever for the tournament that kicks off on May 31.
-------- russia
Official: US - Russia Relations Good
May 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- President Bush's visit to Russia next week will help develop an allied relationship that will increasingly focus on economic ties and civil society rather than arms control, the U.S. ambassador said Friday.
Attention is mostly focused on a landmark arms control deal to be signed during the visit. But Alexander Vershbow said the summit ``may go down in history as the point of transition to a very different agenda, an agenda in which non-security issues become more and more the focal point of our relations with Russia.''
``We are increasingly becoming allies in the fullest sense of the word,'' he said at a conference on U.S.-Russia relations.
Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov said the summit is certain to further improve already warm relations bolstered by President Vladimir Putin's support for the U.S.-led war on terror.
He also said Russia expects a declaration signed at the summit to include U.S. assurances that its planned missile shield wouldn't be directed against Russia. That declaration is in addition to the nuclear deal, which foresees cuts in each country's nuclear arsenals to 1,700-2,200 warheads from the approximately 6,000 each is now allowed.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that Russia wouldn't take any immediate action in response to U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which will become effective June 14. ``We will respond to real, not virtual events, and the missile defense program is still virtual,'' Ivanov said.
Despite talk of economic cooperation, Vershbow acknowledged that U.S. trade with Russia accounts for less than 1 percent of its total trade worldwide, roughly equaling the level of U.S. trade with Costa Rica.
``We have barely tapped the potential for trade and investment,'' he said, pointing at the need for Russia to deal with excessive bureaucratic regulation and corruption that has stemmed foreign investment.
Vershbow also voiced confidence that recent disputes over U.S. anti-dumping duties on Russian steel and Russia's ban on imports of U.S. poultry will ``eventually be viewed as nothing more than bumps on the road to a larger and mutually beneficial trade relationship.''
On a more critical note, Vershbow said the United States is concerned about media freedom in Russia and urged the government to help strengthen such foundations of civil society. Concerns about journalists' freedom have resurfaced in Russia in recent weeks after the slaying of a feisty newspaper editor in the Volga River city of Togliatti.
Meanwhile, a new poll showed that most Russians don't really like Bush -- a change from just after Sept. 11.
Forty-five percent of those polled by the respected Public Opinion Foundation said they didn't care much for the American president, while 25 percent said they liked him. After the terrorist attacks, only 25 percent of Russians said they didn't like Bush, the group said in the poll released Friday.
The polling firm questioned 1,500 Russians nationwide on May 11. No margin of error was given.
-------- treaties
US Wants Better Russia Nukes Count
Fri May 17, 2002
By TOM RAUM,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020517/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_russia_58
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush may raise the issue of Russia's stockpile of short-range nuclear weapons when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in Moscow.
The arms-reduction treaty the two presidents will sign sharply cuts each nation's arsenal of long-range warheads over the next decade, but does not address tactical, or battlefield, weapons.
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed concern about the size of the Russian stockpile.
The United States intends to ask Russia to account for these weapons and explain what it intends to do about them, but is not interested in engaging in formal negotiations, the official said.
Russia has not said how many of these weapons it has, but estimates have ranged from 4,000 to 15,000. The U.S. stockpile is classified, but a non-governmental expert assessment puts the figure at 1,600. Of those, 320 are deployed in Europe while the remainder are in storage, the assessment said.
Putin and Bush are expected to discuss ways to further reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials during their meetings.
At next week's summit, Putin and Bush will sign a treaty under which long-range strategic warheads will be reduced to between 1,700 and 2,200 on each side by the end of 2012, down from the approximately 6,000 each country has now.
The official said the treaty - cutting the arsenals of globe-straddling nuclear weapons to a tenth of their Cold War peak - is the last of its kind. The Bush administration does not envision further negotiations or arms control treaties with Russia, given the warming of relations between Moscow and western nations, the official said.
Bush will visit Moscow and St. Petersburg while he is in Russia. He will also visit France, Germany and Italy on the weeklong trip that begins Wednesday.
U.S.-Russian relations have improved dramatically in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. But sharp economic disputes remain over U.S. duties on Russian steel and Russia's ban on imports of U.S. poultry.
The official suggested the poultry dispute is making it hard to grant Russia's request that the United States lift the Jackson-Vanik amendment to a 1974 trade law that ties Moscow's trade privileges to its policies on Jewish emigration and other human rights.
The administration doesn't have any problem with Russia's recent record on allowing emigration, but it does have concerns about its trade practices, the official said.
----
U.S. - Russia Nuclear Treaty Highlights Bush Trip
May 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-bush-russia.html
WASHINGTON - A nuclear arms reduction treaty to be signed in Moscow next week by President George W.
Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely be the last of its kind, U.S. officials preparing for Bush's trip to Germany, Russia, France and Italy said on Friday.
The highlight of the week-long trip is the May 24 signing of a U.S.-Russia treaty to remove two-thirds of long-range nuclear warheads from missiles, bombers and submarines.
Under the unusually terse three-page treaty, the world's biggest nuclear powers are to cut their deployed strategic nuclear warheads by 2012 to 1,700 to 2,200 from current levels of about 5,000 to 6,000.
A senior U.S. official said the signing of the treaty will be historic because it means that ``the era of strategic arms control is behind us.
``We believe it will really be the last of its kind,'' the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
What the United States wants is a new era of arms control trust like Washington has with nuclear powers Britain and France where they openly discuss their force structures.
``In the old era of arms control, you negotiated down to a razor's edge of force structure. You had a perceived balance between the two sides. Those days are gone. This is the last of these types of arms control agreements,'' another senior official said.
Bush and Putin have developed a strong personal bond over the past year that was solidified during Putin's visit to Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch in November.
To return the favor, Putin is taking Bush to his hometown of St. Petersburg where they plan to tour the famous Hermitage museum.
PACKED AGENDA
On his trip, his third to Europe in less than a year, Bush will have a packed agenda, and the tour will give him a chance to thank leaders for their cooperation in the war on terrorism.
He will address German lawmakers at the Bundestag in Berlin. He will hold a U.S.-Russia summit with Putin and visit Putin's hometown of St. Petersburg.
He will meet newly re-elected French President Jacques Chirac in Paris and discuss NATO expansion and the Middle East situation. He will spend the U.S. Memorial Day holiday at the American D-Day cemetery in Normandy.
And before returning home, he will attend a Rome summit marking formation of the NATO-Russia Council, which gives Russia a say in some alliance decisions. A meeting with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, at a time when the Roman Catholic Church is under fire for a sexual abuse scandal in the United States, will end his trip.
A trade dispute over U.S. chicken exports to Russia threatens to dampen the sunny atmosphere during that leg of Bush's trip. The Russian Agriculture Ministry has accused U.S. importers of repeatedly bringing in poultry meat without a license from the Russian veterinary department, with incorrect package markings or without certificates proving their safety.
The dispute has complicated Moscow's push for the removal of the United States' so-called Jackson-Vanik amendment that restricted normal trade relations in 1974 because of Soviet restrictions on emigration.
U.S. officials hinted the chicken problem could complicate Russia's attempt to join the World Trade Organization.
``It's a serious problem and we do need to get the Russians to do something on the poultry dispute because there are concerns about how free-trading they're going to be,'' one official said, while predicting the two sides will reach agreement on some unspecified economic measures.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Nuclear Reductions: Menace Still Looms
New York Times
May 17, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/opinion/L17NUKE.html
To the Editor:
Re "Bush and Putin to Sign Pact to Cut Nuclear Warheads" (front page, May 14):
We are deluding ourselves if we take solace from the fact that the Russian nuclear threat is diminishing. Today, perhaps the greatest menace to world peace is the growing prospect that terrorists will set off a nuclear holocaust in New York, Washington, Tel Aviv or elsewhere.
The new arms control agreement does little to reduce that threat. Unfortunately, we have not made a commitment to destroy nuclear weapons, or to better monitor and restrict access to the materials required to produce them.
The peril of a nuclear attack is ever present. Our highest priority should be to reduce the likelihood of such an event. This requires open and honest appraisals of the danger. Complacency arising from toothless treaties will not help.
KEN SWENSEN
Pound Ridge, N.Y., May 14, 2002
• To the Editor:
Your call for President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin to "turn their attention to the lingering problem of tactical nuclear weapons" because "these small, highly portable weapons designed for battlefield use remain vulnerable to theft by international terrorists" (editorial, May 14) is quite timely. On April 11, Russia announced that it would complete destruction of its remaining battlefield nuclear weapons - nuclear mines, artillery shells and warheads for land-based tactical missiles - by 2004.
The Russian delegation said that this could be accomplished only if sufficient financing was available. Since it is only a matter of money, President Bush should make it a priority at the coming summit meeting to agree to accelerate or increase United States assistance to Russia.
Moreover, the United States is supposed to finish destroying its last nuclear artillery shells in 2003. If so, perhaps next year the world could finally be rid of all such battlefield nuclear weapons.
JOSHUA HANDLER
Princeton, N.J., May 15, 2002
The writer is a researcher, Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University.
• To the Editor:
In "No-Frills Arms Control" (editorial, May 14), you state that the anticipated treaty between the United States and Russia calls for "eliminating" two-thirds of the strategic nuclear weapons by 2012. In fact, the treaty will not eliminate weapons; rather it will only reduce the number of deployed warheads to some 2,000 by putting thousands of additional warheads into storage.
For its part, the United States plans to maintain these stored warheads so they can be rapidly redeployed. The cost of this flexibility is very high: it will preclude effective controls over retired Russian nuclear weapons.
It is also absurd to state - as President Bush did - that this agreement will "liquidate the legacy of the cold war," since even 2,000 nuclear warheads will give both countries the capability to destroy each other many times over.
LISBETH GRONLUND
Cambridge, Mass., May 14, 2002
The writer is a senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a research fellow at the M.I.T. Security Studies Program.
----
Boyce McDaniel, Atom-Bomb Pioneer, Dies at 84
May 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/obituaries/17MCDA.html
ITHACA, N.Y., May 16 -- Boyce D. McDaniel, a Cornell University physicist and Manhattan Project scientist who gave the atomic bomb its final check before the first test at the Trinity site in New Mexico in 1945, died of a heart attack on May 8, the university announced on Wednesday. He was 84.
Dr. McDaniel played a crucial role in helping to identify the amount of uranium-235 needed to create the atomic fission to detonate the world's first nuclear bomb.
He joined Cornell's faculty in 1946 and became a full professor in the mid-1950's. With Robert Walker, another Cornell physicist, he invented the pair spectrometer, used to measure gamma ray energies. He was also a leader in establishing the Cornell Laboratory of Nuclear Studies.
Dr. McDaniel was born on June 11, 1917, in Brevard, N.C. He received his bachelor's degree from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1938 and a master's degree from the Case School of Applied Science in 1940. He obtained his doctoral degree in physics from Cornell in 1943.
He was a Fulbright research fellow in 1953 and a Guggenheim fellow in 1959.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- alabama
Nuclear Reactor Could be Restarted After 17 Year Shutdown
May 17, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17-06.html
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama, The Tennessee Valley Authority has decided to seek permission to restart a reactor at the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant that was mothballed in 1985. On Thursday, the three member board of the federally owned utility approved a staff recommendation to return Unit 1, the oldest of the facilities three reactors, to service for another 20 years.
Calling it the best business decision to meet long term power needs in the Tennessee Valley, the TVA board authorized the utility's staff to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a 20 year extension of the operating licenses for all three reactors at the North Alabama plant, and to begin work to recover Unit 1.
Two of the three nuclear reactors at Browns Ferry are now producing electricity; TVA wants to restart the third reactor. (Three photos courtesy TVA)
If Unit 1 resumes operations, it will be the first major addition to the nation's nuclear power supply in more than a decade.
"Returning Browns Ferry 1 to service is the best business decision for TVA and its customers in terms of power supply, cost, generation mix, delivered cost of power and the environment," said TVA chair Glenn McCullough Jr. "This decision advances our National Energy Policy, which calls for the safe expansion of nuclear energy, and it meets our objective of providing affordable, reliable power to the people of the Tennessee Valley."
TVA says that engineering and planning estimates show that Unit 1 can be returned to operation safely, said TVA chief operating officer O. J. "Ike" Zeringue, who recommended approval of the restart to the board.
Citing a detailed engineering estimate presented to the Board in March, the power supply forecast, an environmental review and a financial analysis, Zeringue said that returning Browns Ferry Unit 1 to operation will reduce the cost to consumers of TVA's power, while causing to "significant, adverse" environmental impacts.
Restarting Unit 1 is expected to cost from $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion and will take five years to complete. TVA is still about $25.2 billion in debt from the original construction costs of its three nuclear power plants, built in the 1970s and 1980s.
On Thursday, TVA said its financial staff has determined that the agency can finance the restart while continuing to reduce the agency's massive debt, though at a slower pace. Unit 1 is expected to pay for itself after about eight years of operation, and the additional power it will produce will help lower TVA's average power costs, the agency said.
"I believe this is a wise business decision for TVA," said TVA director Bill Baxter, one of the three board members. "This investment will pay dividends for the families, businesses and industry of the Valley in the forms of low cost power, cleaner air and economic growth."
The two reactors now operating at Browns Ferry have set a number of records for continuous operating hours. Unit 1 has a history of problems, including a major fire in 1975 that caused major damage to the unit's safety systems just two years after it began operating.
All three Browns Ferry reactors were shut down in 1985 after engineers learned that the completed plants did not exactly match their blueprint designs. After several refinements were made, the plant's Unit 2 was restarted in 1991, and Unit 3 was restarted in 1996.
TVA said Unit 1 was left idle because its generating capacity was not needed at the time.
Now, the agency facing growing power demand in a region with a major air pollution problem. Restarting the Unit 1 reactor, which emits no smog producing pollutants, will help meet energy needs without adding more air pollution.
TVA worker Robert Smith logs the access of workers at Browns Ferry Unit 3. TVA wants to operate all the Browns Ferry units for another 20 years.
"We must balance the responsibility to provide power to meet future needs with our objectives of protecting the environment and continuing the trend of debt reduction," said TVA director Skila Harris, one of the three board members. "Restarting Unit 1 will provide needed generating capacity without increasing air emissions, and the financial analysis shows that we can undertake this project while continuing the trend of debt reduction."
Approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the only official hurdle the TVA must cross before restarting Unit 1, but some conservation groups say they object to the proposal.
Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy in Knoxville, Tennessee, has long opposed the planned restart.
"The plan stinks," Smith said. "Unit 1 was designed to operate for 40 years, but now TVA wants to add another 20 years on top of that. And they want the unit to produce 300 megawatts more than it was designed for, 1,300 instead of 1,000 megawatts. It's a prescription for a serious problem."
TVA operates three nuclear power plants, including Browns Ferry in Alabama. (Map courtesy Energy Information Agency)
Asked whether TVA was making the right decision in opting to increase its nuclear resources, rather than its fossil fuel powered plants, Smith said "there are a lot better alternatives for the [Tennessee] Valley's energy needs than continuing to generate more radioactive wastes."
David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that petitioned the NRC in 1998 to revoke the operating license for Browns Ferry Unit 1, noted that no nuclear power plant in any nation has ever been restarted after such a long shutdown.
TVA, the nation's largest public power producer, provides power to large industries and 158 power distributors that serve 8.3 million consumers in seven southeastern states. The agency operates three nuclear power plants, 11 fossil fueled plants and 29 hydroelectric dams.
----
Board Votes to Restart Nuclear Reactor in Alabama
New York Times
May 17, 2002
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/national/17NUKE.html
ATLANTA, May 16 - The board of the Tennessee Valley Authority voted today to spend $1.7 billion to restart a troubled nuclear reactor at its Browns Ferry plant in northern Alabama, a decision that could produce the first substantial increase in the nation's nuclear-generating capacity in more than a decade.
The three reactors at Browns Ferry, on the Tennessee River near Athens, Ala., were shut down in 1985 after engineers discovered that they did not precisely match their blueprints. Even before then, the plant had a history of operating problems caused by a fire in 1975. After corrections were made, the authority restarted the second and third reactor units in 1991 and 1996.
The first reactor was left idle because its capacity was not needed, but board members said today that with electricity demand growing, they needed a generator that would not add to the region's air quality problems.
"We must balance the responsibility to provide power to meet future needs with our objectives of protecting the environment and continuing the trend of debt reduction," said Skila Harris, one of the authority's three board members, who was an assistant to former Vice President Al Gore. "Restarting Unit 1 will provide needed generating capacity without increasing air emissions."
The unanimous vote came over the objections of several area residents, who said the plant was insufficiently protected against a terrorist attack, and from environmental groups expressing concern about the reactor's design.
"They're taking an old nuclear reactor that has not operated for 17 years, and they're going to run it longer and harder than it was designed for," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, based in Knoxville, Tenn. "It originally had a design life of 40 years, which they want to extend for 20 years, and they want to force it to produce 1,300 megawatts when it was designed for 1,000. It's a prescription for a serious problem."
There has been no new construction of a nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979; the last nuclear plant to begin operation was the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar reactor in eastern Tennessee, which began full operation in 1996. The Bush administration, however, has expressed renewed interest in pursuing the technology, as have some large utilities.
An operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would be required before the reactor could be restarted. No other approval is needed for the authority to prepare the plant for reopening. T.V.A. officials said they hoped to pay for the work from the annual revenues of the authority's system.
When the Browns Ferry plant was completed in 1977, it was the largest nuclear power plant in the world, the first to generate more than a billion watts of electricity. It uses boiling-water reactors, an older technology than the pressurized-water reactors that are in newer nuclear plants. The T.V.A. is not planning to change the fundamental design of the plant, leading some critics to suggest that it is spending too much money on antiquated technology.
"For the same amount of money, they could build a brand-new reactor that's safer and has a longer life," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear-safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group often opposed to nuclear-plant expansion. "It's like trying to dust off an eight-track tape player rather than buying a DVD system - they're not getting good value for their money."
No nuclear plant has ever been restarted after such a long period in mothballs, Mr. Lochbaum added.
Authority officials disagreed with that analysis. Gil Francis, a T.V.A. spokesman, said the authority had looked at every option available for meeting power demands by 2010 and concluded that it was less expensive and cleaner to restart the reactor than to build one, or to add to the authority's battery of coal, gas and hydroelectric plants.
"Every option had its pros and cons," Mr. Francis said. "Coal plants have emission issues and high capital costs; gas-fired plants have the volatility in the price of fuel. But considering the economies of scale of having the existing reactors nearby, we think restarting this reactor will return its investment in eight years of operation."
The upgraded plant, which would be ready for operation by 2006, would add the latest technology to the reactor, Mr. Francis said.
Most elected officials in the region support the T.V.A.'s action, which would create 2,400 jobs, and several union leaders gave their enthusiastic approval to the plan at today's hearing. Representative Zach Wamp, a Republican who represents the Chattanooga area, said it was hypocritical of environmental groups to oppose a generating technology that does not add to air pollution.
"There's a great debate in the Tennessee Valley over the degraded air quality in the Smokies and around the valley, and how much the T.V.A. plants contribute to it," Mr. Wamp said. "Well, clearly if you want cleaner air, the development of more nuclear reactors is the way to go, and Browns Ferry 1 is the logical place to start. You can't have it both ways."
Environmental leaders, however, said the problem of nuclear waste disposal had still not been resolved and suggested that the authority would be better off spending the $1.7 billion cleaning up the fossil-fuel plants that are now operating.
The T.V.A. is the nation's largest public producer of electricity, serving about 8.3 million people in seven states. About two-thirds of its power comes from 11 fossil-fuel plants, while most of the rest comes from three nuclear plants and 29 hydroelectric dams.
--------
TVA OKs Restarting Ala. Reactor
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 17, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31525-2002May17?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-TVA-Nuclear.html
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) -- The Tennessee Valley Authority board has voted to restart a mothballed Alabama nuclear reactor that is projected to power about 650,000 homes in the South.
The three-member board decided to go ahead with the project Thursday despite objections from environmentalists and questions about how to pay the projected $1.8 billion cost. The board approved the restart without a funding plan.
The 29-year-old reactor at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant was shut down in 1985 because of safety concerns, but the TVA recently began discussing the possibility of bringing it back to boost economic development and power capacity.
Environmental activists warned the board that old equipment increases safety risks, particularly for states east and downwind if there is an accident or terrorist attack at the plant. They pleaded with the board to allow additional public participation before a vote.
``Many of the people advising are pro-nuclear,'' said John Noel, a member of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and the Tennessee Environmental Council. He told board members they were making ``perhaps a life and death decision.''
The board followed the recommendation of TVA employees and said the Environmental Protection Agency agreed that restarting the idle reactor was a better option than building a new power-producing plant.
Board member Skila Harris disagreed with opponents who said there was too little public input in the decision, saying TVA does not operate ``in a vacuum or in secrecy.''
``I felt very confident about my own personal due diligence,'' she said. ``I did not limit myself to just listening to people from TVA.''
TVA executives told the board the utility could pay for the restart, possibly from existing revenues, while continuing to reduce its $25 billion debt. Spokesman John Moulton said specifics were expected within the next few months.
Board Chairman Glenn McCullough said TVA would immediately begin a search for private funding. He declined to elaborate.
``I think we are going to have some viable options,'' board member Bill Baxter said.
Construction is expected to begin in about one year, and the reactor is set to restart in May 2007. TVA employees said the work would mostly involve replacing pipes and cable.
The agency also will construct a new, larger cooling tower, the sixth at the Athens, Ala., plant.
TVA provides electricity to about 8.3 million people in Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama and Mississippi.
-------- ohio
US House panel to investigate FirstEnergy nuke plant
REUTERS USA:
May 17, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15999/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee said yesterday it will investigate corrosion at FirstEnergy Corp.'s nuclear power plant in Ohio.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission launched an investigation earlier this year after a severely corroded cavity was found in the reactor vessel head at FirstEnergy's 25-year-old plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio.
"Public confidence in the safety of nuclear energy is critically important to our long-range energy needs," said Rep. Billy Tauzin, who chairs the committee. "America needs nuclear power, but it needs to be safe as well."
Investigators from the panel will travel to Toledo, Ohio, next week to inspect the plant, Tauzin said. The investigation was launched at the request of Ohio Rep. Paul Gillmor, a Republican, who said he wants to prevent the corrosion that occurred at Davis-Besse from happening at other plants.
There are currently 103 operating U.S. nuclear plants that produce about 20 percent of the nation's electricity.
-------- south carolina
S.C. Gov. Seeks End to Plutonium
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 17, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30903-2002May17?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Standoff.html
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Energy has broken promises on how plutonium shipments to South Carolina will be processed and when the nuclear material will leave the state, Gov. Jim Hodges said, asking a judge to stop the shipments.
Hodges' lawyer, William Want, filed for an injunction Thursday related to the lawsuit the governor filed May 1 against the department and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. The department a week later postponed shipments to the Savannah River Site near Aiken until a judge hears arguments June 13.
Want said the department told Hodges the plutonium would be processed into nuclear reactor fuel or into glass rods for permanent storage elsewhere.
But Want said the agency officially canceled one of two processing options last month that it had promised South Carolina in 1998. The process would have stabilized some of the plutonium for storage elsewhere.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the plutonium won't stay in South Carolina.
``And all the plutonium that would come into the state will have a pathway out of the state,'' he said.
The weapons-grade plutonium was to be shipped from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado to the Savannah River Site, converted and then shipped out of state.
Hodges is concerned the conversion program won't be funded and the Bush administration will back away from the commitment.
-------- us nuc waste
Energy secretary admits that nuclear waste will pile up even after Yucca Mountain opens
Friday, May 17, 2002
By H. Josef Hebert,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/05/05172002/ap_47262.asp
WASHINGTON - Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham acknowledged on Thursday that a proposed Nevada waste dump will be too small to accommodate all the nation's nuclear waste and might have to be expanded.
Under intense questioning from Nevada's two senators, Abraham conceded that the Yucca Mountain repository as currently envisioned could handle only a fraction of the waste expected to be generated by commercial power plants and the government in the coming decade.
Thousands of tons of "this stuff is still going to be (stored) around the country," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., told Abraham, who acknowledged that probably would be the case.
The Bush administration has argued repeatedly that the proposed Nevada repository should be built so that radioactive waste now at commercial power reactors and federal sites in 39 states can be consolidated and better protected at a single location.
About 45,000 tons of radioactive waste currently are kept around the country. Another 20,000 tons are expected to be generated by power reactors before Yucca Mountain can be opened, Abraham said.
If a federal license is obtained, the Yucca facility would be scheduled to accept its first waste shipments in 2010. Abraham said it would receive a minimum 3,000 tons of waste a year for 23 years. The industry has estimated that reactors produce about 2,000 tons of new waste annually.
Ensign and his Nevada colleague, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, said those figures debunk the administration's national security argument, since thousands of tons of waste will remain without a central repository even after Yucca Mountain becomes filled to capacity.
Still, insisted Abraham, any waste taken to Yucca Mountain would be waste no longer kept in less-safe temporary facilities, including some near highly populated or environmentally sensitive areas.
After the hearing, Abraham opened the possibility that the Yucca Mountain facility eventually might be expanded. Congress has limited its initial design to 77,000 tons of waste, but Abraham said a future energy secretary after 2007 can consider expansion. Abraham said the Nevada site has room for more than the initial 77,000 tons. It was unclear how such a move would affect the project's licensing or the likelihood of further legal challenges by Nevada.
President Bush designated the Nevada site as the country's central nuclear waste repository and said he would seek a federal license for it. As was its right under a 1982 nuclear waste law, Nevada filed a formal objection. That can be overridden only by majority vote of both chambers of Congress.
The House already has overridden the Nevada veto. The Senate must vote before July 26, or the Nevada objection will stand. The Nevadans are waging a difficult fight. A survey in this week's National Journal magazine showed that 48 senators already planned to vote against Nevada, with 32 undecided.
Abraham reiterated his conviction that the Yucca Mountain site, which has been studied for two decades, is geologically safe to hold the waste, which will remain highly radioactive for thousands of years.
Nevada's senators have long argued that even if Yucca Mountain were built, thousands of tons of used reactor fuel would still be kept at reactors around the country. They also have argued that shipping wastes through 43 states would pose greater risks than leaving the caches where they are.
Abraham rejected the claims that the waste would pose a transportation hazard. The government and nuclear industry has had "30 years of safe shipment of spent nuclear fuel ... without any harmful radiation release," said Abraham.
----
US energy secretary sees Senate OK of Yucca site
Story by Thomas Ferraro
REUTERS USA:
May 17, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15991/story.htm
WASHINGTON - U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham predicted yesterday the Democratic-led Senate would grant final congressional approval of the administration's decision to bury deadly nuclear waste from across the nation in Nevada.
"I think the majority of senators will conclude we have made a strong and compelling case," Abraham told reporters after testifying before the Senate Energy Committee.
The Senate will decide within the next few months whether to follow the lead of the Republican-led House of Representatives and vote to override Nevada's veto of Bush administration plans to construct the nation's first permanent nuclear waste storage facility in Yucca Mountain, 90 miles (145 km) northwest of Las Vegas.
On May 8, on a bipartisan vote of 306-117, the House rejected Nevada's safety concerns and endorsed President George W. Bush's decision to bury nuclear waste in the Nevada desert.
The Senate Energy Committee held its first hearing on the project yesterday and plans two more before voting on June 5 on whether to recommend approval by the full Senate.
Senate Republicans predict the chamber will approve the $58 billion project with the help of many Democrats from states with nuclear reactors and mounting radioactive waste.
Senate Democratic Whip Harry Reid and Republican Sen. John Ensign, both of Nevada, admitted they had an uphill fight to stop the project.
"We have not given up," Ensign said after Thursday's hearing, during which he and Reid challenged Abraham on a number of fronts. "We're in the fight of our lives."
SITE 'SAFE AND SUITABLE'
Abraham, citing more than $4 billion in studies over the past two decades, told the Energy Committee, "We have concluded that the site is safe and suitable for storage."
He said that if the Senate gave its blessing, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would then make the final determination on suitability when it decides whether to grant a license.
Last month, Nevada Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoed Bush's decision earlier in the year to accept Abraham's recommendation to build the depository in Nevada. Guinn has also challenged the project in federal court.
Under a 1982 federal law on nuclear waste disposal, a state governor may veto the president's plans to put a depository in his or her state. The veto can be overridden by Congress with a majority vote of each chamber.
Nuclear power plants produce more than 20 percent of the country's energy, and many waste storage tanks are nearly full. The government has faced lawsuits for failing to meet a 1998 deadline to open a permanent nuclear waste storage site.
The proposed site would permanently hold 70,000 tonnes of radioactive material and open in 2010.
----
Abraham: Yucca Not Enough for Waste
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 17, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31527-2002May17.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Plans for a nuclear dump deep inside a Nevada mountain are still on the drawing board, but the Energy Department is already acknowledging the facility will be too small to accommodate the nation's radioactive waste.
The Bush administration has argued repeatedly that the proposed Nevada repository should be built so that radioactive waste now at commercial power reactors and federal sites in 39 states can be consolidated and better protected at a single location.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, under intense questioning from Nevada's two senators, conceded Thursday that the Yucca Mountain repository as currently envisioned could handle only a fraction of the waste expected to be generated by commercial power plants and the government in the coming decade and may have to be expanded.
Thousands of tons of ``this stuff is still going to be (stored) around the country,'' Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., told Abraham, who acknowledged that probably would be the case.
About 45,000 tons of radioactive waste currently are kept around the country. Another 20,000 tons are expected to be generated by power reactors before Yucca Mountain can be opened, Abraham said.
If a federal license is obtained, the Yucca facility would be scheduled to accept its first waste shipments in 2010. Abraham said it would receive a minimum 3,000 tons of waste a year for 23 years. The industry has estimated that reactors produce about 2,000 tons of new waste annually.
Ensign and his Nevada colleague, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, said those figures debunk the administration's national security argument, since thousands of tons of waste will remain without a central repository even after Yucca Mountain becomes filled to capacity.
Still, insisted Abraham, any waste taken to Yucca Mountain would be waste no longer kept in less-safe temporary facilities including some near highly populated or environmentally sensitive areas.
After the hearing, Abraham opened the possibility that the Yucca Mountain facility eventually might be expanded. Congress has limited its initial design to 77,000 tons of waste, but Abraham said a future energy secretary after 2007 can consider expansion.
On the Net:
Yucca Mountain: http://www.ymp.gov/
-------- us politics
Bush Seeks to Deflect Questions About Warnings Over Sept. 11
New York Times
May 17, 2002
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/politics/17CND-BUSH.html
WASHINGTON, May 17 - With current and future Air Force officers as a supporting cast, President Bush sought today to deflect questions about the Sept. 11 attacks, saying he would have done everything he could to protect the United States if he had known the terrorists' plans.
"I want the troops here to know that I take my job as the commander in chief very seriously, that my most important job is to protect America and to protect our homeland," the president said at a Rose Garden ceremony honoring the Air Force Academy football team for being the best of the three service-academy squads.
"I'll do whatever it takes, and I know you'll join me in doing whatever it takes to prevent the enemy from attacking America again like they did and causing thousands to suffer and to mourn and to grieve," Mr. Bush said.
The president's remarks, at what would otherwise have been a cheerful and innocuous occasion, reflected the White House's deep concern over mounting criticism from Capitol Hill Democrats and some Republicans.
The critics are asking why Mr. Bush did not make public earlier the fact that he was told at an intelligence briefing Aug. 6 of speculation that Osama bin Laden wanted to hijack planes in the United States.
The critics are also wondering aloud why the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation did not share all their intelligence about possible terrorist actions - in other words, whether there were enough pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to paint a picture if all the pieces had been put on the table.
"You know what's interesting about Washington?" Mr. Bush said. "It's a town, unfortunately, it's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature."
Some of the second-guessing concerns a plan that was developed last summer to move against Mr. bin Laden. That plan, which was drawn up by high-ranking officials among several Cabinet departments, was awaiting President Bush's review when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked.
The existence of the plan was reported late last year by The New York Times, but the subject has been revived with more intense interest since the disclosure this week that the White House had hints weeks before the terrorist attacks that Mr. bin Laden might be planning a major operation.
"The American people know this about me and my national security team and my administration," Mr. Bush said today. "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people.
"We will use the might of America to protect the American people," the president said. "We're in for a long struggle. It's a tough war. This is an enemy that's not going to quit."
It is hardly a stunning surprise that lines of communication become blurred within the huge federal bureaucracy, as they do under Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
But the Sept. 11 attacks killed some 3,000 people, and it seems destined now to live in political as well as public memory, as Democrats are making clear.
"Why did it take eight months for us to receive this information?" Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota said to reporters today. "And what specific actions were taken by the White House in response? I'm not going to jump to any conclusions, but it's hard to understand why the information was not released."
----
Official: US-Russia Relations Good
By Vladimir Isachenkov
Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW -- President Bush's visit to Russia next week will help develop an allied relationship that will increasingly focus on economic ties and civil society rather than arms control, the U.S. ambassador said Friday.
Attention is mostly focused on a landmark arms control deal to be signed during the visit. But Alexander Vershbow said the summit "may go down in history as the point of transition to a very different agenda, an agenda in which non-security issues become more and more the focal point of our relations with Russia."
"We are increasingly becoming allies in the fullest sense of the word," he said at a conference on U.S.-Russia relations.
Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov said the summit is certain to further improve already warm relations bolstered by President Vladimir Putin's support for the U.S.-led war on terror.
He also said Russia expects a declaration signed at the summit to include U.S. assurances that its planned missile shield wouldn't be directed against Russia. That declaration is in addition to the nuclear deal, which foresees cuts in each country's nuclear arsenals to 1,700-2,200 warheads from the approximately 6,000 each is now allowed.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that Russia wouldn't take any immediate action in response to U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which will become effective June 14. "We will respond to real, not virtual events, and the missile defense program is still virtual," Ivanov said.
Despite talk of economic cooperation, Vershbow acknowledged that U.S. trade with Russia accounts for less than 1 percent of its total trade worldwide, roughly equaling the level of U.S. trade with Costa Rica.
"We have barely tapped the potential for trade and investment," he said, pointing at the need for Russia to deal with excessive bureaucratic regulation and corruption that has stemmed foreign investment.
Vershbow also voiced confidence that recent disputes over U.S. anti-dumping duties on Russian steel and Russia's ban on imports of U.S. poultry will "eventually be viewed as nothing more than bumps on the road to a larger and mutually beneficial trade relationship."
On a more critical note, Vershbow said the United States is concerned about media freedom in Russia and urged the government to help strengthen such foundations of civil society. Concerns about journalists' freedom have resurfaced in Russia in recent weeks after the slaying of a feisty newspaper editor in the Volga River city of Togliatti.
Meanwhile, a new poll showed that most Russians don't really like Bush - a change from just after Sept. 11.
Forty-five percent of those polled by the respected Public Opinion Foundation said they didn't care much for the American president, while 25 percent said they liked him. After the terrorist attacks, only 25 percent of Russians said they didn't like Bush, the group said in the poll released Friday.
The polling firm questioned 1,500 Russians nationwide on May 11. No margin of error was given.
----
White House slams hijack 'politics'
May 17, 2002
By Ralph Z. Hallow and Dave Boyer
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020517-158207.htm
Vice President Richard B. Cheney yesterday warned congressional Democrats against trying to score political points by making "incendiary" assertions about what the White House knew about terrorist threats before the September 11 attacks.
"They need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions that have been made by some today that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11," the vice president said in a speech last night in New York.
"Such commentary is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war," he told a Manhattan gathering in honor of the New York state Conservative Party.
Democratic leaders yesterday called for investigations into what the president knew before the terrorist hijackings.
"I'm gravely concerned that the president received a warning in August about the threat of hijackers by Osama bin Laden and his organization," said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat. "Why was it not provided to us, and why was it not shared with the general public for the last eight months?"
Mr. Daschle called on President Bush to turn over documents from his intelligence briefings and a classified FBI memo written last July that outlined attempts by Arabs to train as pilots in the United States.
The furor erupted Wednesday night with a television network's report that Mr. Bush had received warnings from the CIA last August that bin Laden was planning to hijack American airliners. White House officials said those warnings were never specific, and they did not know terrorists planned to use planes as missiles to crash into buildings.
Behind closed doors, Mr. Bush himself passionately denounced the media reports as politically motivated and that he would have "unleashed the full force and fury" of the military if he had known.
"There's a sniff of politics in the air," Mr. Bush told Republican senators at a private meeting at the Capitol, his voice rising. "Someone may be trying to use this as a political opportunity."
Those who heard the president speak said there was no doubt he was referring to congressional Democrats and their calls for investigations.
Mr. Bush said that if he had "gotten wind" of such plans to kill thousands of Americans, "I would have unleashed the full force and fury of the U.S. military" against the terrorists. The administration said it did alert the appropriate authorities about the hijack warnings.
American intelligence officials had been warning about potential attacks by bin Laden on U.S. targets since the Clinton administration.
Time magazine reported in December 1998 that bin Laden was planning strikes on Washington or New York to avenge a U.S. missile strike on his headquarters in Afghanistan. The report was widely picked up by other press outlets, including the New York Daily News and Agence France-Presse.
"We've hit his headquarters, now he hits ours," the article quoted a State Department aide as saying. The report said Attorney General Janet Reno had organized a training exercise, code-named Poised Response, at FBI headquarters in October 1998 to plan for a terror attack by bin Laden.
But on Capitol Hill, Democrats and a few Republicans demanded a fuller explanation.
Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, and John McCain, Arizona Republican, revived their bill to create an independent commission to probe intelligence failures before September 11. The House and Senate intelligence committees already are conducting a joint investigation.
House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, Missouri Democrat, also called for an investigation. So did Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, who said she was not playing "Monday-morning quarterback."
"Having experienced that from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, I will not play that game," the former first lady said. "I do hope and trust that the president will assume the duty that we know he is capable of fulfilling, exercise the leadership we know he has and come before the American people to answer the questions so many New Yorkers and Americans are asking."
Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney, Georgia Democrat, posted a statement on her official Web site saying she had been vindicated for saying several weeks ago that the Bush administration knew about the pending terrorist attacks.
"I've been told to 'sit down and shut up' over and over again," Miss McKinney said. "Well, I won't sit down and I won't shut up until the full and unvarnished truth is placed before the American people."
In an interview with a Berkeley, Calif., radio station, Miss McKinney also had said Mr. Bush's motivation for ignoring the warnings might have been that "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war."
While Mr. Cheney said "a thorough investigation of the events that led up to 9/11 is entirely appropriate," he hinted in his speech last night that some members of Congress leak sensitive intelligence information for the sake of political grandstanding.
"For the most part, the members of the intelligence committees of both houses have conducted themselves in a responsible fashion. That's not necessarily true of every member of Congress," he said. Any investigation of pre-September 11 intelligence failures "must protect sensitive sources and methods and must be devoid of leaks and must avoid sensational and outrageous commentary."
Earlier yesterday, Republicans on Capitol Hill accused Democrats of exploiting a national tragedy for political gain against a president whose popularity has soared since September 11.
"I am disappointed in the deplorable, unconscionable way the Democrats are trying to make this a political issue," said House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Texas Republican. "This was a national tragedy that was met by a courageous administration with conviction and action and the president should be appreciated for this."
Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, called the accusations against the White House "malicious."
"For us to be talking like our enemy is George W. Bush instead of bin Laden, that's not right," Mr. Lott said.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said CIA briefings to the president had contained only general threat information - including word that bin Laden planned to hijack U.S. planes - since May 2001.
There was confusion, too, about whether lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees had access to the same warnings that the White House did. After a briefing with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Daschle said committee members had not seen the same intelligence reports as the president.
"The only people that had this information are those in the White House," Mr. Daschle said. "It's critical everybody understands that."
But some committee members, such as Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican, said Congress was aware of the same general warnings that were provided to the president.
"The intelligence provided to the president was very general in nature," Mr. Roberts said. "It lacked any specifics. It was a general alert in regards to hijackings."
White House officials did not speculate about the source of the news report. But Miss Rice said that "this all came out as a result of our preparations to help the committees on the Hill that are getting ready to review the events."
"Frankly, it didn't pop to the front of people's minds, because it's one report among very, very many that you get. And so it's out of that review that it became clear that this was there," she said.
• Joseph Curl contributed to this report.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Allies Begin New Sweep in Afghanistan
May 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghanistan.html
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) -- Backed by U.S. air power, some 1,000 coalition troops spread out into mountainous eastern Afghanistan Friday to find and fight suspected al-Qaida or Taliban soldiers who had fired on an Australian patrol.
Brig. Roger Lane, the top British commander in Afghanistan, said the targeted assembly of suspected al-Qaida or Taliban fighters in Paktia province was ``a substantial enemy force,'' though he declined to give a number.
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Bryan Hilferty said later the coalition believes there are about 100 al-Qaida or Taliban fighters in the area.
No coalition fighters were hurt during Thursday's attack on an Australian special forces patrol, Lane said, though some suspected al-Qaida and Taliban soldiers were killed.
``Our ability to respond rapidly to such attacks will serve as a reminder that the coalition will not tolerate such activity and we will hunt the terrorists relentlessly,'' Lane said from Bagram, the main allied base north of Kabul.
The new mission begun Friday involved mostly British troops and was named Operation Condor. All three missions the British have led since coming to Afghanistan in April have been named for birds; the first was Operation Ptarmigan, after a Scottish mountain bird, and the second was Operation Snipe, which the British define as a variety of slender-billed birds.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: ``There are now and there will be in the future a variety of efforts where coalition forces will be conducting sweeps through areas that we have reason to believe could or might or do have varying concentrations of al-Qaida or Taliban.''
Rumsfeld said this frequently is done in cooperation with Pakistani forces ``so the possibility of escape is reduced.''
Meanwhile, fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was quoted in the London-based newspaper Asharq al-Awsat saying the war in Afghanistan had entered a new phase and that Osama bin Laden, head of the al-Qaida terror network, is alive.
``We don't consider the battle ended in Afghanistan... the battle has begun and its fires are picking up. These fires will reach the White House, because it is the center of injustice and tyranny'' for its war on Islam, Omar was quoted as saying. The authenticity of the quotes could not be independently confirmed.
Rumsfeld said he had no ``current information on the whereabouts or even the existence'' of bin Laden or Omar.
The 1,000 coalition soldiers in the newest operation near the city of Khost is large enough to overwhelm opposing fighters, said Hilferty, the American military spokesman.
``The best way to ensure people don't shoot at you is to have an overwhelming force. We have no desire to get into a fair fight with al-Qaida,'' he said.
Troops are fighting in the mountains at altitudes of 8,000 feet, officials said.
In Australia, Brig. Mike Hannan said a group of Australian troops came under heavy machine-gun fire in hilly terrain Thursday. A second group of Australians, trying to meet up with them, also came under enemy fire.
``They were able to fight their way through and join up,'' with the help of U.S. air support before moving to safety, Hannan said.
Hilferty said American forces had not deployed ground forces, but were backing the British-led mission with air power. He said AC-130s had been called in to help the Australians on Thursday night, opening fire on their attackers.
Meanwhile, local security officials said at least 10 Afghan tribesmen feuding over land were killed in eastern Afghanistan when U.S. planes bombarded their positions after shooting erupted on the ground.
Security chief Sur Gul said the Sabari and the Balkhiel tribes were skirmishing over ownership of trees near their villages about 30 miles north of Khost. Shooting erupted Thursday night, Sur Gul said, and U.S. planes began bombing shortly afterward.
He said the American bombardment killed at least 10 people, adding: ``We don't know why the U.S. planes fired.''
The Afghan Islamic Press agency, quoting unidentified officials from Khost, said the U.S. air assault occurred after wedding guests in Balkhiel fired automatic rifles into the air in celebration.
U.S. spokesman Hilferty defended the bombing, saying the planes had been fired upon first.
``We're not perfect. I can't say for sure that we did not fire at the wedding and we did not fire at these two tribes. But I can say we fired on a ridge-line in an uninhabited area. They were actively pursing us. People were trying to kill us,'' he said. In recent months, U.S. planes have attacked positions, particularly in eastern Afghanistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts are believed to be hiding. Locals have complained of mistaken or mistargeted bombings that they say have killed innocents.
On Monday, British-led forces wrapped up a two-week search operation in eastern Afghanistan saying they had dealt a significant blow to al-Qaida's ability to mount terrorist strikes by blowing up a huge ammunition dump in Paktia province.
At Bagram, 20 more British soldiers have been struck by a contagious but still unidentified illness, bringing the total number infected to 38. The outbreak began Sunday, and several men have been evacuated to Europe.
-------- africa
Somalia Wants Help Against Invasions
May 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Somalia.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Somalia appealed to the United Nations on Friday to impose sanctions on neighboring Ethiopia, claiming its troops have invaded southern Somalia on several occasions since mid-April.
At least two waves of Somali refuges have fled across the border into northern Kenya in the past month because of ``the Ethiopian invasion,'' Somalia's U.N. Ambassador Ahmed Abdi Hashi told a news conference.
``I call on the international community particularly to help us -- to impose sanctions against Ethiopia ... for violating the Security Council resolutions,'' he said.
Abdi Hashi said he sent a letter to the Security Council on Thursday and was waiting for a response.
Ethiopia's U.N. Ambassador Abdul Mejid Hussein denied any involvement by his country in the fighting, saying the attackers were Somali extremist groups who wanted to hold onto areas under their control.
``We have not made any incursion or invasions. Whenever Somalis have a problem they look for a scape goat, Ethiopia is the easiest one,'' he told The Associated Press.
Abdi Hashi accused Ethiopia of invading several regions in southwestern Somalia.
The United Nations refugee agency said Friday that some 10,000 people had escaped to the border town of Mandera, in northeastern Kenya to escape the recent clan warfare.
Kenya is already host to some 250,000 refugees, including 140,000 Somalis.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since opposition leaders united to oust dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Abdiqasim's government was elected at a peace conference in neighboring Djibouti in August 2000, but it is very weak, and its support is limited.
Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian country which shares a long and porous border with Somalia, a Muslim nation, has accused Somalia's transitional government of having links to Islamic extremists. Abdiqasim has denied the claims.
-------- india
India Vows to Stand Up to 'Terrorism'
May 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-southasia.html
NEW DELHI - India, enraged by an attack on an army camp it blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists, accused its neighbor of encouraging ``terrorism'' and called on world leaders to step up pressure on Islamabad.
During a parliamentary debate on India's response to Tuesday's raid -- in which 34 died including the three attackers -- the government declined to say what specific action it would take to hit back at its neighbor and nuclear rival.
But speaker after speaker lashed out at the United States for supporting Pakistan, which India accuses of sending militants across the border to attack targets in India and Indian Kashmir.
Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led war against terrorism, has denied all involvement in the raid on the army camp in the south of Jammu and Kasmir state.
``All we have got from the international community is a dose of lip service,'' said junior foreign minister Omar Abdullah.
Then, he quoted back the words of President Bush: ``If you are not with us, you are with the terrorists.''
Analysts say India has a range of options, from severing or downgrading diplomatic ties to military action.
But Friday, the government sidestepped the issue.
Home (interior) Minister Lal Krishna Advani said an announcement could be made in due course by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on national television.
``The government will certainly do its duty,'' he said.
Parliament also passed a resolution to fight ``terrorism.''
``It is essential that the leaders of the world community take note of the continuing acts of terrorism, encouraged by Pakistan. The house resolves to fight against such senseless acts of terrorism, which are against humanity as a whole, in a united and determined manner and declares this nation's commitment to see an end to this menace,'' it said.
As the Indian parliament debated the country's next step in what is a half-century-old conflict centerd on disputed Kashmir, Indian and Pakistani troops traded unusually heavy fire across the border in the south of India's Jammu and Kashmir state.
INDIA, PAKISTAN BLAME EACH OTHER
India and Pakistan blamed each other for starting the fighting which an Indian defense spokesman called ``some of the most serious firing'' since December.
An Indian defense official said four Indian civilians and two guards were injured in the fighting while a Pakistani army statement said four people were killed and 40 wounded due to ''unprovoked firing'' by the Indian army.
About a million men have been mobilized on the border since a December attack on India's parliament which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
The raid on the army camp, in which many of the dead were the wives and children of soldiers serving on the front line, raised fresh anger in India both against Pakistan and against the United States for failing to crack down on Islamabad.
And in another attack Friday, at least two people died and 15 were wounded when a bomb planted by suspected rebels exploded in downtown Srinagar, summer capital of Indian Kashmir.
Bush telephoned Vajpayee to condemn to the attack on the army camp and offered his sympathies to the victims.
The prospect of a conflict escalating into the world's first nuclear exchange, combined with intense U.S. pressure, has so far held India back from launching military strikes against Pakistan.
Both countries have said they are willing to use nuclear weapons, though India has said it will not be the first to do so.
``I fail to understand how Pakistan can even consider a nuclear option. You have only to look at the size of India and the size of Pakistan to realize which country would still be around even if Pakistan was stupid enough to consider the use of nuclear weapons,'' said minister Abdullah.
-------- iraq
Iraq said reconsidering inspections
May 17, 2002
By Edith M. Lederer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020517-16782700.htm
NEW YORK - Iraq appears to be seriously considering allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to return, more than three years after barring them from the country, a top U.S. diplomat says.
"I think a lot of people are telling us the Iraqis are seriously thinking about this now," James Cunningham, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters.
Since March, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri has held two rounds of talks with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the return of inspectors who left Baghdad ahead of U.S. and British air strikes 31/2 years ago and have been barred from returning.
"As long as the secretary-general and his people think there's a chance of bringing the Iraqis to that point for whatever reason, we think it's a useful thing to do," Mr. Cunningham told a group of reporters on Wednesday.
Mr. Cunningham said the Iraqis have had "ample opportunity" to exchange views with Mr. Annan, discuss technical issues with chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, and consult Security Council members on other questions it raised. Some were political, including U.S. threats to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and U.S. and British enforcement of "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq.
"I don't think anybody thinks that this process should drag on for months," Mr. Cunningham said, noting that the 15 members of the Security Council were united in wanting the inspectors to return as soon as possible.
The council imposed sanctions after Saddam's forces marched into Kuwait in 1990. The sanctions can only be lifted when U.N. inspectors declare that Iraq's nuclear-, chemical- and biological-weapons programs have been dismantled, along with the long-range missiles to deliver them.
The Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to revamp the sanctions system, capping a yearlong effort by the United States and Britain to get more humanitarian goods to the Iraqi people and try to keep weapons of mass destruction out of Saddam's hands.
The resolution allows the free flow of most civilian goods into Iraq and requires U.N. approval for delivery of civilian items with potential military use on a 332-page checklist.
Yesterday, Iraq said it reluctantly accepted the new sanctions plan, though the Iraqi leadership has criticized it. According to the official Iraqi News Agency, officials portrayed the U.N. measure as U.S. manipulation of the Security Council.
-------- israel / palestine
Arafat gives in to call for elections
May 17, 2002
By Hadeel Wahdan
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020517-94453908.htm
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Yasser Arafat, under pressure from Palestinian lawmakers, agreed yesterday to hold presidential and parliamentary elections within six months.
Mr. Arafat's decision came after Palestinian legislators called for elections within a year, a new Cabinet within 45 days and the creation of a post of prime minister to control day-to-day operations of the Palestinian Authority.
Previous attempts to reform the Palestinian administration have led to few significant changes, with Mr. Arafat ignoring laws passed by parliament as well as decisions by the judiciary.
The proposed election would be the first time that Mr. Arafat faces voters since he was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in 1996 with an overwhelming majority.
"President Arafat has set a program for reform and changes," said Ahmed Abdel Rahman, secretary- general of the Palestinian Cabinet.
"The core of the changes will be conducting general elections in a period that will not exceed four to six months," he said, adding that Mr. Arafat has called for a meeting of the Central Elections Committee within two days.
Israeli officials were skeptical of the proposals.
"What's clear is that any Palestinian leadership would have to, first and foremost, renounce terror as a strategic option," said David Baker, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Until now, terror and the Palestinian Authority have been joined at the hip."
Mr. Arafat's decision came amid growing questions about his popularity among his people. With the economy in a shambles and the community reeling from a crushing Israeli incursion into Palestinian areas, Palestinians were pressing for reforms to an administration widely regarded as corrupt.
In a speech to Palestinian legislators on Wednesday, Mr. Arafat echoed the calls for reform but gave no details.
The legislators responded by putting together their own reform plan calling for elections and a smaller Cabinet. It was approved yesterday. Soon afterward, Mr. Abdel Rahman announced Mr. Arafat's own plans to hold elections.
Legislators from Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement also had demanded the creation of the post of prime minister, charged with governing the day-to-day operations of the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Arafat's proposal made no mention of such a post.
The legislators also called for streamlining the Palestinian Authority's eight security services, but Mr. Arafat's proposal did not address the issue.
Mr. Arafat has run the Palestinian territories virtually unchallenged since Israel permitted his return from exile eight years ago. He was elected president in 1996 with 87 percent of the vote against Samiha Khalil, a female social worker in her 70s.
Members of his Fatah faction won 50 of the 88 seats.
But pressure on Mr. Arafat is growing.
The United States has called on the Palestinians to adopt a constitutional democracy and open their closed, top-down system to counter corruption.
In addition, future U.S. humanitarian aid to the Palestinians will bypass the Palestinian Authority.
The assistance includes $50 million approved last week by the House Appropriations Committee.
On Wednesday, EU foreign and security policy chief Javier Solana called for sweeping changes. The European Union has given the Palestinian Authority $337 million in aid during the past two years.
"We need a Palestinian Authority that is more able and more determined to serve its population and the security of all," Mr. Solana said. "Our expectations are clear: more transparency, more accountability, greater efficiency."
Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said elections should be held on all levels to bring new people into the government.
"All these have to be carried out if we are committed to democracy and democratic representation," she said.
Speaking before Mr. Arafat's announcement, legislator Hussam Khader was not convinced that the Palestinian leader was serious about making meaningful changes.
"I believe Arafat may work in making cosmetic changes in the Palestinian Authority," he said. "Maybe he will change a corrupted Cabinet for another, more corrupted Cabinet."
Mr. Sharon has urged the United States and other nations to reject Mr. Arafat's administration and appoint a one-year interim Palestinian government to carry out reforms, Mr. Sharon's foreign policy adviser Danny Ayalon said.
Mr. Sharon proposed that the new government be established irrespective of whether the Palestinians accept it, the Yediot Ahronot daily reported.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers backed by tanks entered Beitunia, a Ramallah suburb, early yesterday and surrounded an apartment building.
Soldiers killed Ahmed Ghanam, 25, a member of Mr. Arafat's security forces.
The military said the raid helped prevent a terror attack in Jerusalem. About two dozen Palestinians were arrested in other Israeli army raids.
Israel ended a six-week military offensive against Palestinian militias in the West Bank last week, but army raids have continued.
The Ha'aretz newspaper quoted Israel's deputy chief of staff as saying that a postponed incursion into the Gaza Strip is likely to still take place.
Maj. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, who will take over as army chief of staff next month, said it was "only a matter of time" before the Israeli army moves into Gaza.
--------
Obeying 'a holy duty' to kill
May 17, 2002
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020517-7676084.htm
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- A mother lovingly dresses her 12-year-old son in the homemade costume of a suicide bomber, complete with small kaffiyeh, a belt of electrical tape and fake explosives made of plywood.
"I encourage him, and he should do this," said the woman, the mother of six. "God gave him to me to defend our land. Palestinian women must have more and more children till we liberate our land. This is a holy duty for all Palestinian people."
Her son, Abu Ali, joyfully marched in a mask on the day commemorating the Nakba, or "catastrophe," as Palestinians call the day of Israel's founding in 1948.
"I hope to be a martyr," he said. "I hope when I get to 14 or 15 to explode myself."
The suicide bomber thrives on a culture of fatalism, nurtured in a landscape of poverty and hopelessness, and popularized by a Palestinian government whose policies have demonized Israel.
Millions of Palestinians are encouraged to stay in squalid refugee camps, a rebuke to the Jewish state's existence. Textbooks don't even show Israel on the map.
During the current intifada, or uprising, against Israel's military and economic dominance, the martyr has become the ultimate weapon.
A suicide culture
Between 1990 and 2000 the Israeli police catalogued 35 separate suicide-bombing incidents, including successful hits and failed attempts.
Since January 2000, there have been 119 incidents throughout Israel proper and against Israeli targets in Gaza and the West Bank, Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman said.
For every Park Hotel - where 29 persons were killed by a suicide bomber on the first night of Passover - there are many more attempts in Jewish settlements in Gaza or at army checkpoints in the West Bank. Few are successful, but they have wide support throughout the Arab world.
"Why are these settlers and soldiers here? They occupy our land. They are legitimate targets," said Ismail Abu Shenab, the political adviser to Hamas, the resistance group responsible for most suicide attacks.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade is an offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. It was formed after Ariel Sharon, now Israel's prime minister, visited Jerusalem's Temple Mount on Sept. 28, 2000. For Palestinians, the visit marks the beginning of the present uprising.
With funding that the Israelis say comes directly from the Palestinian Authority, the brigade has joined Hamas as sponsors of suicide bombers, with military-grade explosives now replacing homemade chemical cocktails. They have also begun to use women, who arouse less suspicion.
Teen-agers as young as 13, drawn in by a complex mix of adulation and anger, have begun to sacrifice themselves at Israeli targets.
The Israelis accuse the Palestinian Authority of perpetuating the cult of the suicide bomber, starting in elementary schools.
"Every single school we went into in Jenin, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Qalqilya or Tulkarm was plastered with posters of the glorification of the [martyrs]," said Col. Miri Eisen, an intelligence officer with the Israeli army. "They are teaching a generation that violence is OK."
This education often begins on the streets and in the home, as in the case of the woman dressing her 12-year-old son in the suicide-bomber costume.
Deadly foes
The Israeli Defense Forces are by far the most sophisticated and powerful military force in the region. The 5,000 or so Jewish settlers and as many soldiers deployed in Gaza have proved to be an irresistible target to the Palestinians.
The army has had to adapt to fight an enemy who expects to die.
"The only real strategy is prevention," said Col. Guy Zur, who is in charge of military operations for the Gaza Strip. "We can only hope to stop them before they get here."
To this end, the Israelis have built an electric fence on its border with Gaza - the launching pad for so much extremism - and all but closed its legitimate border crossings to Palestinians.
The Israelis confronted this new foe in the West Bank during last month's Operation Defensive Shield: Twenty-three Israeli soldiers died in the attack against the Jenin refugee camp, and half of those soldiers were lost in a single ambush in a courtyard.
"These [people] booby-trapped their own houses," said one soldier in disbelief. "It was like they didn't expect to be coming back."
Posters in the Palestinian territories are not advertisements for unaffordable products, but ghoulish celebrations of the men who died in a battle to liberate their land.
One blew up a bus near Tel Aviv. One scaled a settlement wall with two loaded pistols. Another strapped on an explosive belt and headed for a coffee shop in Jerusalem.
Tucked behind a sports club in Gaza City, two dozen members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade train for the day they will face Israeli troops.
Clad in camouflage pants and damp black T-shirts, the men are put though their paces of calisthenics and wrestling.
They are mostly unarmed, although one man handles a yellow grenade and a few hold handguns and rifles.
They anticipate an Israeli invasion of Gaza and expect the battle to be much bloodier than in the Jenin refugee camp last month.
After the workout, the men run through the streets of Gaza City, shouting "Allah Akbar," which means, "God is great." Beside them are little boys, scrambling and singing in emulation.
Anger replaces grief
Funerals here do more than honor the dead. They are a safety valve for the living, an explosive expression of the anger that marks daily life in the Palestinian territories.
Hundreds of men turned out for the funeral earlier this month of Khalid Abu Siamm, a Gazan who was killed by Israeli soldiers at the Church of the Nativity.
The reeking month-old body was draped in a Palestinian flag, sprayed with perfume and paraded through the streets accompanied by loud chanting and gunfire.
"By the soul, by the blood, we sacrificed you, martyr," they yelled, surging through the streets of Gaza.
At martyr, or "shehid" funerals, some of the mourners wear masks to hide their faces. Many also wear headbands to show their allegiance to Hamas or Fatah or Islamic Jihad, the three main Palestinian groups. Flags and banners flutter everywhere.
The mood is anger rather than grief, more political than melancholy. And for the rest of the day, the Palestinian town or village feels electrified with an air of possibility and purpose.
"We are powerless against Israeli occupation," says taxi driver Eyad Awal, a day after Mr. Siamm's funeral. "We have nothing; we are nothing until they leave. We will do nothing but fight the occupation, but you know, it's hard, because they have tanks and Apaches [helicopters] and guns, and we have no weapons."
Driving through a city plastered with posters of martyrs, he adds, "We have nothing to do but die."
The martyr painter
The paintings of martyrs that decorate so many Palestinian squares and roadways are done by Bahaa Yassin, a laid-back resident of the Al-Nosairat refugee camp in Gaza.
A newlywed who expects his first child in three months, Mr. Yassin, 24, says it feels no different to paint martyrs than it does a family portrait. Now that stores cannot afford his billboards, the martyrs are his best commissions.
The artist says he doesn't mind if his work is used to glorify suicide bombers. "Personally, I don't care about this. I draw what they bring," he says. "But I think that is the idea of the people who want this work."
Hisham Zaqout, whose nephew Youssef, 15, was killed by Israeli soldiers when he tried to infiltrate a Jewish settlement with a knife, says the family is in mourning.
The Zaqouts are clearly in grief and shock over the unexpected death of their son, but the uncle acknowledges that the hastily printed posters and endless stream of well-wishers, mourners and media have helped ease their pain.
"In Islam, sacrifice is the highest honor," he says. "Youssef did this for all of us to be free."
-------- nato
Congress Endorses NATO Expansion
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 17, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34808-2002May17.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-NATO-Expansion.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Underscoring the importance of the U.S. military alliance with Europe, Congress sent President Bush a bill he wanted Friday that endorses an expansion of NATO and authorizes security assistance for seven nations that hope to join.
``The Cold War may be over, but the security and welfare of America and Europe are very closely linked,'' said Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ``And our common goal must continue to be the building of a Europe which is whole and free.''
The Senate approved the bill Friday, 85-6. The House passed it in November, 372-46.
The vote occurred as Bush met with Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek at the White House. Slovenia, formerly part of Yugoslavia, received money from the legislation. The other six that did are former Warsaw Pact members.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush and Drnovsek discussed the November NATO summit in Prague, where the alliance will decide which countries, if any, to invite in as members, as well as bilateral issues and ways to bring peace and stability to the Yugoslav region.
Bush had asked Congress to pass the bill before he heads to Moscow next week for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lugar said. That trip will include attendance at the NATO-Russia summit in Italy, plus visits to Germany, Russia and France.
``This bill will help NATO extend the zone of stability eastward and southward on the continent so that some time in the next decade we'll be able to say, for the first time I think in modern history, that we have a Europe whole and free,'' said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
The measure expresses support for expanding NATO, in line with statements by Bush last June and by former President Clinton in October 1996. The legislatures of all 19 current NATO members would be asked to ratify inclusion of any new invitees.
The bill also would authorize $55.5 million in military assistance for seven countries but does not specifically call for NATO admission for any of them. The aid: Bulgaria, $10 million; Estonia, $6.5 million; Latvia, $7 million; Lithuania, $7.5 million; Romania, $11.5 million; Slovakia, $8.5 million, and Slovenia, $4.5 million.
Croatia, Albania and Macedonia also want to join but are considered longer shots.
The money -- approved by Congress last year, without being specifically authorized -- will ``help those candidate countries meet the alliance's stringent membership requirements,'' Biden said.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, criticized what she considered a failure to re-evaluate NATO's role given the new U.S.-Russia friendship, exemplified by the agreement -- to be signed in Moscow -- to cut nuclear weapons to 1,700-2,200 warheads apiece.
``This is a defensive alliance to protect the democracies of Western Europe from the communist threat of the East,'' said Hutchison, who voted for the measure. ``That threat has evaporated.''
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the Armed Services Committee's top Republican, said he voted against the bill because its rhetoric might make the seven nations think they have the U.S. vote for admission, and expanding NATO might hurt the alliance and impose more costs on the United States.
``What we're doing is saying to the American taxpayer ... and the men and women of the armed forces of the United States, that an attack against one is an attack against all,'' Warner said. ``And such new members as we may admit, what do they bring to the table to participate in, first, deterring an attack, and, if necessary, repelling that attack?''
Warner said other NATO countries' military budgets are not increasing as quickly as the U.S. defense budget.
``We've got to be a watchdog of NATO as we begin to invite more and more countries in under this umbrella, and it could well weaken the alliance,'' he said.
Biden said the bill's passage is not a commitment to support any NATO aspirant.
In 1998, the Senate debated for seven days before ratifying Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as new NATO members, he said, predicting the Senate would conduct similar scrutiny of any nation invited to join in Prague.
Current NATO members are Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the United States.
Voting against the bill were Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho; James Inhofe, R-Okla.; Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; Robert Smith, R-N.H.; Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Warner. The nine who did not vote were Kent Conrad, D-N.D.; Pete Domenici, R-N.M.; Michael Enzi, R-Wyo.; Judd Gregg, R-N.H.; Jesse Helms, R-N.C.; John McCain, R-Ariz.; Zell Miller, D-Ga.; Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Craig Thomas, R-Wyo. The rest voted for it.
------
NATO Chief Concerned by Transatlantic Military Gap
May 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-nato-europe.html
BRUSSELS - NATO Secretary-General George Robertson harangued the European Union on Friday over lackluster defense spending and warned about a widening gap in transatlantic military capabilities.
Robertson said the 15-nation bloc needs to tackle a perception that its European Security and Defense Policy-- including plans for a rapid reaction force -- is producing ''more bureaucracy than capability.''
Although the defense alliance chief has pleaded tirelessly with Europe to address its military shortcomings and spend more appropriately, his comments at a security conference in Brussels marked a hardening of tone.
It followed this week's meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Iceland, where Secretary of State Colin Powell called on allies to gird for new security threats in the light of last September's hijacked airliner attacks on America.
Robertson is determined to have a revamped version of the 19-nation alliance's Defense Capabilities Initiative -- launched in 1999 to deal with shortfalls highlighted by the conflict in Kosovo -- ready for a NATO summit in Prague next November.
``Time is short before Prague,'' said one NATO diplomat. ''Robertson wants the Europeans to go beyond recognizing that there's a capability gap, he wants decisions at Prague.''
Robertson shrugged off speculation that Washington, which took its war on terrorism to Afghanistan with just a sprinkling of help, was not interested in working with its allies.
``To me, the real question is...not whether the U.S. and its allies want to work together, but whether they still can work together,'' he said. ``Because if the U.S. and its allies could no longer act as a meaningful military coalition...NATO would be marginalised as a serious organization.''
DIVISION OF LABOUR
He said that if the gap continues to widen there will be a division of labour, with the United States providing logistics, smart bombs and intelligence and its lower-tech allies providing soldiers -- or simply wringing their hands on the sidelines.
Ultimately, Washington would be faced with a choice between unilateral action or no action at all.
While the United States is set to spend around 3.7 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense this year, spending by European members of NATO has dropped to around 1.8 percent of GDP from four percent in 1985.
The $48-billion increase planned for the U.S. defense budget in 2003 is larger than the total annual defense budget of Britain and France, the next biggest military forces.
Most European allies have plans to make their armed forces smaller, more professional and more mobile. Faced with sluggish economies and fiscal pressure to meet European Union deficit limits, money for defense is very tight.
European forces lack strategic airlift, precision-guided weapons and other key capabilities, including surveillance, air-to-air refueling and tactical missile defense.
Robertson criticized the EU's security and defense policy -- under which 60,000 troops are supposed to be deployable in hot spots in and around Europe by 2003 -- saying the self-prescribed goals seemed to be ``about numbers rather than new capabilities.''
``Irrespective of declarations and new committees, Europe is still not seen as seriously addressing the transatlantic capabilities gap,'' he said.
``If the EU does not resist the perception that ESDP is producing more bureaucracy than capability, we will end with two gaps: a transatlantic capability gap and a European credibility gap.''
-------- pakistan
War Feared Along Kashmir Border
May 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Kashmir-Ready-for-War.html
CHIKOTI, Pakistan (AP) -- Col. Nauman Saeed is ready for a fight.
Barely 100 yards away in bunkers that hug the forested mountainside is his enemy -- India.
The standoff between Pakistani and Indian soldiers is decades old. But it's never been more dangerous, explains Saeed, who says he has come to terms with the prospect that another war on the subcontinent could involve nuclear weapons.
In his camouflage army uniform, Saeed leaned on the sandbag-covered wall of a bunker and peered through his binoculars across the disputed Kashmir border that divides the former princely state between Pakistan and India.
``Over there at 12 o'clock at the scraps of wood -- what looks like rubble, it's an Indian bunker. There at 3 o'clock in the trees, another bunker, further up again at 12 o'clock what looks like a stone wall. It's not.''
Peeking through a small hole in the wall, barely visible, was the steel gray nose of a rifle. It's another Indian bunker.
Pakistan and India have fought three wars in the last 55 years -- two over Kashmir, which both countries claim in its entirety. But all those conflicts came before each of the hostile neighbors developed nuclear weapons.
Shooting erupted across the border again on Friday, mostly in the Samba and Ramgarh sectors, where Indian soldiers are trying to build a fence along the border, Indian army officials said in Jammu, the winter capital of India's northern Jammu-Kashmir state.
India says it will keep its options open to stop cross-border incursions into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir by Muslim militants who New Delhi says are financed, trained and sent by Pakistan. The Pakistani government denies the accusation, calling the insurgency in Kashmir a ``freedom struggle.''
The current tensions arose with a Dec. 13 attack on the Indian Parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistani-based militants. Both sides moved troops to the border and put them on high alert.
Fearful that fighting could erupt, the United States sent its assistant secretary of state for South Asia, Christina Rocca, to both India and Pakistan this week. She left the region urging talks to defuse tensions, but no such meetings were scheduled.
An attack Tuesday on a bus in Indian-ruled Kashmir that killed 34 people further inflamed the situation. India blamed Pakistan and said it wouldn't rule out military action, although Indian Foreign Minister George Fernandes has said that's not likely before September.
A former Pakistani army brigadier-turned-politician, Mohammed Yusuf, said the ``basic problem'' is a lack of trust on both sides, and he urged the international community to get Pakistan and India to the negotiating table.
``America and the European Union should help create an environment of trust, get both sides to show wisdom,'' he said. ``Both sides must chose to talk, not chose a path of confrontation, which could lead to a nuclear confrontation that would be very bad for the region, for the whole world.''
But India wants Pakistan to stop cross-border incursions before it talks. Pakistan denies it can do so.
As a Pakistani army commander on the volatile border, Saeed said the fears of a confrontation are well founded.
``The military option is possible,'' he said. ``But once it starts, it is between two nuclear states. It would be naive of India to think it can bully its way into Pakistan. Once a war is started, it has a dynamics of its own. It cannot be controlled.''
In Muzzafarabad, the capital of Pakistani-ruled Kashmir, people fear a possible Indian strike on suspected militant training camps.
``That would be bad for us. That could mean a war. Then how will it end?'' asked Nazir Hussain, an employee of a multinational pharmaceutical company. ``The situation is getting worse every day. Never before has it been so bad.''
After the December attack on India's Parliament, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf banned several Islamic militant groups -- some allied to al Qaida and the Taliban -- and ordered graffiti encouraging holy war against India obliterated from walls in Pakistani Kashmir. Some graffiti had listed telephone numbers where would-be recruits to attack India could call for training.
Saeed said Pakistan's army does not encourage cross-border attacks but added, ``I am not saying there is no infiltration. That would be wrong.'' He maintained that the infiltration is by people outraged at the treatment of Kashmiri Muslims by Indian soldiers.
``This is not a territorial war. The West has to understand that. The dispute is an ideological one of Muslims and Hindus,'' Saeed said.
Most of India's 1 billion people are Hindus, while Pakistan's 147 million population is almost all Muslim. Saeed accused Indian soldiers of killing and torturing Muslim civilians, a charge also leveled by human rights groups that say Indian and Pakistani civilians have been victims in the dispute.
Gazing out over the muddy Jhelum River that flows from India, Saeed said, ``We drag bodies out of there -- mutilated bodies, Muslim bodies.'' The last body pulled from the river was on May 6, he said.
His hand went to his heart. ``It really hurts here.''
-------- russia / chechnya
Putin: Russia Won't Join NATO
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 17, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35536-2002May17.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-NATO.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin emphasized again Friday that Russia has no interest in joining NATO.
Russia and its former Cold War foe, NATO, agreed this week to put the Cold War behind them and set up a new council to jointly fight terrorism and other threats.
NATO officials say the agreement will not affect the alliance's core mutual defense role and that safeguards are built in to ensure Moscow will not be able to veto NATO decisions if relations sour.
``Russia is going to participate in the decision-making process for issues such as the fight against terrorism, humanitarian operations,'' Putin said, according to Interfax news agency.
Speaking from the Black Sea resort of Sochi after a meeting with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Putin also encouraged Ukraine to broaden its own relations with NATO.
Kuchma said last month that Ukraine wanted closer ties with NATO. Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons and declared itself a neutral country after gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. It has actively participated in U.N. peacekeeping contingents in Lebanon, Kosovo and Sierre Leone.
Asked last month whether Ukraine would be interested in joining NATO, Kuchma said: ``Invite us.''
Putin has never expressed an interest in joining NATO, even as he pushed for closer ties with the military alliance.
-------- spy agencies
Britain Names Woman New Spy Chief
May 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Spy-Chief.html
LONDON (AP) -- A counterterrorism expert was named Friday as the new head of Britain's MI5 spy service, only the second woman to hold the job.
Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that Eliza Manningham-Buller would take over as director general of the Security Service, also known as MI5, in October.
Manningham-Buller, 53, is a counterterrorism expert who once ran a unit fighting Irish Republican Army terrorism. She worked in Washington as a senior liaison with the CIA during the Gulf War, and was among a group of British intelligence officers who flew to Washington the day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
She is currently MI5's deputy director general.
Manningham-Buller takes over from Sir Stephen Lander, who after six years in the position will take another government post. His predecessor, Dame Stella Rimington, who headed MI5 between 1992 and 1996, was the first woman to head the organization and was the model for Dame Judi Dench's female spymaster M in the recent James Bond films.
Rimington also was the first British spy chief to be publicly named. The government officially acknowledged the existence of MI5 only in 1989.
A Home Office statement listed Manningham-Buller's interests as ``reading, music, crosswords and history.''
-------- un
U.S. Fires Opening Salvo at UN on Global Court
May 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-timor-usa-court.html
UNITED NATIONS - The Bush administration on Friday fired its opening salvo in the United Nations against the new International Criminal Court by attempting to prevent U.N. personnel in East Timor from being prosecuted by global tribunals.
The action, in the form of an amendment to a resolution authorizing a peacekeeping mission for post-independence East Timor, was rejected by Security Council members, especially Britain and France, in private consultations.
The United States then voted for the resolution on East Timor, the Southeast Asian territory administered by the United Nations since late 1999 after Timorese voted for independence from Indonesia. It becomes independent on midnight Sunday.
But U.S. officials said Secretary of State Colin Powell wanted the issue raised again before July 1, when the new court's treaty comes into force. The ICC was set up to try individuals for the world's most henious crimes, such as mass murder and genocide.
The U.S. action had little to do with East Timor itself, but diplomats said Washington might make its position on the court a condition before participating in future peacekeeping missions.
The United States has few combat troops with U.N. operations and none in East Timor, although it has joined NATO troops in Kosovo and Bosnia. But there are several hundred U.S. policemen and civilians serving with the United Nations.
Among council members all but China and Singapore have signed the treaty and six of them, Britain, France, Ireland, Norway, Bulgaria and Mauritius, have ratified it.
Colombia, which is about to ratify the treaty, said countries that have approved the court could not back the U.S. position. ``They have made a national commitment. It is a matter of hierarchy of the law,'' said Ambassador Alfonso Valdivieso.
The Bush administration, angering its closest allies, renounced on May 6 any obligation to cooperate with the new court. Former President Clinton had signed the treaty.
It argues that the court would supersede national law and make American soldiers subject to frivolous prosecutions. Supporters of the court counter that the tribunal would only step in if national courts did not prosecute offenders.
``The across the board reaction of the Security Council is a clear indication of the opposition the Bush administration's brass knuckles policy toward the ICC is generating,'' said Richard Dicker, associate counsel of Human Rights Watch and an expert on the court.
The U.S. amendment avoided limiting the exemption to Americans, which would have been of questionable legality.
Instead U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte's proposal would have excluded ``current or former officials or personnel from any state'' contributing to the East Timor U.N. mission from ''being surrendered or otherwise transferred to an international tribunal ... without the consent of that contributing state.''
The court is expected to be functioning in The Hague, Netherlands, early next year, financed largely by Europeans.
On Friday, a key House of Representatives committee voted to authorize the president to use force to rescue any American held by the new court and to bar military aid to nations that ratify the treaty.
This provision, dubbed by Europeans as ``the Hague invasion clause,'' is expected to pass the House, with administration support, but may not survive the Senate.
-------- propaganda wars
China Lifts Blocks on Some Western News Sites Without Comment,
Beijing Drops Long-Standing Ban on Various Web Reports
Reuters
Friday, May 17, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29796-2002May16.html
BEIJING, May 16 -- China appears to have lifted long-standing blocks on the Web sites of several Western news organizations, which were accessible today through local Internet connections in Beijing and Shanghai.
There was no official announcement explaining why normally censored Web sites -- including those of Reuters, CNN and The Washington Post -- were accessible, some as early as Wednesday evening. Nor was there any immediate indication of a change in policy.
"We aren't aware that there's any change," said a CNN spokeswoman in Hong Kong.
Foreign news organizations have lobbied hard for China to unblock their sites, but Beijing remains deeply suspicious of foreign media, especially given the leadership shuffle that is expected to take place this year.
The reason and timing for the apparent removal of the blocks, which many Web-savvy Chinese had already found ways to circumvent, was not immediately clear. It was also not known if the sites would remain accessible.
"Maybe they've realized that it is very easy to get around their blocks anyway and that it may be more efficient to just open them up and monitor their use," said one Western diplomat.
"They must have cared to have them blocked in the first place. It's a good move in general."
Today, the sites of the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe and Atlanta Journal-Constitution could also be accessed.
Sites for Time magazine, the Voice of America and BBC news, however, appeared still to be blocked.
The Ministry of State Security declined to comment and officials at the Ministry of Information Industry were unavailable.
Officials at the Foreign Ministry and the Information Office of the State Council, China's cabinet, said they were unaware the previously censored Web sites had been unblocked.
China has permitted access to normally blocked foreign news Web sites in the past, but mostly on a temporary basis.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
-------- death penalty
Prosecutors rebut judge on executions
May 17, 2002
By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020517-246132.htm
Federal prosecutors yesterday broke their silence on a federal judge's ruling that the death penalty never again could be constitutional, filing a scathing reply that attacked the judge's logic, his timing and his reading of the law and the Constitution.
"It fundamentally misapprehends the Constitution to use a provision that regulates the procedures by which the government may deprive someone of life to require that defendants may never be deprived of life at all," said the government response.
The Fifth Amendment "specifically contemplates" the use of capital punishment by setting rules for indictment in capital cases and when the government may take a criminal's life, said Assistant U.S. Attorneys David B. Anders and Amy K. Orange.
On April 25, Manhattan U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff said innocent people had been executed and more wrongful deaths were likely.
He ruled that the release of 32 "innocents" from state death rows in 10 years because of criminology advances meant that any execution would violate the Fifth Amendment right to "due process" because any more discoveries would be meaningful "only if such persons are still alive to be released."
The availability of DNA testing decreases, rather than increases, the likelihood of erroneous convictions, said Mr. Anders and Miss Orange, who pointed out that none of the 31 capital convictions under current federal law had been overturned.
U.S. Attorney James B. Comey brushed aside Judge Rakoff's unusual invitation to immediately appeal that April 25 order and instead filed yesterday's point-by-point rebuttal in an effort to persuade the 1995 Clinton appointee to rethink his unprecedented action.
The reply said Alan Quinones and Diego Rodriguez did not claim they were innocent of killing police informant Eddie Santiago in June 1999.
The prosecutors told the judge they "hogtied, tortured and killed Santiago whom they correctly suspected to be an informant" and burned his body in an effort to protect their large-scale heroin and cocaine sales ring in the Bronx. Eight co-defendants pleaded guilty.
Their attorney, Kevin McNally, said he would ask Judge Rakoff to hold an evidentiary hearing on whether innocent men had been freed from death row.
"Up till now, the government had not denied there were many innocent citizens released from death row. Now they're trying to quibble about how many there were," Mr. McNally said.
He said the prosecutors' decision not to appeal the hastily written preliminary order meant that after holding a hearing as he promised to do, Judge Rakoff could assemble a broadly reasoned ruling with more than the one precedent he included, the Supreme Court's 1993 Herrera decision, which prosecutors said contradicted his own reasoning.
"Everything will be before the court including the government's belated claim quibbling with the number of innocent people who've been released," Mr. McNally said.
"Since the Herrera decision, the ground has shifted and the repeated release of innocents from death row changes everything, even though it's state death rows, and even though there was a death penalty at the time the Constitution was written," Mr. McNally said yesterday.
Noting that Judge Rakoff "accepted" a June 2000 report by Columbia University law professor James Liebman that attacked errors in trial and sentencing phases of most murder cases, the government attacked that study as significantly flawed and said Mr. Liebman was a biased death penalty opponent and capital defense lawyer.
-------- terrorism
1999 Report Warned of Suicide Hijack
Fri May 17, 2002
By JOHN SOLOMON,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020517/ap_on_go_pr_wh/attacks_1999_warning_2
WASHINGTON (AP) - Exactly two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal report warned the executive branch that Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon (news - web sites) or other government building.
"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.
The report, entitled the "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?," described the suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks al-Qaida might seek for the 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan (news - web sites).
The report noted that an al-Qaida-linked terrorist first arrested in the Philippines in 1995 and later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had suggested such a suicide jetliner mission.
"Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters," author Rex Hudson wrote in a report prepared for the National Intelligence Council and shared with other federal agencies.
The intelligence council is attached to the CIA and is made up of a dozen senior intelligence officers who assist the U.S. intelligence community in analysis of threats and priorities.
The report contrasts with Bush administration officials' assertions that none in government had imagined an attack like Sept. 11 before that time.
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
The report was written by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress that provides research for various federal agencies under contracts.
The report was based solely on open-source information that the federal researchers gathered about the likely threats of terrorists, according to Robert L. Worden, the division's chief he federal research division.
"This information was out there, certainly to those who study the in-depth subject of terrorism and al-Qaida," Worden said.
"We knew it was an insightful report," he said. "Then after Sept. 11 we said, 'My gosh, that (suicide hijacking) was in there.'"
Asked about the report at his daily press briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer described it as a psychological, sociological evaluation of terrorism.
"I don't think it's a surprise to anybody that terrorists think in evil ways," he said.
"It is not a piece of intelligence information suggesting that we had information about a specific plan."
----
Foreboding Increased, but No Single Agency Had All the Clues
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN
New York Times
May 17, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/national/17AUGU.html
WASHINGTON, May 16 - Foreboding grew in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, as President Bush and his national security aides studied intelligence reports hinting that terrorists could be plotting a major attack, Mr. Bush's National Security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said today.
Ms. Rice described a hazy, jumbled mosaic of threat signals, none of them precise or clear.
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile," Ms. Rice said.
But Mr. Bush and his aides did not have all the threat information that was circulating through lower levels of the government in July and August, some of it more specific.
Bits and pieces of intelligence began to be picked up American counterterrorism officials but were never coherently assembled because agencies did not share or act on the information before the Sept. 11 attacks. Even when information did reach the president, its possible relevance to the plot seems evident only in hindsight.
For example, the report provided to the president on Aug. 6, which warned him that Mr. bin Laden's followers might hijack airplanes, was based on 1998 intelligence data drawn from a single British source, government officials said today.
That source said al Qaeda had an interest in hijacking airplanes in order to obtain hostages who could be used as bargaining chips so the terrorist organization could demand the freedom of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a Muslim cleric who was convicted in 1995 for his role in the failed plot to blow up landmarks in the New York area.
Mr. Bush was told, the officials said, that neither the Central Intelligence Agency nor the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed the information from the original source.
Even as President Bush asked for more information about the threats posed by al Qaeda, Ms. Rice said, the White House was not informed about several developments that, in hindsight, might have provided early warnings.
She said Mr. Bush had not been told before Sept. 11 about a memo written in July by an F.B.I. agent in Phoenix who warned that groups like al Qaeda might be sending students to American flight schools to train for terror operations.
The White House was also not told that the F.B.I. had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in Minneapolis after a flight school there reported that he had wanted to train on a 747 flight simulator, even though he had little experience as a pilot.
"As you might imagine," Ms. Rice said, "a lot of things are prepared within agencies. They're distributed internally, they're worked internally. It's unusual that anything like that would get to the president. He doesn't recall seeing anything. I don't recall seeing anything of this kind."
Beginning in December 2000, Ms. Rice said, the White House received warning signs that continued into the spring and summer of 2001 that indicated that al Qaeda was planning an attack in the United States, but intelligence and law enforcement officials said they were not certain where or when.
In May and June, American intelligence began to intercept communications between al Qaeda members discussing an attack, one that could be larger than any previous al Qaeda operation. Other officials have said that at least one message included a reference to the organization's desire to wage a devastating attack and used the word "Hiroshima" to describe its possible scope.
The communications prompted deep concern in counterterrorism units at the C.I.A., F.B.I. and the White House, and the bureau issued threat warnings in June and July about a possible terrorist attack around the Fourth of July. The Federal Aviation Administration also issued warnings to airlines.
"On July 5, the threat reporting had become sufficiently robust, though not, again, very specific, but sufficiently robust - there was a lot of chatter in the system - that in his morning meeting, the president asked me to go back and to see what was being done about all of the chatter that was there," Ms. Rice said.
Ms. Rice said she met that afternoon with Richard A. Clarke, a White House counterterrorism coordinator, to discuss the increase in threat information. Mr. Clarke convened two meetings that day on possible attacks, including one in which domestic agencies like the Transportation Department were included.
On July 6, the government was so concerned about threats in Turkey, France and Italy that counterterrorism officials were ordered to avoid traveling.
"Contingency planning was done on how to deal with multiple simultaneous attacks around the world," Ms. Rice said.
No attack occurred over the holiday. Even so, American counterterrorism experts still believed that a large-scale operation could be coming, officials said.
Ms. Rice said intelligence analysts had long believed that terrorists - and al Qaeda in particular - might resort to hijackings as a weapon against the United States.
The authorities in the Philippines had warned in 1995 of a possible plot to hijack commercial jets for use in terrorist actions. Ms. Rice said,
"That terrorism and hijacking might be associated is not rocket science," she said.
In August 2001, the C.I.A. issued a report reviewing the most recent evidence on the threat posed by al Qaeda. Intelligence officials say the report was designed largely to remind policy makers in the Bush administration that although no major attack had occurred in July, the threat of another attack still existed.
While the report had some new information, it was largely based on the same intelligence that had prompted the threat warnings issued in June and July, officials said.
That report did not mention the possibility of al Qaeda hijacking airplanes, however, an intelligence official said Thursday.
The personal briefing given to President Bush on Aug. 6 was based largely on the same material included in that August C.I.A. report, officials said.
But President Bush had asked for a briefing that provided greater historical context about what intelligence agencies knew about the threat from al Qaeda, and so the C.I.A. dug into its files for some older intelligence reports, officials said.
Ms. Rice said that the reference to hijackings was not based on any new intelligence, but rather reflected longstanding evidence that al Qaeda was interested in conducting hijackings.
"I want to reiterate: It's not a warning," Mr. Rice said. "There's no specific time, place or method mentioned. What you have seen in the run-up that I've talked about is that the F.A.A. was reacting to the same kind of generalized information about a potential hijacking as a method that al Qaeda might employ, but no specific information saying that they were planning such an attack at a particular time."
On Aug. 13, a week after the president's briefing, another incident occurred in Minnesota that some counterterrorism officials have said should have raised more red flags about al Qaeda's interest in aviation, but did not receive high level attention in Washington.
Mr. Moussaoui, a French citizen, was arrested in Minnesota after officials at a flight school there contacted the F.B.I. about their suspicions about his behavior.
He was arrested on immigration charges, and in one F.B.I. interview, an agent accused Mr. Moussaoui of being a terrorist. Mr. Moussaoui denied it, saying only that he wanted to learn to fly.
Meanwhile, in August the C.I.A. notified the Immigration and Naturalization Service that it should place two Middle Eastern men suspected of terrorism on its watch list to prevent them from entering the United States.
After the immigration service responded that the two were already in the country, the F.B.I. was informed that it should begin to look for the two men. The men - Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi - were not found before Sept. 11. They were among the 19 hijackers who attacked New York and Washington.
Ms. Rice said that even if Mr. Bush had more information, the attacks would have been difficult to predict.
"The fact is, this, in retrospect even, looks hard to put together," Ms. Rice said. "At the time we were looking at something very different."
----
Post-9/11, Questions About Security at Electric Plants
By JAYSON BLAIR
New York Times
May 17, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/nyregion/17POWE.html
Rose Marie Poveromo never thought much about security at the five power plants near her home in Astoria Heights, Queens. Instead, she focused on things like whether the tiny particles coming out of the plants caused cancer and made people sick.
That was, until Sept. 11. That is when the nightmares with the plane crashing into a plant, or a truck bomb going off, started surfacing.
"I have been worried about security because of the power plants ever since the attacks," Ms. Poveromo said recently from her home on 81st Street, which is near several other plants that, combined, generate half the electrical power in New York City. Her fears were calmed, she said, a few days after the attacks, when the city sent orange Sanitation Department trucks packed with sand to the plants and extra patrol officers to the streets.
Now, however, as the Police Department and other agencies get back to business as usual, the sand trucks and officers are gone. And Ms. Poveromo's nightmares have returned.
"Things have become quiet, and now all of a sudden security is on the back burner," said Ms. Poveromo, a real estate agent who is also the president of an Astoria neighborhood group, the United Community Civic Association.
As attention has focused on the safety of places like Indian Point, a nuclear plant in Westchester County, people like Ms. Poveromo who live near electric power plants, transmission lines and substations have become increasingly frustrated by what they consider a lack of adequate security.
Some estimate that an attack at a large power plant could set a small neighborhood ablaze by igniting a chain of powerful explosions.
This has been of great concern to government officials like James K. Kallstrom, who stepped down this week as the director of the New York State Office of Public Security, which was created after Sept. 11.
"Quite frankly, there is nothing that is more of a national security asset than the power grid," said Mr. Kallstrom, who remains an unpaid adviser to the office, now led by John Scanlon, a former chief of patrol for the New York Police Department.
The debate is over not only whether more oversight of power plants is needed, but also over who should pay for it. Power companies say that they have done their best to improve security after the attack, and that if anything is needed from state agencies it is financial assistance, not oversight. The companies also worry that state laws might allow the public release of information, like maps of transmission lines.
Consolidated Edison officials say they are working closely with the police on security precautions.
In Queens, Assemblyman Michael N. Gianaris, a Democrat and a resident of Astoria, said he was alarmed by the fact that unlike Indian Point, where security is monitored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, other power facilities are not monitored by government agencies. He has introduced legislation to give the state public security office responsibility for overseeing plants, substations and transmission lines.
He said he did not want security to get pushed to the side because of budget problems, particularly since the F.B.I. has issued alerts since Sept. 11 warning that power plants were being targeted by terrorists.
"In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the government stepped in - you had the N.Y.P.D. cops and the National Guard, and there was an immediate mobilization," Mr. Gianaris said. "But as we move into the long term, you can see those things are not there, and it is just not possible for the state or the city to manage the ongoing costs."
Shortly after he took office in January, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, created two new positions - a deputy commissioner for intelligence and a deputy commissioner for counterterrorism.
Police officials say the men in those posts have been working on securing power networks. But they added that there were more than 1,000 potential power-related targets in the city, from Con Edison's power plant on East 14th Street in Manhattan to a KeySpan Energy plant in Far Rockaway, Queens.
Inspector Michael Collins, a Police Department spokesman, would not comment on specific plans. "The department initially responded and provided extensive resources for covering these sites," he said. "We have met with operators of many of the sites that were covered after 9/11 and we have taken some steps to increase security at them."
Power companies and the New York Power Authority, which also runs plants, have said they have made many improvements. "We have looked at our security and made changes that have improved it," said Jack Murphy, a Power Authority spokesman. "We have determined we are not going to talk about what the improvements are or quantify them, because that would play into the hands of anyone looking to do harm."
The sprawling nature of power distribution makes regulating security hard. Connecticut Light and Power Company operates 3,100 miles of transmission lines and 530 substations to serve 1.1 million customers.
"We are working with industry groups, federal, state and local officials to determine the appropriate level of preparedness," said Chris Riley, a company spokesman.
Andrea Staub, a spokeswoman for KeySpan, which operates plants and other facilities on Long Island and in Queens, said, "What I can tell you is that the attack did open our eyes to make sure that all our facilities were covered as soon as they could be."
Despite the assurances, Ms. Poveromo said she noticed a lack of security. She says she hopes that Mr. Gianaris's bill passes.
As for the other power plants in her neighborhood and plans for several new ones, she says her opposition has only grown. "If they want to build more power plants, let them build them in Manhattan," she said. "Or let them build them in the area of Albany where most of our legislators who make our decisions live."
----
1999 Report for CIA Foresaw Al Qaeda Plane Attack
By REUTERS
May 17, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack-bush-report.html
WASHINGTON - Despite White House avowals that it would have been impossible to conceive before Sept. 11 of using a hijacked plane to attack U.S. targets, a 1999 report for the CIA envisioned a very similar threat.
It predicted Islamic militant Osama bin Laden would retaliate ``in a spectacular way'' against Washington for U.S. cruise missile strikes in 1998 against training facilities of his al Qaeda network in Afghanistan.
``Suicide bombers belonging to al Qaeda's martyrdom battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives ... into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, or the White House,'' the report said.
The report, titled ``The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism,'' was commissioned by the CIA and conducted by the research arm of the Library of Congress, well before Bush took office.
One work in a vast output of terrorism studies, the report has long been public and is available on the Internet.But its on-target prediction prompted new questions on Friday over how much the government knew about potential threats, in the wake of disclosures that President Bush was alerted in his daily CIA intelligence briefing to the possibility of a hijacking by al Qaeda last August.
Four hijacked U.S. airliners slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, killing about 3,000 people. Washington has blamed al Qaeda for the attacks.
``I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon,'' Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said Thursday.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Thursday the alert to Bush did not say there was a chance planes would be used by al Qaeda as suicide bombs.
``Traditional hijackings prior to Sept. 11 -- it might as well be a different word in a different language from what we have all unfortunately come to know about the post-9/11 world,'' he said.
On Friday, Fleischer played down the significance of the report, saying it was primarily a study of the thinking of potential terrorists and not based on specific intelligence.
He said he had not learned of the report until Friday, but noted it had also long been available to Congress, some of whose members have called for an investigation into potential administration intelligence failures.
``I think what it shows is this information that was out there did not raise enough alarms with anybody ... because it was not intelligence information,'' Fleischer said.
The Library of Congress report said retaliation could also come in the form of a ``building buster'' bomb at a federal building or, more likely, a time bomb on an airliner. ``A horrendous scenario consonant with al Qaeda's mindset would be its use of a nuclear suitcase bomb against any number of targets in the nation's capital,'' the report said.
It said other groups that could carry out terror attacks on the United States, including Lebanon's Hizbollah, Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam, and Japan's Aum Shinrikyo.
However, it said, ``al Qaeda poses the most serious terrorist threat to U.S. security interests, for al Qaeda's well-trained terrorists are actively engaged in a terrorist jihad against U.S. interests worldwide.''
----
Excerpts From National Security Adviser's Statement
New York Times
May 17, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/politics/17RTEX.html
Following are excerpts from the statement of Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, at a news conference yesterday in Washington, as recorded by The New York Times. The complete transcript is online at nytimes.com/politics.
In the April/May time frame there was specific threat reporting about Al Qaeda attacks against U.S. targets or interests that might be in the works. Now there was a clear concern that something was up, that something was coming. But it was principally focused overseas. The areas of those concern were the Middle East, the Arabian peninsula and Europe.
In the June time frame, arrests for the millennium plot - there was testimony by the participants in the millennium plot that Abu Zubaida had said that there might be interest in attacking the United States. . . .
And then on June 26 there was a threat spike. And as a result, again focusing overseas, the State Department issued a worldwide caution. . . .
At the end of June there was a status of threat and action meeting that - what we call the Counterterrorism Security Group. It is a group that is in our agency that meets under the direction of an N.S.C. special assistant, Dick Clarke at that time. . . .
On July 2, as a result of some of that work, the F.B.I. released a message saying that there are threats to be worried about overseas. But while we cannot foresee attacks domestically, we cannot rule them out. This is an INLET. And again an INLET goes out to law enforcement from the F.B.I.
On July 2 the F.A.A. issued another I.C. saying that Ressam, again associated with the millennium plot, said that there was an intention of using explosives in an airport terminal. This was a very specific I.C.
On July 5 the threat reporting had become sufficiently robust, though not, again, very specific, but sufficiently robust. There was a lot of chatter in the system, that in his morning meeting the president asked me to go back and to see what was being done about all of the chatter that was there. Andy Card and I met that afternoon with Dick Clarke. . . .
On July 6 the C.S.G. core players met again because there was concern about - very high concern - about potential attacks in Paris, Turkey, Rome. And they acted to go so far as to suspend nonessential travel of U.S. counterterrorism staff. . . .
Contingency planning was done on how to deal with multiple, simultaneous attacks around the world. The period in mid-July was a point of another major threat spike. And it all related to the G-8 summit that was coming up. And, in fact, there was specific threat information about the president. There was a lot of work done with liaison services abroad. . . .
Throughout July and August, several times a week, there were meetings of the C.S.G. reviewing the information at hand. There was no specific new information that came in in that period of time after the end of July and in August leading up to September. . . .
On Aug. 1 the F.B.I. issued another INLET on the upcoming third East Africa bombing anniversary. And again reiterated the message that had been in the July 2 INLET.
Now on Aug. 6 the president received a presidential daily briefing. . . . It was an analytic report that talked about U.B.L.'s methods of operation, talked about what he had done historically in 1997, in 1998. It mentioned hijacking, but hijacking in the traditional sense, and in a sense said that the most important and most likely thing was that they would take over an airliner holding passengers and demand the release of one of their operatives. . . .
There is one other F.A.A. I.C. in this period, issued on Aug. 16, where the F.A.A. issued an I.C. on disguised weapons. They were concerned about some reports that the terrorists had made breakthroughs in cellphones, keychains and pins as weapons. . . .
I want to reiterate that during this time the overwhelming bulk of the evidence was that this was an attack that was likely to take place overseas. The State Department, the Defense Department were on very high states of alert. The embassies were - have very clear protocols on how to button-up. So does the military. That was done.
But at home, while there was much less reporting or chatter about something at home, people were thinking about the U.S. And the F.B.I. was involved in a number of investigations of potential Al Qaeda personnel operating in the United States.
----
For years, signs suggested 'that something was up'
May 17, 2002
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020517-70217917.htm
U.S. intelligence agencies had indications for months and even years before September 11 that terrorists were planning attacks with aircraft.
But National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the most-recent intelligence indicated hijackers only would take hostages. A senior official last night told the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity that the only mention of hijacking was "one sentence buried in one briefing."
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Miss Rice told reporters at a news conference yesterday. "All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking."
•As early as 1995, the FBI and CIA were notified by police in the Philippines that Abdul Murad, a pilot and al Qaeda terrorist linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had revealed plans to fly a small plane filled with explosives into CIA headquarters.
•In late 1998, U.S. intelligence reports said Osama bin Laden was planning strikes on Washington or New York to avenge a U.S. missile strike on his headquarters in Afghanistan.
•Beginning in December 2000 and continuing through the spring of 2001 there was an increase in intelligence "traffic" indicating that bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist group was planning an attack.
"Now, there was a clear concern that something was up, that something was coming," she said. "But it was principally focused overseas. The areas of most concern were the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and Europe."
•That "chatter," Miss Rice said, increased in summer 2001.
The Federal Aviation Administration in late July issued a notice stating "there's no specific target, no credible info of attack to U.S. civil-aviation interests, but terror groups are known to be planning and training for hijackings, and we ask you, therefore, to urge - to use caution," she said.
President Bush was given an analytic intelligence report during a daily briefing on Aug. 6 that terrorists were planning to hijack airliners, but the intelligence did not indicate that the airliners would be used as missiles in suicide attacks.
"It mentioned hijacking, but hijacking in the traditional sense, and in a sense said that the most important and most likely thing was that they would take over an airliner holding passengers and demand the release of one of their operatives," Miss Rice said.
A hijacking might have been aimed at winning the release of imprisoned terror leader Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was convicted of plotting the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, she said.
"I want to reiterate: It's not a warning," Miss Rice said. "There's no specific time, place or method mentioned. What you have seen in the run-up that I've talked about is that the FAA was reacting to the same kind of generalized information about a potential hijacking as a method that al Qaeda might employ, but no specific information saying that they were planning such an attack at a particular time."
Miss Rice also said most of the intelligence indicated that an attack was likely to take place outside the United States.
"But at home, while there was much less reporting or chatter about something at home, people were thinking about the U.S., and the FBI was involved in a number of investigations of potential al Qaeda personnel operating in the United States," she said.
No public notification was made about the hijacking threat because there were no specifics "about when, where, under what circumstances," Miss Rice said.
"You would have risked shutting down the American civil-aviation system with such generalized information," she said. "You would have to think five, six, seven times about that, very, very hard. I don't think we ever thought a warning made sense in this context."
In 2001, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies had at least two chances to discover the September 11 plot.
The first was Aug. 16, when Zacarias Moussaoui, a Moroccan-born French national, was arrested by the FBI in Minnesota on immigration charges.
Moussaoui had enrolled in the Pan Am International Flying Academy in Eagan, Minn., and had paid $8,000 to learn how to fly a commercial jetliner but had expressed disinterest in learning to take off and land.
After the arrest, the FBI suspected that he was involved in some type of terrorist activity, but FBI investigative rules at the time prohibited agents from conducting the kind of intelligence probe that might have uncovered a role in the September 11 plot.
Moussaoui has since been indicted on conspiracy charges that carry the death penalty.
A second chance was an FBI memorandum from July from the Phoenix field office that stated that several Arabs were seeking flight training and other courses involving airport security and airport operations at at least one U.S. flight school.
The agent, who has not been identified by name, asked FBI headquarters to order a check of all flight schools to look for other Arabs who might also be involved.
The five-page memo referred to Osama bin Laden and suggested that his al Qaeda terrorist network or others might be involved. The memo offered no specific evidence but raised questions that went to FBI officials in Washington.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said yesterday that the FBI did not do enough to uncover the plot after the Phoenix memorandum and the arrest of Moussaoui in Minnesota.
"The FBI basically kept this [information] in," Mr. Shelby said. "They should have given it to the president. They should have given it to the [intelligence] committee, but in reality they sat on it."
Miss Rice defended the FBI for not sharing the information.
"It's unusual that anything like that would get to the president," she said. "He doesn't recall seeing anything. I don't recall seeing anything of this kind."
The pieces of intelligence information were "hard to put together," she said.
Administration intelligence officials said shortly after September 11 that there was no warning of an attack, although there were signs of terrorist planning overseas.
CIA officials, saying the agency was too busy taking part in the war on terrorism, did nothing to review the intelligence failure until after Congress formed a joint committee to investigate the matter earlier this year. CIA Director George J. Tenet then formed a secret task force to look into the matter.
Mr. Tenet told a Senate hearing in February that there was no intelligence failure, saying, "We are proud of our record."
Vice President Richard B. Cheney said in an interview in December that good intelligence is only part of preventing attacks.
"You can do all you can in terms of trying to penetrate the organizations of the terrorists, in terms of trying to harden the targets here at home," Mr. Cheney said. "But the ultimate defense, the only thing that guarantees your security, is to destroy your enemy."
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said in a speech last month that the terrorist plot was "hatched and financed overseas" up to five years ago.
All 19 hijackers entered the United States legally and "while here, the hijackers did all they could to stay below our radar," he said.
"In short, the terrorists had managed to exploit loopholes and vulnerabilities in our systems, to stay out of sight, and to not let anyone know what they were up to beyond a very closed circle," Mr. Mueller said.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Italy green power output set to climb - Enel
Story by Margaret Orgill,
REUTERS ITALY:
May 17, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16002/story.htm
ROME - Italy's renewable electricity output will rise by about sixty percent over the next four years, mainly from new wind farms and geothermal projects, the head of Enel's green power division said.
"We'll see more investment in wind, geothermal and then some hydro," Paolo Pietrogrande, chief executive officer of Enel Greenpower told Reuters on the sidelines of a power finance conference.
Unlike countries in northern Europe which are building wind farms offshore due to planning problems, Pietrogrande said Italian sites will be onshore because the tourist industry would object to towering turbines just off the coast.
Also, the seabed slopes steeply around Italy making it difficult to build offshore sites, he added.
Italy generates about 14 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity from green sources, excluding large hydropower schemes, which is nearly six percent of total power production. This is likely to rise to around 25 TWh by 2006.
State-controlled Enel's production is around eight TWh and will grow to 12-13 TWh by 2006/2007, said Pietrogrande.
Planning is also a problem for Italy's wind power sector with projects having to wait years to get approval.
"Enel has projects in the United States and there it takes about nine months to get a permit and start building. In Italy, it takes between three and four years," he said.
"Italy has passed approval power from central to local government so it takes time to make decisions."
The government, worried about a looming power shortage, recently passed a decree speeding up power plant authorisation so that most schemes get the go-ahead within six months.
According to Italy's grid, companies have made proposals for 538 renewable energy schemes with a total capacity of 18,900 megawatts.
Electricity generators must by law supply two percent of their power from green sources this year.
-------- energy
Lieberman to Seek Subpoena on White House's Enron Contacts
New York Times
May 17, 2002
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/politics/17CND-ENRO.html
WASHINGTON, May 17 - Democratic Senator Joseph I. Lieberman said today that he will seek to subpoena the White House about its contacts with the bankrupt but once-politically influential energy trader.
The move is a significant change of course for Democrats, who until now had only informally sought Enron-related information from the White House. Earlier this year, for example, Senate Democrats decided not to subpoena records of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, opting instead to let the General Accounting Office sue to obtain the information.
Mr. Lieberman, chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee and a potential 2004 presidential candidate, said he has become frustrated that White House officials have refused to turn over records of the contacts that his committee requested in a letter in March. Today, he informed the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, that he will ask his committee to issue subpoenas at a meeting next Wednesday.
The Connecticut lawmaker, who was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee two years ago, has sought "all communications" dating to 1992 between White House officials and Enron regarding the company's dealings with eight federal agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy. Mr. Lieberman also wants details of contacts between White House officials and officials at those agencies regarding Enron, as well as information about contacts between the Bush administration and Enron about national energy policy.
Before its abrupt collapse amid an accounting scandal last fall, Enron had close ties to the Bush Administration. Its executives had donated more to Mr. Bush's political campaigns than any other company, and its former chairman, Kenneth L. Lay, had served as chairman of a business advisory committee to Mr. Bush while he was the Governor of Texas.
In a letter to Mr. Gonzales today, Mr. Lieberman said that he has given up hope that the White House would provide the information the committee requested, despite "extensive efforts to resolve these issues with you and our extreme patience in waiting almost two months before demanding a response."
"Indeed," Mr. Lieberman said, "the only material you have sent us is copies of letters responding to other Congressional inquiries and a transcript of a presidential press conference. These documents are inadequate on their face even as a partial response to the Committee's request."
-------- environment
California Could Save $28 Billion, Protect Environment
SACRAMENTO, California,
May 17, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17-09.html#anchor1
A new report by a coalition of environmental and consumer groups identifies $28 billion in California's budget that the groups say funds programs that pollute the environment, hurt the economy, and endanger public health.
The coalition of 26 organizations released their report Thursday, outlining areas in which the state could save money while protecting the environment and improving public health. In contrast to Governor Gray Davis' May budget proposal, the coalition says their suggestions provide a solution to the state's current budget crisis that would avoid deep cuts in social services, education and healthcare.
The new report, "Green Watchdog 2002," recommends eliminating subsidies, tax loopholes and other activities that encourage environmentally harmful practices. The recommendations include: requiring refineries instead of taxpayers to pay for the clean up of MTBE contamination, charging fees of timber harvesters, and requiring the agricultural industry to pay for the clean up of pesticide runoff.
The governor and the state legislature are facing the worst budget crisis in California history, the groups say, with the gap between state revenues and expenditures having widened to an estimated $23.5 billion.
The coalition, which includes the California Tax Reform Association, Friends of the Earth and Green Capitol, is that environmental protection and strict fiscal responsibility go together. Pollution is most often the result of poor fiscal accountability, the coalition argues, allowing corporations and individuals to take advantage of free public resources.
"Polluters deliver a one two punch to Californians," said Teri Olle, toxics program director at CALPIRG. "Subsidized by taxpayer dollars, polluting industries get paid to make a mess in California. When they're done ruining the environment and harming our health, taxpayers are left holding the bag as the state spends millions to clean up after them. We need to break this cycle and make polluters pay their own way."
Green Watchdog 2002 marks the second time the national Green Scissors campaign has targeted California's budget. The recommendations highlighted in the report were chosen by coalition members after consultation with a variety of experts, agencies and advocates, in addition to an independent review of the state budget.
"California loses billions of taxpayer dollars on special interest tax breaks at the expense of the environment and public health," said Lenny Goldberg, executive director of the California Tax Reform Association. "Let's end polluters' free ride in our state, and solve this budget crisis rather than worsen it."
To read the "Green Watchdog 2002" report, visit: http://www.greencap.org
-------- genetics
Debate on Human Cloning Turns to Patents
New York Times
May 17, 2002
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/science/17CLON.html
The University of Missouri has received a patent that some lawyers say could cover human cloning, potentially violating a longstanding taboo against the patenting of humans.
The patent covers a way of turning unfertilized eggs into embryos, and the production of cloned mammals using that technique. But unlike some other patents on animal cloning, this one does not specifically exclude human from the definition of mammals; indeed, it specifically mentions the use of human eggs.
Those opposed to cloning and to patenting living things say the patent is a further sign that human life is being turned into a commodity.
"It is horrendous that we would define all of human life as biological machines that can be cloned, manufactured and patented," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the International Center for Technology Assessment, a Washington group that has long opposed patenting of living things and also wants to ban all human cloning.
The patent was issued in April 2001, but attracted no attention until Mr. Kimbrell's group ran across it recently.
Senator Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican who has been a leading opponent of human cloning, said he intended to introduce a bill to prohibit patents on human beings and human embryos, which he said were "akin to slavery."
"I think the patent office will appreciate having that clarity, given the applications that are coming into the patent office," Mr. Brownback said.
That bill would be separate from a bill the senator is already sponsoring that would prohibit all human cloning. The Senate is debating how extensively to ban human cloning, but none of the bills it is considering deal with the patent issues.
The patent also illustrates the tricky legal and ethical issues the United States Patent and Trademark Office is confronting as scientists race to develop cloning and to grow human tissues to treat disease. Mr. Kimbrell said he had found a few other patents that had been applied for but not granted that might cover human cloning.
The United States has been more liberal than most other countries in granting patents on living things, ever since a Supreme Court decision in 1980 that allowed the patenting of a microbe genetically engineered to consume oil spills. There are patents on complete animals, like a mouse genetically engineered to be prone to cancer. There are patents on human genes and human cells. The University of Wisconsin has a patent on human embryonic stem cells, which are cells taken from human embryos that have the ability to turn into any other type of tissue.
But the patent office has drawn the line on patenting of humans or human embryos themselves, saying it would not be constitutional. Many experts say this is because such patents would violate the 13th Amendment ban on slavery. Brigid Quinn, a spokeswoman for the patent office, said the agency was not using the 13th Amendment argument anymore but was not granting patents on humans because it had not received any guidance from Congress or the courts saying it should do so.
The result has been that many patents that conceivably could cover humans - like on cloning animals or on genetically engineering animals to produce drugs in their milk - specifically exclude humans.
A spokesman for the University of Missouri, Christian Basi, said it believed its patent covered human cloning because it applied to all mammals. The university has licensed the patent to BioTransplant, a Massachusetts biotechnology company that is working on creating pigs that can be used as human organ donors. But the license, Mr. Basi said, covers only the use in pigs.
"We have absolutely no interest in using this to research humans and we will not license this technology to anyone for use in humans," Mr. Basi said, suggesting that the patent could actually help stop human cloning. "This gives us control of this particular technology so we will know that this technology will not be used in humans."
Ms. Quinn said the patent office did not comment on individual patents but had not changed its policy of not issuing patents "drawn to humans."
Randall S. Prather, a professor of reproductive technology at Missouri whose work was the basis for the patent, said the mention of human eggs "was put there by the attorneys and they wanted to cover all mammals."
Charles Cohen, who wrote the patent when he was a lawyer at a St. Louis law firm, declined to comment.
Some lawyers who have looked at the patent, No. 6,211,429, say it is not clear that it covers human cloning and that interpreting patents requires careful analysis of the patent's history. That the patent office did not appear to have problems with it could be a sign that the agency believes that the patent does not cover humans.
"You'd have to go through line by line, word by word," said Gerald P. Dodson, a lawyer with Morrison & Foerster in Palo Alto, Calif., who read the patent and said he could not reach an immediate conclusion.
Mr. Dodson and others noted that the specifications and examples of how the patent could be used dealt with pigs and cows.
Even if the patent does cover human cloning, some lawyers say, it would be a stretch to say it covers humans themselves, although the abstract of the patent says it covers the "cloned products."
But even a patent on the process of cloning humans could give the patent holder some rights over people, some lawyers said. Conceivably, for instance, the university could bar people created overseas by its cloning process from entering the country.
"It definitely is a patent for cloning a human, and under the laws we have right now, it might actually cover the human," said Richard Warburg, a patent lawyer at Foley & Lardner in San Diego who represents Infigen, an animal cloning company.
Dr. Rochelle Seide, a New York patent lawyer who heads the biotechnology practice at the law firm of Baker & Botts, said the lack of the nonhuman disclaimer in the Missouri patent was surprising.
"Looking at it," Ms. Seide said, "I can see where people who are against cloning would have a big problem with it."
Advanced Cell Technology, a company that wants to clone human embryos to obtain stem cells for disease treatments, licensed a patent from the University of Massachusetts on its method of cloning. But the patent is on only nonhuman embryos produced by the process, though it does seem to cover human cells.
It might be difficult to draw the line on what constitutes a human. George J. Annas, professor of health law at Boston University School of Public Health, said it was unclear whether the antislavery amendment would be a basis for denying patents on human embryos because courts, in cases like those involving custody of frozen embryos, have said an embryo is not a person.
-------- human rights
UN Attacks Guatemala Demilitarization as Too Slow
May 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-guatemala-un.html
GUATEMALA CITY - The United Nations on Friday criticized Guatemala's government for failing to cut military spending and dismantle its counterinsurgency apparatus as promised in 1996 peace accords that ended a bloody 36-year civil war.
``The process of demilitarization must speed up,'' said Gerd Merrem, head of the U.N. peace verification mission in Guatemala (Minugua), presenting a report focusing on the army's post-war presence in the Central American nation.
The mission said in the report that Guatemala's military spending had soared in 2000 and 2001 to 0.83 percent and 0.96 percent of gross domestic product -- levels not seen since the end of the war.
Guatemala signed peace accords in 1996 with leftist guerrillas, ending a conflict in which some 200,000 people died, many in countless political slayings and massacres of Mayan Indians by state security forces.
A cornerstone of the deal was shrinking the size and power of the U.S.-trained and financed army that used an extensive intelligence network to hunt down perceived rebels.
As stipulated under the accords, the army was reduced in 1998 by 33 percent to 31,423 members from 46,900. Yearly budgets have frozen military spending on paper at around 0.66 percent of GDP, a nation's total output of goods and services.
But demilitarization had recently ``stagnated and even regressed,'' said Julian Camamero, head of Minugua's public security and army analysis section.
During the last two years, the government of President Alfonso Portillo has pumped extra money from outside its budget into the army, the report said, adding that limited access to information had prevented it from pinning down where the additional funds had gone.
Guatemala was meant to have complied with all the stipulations of the peace accords by 2000, but due to delays deadlines were later stretched out between 2000 and 2004.
Under the accords, in which the army was a major negotiator, Guatemala was supposed to have steered money away from the army and funneled it into crumbling, resource-starved health, education and public security sectors.
WARTIME MENTALITY PERSISTS
Once a left-leaning guerrilla sympathizer, Portillo has earned himself a reputation as a populist since taking office in January 2000 through fiery speeches railing against Guatemala's traditional economic elite.
Paradoxically his government is dominated by a right-wing
ruling party heavily influenced by retired military brass and presided over by Efrain Rios Montt, an ex-general. Montt is a former wartime dictator accused by human rights groups of ordering genocide of Maya Indians during his coup-led 1982-83 presidency at the height of the conflict.
The report said Guatemala's army had maintained a structure and philosophy geared toward a counterinsurgency war rather than a peace-time role of defending international borders.
It said an unnecessary number of military bases still operated around the countryside, especially in areas hardest hit by the war, in a system still based on controlling the population.
The report also urged Guatemala to speed up efforts to disband the army's infamous Presidential High Command, a presidential bodyguard unit linked to numerous political assassinations during the war, and some since 1996.
Military training was still geared to instilling soldiers with hostility toward the population -- something that was out of line with the peace accords, it said.
Minugua singled out a jungle training school where tough commandos known as ``Kaibiles'' still used physical punishment, including blows to the genitals, as a way of training soldiers to lead small attack units.
When Reuters journalists visited the center recently, commandos sailed down hills, swam across a pond and completed an assault course while shouting the battle cry: ``If I advance follow me, if I stop reprimand me, If I retreat kill me.''
``This is all contrary to the peace accords and underlines the failure to come good on compromises related to the military training system,'' said the report, which specifically mentioned the battle cry.
--------
U.N. Urges Saudis to End Floggings, Amputations
May 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-saudi-torture.html
GENEVA - A United Nations human rights body urged Saudi Arabia on Friday to consider ending punishments such as flogging and amputations, saying they violated international law banning torture.
But a Saudi delegation argued that its Islamic Sharia law allowed such corporal punishments to be imposed on convicted defendants, and they thus fell outside of U.N. jurisdiction.
The conservative kingdom opened its record for examination for the first time to the U.N. Committee against Torture, whose 10 independent experts ended a semi-annual session on Friday.
In its conclusions, the committee recommended Saudi Arabia ''re-examine its imposition of corporal punishments that are in breach of the Convention (U.N. Convention against Torture).''
Saudi Arabia implements strict Islamic Sharia laws, executing murderers, rapists and drug smugglers, usually by public beheading. It imposes floggings for sexual offences including harassing or even dating women, and amputations for theft.
``The committee itself had no doubt that flogging in almost every case constitutes torture, and amputation of limbs probably in every case...would constitute torture under our definition,'' said Peter Burns, Canadian law professor and committee chairman.
Saudi Arabia was the first country observing Sharia law to reject U.N. jurisdiction in some areas, Burns told a final news briefing after the three-week session, but he said he expected further ``conflicts in interpretation'' with other Islamic states.
It is among the 129 countries to have ratified the 1987 U.N. Convention against Torture, which forbids torture, violence or other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment.
Referring to the Saudi delegation, Burns said: ``Their position was that we were not really in a position to confront them on this because it was excluded from our jurisdiction.''
The Saudi position is that Sharia Law prescribes a punishment and a state that observes Sharia law has no choice but to observe those punishments, he said.
``So the Saudi argument is that whatever pain is associated with amputation of limbs, or for flogging, for these offences prescribed at Sharia, falls within that exception. We disagree.''
The Saudi delegation told the U.N. body that confessions obtained under torture were not admissible in court, and corporal punishments were not imposed on minors.
The exchange was an important first, Burns said, establishing a dialogue with Saudi Arabia -- which human rights groups charge is a politically protected ``untouchable'' at the annual U.N. Commission on Human Rights despite major abuses.
``We do not want to take a confrontational position with Saudi Arabia that removes them from the dialogue. We want to engage them, and keep engaging them and try to persuade them over time,'' Burns said.
The U.N. committee also expressed concern over Saudi denial of access by consular officers to detained foreigners and some deportations of foreigners.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Students paint nuke disaster picture
By Ed Koch <koch@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
May 17, 2002
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/special/2002/may/17/513460359.html
With the U.S. government poised to approve Yucca Mountain as the site of the nation's nuclear waste repository, a ninth grade class at an Arizona school near the Colorado River undertook research into what could happen if a truck carrying waste crashed on a major local bridge.
"Our research found that the water would be contaminated for a 42-mile radius and fish in the area would die instantly," said Alex Ozuna, 15.
Ozuna was one of 15 students at Mohave Accelerated Learning Center Public Charter School in Bullhead City who built a model depicting theoretical results of a tractor-trailer carrying four tons of nuclear waste crashing on the Laughlin Bridge.
"We studied what Nevada officials have been saying and what the Department of Energy has said. What the Nevada officials said seems more accurate, based on our research," Ozuna said.
The U.S. Senate is now debating whether to designate Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste repository. The plan calls for transporting and burying 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste at the ridge, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Senate is expected to vote by July.
Nevada officials have argued that the transportation of nuclear waste is unsafe and in danger of terrorist attack. Officials would take waste from across the country on barge, truck and train to Yucca Mountain. Nuclear industry leaders argue that the transport is safe and say storage casks have survived everything from simple accidents to major train collisions in field tests.
In the students' study, the bridge would not collapse because of a single tractor-trailer accident, Ozuna said, but should the casks carrying the waste be breached, the radioactive contents would leak into the river that flows by the gambling boomtown of Laughlin across the river from Bullhead City.
Ozuna is trying to raise money to take the model made in teacher Hannah Hazen's class to Washington to show lawmakers who will be voting on Yucca Mountain. He wants to try to convince the lawmakers that the transportation of nuclear waste from 31 states and military sites is fraught with peril.
"We have a small hazardous waste team here, but to clean up a disaster of this size, we would need to wait for crews from Las Vegas and Phoenix to get here," Ozuna said.
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, all tractor-trailers in the Colorado River towns have been rerouted from the Davis Dam Bridge to the Laughlin Bridge, the main thoroughfare linking the two communities.
"It is highly subject to sabotage," Ozuna said, noting that Yucca Mountain is not just a Nevada issue, but rather one that can affect many cities along transportation routes.
The school will pay for one-half of Ozuna's airfare and a three-night stay in Washington. Donations can be made to the Mohave Accelerated Learning Center for Alex Ozuna. Donors are asked to mark all donations to the attention of Michelle Dyer, P.O. Box 21288, Bullhead City, AZ 86442.
All donations above the sum needed for Ozuna's plane ticket, hotel room and reasonable daily expenses will be donated to the Nevada Protection Fund to aid Nevada's legal battle and education efforts to stop the dump.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.